Hello and welcome to your latest pre-weekend newsletter.
If you’ve stumbled across this humble newsletter (mainly) about purpose, customer experience and employee experience, then please make sure that you subscribe before you even know if you like it.
Firstly, a big thank you for all the messages and comments about my ASA journey, Pepsi Lipton have yet to offer me a job, but then their lawyers haven’t contacted me either, so I’d say that was a win on balance. If you’ve already read last weeks and want to know more, I found an excellent article by Beverage Daily that goes into more detail. I also found a mention in Marketing Week, a whole ten years since my work was last mentioned by them. Finally, last week’s edition was also sponsored by a stinking (Not COVID) cold and a cough, toothache, and multiple work deadlines. Thankfully, none of these are sponsoring this week edition.
If you’re already a subscriber, then a big thanks to you and the other 305 (and counting) subscribers and the 1,400+ views of my 5 previous newsletters. Not bad for something that was setup to test out LinkedIn’s new newsletter feature and to stretch myself a bit and hopefully educate.
But then, I have form in that department as LDN Life, my blog about (you guessed it) London Life was set up nearly 9 years ago so I could test theories and ideas before recommending them to others. It has since amassed 600 posts by over 30 guest writers over the years, plus it was Highly Commended 3 years running at the UK Blog Awards. Add in a finalist another year and it makes me the most successful loser in UK Blog Awards history. (Am I humble bragging right now?) What that doesn’t tell you is that the plucky LDN Life beat the likes of Jamie Oliver, Graze and a whole host of other Food & Drink brand blogs on a consistent basis. There might be a point to this story, but maybe there isn’t, you’ll have to keep reading to find out.
Oh, I also hit the nosebleed inducing 2,003 followers on LinkedIn this week. A figure I could have hit in just a few weeks had I accepted every salesperson connection request when I worked in Fintech.
But enough about me, let’s start with purpose and employee experience. Or a lack thereof.
The only person in the world that seems capable of giving Boris Johnson any advice right now is James Watt of BrewDog. If there was ever a brand that adopted the break things and fix it mentality of Facebook and sold it in cans, it must be BrewDog. His latest blog reads: 33% Trying to go viral (for the right reasons). 33% heartfelt. 33% written by his lawyers and 1% banned substance in the USA. Somehow both James and Boris are still able to have their cake and eat it, though my guess is that how the voting is setup at BrewDog, James will outlast Boris, even after the IPO. I’m not even going to mention the BBC Scotland documentary about BrewDog that aired this week. When it rains it pours. My Biggest Mistakes – Growing Pains Edition.
Remember when Brexit was a thing? I almost miss those days…
Anyway, the ASA continues to show that it’s not afraid to hand out slaps to brands bending the truth about sustainability, this time with Oatly getting multiple slaps with its claims again diary. The lesson, all because you’re better, doesn’t mean you can say what you want and act like you’ve fixed the world’s problems. I might be bias, but I like what I’m seeing from the ASA.
BBC News reported on the “False banana” and asks if Ethiopia’s enset ‘wondercrop’ can help with climate change? TL:DR, it will grow almost anywhere and doesn’t appear to taste awful. This “fake it until you make it” unloved crop has potentially found a new purpose. You can make Porridge with it too, though I don’t know if it needs dairy milk, Oatly or otherwise.
There has seemingly been a glut of safety apps (primarily for women) released over the last year or so. I’ve been a supporter of Safe & the City for years and whilst there is certainly space for more than one app of type of solution, I do worry that data won’t be shared between them. For them all to be effective, there needs to be a central database that helps these apps be more useful and likely to help the end user. To my mind, this is not an area where protecting non-sensitive data helps anyone. However, I feel that I maybe slightly out of touch with this one, so feel free to educate me in the comments. “Can this app help to keep women safe on the streets?”
With businesses still thinking about their purpose and responsibility to their employees as the pandemic legacy continues to take shape. Time out asks what you would do with a 4-day week as a 6-month trial is official launched across the UK. Don’t let us down 4-day weekers, you could be the difference between me writing this newsletter on a train and a pub garden on a Thursday evening in January or on a relaxed afternoon where my time is my own. https://www.timeout.com/news/the-uk-has-just-launched-a-four-day-working-week-pilot-011722
Speaking of Thursday evening, I did manage to squeeze in a visit the Black Horse in Soho for their Cocktail bar launch. A smoky old-fashioned, followed by an Apple-Pie cocktail and a few samples of their delicious food later and I was sold. I could have stayed all evening, but I had plans to catch-up with a former work colleague who is flourishing in their (not so new) role.
Facebooks world domination plans took an upturn this week as it laid out plans for a super powerful AI machine. Purely by coincidence (I hope), they announced it the same week Arnold Schwarzenegger crashed his car. Not to make light of the incident but if I imagined a Mark Zuk T-1000, I’d crash my car too.
Whilst on the subject of computer chips, car makers are still struggling to manufacture cars thanks to the global chip shortage. However, did you know that the average car has between 1,500 and 3,000 chips? Is the car made of chips?
Though it’s not all plain sailing for Facebook, as it is expected to finally sell its Libra crypto project. Though quite what there is to sell at this point I’m not sure or really care. In short, they learnt the hard way what everyone else was thinking all along. It was a bad idea.
More bad crypto news. IQONIQ, the brand behind the fan crypto at major football clubs has gone bankrupt. Or has it? Either way, the fan crypto tokens have crashed and lots of questions need answering. It all looks like a mess and profit before people seems to have won out. Football clubs need to put their customers first. They are more than simply customers, they are fans, but even fans (promoters) have their limits. The potential LTV of a football fan is astronomical, and many brands would figuratively kill for similar metrics. Yet some clubs still haven’t got it yet.
Whilst it was last week’s news, the announcement that Microsoft plans to acquire Activision Blizzard showed just how much a good company culture can be worth. Selling for just north of $68bn sounds like a massive deal. However, back in February 2020 they were worth approx $70bn and since acquisitions normally come with about a 30% premium, there’s a tidy sum of about $23bn that the shareholders will never see, due in large part because of their toxic work culture. Whether Microsoft would have thrown that amount of cash at them if they had been their highest price, I guess we will never know.
More EX and this time in finding the right talent. Otta, a brand that I knew had big potential in their early days but seemingly went quiet were clearly working busily behind the scenes as they have been nailing it recently. No surprise then that they have raised a cool 20m to expand further.
Back to LDN Life and the one article I suggest you read is by my dear friend and wordsmith genius, Andrew on why Street trees are good for you.
Finally, it’s always good to see old buildings finding a new purpose and I finally got to see Television Centre (Featured) for the first time in about 15 years. The last time I was there I was told to get off the coach, don’t hang around and go straight in. This time it felt a shame that I was just passing through.
That’s all for this week but I have something planned for next week that I hope you’ll be back for. Enjoy your weekend and stay safe.
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Until next week.
Bye for now.
