Random thoughts
I wonder how difficult it’d be to start a dollar dog food truck. Boil hot dogs, plop them into a fresh bun and provide all the fixings. $1 each. No more. No less. Digital currency only.
We were discussing this over a beer this week:
- Would we offer a bag of Lay’s potato chips for $1 more?
- Would we create a premium hot dog for $6?
- Would we sell canned sodas for $1?
- What would the truck look like?
As we neared the end of our beers, we realized something: One of us was talking costs and efficiency and the other was talking revenue and advertising. I love those conversations, especially over a beer.
Articles (and emails)
- Reinventing work in marketing (link). “Marketers at Hearst Magazines realized they needed to better understand how their content was performing in the rapidly changing world of digital publishing, so they turned to HANS (short for “Hearst Answers”), a custom-built bot that pulls engagement data into Slack. Instead of wasting time manually digging for data on how content is performing, employees can use HANS to quickly pull reports from seven different sources with just a few keystrokes. The HANS automation is saving each employee an average of an hour per day.”
Briefly dove into this Slack report. I’m now going to learn how to create a similar bot for our instant data / reporting needs. There goes my weekend.
- Chelsea agree sale to Boehly consortium for record $5.2 bn (link). “The total value of the deal smashes the previous record for the sale of a sports team — $2.4 billion for the New York Mets baseball franchise in 2020.”
No doubt Chelsea will get better with this purchase. More structure. Less uncertainty. A better chance to join the ‘bigger’ European soccer clubs. Both in terms of global recognition (sales) and success (more sales).
Boy, the organizers of the Super League really bungled their messaging. Instead of an opportunity to give back to the lower-tier clubs (via revenue %), now we get to watch the rich get richer and the middle-table clubs hoping for a Europa League spot.
- Why brand publishing is a long game (link). “It often takes months or even years for properly architected brand publishing initiatives to yield discernible results, and there can be significant downsides to rushing the process or forcing the issue. In publishing, consistency and patience is often a competitive advantage.”
This might feel like a content story, however it’s really focused on distribution and the audience (and the ability to change quickly based on short- and long-term feedback). The great thing about B2B publishing: We already know a ton about our audience, giving us a longer leash to experiment with formats, timing, frequency, etc.
Podcasts (and videos)
- PR giant advising corporate clients to stay silent on abortion rights (link). Earlier this week I referred to an episode of The Daily on the sensitive topic of Roe v. Wade. In this particular podcast episode, the normal mid-roll ad was missing. I thought that was peculiar. Now it makes more sense. (audio / article)
- How big companies kill ideas — and how to fight back, with Tony Fadell (link). Feels like it’s the Tony Fadell road show this week. With interviews on Decoder and Stratechery along with a dedicated segment on Dithering, he’s hitting the right audience for his new book. The link above is to the interview on the Decoder podcast and while I’m only 30 minutes in, the discussion and focus on organization growth’s impact to structure is fascinating. (audio)
- Apollo CEO Marc Rowan stresses the usefulness of digital asset technology (link). NFTs might be hard to grasp, especially with their price volatility and interest speculation. What if we think about the digital infrastructure needed to turn car or home titles into digital assets? Great, quick overview of why this topic is garnering so much attention (and money). (video)