NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Brand Extensions Are Supposed to Create Value. The Grammys Show How They Can Destroy It.

BTS recently pulled its newest album from award considerations after the Grammys announced a new music category. It’s an important lesson for entrepreneurs about diluting your brand.

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @TULLMAN

AUG 25, 2026

TS perform onstage during the 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 03, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo: Getty Images

I wrote some time ago about how BTS, one of the biggest bands in the world these days, was developing their own platform that would permit them to “own” a direct and persistent connection to their fans that was free of the many gatekeepers and parasites that have traditionally controlled the music industry. This would permit them to sell swag, special access, live podcasts, and eventually even tickets fee-free to their fans. Another upcoming artist, GiaNina Paolantonia, has similarly built her own platform and app in order to communicate with, connect to, and engage with her fans and followers.

The music industry is like a multi-headed hydra, however, and always has another card to play. The Grammys, an industry organ for decades, just announced a new music category specifically for Asian music in a transparent and expansive attempt to segregate BTS and all the other popular artists and bands from South Korea and elsewhere in Asia. Keeping these performers in their new and narrow vertical prevents these massively popular and emergent artists and rapidly growing music groups from dominating the main award categories which the “industry” prefers to reserve for their own in-house acts. As a reaction, BTS pulled its newest album from award consideration and urged others to do the same. Years ago, the same approach and treatment was used to keep Michael Jackson out of the Grammy Pop category even as he was declared the “King of Pop” and had some of the biggest and best-selling albums in history. And don’t get me started on the years-long shabby treatment accorded to everyone in the Hip hop world.

What really struck me about this latest move was the unbelievable proliferation of award categories that the Grammys have manufactured to continue to slice, dice, minimize and otherwise control the artists and the entire awards process along with all the acclaim, access, financial rewards and other benefits that accompany such recognition. In 1959, there were 28 award categories. Today, albeit more than half a century later, there are 100.

You can decide what real value or meaning any of the “minor” awards actually has, even assuming that the typical consumer actually understood what criteria went into each award and what behavior, achievements or results it recognized and acknowledged. The more tangential awards, of course, the less meaningful each becomes. Spread a mile wide and an inch deep, even the performers can barely bring themselves to sincerely express their gratitude for the Potemkin efforts. The brand and the bragging rights diminish in direct proportion to the number of categories and trophies much like childhood sporting events where virtually everyone’s a winner just for showing up.

Alas, the music biz isn’t alone in meaningless brand extrapolations. We’ve seen dozens of aborted attempts to spread a brand gloss over a grossly mismatched product. Colgate beef lasagna, vegetable-flavored Jell-O, Life Savers soda, Frito Lay lemonade, Cosmopolitan magazine yogurt and my personal favorite, Harley-Davidson perfume. There’s a lot to be said for sticking to your knitting. It may not be new and exciting, but it will likely keep you from falling flat on your face. Brands aren’t concrete and can stretch reasonably far, but not to excess.

There’s no one greater than JD Power at creating an award for every suitor in every automotive category and now expanding into virtually any and every imaginable area of products or services under the sun. You too can win a narrowly drawn JD Power award for the best of something accomplishment in your space—whatever it may be—and even if it’s only for your efforts on Sundays in months having 28 days. You get the idea. Winners galore and all willing to pay wonderful fees to use and promote that recognition in their advertising.

A close second in the race for exponential category growth and the clear winner in shamelessness are the fine folks at Guinness World Records, who invite the entire world to invent records of all types and sizes and then submit them to Guinness for a very costly validation process (Guinness is happy to provide paid consultants to advise applicants) along with judges and witnesses.

Once the months’ long confirmation process is concluded, Guinness provides a framed piece of paper with their brand and seal which recognizes the newly created and established record. They’ll also sell a framed “You Were There” Guinness certificate to every attendee at any Guinness record-setting event. Here again, the very DIY nature of this “record” creation process and the massive number of claimed records makes one wonder about the value of the end product and frankly what the Guinness name or brand even brings to the process. Nonetheless Guinness claims that it receives almost 1000 record proposals and applications per week and over 50,000 submissions a year. 

A pair of Chicago twin brothers who have taken and documented over 82,000 selfies since the Apple iPhone camera was front facing enabled in 2010 are the likely holders of the putative Guinness World Record for “selfies taken by twin brothers” and to date, as their application process proceeds, no one has come forward to dispute or contest this amazing achievement. Taking a page from Michael Jackson, they now call themselves the Selfie Kings. Apparently, in the world of world records, saying makes it so.

Criminal rapist and thief

 The most incompetent and corrupt President America has ever seen— Donald J. Trump:

97 Times Pleaded The Fifth

91 Criminal Charges

1 Million Mentions in Epstein Report

34 Felony Convictions

26 SA Allegations

6 Bankruptcies

5 Draft Deferments

4 Indictments

2 Impeachments

2 Convicted Companies

1 Fake University

1 Fake Charity

$25M Fraud Settlement

$5M SA Verdict

$2M Fake Charity Abuse Judgment

$93M SA Judgements

$400M+ Fraud Judgment

Fake Trump Phone Con

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS SELFIE

 LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE:

Howard Tullman: Updates on Selfie AI | WGN Radio 720 - Chicago's Very Own

Howard Tullman: Updates on Selfie AI | WGN Radio 720 - Chicago's Very Own

Move Over Social Media. The Age of Your AI Self Has Arrived.

Selfie launches the world's first platform that lets anyone create an articulate and authentic digital version of themselves in minutes.

CHICAGO, IL — 8/4/26 — For the past two decades, the internet has been about sharing content. Selfie believes the next era will be about effortlessly sharing yourself.

Today, Selfie.com officially launched a first-of-its-kind platform that allows anyone to create an intelligent, interactive AI version of themselves—a digital twin that can answer questions, engage followers, and represent its creator online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Whether you're an athlete, artist, entrepreneur, educator, executive, influencer, or simply someone with a story to tell and share, a Selfie transforms your existing content into an AI-powered version of you that never sleeps.

"The next billion AI users won't build software—they'll build themselves," said Howard Tullman, one of the co-founders of Selfie. "Every major technology wave has changed how people connect. Social media let us broadcast outbound and wait for comments. Selfie lets people have immediate, interactive and responsive conversations with us—even when we're otherwise occupied."

Unlike traditional AI tools that require technical expertise or hours of setup, Selfie automatically builds each digital twin using existing content from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, podcasts, Substack, websites, documents, videos, and more. In just minutes, users can launch an AI-infused version of themselves that reflects their personality, knowledge, tone and communication style, and which can even speak in their own voice.

The result is an always-on digital presence capable of engaging audiences, answering questions, promoting events, recommending products, supporting customers, and creating deeper relationships with followers around the world. Selfie also provides creators with multiple earning opportunities while freeing them up to concentrate on the day-to-day work that they love doing.

From Social Profiles to AI Personalities

Selfie isn't another chatbot. It represents a new generation of personal AI—one where every individual owns a digital version of themselves that grows smarter as new content is created and their Selfie seamlessly interacts with fans, followers, clients and customers.

Instead of static profiles, creators gain dynamic AI companions that continue conversations long after an initial post is published.

Instead of FAQ pages, organizations can deploy constantly updated interactive experts.

Instead of waiting for replies, fans can chat digitally with the people they admire.

Selfie also announced a new referral program designed to accelerate adoption by rewarding creators for introducing their audiences to the Selfie app and platform while generating recurring revenue opportunities.

As AI rapidly becomes part of everyday life, Selfie believes every creator, professional, business, school, nonprofit, and public figure will eventually have an intelligent digital counterpart.

The company aims to make building one as simple as creating a social media account.

"We're not trying to replace social media," Tullman said. "We're building what comes next."

Launched in Chicago around Lollapalooza with more than 1200 initial Selfies up and operating by Andrew and Jon Landan a/k/a “The Landan Twins” who head up Selfie’s marketing team, “what comes next” is already here to stay.

Consumers can create their own free Selfie today at Selfie.com

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

HOW TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

One of the reasons that the failure rate of new restaurants is so high is because - even in cases where new operators are moving into existing locations - so much of the necessary capital investment is required upfront for renovations and/or new construction. You’ve got to build out the entire business before you know if the “dogs” are going to eat the dog food, say nice things to their friends, and keep coming back. A rule of thumb is that a successful restaurant needs to convert about 15%-20% of its customers into regulars if it’s going to make it through the first full year of operations. These required retention numbers may have even increased now because fewer diners are drinking as much as they did in the past so each customer is likely to be less profitable. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/60-40-restaurant-rule-food-beverage-glp-1-ozempic-wegovy-mounjaro-alcohol/91323202 .)

And, as we all know from the media’s obsession with opening weekend box office results, it’s pretty much the same front-end loaded situation with film studios making expensive motion pictures and then hoping that the crowds show up at the theatres so that the players don’t lose millions of production costs and marketing dollars essentially on Day One. Of course, there are occasional attempts with early screenings and test audience previews to get a reading on viewers’ likely reactions and, in some very costly cases, to actually attempt to shoot additional or alternative scenes and re-edit sections of the films. But as noted writer, playwright, and filmmaker David Mamet once said about fixing others’ failed efforts: “it’s
hard to polish a turd”. Once a movie is in the can, it’s a crapshoot at best as to whether it’s gonna be a triumph or a tragedy. But at least it takes a while for the ultimate reckoning in the film business because movies take years to finance, approve, and actually get made.

In the advertising world, where social media commentators and trolls lurk every day around every corner of the web, expensive new ad campaigns which suck, offend some segment’s tender sensibilities, or have the “wrong” spokesperson are condemned, roasted and rejected the same day they are released and sometimes (in the case of Super Bowl ads in particular) even before they are widely distributed and shown to the general public.

Millions of production dollars are flushed down the toilet, media buys and expensive marketing commitments are wasted, and – in some especially problematic cases – as  PepsiCo (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_for_Now ), Kendall Jenner, and many others have learned   - even more dollars are spent trying to make amends, repair wrecked brands, resurrect reputations, and apologize to millions of people who may not have even seen the offensive material in the first place.

While there are no guarantees or crystal balls in the ad biz, I wrote many years ago about a company called Dumbstruck (www.Dumbstruck.com), an emotion analytics company founded in 2018, that had developed some crucial technology which reviewed, evaluated and analyzed both proposed videos and actually produced ads in order to determine how that content would be received by the target populations and how they would respond to it. (See   
 https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/catch-me-if-you-can.html). The basic idea was to keep offensive and ineffective materials from ever reaching the marketplace. As I said at the time, it’s much smarter to avoid the potholes than to get a great deal on the cost of the tow truck that pulls you out of the ditch.

But in too many cases, while Dumbstruck’s impressive tools (which measure emotional, behavioral and cognitive reactions to displayed material) could highlight the prospective issues and shortcomings of completed videos, actually making those improvements could require costly edits or reshoots that campaign timelines and budgets simply didn't permit. The insights could still inform media decisions and future creative development, but improving the finished asset itself wasn't always practical. The horse had already left the barn. So, the tech worked, but the insights it provided often came too late in the creative process to provide its clients with the ability to cost-effectively fix the problems that its software had identified.

The good news for the clients – but another unfortunate blow for the traditional creative business – is that through a new technology partnership between Dumbstruck and Luma, which operates a multi-modal general intelligence platform based in California, there may finally be a fast, cost-effective and readily available approach the companies are calling Creative Intelligence which combines Dumbstruck powerful insights and observations about which elements of a given ad will work and connect with viewers and which other parts need to be revised, eliminated or enhanced with the AI-infused tools called Luma Agents that Luma has built which permit editors to: (a) implement the Dumbstruck recommendations and changes in real time into the existing video materials without extensive delays or costly reshooting of scenes and (b) even more importantly - and somewhat frighteningly at the same time – to digitally create and add elements, props, environmental effects and even new actors to the video on the fly and in the moment. The new system combines AI rendering abilities with human response data and applies all of this to the content being developed and enhanced. When the content is revised, updated, and improved, it is retested by Dumbstruck to confirm its value, impact, and effectiveness.

It’s actually hard to imagine a more enormous and disruptive offering which is entirely likely to upset the entire ad creation and production industry in short order. If you can write it and envision it, it’s becoming very clear that the actual video materials including all the personnel and props can now be digitally generated in 4K quality in a matter of hours rather than weeks with all of the obvious cost and time savings which that kind of technological advancement offers. What’s more, specific variations of the content can be made at little or no incremental cost to be directed to slices and segments of the overall audience. But the cost-effective abundance of content and the ease of production isn’t really the critical question, which is whether Dumbstruck’s technology determines that the finalized content will get the job done and resonate with the consumers. After all, at the end of the day, the ultimate goal is to sell something.

If the traditional ad biz wasn’t already plagued by the same basic time crunches, talent costs, and production issues that many other industries are facing as well as also being under new serious pressure from the rise of inexpensive and ubiquitous user generated content (UGC) as well as A.I. slop that are swamping all of the available channels (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/ai-trend-traditional-ad-agencies-creators-influencers/91366965.), the Luma-Dumbstruck technology partnership may be one of the final blows to the old leisurely days of Madison Avenue when who you knew was much more important than what you knew and could do. A long-past time when how a particular ad did for a client was a matter of good fortune rather than careful planning, precise execution, and after-the-fact analysis and accountability.

Today, thanks largely to Dumbstruck and Luma, advertisers can now “know before they go” exactly how their ads are likely to resonate with their target audiences and also have the immediate ability to improve their ads before significant media dollars are spent.

MAKE THE MIDTERMS A RECKONING

He normalized vulgarity, legitimized stupidity, rewarded incompetence, and made immorality acceptable.

He turned grift into state policy and corruption into a prerequisite for public office.

He recast criminality as patriotism and shamelessness as honor.

He promised prosperity, then left working families paying for his tariffs, his chaos, and his war which is an albatross around his neck.

He’s an abject human being, a failure on every level, now in clear cognitive decline, which may be the only positive thing left to say about him.

He did not do this alone. Every Republican who enabled him, excused him, and surrendered Congress to him owns the result.

Make the midterms a reckoning.

HEATHER

 August 15, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 15, 2026

---

On Monday, August 10, Todd Blanche took the oath of office as attorney general, administered by federal appeals court judge Emil Bove, another of Trump’s defense lawyers before moving to the Department of Justice, where he was Blanche’s top deputy. In that capacity, CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz recalled, he fired career prosecutors and pushed Trump’s takeover of the department.

Using Bove to swear in Blanche looked like a victory lap for the Trump team. Although the press was excluded, two other Trump loyalists, FBI director Kash Patel and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, attended Blanche’s swearing-in.

Retired conservative judge J. Michael Luttig told MS NOW: “Todd Blanche now becomes the symbol of Donald Trump’s corruption of the rule of law in America and the actual ruin of the Department of Justice of the United States. This is another shameful act of acquiescence, if not obeisance, by the Senate Republicans; they will bear this badge of shame the rest of their lives.

Never before in American history has an attorney general been confirmed who was as corrupt as Todd Blanche. The Department of Justice is already in shambles.”

“And,” Luttig added, “he will further ruin the Department of Justice.”

As soon as he took office, Blanche issued a memo dramatically expanding executive privilege, which he described as the authority of the president to “withhold certain sensitive information for the public good.” Executive privilege has enabled the president to shield conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny with the logic that a president must be able to get a wide range of advice, given freely, by those in the executive branch.

Now, though, the Department of Justice under Blanche says the president can shield “presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking.” The memo defines as a “private adviser” “anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch.” As John Light of Talking Points Memo notes, this definition would enable the White House to defy congressional subpoenas for anyone to whom the president talks.

As Avery Lotz of Axios reports, Democrats had been planning to begin investigations of Trump’s corruption if they retake control of the House and/or the Senate. Recognizing that the White House would stonewall them, they intended to subpoena companies, college officials, and private citizens to testify. The memo, which is not legally binding but which indicates the administration’s position, would hamper that effort.

Lotz notes that the administration is already fighting a subpoena in a lawsuit filed by the American Bar Association that orders Trump’s senior personal lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, to testify about the deals the Trump administration struck with major law firms early in his second term.

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote: “This latest opinion should be seen as a partisan measure to insulate the president and his corrupt activities from Congressional subpoenas when the majority flips.”

Thursday was the day that Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held a status conference in the case of Phang v. Blanche. This is a lawsuit brought by independent journalist Katie Phang to force the Department of Justice to produce unredacted versions of documents from the Epstein files that she says were redacted against the explicit instructions in the Epstein Files Transparency Act. With that law, Congress ordered the Department of Justice to release all the files gathered by the FBI investigation into sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, with redactions only to protect victims, no later than December 19, 2025.

Almost eight months later, the Department of Justice has refused to do so, probably producing about half the files, with many of the documents heavily redacted at the same time that it released some of the victim’s names, photographs, and identifying information.

As legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained in her Civil Discourse, Phang sued in April for access to an unredacted version of a handful of files, including emails about a “torture video” and sexual activity with girls, as well as notes from FBI interviews with a victim who claims Trump sexually assaulted her when she was 13 and materials in foreign languages, which the Department of Justice has not produced at all. She also asked the Department of Justice to explain why they made the redactions they did, something the law requires but the Justice Department has not done.

In late June, Sullivan granted Phang’s request.

But the Department of Justice under then–acting attorney general Todd Blanche, who interviewed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell shortly before she was transferred to a far less restrictive prison that should have been inaccessible to a sex offender, did not turn over those documents.

So, in July, Sullivan ordered the government to turn over the unredacted documents to him so he could review them himself to see if the decision by the Department of Justice not to release them was correct. Once again, the Department of Justice refused. As for an explanation for why the department hadn’t explained the decisions to redact, the Justice Department lawyer told the judge the process was “underway” but couldn’t say when it would be done or why translating documents in foreign languages wasn’t practical. He claimed the materials the department is withholding are simply duplicates of things that have been released, but offered no proof of that assertion.

Ultimately, as Vance explains, Sullivan asked: ““So you’re saying I’ve learned everything I’m going to learn from the government?” The lawyer for the Department of Justice, Andrew Block, answered: “That’s right.”

Sullivan wasn’t satisfied. “The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case. The victims have a right to know. The court has a right to know. The law is still in full force and effect. The court is just ensuring compliance.”

To make it clear he was being reasonable, in expectation of a review from a higher court, Sullivan repeatedly told Block he was willing to work with the department, but warned that he had held prosecutors in contempt of court in the past. Sullivan gave Phang’s lawyers 10 days to propose an order to deal with the failure of the Department of Justice to comply with his orders to produce the files Phang requested.

The administration is also undermining another popular law. This week, under Trump, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in the Treasury Department not only ended the registry Congress set up in 2021 over Trump’s veto to make shell companies identify their owners, but also destroyed all the data it has already collected.

FinCEN combats money laundering. Congress set up the Corporate Transparency Act after documents leaked to BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2020 found that between 1999 and 2017, banks had flagged more than $2 trillion in potentially laundered money, moved by criminals operating out of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria through shell companies. These are legal entities that don’t have physical plants or operations, but can be used for holding and moving money.

Shell companies also meant that the political system in the U.S. was awash in secrecy. “[I]t’s illegal for foreigners to contribute to our campaigns,” one Democrat reminded Congress in a speech for the bill, “but if you launder your money through a front company with anonymous ownership there is very little we can do to stop you.” One of the documents flagged how much Russian money was flowing into the U.S. in 2016 through Deutsche Bank.

The U.S. was the easiest place in the world for criminals to form an anonymous shell company enabling them to launder money, evade taxes, and engage in illegal payoff schemes—Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen used a shell company to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from taking the story of her sexual encounter with Trump public before the 2016 election. So Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act to undercut the shell companies that enabled money laundering in America.

The act required the owners of any company that was not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file a report that identifies each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercises substantial control over it. That report, including name, birthdate, address, and an identifying number, would go to FinCEN. The measure also increased penalties for money laundering and streamlined cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.

The plan was to pull the rug out from both domestic and international criminals that take advantage of shell companies to hide from investigators. The measure passed on a bipartisan basis; then-senator Marco Rubio of Florida, now secretary of state, co-sponsored it, calling it the “most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades.”

Now the Treasury Department says it will not collect the information the law requires, raising the question of whether the Trump administration is openly refusing to implement a law.