OCTOBER ROUNDUP - Media, Tech and Innovation

Hello and welcome to the October edition of my newsletter. With the US just days away from a historic election, both campaigns have been scrambling to spend their remaining ad dollars on TV, print and digital. Time Magazine altered their cover logo for the first time in their nearly 100 year history (above).

In other industry news:

• Quibi (Quick Bites), which raised 1.8B in investments, is closing and selling off their content six months after launch. 
  

• Nathan Apodaca became an overnight TikToc sensation posting a video of himself on a skateboard, bottle of Ocean Spray in hand and singing a Fleetwood Mac classic.

• Former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive and his new company Love From have joined up with AirBNB.

Happy Reading!

1. Quibi will shut down after raising $1.76B in capital

The most talked about “I told you so” news for October was the launch and ultimate failure of Quibi, the Quick Bites subscription-based mobile video platform.

• Quibi launched on April 6 for $5 per month with ads or $8 without.

• It offered a 90-day free trial. The Verge reported that only about 8% converted into paid subscriptions.

• In May, with 3.5 million downloads, Katzenberg told The New York Times that the coronavirus was responsible for "everything that has gone wrong" with the app.

• Netflix and Disney Plus on the other hand saw booms during the pandemic.

• During the layoff announcement, billionaire founder Jeffrey Katzenberg told employees to listen to a song from "Trolls" to lift their spirits.

The Big Picture:

For Quibi, many in the industry seem to be having a good chuckle about its demise noting it was destined to fail from the beginning. Quibi ignored their target customer. They didn’t take the time to invest in, and learn, what 18-34-year-olds care about. That’s why they went with traditional stars instead of digital stars like Mr Beast (45M YouTube Subscribers). They made the mistake of a content approach rebooting shows from 20 years ago, when their audiences weren’t even born! Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got billions of dollars, you can’t spend your way out of a mistake. Knowing your consumer is marketing 101.

2. Nathan Apodaca’s Viral Fleetwood Mac TikTok

Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams has experienced a huge boost in popularity since being featured in a blissful TikTok video, earning its highest-ever streaming numbers in the US. Idaho labourer Nathan Apodaca, known as 420doggface208 on TikTok, filmed himself skateboarding down a highway drinking cranberry juice and lip-syncing to the Stevie Nicks lyrics to Dreams. 

• Its carefree mood quickly made it viral, with over 23m views so far. 134,000 tribute videos have been made, totaling almost a half-billion views.

• The success of the clip has prompted 8.47m streams of Dreams in the last week in the US, beating the previous high of 3.83m, set in September.

• Apodaca has received thousands of dollars in donations since posting the clip, which he plans to spend on vehicle repairs and upgrades, as well as on his parents.

The Big Picture:

Unexpected viral content bringing joy to others is something that can’t be premeditated in these times. This was a great opportunity for both Fleetwood Mac and Ocean Spray to use the social media platforms to join in on the free publicity opportunity. Ocean Spray bought him a new truck in the appropriate color of cranberry red. It was delivered to him packed full of jugs of the brand's juice.

3. Former Apple Chief Jony Ive joins AirBNB

Airbnb Inc. is hiring former Apple Inc. design chief Jony Ive and his new firm, LoveFrom, to work on projects with the home-sharing startup. The San Francisco-based company, which is planning to go public later this year, on Wednesday said the multi-year deal will be a “special collaboration” that will see Ive and his firm help develop Airbnb’s internal design team.

• At Apple, Ive was responsible for the design of several generations of the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch and was known as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’s “spiritual partner.” 

• He was also key in the design of Apple’s new Cupertino, California campus and redesigns to retail stores.

• The company has its own typeface and highlights redesigns to its website and mobile apps.

The Big Picture:

As Airbnb aims to separate themselves from the competition of online booking systems there’s no better way to do it than to collaborate with Ive, who redefined Apple design systems for the past few decades and generations to come. With Airbnb set to go public later this year, this is also a great PR play for potential investors to have the company associated with such an iconic innovator. 

4. The Rise of No-Code

No-code is a type of technology platform or tool created for non-technical people to build websites or mobile apps without programming knowledge. Instead of writing code, users can build apps using drag-and-drop to create the front-end and integrate with third-party technologies to create the backend. 

• No-code has benefited professionals from all walks of life such as founders, designers, marketers, product managers, freelancers, and even software engineers. 

• No-code allows you to create fully-functional MVPs (minimum liable product) and high-fidelity prototypes rather than wireframes and 2D mockups. 

• Makerpad is an educational platform that’s built with no-code tech and it is a profitable online business that monetizes from no-code tutorials and membership subscriptions.

• Another example is scribly.io - a content marketing service marketplace that operates using no-code tools such as Airtable, Zapier, Webflow, and Slack. 

The Big Picture

Entrepreneurs always face the challenge of validating their idea before getting into a long development journey. There are a few ways to put a product idea to the test; interviewing potential users is important, and creating an MVP is a must to test your hypothesis. With no-code, the path to a working concept has never been so short.

5 - Stir Raises $4M to help online collaborators

Stir, a service that lets creators on new online platforms manage their businesses, has raised $4 million in seed funding.

• The company is founded by Facebook veteran Joseph Albanese and Amazon, Brex and Google veteran Kushal Byatnal. Albanese will serve as CEO and Byatnal will serve as CTO.

• Many of those writers and creators, working with new technology companies like Substack, Patreon, YouTube, Twitch, TinyLetter and others have made the transition amid the pandemic. 

• Stir's tools can be used for big collaborations, like splitting revenue on a YouTube series, or tiny collaborations, like one newsletter writer referring their audience to another newsletter.

The Big Picture:

The creator economy is at its biggest influential point, where journalists are now going it alone with Newsletters (like this). The pandemic has increased the go it alone approach, offering freedom from bureaucracy and an opportunity to connect and grow audiences. In this crowded marketplace where only the very top will succeed, time will tell if this has negative implications on the wider funnel of news that those journalists would otherwise provide to local, national and at a global level. 

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WHAT TO WATCH

Netflix - My Octopus Teacher
Tells the story of a filmmaker forging an unusual friendship with an octopus living in a South African kelp forest, learning as the animal shares the mysteries of her world.