What’s In This Issue?
This Week’s Main Stories
Story 01Adventure Tape Tries To Create The Next Duct Tape
Story 02DelivAir Launches Drone-to-Hand Delivery (Literally)
Story 03How Chicken Feathers Could Be The Future Of Home Insulation
Story 04Google Buys Facebook, Smart Hacker Probably Makes Millions
Story 05IKEA To Sell Some Products Via Other Retailer SitesAdventure Tape Tries To Create The Next Duct Tape
What would you do if you had to market a product that is competing with duct tape? Here's a great 5 step strategy from the team at Adventure Tape ... (1) Attack what people dislike about the market leader (duct tape leaves a sticky residue). (2) Get endorsed by media outlet targeting innovators (this story in Digital Trends). (3) Tell your story in a video (see the post). (4) Launch a movement to engage superfans (the product is currently for sale on Kickstarter). (5) Generate actual sales! (product is halfway to its sales target)
DelivAir Launches Drone-to-Hand Delivery (Literally)
The last 50 feet is a problem for automated delivery and I have seen lots of solutions, from Amazon's parachute drones to Mercedes' delivery truck with drones. What if you could send the drone to a person instead of to a place? If you combined this with a tracking app on your phone or even with address data from what3words, this could be the best drone delivery solution yet ... and life saving if it were used to deliver urgent healthcare devices like a portable defibrillator or medicine like epipen.
How Chicken Feathers Could Be The Future Of Home Insulation
It takes some serious Non-Obvious thinking to dream up using discarded chicken feathers as a super efficient home insulation material - but that's the idea from a London duo who created "Aeropowder" and are testing its fire safety before making it a commercial product. I love these kinds of stories because it takes something we don't need in the world and turns it into something we do. The polar ice caps might be melting, but innovations like this and the miraculous plastic-eating caterpillar might just help save us all.
Google Buys Facebook, Smart Hacker Probably Makes Millions
Did you hear Google was buying Facebook for only $9b? The story went out over the wires earlier this week and immediately triggered automated investment bots to start trading in Apple stock, jumping the price from $156 to $158 (not an insignificant jump). Then the story was quickly taken down and attributed to a tech glitch. Still, someone traded in that time and probably got rich. It's the ultimate hack if you think about it. Post fake news, cash in on the stock difference, and get away with it completely because everyone is too embarrassed to admit what happened.
IKEA To Sell Some Products Via Other Retailer Sites
It is sadly rare to see a brand that is truly great at self-disruption but IKEA is one worth watching. They made the bold announcement this week that they would pilot test shipping products via other retailer sites instead of only their own. Combined with its recent acquisition of TaskRabbit and their experimentation with augmented reality, the brand refuses to be complacent with profitable retail business and continually tries new ideas. At least with the retail pilot they can be assured of good SEO. After all, no one else can possibly own the top result for the "Fyrkantig."
