WhatsApp Business
Introducing the WhatsApp Business App | WhatsApp blog – a free-to-download Android app for small businesses. Our new app will make it easier for companies to connect with customers, and more convenient for our 1.3 billion users to chat with businesses that matter to them. Here’s how:
Business Profiles: Help customers with useful information such as a business description, email or store addresses, and website.
Messaging Tools: Save time with smart messaging tools — quick replies that provide fast answers to frequently asked questions, greeting messages that introduce customers to your business, and away messages that let them know you’re busy.
Messaging Statistics: Review simple metrics like the number of messages read to see what’s working.
WhatsApp Web: Send and receive messages with WhatsApp Business on your desktop.
Account Type: People will know that they’re talking to a business because you will be listed as a Business Account. Over time, some businesses will have Confirmed Accounts once it’s been confirmed that the account phone number matches the business phone number. Free to download on Google Play in Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S – surprised that Hong Kong didn’t make this list
Mark Ritson: The Diet Coke relaunch shows its marketers have lost the plot – Marketing Week – a few things I don’t get. Moving away from the one Coke brand architecture. Are they trying to position diet coke against Red Bull? (Thinking about the can size). Or is there some shopper marketing related insight at play that says they need to maximise choice in a given shelf space? Decidedly odd, I would have expected this lot of ‘product’ innovation more in a market like Japan where you see constant consumer demand for the new new thing. Don’t even get me started on the ad creative…
Business
Apple plans to add $350B to the US economy — but that may not be as heroic as it sounds – interesting analysis to show that this is as much about PR as anything else. Aside from the tax deal why is this release being put out now?
Silicon Valley Spotlight | Indeed blog – interesting data about slowing market for talent in tech companies
Cathay Pacific Airways lags behind peers in fuel efficiency while Qantas is worst polluter, study finds | South China Morning Post – How much cargo, and how well airlines fill planes up to their maximum payload, typically with freight, had the greatest impact on fuel efficiency, Graver added. He said it was not about the number of passengers carried or the number of seats squeezed into planes
Google moves into Shenzhen in latest China expansion | TechCrunch – not a big move
Consumer behaviour
YouGov | Who is on top in the Nike vs. Adidas battle? – UK only data
Design
How an unknown Chinese phone maker became No 3 in India by solving the oily fingers problem | South China Morning Post – “Big companies which sell smartphones in more than 100 countries are too global to care for one single market,” Chowdhury said in an interview in Shenzhen. “The core strategy for us is to become the favourite mobile phone brand in emerging markets.”
Economics
How China’s market economy has fuelled a prostitution boom | South China Morning Post – My grandma was always grateful to Mao, mainly because she was upgraded from a concubine to a wife under the Communists “one wife” rule. – There is also the shredding of culture and community during the cultural revolution probably ruined community / support mechanisms
Luxury
The Pet Shop Boys are the face (and sound) of Christian Dior’s men’s collection this summer.
Luxury group Kering to spin off Puma to shareholders | RTE – not terribly surprising it fits awkwardly with the other brands
Media
Cranberries sales jump by over 900,000 percent after Dolores O’Riordan’s death | Irish Central – record companies eye ‘flowers and sundry’ budget to hire assassins and boost back catalogue sales
American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy – Edelman – I suggest that the public relations business move itself from a reliance on advocacy toward a new policy of informing the populace more broadly on subjects of the day. That means providing the positive and negative facts, with third party attribution
Online
Instagram test two new features in Europe, and one of them will make it more difficult to snoop | JOE.ie – interesting for brands to track dark social syndication and regramming
Google Plans to Vet YouTube Premium Video Content – Bloomberg – guessing the News International media campaign and Logan Paul debacle is starting to have an impact
Security
The bitcoin drugs trade is highly centralised | FT Alphaville – looks that the cryptocurrency bubble could burst pronto
Technology
Should the Tech Giants Be Broken Up? | WSJ City – Apple and Microsoft supply 95% of desktop operating systems – but this point hides the huge disparity in market size and power between Microsoft and Apple still in the PC market
Benedict Evans on ten-year future predictions (well as good as anyone can)
Web of no web
App that pays YOU based on your step count overtakes WhatsApp to become most popular in App Store – Mirror Online – where’s the business model?
Why Uber Can Find You but 911 Can’t – WSJ – one can understand the reluctance of technology companies to get involved