Hasan Minhaj and other things that caught my attention this week

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Supreme by Hasan Minhaj. I hadn’t watched much of Patriot Act mainly because there is more content that grabs my attention on Netflix. This clip is a great dive into hype culture by Hasan Minhaj – often the best humour is that with uncomfortable truths in it.

Amazon playbook on Amazon Vine. Gartner L2 made this useful clip on the effective use of Amazon’s Vine programme.

Key take-outs (my observations in italics):

  • Amazon don’t allow vendors any editorial controls over reviews and look to keep them honest and authentic
  • Vine seems to be really good in the process of accelerating product launches for vendors
  • Use Vine BEFORE Amazon’s sponsored products and sponsored brands advertising function; by the sounds of it pretty similar to the way you’d have previously used PR in a product launch marketing campaign
  • L2 recommends ensuring the efficacy of the product; but Vine COULD be used as the last gate in the innovation process before you go gangbusters. Lots of negative reviews could still save you on a massive production run and huge advertising spend

Sophie Cope (Electronic Frontier Foundation) on digital privacy and the surveillance state. Great video on the World Affairs channel – interesting how this has become such a big issue amongst ‘wonkish’ audiences. More privacy related content here.

Lynx (Axe for non UK audiences) have latched on to the ASMR meme that has been popular for a couple of years. It feels weird to watch, I am not sure what the strategic insight(s) were for this work beyond the fact that beards are sticking around for a good while yet.

The last thing is the positive experience I had with American Express this week when I lost my card. I spoke to a real person on a decent phone line who quickly canceled my old card sent me out a new one that arrived in 48 hours.