4th May 2018
‘Lil Miquela has been a source of fascination for many on Instagram since her account launched in April 2016, but for her first two years of existence, no one could definitively say who or what was behind the operation….’ (NB- C.G.I. Influencers, like Lil Miquela are about to flood your feeds).
Jeff Bezos has banned powerpoint from Amazon executive meetings. As a replacement, everyone sits silently for about 30 minutes to read a “six-page memo that’s narratively structured with real sentences, topic sentences, verbs, and nouns.” From Inc., here are 3 reasons why this is a good idea.
From Scott Brinker (and via @neilperkin), here is this year’s marketing technology landscape infographic. Now including 7,000 solutions, vs only 150 in 2011. ‘This demonstrates an interesting dynamic in the market – very low barriers to entry on the supply side (cheap infrastructure, readily available open source resources, on-demand global talent) combined with this expansion of marketing scope and scale into customer experience, content, and an explosion of channels and touchpoints.’
Perhaps a little ironically, Facebook has started assessing news organisations in terms of ‘trust’ – implementing a system that ranks based on trustworthiness, and promotes or suppresses content based on that metric. …And meanwhile, Facebook has entered the relationship game – launching a dating app. According to Zuckerberg, there are 100 million people on Facebook, who list themselves as single.
From Campaign. ‘From a robot searching for love to a curious ostrich and an emotional take on the time machine concept… here are the Best of the Best winners from Brand Film Festival London 2018.’
The inexorable rise of Esports (currently being driven forward by Fortnite) is having an interesting impact in other areas. Previously unused or underused spaces; such as malls, movie theatres, storefronts and parking garages, are being transformed into esports arenas. At the same time, content farms are spinning up in Los Angeles, where managers now see gamers as some peculiar new form of famous person to cultivate — half athlete, half influencer.
Poignant piece from The Guardian, looking at the jobs (and the people who do them) that are disappearing around the world,
Some great insights and creative work, from a market undergoing rapid transformation. From Adweek ; ‘Online Underwear Brands Are Using Comfort, Innovation and Great Ads to Win Over Consumers.’
‘Phantom Islands—mapped but nonexistent land masses—can persist for centuries. But their removal from the record conjures a sense of loss for something that was never there’. From Hazlitt; these are the world’s Unfound Islands.
Google’s first VR doodle, honours French illusionist director and ‘father of special effects’ Georges Méliès. Georges was also featured in a very good (but relatively unknown ) family film – Hugo, by Martin Scorsese. From the pic, here is the Georges Méliès Tribute Scene.