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NFR #70 - BFCM Explosion, 9 Figure Fines & Amazon Pull Out

5-minute marketing newsletter providing you latest events across eCommerce, NFTs, culture & more every Wednesday morning on Linkedin & sub-stack.

November 30, 2022

Never Fully Read

Joining 1,000 readers from companies such as Klaviyo, Shopify, Recharge, Amazon, HubSpot, BrewDog, IBM and Canva.

Never Fully Read is a 5-minute marketing newsletter providing you latest events across eCommerce, NFTs, culture & more every Wednesday morning on Linkedin & sub-stack.

Newsletter in a flash:

🤖 eCommerce news:

📈 Top Trends:

🐵 NFT download:

👀 WTF Moment:

🐦 Twitter thread of the week:

🤝 Hot jobs:

🤖 eCommerce news:

🍎 Apple and Elon Musk’s Twitter are on a collision course “Musk wants to vastly increase the amount of money the company makes through subscriptions while opening up the site to more “free speech.” This creates a risk that Twitter could violate Apple or Google’s app rules in a way that slows down the company or even gets its software booted from app stores. Battle lines are being drawn. Last week, Musk complained about app store fees, which are between 15% and 30% of digital sales, in a tweet.”

🛍 Shopify stock jumps on record $3.36B in Black Friday sales “The top-selling countries where shoppers made purchases were the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, with the top-selling cities including London, New York, and Los Angeles. Shopify merchants globally saw a 27% growth in POS sales when compared with Black Friday last year, according to the company. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein. “The weekend that started it all is still one of the biggest commerce events of the year, and our merchants have broken Black Friday sales records again.”

✅ Meta hit with ~$275M GDPR penalty for Facebook data-scraping breach “Facebook’s parent, Meta, has been hit with another hefty penalty for breaching European data protection law. The €265 million (~$275M) fine was announced today by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the tech giant’s lead regulator for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).”

💬 WhatsApp rolls out a feature that makes it easier to message yourself “WhatsApp has started rolling out a feature to let you chat with yourself. Sending messages to your own account can be a way to keep a piece of information easily accessible, right next to your other WhatsApp conversations. Called ‘Message Yourself’, the feature lets users send notes, reminders and shopping lists to themselves on WhatsApp.”

🤖 Bionaut Labs gets $43.2M for its tiny drug delivery robots “Founded in 2017, Bionaut Labs arrived out of stealth in March 2021, with plans to commercialize longstanding research around drug delivery robots. The Los Angeles-based startup today followed up its initial $20 million funding announcement with a $43.2 million Series B, bringing its total raised up to — you guessed it — $63.2 million.”

🌎 Yahoo gets a 25% stake in Taboola as part of a long-term advertising deal “Yahoo is taking a nearly 25% stake in advertising network Taboola. In exchange for this move, Taboola is becoming Yahoo’s native advertising partner through a 30-year commercial agreement. If you’re not familiar with Taboola, you may have seen its content recommendation widgets on popular news websites, such as USA Today, Insider and The Weather Channel. They mostly feature sponsored links that lead to third-party websites. Those links appear in recommendation widgets at the end of news articles or in the middle of a content newsfeed.”

📦Amazon shutting down wholesale distribution in third business exit in India. “Amazon is shutting down its wholesale distribution business in India, the latest in a series of retreats for the retailer in the key overseas market where it has deployed over $7 billion in the past decade. The American e-commerce giant said Monday that it is discontinuing Amazon Distribution, it’s wholesale e-commerce website available to small neighbourhood stores in Bengaluru, Mysore and Hubli. “We don’t take these decisions lightly. We are discontinuing this programme in a phased manner to take care of current customers and partners,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.”

🐦 Elon Musk says Twitter’s new multicoloured verification will launch next week “After messing up the first launch of Twitter’s “power to the people” verification system, Elon Musk said that the social network will tentatively roll out a new multicoloured verification system next week. The owner of Twitter said that, under this scheme, companies will get a gold checkmark, government officials will get a grey checkmark — probably similar to the “official” checkmark it’s currently trying out with some prominent accounts — and the blue checkmark will be dedicated to individuals even if they are not celebrities. That would mean that the blue check mark will be used with legacy verified accounts and folks who buy Twitter’s new $8 per month paid plan.”

🚀Cyber Monday online sales hit a record $11.3B, driven by demand, not just inflation, says Adobe “Expectations for this year’s holiday spend online were lukewarm, but initial activity — driven by deep discounts — has bucked predictions. Cyber Monday pulled in $11.3 billion in sales online according to figures from Adobe Analytics, which tracks seasonal e-commerce activity. This is 5.8% more than consumers spent on the same day last year (when $10.7 billion was recorded in sales, a drop on 2020’s $10.8 billion), and sets a record both for the day and the year so far.”

📈 Top trends:

“Black Friday broke $9 billion in sales for the first time yesterday, with online sales of $9.12 billion, according to figures from Adobe Analytics. This is a record figure for the day, and up 2.3% on sales figures a year ago, and slightly higher than Adobe had estimated leading up to the day. Adobe doesn’t break out volumes in its report, so it’s hard to know if those figures are due to items simply costing more this year because of inflation, or if the higher numbers are a result of more buying.”

“How many VC funds can you name where the three partners all had babies whilst raising the fund, have deep connections in Asia as well as Europe and the US, and include actress Anne Hathaway as an LP? Not many I’d hazard.

But that’s the profile of Pact, a new Seed VC fund launched with a £30 million ($36 million) pot of cash to back early-stage startups across Europe. Pact will aim at ‘mission-driven’ startups in what it calls the “ABC” categories: Access (economic inclusion), Betterment (personal and professional well-being), and Climate. (That’s a much more interesting way of addressing ‘doing good’ areas, instead of that trotting out the UN SDGs, IMHO). Pact’s investment tickets will range from around £1m to 1.5m.

As well as Anne Hathaway (she’s not ‘just’ an Oscar Award Winning Actor, but also a UN Woman Goodwill Ambassador), other LPs include Jeff Dean, the Head of AI at Google, and Keith Teare, a founding (and former) shareholder of TechCrunch and former tech entrepreneur in the UK and US.”

🕺 TikTok is hiring

Source: theHUSTLE

“In November alone, 48k+ tech employees have been let go — many from Twitter and Meta.

But whereas Meta is seeing ad revenue decline, TikTok is forecasting growth of ~150%, up from $4B last year to $10B this year.”

🙉 NFT download:

“We live in an era of global technological change. Modern innovations are both exciting and difficult to understand. Many of us scratch our heads when we hear talk about Web3, cryptocurrencies, metaverses, and blockchain.

The good news is that a lot of Web3 technologies now are not just a concept. There are already a large number of projects that are developing and creating opportunities that can change our lives.

Today we want to talk about metaverses using the ranking of the best projects of 2022 as an example. This is not just a game, as many people think. Such projects are designed to revolutionize the future of entertainment, work, education, and much more. Let’s get started!”

Link to find out the top ten here 

TL;DR

  • The Sandbox

  • Decentraland

  • Meta Hero

  • Somnium Space

  • Bloktopia

  • Otherside

  • Cryptovoxels

  • Highstreet

  • Blankos Block Party

  • Dogami Petaverse

🏆 WTF moment:

“The FTX drama is not over yet — and Amazon wants a piece of it. The company is partnering with Russo Brothers, best known for Marvel movies, to make a show on the spectacular collapse of the giant cryptocurrency empire.

Amazon has partnered with the duo’s production house AGBO to make the show, which will go into production in Spring 2023, Variety first reported. Amazon is also trying to rope in the brothers to direct the show, the report added.

The company confirmed the news in a statement and said “Hunters” creator David Weil will write the pilot.

“We are excited to be able to continue our great working relationship with David, Joe, Anthony, and the AGBO team with this fascinating event series I can’t think of better partners to bring this multifaceted story to our global Prime Video audience,” Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke said.”

🐦 Twitter thread of the week:

Link to the thread here

TLDR

  • No cookie-cutter leadership

  • Good managers support, respect + trust

  • 1:1s + staff meetings are critical

  • Smarts and hearts

  • How to lead during hard times

🤝 Hot jobs:

“As a part of this expansion, Secret Cinema is looking for an experienced, creative and insight-led Head of Loyalty & Lifecycle Marketing. This role is ideal for a candidate who applies a data-based approach to their strategic thinking whilst still being able to creatively and tactically deliver.

You’ll fit the bill if you have a background which demonstrates how you really understand segmentation and customer lifecycles, using insights to deliver long-term engagement in turn unlocking loyalty and LTV growth. Engaging growing audiences to introduce them to truly unique experiences, the perfect candidate will be determined, resourceful and relish the opportunity to be a part of Secret Cinema’s future success.”

“This newly created role, reporting to the CMO, is responsible for developing and executing the global consumer marketing strategy for Dr Martens. You will oversee brand & product marketing, global social & global PR, and will work closely with the Global Creative team, Global DTC Marketing team and Regional Marketing teams to develop and deliver culturally relevant strategies and plans that drive DM’s overall brand and business objectives.”

“As the Marketing VP, you play a pivotal role in defining, implementing and owning an end-to-end marketing strategy across all channels. This strategy will be aligned with the overall business objective to deliver revenue growth by focusing on increased demand generation across our market-focused business units (BE, UK, Platform and Emerging Markets) and the delivery of “core” centralised marketing functions. You will work closely with other members of the leadership team in this strategic, operational, and highly visible role in the business.

Reporting directly to the CEO, and having developed strong relationships with the BU Leaders, you will own the marketing KPIs and marketing budget, marketing metrics and ensure insightful reporting on marketing ROI. You will balance out the best practices of marketing and overall company assets such as brand, product marketing and website, with the practical needs of the operational leaders such as lead creation, campaigns and customer marketing.”