What’s In This Issue?
New Color Picker Helps You Find a Color Based On A Word
What is the optimal color for hot dogs? Actually, no one cares. You might care that Heinz is finally launching a campaign to get the number of hot dogs in a package to match the number of buns. But neither are really the point of the story I wanted to share with you, which is actually about a platform called PhotoChrome. The way it works is you can put in any word and get a color palette for that word generated based on stock images that show up for that particular word. For anyone who has struggled to pick the right color for something, or to find several complimentary colors to use in a design - this tool is absolutely brilliant. Plus, if you ever do happen to need the correct color to depict hot dogs, now you know it's hex code is #802714. And you know Heinz is on top of solving that hot dog to bun ratio problem.
Summer's Best Treat? Nissin Cup Noodle Flavored Ice Cream!
I do love a good non-obvious ice cream, and Nissin's new Cup Noodle Ice Cream certainly qualifies. According to this story, the flavor "starts with a regular swirl of vanilla ice cream with all the dried ingredients found in its instant ramen – shrimp, cubes of meat, sliced green onions, small chunks of scrambled eggs." You haven't really tasted ice cream until you add cubes of meat and small chunks of dehydrated scrambled eggs to it, apparently. But the truth is, I'm kind of glad the only place you can have this is at the Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama, Japan. If this was around when I was in college, I probably would have been 25 pounds heavier. At least.
Why Small Business Owners Might Be Ready To Switch Banks En Masse
There is a concept in journalism called "burying the lede" where you hide the most important part of a story somewhere down the page instead of putting it front and center. It's usually not a good idea. As I was reading an article this week about Amex's new partnership with Kabbage to "disrupt the banking status quo," an interesting stat popped up in the article:
According to PwC, 22% of small businesses are considering switching banks. Although you might think that those businesses that received Paycheck Protection Payment (PPP) loans from their financial institution would be the most loyal to their bank, in fact, the opposite is true. PPP loans didn’t make small businesses stickier to their primary financial institution: Four times as many of those small businesses that say they would switch actually applied for PPP funding.
If the numbers are correct and nearly one-fourth of all small business customers are considering switching banks, this is a HUGE opportunity across the financial industry. In a sector where there are many reasons why people generally don't make big changes, you might even consider this a once in a generation opportunity. So this deserves the headline. It's buried in this particular story, but if you work in financial services, you are hopefully already working on this. And if you're a small business owner, this might be the time to actually make that change to a new bank if the incentives are right.
