Perks > Culture 🤔

Must Reads Friday 8th May 2020 | Today’s Must Reads including culture, Google breaking their remote perks expectations, the power of the 3T’s, cheap TV ads, 5 Tips from Genius Box’s Andy Reid and going deeper on why there is a fight for everyone “going live”.

—Hit Of The Week—

If this doesn’t make you smile, I’d be extremely surprised, enjoy it.

1. Improved virtual workplace: 5 new tools you and your businesses can use to enable the virtual corridor conversation or random coffee chat 💬- Link 

2. New Office: Is the open office dead as we know it 🏢- Link

3. Perks Not Culture: Google’s perks are well known and documented, but while Googlers are not in the office the staff are horrified to learn free food isn’t going to happen (and cannot be claimed back) while WFH. Yes that is actually happening! Perks famously do not make culture, but definitely can shift organisational culture 👨‍💼👩‍💼- Link

4. Human: Rather than the usual google sheet, Airbnb have built a searchable directory of the talent they had to let go - Link

5. Jigsaw: Heinz have launched an all-red Heinz ketchup jigsaw 🧩 - Link

6. Gen Z Influencer: The rise of TikTok has led to more users wanting to make money - it’s not as easy as people think or hope 💰 - Link

7. Money: Why you are seeing brands you haven’t heard of on TV 📺 - Link

8. Unlikely Partners: Google and Gates Foundation are joining forces to offer digital payments in developing countries 💳 - Link 

9. Not enough data? Google has however canned their plans for their smart city in Toronto - Link

10. The Force: Here is why Star Wars is so important ⭐️- Link

11. 3T’s: How the 3 t’s (Twitter, Twitch, TikTok) likely control the fate of the next big hit 🎧 - Link

12. Sleepy: Do you struggle to sleep? There are 5 personality traits that might influence it 💤- Link

13. Disney Ranked: Disney+ going great guns, Disney in general not so much, but here are the 105 Disney movies rank - FWIW I disagree greatly with ordering 🎥 - Link

14. Karen: Find out how “Karen” became the internet name for “the policewomen of all human behavior” 👩 - Link

15. Platform Expansions: Twitch is coming for TV and YouTube with interactive talk shows 🗣 - Link. Spotify is sending a shot across the bow of YouTube branching out into video podcasts. This is officially a test and not Spotify’s first play into video but it is a clear shot at YouTube’s unique offering of the famous Joe Rogan video podcast 🎙- Link

—5 Tips—

Today's tips are from innovation and consultancy lead Andy Reid. Andy offers 5 tips to strengthen your personal creativity during the lockdown.

1. Step away from all tech until 10:00am. Really, it can wait. Walk outside (barefoot on the lawn if you’ve got one). Breath fresh air, close your eyes, slow down your breathing and come down a gear or two. Notice the simple beauty in watching one thing move at a different speed to you; like a cloud in the sky, or a raindrop making its way down the window pane. This reminds coaches and trains your brain to focus in a different way. Something it can’t do by dancing from one email to the next or checking in messages on all your social channels.

2. Have a brain commute. Get up an hour earlier each day and sit in the chair and read, write, or draw in peace. This is not to get up early to carry on from where you left off the night before but instead invest in new connections. Notice what themes emerge when you’ve created 5 extra hours a week.

3. Avoid facilitating your own problems but instead, ask others to coach you. In return use your creative brilliance to help them. Problems shared lead to fresher stimulus and better ideas. It’s easier to be objective, impartial, and prevocational for someone else.

4. Ask ‘who else or where else has the heart of my challenge been solved before’ and it’s easier to do this once you’ve re-expressed your problem by completing this sentence “my challenge is a bit like…” by identifying the core of the issue, you’ll soon spot what needs to be tackled and who else has cracked it in the past.

5. Carry a note pad. A paper one. Nothing helps the subconscious power of the brain more than a visceral experience. Writing, sketching, doodling, drawing, and keeping different parts of your challenges and starter thoughts in one place becomes a creative canvas. A vast portable storage room of stimulus and starter ideas from which your inner genius will grow. It’s by the bedside table when you sleep and at the side of the desk as you read this. It’s on the sofa when watching t.v. and the coffee table in the afternoon. Within arm’s reach it saying “it’s okay, you’ve got this, go think freely”.

➡️ Connect with Andy on LinkedIn 

—Going Deeper—

Live Streaming Wars: Controversial YouTuber PewDiePie is going to exclusively stream on YouTube despite previous problems and constant slip-ups ⏯ - Link

• The TV is still the main focal point of the living space in homes around the world.The battle for the TV has never been so contested with live sports, SVOD like Netflix, social apps, YouTube, e-sports and gaming competing to be hosted on your set. Fortnite had 3.2B hours of gameplay in April alone, the fight for attention and ownership of the TV remote has never been as competitive as it is today.

• Going Live has become a huge business, particularly for YouTube. The fight now is for the best line up for large events and recreating virtual festivals

• Most of recent “live TV” has become poor copies of YouTube videos. Live blast aka the tv presenter model often does not work because it’s hard to recreate the atmosphere of a studio and lack of team guiding them

• The next “live” platform of choice is big business, you have Instagram, YouTube, Twitch and Facebook are all competing in this space and willing to spend money to capture personalities, DJ’s and more specifically streamers (not just gamers)

• Mixcloud entered the space to help DJ’s monetise live streams vs being taken down or muted by Warner and other large labels

• The problem right now, we have fatigue, live is already a saturated market, too many celebrities, friends and profiles we follow going live and not enough marketing for the live events (& at what time) or importantly why people should tune in. Share Must Reads Going Deeper

Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend ahead. See you again on Sunday. Danny Denhard ~ Advisor & Consultant