The Raffi Report - w/c 16th June 2025
The five best Marketing-related nuggets across my desk this week
Welcome to the latest edition of The Raffi Report!
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ONE (if you believe that social media has ruined us, read this one)
Pretty provocative stuff here - don’t know if I agree with everything but it’s fascinating to see the decline in people’s satisfaction with life. It’s something that I’ve anecdotally noticed, and it’s sad!
With the AI wave now breaking, I’m hoping we can be more intentional about how we mitigate its effects. Seems to be that the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to social.
TWO (if you want to see how distribution and gate-keeping is changing, read this one)
My colleague Noah had an astute breakdown of Fred Again..’s latest track:
When one of the most popular DJ's in the world, Fred Again, and one of the most iconic UK rappers ever, Skepta, release their new song on a Twitch live-stream, with a whiteboard behind them announcing tickets for the release party...
It's a clear reminder that the conventional distribution channels have shifted.
From slow moving, legacy platforms, < to channels that move at the speed of culture, where shots on goal matter, and tastemakers rise to the top.
Old: 1 year to produce superbowl ad, demo video in 6 months, music video with your pr agency and some magazines, tickets sold via big ticket agencies
New: live-stream to thousands cross platform, subreddits created in front of your eyes, content clipped and shipped straight to tiktok,shorts,reels, behind the scenes build up and post event from personal social accounts, tickets sold on snapchat, ig stories and dark social
THREE (if you want to see where the future of Hollywood is headed, read this one)
Whether it’s social media or livestreaming, when it comes to content, China has long been 3-5 years ahead of the West. So what’s going on there now is a fair bet for what we’ll class as innovation around 2030…
Per Nikkei Asia:
Minidramas are a massive industry in China, where the market for short, serialized dramas is estimated to grow to US$14 billion (100 billion yuan) by 2027. Their popularity has led the city of Shenyang to embark on the construction of a massive studio space specifically for the production of minidramas. The studio is being developed in a former machine tool factory, a facility that by this summer will have 30 different sets for various kinds of scenes, ranging from modern locations to period drama to science fiction. Hopefully, it will be supporting the production of 150 minidramas within five years.
FOUR (if you want a handy framing for AI usage in day-to-day life, read this one)
Marian Bull cites Professor Rhett Allain who “compares AI to an elevator, and cognitive problem-solving (like solving a physics problem by hand) to a stairmaster machine. The elevator will get you to your destination faster, but the stairmaster will make your mind stronger and more agile.”
Personally I break it down like this:
Using AI to edit / tweak / sounding board / amend / improve my shitty first draft? All great. Doing everything so I don't even have to think? Medium-term dangerous.
FIVE (if you want to see where Marketing budgets are at, take a look at this one)
It’s a bad time to be a traditional agency, per Gartner:
“Thirty-nine percent of CMOs plan to cut back on agency budgets, and top actions to save agency costs include eliminating unproductive agency relationships and streamlining agency rosters, followed by renegotiating agency contracts and scopes of work. Twenty-two percent of CMOs said GenAI has enabled them to reduce their reliability on external agencies for creativity and strategy building.
Similarly, 39% of CMOs seek to reduce spending on labor, with top cost-saving actions including simplifying overlapping roles and reducing total headcount.”
