➡️What Company Culture Is

And what it is not!

In Todays Must-Reads:

💯 What company culture is and is not 🧘‍♂️ Meditation and anxiety app battleground 🚚 How stores are fighting back…instant delivery 🥤 Coca Cola’s marketing genius and investing in inspiration 😟 Deep fakes are the fight to win in 2021 ➕ Including Must Read 5 deep dives

The Must-Read Stories Of The Week

  1. What company culture is and is not ℹ️- LinkHappily share this post internally and on social.

  2. Amazon’s live stream capabilities are attracting the beauty industry, with many others no doubt going to join 🎥 - Link

  3. Your real objective in Marketing, making it into a created list (regularly created by customers) 📖 - Link

  4. The island humans just cannot conquer 🏝- Link

  5. ICON: It’s time to return and stay (off-world sustainable) on the moon 🌓 - Video Link

  6. Want to get more out of Google Drive & what it can do? Here’s an incredible resource ☁️ - Link

  7. As I suggested in my 2021 and beyond blog post, retailers and supermarkets are having to move towards the quickest delivery possible (we have prime expectations so better than same-day is essential) 🚚 - Link

  8. Friends of Must Reads Ross Simmonds was interviewed by another great newsletter Marketing Brew (and their founder Alex Liberman) on content and ramping up your distribution engine ✅- Video Link

  9. Smart promo from Netflix, famous fans ask Sir David Attenborough about nature and the planet 🐵 - Video Link

  10. When will these brands learn? H&M were fined over spying on staff and holding a lot of irrelevant data on their psychometrics data 😕- Link

  11. “Dumb ideas” broken down by Seth Godin is genius 👏- Link As is this week’s Akimbo podcast link 

  12. Daniel Ek (the Spotify founder) was interviewed and covers many important areas of business, my personal favourite is where Daniel references good and bad meetings and discusses when to stop the meeting and how to make them better 👍- Link

  13. It seems like 2021 will have to be the year to fight deep-fakes 🦺- Link

  14. If you haven't read the everything store, this documentary about Amazon is a must watch to see how powerful Amazon is and how clever Amazon is 💯Share

Friday Deep Dives

Here are a few stories that are worth deeper insights that I’ve added the Must Reads deep dive commentary too:

  • Last week’s must-reads endorsement saw Dick Costello call out Coinbase’s (a crypto company) CEO about being a place to work and just to work, well Coinbase followed up and 60 people left in the middle of a pandemic. Something tells me this won’t be the end of the drama. This is why company culture is so important - Link

  • Pepsi’s pivot to digital helped them to have a bumper quarter - Link We all went through the scrap to survive phase, those who came out of it got to the survive stage and now the likes of Pepsi have leapfrogged into the thrive phase, like I suggested in last week’s Must Reads this cycle will be played out and you have to work out where you are and where you are broken: reach ➡️ problem solve ➡️ inspire ➡️ product purchase ➡️ repurchase is essential

  • Instagram will soon be completely shoppable, including in IGTV and Reels - LinkA-commerce (algorithmic commerce) is something that Scott Galloway coined recently, it’s a battle between TikTok & Instagram who can create the complete algorithmic shopping experience within our native social app. WeChat has this & important to note the West is a number of years behind — Related Must Reads: Why it’s time for Disney to release the rundle (recurring revenue bundle) and release the Disney++ (aka releasing the Mickey and friends) 🎢 - Link

  • The economics of vending machines - LinkI’m a huge fan of vending machines, your brand has so many opportunities with vending machines especially if you are not a brand that you touch, taste, drink, or share in person. Snap lenses did a great launch campaign a few years & Coca Cola sells ~70% of drinks in 🇯🇵 via vending machines.

  • Why Coca Cola is doubling down with Netflix, Disney+ and many other streaming giants - Link“Coca Cola works around the shows, not in them” is a great quote to consider if you want to know how brands think differently. If you are a brand and looking to consider ways to play and advertise, consider how you are native and featured within shows, productions, and places where your audiences spend a lot of time and attention.

Must Read Endorsement Of The Week

Mental Health Awareness

This Saturday (10th) is Mental Health Day. So I wanted to increase awareness and share: What Is Depression - TED Video Link —Related Must Read: How Headspace is winning the meditation and anxiety space 🧘‍♀️- Link

A friend of Must Reads Heather messaged me this week and recommended an app to help with your wellbeing. Here's Heather recommendation:

  • We’ve all been there; stressed, anxious, feeling low, becoming overloaded by everything that life throws our way. And what’s the first step we take?

  • Looking online for support, wading through page after page offering different advice, and further avenues to venture down for resources. This can be overwhelming, and let’s face it, the last thing you need when the storm hits.

  • This is where sidekick app comes in! The app holds a collection of interactive exercises, tools, and tips to help boost mental wellbeing. The app enables you to build a personalised plan for managing their mental health with a range of wellbeing exercises and content. You can download the Sidekick app here 

Thanks for reading, enjoy your weekend and I’ll see you next week.

Danny Denhard

If you don’t know, I have worked in Marketing and Growth for 20 years, from before Google ran search and Facebook ran ‘Social’, a former leadership team member from JustGiving & now on a mission to fix the broken world of work with Focus (my culture, strategy consultancy).