10 More Things// Starbucks, Media Channels, Google Docs
In this edition: Starbucks' CEO sets out his first 100 days, don't set a limit on media channels, the new travel guides are Google Docs
For the past year I’ve been sending a newsletter round Essencemediacom headquarters, which people seem to like. It’s called 10 More Things and the premise is fairly simple: I send it when I have 10 things I deem worthy of sharing. The 10 things are always links of some sort: articles, case studies or interesting websites.
No forced deadline. No stuffing half-baked thoughts into an email to hit a quota. I save things I like and when I have 10 of them, I send it out. Still with me?
So if you choose to subscribe (and I hope you do!), don’t expect this on a given day. Some weeks I may send out 2 newsletters, some times it’s months in-between newsletters. At the moment you can expect to see this in your inbox around every 2 weeks.
As to the contents, it changes based on what grabs me. Usually you can expect things around: business, marketing, comms strategy, advertising, media planning and culture. The benefit of having this as a Substack, as opposed to an internal email, is I can see what you click on. So if you like something, click on it and you might see more of it.
In the news this week
Back to Starbucks. You’ve probably read about the under-performance of Starbucks and their $113m solution to fixing that. You may not have read the $113m’s first letter addressing what he’s going to do about it. Concise, clear and on-the-nose, it’s a good start for Brian Niccol. The company direction isn’t that surprising if you listened to the Howard Schultz Acquired episode where he continually criticised Starbuck’s move away from customer service into impersonal digital ordering, which works for fast food but not when you’re competing against local cafes.
Did Nike Lose Its Cool Or Its Place? Further reading into what went wrong at Nike. (It lost its place and possibly over-focused on lifestyle over innovation).
Unwrapping Summer by Cornetto. This is a beautiful idea, comparing the rips in a Cornetto to ocean waves. Ice creams will all be fighting for attention in ‘summer’ but you can already tell from the huge reaction on LinkedIn that Cornetto are set to stand out.
In the world of ad effectiveness
The More Media Channels The Better. If your comms has a consistent look then “going from using 1 channel to using 5 brings 35-65% more ROI and double the effect on brand metrics”. See, I told you there would be some media planning.
You Have To Spend £10m More In Media To Make Up For a Dull Campaign. How’s that for a headline? Another golden nugget from the article: “it turns out that 30 seconds of a cow chewing grass outperforms 50% of the ads on their database”. No wonder you never see a negative report from System1…
Is Attention Linked To Effectiveness? No. Sharp argues that inattention is bad but you only need a couple seconds of attention for ads to be effective, after that point you’re handing over to the viewer to determine how much attention they’ll choose to give to the ad. At the same time - the pro-Attention lobby say you only need to reach people for 2.5 seconds to get the benefits of mental availability, which only 15% of ads apparently do.
Pick n Mix
The Most Sought-After Travel Guide Is A Google Doc. Travel books are unwieldy and commercial. Travel guides written in Google Docs read more like love letters to somewhere you’ve never been. Guess which format discerning travelers prefer?
The BBC's Orbit Music. Fun tool that forces you to engage with new music to see if you like it or not. Most of these musicians have tiny followings but are indistinguishable, at least to my ears, from globally revered bands. I’m currently listening to Burn The Leaves by Soot Sprite. 2000 listens on Spotify. Not bad.
Google's Gen Type. Create an AI font. In honour of the excellent Cornetto work, here is an example with the prompt ‘ice cream sundae with a cherry on top’.
Milo Mottola’s Totally Kids Carousel. A carousel created from 36 children’s drawings for the for the Riverbank State Park in New York. First created in 1998, you can still ride it today if you have $1 and are ok being the only adult riding the carousel.
Peace out ✌️
Alex