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Recently, I was telling a friend about a marketing pitch Id received that ended with a hard sell. I mentioned to my friend that I was still thinking about the pitch, which promised to generate leads for my freelancing business. How do you know its not a scam? she asked me. That stopped me in my tracks. Id recognized the hard sell as soon as it startedand had even anticipated it. I scheduled the call before another appointment so Id have a good reason to hang up. But Id still been tempted. After a moments thought, I was able to articulate how I knew I wasnt being scammed. This company is offering to do something real that I could certainly do myselfidentify and contact potential clients. The company isnt scamming me; theyre just using high-pressure sales techniques. But my friends question was an excellent reminder of how easy it is to fall victim to investment scams, whether youre investing in your business or your nest egg. Thats why its so important to understand what investment scams look like and how to recognize them. Nothing new under the sun While the methods scammers use to reach their targets are constantly changing and evolving, the actual scams have remained basically the same since the first prehistoric cave dweller received an email from a deposed Nigerian prince. Even new investment scams, like Sam Bankman-Frieds cryptocurrency fraud and whatever the hell NFTs claimed to do, prey on reliable human frailties that dont changelike assuming we dont need to understand an investment to profit from it. Thats why most investment fraud is just repackaged versions of the same old scams. These might include: Ponzi schemes A century ago, Boston con artist Charles Ponzi promised investors a 50% return within 45 days on an investment in international mail coupons. At the heart of every Ponzi scheme is the promise of high returns with little to no risk. Of course, there wasnt really an investment. Instead, Ponzi continued to gather new investors, using their money to pay the returns to the original investors. This is the other hallmark of a Ponzi schemethe scammer must constantly bring on new investors to satisfy the older investors. Ponzis international mail coupon scheme fell apart when postal inspectors grew suspicious and his investors cashed out in large numbers. Ponzi schemes are inherently unstable and will inevitably disintegrate, either when investors cash out or when the scammer can no longer bring in new investors. But they continue to crop up, as Bernie Madoff reminded the world in 2008. You can generally recognize a Ponzi scheme when it seems too good to be true, when the returns are too consistent, and when those returns arrive nearly overnight. Those all feel great, which is how Ponzi schemes override your logic. This is why its always a good idea to embrace your financial paranoia. Pump-and-dump schemes The aim of a pump-and-dump scheme is to manipulate the price of a stock in order to profit. Under this scheme, scammers purchase shares of a company at a low price, then start aggressively promoting the stockpumping itto encourage investors to buy in. This inflates the price of the stock. At that point, the scammers sell off their sharesdumping the stockprofiting off the unnaturally high price. This leaves the investors holding stocks they paid too much money for. Typically, pump-and-dump schemes work with penny stocks on little-known exchanges and the scammers engage in high-pressure tactics to get you to invest now. If youve never heard of the stock or the exchange its traded on, and the sales pitch veers from buttering you up (A smart person like you wouldnt leave this opportunity behind!) to a hostage negotiation (Come on, do the right thing!), then you may be facing a pump-and-dump scheme. Even if you have to do the Zoom-call equivalent of locking yourself in the bathroom and escaping out the window, get out of that meeting. Pre-IPO investment scams We all like to imagine where our bank account would be if wed been one of the initial investors in Apple, which is why its easy to fall victim to a pre-IPO investment scam. These fraudulent offers give you the opportunity to purchase a stake in an emerging company before its initial public offering, or IPO, and they will often compare this startup to an established company so youll get dollar signs in your eyes. Who wouldnt want to get in on the ground floor of the next Amazon? Like pump-and-dump schemes, pre-IPO scams commonly include high-pressure sales tactics. The fraudsters want your money as quickly as possible and they dont want you to have time to think more deeply about their offer. The other red flag for pre-IPO scams is how you are contacted. These scammers often rely on cold-calling potential investors and social media solicitations (because thats really how the biggest companies in the world raised their capital, right?). Taking a moment to think through the weirdness of getting contacted out of the blue for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! can help you resist the temptation to invest. Affinity scams Scammers know that youre likely to lower your guard among your community, so the bastards exploit that. Affinity scams target members of affiliated groups, such as religious communities, military members, or other tight-knit circles. The fraudster either is a member of the group or poses as one. By earning the trust of a respected leader, who spreads the word about the investment scheme, the scammer is able to convince the group to invest. These scams can be some of the most difficult to identify, since the scammer is exploiting the groups social capital for their own gain, especially if they have hoodwinked a well-regarded leader. The best way to fight affinity scams is to ask a lot of questions. Legitimate investment professionals are happy to field questions and help you understand where your money is going. Scammers will pressure you to shut upand will use group dynamics to enforce your silence. And that faux-friendly insistence on slence after youve asked questions is the best indicator of an affinity scam. Know the signs of a scam Knowing what scams exist doesnt make you immune to them. Madoffs victim list included a number of brilliant minds and tough cookieswhich just proves that fraud can happen to anyone. Understanding the specific psychological tools scammers use can help you give yourself enough room to think before you act. Urgency: There is no legitimate investment that cant wait 24 hours. You can feel confident about walking away from anyone who pressures you to make an immediate investment decision. Ambiguity: Even if you are an investment noob, you need to understand what your money will be used for. If youre more confused after getting a string of smart-sounding gobbledygook or if youve been told not to worry your pretty little head, dont invest. Guarantees: There are no guarantees in investing. Give the hairy eyeball to anyone who tells you differently. Reaching out to you: Cold-calling is the last refuge of the desperate. (So says the writer who sometimes needs to find people to interview.) If someone is reaching out to you with an exciting opportunity, you need to wonder why. Not today, scammer Remembering that scamming techniques dont really change over time can help you protect yourself. Thats because all scams, from Ponzi schemes to pump-and-dumps to pre-IPO investments to affinity scams, aim to get your emotion to override your logic. Of course, it can be difficult to recognize when your lizard brain is driving. Thats why you can train yourself to look for the classic signs of an investment scam, including urgency, ambiguity, guarantees, and cold-calling. Before you sign on to any investment, do some basic research, starting with a simple Google search of the opportunity. The Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission provide information on common and emerging trends in investment scams, and scam victims will often share details of their experiences online. Just searching online for the investment may be enough to identify it as a scam. If youre still not sure, consider whether youre feeling pressured to invest. Take at least 24 hours (but consider taking longer) to do more digging into the investment and talking with knowledgeable friends and colleagues before deciding. And throughout your decision-making process, keep my friends savvy question at the top of your mind: How do you know its not a scam?
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E-Commerce
CosMcs, the glimmering, retro, space-agey concept restaurant from McDonalds, is no more. In 2023, McDonalds announced the spin-offbilled as the next frontier for the fast-food chain to test its most otherworldly specialty beverage ideasto a deluge of marketing fanfare. CosMcs was a drive-through-only concept with a pared-down menu of neon-colored drinks and a few snack items. The first CosMcs restaurants opened with lines around the block before the sun was even up. Now, less than two years later, McDonalds is jettisoning the stores back into the ether. According to a press release published late last week, McDonalds plans to shut down all five of its CosMcs locations (one in Illinois and four in Texas) in late June, as well as delete the restaurants associated app. In the coming months, CosMcs-inspired flavors will be landing in hundreds of U.S. McDonalds locations as part of a wider beverage test. The announcement comes in the wake of McDonalds first-quarter 2025 financial report on May 1, which revealed that the chains sales dropped at the beginning of the year, marking its second consecutive quarter of declines. Experts say there are a few main reasons why CosMcs didnt work out as a stand-alone conceptbut that doesnt necessarily mean the spin-off was a failure for McDonalds. [Photo: Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images] Bubble tea, energy drinks, functional soda, oh my! From the beginning, it was fairly clear what McDonalds hoped to gain from CosMcs: an entry point into the speciality beverage category (dominated by players like Starbucks, Dutch Bros., and Dunkin) thats been on the rise in recent years. As Gen Z has become increasingly interested in beverages like bubble tea, functional soda, and colorful energy drinks, other quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have moved to catch up. In 2024, Starbucks experimented with adding bubble tea to its menu; Dunkin introduced an energy drink lineup; and even Taco Bell opened its own beverage-only spin-off called Live Más Café. Meanwhile, McDonalds beverage offerings have remained largely limited to its soda machines and McCafé coffee menu (which, interestingly, also originated as an Australian spin-off concept). CosMcs was McDonalds answer to this gap in its offeringsa space to, as the restaurant put it at the time, perform a limited test of otherworldly beverage creations at a safe distance from its main restaurants. Within CosMcs blue-and-yellow beverage test kitchen, the chain was free to trial-run concepts like Tropical Spiceade and Island Pick-Me-Up Punch to a smaller audience of consumers. On the companys first-quarter 2025 earnings report, CEO Chris Kempczinski called this strategy quarantining the complexity in a stand-alone concept. [Photo: Matt Schwerin for The Washington Post/Getty Images] According to Matt Michaluk, executive creative director at the branding agency JKR, CosMcs made sense as a viable innovation for McDonalds. With an increasing share of occasions within QSR now solely drinks-only missions, and the diversification of menus by the big coffee chains, this should be a competitive yet fertile ground for growth, Michaluk says. In spite of that promise, he says, there are three reasons CosMcs fizzled out as a stand-alone: brand contradiction, absence of experience, and decline of hype. To start, Michaluk notes, CosMcs was shaped around a pseudo-nostalgic play on historic McDonalds brand characters, like the oft-forgotten 80s alien CosMc. But the spin-offs menu failed to align with that conceit. Further, the pilot format’s focus on drive-through architecture takes away from the overall brand experience, leaving consumers overwhelmingly underwhelmed. And, to cap it off, he says, Innovations and pilots work best when theyre new, exciting, and highly salient. McDonalds seemingly didnt invest in sufficient marketing efforts to support CosMcs. Hence, the hype died far too quickly. Within weeks of launch, there was nothing more to talk aboutnothing new, nothing to get people to come back. [Photo: Matt Schwerin for The Washington Post/Getty Images] Why CosMcs hasn’t failed yet Michaluks assessment might seem like a fairly bleak one, but Danny Klein, editorial director of the trade publication QSR, says the failure of CosMcs as a stand-alone doesnt necessarily equate to a failure for McDonalds business. From its inception, Klein says, McDonalds likely viewed CosMcs as more of a test run for a potential beverage expansion on its main store menus than a restaurant in its own right. Now that CosMcs recipes are rolling out across stores in the U.S., it appears that the initial experiment was a success. Hundreds of locations are going to start testing [CosMcs beverages], and I think from the general McDonald’s system standpoint, a beverage extension is what they all wanted, Klein says. I don’t think its a failure. People are going to say that because it was such a big deal, and then it just flamed out into the universe. But in my opinion, it was always a marketing test with the potential to be something else, and that just didn’t materialize. In addition to broadening the availability of CosMcs beverages, McDonalds also announced last week that it would create a new beverage category team dedicated to gaining share in the space. As Kempczinski told investors in early May, There’s a lot of growth that we see in beverages, and the profitability of beverages is very attractive, adding, frankly, we think there’s more that we can be doing to capture our fair share of that. Ultimately, Klein says, the true test of CosMcs will be whether the average McDonalds customer is interested in supplementing their Big Mac and fries with a Sour Cherry Energy Burstor if they choose to stick with a plain old Coke.
Category:
E-Commerce
People like to say that change happens gradually, then all at once. That pattern seems to be holding with respect to AI in search, and we may be at the beginning of the “all at once” part now that Google has officially launched AI Mode, which turns internet searches into conversations where you get answers instead of links. The point of AI Mode is for Google to act as an assistant to help you accomplish what you were trying to do with the search in the first place. Need to book a flight, find a sushi restaurant nearby, or grab a statistic that supports the email pitch you’re authoring? AI Mode will simply find what you need and even complete the action for you in many cases. And those cases will continue to expand: The company showed a future shopping capability where Google completes checkout for you without ever needing to leave the search page. Potential for Disruption The potential disruption to industries is staggering, not just for the media but also for marketing, e-commercethe whole web, really. For now, however, it remains mostly potential. AI Mode primarily lives as a button on the Google homepage and one of the tabs on results pages (alongside tabs for News, Photos, Videos, etc.). Users need to deliberately engage with it. And the omnibox in Chrome, where most Google searches occur, still defaults to regular search. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} So despite the hype and panic emanating from Google’s I/O conference over AI Mode, Google isn’t going all-in just yet, and with good reason: Its existing business model depends greatly on the search results page. AI Mode can display ads, too, but it’s going to take time for the product to mature as a business. There’s also the simple fact that it costs Google more to serve up an AI answer versus a search pageit needs to move slowly in order to keep from tanking its own profits. The undeniable rise of AI search Make no mistake, though: The AI Mode summary will be the new battleground for attention. It’s fundamentally more engaging than even Google’s AI Overviews that appear at the top of search results pages. Whereas Overviews are a kind of “extra” to the list of links, AI Mode effectively creates a bubble around your Google experience, one that you deliberately enter and stay within. It’s designed to “fan out” from your initial query, turning search into something that’s more like a collaboration with Google on a task that search is just one part of. While that may sound like work compared to just getting served a search query, you have to remember: Once you had those results, you had to do the workthe navigating to sites, judging which were credible, and then manually absorbing information, filtering the irrelevant stuff. Now AI Mode does most of that work for you, greatly reducing the friction or “cognitive load” involved in getting information. I see this all the time in my own experience: Over the Memorial Day weekend, I ended up looping in AI assistants for several different projectshanging outdoor lights, what those metal ring-thingies are called, and how to optimize my cooking methods for pork ribs versus beef ribs. In all those interactions, no list of links was required, and in many cases, I got the information verbally, reducing friction even more. I’m a sample size of one, but studies suggest I’m far from alone. A recent study revealed 17%, or one in five consumers, now rely on AI answers more than traditional search. Referrals from generative AI to websites surged over 1,200% between July 2024 and February of this year, according to Adobe research. The AI search wave is real. When knowledge goes flat AI search experiences are more convenient, but it comes at a cost. If the AI summary is the new place for information brokers to conquer, there’s less land to fight over. Summaries simply can’t meaningfully cite dozens of sources in a curt answer. Moreover, if one or two sources change, the effect on the summary will be minimal. If an AI answer gets a new site fueling it, it’s still an averaged, homogenized consensus built from several sources. You don’t have the unusual link suddenly gaining prominence on a results page, inviting users to go down a rabbit hole. An AI summary is made to pave over those holes. This tendency toward singular, concise answers may have the inadvertent effect of flattening knowledge diversity. Mainstream perspectives will get prioritized, and niche or contrarian voices will have a tougher time standing out. Signal generators This shift puts a burden on journalists and media organizations to act not just as content creators but also as distinctive signal generators in a noisy, compressed ecosystem. In a world where AI systems synthesize information from thousands of sources, what gets retained are the most statistically common patternsnot necessarily the most insightful or original voices. That’s why it’s going to be essential for media sites to be able to do both: structure content to acknowledge and align with the mainstream view, but also provide original and unique perspectives that will offer real value for those who go deeper. It’s an updated version of a diverse content strategy, only in the AI world it can mean serving those ingredients in new ways: possibly by remixing content into formats recognizable by a multimodal AI that cares just as much about sound and video as it does about text. One thing’s for sure: AI answers are here to stay, and “winning” them is going to be the game to master. What’s unclear is what will be harder: influencing readers through what the summary says, or getting them to click through the AI ode bubble so you can influence them yourself. Let the games begin. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
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