Dads pranks are the best

😂

Yes, it is Friday! It’s the first of two installments of Must Reads this week, today’s has 5 actionable tips from Beth Gladstone and is full of alternative & important reads you have not likely seen this week and a deep dive into streaming and gaming. Sunday Must Reads will have 5 more excellent tips and 7 must-reads.

—Hit of the Week—

👏 Pranks: This prank week tweet by a funny dad has made me laugh all week - Link 👏

Better than the average dad joke (below)

—Must Reads Of The Week—

Sneeze: Why it has been so difficult to stop the common cold 🤧 - Link
Creative: How discomfort makes us more creative (and how power affects creativity) 💪 - Link
Opinions: Something I learned a few years ago is bikeshedding and this FS blog explains why everyone has an opinion on the simple things (& how to avoid) 🤔 - Link
Feed Me: How the George Foreman grill took over our kitchens 🥊 - Link
Secret Sauces: IKEA and many others have released their secret recipes, Ikea’s is straight forward - Link& Home Baking: Cupcake legend aka Sprinkles founder Candace Nelson and Reese Weatherspoon bake Sprinkles famous skillet cookie recipe 🍪 - Video Link
Self Doubt: Imposter Syndrome hits us all, here are some nice tips 👏 - Video Link
Experimentation: brands win in many ways, Levis is experimenting on TikTok and seeing some interesting trends 🤳- Link
Priceless Insights: Friend of the Must Reads Simon Kemp and the team have launched the Q1 insights, it is packed with some incredible stats and gems & is a must-read for anyone in Marketing and e-commerce 📍 - Link
Video Fatigue: I joked and coined the phrase zoombies but video calls are impact us and fatigue is on the rise alongside more video calls 🧟‍♀️ - LinkFWIW Zoom just hit 300m daily (yes daily) active users thats about 100m away from TikTok.
Insta: Instagram is full of weird and wonderful, this account reminds me of the gold days of Insta, hotels from North Korea 🇰🇵 - Link
Email as a Platform: Having a newsletter is sometimes a labour of love and really does show you how you can control the send but not the opens or the delivery, here is a good article on how to think about email as a platform 📧 - Link
Airbye?: Airbnb is always popular on Must Reads, Wired questions “Is this the end of Airbnb?” ✈️ - Link
Google Assistant V3: Google is making the search engine results even more personalised with reminders of your favourite TV shows. Search data is a powerful thing 📲 - Link
Powerplay: Facebook has invested $5.7b in Indian telco Jio, Why? Facebook is big in India especially WhatsApp (with money transfer (remittance) doing well), commerce is the next logical step and Jio is a platform that can enable Facebooks move towards the Superapp / WeChat model and political influence. 🇮🇳 - Link
Budget Freeze: - The first thing that gets stopped or frozen in poor company performance is the Marketing budget, Google has suggested they are going to half their spend in 2020. Google will be ok thou. Why? Google has the best ad options and large number of product releases. Expect these cuts to impact TV & online spends and launch events 🎢 - Link

—5 Tips—

Today’s 5 tips come from podcaster and content creator Beth Gladstone. Beth has appeared on the newsletter a number of times and Beth's Content Makers podcast is one of my Must Listens 🎙 weekly.

Get (virtual?) coffee with people in your company. It’s not enough to be good at your work, you also need to be good at building relationships and letting people know what you’re working on.
Need content ideas? Do a customer tour or interview. Brands that make great content (Netflix, Glossier, YouTubers) rely on data and insights from their customers.
In content creation user experience (UX) is your best friend. If people can’t consume what you’re producing easily, they’ll leave and it’ll be a waste of great content.
For everyone preaching video is the future, social distancing has got us there a lot faster. People are now used to consuming and creating audio/video - this should change what you’re producing.
Paid spend is great but never stop investing in your strategy to get found in organic search. Long-term, you’ll get a much better return - and it’s not affected by budget cuts!Share

➡️ Connect with Beth on LinkedIn

—Going A Bit Deeper—

Today’s going a bit deeper, is the biggest trend is streaming and gaming, and why it is important, not just to gamers but marketers and brands.

Facebook enters streaming marketing 🎮 - Link

Streaming has been a huge part of our recent lives, it has exploded in popularity in recent years, especially over the last 6 weeks. Twitch is now an important player in music, gaming and offering live gigs to celebrities, comedians and chefs.
With power players such as Twitch, YouTube, (Microsoft) Mixer the market is already saturated.
The ways to think about this space is: Streaming -> Gaming -> Esports
Games inside of gaming category are also marketing channels being leveraged (Marshmello live dj set and Travis Scott touring - insta clip of “tour”)
Facebook formally announced its offering for gaming streamers (gaming and e-sports are very different things), with Facebook already has over 5m downloads on Google store alone. Facebook won’t be a platform it will be just a channel.
It is important to understand that Facebook has exclusive deals with specific gamers and will look to leverage its organic community to increase usage of Facebook
Facebook’s offering vs Twitch's (vs others) is very different, Why? Facebook wants attention and an increase of the younger demographic usage of Facebook, not just gaming. Twitch wants frequent streaming & long term streamers to build their audience alongside improving the network and community on Twitch (leading to prime subscriptions, coins being brought for streamers) and mid-term diversification outside their traditional audience, improving ads and targeting.

Thank You 🙏

Thanks for reading this week’s Must Read’s.

Please have a good weekend! Take care of yourself, please. Danny Denhard ~ Advisor & Consultant.