The perfect is the enemy of the good, and I proved that today by creating a video…and then another one…and then another one.
I planned to write on GoFundMe “helper” scammers, ways to detect scammers, and ways to flush out scammers via a honeypot: a post prominently featuring the word “GoFundMe.”
So I created a video.
Version One. 89 seconds.
After posting that video I decided it was too long and created a shorter version.
Version Two. 44 seconds.
You’ve never seen this before…because just before I was going to post that video I decided it was too long and edited it further.
Version Three. 30 seconds.
I went ahead and posted that third version, leaving the first version active.
And for all I know I will create a fourth version.
And I don’t know whether the first or third video is better. My intuition tells me the third one is better, but maybe the prospects will prefer the first version. Or the second one, which almost never saw the light of day.
Which one do you prefer? Tell me in the comments.
The unavoidable call to action
You know, all this iterating teaches us a lot about B2B sales.
I know some marketing leaders who are afraid to post anything, waiting for the perfect moment.
They’re still waiting.
Don’t let your competitors steal your prospects from you while you delay. Bredemarket can help. Book a free meeting with me: https://bredemarket.com/mark/
As some of you know, my generative AI tool of choice has been Google Gemini, which incorporates guardrails against portraying celebrities. Grok has fewer guardrails.
My main purpose in creating the two Bill and Hillary Clinton videos (at the beginning of this compilation reel) was to see how Grok would handle references to copyrighted music. I didn’t expect to hear actual songs, but would Grok try to approximate the sounds of Lindsey-Stevie-Christine era Mac and the Sex Pistols? You be the judge.
And as for Prince and Johnny…you be the judge of that also.
Most of my recent generative GI experiments have centered on Google Gemini…which has its limitations:
“Google Gemini imposes severe restrictions against creating pictures of famous figures. You can’t create a picture of President Taylor Swift, for example.”
Why does Google impose such limits? Because it is very sensitive to misleading the public, fearful that the average person would see such a picture and mistakenly assume that Taylor Swift IS the President. In our litigious society, perhaps this is valid.
“One common accusation about Grok is that it lacks the guardrails that other AI services have.”
During a few spare moments this morning, I signed up for a Bredemarket Grok account. I have a personal X (Twitter) account, but haven’t used it in a long time, so this was a fresh sign up.,
And you know the first thing that I tried to do.
Grok.
Grok created it with no problem. Actually, there is a problem, because Grok apparently is not a large multimodal model and cannot precisely generate text in its image generator. But hey, no one will notice “TWIRSHIITE BOUSE,” will they?
But wait, there’s more! After I generated the image, I saw a button to generate a video. I thought that this required the paid service, but apparently the free service allows limited video generation.
Grok.
I may be conducting some video experiments some time soon. But will I maintain my ethics…and my sanity?
And what about Freja? Well, if the Danish Copyright Act takes effect on March 31, 2026 as expected, Cali John can get into a ton of trouble if he uses the video to create a realistic, digitally generated imitation of Freja. Again, consent is required. Again, there can be monetary penalties if you don’t get that consent.
But there’s another question we have to consider.
The vendor responsibility
Does the videoconference provider bear any responsibility for the violations of Illinois and Danish law?
“5. USE OF SERVICES AND YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES. You may only use the Services pursuant to the terms of this Agreement. You are solely responsible for Your and Your End Users’ use of the Services and shall abide by, and ensure compliance with, all Laws in connection with Your and each End User’s use of the Services, including but not limited to Laws related to recording, intellectual property, privacy and export control. Use of the Services is void where prohibited.”
But such requirements haven’t stopped BIPA lawyers from filing lawsuits against deep pocketed software vendors. Remember when Facebook settled for $650 million?
So remember what could happen the next time you participate in a multinational, multi-state, or even multi-city videoconference. Hope your AI note taker isn’t capturing screen shots.
It was 8:48, just before an important client meeting this morning, and I was freaking out. I had scheduled the meeting in Google Meet, and I started up the session…and the right third of the camera view was obscured.
Imagen 4 re-creation. I didn’t think to take a screenshot at the time. And no, I don’t have facial hair.
I attempted various fixes:
I stopped Google Meet, started it again…and got the same result.
I logged off and logged back in again…and got the same result.
I restarted my computer (turn it off and turn it back on again)…and got the same result.
I tried Zoom…and got the same result.
Which meant that the possible problem was a hardware problem with the camera itself. Which meant a lot of hassle sending the computer in for a fix, which was especially upsetting because this was a new computer.
A black section in a laptop camera feed is most often due to a hardware issue, such as a damaged camera sensor or a problem with the ribbon cable that connects the camera to the motherboard. Software issues are less likely to cause a precise, consistent black area like this, but they’re still worth checking.
Then I began working down the checklist that Bredebot provided, beginning with the first item.
The most common and easiest issue to rule out is a physical object blocking the lens. This could be a speck of dust or debris, a stray piece of a sticker, or a misplaced privacy slider. Even a tiny particle on the lens can show up as a large black spot or area in the image.
A speck of dust? Just a simple speck of dust causing that major of an obstruction?
Not having a can of compressed air available, I used my mouth to blow on the top of the laptop screen.
The obstruction partially cleared, and now three fourths of the screen was visible.
One more blow, and my “critical hardware failure” was fixed.
What does this mean?
So some computer problems are NOT fixed by turning it off and turning it on again. Sometimes a lot of hot air is necessary.
Imagen 4.
By sheer coincidence, the Just A Band song “Huff + Puff” is on my current Spotify playlist. Nothing to do with computer video hardware, but it’s a good song.
So I just created a short reel for no purpose other than to illustrate Theodore Roosevelt’s famous saying “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
But then I began thinking. For product marketers, is “speaking softly” an idea that should be relegated to the early 20th century? The answer to that question partially depends on whether you are marketing in an earlier awareness stage, or a later conversion stage.
But the reel doesn’t get that deep.
Speak softly.
An aside (overly serious product marketers skip this part)
Originally this reel was supposed to be a single image, with no stick, showing President Roosevelt to the audio accompaniment of Paul Simon’s “Loves Me Like a Rock.”
To be honest, ORIGINALLY the President was supposed to be Nixon, whose mama loved him and was a saint.
But once Roosevelt got behind the Presidential podium, my mind traveled to earlier times in the Dakotas and Cuba, and the stick—softly—inserted itself.
Excluded from the reel but not forgotten: my earlier fictional conception of Roosevelt overseeing the construction of the Panama Canal, previously shared here.
A man, a plan…
And if you haven’t already figured it out, Teddy appears to be safe from the restrictions from Google’s guidelines on depictions of famous figures. As I said before, no picture generation of President Richard Nixon, or President Taylor Swift.
“This quote often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt is actually a West African proverb. Roosevelt writes this in a letter to Henry Sprague on January 26, 1900.”
A year and a half later, after Roosevelt’s political enemies had maneuvered him into the then-obscure position of Vice President of the United States (subsequently characterized as a bucket of warm…spit), he expounded upon the phrase at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 1901.
Deep fried pizza on a stick. Not historically accurate.
(He and his political enemies had no way of knowing that later that month McKinley would be assassinated and Roosevelt would be President. Oops.)
“”Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far.” If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few things more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting; and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples.”
As Roosevelt noted, the “and” it’s important. A soft speaker without a big stick will not be persuasive.
But is speaking softly all that important?
Speaking loudly: Berliners, Crazy Eddie
There are certainly instances, both in diplomacy/politics and product marketing, in which speaking loudly is extremely effective. Avoiding the 21st century (we really don’t want to go there) and confining myself to the 20th, the masses of people at the Berlin Wall were very loud.
“The Treaty of Portsmouth formally ended the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The negotiations took place in August in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and were brokered in part by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt….Although the actual importance of Roosevelt’s mediation and personal pressure on the leadership in Moscow and Tokyo to the final agreement is unclear, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in moderating the talks and pushing toward peace.”
Of course, everyone knew that negotiations were taking place in Portsmouth, just like everyone knew that Egypt and Israel were negotiating at Camp David 70+ years later.
“The world of golf was left stunned on Tuesday as the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and rival Saudi-backed LIV circuit, who have been involved in a bitter fight that has split the sport, announced a shock agreement to merge and form one unified commercial entity….The bombshell announcement was slammed by many PGA Tour players who were left in the dark about the merger…”
Not historically accurate. I don’t think.
For the moment, ignore the fact that the merger hasn’t happened two years later. The heated war between the PGA and the LIV meant that while a merger made financial sense (see the NFL and the AFL bidding up football player prices in the 1960s), no one expected a PGA-LIV merger to happen.
My Google Gemini account does not include access to Google’s new video generation tool Veo 3. But I’m learning about its capabilities from sources such as TIME magazine.
“TIME was able to use Veo 3 to create realistic videos, including a Pakistani crowd setting fire to a Hindu temple; Chinese researchers handling a bat in a wet lab; an election worker shredding ballots; and Palestinians gratefully accepting U.S. aid in Gaza. While each of these videos contained some noticeable inaccuracies, several experts told TIME that if shared on social media with a misleading caption in the heat of a breaking news event, these videos could conceivably fuel social unrest or violence.”
However, TIME notes that the ability to create fake videos has existed for years. So why worry now?
“Veo 3 videos can include dialogue, soundtracks and sound effects. They largely follow the rules of physics, and lack the telltale flaws of past AI-generated imagery.”
Then again, some of the Veo 3 deepfakes look pretty good. Take this example of Will Smith slapping down some pasta at Eminem’s restaurant. The first part of the short was generated with old technology, the last part with Veo 3.
He had purchased a feature-rich home security system and received an alarm while he was traveling. That’s all—an alarm, with no context.
“The security company then asked me, ‘Should we dispatch the police?’ At that moment, the reality hit: I was expected to make a decision that could impact my family’s safety, and I had no information to base that decision on. It was a gut-wrenching experience. The very reason I invested in security—peace of mind—had failed me.”
This week has been a busy week in Bredemarket-land, including work on some of the following client projects:
Creating the first deliverable as part of a three-part series of deliverables.
Reworking that first deliverable for more precision.
Preparing to start work on the second deliverable.
Drafting a blog post for a client.
Gathering information for an email newsletter for a client.
Following up on a couple of consulting opportunities that take advantage of my identity/biometric expertise.
Creating a promotional reel based upon the grapes in my backyard. (Yet another reel. I plan to reveal it next week.)
Engaging in other promotional activities on Bredemarket’s key social media channels.
Plus I’ve been working on some non-Bredemarket deliverables and meetings with a significant time commitment.
But there’s one more Bredemarket deliverable that I haven’t mentioned—because I’m about to discuss it now.
The task
Without going into detail, a client required me to repurpose a piece of third-party government-authored (i.e. non-copyrighted) text, originally written for a particular market.
Shorten the text so it would be more attractive to the new market.
Simplify the presentation of the text to make it even more attractive to the new market.
The request was clear, and I’ve already completed the first draft of the text and am working on the second draft.
But I wanted to dive into the three steps above—not regarding this particular client writing project, but in a more general way.
Step 1: Rewrite
When you’ve worked in a lot of different industries, you learn that each industry has its own language, including things you say—and things you don’t say.
I’ll give you an example that doesn’t reflect the particular project I was working on, but does reflect why rewriting is often necessary.
When I started in biometrics, the first two industries that I wrote about were law enforcement and benefits administration.
Law enforcement’s primary purpose is to catch bad people, although sometimes it can exonerate good people. So when you’re talking about law enforcement applications, you frequently use a lot of terms that are negative in nature, such as “surveillance,” “suspect,” and “mugshot.”
Benefits administration’s primary purpose is to help good people, although sometimes it can catch bad people who steal benefits from good people. So when you’re talking about benefits administration applications, you tend toward more positive terms such as “beneficiary.” And if you take a picture of a beneficiary’s face, for heaven’s sake DON’T REFER TO THE FACIAL IMAGE AS A “MUGSHOT.”
These two examples illustrate why something originally written for “market 1” must often be rewritten for “market 2.”
But sometimes a simple rewrite isn’t enough.
Step 2: Shorten
Now I don’t play in the B2C market in which crisp text is extremely necessary. But it’s needed in the various B2G and B2B markets also—some more than others.
If you are writing for more scientific markets, your readers are more accustomed to reading long, academic, “Sage”-like blocks of text.
But if you are writing for other markets, such as hospitality, your readers not only don’t want to read long blocks of text, but actively despise it.
You need to “get to the point.”
Tim Conway (Sr.), as repeatedly played during Jim Healy’s old radio show. Sourced from the Jim Healy Tribute Site.
In my particular project, “market 1” was one of those markets that valued long-windedness, while “market 2” clearly didn’t. So I had to cut the text down significantly, using the same techniques that I use when rewriting my “draft 0.5” (which a client NEVER sees) to my “draft 1” (which I turn over to the client).
But sometimes a simple shorten isn’t enough.
Step 3: Simplify
If you know me, you know I’m not graphically inclined.
Someday I will reach this level of graphic creativity. Originally created by Jleedev using Inkscape and GIMP. Redrawn as SVG by Ben Liblit using Inkscape. – Own work, Public Domain, link.
But I still pay attention to the presentation of my words.
Remember those long blocks of text that I mentioned earlier? One way to break them up is to use bullets.
Bullets break up long blocks of text into manageable chunks.
Bullets are easier to read.
So your reader will be very happy.
But as I was editing this particular piece of content, sometimes I ran into long lists of bullets, which weren’t really conducive to the reading experience.
Question
Answer
What does this mean?
Why are long lists of bullets bad?
Because with enough repetition, they’re just as bad as long blocks of text.
Your readers will tune you out.
How can you format long lists of bullets into something easier to read?
One way is to convert the bullets into a table with separate entries.
Your readers will enjoy a more attractive presentation.
What do tables do for your reader?
They arrange the content in two dimensions rather than one.
The readers’ eyes move in two directions, rather than just one.
Hey, wait a minute…
Yeah, I just plugged my seven questions again by intentionally using the first three: why, how, and what.
You can go here to download the e-book “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.”
I don’t have the skill to make WordPress tables look as attractive as Microsoft Word tables. But even this table breaks up the monotony of paragraphs and lists, don’t you think?
So what happened?
After I had moved through the three steps of rewriting, shortening, and simplifying the original content, I had a repurposed piece of content that was much more attractive to the “hungry people” (target audience) who were going to read it.
These people wouldn’t fall asleep while reading the content, and they wouldn’t be offended by some word that didn’t apply to them (such as “mugshot”).
So don’t be afraid to repurpose—even for a completely different market.
I do it all the time.
Look at two of my recent reels. Note the differences. But note the similarities.
The identity/biometrics version of the reel.
The Inland Empire version of the same reel.
So which of Bredemarket’s markets do you think will receive the “grapes” reel?
Bredemarket 