Good Morning Friends! 

Congrats Must Readers, you've made it through another week. It's 51 days until Christmas 😬 . It has been a dark and wet week in London, so I am binge-watching old CSI for the last few weeks and loving it, let me know what you are reading or recommend watching, just hit reply!

Newsletter #237 is packed full of must read stories including 5️⃣ you have to click through on (1) company culture lessons from Apple, Google & Uber, (2) Why managers are struggling at work too, (3) Pet & Virtual influencers wave, (4) Amazon primed to be an ads company, (5) the impact of social media on mental health and self-diagnosis 

Must Read Stories Of The Week

Work Must Reads 

> Company Culture Lessons From Apple, Burberry, Google & Uber 🚩 - Says exactly what it does in the title ;-) 

> Is Your Out Of Office Helping Your Internal Team? 🛫 - Interesting take on whether your OOO is a chance to normalise outside-of-the-office activities or maybe question whether it's another reply that will likely be misinterpreted or ignored. BTW OOO messages is great to understand personalities and motives 

> The Biggest Struggle In Management! 😣- We are experiencing so many factors as leaders it is becoming the hardest time to be a manager and lead with any real confidence, alongside being fatigued and close to burnout. Next time you speak to your boss, it's worth considering how they have been impacted too

> Petflunecer Time 🐕 - Yes, you read that right, the rising of the pet influence has exploded (some having over 250k followers) and even seeing Gucci sponsor pets (and brands see the uplift). The old social media hack used to be if you were struggling for engagement get a pet, maybe the next one is struggling for followers start that pet account...

> Virtual Influencers 🤖 - M&S (the UK's most well-known high street brands) launched Mira a virtual influencer. This trend is fairly common in China but usually, for more modern brands, it's interesting to see how M&S might use their own virtual influencer to story tell and eventually influence sales. Expect others to attempt a similar approach but look to broaden out the scope to adverts (think more like a mascot than a digital influencer)

> Google Promo's 🏷️ - Google's evolution from search engine to answer engine is moving faster to help with the macroeconomic situation, offering discounts and savings with search engine result pages (aka SERP's in the business world). Expect Google to borrow features from Pinterest (you can be notified when you pin a product on price changes) and coupon sites (which G actively dislike) to drive more sales via their search interface. 

> Amazon The Ad Company 🛒 - Amazon is rapidly becoming an ads company, by thinking of its wide-reach and influence Amazon is smartly approaching ads to take the load off smaller margins. This time they are releasing products for other stores and groceries. 

Life Must Reads

> Dark Sky Pollution 🌙- New Zealand is attempting to be the first nation to fight pollution and help preserve its Māori culture and traditions. Well worth a deeper read.

> F*** Yeah 🤬 - Finally it's official, swearing is good for us (and shows intelligence)

> Taylor Swift broke recent sales numbers, shattered streams record this week and dominated 1-10 of the hot 100 is a pretty incredible feat. It is a clear demonstration of knowing how to market your music to your fandom and understanding how to dominate the streaming platforms (like Bieber, Ed Sheeran and others have done in recent years)...smart and savvy marketing! 

> Awareness Vs Self Diagnosis - One of my biggest critiques of social media platforms is how and why they serve content in the way they do with reckless regard of the impact. The ongoing case of Pinterest sending an email with recommended suicide content shows you how badly these algorithms just aren't trained. Yes, social algorithms do serve interesting content for the most part and often raise awareness of potential mental health issues, however, it's creating a huge amount of teenagers and young adults to self diagnose and then self-medicate leading to long-term issues. In the near future, we (big tech) have to do a better job of teaching the algorithms and the users of how they work to ensure we have remove as many issues as possible!   

> Vodcast 👇 This is an incredible podcast with Ferne Cotton (UK celebrity) and Roman Kemp (the biggest UK radio DJ), trigger warning it does cover depression and suicide references it will really help with understanding mental health and how everyone suffers differently. I resonated with a lot of this.  

Have a great weekend and if you want to chat about stories just hit reply or message me on twitter!  

Thanks! Danny Denhard