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If you ask New Yorkers on the street what they think about the giant, controversial print ad campaign in the NYC subway system, their initial response might be, Which one? In the past two months alone, not one, but two ad campaigns fitting that description have appeared on the subway. The first debuted in late September, when Friend, an AI company billed as a portable companion, ran a $1 million print campaign featuring a variety of servile messages like, Ill never leave dirty dishes in the sink. The campaign received massive criticismto the point that the MTA was forced to continuously remove Friends vandalized ads. In an interview with Fast Company, Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann said he expected that would happen, and, in fact, he designed the ads with white space to invite graffiti. Now, another controversial print ad campaign has joined the fray. The new ads are paid for by Nucleus Genomics, a genetic health company specializing in genetic testing, IVF services, and embryo screening. The companys ads include phrases like, Height is 80% genetic, IQ is 50% genetic, Have your best baby, and These babies have great genes. In emails to Fast Company, Nucleus said that its new campaign was inspired by yet another contentious ad from this year: Sydney Sweeneys recent American Eagle partnership, which sparked backlash for what many people believed was a casual promotion of eugenics. Shock value marketing is as old as advertising itself. But Friend and Nucleuss recent campaigns represent a novel kind of rage bait marketing that is primed for the current moment of political and technological divide. This new era of attention-seeking provocation, incubated on social media with companies like Cluely, has now made its way into the physical world where brands are looking to double down on turning backlash into opportunity. We spoke to leading experts about the rise of rage bait marketing and where it goes from here. Hear from: An NYU Stern School of Business professor on why the new crop of tech startups is perfectly primed for rage baiting. The head of strategy at The Martin Agency on the advantage provocative marketing campaigns give young companiesand what it might cost them. The cofounder of Joan Creative on what comes next after this initial wave of rage bait campaigns. [Photo: Nucleus Genomics] What is Nucleus Genomics trying to do, exactly? Nucleus was launched in 2021 by the now-25-year-old Kian Sadeghi. According to Sadeghi, the company is dedicated to helping parents have healthier children through what he calls genetic optimization. In practice, Nucleus provides a few different services. Its first offering was a proprietary DNA testing kit that uses cheek swabs to, per its website, uncover your genetic risk for 2000+ conditions. This summer, Nucleus partnered with a company called Genomic Prediction to begin offering an embryo screening service that allows patients to look at their embryos statistically predicted traitsincluding the potential likelihood of developing conditions like autism or Alzheimer’s, alongside eye color, height, hair color, and IQ. Later, in August, the company bundled that service with a new full-service IVF program called IVF+. [Images: Nucleus Genomics] Nucleus isnt the only company thats started offering more advanced embryo screening services in recent years. Several others, like Orchid and Genomic Prediction, have emerged within the last decade. All of these companies are facing intense debate from the scientific community over the legitimacy of their prediction models, the morality of screening for certain traits, and the long-term repercussions of a future in which embryo optimization becomes commonplace. This discussion around the ethics of Nucleus core premise is actually what sets it up for a successful rage bait campaign, according to Joshua Lewis, an assistant professor of marketing at NYUs Stern School of Business. For companies like Friend and Nucleus, he says, some level of polarization is intrinsic to the product itself. AI companions, for example, will inevitably have detractors who find the premise objectionable, as well as champions who believe in it wholeheartedly; the same goes for embryo screening companies. By employing rage bait tactics, Lewis says, these companies can start broader cultural dialogues and build affinity with their target audiences without losing too many potential customers. To polarize intentionally can make some sense, because ultimately what you want in marketing is to have your target segments be loyal. Polarizing can be quite good, as long as your non-target segments are experiencing the rage, and your target segments are appreciating what the brand is doing, Lewis says. Regardless of Nucleus actual intentions, he adds, it doesn’t cost them much to upset people who weren’t going to be using their products anyway. For companies in nascent fields, theres an added advantage to aiming for shock value in campaigns, says Elizabeth Paul, chief strategy officer at the advertising company The Martin Agency. If you’re in the business of genetically engineered babies or AI companions, controversy is baked into the product, Paul says. It seems to me like Nucleus Genomics and Friend AI decided to lean into that reality and make their baklash bug a feature. If anyone’s wondering, Why would you do that? I think their tension-filled campaigns better amplified mass awareness for what are very nascent categories. [Images: American Eagle] Inside Nucleus latest campaign In an email to Fast Company, Nucleus PR firm described the subway campaignwhich includes a full takeover of the Broadway Lafayette station, more than 1,000 subway car ads, and another 1,000 street adsas the first mainstream campaign to openly champion advanced embryo selection for specific traits. Several of the ads call out physical attributes and IQ, and most direct viewers to Nucleus landing page, pickyourbaby.com. The Nucleus team says it was inspired by the controversial Good Jeans campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney. In that campaign, a denim-clad Sweeney narrates, Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue. A male voice-over adds, Sydney Sweeney has great jeans. It almost immediately entered the sphere of marketing infamy for (likely inadvertently) promoting genetic ideals, given Sweeneys blue eyes, blond hair, and white skin. When Sadeghi saw the reaction to the Sweeney ad, he noticed a lot of what he calls DNA dissonanceor what he considers a widespread misunderstanding of what DNA actually is, why genetics matter, and how far along genetic testing has come in the scientific community. He claims that Nucleuss products are just another tool parents are going to use to help give their child the best start in life, and that the ads can help parents better understand how to achieve that advantage. While Sadeghi benignly frames the campaign as an educational tool, it doesnt exactly line up with the actual ads. Much of the copy feels designed to generate a reactiongood or badto what Sadeghi refers to as the “sci-fi narrative” surrounding embryo optimization. The internet reacts On Threads, one post of an ad reads, Every single day theres a new dystopian subway ad. On TikTok, a video with nearly 200,000 views critiquing the campaign is captioned, We need to have some very serious conversations about eugenics cuz we’re losing ground here. Another TikTok with more than 2.4 million views shows a camera panning around the Broadway Lafayette station with the overlaid text, Uhhh sorry but what in the eugenics is this? More than 8,000 other users have sounded off about the campaign in the comments. On the surface, rage baiting might seem counterproductivewho wants people to hate their product? But for companies like Friend and Nucleus, the numbers may speak for themselves. Nucleus says that since the campaign debuted, the company has seen an over 1,700% increase in sales, primarily driven by sign-ups to its IVF+ services. Across organic responses, its achieved almost five million impressions. Similarly, Friends earlier campaign sparked dozens of stories in the media and commentary across social media, causing Schiffman to deem it an overwhelming success. The vast majority of marketers are not going to want to test the adage all press is good press by courting controversy, Paul says. Still, most can probably understand the desire to break through the noise in an environment where consumers are bombarded with content on a daily basis. On social media, one algorithmically-backed way to achieve those ends is by eliciting fear or anger. The reality is, according to Kantar, 85% of ads right now fail to meet the minimum threshold of attention for comprehension, Paul says. In other words, they are so bland and boring and invisible, people did not pay enough attention to even process what they said. In an environment like that, brand invisibility is a bigger threat than brand rejection. View on Threads Companies are choosing to say the quiet part out loud Risk and provocation in marketing is a tale as old as time. Paul points out that such tactics trace back as far as P.T. Barnums shock-value stunts for his circus events. But Jaime Robinson, cofounder of the agency Joan Creative, believes there is something entirely unique about Friend and Nucleus recent campaigns: the willingness to openly address, and even emphasizeintrinsically controversial elements of their products. Robinson recalls a 1974 ad in which a brand called Beautymist featured football player Joe Namath pictured with his legs smoothed by a pair of nylons. Lewis remembers a 2018 ad featuring Colin Kaepernick after he refused to take a knee during the National Anthem. Each of these examples, they told me in separate interviews, were made with the knowledge that there would be some backlash from the public. The difference with Friend AI and Nucleus, Robinson explains, is that pantyhose and sneakers are not inherently controversial, while AI companions and embryo screening areand instead of hiding the elements of these products that consumers are most wary of, both companies are bringing them to the fore. [Nucleus] product is something where you can not just look out for potential diseases your embryos might have, but also pick out features like eye color and hair color. Theyve made a really provocative choice in their product and their use-case, Robinson says. Last year, she adds, a company like Nucleus might have shied away from talking about those features, and instead emphasized the health aspects of the marketing. Now, theyre putting it front-and-center. It’s about saying things that go against some of the most deeply held convictions of most of us and the things that we find most uncomfortable in the world: being replaced by robots; having babies being picked by their physical features and IQ, Robinson says. These are the things that we find the most abhorrent, just as human beings. [Screenshots: Twitter/X] Robinson believes that part of this marketing strategy might be attributable to a political climate in which authority figures are constantly testing the boundaries of what is acceptable to say. Lewis noted that, in a sense, President Trump often uses similar rage bait techniques in order to communicate his own personal branding. Now, we might be seeing that political tenor bleed into the marketing sphere. Both Robinson and Paul predict that, in the wake of Friend and Nucleus campaigns, were likely to see an uptick in rage bait marketing in the months to come. What’s interesting now is how companies are choosing to say the quiet part out loud, and doing it fearlessly, Robinson says. It’s almost as if they’ve thrown away the dog whistle and traded it for a foghorn.
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E-Commerce
U.S. consumers were much less confident in the economy in November in the aftermath of the government shutdown, weak hiring, and stubborn inflation. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 in November, from an upwardly revised October reading of 95.5, the lowest reading since April, when President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs that caused the stock market to plunge. The figures suggest that Americans are increasingly wary of high costs and sluggish job gains, with perceptions of the labor market worsening, the survey found. Declining confidence could pose political problems for Trump and Republicans in Congress, as the dimmer views of the economy were seen among all political affiliations and were particularly sharp among independents, the Conference Board said. Earlier Tuesday, a government report showed that retail sales slowed in September after healthy readings over the summer. While economists forecast healthy growth for the July-September quarter, many expect a much weaker showing in the final three months of the year, largely because of the shutdown. Less-confident consumers may spend less, though the connection isn’t always clear. In recent years, consumer spending has held up even when the available data suggests they’ve grown more anxious. We do not think that consumer spending is about to hit a cliff, as spending has decoupled from confidence, but risks to the downside are increasing, Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies, an investment bank, said. The proportion of consumers who said jobs are plentiful dropped to 27.6% in November, down from 28.6% in the previous month. It is down sharply from 37% in December. At the same time, 17.9% said jobs are hard to get,” slightly below the 18.3% who said so in October. That figure is up from 15.2% in September. The figures on job availability are seen by economists as reliable predictors of hiring and the unemployment rate. Americans continue to worry about elevated costs, fueling the affordability concerns that were a key issue in elections earlier this month. Consumers write-in responses pertaining to factors affecting the economy continued to be led by references to prices and inflation, tariffs and trade, and politics, with increased mentions of the federal government shutdown,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board. The shutdown ended November 12. The economy likely grew at a solid annual rate of about 3% in the July-September quarter, economists estimate. But growth is likely to slow in the final three months of the year, largely because of the shutdown, which cut off pay for federal workers, disrupted contracts, and interrupted air travel. The Conference Board survey ran through November 18, about five days after the shutdown ended. By Christopher Rugaber, AP economics writer
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E-Commerce
The Trump administration is hunting for ways to block the ability of states to regulate artificial intelligence. In response, dozens of state attorneys general have now sent a letter pressing Congressional leadership not to approve language that would preempt their governments freedom to propose their own legislation on the technology. Broad preemption of state protections is particularly ill-advised because constantly evolving emerging technologies, like AI, require agile regulatory responses that can protect our citizens, they write in a Tuesday memo. This regulatory innovation is best left to the 50 states so we can all learn from what works and what does not. New applications for AI are regularly being found for healthcare, hiring, housing markets, customer service, law enforcement and public safety, transportation, banking, education, and social media. The endeavor, which represents 36 states total, comes as Congress weighs language, packed in a new defense funding authorization bill, that would prevent states from enforcing their own rules about the technology. A previous measure, which failed, would have established a 10-year moratorium on states writing their own rules. A draft executive order leaked last week would, similarly, push the federal government to punish states for enacting or enforcing these rules. If there were real cases to be brought up, they would have brought [them] already, Alex Bores, the lawmaker who authored New Yorks passed, but not-yet-signed AI legislation, the RAISE Act, told Fast Company last week. The only reason you need an executive order to tell people to look for cases is when you just want to harass states into submission. Every state should be able to enact and enforce its own AI regulations to protect its residents, New York Attorney General Letitia James, the lead author of the letter, said in a statement. Certain AI chatbots have been shown to harm our childrens mental health and AI-generated deepfakes are making it easier for people to fall victim to scams. State governments are the best equipped to address the dangers associated with AI. The letter comes after state lawmakers wrote to their federal peers not to strip states of their ability to regulate artificial intelligence. Thus far, the federal government has not passed major legislation on ensuring model transparency use, AI cybersecurity and safety, or energy use. For state officials, the concern is that states will be banned from taking their own action on these fronts. Arati Prabhakar, a top tech adviser under the Biden administration, recently called this effort ludicrous, since Congress has yet to establish any regulatory regime for AI. The attorneys general emphasized the importance of defending children from inappropriate relationships with chatbots, including discussions of self-harm, and defending against deepfake-enabled scams. A moratorium would put us behind by tying states hands and failing to keep up with the technology, they write, arguing that pre-emption prevents states from remaining agile in responding to an emerging technology.
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E-Commerce
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