🥤New Coca Cola Recipe?

This week has been action packed with cool collabs, disappointing endings and bans.

🤩 Your Five For Friday 🤩

1. 🙈 Worried your parents were pushy, our nearest relative the bonobos have the same or even more pressure in the wild 

2. 💰A teacher got laid off in 2016 and now earns 6 figures teaching dungeons and dragons 

3. 🤔How Facebook and Google became two of the biggest funders of journalism in the world and that’s probably a problem

4. When Trolling a brand backfires and you get taken down 

5. ⏯Great video looking at the rollercoaster ride at is Yelp (their Google fight and their mafia like approach) ❝Quote that resonated with me this week❞ 

❤️ Marketing / Growth / Advertising ❤️

• Reddit is becoming a marketing staple and John Wick subreddit is just one stand out example - Reddit is quickly becoming the network others are copying and many brands cannot crack, maybe reddit is the past, present and future?

• Stranger Things and Coca Cola are pairing up to relaunch “new coke” 30+ years later - nostalgia is always a powerful marketing tool and launching such an iconic brand moment is genius for both Coke and Netflix’s Stranger Things

• Did all that tea spilling cause YouTube to change the way they display subscribers?

• Marketers and CRM teams have noticed googlemail / gmail issues and is impacting numerous campaigns 

• Airbnb have joined forces with 23andme (the dna database company) to plan trips around your heritage - this is a clear tie in, whether its a market or a marketing tactic we will see, pretty smart nonetheless

• Very smart billboard from BA (thanks Paula Holmes)

💵 Business 💵

• Looking for investment into your company or idea? The trick? present great content without over designing it

• BT updated their logo and to say its basic is an understatement - what do you think?

• Apparently search is a tough business (and this comes from a Googler)

• LinkedIn have a decent podcast series, but by far their best podcast to date is “Vulnerability Lessons with Facebook's Carolyn Everson” talking about how she was fired from our company pets.com and how its stuck with her 

• WARNING: Do not plug in your phone into airport USB’s

• Wearables are back, Google Glass 2 came out (for business users) and Amazon are working on device that tracks and reads emotions

🤔 Friday Thought Starter 🤔

There is a lot of chatter about social networks and creating a rival to Facebook and the majority of the narrative is that Apple should create a competitor, only problem with this, Apple have tried previously and not had many successes. However for those outside Europe and with WhatsApp usage blindness, Apple already has a social network, iMessage, why/how you ask? It has an economic moat (meaning its exclusive to Apple devices not just iPhones), brands can build into their ecosystem (The Giphy app is a stand out) and its private first; meaning you have to have their phone number and can to one to one (private), one to few (living room style in the Facebook world) or one to many (town hall / groups of comparing to Facebook). Apple could dive deeper in adding better layers of a feed or stories style mentality enabling richer content to be threaded in a modern messaging way like Slack / Teams but Apple don’t have a huge track record in this market.

If Apple wanted a smart and simple way to test, they could offer conversation around podcasts (they own 70% of the podcast market) and adding in relevant chatter from Twitter and trigger conversation in a one-to-few or one-to-many way in a iMessage group. Apple users might not all want this and it’s unlikely to be in Apple’s roadmap for 2019 / 2020 but with a few smart hires Apple can lead the way to an enhanced, more private social experience.

🚀 Product 🚀

• I product I love is Beautiful.ai - they are a free online competitor to powerpoint / keynote / slides with loads of amendable templates and customisable diagrams etc

• How Fortnite game could create the next revolution - Although kids left and are going back to Fortnite, many brands like Netflix have called out that Fortnite and Epic as competitors with 250m+ users (Interestingly Fortnite and Air Jordan teamed up this week for a specialist pack - apparently it’s been incredibly popular)

• Subscriptions are everywhere, here is Medium founder Ev Williams explaining mediums model and approach to subs (video)

• TFL are going to be tracking all devices from July 8th - if you have privacy concerns they using it to improve congestion, marketing and to provide more travel insights

• DJ Khalid directions anyone? He is on waze for a week - is navigation voiceover the new marketing ploy? Why you ask?…His album is just out (we the best 🤣)

• 📵If you have a Huawei (or honor) phone and don’t know whats been happening, Huawei has been pulled from Google and is part of the open source Android (very basic version), want more info on what the bans means here is a great explainer video from YouTuber Marques Brownlee or an in-depth strategic view from Ben Thompson 📵

There is a lot made of the dying influence and power of linear TV, it seems far from dead: A 🇺🇸 Study suggested 11 Million people were expected to skip work last Monday because of the Game Of Thrones Finale. There were about 10.8m unhappy GoT fans ranting on Twitter too.

🎧 Must Listen Of The Week 🎧

Ever wondered why you remember the sounds of a brand - this is one of my favourite brand and marketing podcasts and was submitted this week by my colleague Jamie Parkins 

📝Three From Me 📝: 1. 19 tips from 19 years in marketing and growth 2. How hyper personalisation and user generated content can power your brand 3. 21 simple questions to really understand your audience(s)

Let me know what you think of this week’s must reads by tweeting, emailing or messaging me on LinkedIn.

Thanks - Danny Denhard (and of course all views are my own)

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