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- NFR 31 - Snapchat, Meta Feasts & A $14M QR Code
NFR 31 - Snapchat, Meta Feasts & A $14M QR Code
Snapchat, Meta Feasts & A $14M QR Code
☕️ Morning Inspiration:
"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
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🤖 eCommerce News:
“French startup Alma is trying to build a new “buy now, pay later” giant in Europe. The company has closed a $130 million Series C round (€115 million). It has also raised $109 million (€95 million) in debt financing. The company has partnered with 6,000 merchants so that they offer more flexibility for expensive purchases. The main payment product is the option to pay in two, three or four installments.”
“Snapchat is trying to solidify itself as a platform for creators to turn a profit. Today, Snap announced that it plans to introduce mid-roll advertisements during Snapchat stories for Snap Stars.
This feature is already in very early beta for a small set of U.S.-based creators, but the platform plans to roll it out more broadly to Snap Stars in the coming months. These advertisements will appear as mid-roll ads inside of their stories, and the creator will earn a share of the ad revenue. That payout is determined by a payment formula, which weighs factors like posting frequency and audience engagement. Snapchat declined to comment further on the nature of these payouts.”
“Casual mobile games have reached a fever pitch of interest with consumers, and so too with investors, who are rushing to back the biggest and most promising startups building these quick hits of engagement and diversion. In the latest development, a startup out of London called Tripledot — the company behind a popular Solitaire app, another game called Woodoku (“wood blocks meet sudoku”), and more — is today announcing that it has raised $116 million. The funding puts the London-based startup’s valuation at $1.4 billion.”
“Private equity firm Ames Watson is levering portfolio company Lids with a new $250 million term loan to finance the private equity firm's acquisitions, it said Wednesday morning. Why it matters: The new funding will help Ames Watson, which has a mix of long-term holdings as well as VC and PE investments, consolidate the retail and apparel industries.”
“Today’s announcement comes eight months after Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway completed its acquisition of Grubhub in an all-share deal for an enterprise value of $7.3 billion. The acquisition was not just a big piece of M&A in the food delivery space, but also represented a major competitive swipe, as Uber Eats had also been trying to acquire the company.”
“In the U.S., U.K. and Europe, payment orchestration platforms such as Spreedly, Zooz and Primer handle a lot of the heavy lifting on behalf of merchants via a unified payments API. But there remains an untapped opportunity in Africa and the Middle East, where significantly few companies bring transparency to merchants’ payment stacks.”
“Based in Singapore with offices throughout Asia and Australia, Reebelo wants to make buying pre-owned tech as desirable as a brand new device. “What we have seen is that many younger generations are very much open to the idea of sustainable consumption,” co-founder Philip Franta told TechCrunch. “We see a lot of growth and momentum in the space globally, but also here in this region, because I think we are finally at the stage as a society where we’ve realised that the way we’ve consumed in the past is not sustainable.””
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📈 Trends Of The Week:
“The trend of crashing into furniture while in the metaverse provoked a 31% jump in home contents claims involving VR headsets last year, insurer Aviva said, marking a 68% overall increase since 2016. As new games and gadgets become popular, we often see this playing through in the claims made by our customers,” said Kelly Whittington, Aviva’s UK property claims director. “In the past we’ve seen similar trends involving consoles with handsets, fitness games and even the likes of rogue fidget spinners.”
“Premixed cocktails were the fastest-growing spirits category in 2021, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S.
Sales of premixed cocktails surged 42.3% to $1.6 billion compared with a year earlier.
The trade group said canned cocktails were stealing share from beer and hard seltzer.”
“The fast-food giant filed 10 trademark applications earlier this month to get meta, including one for a virtual restaurant that would deliver to your actual home.
The filing, submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office on February 4, also covers “virtual concerts” under the McDonald’s and McCafé brands. (At least, there, we can hope to never run out of BTS’s special sauces?)”
“I think you’re going to see every brand that you can think of make these filings within the next 12 months,” Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney who first tweeted the news, told Forbes. “I don’t think anyone wants to be the next Blockbuster and just completely ignore a new technology that’s coming.”(Link to Business Insider article)(Link to Morning Brew Newsletter)
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🛍 My Marketing Highlights:
“Coinbase invited Super Bowl viewers to hit the crypto jackpot with a direct response ad depicting nothing more than a QR code bouncing around the screen for 60 seconds.
Riffing on the bouncing DVD meme and set to the song Money, a click on the roving QR code transports curious would-be crypto traders directly to the Coinbase Drops website (at least those who made it through before it inevitably crashed.)”
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❓Quotes that make you think:
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” Sheryl Sandberg.
Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. Les Brown.
“Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.” Voltaire.
“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one’s desires, but by the removal of desire” Epictetus.
“Give instructions only to those people who seek knowledge after they have discovered their ignorance.” Confucius
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⛓ Mental Model Of The Week:
Decision Fatigue
“Decision fatigue describes how our decision-making gets worse as we make additional choices and our cognitive abilities get worn out. Decision fatigue is the reason we feel overwhelmed when we have too many choices to make.”
“Decision fatigue is a cognitive shortcut that causes irrational trade-offs in decision-making. One prominent example is Barack Obama’s presidential outfits. He claims to have worn the same coloured suits every day so as to limit the number of decisions he has to make. Obama understood decision fatigue and how it can compromise the quality of important choices.
The phenomena of decision fatigue can affect even the most rational and intelligent individuals, as everyone can become mentally exhausted. The more decisions made throughout the day, the harder each decision becomes for us. Eventually, the brain looks for shortcuts to circumvent decision fatigue, leading to poor decision-making.”
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✅ Course I’m Finishing:
“Former Allbirds Global VP of Marketing Julie Channing helps you unlock next-generation strategies for effectively scaling your marketing efforts while still remaining true to your brand’s purpose.”