Happy Friday Must Readers. I hope you had a great week. I’ve reverted back to the shorter, more selective Must Reads this week. Please do let me know what format you prefer here.

Included In Today’s Must-Reads:

• New ways to improve your management teams

• Buzzfeed going into adult….toys

• Emoji - cave to smartphone

• Bring your own algorithm

• Supreme timing

The Must-Read Stories Of The Week

1. It is time to improve your leadership team with management pods 💯 - LinkHint - Yes!

2. Move Over Tasty: Buzzfeed is coming off a big and successful 2020, so much so it’s making profit for the first time. BF is going into the adult world of Buzzfeed branded toys and sexual wellness products ➕- Link Buzzfeed has had a breakout 2020 and seen a huge rise in adult-related searches on site and seen its popularity rise it’s coming up with new adult product lines, is this a smart play? I predict so.

3. How the media turns research into clickbait 😞 - Link

4. From the cave wall to the smartphone: The glorious history of the Emoji 💐- Link As you can see weekly I love the emoji, there is a huge world of opportunity moving forward, especially if you are brand.

5. Here are some of the most extreme sports in the world 🌎 - Link The psychology behind why people skydive into a tornado is fascinating 

6. I am definitely guilty of: ‘Tsundoku: The Art of Buying Books and Never Reading Them’ 📚 - Link

7. Aptitude testing, is it fact or fiction? 🤔- Link 

8. Child advertising is not new and uncommon, but $1.8b on child influencers is 🍟 - Link

9. Twitter is flirting with the idea of users being able to bring their own algorithm, here’s why it’s a bad idea 🤷‍♂️- Link Twitter can barely control it’s platform now, how would it handle numerous different versions. It couldn’t.

10. Are you missing visiting the zoo? Have no fears, the best live streams are all in one place - the cloud zoo ☁️🐼 - Link

11. What it now means Supreme has sold for $2.1b 👕 - Link 

➕ Deeper Dive ➕Spotify’s Successful Audio Play 🎧

It’s safe to say podcasting in 2020 has exploded but paid for podcasts with exclusive subscriptions and new businesses have really struggled to create platforms that charge for subscriptions even with huge talented creators and curators creating exclusive shows. Spotify has been clear over the last 18 months, they want to own and run audio, from music, to podcasts to branching out into Amazon territory, audiobooks etc. Spotify is looking to roll out an advert-free experience with podcasts (link), this might be good for users but likely be bad for podcasters and the ads industry within the podcast industry. There will be even more of a need for more things like buymeacoffee and Patreon etc.Spotify also brought megaphone advertising (link) this week, Spotify is really looking to close the door to other players and platforms and drive podcast listening and ownership exclusively on Spotify. This will likely kill innovation to the open podcast and player market, stopping the spread of brilliant content (all via word of mouth) and exclude a huge number of creators and listeners connecting as many shows will just be on Spotify. Expect this to heat up and potentially cause a rush for talent to be exclusively signed up. Advertising options and advertisers will have to step too.

Quote Of The Week:

Want A Weekend Must-Reads? If you’d like a little more must reads, I write a weekend edition on Saturday morning (example from last Saturday), which includes the most-read 5 articles from Fridays must-reads and 3 brand must-reads for your weekend. I don’t send this out as an email but tweet it instead, if you’d like to receive a copy let me know here.

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

Danny Denhard

If you don’t know or cannot remember, Must Reads newsletter is your weekly brainfood newsletter filled with Must Read Articles. It takes me hours every week to create Must Reads.  About My Work: I am on a mission to fix the broken world of work with Focus (my culture, strategy consultancy). I have spent two decades in Marketing and Growth leadership, from before Google dominated search and Facebook controlled ‘Social’ & I was on the leadership team at JustGiving & currently I am an interim CMO and company advisor. Happily email me for consultancy.