Welcome to the FIMS Lab newsletter

In this edition:

• FIMS Lab highlight: Sonoma partners with an old-school influencer

• One Marketing Thing: Wait for it…

• One Trending thing: Are climate havens real?

• 🤖 One AI Thing: A roundup of what you need and want

Total read time: ☕️ 3 minutes

FIMS Lab highlights:

Sonoma Media is working with the Peanuts Worldwide for a “throwback” Giving Tuesday influencer campaign. Charles M. Schulz was a long-time resident of Santa Rosa, home of the Press Democrat.

(We were supposed to show it off during our last group call and I forgot)

Have campaign creative you’d like to share? Upload it to Notion or send it my way!

Congrats Sonoma!

One marketing thing: Wait for it 🍿 

Waiting for results can be agonizing.

In this example, Seth Godin describes why sometimes it’s an essential part of the recipe.

For you Accelerator alumni, this is similar to the melting ice cube analogy from Atomic Habits. Your efforts up to the nine-minute mark are not wasted but stored.

One Trending thing: Climate havens

Homeowners have always sought out safe places to live. Threats include earthquakes, crime, affordability and more recently, climate change.

More than 14.5 million homes were affected by natural disasters in 2021 and weather events that caused $1 billion in damage have increased each year over the past decade.

Enter climate havens. The marketing goes something like this:
These climate haven cities are at low risk for destructive storms, extreme heat, drought, fire or floods. They boast an abundance of affordable housing, low crime and sun — but not too much sun. It’s about 65 degrees year-round on average. And fresh clean water? Oh yes, we have plenty of that.

It’s an opportunity, The Insider reports, for places with manufacturing infrastructure to attract new residents and businesses after years of declining investment.

“How Buffalo’s weather is going from punchline to lifeline” reads the beinbuffalo.com website.

Climate check risk for Durango vs. Buffalo

So are these the best places to “ride out dystopia?”

Maybe not, The Conversation reports. A self-described Michigan “haven city” flooded recently when record rainfall overwhelmed the old infrastructure, despite having a historically low flood risk.

While evidence from Zillow, the US Census and others suggest climate challenges are influencing homebuyer and lender decisions, homebuyers still have an abundance of concerns and data to sift through. And will need help interpreting data that will influence future decisions.

So whether climate havens are real or not today, the more than 50 percent of Americans who say they are concerned about the effects of climate change may rely more heavily on local reporting just like The Gazette, Times Picayune and many of you are already doing.

And maybe we can convince Climate Check that a strong local news source should be a deciding factor in whether a city is considered a climate haven?

One AI thing: Your priorities 🎯 

So many things happened in generative AI just yesterday, but instead of offering a recap, we’re going to focus on the things you told us are important about understanding and implementing generative AI in your companies.

Some of you are already implementing generative AI across several business functions, while others are still “discovering” and responding to employees using it quietly. At this early stage (yes, we’re still in early stages) there’s no right or wrong, but there is growing urgency to set guidelines and understand risks.

• Case studies: Peers using AI successfully and how success is measured

• Instruction: You’re open to experimentation, especially if it comes with financial incentives

• Impact: Where local news companies are finding the most value

• Understanding threats: From copyright to privacy, which threats are most important and how to address them

• Vendors: Vetting, investment, effectiveness. What problems do they solve

• Employees: Addressing fears they will be replaced by AI or someone who understands AI

This information is helping us shape future FIMS programming, including our February event in Austin. Have additional considerations? Please let us know!

Upcoming:   

• Participants in Amalie’s subscriptions sprint shared their goals last week. Passcode: ?OqTj6*&

• Thanks to everyone who presented at last week’s group call: Recording and passcode yQ85?8+9

• Register now for the next Big Branded Call: It happens every third Thursday

Help shape phase two of the FIMS Lab 💕