The Drip Edition 2

Welcome, Wamkelekile, Bienvenue

It’s been a FREEZING cold week in Cape Town, and I am on top of a heater right now, cuddling my fluffy and very naughty little labrador. It is a dreary Thursday evening as I type this, and I am re-watching The Sopranos (the best show ever by the way, if you have never seen it, do yourself a favour) and Bitcoin prices are plummeting. Hoorah for life’s little peaks and troughs.

This week you can look forward to some digital and POS integration content (calm down, I know it’s all sounding super sexy already); KFC introduced a vegan burger (thanks to one Cathy Coyle for sending me this); a podcast that will give you the creeps but also intrigue you and finally the importance of voice search.

Enjoy  – and have a wonderful weekend hopefully doing nothing but keeping warm!

Coca-Cola Goes Full Digital Shopper Integration

My FAVOURITE article this week is one that is possibly the most relevant to all of us – Full Point of Sale; Shopper; design and Digital integration between Coca-Cola and Omnivore in restaurant environments.

This is GENIUS, in my opinion.

This article specifically references the restaurant industry, but imagine the opportunities for companies like Unilever and L’oreal to implement this sort of shopper and digital integration in big retailers (not least of which will be back-of-house inventory management; outside-of-retail loyalty; online ordering; etc)

These are areas where our business can win, because we have the skills and we have the clients and now it is time to identify and capitalise on these opportunities.

An excerpt from the article:

“…the integration of digital technology, while offering plenty of opportunity for businesses in the restaurant industry, still poses complications and costliness when it comes to researching, testing and finally implementing what the best tools for respective companies are. With these concerns in mind, Coca-Cola and Omnivore are simplifying the process by creating an all-in-one space that brings together an array of available technologies and restaurants’ point of sale (POS) systems to optimize time, money and resources. The marketplace offers technologies for the front of the house (from tableside ordering and payment to digital menus) and inventory and analytics as well as online ordering and third-party delivery.”

KFC Launches a Vegan Burger

KFC is creating a Vegan burger made from a Quorn fillet and coated in their famous recipe. Personally, I don’t know many vegans who would want to support KFC, because the company is still very steeped in a history of cruelty to animals so for ethical and environmental reasons, it would be defeatist to ignore that. But – more power to companies who are finally making a move.

This is cool for two reasons:

1) Organisations are catering to a healthier / more ethical audience and

2) The demand is now actually high enough that big behemoths like KFC are actually seeing it as financially viable

Queue Dermot sending abuse via Whatsapp voice note about my veganism

Podcast: The Shrink Next Door

If you also have a sick fascination with how people can mentally manipulate others into doing their bidding (think Wild Wild Country and the Rajneeshi religion; Charles Manson etc) then you might enjoy this podcast about a psychologist who – over time – manipulates his patient (a wealthy business owner) into doing anything he wants. He literally takes over this man’s life, isolating him from friends and family and ingraining himself in his business, living off of him, all the while keeping him isolated. Why are people like this? Fascinating stuff.

Preparing For Professional Decline

This wholly depressing article provides at least some light at the end of the tunnel. The premise – don’t let life pass you by and start preparing for the notion that work and professional life is not everything. We will all someday (hopefully) be old, and our professional success will not be all that should define us. How else do we derive joy from life? (The article gets more inspiring once you’re about 3000-words in)

An excerpt:

“A few years ago, I saw a cartoon of a man on his deathbed saying, “I wish I’d bought more crap.” It has always amazed me that many wealthy people keep working to increase their wealth, amassing far more money than they could possibly spend or even usefully bequeath. One day I asked a wealthy friend why this is so. Many people who have gotten rich know how to measure their self-worth only in pecuniary terms, he explained, so they stay on the hamster wheel, year after year. They believe that at some point, they will finally accumulate enough to feel truly successful, happy, and therefore ready to die.

What I need to do, in effect, is stop seeing my life as a canvas to fill, and start seeing it more as a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of. I need a reverse bucket list. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships until I can clearly see my refined self in its best form.

[…]

There is a message in this for those of us suffering from the Principle of Psychoprofessional Gravitation. Say you are a hard-charging, type-A lawyer, executive, entrepreneur, or—hypothetically, of course—president of a think tank. From early adulthood to middle age, your foot is on the gas, professionally. Living by your wits—by your fluid intelligence—you seek the material rewards of success, you attain a lot of them, and you are deeply attached to them. But the wisdom of Hindu philosophy—and indeed the wisdom of many philosophical traditions—suggests that you should be prepared to walk away from these rewards before you feel ready. Even if you’re at the height of your professional prestige, you probably need to scale back your career ambitions in order to scale up your metaphysical ones.”

Voice Search Dominating SEO

Read (or listen to on Audible) this incredible list of books and become the best ad person you can be (or just be a better manager; or more creative and lateral thinker).

I have compiled this list of good reading from other resources I have shared here before because I know you are all lazy and have not looked at the previous resources I shared.

• How brands grow by Byron sharp
• Truth, lies and advertising By Jon Steele
• Hey Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide To Creating Ads By Luke Sullivan
• Under Think it BY Adam Pierno
• How not to plan – 66 Ways To Screw It Up
• Eat Your Greens By Wiemer Snijders
• The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy
• A Beautiful Constraint: How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business- Adam Morgan
• Where did it all go wrong: Adventures at The Dunning Kreuger Peak of Advertising – Eaon Pritchard
• Alchemy – Rory Sutherland
• Lateral thinking; A Textbook of Creativity – Edward De Bono
• How To Write a Good Advertisement By Viktor A Schwabb
• One Plus One Equals Three – Dave Trott
• A Technique For Producing Ideas – James Webb Young
• Invisible Women – Exposing Data bias In a World Built For Men – Caroline Criado Perez
• Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets By Al Ramadan
• Seducing the Subconscious: The Psychology of Emotional Influence in Advertising – Robert Heath

Packaging Design

Some wonderful and incredibly calming examples of beautiful packaging design that will bring you inner peace.

My favourites, because they aren’t afraid to be functional but also playful:

If you have any thoughts you’d like to share about any of the content, or you want to just have a chat, or even have some things of you own you would like to share, please send them through to me throughout the week

Kind regards…