Wicked BRAT?

This Must Reads Drop Includes:

1. Deep dive into why Tyson Paul was a hit-and-miss for consumers 🥊

2. Why playing the game is so important in the corporate world 🏢

3. Social media’s move to entertainment media might just save TikTok and its record revenues 💰

4. Why BRAT might just be the smartest marketing move of 2024 👏

5. 3 must watch videos on the future (yes including AI relationships) 🤖

   And no hot take on Jaguar’s “rebrand”

2x By Me

1. A few weeks ago friend of Must Reads Harry and I launched Marketing Unfiltered and I went deep into playing the game, what I call political intelligence (PQ). Remember even if you aren’t play ing the game it plays on with you!

2. My recent leaders letters newsletter on how the likes of Amazon, YouTube, Stripe, Spotify & Pinterest go against the way everyone else does it and rethink teams and approaching issues

Business 👩‍💼

• The Advertising Behind WICKED and the incredible scale that movie advertise and partner with now (thanks to the Barbie movie playbook). Many movies spend less on marketing than making money, this approach is flipping it on its head

• Google’s way of controlling everything - teaching and training staff of what to say and not to say and how to control being investigated. Smart in a way to protect themselves not as smart when Xooglers go elsewhere and aren’t helped the way they were before.

• How South Asian giant Grub built its own map service to compete with Google. I worked with a brand in the maps space and the level of detail these companies go into in incredible

• Being Remote Ready? How much would you spend to look better on Zoom/Meets?
  »I still highly recommend improving your sound, wearing headphones and considering a much better camera, the little details and experience matter!

• The Raise Of Ghost Job Listings - worrying sign many roles are fake or shared externally for internal candidates to be offered the job. It’s just what you have to do…

• Apps and app rankings - TikTok earned an estimated $269m in October from their apps & spending is expected to increase while brands try and work out how they play there in ads and in live streams. All eyes on what happens in the US to see if TikTok stays a global player or is removed. Something tells me its here to stay.

  • Here’s a good podcast on why TikTok might just be too big to ban

Sports ⚽️

• Ultra’s in Women’s football - an interesting look at top-tier women’s football teams now having ultras (think of the biggest hardcore fans) and why it is actually a great thing (fandom, deep love for their team and a way to bring in younger generations into the female professional game)

• The Story Behind “The Rest Is” Podcast Franchise Aka GoalHanger is a great deep dive into GoalHanger, it is the most powerful network of podcasts In the UK and why co-owner Gary Lineker is one of the driving forces in 40m downloads per month

• If you are looking for the other top-ranking podcasts and their networks I dive in below

• You wouldn’t have escaped the Jaguar logo launch this week but this explainer behind the LA Clippers’ new logo (NBA team) is well worth a watch especially if you haven’t been involved in a brand refresh or rebrand

• The Simpson NFL (Bart and the Bengals vs. Homer and the Cowboys) looks to piggyback from last year’s success on Disney+ — we will see a lot more of this in the near future

Music 🎧

• I’ve had this saved since the last must-reads and it is a great read on the biggest song in the US, Tipsy a bar song & why 16+ weeks in huge news in 2024 (thanks to streaming, cross-genre popularity & of course TikTok)

• Brat was the word of the year - Singer, producer and most importantly Marketer Charli XCX marketing campaign behind her album BRAT drove the word of the year to be BRAT. I highly recommend listening to Charli speak from 12mins below about BRAT and her approach to marketing herself, from making her logo on her phone to pushing out BRAT

Best Of The Rest 👏

• The science behind the Snicker bar - probably something you would read away from Must Reads but an interesting look at the engineering behind the world-famous chocolate treat

• Why you hate the sound of your own voice - simply put it’s science… but if you have ever created an audio file, video or voice-over you have to get used to looping over and over & end up rewiring the hatred for it

• The world’s largest sea creature found - the size is incredible. We were recently told of the aliens in the sea, I think this might just prove it. FWIW NASA started studying and investing in the sea and then was moved to space

• Indian whiskey is holding its own against international and traditional makers, but insiders are questioning whether this trend will last the test of time down to budget and international tastemakers

Live Streaming Problems?

• Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson “fight” caused huge streaming issues for Netflix despite driving a monoculture event

• Think Scale Of Competitors - Huge live sports events have previously done well on Amazon Prime Video (NFL), iPlayer and itvX with football/soccers Euro’s and World Cups driving large streaming audiences but weren't at 65m streamers online (most end up with a satellite or cable into their properties

  • For context - the Queen's funeral in 2022 was watched by 26.2m viewers & Prince Charles and Princess Diana had 28.40 million viewers from the UK, roughly 38% of the UK population.

  • YouTube has around 122m DAU (daily active users) so the scale was unreal and incredibly hard to ever test

• Internal Success? Netflix has called out this as a huge success in success internally and this will give them confidence moving forward

• External Successes:

  • Netflix live entertainment (Paul Tyson was not boxing) stream issue seems big for users but not so much for their share price (NFLX has gone up from 824 to 894 (as of last night)

  • Huge Audience: 108m global viewership (the problem was 65m concurrent users is a huge issue for any provider) and the largest female sports event ever between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano (real boxing!)

  • Stock: Analysts see Netflix’s success as a huge growth area and something that will retain users - especially those who are not loyal and just bounce between streaming platforms

• Sued: Already hit with a class action lawsuit with Netflix being hit with $50m lawsuit. Will people go legal for anything? Seems that way

• ADS ADS ADS — This is very much an ads play and seeking to drive huge ad buys. The ads-supported tier is becoming popular (40% of all new signups are choosing the ad-supported tier) and we are likely to see the largest advertising move to support and pay towards its recording programming budget

• Coming Up: Christmas day NFL games already teasing then confirming Beyonce's involvement, Netflix will have to ramp up their abilities to handle huge requests for live shows and huge audiences

3 Must Watch Videos

💚AIs’s role in relationships on demand… not human love and even marriage. Is this a big issue? Or just another example of humans being so disconnected

💴The AI Influencers making real money - learn from how a digital agency in Barcelona has created AI model Aitana Lopez and making serious money from Instagram.

Meet the real Ari Gold (yes from Entourage) and his influence over “combat sports” the UFC and WWF WWE. The growth of the UFC in recent years has coincided with what Ari and team made happen at Fight Island (an island converted to allow live UFC fights to happen) in the middle of covid