Cherry 

Best of the past week

Hi , There are probably quite a few changes coming up around Ice Cream central. I'm not sure what exactly or when I'll tell you, in the meantime I'm in Mexico this week for a holiday; I'm writing this from Heathrow though by the time you read this I'll be in a resort near San Jose del Cabo, taking time out to ponder a few things, hang out with friends, participate in a vacation course (The theme of which is "The Way of Wonder: A Life of Expecting Miracles, no less), and last but certainly least I'm really looking forward to scuba-diving.I've already mentioned this, I'll also soon be pondering the future and format of this newsletter. I'm noticing more people unsubscribing in the past few weeks and less people clicking through links. I'm not sure what to do about it just yet.My favourite thing this past week was listening to this excellent interview of Shep Gordon on the Tim Ferriss podcast. Shep is an entertainment PR legend and has been named "One of the 100 most influential people" by Rolling Stone Magazine. He's managed and/or befriended celebrities such as Alice Cooper, Jimi Hendrix, Groucho Marx and many more. The stories he tells are really worth the listen! One of the things he repeated and I thought was quite interesting: "Pay attention to the miracles."

 Sprinkles What's the GIF? 

Scuba diving Mickey Mouse!

Whipped Cream

In the news

Caramel Fudge

What's sticky in the communications industry?

This is a big deal in the industry: consulting giant player Accenture acquired possibly the largest only independent creative advertising agency left in the UK, Karmarama.Consulting firms had started acquiring digital and design agencies in the past few years though they hadn't really crossed the threshold into more "traditional" creative advertising shops. Many industry specialists are pondering what this means for the industry or what all these different agencies integrated with consulting groups will actually look like. This is of course totally reductive though my initial opinion is that financially driven, bottom line focused consulting groups will try to group different agencies together to streamline all possible imaginable creative communication services together and in the process get rid of all the human emotion and creativity available in those shops. More creative types will leave the industry to start their own thing in a different industry. Obviously I could be completely wrong, but I just don't see those two worlds colliding very well. 

Chocolate

What's going on in gaming?

Remember Pokemon Go? It was a huge fad last summer and they're doing their best to bring players back with new features. The game developers were unfortunately victims of their own success, they had not planned for this kind of initial hype at all, so while they were supposed to release new features at the beginning, they barely managed to keep the lights on and provide enough server space for the millions of unexpected people who wanted to play a few months ago - then they got bored and left.I had a great conversation with a colleague this week who keeps playing for his children, who are still hooked and asking after new Pokemon creatures every day. While he finds it annoying, he said it's also a fun outing with his kids to walk around and bond around looking for new Pokemon. I thought it sounded pretty cute.

Vanilla

What else is interesting this week?

I have been looking into what the teens are up to on social media these days (purely in the name of research, of course) and have been feeling pretty old as a result.In case you don't know, teens use an application called Snapchat (though more grown ups are also getting into it) and another even more baffling one called Musical.ly.Check out this article about a woman who looked after her sister's Snapchat account for an insight into what's going on with 13 year olds these days.That's about it for this week folks, enjoy the rest of your weekend!CheersWillem