SNAP GOES DOWNTOWN FOR AD REV:  Up until the moment it went public Snapchat vigorously pursued a quality over quantity approach to ad sales.  Advertisers were usually limited to national brands who spent $250K+, and typically ran custom creative which felt native to Snapchat’s user experience.  But oh how times have changed in just the three weeks since its inaugural earnings call, where revenue and user growth fell below the Street’s expectation.  Fast forward to June 1^st and it’s a whole new world for Snapchat advertising, thanks to their new self-serve API.  As noted in the attached Digiday article, Snapchat is now being flooded by direct response and app-install ads usually found on publishers who rely on ad networks over their own sales teams.  The euphemistic term for this is “non-premium ads”.  Apparently Snapchat’s need for immediate incremental revenue has lowered the quality bar enough to take these ads.  I’m wondering if this will also water down the UX enough to affect usage.

WILL “FLEXDRIVING” REINVENT THE DEALERSHIP MODEL:  Product sharing is here to stay, no doubt about it.  Whether it be ZipCar for ridesharing or Airbnb for homesharing, the idea of renting or short-term leasing is replacing larger life purchases for many consumers.  Given this trend how will the industries who sell larger durable goods, like car dealerships and real estate agents, adopt to these changes?  One early answer might just be seen in the attached Automotive News link.  The article features a NJ car dealership group, Hollman Automotive, whose strategy is to create a vehicle subscription service called Flexdrive.  The concept is like a dealership-based version of a car rental operation, where consumers can use an app to book a car from dealership inventory for weeks or months at a time.  The ownership stays with the dealership (so no title change), and the pricing is typically a flat fee of a couple hundred dollars per week.  Hollman’s plan is to go nationwide with 500+ Flexdrive dealerships.  Could this be what Car Dealerships 2.0 looks like?

WEEKEND INSPIRATION:  Some of my most widely viewed posts are longer-form weekend reads about things like leadership and business innovation.  Apparently you guys are hungry for inspiration when you have a few moments to disconnect from your in boxes!  To feed this part of your soul I’m going to start providing some Weekend Inspiration on select Fridays.  To kick things off I’d like to feature an amazing LinkedIn article about Thomas Edison.  Obviously the man was a genius . . . he literally invented the light bulb.  But just knowing someone is a genius is less important than understanding how they made the magic happen.  In Edison’s case the How came in the form of reading more because he was mostly deaf, taking power naps when he got stuck on a problem just so he could attack the challenge a different way when he awoke, and failing at something up to 10,000 times just to get to the solution.  Amazing stuff from a world changing mind.  Enjoy when you have some free time!

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!

TAKING YOUR WORKOUT MUSIC UP A NOTCH:  Sometimes the best new ideas are as simple as connecting preexisting dots in a new way.  That adage is on display with Pandora’s new branded radio stations featuring on-demand functionality, which is highlighted in the attached AdWeek link.  In 2016 Propel blazed a trail with Pandora by using gyroscopic technology to allow fitness enthusiasts to unlock Sponsored Listening by literally shaking their phones (which works perfectly during mid-workout).  Now Propel is taking things one step further by creating custom stations which are curated by local fitness influencers, and then allowing listeners to hit a “Power Up” button to save the song for on-demand play later.  For those who love listening to music as they work out think about this flow for a minute . . . you get to hear prepackaged playlists from wanna-be-them fitness enthusiasts, and then you have the ability to one tap save those songs to create your own best-of-you workout playlist.  It’s sort of like getting to unleash your own inner fitness instructor while keeping your day job.  So who’s ready to Power Up in their next workout?!?

RIP FM?:  Could the FM dial eventually go the way of 8-tracks or tape decks and become non-existent?  That’s the gist of a provocative guest author article in Billboard magazine.  There’s plenty of evidence to support this theory.  Station valuations are way down – 20 years ago top FMs in major markets could sell for as much as half a billion dollars and now they’re selling for under a hundred mill.  The largest broadcasters, like iHeart and Cumulus, are debt-laden behemoths who bought high during the era of broadcast consolidation in the 90s and are now trapped in a declining legacy business.  As for the product itself, not only is FM radio’s primary content (music) under attack from so many other new technologies, but now the local content side (think news/weather/traffic) are more conveniently accessed on a mobile device than waiting to hear it on the radio.  All of these ingredients are creating a recipe of disaster for a medium that was once considered a state of the art replacement to the AM band.

KEEP YOUR HUSTLE REAL:  Finally today, I LOVE this LinkedIn article on the idea of the False Hustle.  The author’s reference to Cubs’ outfielder Sammy Sosa sprinting out of the dugout to his position only to loaf around in the outfield is the perfect analogy.  Nobody, in sports or business or whatever industry, likes a showboat.  But what’s worse is the showboat who makes a point of humblebragging and then doesn’t back it up with actual work.  To check yourself on any False Hustle tendencies check out the four common traits listed in the piece – so true!  The embedded FedEx commercial is also a funny exaggeration of these personality types.  Bottom line – being a hard worker is good.  But acting like a hard worker and then not backing it up with any actual work is bad to the point of embarrassing.  So is your hustle real or false!?!

Have a great Thursday guys!