🤭 When Wikipedia Trolls You 🤭

I’m officially bored of Brexit but what was fascinating was looking at the Petition and it’s spread online and who and when people shared it. On scheduling this there were 2,451,828 signatures. I’ve put together a Google Sheet here if you are interested in how it spread. The timeline view shows you a lot.

🤩 Your Five For Friday 🤩

1. 🤖 The White House Social Media Director was blocked by Facebook as was too bot like

2. 😲 Who knew calling millennial’s snowflakes would drive the highest enrollment in British Army in years

3. 👅Burger King burn the ads is beyond genius - free whopper anyone?

4. 💯 I struggled growing up with dyslexia, this viral poem made my week, hopefully it will yours too

5. 🧐A 7ft 6in college 🏀 player might be too tall for the NBA

❤️ Marketing / Growth / Advertising ❤️

• Netflix is ramping up its marketing and sales team, meaning - integrated ad experience with product placements and licensing their characters outside of Netflix

• Obsessing about marketing ROI is everywhere - this is a must read for any marketers (and business leads)

• Cafe Destination: Coffee as a subscription is an amazing idea from BK (only $5 per month)

• How Waze managed to create in car ads that no-one has before (very smart acquisition by Google)

• Wechat-ification of Insta continues: Instagram is running a trial for 20 companies to sell directly via instagram, one click commerce

• One thing you can learn from Trump, his marketing campaign to be president, spending $1m on Google and $3m+ on Facebook, won last one, likely to help him in this

• In the very meta format, the new social media is the newsletter (can’t say I agree but agree newsletters are becoming useful and popular again - thanks for reading)

• Snap is ramping up its offering but UK advertisers just don’t bite

• Amazon is coming after Facebook and Google with video ads

☝️Must listen to podcast of the week ☝️

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💵 Business 💵

• “Google now owes the EU about $9.3B -- equivalent to the market caps of Groupon, Bed Bath and Beyond, Office Depot, Papa Johns, Sonos, and GoPro combined.”

• HBR and dropbox found that smaller teams perform best, so next time ask if you need more than the essential people in the meeting

• Good read on “the billion dollar blog” Glossier and beautiful business model it has

• A look at the ousted co-founder of Facebook’s fund does and why he invests in what he does

• Another good deep-dive at one of the Facebook power players Fidji Simo

• Someone I look up to Connie Chan has a great interview on CNN Edition and why her inspiration from China is becoming reality in Western World

• How Uber used more spyware and scraping to remove competitors

• Here’s a good post on career progression (at his agency) by my friend Paddy Moogan (go connect with him on LinkedIn)

• ProductHunt founder Ryan Hoover compiled a nice blog on the troubles of working remotely

• The co-founder of Basecamp on why work doesn’t have to be crazy or hectic

• Netflix is dubbed the future of TV..but..is becoming like the old TV remixed with your driving the scheduling

• Google pay is now live on eBay - catering for their largest demographic 

• Candles are now £1.9b a year in 🇬🇧 

🚀 Product 🚀

• Google are doubling down in gaming with their new service Stadia

• The more I use Microsoft teams, the more I like it and loads of new features are coming  

• A great long read on what questions we should be asking Facebook and YouTube after the spread and live streaming of the New Zealand terror attack

• Being annoyed by poorer experiences on instagram, this medium article rightly points out its deliberate in the pursuit for engagement 

• Messenger finally gets threading (and expect your other IM’s to too)

• Why note apps might be the most private but most public app you have 

Absolute truth here on the state of tablets and Apple’s dominance -

🤔Final Thought 🤔

I spoke at a conference this week, I was talking to some smart people in the break and they made an interesting point and raised a timely question around product development and growth. Why are companies too proud to make the change that their users crave? In this brilliant tweet example from Wikipedia to Twitter, it raises both points; but I suspect in this case: When you don’t know who your target audience is or what your core product is, does one feature change that is requested constantly do you make that change? Or in Twitter’s case do you take the free press it comes with and work on other features? I’m pretty sure you experience this constantly but next time you cannot work out what, who or why - probably time to ask it loud and clear.

My old team are hiring a few roles, a growth marketer and a digital marketing manager - if you are interested or know anyone follow this link and read the specs. 

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

Thanks - Danny Denhard