The battle for your eye(ball)s
Hi everyone! For those of you who are new here, Friday Finds is a weekly newsletter highlighting articles, thought-pieces and news I've stumbled upon throughout the week. Feel free to forward along to anyone else who might be interested. If you want to be on the mailing list, you can sign up here. Cheers and happy Friday!
The streaming wars continue
If you follow media, you probably know that Disney+ is scheduled to launch in November. Their offering will include around 500 movies and 7,500 shows for only $7 per month, making them a serious competitor in the streaming wars and ushering in a new era for cable cutters. New players (aka old TV titans) are transitioning to the cable-less world as more consumers ditch traditional TV. It's predicted that by the end of 2021, 20% of US households will have given up traditional TV subscriptions.
People are also spending less time watching traditional TV. US TV viewers will spend 3% less time watching traditional TV this year. As a result, ad costs have to go up which drives more advertisers away. This cycle is driving more media players to bulk up their D2C offerings and, thus, fueling the fire of the streaming wars.
But getting into the streaming world is expensive; many companies are accruing massive amounts of debt to sustain their investments in creating content. Netflix, for example, needs to grow their subscriber base if they hope to offset their debt. They've been investing more in international markets and content (if you haven't watched Money Heist, I highly recommend) to help drive that growth.
All this pressure is causing things to get tense. Disney is now banning Netflix ads across its TV networks. Throw Apple TV+ and AMC into the mix and this may just be the biggest fight for our eyes yet. It's nice to be wanted, isn't it?
Poll (click to respond): who do you think is going to win the streaming war?
Amazon, Apple, Disney, HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Other
Gold Stars:
- for our favorite gold-wrapped candy brand. Ferrero has committed to 100% sustainable packaging by 2025.
- for Impossible Burger. Burger King has the plant-based meat brand to thank for 18% of their traffic growth.
- for Canva. The easy-to-use online design tool is now valued at $3.2 billion dollars! Talk about unicorns. (PS I use Canva to design my email headers!)
- for Kroger. As part of their Zero Hunger | Zero Waste initiative, they're standardizing date labeling on their private label products to reduce their food waste. Roughly 20% of food waste is due to misinterpretation of date labels on products.
- for Google. They officially announced their Pixel 4 and it may be the best phone on the market (it has a motion sense function!). But will it be enough to get iPhone users to make the switch to green messages? Probs not.
Yikes:
- In 2018, 63 MILLION tons of plastic were thrown out in an "improper" way (aka: the recycling bin is right there, why did you just throw that out on the ground!?)
Quick Tidbits:
- AI is getting into the restaurant customer experience business. Outback is trialing it in their lobbies to analyze diner interaction with staff. Poll: creepy or cool?
- Wondering what happened with the blind man's lawsuit against Domino's? Well, it's going to trial. This case could impact every business's website if the verdict is that the ADA applies to the digital world, too.
- Are on-demand mopeds the next big thing? Uber announced that users in Paris will have access to a shared network of mopeds via the Uber app.
- Have you tried Yappah? No? You're not alone. Tyson is shutting down their upcycled protein crisps due to lack of traction.
- We should have expected this. Scooters are now scooting themselves.
On my GoodReads:
All this talk about Disney is making me nostalgic for all the OG Disney movies and inspired me to order Creativity, Inc. from Amazon.
Author Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar (along with John Lasseter and Steve Jobs), give us an all-access trip to the center of Pixar, where some of our (my) favorite movies have been made (aka Up). At its heart, this book is about how to lead teams and develop a creative culture where people are excited to share their ideas. Throughout the book Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.
PS: if you, like me, feel bad buying paper books all the time I highly recommend downloading Libby (e-books app, but you have to get a library card which you can normally do online) or buying used books on Amazon.