Must Reads 261

Good Morning Must Readers, Must Reads #261 covers the following themes >>

• Better Bosses? - How Bosses are learning to listen (and leverage a PR opportunity)

• The Next Wave Of New Media - What to learn from the top creators and how they are influencing the next wave of media companies

• Driverless Cars - From the current chaos in San Fran to helping with driving struggles in China

• Community Design - What to learn from Norwich castle's redesign...community being embraced & big brands will want to be inspired and engaged this way moving forward

• NFT's? - How Nike launching their OF1 digital collection goes against crypto but embraces how brands want to interact with superfans and collectors

Here is Londons famous landmark reimagined with prompts by Ai

If this email forwarded to you? Sign up here!. Sharings Caring >> Copy and paste in your chat apps or slack or teams ➡️ https://mustreads.beehiiv.com/p/261

>> Undercover Bosses 🕵️‍♀️ - You might be surprised to learn not every undercover boss activity is a PR stunt (albeit they can work in the favour of PR purposes too). Uber CEO recently went undercover and learnt a lot from his time driving Uber's (not only being out of contact when driving in a company wide emergency). His takeaways sided with the numerous issues that were already raised seeing them firsr-hand helped him and Uber to cater more for the drivers. Not every boss will want to or actually gain the insights Uber's did however it might just be what many CEOs need in this climate, to experience first-hand the issues and obstacles faced.

>> How Must Reads (& Leaders Letters) Is Made & My Top Secrets To Success 🧠 I have broken down my complete processes in this pod and gone deep in my insights in more details on my blog. Definitely watch the full pod below (I also share a funny story about people hate reading must reads)

>> The Latest Wave Of Apps 📲 - Apps and social media have had a huge impact on almost everyone's life, from the like button and photo dumps on Facebook, to modern apps like TikTok impact purchases from books to feta cheese. China is seeing a different wave, with a lifestyle app (some dubbing it the lifestyle bible) called Xiaohongshu helping a different way of living for younger women and influencing decisions and product purchases. We are seeing this at a smaller scale in the West but with the broken nature of social media (and the social graph) and shift to the entertainment graph, we are going to numerous tribes find new homes away from traditional apps & chat apps and move towards different smaller niche apps. We see this starting to happen and then are acquired traditionally here in the West but with the state of anti-competition forbidding acquisitions from social media giants and M&A at a low, we will see apps come up and stay relevant for longer before a purchase or an eventual slow down. How ads play here is going to be tricky.

>> Driverless Car Chaos 🚘 - Regardless of what we think - driverless cars are coming, unfortunately, where they are being tested (San Fran & in China - see Baidu's driverless cabs below) there are frequent examples of traffic being completely halted by driverless cars not understanding what is happening & cannot exit the situation it caused. >> UK supermarket chain Asda are now also running a driverless car delivery test in London

>> Interesting Life/Career Advice You Never Knew You Needed 🙆- I wasn't looking for this but this article covers some unexpected and non-standard advice with some thought-provoking questions.

>> Leaked AI Sources 🕸️ - ChatGPT and OpenAi have been somewhat cagey about moving forward and releasing some of their training data, as has Google with their BARD system, but this week we saw brilliant journalism in analysing the data and finding out the sources of answers including 4chan, forums and questionable hate-filled sites. Unfortunately, the race for Ai is creating a rush to go live (as I mentioned in the 10q pod linked above) without real thought of the consequences. We will see this time after time with Ai and the rush to try and compete in this space, be wary of the results.

>> How search, social and chat apps will all work in the near future (a follow-up and explainer from last weeks deep dive)

>> How To Embrace Community In Rebranding 🏰 - How a city in England embraced its community to rebrand their castle with post-it note designs. This is something so many businesses would be scared to embrace this approach but is actually super smart. In the near future, many brands are going to have to work out how to integrate fans and superfans (and the locals) or redesign without them causing negative feedback and potential loss of these fans.

>> Why Some Stars Are Being Paid Millions To Not Make Hits 📺 - TV and streaming is a huge business and market, it is what many empires are built around in recent years with talent and showrunners driving the growth of the streaming giants. What is rarely discussed is what happens when the talent is paid their fee and doesn't actually deliver a single hit. Sometimes through no fault of their own or bad intentions. This is a lot like hired execs at big firms, often it's about having the talent in your org not ensuring they are set up or have the right project.

>> How Nike Is Still Investing In NFT's 👟- Nike were early in its exploration of NFT's and Web3. Their first real collection of NFTs aka OF1 drop (air force 1) is a limited release (drop) and is not accepting crypto but accepting $19.82 in non crypto payments. What's interesting here is they call it a digital drop, it's limited (like most NFTs) and its solely available across their digital .swoosh but not promoting deeply as an NFT and not accepting crypto. I can see many brands following Nike's lead and picking what is their version of web3 and what isn't.

>> Rory Sutherland’s great presentation at Re:Signal Conference in March  -

>> Nostalgia Wins 🎬 - The movies are back (theatres and cinemas are extremely popular) and in some instances breaking pre-2020 levels. One reason; the latest wave of movies is looking back at nostalgic companies and catering to the actual moviegoers demographics. Anything that was a successful podcast looking back at companies in the 80s-2009 will likely get a chance to pitched and remade as a film. Also, keep an eye out for how Paramount+ is looking back at its catalogue and re-making classic movies as streaming exclusive series.

>> Overemployment & Ai 😮 - Overemployment is where some people are working a number of full times roles at once and now some smarter individuals are using chatGPT3 to automate their roles. This is one of the fears some leaders report on but as we lean into Ai we will see this more common and actually rewarded in the near future. Do you embrace this as a business lead or break it...if the goals are being hit then many might consider embracing it...

Thanks,

Danny Denhard -- want to say thanks for Must Reads? You can by tipping me & buying me a coffee