Last November I Learned

Hello and?welcome back for one more?"Last Month I Learned".

For the newcomers: In this LinkedIn newsletter, I'm gathering a shortlist of things that I find noteworthy. My goal is to create a monthly archive of "what's going on" in the Marketing, Tech, and Innovation field. This snackable list of links is supposed to be read in less than 5 mins. Stay in the know and subscribe to receive these links before anyone else!

What's new?

Apart from the Elon-Twitter Saga, November also featured the FTX collapse, but you won’t read anything for this greatness in this letter, I’m sure you had enough of these already. So, let’s see what I found interesting last month and you may have missed:

1. The comeback of Netflix. Apart from the "basic with ads" subscription tier starting this month, the streaming platform that suffered declining subscriber numbers earlier this year for the first time, now strikes back with something that talks directly to my heart: The Netflix Hubs! More than 2,400 Walmart stores in the US are going to open shops-in-a-shop selling?merchandise from the streaming platform’s films and television series. Now if there were no inflation, my reaction would be something like the #ShutUpAndTakeMyMoney meme. [RetailWire]
2. It's that time of the year. John Lewis did it again, so in the following link, you are going to watch this year's emotional Christmas ad. [DigitalSpy]
3. Europe dominates the top of the annual Global Talent Competitiveness Index issued by INSEAD, with 7 countries in the top 10 in attracting and retaining talent. I don’t know, we may feel proud after that. [Bloomberg]
4. Tech is holding up well and tops Interbrand's Best Global Brands for 2022, with Apple being named #1! [Interbrand]
5. From AI Research to Clinical Practice: Google Health announces their first commercial agreement to license their AI research mammography model to be integrated in real-world clinical practice.This is a step to make healthcare AI more accessible and eventually save more lives.?[Google Blog]
6. Spoiler alert: The new dorms are empty, and for sale. In this very interesting article, you will learn why in the next four years, the number of students graduating from high schools across the US will begin a sudden and precipitous decline, due to a rolling demographic aftershock of the Great Recession. [Vox]
7. Dear marketers, are we fighting for the wrong demographics? According to this article, given the growing numbers of older consumers, and their disposable wealth, they are going to replace their younger counterparts as the target of many marketing campaigns. [WSJ]
8. Ok I cannot avoid mentioning FTX at all. As I’ve said earlier, you've probably heard of the FTX Crypto Exchange collapse, bringing even more pressure on the global crypto scene. What you may have not heard about, is the collateral damage of FTX's implosion in the NFT scene. Something that the whole community should have expected, is the malfunction of the NFTs that are connected to the platform. Among these NFTs, are the “Coachella Keys” series, which granted lifetime access and VIP perks to the festival, such as luxury experiences and exclusive merchandise. By clicking the following link, you are going to get a taste about how much they costed. [Billboard]
9. What do you know about Phenaki? Phenaki is a word coming from ancient greek and means: "intentional deception". But Phenaki is also a [Google Research] project (though with zero Greek people in the team, so I am 99% sure about the root of the name). Phenaki is a model capable of realistic video synthesis, given a sequence of textual prompts, that can be as long as multiple minutes. Enjoy the following video while reading this specific series of prompts that helped to create it: “Lots of traffic in futuristic city. An alien spaceship arrives to the futuristic city. The camera gets inside the alien spaceship. The camera moves forward until showing an astronaut in the blue room. The astronaut is typing in the keyboard. The camera moves away from the astronaut. The astronaut leaves the keyboard and walks to the left. The astronaut leaves the keyboard and walks away. The camera moves beyond the astronaut and looks at the screen. The screen behind the astronaut displays fish swimming in the sea. Crash zoom into the blue fish. We follow the blue fish as it swims in the dark ocean. The camera points up to the sky through the water. The ocean and the coastline of a futuristic city. Crash zoom towards a futuristic skyscraper. The camera zooms into one of the many windows. We are in an office room with empty desks. A lion runs on top of the office desks. The camera zooms into the lion's face, inside the office. Zoom out to the lion wearing a dark suit in an office room. The lion wearing looks at the camera and smiles. The camera zooms out slowly to the skyscraper exterior. Timelapse of sunset in the modern city." [Phenaki]

The STAT:

$330Μ. Opening in 50 overseas markets, including an early rollout on Wednesday in some territories, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Opens to $181.3M Domestic, $330M Global start. [BoxOfficePRO]

Fun & Surprising:

The Paris 2024 Olympic official mascots are ... two giant red hats. Here's why! [NPR]

Bonus!

What to read: I know that you are fed up with content saying that something is dying or is already dead (like SEO that is dying with every single algorithm update), yet this article about social media decline is worth your next five minutes. [The Atlantic]

What to watch: The TEDx Talk of George Lois, the Greek-American?art director, designer, and author that died last month. Lois was best known for over 90 covers he designed for?Esquire?magazine from 1962 to 1973, and is recognized as one of the true Mad Men. [TED]

Thank you for actively reading one more Last Month I Learned, you are one of the Champion Readers that managed to reach the end! Please share this newsletter with friends and colleagues and why not, share with me in the comments your favorite bullet from the list above, to guide me on what interests you, the chosen one, the mighty, the Champion Reader!