Sweden's Dangerous Experiment, Phone-Friendly Theaters & Brands Betting On Bots

Brands Experimenting With Bots

Bots are hot right now, but hard to figure out. The confusion isn't keeping some surprising brands from launching their own experiments with bot-enabled initiatives of all sorts. Just this week, Taco Bell announced its "TacoBot," Facebook shared its ambitious mission for Chatbot enabled commerce, and a logo generator called "MarkMaker" uses robots to design logos. As "Zero UI" products become more popular, bots have the potential to offer solutions for consults who want to forego the need to learn a new interface, or even to press any of those pesky buttons.

AMC Gives Up Telling Millennials To Silence Their Phones

In what may be the saddest executive quote of the week, AMC CEO Adam Aron said "you can't tell a 22 year old to turn off their cellphone, that's not how they live their life." So AMC may soon pilot ideas like text-friendly showings to cater to the phone obsessed movie-goer. It is a perfect example of the sort of condescending innovation aging executives think is a good idea. What's next ... "selfie intermissions" so those narcissistic kids can update their social media feeds with selfies mid-movie?

Kellogg's Experiments With VR Product Launch

In an interesting taste test and product launch, Kellogg's UK experimented with creating a virtual reality cereal tasting experience where consumers were transported back to the "simpler" times of Cleopatra through an Oculus Rift VR headset while tasting the new Ancient Grains cereal. Food tasting itself is a sensory experience, and creating this sort of "multi-sensory" journey is a fascinating study in just how much the setting and story around a product tasting experience may impact how good (or bad) that product tastes to a consumer.

Sweden's National Number ... Staffed By Random Swedes

One thing you can always count on the Swedish to do is trust their citizens in ways that would be unfathomable by other nations. A few years ago they launched what many people call "the greatest Twitter experiment ever" (with mixed results). This week they declared themselves the "first country in the world with its own phone number" as a way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of abolishing censorship. Despite the inevitable hiccups, you have to admire a country that continually gives a public microphone to its people and trusts them to represent the country. It may not always go right, but it certainly offers a model of transparency that we can only wish other countries would follow.

What You Can Learn From The Yogurt Wars

To call the ongoing battle between Chobani, Dannon, Yoplait and others a war is not really an overstatement. Competition, flavors, marketing and sales have all exploded over the past decade as more competitors and increased health concerns have transformed this previously sleepy product category. As this article illustrates, watching the pace of change in this category provides a fascinating study into modern marketing, building trust, the fickleness of consumers, and just how hard it is to build a brand on the most minimal of differentiators.

Product Idea Of The Week: Professional Bios Written For You*

Almost every one of us has struggled at some point to create a bio for ourselves. Finding a good way to describe yourself without sounding egotistical or under selling yourself is a near impossibility. Yet the story of our background and why we are great to work with can be one of the most powerful things we can share. To solve this problem, storytelling trainer and speaker Michael Margolis has built a new storytelling service to help write your story for you. The service is one that I know plenty of executives have wished for, and a very smart new offering from his storytelling company GetStoried.

*Disclaimer - I am not being compensated in any way to promote this product - I have only featured it because I believe it may be useful for you.