Happy holidays! I hope you are enjoying some well-deserved down-time with you family and loved ones. Next week will be a special edition recapping the year, but here’s the last regular edition of the year!
Marketing campaign I’m thinking about this weekend
I wrote about this a few years ago, but only this year am I starting to see many other marketing teams pick up on this idea. Last year there were over 66 billion views on TikTok alone of posts with the Spotify Wrapped hashtag. This Spotify campaign has been a viral hit year after year, using personal data to allow users to show off their music listening preferences and habits. What I can’t believe is that more brands with this amount of data haven’t jumped on the trend. Youtube added some wrapped features, but it only covers gaming and music, why not videos? Netflix still doesn’t have any sort of wrapped campaign, even with many devs building custom tools so people can see their own data. A few days ago I found a tool to recap your year on LinkedIn, but if it was native to the platform it would be so much more popular. All these companies who have huge amounts of data have a fantastic opportunity to leverage user-generated content and let people show off their yearly stats, let’s see if more jump on the bandwagon over the next few years.
What I read this weekend
I was excited to read ‘Guilty as Charged: 25 Crimes That Have Shaken Singapore Since 1965‘ as Singapore is known for being a safe and low-crime country. It turns out there are still plenty of shocking crimes that occurred on the island. From white-color money laundering and gambling, to horrific murders and abductions, I had no idea about almost all of these cases. I wasn’t as surprised at the crimes in the early years, as Singapore has had gangs and other nefarious activities, but I was amazed at some of the crimes that have occurred in recent years, when it seems like a done deal they would get caught. Published by the Straits Times, the writing was pretty dry, mostly just giving out the facts of the cases, it would have been more interesting if it provided a bit better story telling, but an interesting read nonetheless.
Next episode of Before We Get There
Next week I’ll have a special episode of the podcast. I’ll be sharing some reflections on the year as well as clips from two other podcasts that I was on recently. I’ve found that it is a completely different experience being a guest or host, so I want to share these clips of me as a guest, which will showcase more of me talking than on my own episodes. I haven’t decided if I’ll do regular solo episodes, as my goal behind starting the podcast was really to learn about other people and dig into their stories. But this will be a nice change of pace and a good way to dip my feet into having an episode without a guest. Keep a look out next Thursday!
What I watched this weekend
I got sucked back into watching Anatomy of a Fighter, super high-quality documentary-style videos on MMA fighters done by Will Harris on YouTube. I would say I’m a pretty casual MMA fan, I don’t watch all the cards and know who is who in every division. But I have been watching MMA for a long time, before the first TUF, plus a lot of Pride and ONE FC fights. But the way Will Harris has become friends with the fighters, especially Khabib and the rest of the Dagestanis makes his videos miles ahead of anything even the UFC itself could produce. He’s stayed in their homes, played basketball, prayed, joked, and been beside them backstage for their biggest fights. He was on Rogan a few years ago, and I recall he has a pretty amazing story himself, he just started making these videos on a whim, without any MMA or even video production background, and was able to get close to Khabib during the height of his career. What also makes it so compelling is how compelling, devout, hard-working, and humble the Dagastani crew is, it is impossible to not like and respect them.
Best kitchen gadget I’ve started using
To be honest I hadn’t considered getting an air fryer before, I thought it was kind of gimmicky, and was for people who aren’t “real” cooks. Well, I was wrong. We moved to a different apartment earlier this year, and there’s no oven here, which I usually use a lot to cook roast meats, casseroles, potato dishes, etc. With that and my daughter’s recent love of french fries, I gave in and bought a Xiaomi air fryer on Black Friday. After just a few weeks I’m a convert. But I think it is named wrong, it is more of a small, precise convection oven. I’m sure there are some things like bread that wouldn’t work in the air fryer, but so far I’m very impressed and have been having a lot of fun cooking with it. Besides the original purpose of frozen kids foods, I’ve also made roast pork, pork knuckle, veggies, and more in it. I’m looking forward to experimenting what else I can cook in it.
That’s all for this week. Have a very merry Christmas, and see you next week for the last edition of the year!