Stuff not many talk about…..

Zoom ceiling:

Apparently there now exists a new form of glass ceiling for remote workers – the Zoom Ceiling. Remote work has definitely made achieving a healthier work-life balance a tad bit easier for remote workers, but not showing up at work physically is now the new barrier between them and their next promotion.

Bosses don’t really talk about it, diplomacy-schiplomacy…but they play the “out of sight, out of mind” game pretty well when promotions are in the horizon, passing over the remote workers and grabbing onto those who have started going to the office more frequently, if not daily.

Crypto crash or Crypto correction?

Despite the major not-so-surprising hype over meme coins like Dogecoin and its killer Shiba Inu during 2021, their predecessors (“the real coins”) Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all major cryptocurrencies dropped by 10% or more recently.

Another nail was hammered into the crypto-coffin when on January 21st, the cryptocurrency market cap declined by $205 billion in less than 24 hours. The major market indices also crashed, and were treading the correction territory at the period too. Data on January 28 suggested that the crypto market is worth $1.7 trillion, quite the slippery slope from the all-time high of $3 trillion. Given how much time, energy (stolen electricity) and effort it takes to “mine” cryptos, are cryptos ever gonna become real currencies with less volatile values?

Depends on who you ask, the answers will be different. Bill Maher said it best, “Crypto is an anonymous currency with a dollar sign on it.”

Warren Buffett says, “Cryptocurrencies basically have no value and they don’t produce anything. What you hope is that somebody else comes along and pays you more money for them later on. But then that person’s got the problem. In terms of value: zero.”

Media owners must stop being order takers.

I am just puzzled why media owners sometimes regard themselves as low placed suppliers in the advertising food chain. Do they assume that the rest of the stakeholders in the value chain are more intelligent than them?

I strongly disagree, because there are so many bright people in media owner companies (their companies can dwarf most agencies in town) but they do not act the part.

It is also bewildering to see clients trust their million-ringgit budgets to “media intelligent” companies as if there is a clear knowledge gap. Are media owners not capable of adding value to the conversation or are they banned from meeting clients directly to make their case?

This piece by Prof. Harmandar Singh aka Ham was the Editor’s Note for MARKETING WEEKENDER Issue 318.

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