Thirsty

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant, and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye, topics from our podcast, and our street knowledge blog.

Hi there!

Today, I gave a lift to my daughter to take her to her sports club. I click on Spotify and press play on a playlist she’s shared with me (as those are the rules), and Thirsty by Aespa starts.

Aespa - who, for those of you who have not had the benefit of an education brought courtesy of daughters spending their teenage years in the last decade, are a Korean girl group, and while I might not be a fan, is the tune that inspires this week’s marketing thought.

Why? Well, it could be that when the cool kids say “thirsty,” they mean needy, and I could make some pithy observations about the state of personal brands, and specifically LinkedIn these days.

But maybe that’s for another day; what I think is more interesting to us as marketers is my daughter's relationship with K-pop and, in turn, social media.

You see, despite us sitting there in traffic, and don’t get me started on the roadworks in my town, listening to this jolly K-Pop tune, if I was to introduce her, say, at a chum’s wedding, for example, and say she likes K-Pop to one of my younger colleagues; I would be wrong.

I know this now.

She is not a fan of K-pop.

But she is, trust me, when I say I’ve been educated, I mean I have had detailed updates on BTS and their military service.

It’s just not her public persona, which is cool. We all have our guilty pleasures; I don’t go blurting out that I binge-watched half a series of the Secrets of the London Underground one lazy Sunday afternoon when I meet new people at colleagues’ weddings.

The fascinating thing, for me anyway, is that she has different social media accounts that she purposefully trains to reflect these aspects of her life.

There is a virtual K-Pop-loving daughter out there, so when she wants to indulge this side of herself, it feeds all the latest videos, gossip, and all the K-Pop things.

I find this awareness of personalization engines smart and refreshing when our young’uns are often being portrayed as victims of the algorithms, but also, it’s a great example of the complexity of making assumptions about our audience.

The age-old challenge of personalization, which everyone cites when they talk about poorly targeted ads or product recommendations, is not about the content or ad per se; it’s the context of that interaction.

Yes, I was buying a little black dress for my niece; I don’t need ads for them to follow me around the interwebs.

Like my stumble when introducing my daughter at my chum’s wedding, that was not the time to refer to K-Pop.

And, of course, back to Spotify, it has no concept of the rule that when I drive either of my daughters around, it’s their playlists, not mine. To put it another way; it has no idea that this is my context for listening to K-pop.

So, maybe my daughter has her algos trained, but back in my office, the Spotify DJ is suggesting I should be listening to Backswan*….. err.. no.

*Another female K-pop band ;-)

I hope you enjoy this week's links; thanks for reading this far.

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

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