Arbys + more news

3 minutes estimated reading time

Arbys trolls McDonald’s over Filet-O-Fish | US Today – you realise how important christianity is in the US when this is going on for the Lenten fish sandwich market. (As far as I can tell, Arbys is like Subway, but serves at least some of their sandwiches in a bap rather than a roll. And has a sides menu closer to say Pizza Hut.) Prayer meetings in the White House and creationism given equal time to evolution on NPR is one thing. Conscious christian consumerism is quite another for your average secular marketer to consider, which is why Arbys vs McDonald’s seem unusual. Given the rise of ‘nones‘ in the American population, particularly young people, Arbys may put off more customers over the long term than it attracts

Brand New: New Logo for BMW – looks a lot flatter, better for glanceable app icons, printing, possibly printed or vinyl car badges rather than the traditional car badge. More branding and marketing related items here.

Keep clean and carry on: the new etiquette of Paris Fashion Week | Financial Times – seems to be much more pragmatic than many events

Chinese teens are shying away from posting about their lives on WeChat to avoid prying parents | South China Morning Post – WeChat is where Facebook was in terms of ubiquity

Apple now allows iOS developers to send ads using push notifications – Developer Tech – this is going to be annoying

Repl.it – CLUI: Building a Graphical Command Line – interesting overlap with conversational interfaces

Didi Chuxing – State of play. – Radio Free Mobile – interesting analysis on Chinese government’s interference

The Dark Side of China’s Idol Economies | Jing Dailyenraged by Xiao fans’ censorship plot, millions of free speech activists began boycotting Xiao Zhan and the dozens of brands he campaigns for, including Estée Lauder, Piaget, and Qeelin. But they’ve gone further than the usual boycott by promoting competitors of Xiao-promoted brands, crashing Xiao-sponsored brands’ customer service lines, and pressuring those brands to end their collaborations with Xiao. So far, the Weibo hashtag #BoycottXiaoZhan# has exceeded 3450,000 posts and 260 million views.

Streetwear still hot, influencers not | Financial ReviewForty percent of North American and European respondents said that “community” had been key to their interest in streetwear; only 12% of Asian respondents said the same. (But 41% of Chinese and Japanese respondents said that wearing streetwear was a political act, something that only 11% of North Americans and Europeans reported.)

Biometric Recognition White Paper 2019 – Google Docs – good translation of an interesting Chinese biometrics whitepaper. Biometrics in China circa 2006 – presentation – and if you compare with this you’ll see the progress made over the past decade or so

Is Social Selling China’s Next Big Marketing Trend? | Jing Daily – actually being going on for a while with influencers like Mr Bags

Innovation of the Day | Panera – Panera launched its MyPanera+ Coffee subscription program, offering customers unlimited coffee for USD 8.99 a month. Burger King apparently did a similar scheme it would be interesting to hear how they got on

For a Whole Month, Pornhub Is Streaming Acclaimed Documentary ‘Shakedown’ for Free – interesting that documentary is running on PornHub

Mediatel News: How to make, break and shape consumer habits – But when Febreze added a nice smell and advertised the product as a spray to use at the end of cleaning – using the tagline ‘two sprays & we’re clean’ – it became very successful. This is because it created a new habit. It was able to do this because it created a consistent trigger and reward for use. The trigger was when someone finished cleaning. The reward was the added nice smell, which customers came to associate with a cleaning job well done. By having a consistent trigger (people often finish cleaning – or at least people who aren’t me often finish cleaning) and reward, the product shifted from failing launch to a billion dollar brand.

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