What’s In This Issue?
This Week’s Main Stories
Story 01Why Chief Marketing Officers Don't Last
Story 0222,000 People Who Would Clean Toilets For WiFi Access
Story 03Tinder's Redesign Prioritizes Your Looks and Profile Photos
Story 04How Monte Carlo Is Embracing The Future Of Luxury
Story 05Google Studies 180 Teams And Shares 5 Traits The Best All Share
Story 06What VCs Look For In Robotics Startups (And What It Can Teach You)Why Chief Marketing Officers Don't Last
The tenure of most Chief Marketing Officers is woefully short, but this fact is often dismissed as a symptom of changing leadership or sometimes ineffective results. New research points to the fact that CMOs often suffer from vaguely defined job responsibilities and confusion between whether more strategic thinking or focus on commercialization (or a hybrid) is required. The bottom line conclusion from this piece is that getting this right and setting the right priorities is the key to long or short term CMO success.
22,000 People Who Would Clean Toilets For WiFi Access
Do you actually read the terms and conditions for Wifi access before accepting it? If not, apparently you’re not alone in your lazy behavior. Wifi provider Purple hilariously added a clause into their terms for WiFi as a social experiment, and over 22,000 people blindly agreed to do everything from cleaning toilets to “manually relieving sewer blockages” in exchange for their WiFi. Only one person actually spotted the gag … and won a prize for their diligence.
Tinder's Redesign Prioritizes Your Looks and Profile Photos
Judging whether you want to get to know someone romantically solely based on their photos has become such a commonplace behavior that “swiping left” has its own meaning. That is about to get even more prevalent as Tinder’s latest redesign prioritizes the images you upload. While it may seem shallow, this is not really that much different than how you might judge the dating potential of someone you see across a room. The interesting part is how it will force Tinder users to rethink how many images they use, the quality of those images and the stories they tell about their personality.
How Monte Carlo Is Embracing The Future Of Luxury
In a world where luxury consumer demand is changing, how can one f the world's most iconic luxury destinations stay on top? It turns out Monte Carlo has a fairly sophisticated strategy which hinges on being about more than just gambling and opulence. The city is launching music and art festivals, charity galas and even new hotels that cater to younger demographics of luxury consumers who are more likely to travel with family. The centralized approach seems to be working for the city, and may offer a blueprint for other luxury brands struggling to find the right way to move from selling products and ownership to selling experiences and belonging instead.
Google Studies 180 Teams And Shares 5 Traits The Best All Share
After two years of studying 180 teams with the intent of finding why some achieve game changing success while others fail, Google recently shared some of their findings. The key, it turns out, comes down to five qualities: Dependability, Structure and Clarity, Meaning, Impact, and Psychological Safety. The last point is perhaps the most interesting, as the study found people need to feel that they are safe from judgement and able to take risks without repercussions before they can really do their best work.
What VCs Look For In Robotics Startups (And What It Can Teach You)
As investing in robotics takes off, this story about what VCs and investors look for has a valuable insight as shared by investor Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital: “what I recommend in two words is: make magic … when we feel that we’ve seen something that nobody else has seen, that we’ve seen something that came out of a sci-fi movie … that’s the thing that gets us to part with our cash.” The quote offers a good reminder that the best pitches never just focus on the numbers. We have to “make magic” to really inspire … and open wallets of investors too.
