This week was a busy week for me, I am finishing up three conference presentations for conference talks for the end of March and April and had the judging day for The Drum Marketing Awards, some great entries and met some super smart marketing leaders.
👏 Five Must Reads 👏
☕️Starbucks and Ariana Grande are releasing a brand caramel and cinnamon flavoured new drink together - here is a video on how to make it already
💵How Aldi is reshaping the UK supermarket chains and influencing British shopping behavior
🏩AirBnB has just acquired HotelTonight (which is staying independent) - can this boost the demand boutique hotel’s, likely. They are now is peer to peer and now end to end travel company and perfect timing for their proposed IPO.
👸The Queen yes the Queen is now instagramming - don’t slide into her DM’s
🍫IKEA living their brand so much they are releasing a flat pack chocolate bunny
❤️ Marketing / Growth / Advertising ❤️
No need to click news:
Instagram doubling down with branded content ads - in short it’s so brands and influencers are working together more closely,
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and their Policy lead was on Joe Rogan podcast to answer policy questions & struggled to be crystal clear but Twitter is rolling out new insights tool for video engagement.
Facebook are going all in with private messaging with a blog post from Zuck, there are some great thought pieces and reviews, Wired, The Verge and my favourite read of the week from Ben Thompson
Seth Godin’s gem on email and our slavery to emails received
Why podcasts are likely the next brand adventure (here is a great podcast by Nike and Michael Johnson)
💵 Business 💵
How Nike’s founder’s chat with LeBron James led to supporting the Colin Kaepernick campaign
They (Nike) have also gone all in with League of Legends in China by designing the kits for it
The FT has brought The Next Web for it’s brand, event and publication to go into live events
How Allbirds challenged Nike and Adidas with super comfy trainers
Facebook’s trust has never been lower from recent report
🎁Tool of the week - Twimmage - turn tweets into Instagram shares 🎁
🚀 Product 🚀
Bitcoin summed up
Instagram is embracing influencers on it’s platform with new ad type - branded content
Ultra experimental brand KFC have gone into crowdfunding to see appetite in their ideas from the lab
Giphy improves their iMessage integrates for custom uploads (I love iMessage’s mini apps and integration especially stickers, there build your own sticker and gif is an absolute 💯of a product update)
Sad news from Square, their co-founder lost his battle to addiction
An absolute must read for any product manager or product lead on status as a service
Evidence that analysis just the details you have doesn’t work - WW2 example
Creative tweet of the week
🤔Final Thought 🤔
A teacher took the amazing step to record all notifications with noise on from their class, this is particularly scary as the number of notifications when kids are at school is insane and no doubt having a negative impact on them. I believe the phone and OS companies should be doing more to have a mode which reduces this and works on most important notifications. DND mode only goes so far.
Let me know what you think of this week’s must reads by tweeting, emailing or messaging me on LinkedIn.