Here is Andrew. As usual, you probably got his DealBook newsletter by email today. However, your inbox may also be flooded with spam and junk mail.
That’s why many of us have moved our most important communication to text messages. And in the process, the “text inbox” has become the new sanctuary for brands, far more intimate than social media feeds.
At least, that’s the bet that actor-turned-venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher and Bono and Madonna’s manager-turned-investor Guy Oseary gambled when they co-founded a texting company called Community in 2019. Celebrities can communicate with fans about tour dates and new projects.
But last year, the business quietly grew, with McDonald’s, HBO, new york yankees and Condé Nast. When this month’s Hollywood blockbuster, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, launched its advertising campaign, it came with a phone number that viewers could text him with.
The company plans to announce next week that it has raised another $25 million from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Morgan Stanley Next Level Fund and Verizon Ventures, bringing its total funding to $110 million. (The latest appraisal value has not been disclosed.)
It also appointed Robert Wolfe, former chairman of UBS Group Americas and an informal adviser to President Barack Obama, as its new chairman. In the past year, he began helping large corporate clients register and the total number of clients exceeded his 8,000. The company is run by his Diankha Linear, a long-time executive who served as the Army’s Logistics and Transportation Officer.
The community has received its latest funding amid growing questions about social media reach and how businesses can own digital relationships with their customers without intermediaries like Facebook and Twitter.
“I started on Twitter and got quite a lot of followers,” said Kutcher, who has 16.8 million followers. “But Twitter today is very different from his Twitter when I was first playing,” he added. “Click-through rates have dropped significantly. The number of people who actually see posts has dropped significantly.”
By contrast, in Communities, “the click-through rate is 45% and the open rate is 98%,” Kutcher said. “You don’t get that in a social environment because most people don’t even see what you post.”
Communities compete with all sorts of services, from Attentive to Twilio to Zendesk, all vying for space in your text inbox. Additionally, many of the software platforms companies use to manage their customer relationships include features that make sending texts easy.
But what makes Community stand out is how celebrities and brands interact with their customers. Customers provide a trove of information about themselves that is brand-owned and not shared with other clients in the Community.
He said Oseary was originally drawn to the community because of his role as music manager.
“I don’t know who came to the concert tonight. If they leave the concert, I have no way of speaking to them again. There is no way of knowing who bought the album,” he said. “With Community, you can message a phone number and get in touch directly. Not owned.”
Companies advertise phone numbers that users can text to receive updates. McDonald’s posted the number on a billboard in The Times Square earlier this month. The service also allows brands to segment customers who sign up for texts, so if an artist has a concert scheduled in Atlanta, only people in Atlanta will receive the texts.
Using text messaging to connect with customers poses unique challenges for all of that promise. Brands need to get customers to opt-in to messages, which is difficult to do unless the brand is already well established. We may wish to hear from fewer brands.
“If you don’t like the text message you receive, you only have to write one word, as opposed to an email where you have to scroll to the bottom and click an unsubscribe link. Stop.” said Mr. Kutcher. (That’s some news you can use.)
in case you missed
Rupert Murdoch makes another deal. Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit with the Dominion voting system at the last minute for $788 billion. On one Staple Street, big payday Fox Corporation’s CEO son Lachlan, who bought the company for $38 million in 2018, also settled another defamation lawsuit against the Australian publisher this week.
Return to sender. Netflix is ending its DVD distribution service for the first time in 25 years. The streaming company’s original business model revolved around sending discs by mail, and at its peak in 2010, about 20 million subscribers used the service. The company announced the change as it reported first-quarter profit of $1.3 billion, up 4% year-over-year.
Gary Gensler gets a grill. The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, beaten by republicans Appearing before the House Financial Services Committee on the handling of agencies in the cryptocurrency industry. He defended regulators, saying he had never seen them break many securities laws.
China’s economy is recovering. In the first quarter after Beijing lifted tough COVID-19 restrictions, China, the world’s second-largest economy, slumped on the back of soaring consumer spending, rising exports and government-led infrastructure investment. Exceeded my expectations. But the youth unemployment rate has hit her 19.6%, the second-highest figure ever, and businesses believe Beijing has stopped entering the private sector and the economic uncertainty is over. suggests not.
Goldman Sachs Hastens U-Turn in Retail Banking. The Wall Street giant reported lackluster first-quarter earnings and saw a surge in demand from consumer banks, including putting its GreenSky unit up for sale just a year after buying the lending firm for $2.2 billion. Accelerated withdrawal. One spot for new business: Banks Apple savings account This is an annual interest rate of 4.15%, more than ten times the national average.
BMW soaks in hot water while drinking ice cream. German car maker forced to apologize After being accused of discriminating against Chinese visitors to this week’s Shanghai Motor Show.On Chinese social media, a booth employee told a Chinese attendee that he had run out of ice cream, and then a westerner. An image has gone viral that appears to show a man offering free ice cream.
Term of the Week: “Greenhushing”
Since Earth Day was instituted in 1970, businesses have advertised their commitment to the environment on April 22nd. Green credential of the year. Instead, some companies resort to “green hashing”. His analysis of 1,200 companies, published last fall by the Swiss consultancy South Pole, found that one in four of his had planned to go green, but then “fall into the dark.” In other words, it turns out that it obscures the goal of going green.
AI, artist
Artificial intelligence has had a creative few weeks, with a song that uses AI to mimic the voices of Drake and The Weeknd going viral. A murder mystery novel written using AI is available for pre-order. The AI-generated image won him one of the world’s largest photography awards. DealBook wrote last week that AI is causing nasty copyright issues, but it also raises questions about the nature of human creativity itself.
Companies have tried to draw the line between human-generated and machine-generated work. Streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music removed technology-created songs from their platforms this week. Universal Music Group also asked the service to block AI from scraping songs for use as training data.
Some artists see creative potential rather than threats. Stephen Marche, who used three AI programs to write a novel cheekily titled “Death of an Author,” compared the process to hip-hop songwriting. How the hooks work, you have to be able to bring them together in a way that makes sense,” he told The New York Times. I was. “But on the other hand, I wasn’t the one who created the word.”
who is the creator? Berlin-based artist Boris Erdagsen, whose AI-generated “Pseudomnesia: The Electrician” won the Creative Open category at the Sony World Photography Awards, told DealBook that creating the images was like directing a movie. rice field.
“There are set directors, cameramen, actresses, storywriters in the film and I tell them which direction to go,” he said. “As an artist, I need to connect all this to the world, to the human condition.”
He entered a competition and started a conversation about separating photographic art from AI-generated art.
But who should take credit for this kind of collaboration? Generative AI is informed by reference materials created by human artists. Using AI to mimic the drawing style of a particular performer or a particular artist further complicates things. Last month, the Recording Industry Association of America said,human art campaignAI creators claim that they should license their works for use as training data. And musician Holly Herndon started a company that creates consent guidelines for technology. “The creative possibilities there are fascinating and will change art forever,” she told The Times. “You just have to understand the conditions and the technique.”
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