Buff Briefs

Your quick scroll of what mattered last week, before the morning beverage kicks in.

😮 Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2 Thinking Might Have Outreasoned GPT-5: Moonshot AI released a 1-trillion-parameter reasoning model that can sustain 300 steps of logic without breaking. It beat GPT-5 on complex reasoning while costing a fraction to train.

🏛 Microsoft Is Building ‘Humanist Superintelligence’: Mustafa Suleyman’s new MAI team is ditching the AGI arms race for bounded, interpretable AI systems that solve specific problems.

📊 LinkedIn Launches Conversion Lift Testing: LinkedIn’s new Conversion Lift Testing helps quantify incremental impact, revealing how many conversions your ads actually drove beyond what would’ve happened organically.

🤯 AI Stocks Face a $1T Reality Check: One trillion dollars vanished from AI-linked stocks, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Palantir, and Oracle. This wasn’t panic selling; it was a stress test. The AI gold rush phase is over.

✏️ Deloitte’s 40th Holiday Retail Report: Gen Z Rewrites Shopping Rules: Consumers expect higher prices (77%) and a weaker economy (57%), but the holiday spirit remains intact. The big story? Gen Z is redefining retail behavior. 95% are deal-hunters, 74% look to creators and social media for gift ideas, and 43% now use Gen AI to plan, compare, and buy.

Buff Takeaway: From CMOs & CFOs at NYSE

Last week, the New York Stock Exchange hosted a private gathering of CMOs and CFOs to unpack how marketing and finance create growth together. Here’s what leaders really talk about behind closed doors, and what you can borrow for your next budget meeting.

The Three Levels of Marketing

Sarah Zurell from Chinese Laundry outlined three tiers every CFO should understand before cutting spend:

• In-the-Sky (Brand): Big bets that build aspiration and future demand.

• On-the-Ground (Performance): Direct-response channels that turn intent into sales.

• Underground (Community): Trust-building moments that resist attribution but drive the biggest halo; defend this line as the multiplier that lowers CAC over time.

When finance understands these layers, budget conversations shift from cuts to portfolio management.

Creativity That Can Be Measured

Ben Grossman, President of Saatchi & Saatchi, said it best: “Marketing isn’t just art, it’s science.” He urged leaders to quantify memorability and findability as core growth metrics. When ideas are backed by evidence, creative teams earn a seat at the finance table.

When Brand Value Becomes Market Value

NYSE’s Joe Benarroch noted that the lines between paid, earned, and investor media are blurred. A consistent narrative builds trust that translates to valuation multiples, storytelling as a financial asset.

Make Simple Special

Gatorade scaled by staying anchored to a single truth: athletes need energy and electrolytes. The lesson for leaders: simplicity is not a creative constraint; it’s an operating strategy.

The Buff Agenda This Week

Stay Curious, Stay Ahead!

"The future belongs to the curious, not the certain." - John C. Maxwell

See you next Monday, 7:30 AM on the dot, Buffs!