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Unlike some intrusive ads, branded content allows you to connect with consumers by creating media they actually want to engage with.
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Whether you’re listening to the radio, watching TV, or scrolling on Instagram, you face a near-constant barrage of advertisements—ads you’ve probably learned to tune out. If you’re selling a product, you can be sure your customers are similarly adept at tuning ads out. So how do you catch (and hold) their attention?
One option is to reframe how you approach marketing, aiming to connect with your audience instead of just selling to them. If you’re wondering how to create meaningful content your customers won’t skip over, leveraging branded content may be your solution. 
Branded content is marketing material that, rather than explicitly promoting your products, provides useful information or tells a story your audience can connect with. Unlike conventional advertising that incorporates a call to action (CTA) to generate leads and make a sale, branded content focuses on positive brand association and appeals to the viewer’s emotions. And unlike typical ads, audiences choose to engage with branded content. Effective branded content should function as entertainment, piquing your audience’s curiosity and, ideally, promoting conversation.
Branded content is often considered a type of content marketing. Content marketing is about creating useful or engaging content that contributes to brand awareness and drives sales. Branded content specifically focuses on engaging storytelling that doesn’t overtly promote the brand; instead, the brand benefits from the positive association of aligning its name with a story audiences love.
All branded content is content marketing, but not all content marketing is branded content. To illustrate the distinction, other types of content marketing might include downloadable templates, video tutorials for using a brand’s product, and clever social media posts that highlight the benefits of a business’ services. None of these types of content marketing have branded content’s emphasis on storytelling, and they’re also a little more overt in promoting the business itself.
Here are three reasons to consider incorporating branded content into your marketing mix: 
A robust marketing strategy integrates different forms of marketing material. By integrating branded content into your marketing approach, you can avoid the redundancy of, for instance, typical pay-per-click (PPC) ads and present your brand from a fresh perspective. This helps you expand to broader audiences and boost visibility.
Branded content often tells compelling stories. Consider how you can express your brand identity through a narrative to create meaningful connections with your customers. What brand values matter most to you? What is your company’s mission statement? When your values and mission are reflected in the content you create—even if it doesn’t directly promote your products—customers are more likely to relate to your brand on an emotional level.
For example, Bebemoss is a sustainable toy company. Its founder, Izabela Erşahin, uses branded content to share how she found joy in crocheting and knitting after a difficult pregnancy. She breathes humanity into the brand’s story by sharing her narrative in a captivating video.
The branded content you create doesn’t have to be complex—in fact, something simple can come across as more authentic. Your first piece of branded content might just be you in front of the camera, sharing why you began your business. This openness can endear you to viewers and create positive associations around your brand.
Consumers are inundated with advertisements—to the point that many people have learned to tune them out. By creating branded entertainment your audience enjoys, you provide value in a way that traditional advertising cannot. Think of it this way: A traditional ad takes, while branded content gives. This allows your target audience to connect with your brand in a different way that doesn’t involve being directly sold to. 
Use these steps to flesh out a branded content campaign that aligns with your business goals:
Before creating content to connect with your target audience, you’ll need to understand who they are and what they care about. This will help you tailor your branded content. Gather customer feedback in surveys and inquire about their concerns. Ask what things they care the most about. Consider emailing a survey immediately after a customer interacts with your brand, like after a purchase; post-purchase emails have a 40% to 50% open rate and increase customer retention.
Also examine customer reviews, comments, and engagement on social platforms. By evaluating customer behavior, you may notice patterns in their feedback that you can address through your branded content marketing strategy. For example, Bebemoss makes toys for children, but its customers are parents. As a result, the company’s video intentionally speaks to parents—specifically moms—because Bebemoss knows a story about resilience and motherhood will resonate with its target audience.
Your brand identity and values can serve as the foundation of a gripping narrative. They offer a purpose behind your story and a lens through which to tell it. 
Shopify’s mission, for example, is to reduce the barriers to business ownership. This purpose can be seen in the Shopify Masters podcast, which features interviews with business owners, highlights their entrepreneurship journey, and provides listeners with valuable information. The podcast is branded content that contributes to Shopify’s mission of making entrepreneurship accessible while connecting its audience to the stories of those on a similar path.
To create content that incorporates your brand identity, know which problems your brand aims to solve, how it differs from the competition, and its outward personality. To create content that includes your values, know what you’re unwilling to compromise on and what motivates your brand.
The best branded content tells a compelling story. Great stories include rising action, a climax, and a resolution. Ideally, your audience should have someone to root for and feel emotionally tied to the story’s outcome. You can accomplish this by taking a relatable character on a journey that involves overcoming conflict. Your brand can tell the story of the founder’s personal history, the brand origin, a challenge the brand has overcome, or people your brand has helped.
They say two heads are better than one. If you want more creative expertise, consider working with another company—like a magazine or agency—to produce your branded content. For example, you’ve probably seen magazine articles marked with a paid partnership label; the content is interesting and doesn’t overtly promote a product. This is branded content in action.
Up-and-coming business owners who may not be able to hire another company can mimic these techniques on a smaller scale. For instance, you could hire a local influencer to create a video series in-house. Or, you could interview a customer to find ways their personal story connects to your brand’s values and then share that story on your company blog.
Ideally, you’ll promote your branded content via different mediums. Doing so will help you reach more people and present your content in new ways. This can involve posting on social media platforms, including it in newsletters, uploading a video to YouTube, and leveraging PR to get media attention. 
Tracking the performance of your branded content will inform your team of its effectiveness. Remember, the primary goal of branded content is high audience engagement, not generating leads or sales. With that in mind, some marketing metrics to track are:
Your team can take this data and your findings to guide your future decisions in your marketing strategies.
Branded content is a marketing technique that connects viewers to the brand. It relies on storytelling, emotional appeal, and brand value to build a relationship with its target audience.
The Barbie movie took the world by storm with its star-studded cast, serving as branded content for Mattel, which saw an increase in sales after the film’s positive reception. Michelin’s restaurant guide is another wildly popular example that spotlights the tire company while providing restaurant reviews. On a more accessible level, Fly By Jing uses its recipe blog to provide genuine value to readers without ever making a hard sell.
Branded content is a type of content marketing; typically, branded content is an entertaining piece of media—a video or article, for instance—that audiences choose to engage with of their own accord. A content marketing campaign as a whole may be a bit broader, including social media, email newsletters, and press releases.
Companies can create branded content themselves, but they can team up with others to tell a more impactful story. For example, brands like Red Bull and Mailchimp have in-house branded content studios, while other brands rely on agencies or other creative partners to bring content to life.
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When we fall prey to perfectionism, we think we’re honorably aspiring to be our very best, but often we’re really just setting ourselves up for failure, as perfection is impossible and its pursuit inevitably backfires.
Verified by Psychology Today
Posted December 19, 2024 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
“AI might become smarter than us!” “AI is already smarter than us!”
Today’s media is inundated with claims about AI being smarter than humans or that if it is not yet, it will be soon. It is an odd claim because it depends on, among other things, the very definition of “smart” and “intelligent.” In all our human-centered arrogance, we are changing the definition continuously.
Our human mind has been obsessed with artificial minds for centuries, from Homer’s Iliad to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to C-3PO in “Star Wars.” The question of when these artificial minds become intelligent has fascinated us and scared us at the same time. But when do these artificial minds become intelligent?
Imagine running a marathon. You aim to run the 26.2 miles, but the moment you have the finish line in sight, somebody tells you that the organization has just decided to extend the marathon by a few miles. Somewhat annoyed (and exhausted!), you run farther, when suddenly in the distance you see the new finish line. Exhilarated you run farther, but then you are told that the finish line has been moved yet again.
Sounds unfair? Well, in answering the question of whether machines are smarter than humans we do exactly that: We continuously move the finish line.
Since the formal inception of artificial intelligence in 1956, it was held that AI could be considered to match human intelligence when it would be able to play chess. In 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. AI had reached the finish line of intelligence!
But immediately the world argued that while a computer beating a chess master is certainly impressive, this achievement was in hindsight doable. After all, the number of possible chess game variations is large but remains only around 10¹²⁰ (a 1 followed by 120 zeros). Handling that many possible chess game variations does not really constitute intelligence. What really does is beating somebody at the game of Go. Go is played on a much larger board than chess, typically 19×19, compared to chess’s 8×8, with simpler rules and far more possible board positions than chess—around 10¹⁷⁰. The complexity of Go would really constitute the finish line of intelligence.
In March 2016, Google-DeepMind’s AphaGo beat professional Go player Lee Sedol in a five-game match. AlphaGo had crossed the finish line of intelligence. After 60 years AI had truly become intelligent.
Now, beating human chess and Go champions is impressive, but 10¹²⁰ or 10¹⁷⁰ variations are still manageable. If a computer is powerful enough to compute, it is feasible it can capture these variations. So, perhaps computers are not really intelligent when they beat chess and Go champions. Instead, what would make AI really intelligent is not just making computations based on some moves, but actually interacting with the real world. Self-driving cars! That would constitute intelligence.
When the first self-driving cars hit the highway, we decided to move the finish line yet again. Sure, self-driving cars were intelligent in their own right, but highways did not make them really intelligent. Once they hit the streets in crowded cities, then they would be intelligent.
No, creativity—that would make AI intelligent. If AI could create text or pictures that did not exist, that would really constitute intelligence. Meanwhile, although many of us now rely on AI to generate texts, pictures, and movies, we are still wondering whether AI is smart.
The question is, why do we move the finish line? If an organization moves the finish line during a marathon, that hypothetical organization would simply be mean and heartless. In contrast, we humans likely move the intelligence finish line for AI because of a simple reason: We don’t want to lose the game and hence do not play by the rules.
We don’t play by the rules. Not only because we continuously move the finish line. We are not even true to ourselves.
Undoubtedly, you consider yourself smart—certainly smarter than a machine. Yet, you probably cannot beat a chess grandmaster or a high-level Go player. And even though you can drive a car, you will not be able to do that for long when a self-driving car is better able to do this.
By these previous definitions of intelligence, you are not as smart as AI. But you will quickly come up with a clever solution: You may not be as smart as AI when it comes to chess, Go, or the self-driving car, but at least you are conscious. And you have a soul. And a body. And have five senses.
Will AI ever become as smart as humans? I am reluctant to answer this question with “yes.” Not because AI can never become as smart as humans, but because humans will always eagerly move the finish line called intelligence.
References
Louwerse, M.M. (2025). Understanding artificial minds through human minds. The Psychology of AI. Routledge /Taylor & Francis.
Max Louwerse, Ph.D., is a cognitive psychologist, artificial intelligence researcher, and linguist. He is currently is Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University and Professor by Special Appointment at Maastricht University, both in The Netherlands.
Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today.
Psychology Today © 2024 Sussex Publishers, LLC
When we fall prey to perfectionism, we think we’re honorably aspiring to be our very best, but often we’re really just setting ourselves up for failure, as perfection is impossible and its pursuit inevitably backfires.

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The CDC confirmed the first severe human case of bird flu in the United States on Wednesday. While the immediate health risk to the larger public remains low, it does spark the question: is the U.S. better prepared for another pandemic?
“Absolutely,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the former White House COVID-19 response coordinator under President Joe Biden, told Boston Public Radio on Thursday.
Jha is now the Dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. He said the U.S. has made a number of improvements over the past four years, including better disease surveillance and faster vaccine production.
But preparedness must be an ongoing effort for President-Elect Donald Trump’s administration, he said. “And what I worry about is, will the Trump team take all of those gains and basically rip it apart, or continue? If they continue, we will be in better shape.”
Improving preparedness should include a national assessment of what went right and wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jha said. Not to blame anyone for past mistakes, but to make sure the country does it better the next time. Some countries, like the United Kingdom, are doing this on the national level. Jha said he wishes the U.S. would do the same, because the risk of pandemics and biological threats are increasing, thanks to climate change and an increasingly globalized world.
“If we are smart … we can manage our way through them without having the kind of ridiculous shut downs and stuff that we had to do in 2020,” he said. “And being smart means knowing what you did right and what you didn’t do so well.”
According to Jha, one thing the U.S. didn’t do so well were school closures. Closing schools made sense in early 2020 when scientists were still learning about the new coronavirus and didn’t know if schools were major spreaders, he said.
Many public health officials — and even Jha — were cautious reopening schools in the fall of 2020. That was a mistake, Jha said, because Florida and other states without school closures did not see large outbreaks.
“By the end of September of 2020, it was very clear to all of us that all the schools should reopen. And obviously that did not happen,” Jha said. His children were in Newton public schools, which did not reopen that fall, a move he said was “super frustrating.”
To protect older and at-risk teachers and children, Jha said there could have been more creative solutions. For example, having older teachers teach remotely or not work with kids directly.
A pandemic post-mortem should also include an assessment of vaccine mandates, Jha said. It’s clear the mandates — which Jha advocated for — increased vaccination rates, but they may have helped fuel the anti-vaccination movement, he said.
“Public health does not work well when you start with mandates and forcing people to do stuff. It works much better when you engage in persuasion, where you understand where people are,” he said.
Once vaccines became more broadly available, public health officials should have done a better job trying to persuade people that vaccines were going to save lives, Jha said. The benefit of lives saved by vaccines in the short term may have come at the cost of a loss of trust from the public, he said.
“And in retrospect, I can go back and ask the question: ‘In the long run, did we do more good or more harm on public health?’” Jha said.
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Artificial Intelligence in 2030  The New York Times
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CARTERET COUNTY, N.C. (WITN) – Two Eastern Carolina men are facing multiple drug charges after deputies say another man died of an apparent overdose death.
Carteret County deputies say 62-year-old Benny Weeks, of Newport, died at his Stargazer Lane home on Tuesday.
Based on their investigation and preliminary autopsy findings, deputies believe Weeks died from an overdose.
Deputies say their investigation shows that Francis Vandevoord and Jamie Rumsey sold heroin/fentanyl to Weeks around November 5th.
Vandeevoord is charged with two counts of possession with intent to sell and deliver Schedule II controlled substance, sell and deliver Schedule II controlled substance, delivery of Schedule II controlled substance, and two counts of conspire to sell and deliver Schedule II controlled substances.
Rumey is charged with possession with intent to sell and deliver Schedule II controlled substance, sell and deliver Schedule II controlled substance, and two counts of conspire to sell and deliver Schedule II controlled substances.
Deputies say additional charges related to Weeks’ death are expected after the autopsy is completed.

Copyright 2024 WITN. All rights reserved.

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Three Saint Michael’s fall Athletic teams complete record-breaking seasons  Saint Michael’s College
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Key Points
Why is recent news from the Federal Reserve causing big sell-offs for cryptocurrencies?
The cryptocurrency market is seeing a day of big sell-offs in Thursday’s trading. Bitcoin‘s token price was down 4.8% over the previous 24 hours of trading as of 4 p.m. ET, and Ethereum‘s price was down 9.2% over the period. The valuation pullback has been even more pronounced in the altcoin space.
The popular meme token Shiba Inu (SHIB -12.39%) saw its price fall 11.5% over the last day of trading. Meanwhile, Cardano (ADA -11.24%) was also down 11.5% across the stretch, and Chainlink (LINK -12.88%) was down 13.2%.
Shiba Inu is losing ground amid a waves of sell-offs impacting the broader crypto market. Crypto prices are seeing a big pullback following news from the Federal Reserve yesterday that suggests a less bullish macroeconomic backdrop in 2025. With concerns that inflationary pressures could persist, it now looks like cuts for interest rates will arrive at a slower pace than previously anticipated.
With its meeting yesterday, the Fed announced that it was moving forward with a 25-basis point cut for interest rates. The cut marked the central banking authority’s third rate reduction since September and brought the benchmark rate down to 4.25%. The move was in line with the market’s expectations, but comments from Chairman Jerome Powell shocked the market and put a halt to a recent surge of bullish momentum that has propelled valuations for cryptocurrencies and speculative stocks higher.
Powell indicated that the recently announced rate cut was not an easy decision and signaled that the Fed will be taking a more cautious approach to rate reductions in 2025. The Federal Reserve said that it now expects to deliver only two subsequent rate cuts of 25 basis points next year, down from its previous forecast for four cuts at that level. Lower interest rates have typically been a bullish catalyst for cryptocurrencies, and the less favorable rate outlook is driving substantial sell-offs for Shiba Inu, Cardano, Chainlink, and other tokens.
Even on the heels of recent pullbacks, Shiba Inu’s token price has risen by roughly 107% across 2024’s trading. These gains have largely been propelled by speculative investing, meme coin momentum, and expectations that the incoming Trump administration will take steps that promote the growth of the crypto market.
While the change in presidential administration and shift in congressional makeup next year could create catalysts that drive Shiba Inu’s token price higher, investors should keep in mind that the token’s rally this year has not been driven by fundamentals. Accordingly, if macroeconomic conditions take a turn for the worse or other disruptive risk factors take center stage, it’s reasonable to expect that the cryptocurrency could see significant downside pressures.
Performance of Cardano and Chainlink will likely be impacted by the same macroeconomic dynamics that shape results for Shiba Inu. Lower interest rates mean that it is cheaper for investors to borrow money. In turn, this can make it more appealing to borrow money and put it into relatively high-risk investments in pursuit of explosive returns. Lower interest rates also mean that companies can borrow money more cheaply and then invest that capital into growth initiatives, which can help power gains for the overall stock market — as well as other speculative investment classes.
On the other hand, Cardano and Chainlink also have more substantive fundamental valuation cases compared to Shiba Inu. While Shiba Inu is primarily a meme token with a limited use case outside of payments and speculative investments, both Cardano and Chainlink are backed by networks that are centered around facilitating other projects and applications. This doesn’t necessarily mean they will outperform Shiba Inu, but it suggests there are a greater number of factors that could go into shaping their respective valuations.
In the near term, there’s a good chance that valuations for top altcoins and the crypto market at large will continue to be highly volatile. Investors are still weighing the impact of next year’s interest rate schedule against potential benefits from regulatory shifts under the incoming Trump administration, and token prices could see more big swings.
Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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‘Texas, California and Florida are seeing trends of close to 10 [percent] in terms of year-on-year growth in bizjet departures in the last four weeks, testament to solid improvements in consumer and business confidence in the wake of [Donald] Trump’s [presidential] win,” said Richard Koe, managing director at WingX. [Credit: Shutterstock]
December 9-15 saw 72,682 bizjet departures globally, 2 percent more than Week 50 (W50) last year, according to a WingX weekly global market tracker report published Wednesday.
Furthermore, WingX reported a four-week trend of 5 percent growth compared to 2023. Both Part 135 commercial and Part 91K private aircraft activity were up 1 percent versus last year, with the last four-week trend up 7 percent.
WingX stated there have been just over 3.5 million bizjet departures year to date, 1 percent fewer than last year. 
In North America, bizjet activity rose 3 percent compared to the same week in 2023 with a four-week trend up 7 percent compared to last year. Part 135 and Part 91, Subpart K activity in the U.S. grew 3 percent, and the four-week trend was up 9 percent.
Postelection bizjet activity is trending 3 percent ahead compared to last year. Transatlantic flying is up 5 percent compared to last year with the U.S.-to-U.K. route being the busiest, accounting for 41 percent of all bizjet transatlantic flights since the presidential election.
Florida and Texas saw 6 percent and 5 percent gains compared to Week 50 last year. Texas hot spots of activity included Dallas, Houston, and Fort Worth, with small declines in San Antonio. Part 91 operators accounted for over half of bizjet departures in Texas with 58 percent in Week 50.
“Texas, California, and Florida are seeing trends of close to 10 [percent] in terms of year-on-year growth in bizjet departures in the last four weeks, testament to solid improvements in consumer and business confidence in the wake of [Donald] Trump’s [presidential] win,” said Richard Koe, managing director at WingX, in the news release.
In Europe, bizjet activity fell 3 percent compared to Week 50 in 2023. 
Outside of Europe and the U.S., bizjet activity was 4 percent higher than Week 50 in 2023. WingX stated that most of this growth came from the Middle East, where bizjet departures were 18 percent higher than last year. Asia saw activity up 15 percent year over year, Africa was 22 percent behind last year, and South America was down 2 percent from a year ago.
The WingX report said the Middle East benefited from the afterglow of hosting Formula 1’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on December 8 and Middle East Business Aviation Association (MEBAA) conference in Dubai on December 10-12.
“More than usual numbers of U.S. tourists have flown to Europe in the last week, notably more to the U.K. and Italy than to France and Germany,” Koe said. “The Middle East saw a strong bump in [year-over-year] bizjet flights coinciding with the MEBAA show in Dubai.”
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Matt LaFleur clarifies Ted Thompson’s role in Packers drafting Jordan Love  AtoZ Sports
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