This week the internet was awash with news of Baby Yoda…turns out Disney execs didn’t speak to their team and understand the power of user-generated marketing campaign, that is a prime example of how precious some companies can be. Looks like Disney won out anyways… OR maybe Lego did with their news-jacking of Tesla.

Anyways, on to…⤵

😍 The Must-Reads Of The Week 😍

Marketing & Growth

• 🚀 The continued death of the CMO is happening as ASOS hires Chief Growth Officer to oversee Marketing and Customer Service Or will the Chief Growth Officer be a continuing trend against the CMO?

• 💯2020 is the year of no excuses for Marketing departments

• ✅How Mariah Carey and Queen Bey helped turn Airbnb into a luxury brand

• 💬Why less video and RCS (new SMS) is going to be the future

• 👏Using social media as a platform for great - missing person awarenessAS Roma are known for great social media campaigns and tactics, here is another example…actually standing out for doing great.

• 👽ET (above) is coming home (well to Sky in 🇬🇧and Xfinity in 🇺🇸)Nostalgia 101 - with the continued trend of refreshing the 80’s ET is a sure-fire hit

• 🗣Buzzfeed might not have made but they made the meme (and the listicle, the who am I quiz and the share-able content), they were real drivers of change for content consumption and mixing entertaining and news together, NY Magazine had a good interview this week

Fashion Focus

• 📣Allbirds called out Amazon this week with a dupe issue Brave move going against Amazon but fair play for calling them out, especially when Allbirds gives 10% to charity

• 👗Clothing as a Service - everything you need to know about clothing rental Having been around for a few years, it has really picked up pace and popularity, this is a good look at the business model.

• 🏭Amazon also released all of the suppliers on its platform for more transparency This will show you how powerful their moats and flywheel is

Culture

• ⏰Interesting discussion on LinkedIn on the 9am start and how outdated it really is As someone who is a morning person and works optimally until mid-afternoon for me, this is very outdated and unprotective  

• 📝Good thoughts and lessons on OKR’s Do you love or hate them?

• 😧12 million working days were lost to mental health last year 

Business

• 📲Ryan Reynolds now owns a virtual provider (aka mobile carrier) called Mint 

• 🤔Facebook wanted Fitbit but wouldn’t match Google’s bid I’m not sure Facebook needs more data? Or does Google…

• 😐Twitter almost rolled out unused and inactive accounts until they were reminded of those who have passed away and want to be kept Coming from a Product POV it’s difficult to keep everyone happy especially when it comes to handles and profiles. Twitter has really ramped up their Product releases and considered how they put their users first recently, shame this is going to hinder them.

• ☑️Goes against all of the previous advice “Why You Should Skip the Easy Wins and Tackle the Hard Task First”

Christmas Corner

• 🎅Struggling for Christmas ideas? Well here’s a great guide to help you out 🎅

• Cardi B Christmas ad? (Thanks @theldndiaries)

👏You made it to the end 👏

Have a great weekend (Black Friday, Cyber week, ThanksGiving etc 😉) & thanks for reading the Must Reads Newsletter.

Danny Denhard (Follow Me on Social ~ LinkedIn — Twitter — Blog)

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Disclaimer: All views are my own, until you click through on the stories.This week’s gif is of course from Giphy