As someone who considers herself to be a lifelong learner, I consume a lot of content each week about business, marketing, tech, startups, world news, and more. As such, I wanted to start a new weekly post series sharing the most interesting podcasts, news articles, blog posts, videos, and more, that I discovered over the week. For a longer edit, follow me on Twitter.

Blog Posts

5 Innovative Brands Display an Unexpected Approach to Content and Storytelling

A 2021 goal of mine is to publish content on Medium consistently. This post shares five incredibly clever and inspiring approaches to content marketing and storytelling from KFC, Century 21, Land Rover, TripAdvisor and Google.

News Articles

How a 22-year-old L.A. native became Biden’s inauguration poet

‘Not Broken But Simply Unfinished’: Poet Amanda Gorman Calls For A Better America

I was blown away by Amanda Gorman, the Poet Laureate at the Inauguration this past week. It was such an incredible moment to discover Amanda and see her grace, strength, positive energy, and of course, words, inspire us all. I spent some time after the Inauguration reading up on her story and am excited to watch this rising star continue on her path.

The 18 craftiest brand memes featuring Bernie Sanders and his inauguration mittens

Who could have predicted that Bernie Sanders would become the meme of the Presidential Inauguration? While on “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” Sanders confessed that he did not expect his pose to go viral, “I was just sitting there, trying to keep warm, trying to pay attention to what was going on.”

As it turns out, the mittens were made with fleece from recycled plastic bottles and re-purposed wool sweaters by a Vermont teacher named Jen Ellis. There is actually a wonderful backstory behind the mittens, where Jen gifted them to Bernie with a note that read, “‘I believe in you, I’ve always believed in you and I hope you run again.” She was apparently very surprised – and delighted – to see him wearing the mittens on the campaign trail, even lending them to others who had cold hands on occasion. She has since gifted his campaign with more mittens to give away.

While the maker of the mittens, Jen Ellis, does not have a website and the mittens are currently sold out, you can follow her Twitter account for future orders.

Barilla cooks up pasta timer playlists on Spotify

Barilla has launched a collection of eight Spotify playlists with running times equal to the cooking times of different pasta shapes, from penne to spaghetti, linguine, and more. While marketing via Spotify is not anything “new,” I found this campaign to be more creative and useful than most of the other Spotify marketing campaigns that I’ve seen. Now, let’s just hope Barilla provides instructions accordingly for those like yours truly who like her pasta al dente!

From Russia with free shipping

We’ve all heard of Amazon – but how many of us have heard of Wildberries, Russia’s equivalent to the online shopping giant? The founder, Tatyana Bakalchuk, invested $700 in a website in 2004 to sell clothes and used her apartment as a makeshift warehouse, taking public transport to deliver the packages herself. Today, she is Russia’s wealthiest woman.

America’s Biggest Owner Of Farmland Is Now Bill Gates

I had no idea that Bill Gates now owns 242,000 acres of farmland across 18 states in the U.S. — enough to make him the top private farmland owner in America. Interestingly, he’s not the only one making such investments in farmland.

Podcasts

Second Life Podcast: Dr. Barbara Sturm

This episode is a treat to listen to! It shares the story of how Dr. Sturm used a medical background in orthopedics as a basis for her skincare philosophy—one that’s garnered a cult-like following and made her one of the most sought-after beauty professionals in the world.

What I really enjoyed was how open and refreshingly honest Dr. Barbara Sturm is about her story, her challenges and her opinions on the beauty and skincare industry. I also found it fascinating that as a young doctor, her approach started to bring her a lot of success in the form of new patients. She was working with older, male doctors at the time and her success – even though it was making them more money than her – resulted in a lot of jealously, and is what pushed her to start her own business.

The podcast is also a great example of how powerful storytelling is. Dr. Sturm’s products are expensive, but after hearing about the science behind them, I’m much more interested in purchasing them. She does a wonderful job educating the listener about the value of her products. Even if you’re not interested in skincare, listen to how she speaks about her expertise, her products and tells her story – there are valuable insights for other premium, technical or luxury businesses in this episode.

Videos

Queer Eye’s Karamo Is Culture | Rich Roll Podcast

I loved the re-boot of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy on Netflix and especially loved Karamo. In this interview on the Rich Roll podcast, Karamo shares his remarkable life path, from becoming a single Dad at a young age, to how he ended up in the fab five, why his role on the show focuses more on mental health, and much more.

Staying At The MacDonald Bath Spa Hotel! Girl’s Spa Weekend – Full Review

Another goal of mine this year is to share a new video on my travel and lifestyle YouTube channel every week. I have years of travel video footage that I have done nothing with, and the current UK lockdown is giving me the opportunity to travel back in time and bring these videos to life. This video is on a 2020 trip to the MacDonald Bath Spa Hotel in Bath, UK. It was such a lovely weekend and I look forward to more weekend getaways when times improve!

Now It’s Your Turn!

What have you read, watched or listened to this week that had an impact on you? Share it in a comment – I would love to check it out!

Jessica Gioglio is the co-author of The Laws of Brand Storytelling and The Power of Visual Storytelling. Professionally, Jessica has led innovative marketing and public relations programs for Dunkin’ Donuts, TripAdvisor, Sprinklr, and more. Today, Jessica is the founder of With Savvy Media & Marketing, a strategic branding, storytelling, and content strategy consultancy.