Twitch Prime Watch Parties, Apple's Road to Hollywood, Amazon's Platform Challenges, Craft Rum Empresario, Remote Control Drivers, Fred Segal Collab, Comic Book Distro, Sober is New Cool
Covering commerce daily from Amazon to Zulily.
Twitch 'Watch Parties' let streamers watch Prime Video with viewers
Twitch is testing a feature that allows streamers to host 'watch parties' with fellow Prime Video subscribers.
Travis Shreffler, a content creator and author, has tweeted an email he received from Prime Video, inviting him to test a new feature called Watch Parties.
The current selection is pretty limited, but it includes the new season of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan,Mission Impossible: Fallout and Pokémon .
Inside Apple's Long, Bumpy Road to Hollywood
After a few false starts and a little offscreen drama, AppleTV+ finally makes its big debut with a slate of shows, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon and a billion potential customers ready to see what original programming looks like from the world's largest company, led by CEO Tim Cook.
But while there have been some missteps (in addition to Carson, Steven Spielberg anthology Amazing Stories parted ways with showrunners Bryan Fuller and Hart Hanson, and sources say the Jason Momoa sci-fi epic See will soon make a change at the top), the interest surrounding Apple's Hollywood debut remains high.
While the company isn't imposing strict family-friendly guidelines — early episodes of Morning Show feature the heavy use of F-bombs — the understanding is that explicit content must be in service of the storyline and all projects should, ultimately, mesh with Apple's aspirational brand identity.
Amazon agency specialist breaks down the platform's opportunities and challenges
At 4A's StratFest, Podean CEO Mark Power said it's important to get the foundations right when working with Amazon, something that's resource-intensive but could be worth the effort.
NEW YORK — Agencies for years have pined for a third player to break up the stringent control of digital advertising wielded by the Google-Facebook duopoly, and with Amazon — whose ad business raked in $10 billion in revenue in 2018 — they're getting their answer.
Power cautioned that agencies should advise clients not to expect Amazon advertising to do all of the heavy lifting in promoting their brands, which could be a tough pitch to make at marketers who are used to running set-it-and-forget-it campaigns on other platforms.
The Life And Times Of Marc Farrell: From Starbucks’ Youngest VP To Craft Rum Impresario
At age 36, Marc Farrell was the youngest ever vice president of Starbucks. Now the ambitious impresario reinvents himself with Ten To One Rum, his first foray into craft spirits. An exclusive Forbes interview.
Over the course of the next few years, we would continue to talk about how big a gap there was between the experience of that trip, and the way that rum was typically positioned in the US, until we started working on the concept in early 2018, once the call to begin developing the brand became virtually impossible to ignore.
Through the lens of Trinidadian culture, I understood rum to be an extremely versatile spirit with a number of premium expressions, that played a pivotal role in many of the moments of celebration – both big and small - that we enjoyed as a people.
This service wants to operate cars with remote control when self-driving tech gets confused
Self-driving cars can get confused in certain scenarios. Phantom Auto wants to provide backup in those cases.
Inside are six cockpits with a steering wheel, brake and acceleration pedals and multiple screens so remote operators see what a driver in the car would see.
"In an autonomous vehicle you need that channel to be fast, someone to be there in real time," Shai Magzimof, co-founder and CEO of Phantom Auto, said as he stood in the company's control center with remote operators.
Stadium Goods to Open Pop-up at Fred Segal
The Los Angeles retailer will host a Stadium Goods pop-up at its West Hollywood location beginning Oct. 17 to mid-January 2020.
This Futuristic Camper Is Like Nothing Else You’ve Seen Before
If The Jetsons went on a road trip, this would be their ride. The Romotow camper takes the futuristic RV concept to the next level, providing a seriously innovative and high-tech experience to what used to be a pretty simple mode of travel.
When the Romotow is open the deck stays covered by the camper’s frame, creating the ultimate outdoor/indoor living space, ideal for relaxing in the night air or entertaining your crew of camping trip buddies in style.
Book stores and online retailers are surpassing comic shops in sales as graphic novels and children's books rise in popularity.
More comic stores are experimenting, though, and buying from the book channel through publishers like Penguin Random House and Simon and Schuster, according to Griepp.
David Steinberger, the CEO of Amazon's digital comics service Comixology, said at last week's conference that consumers are moving toward the binge model generally because it's "inexpensive, convenient, and there's a lot of content."
From spiked kombucha and functional beer to alt-drinks and the rise of teetotalism , Big Alcohol is under siege from health-conscious consumers and upstart brands alike.
Demand for options outside of alcohol has also given us booze-free cocktails from Curious Elixirs, CBD-infused seltzers like Recess, Higher Mind’s nootropic drink, and an entirely new category in “euphorics” thanks to Kin.
How Millennials are driving brands to be more purposeful.
CBS reports Nike stock has soared 5% since its launch on Labor Day Weekend, drawing record social media likes and boosting sales, despite calls to boycott the brand.
A survey r eleased by Deloitte Global found that six in ten millennials said they chose to work for their current employer partly because the company has a “sense of purpose,” differing from previous generations.
Gut Instinct, Not Data, Is the Thing
Many executives say it’s time for statistics to replace guesswork, but evidence suggests that managers who spend their time buried in data lose their ability to discern how their decisions will play out in the real world.
Starbucks Corp. CEO Kevin Johnson said data-driven decision making is the secret blend he has used to keep the coffee empire percolating since the departure of Howard Schultz, the entrepreneur who turned the green siren logo into a global icon.