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Each week, Padilla’s Insights + Strategy team stands at the intersection of people, culture and brands to bring you five stories that you can read in five minutes.
1. The Louvre
The Louvre just put its entire collection online. For free. Why should you care? The Louvre, the world’s most visited museum is bringing art back to the masses with its new online Collections Database that houses more than 480,000 artworks. For the first time in history, art lovers can view everything from lesser-known artworks to masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo free of charge. There’s also an option to explore the Louvre room by room with an interactive map. The pandemic may have put a stop to all our favorite cultural past-times, but we can’t complain about its unintended side effect of paving the way for more accessibility. [Robb Report]
2. Booked Up
AirBnb and VRBO are overloaded with reservations. Why should you care? Airbnb shares are up more than 20%, Expedia more than 30% and airline and hotel stocks surging as well along with VRBO having its best quarter yet. Numbers don’t lie, and after a year of being cooped up at home and now with the introduction of vaccines, Americans are itching to get out whether it be a core urban destination or a rental house in the woods. “We could be looking at a real boom period for leisure travel,” said VRBO president Jeff Hurst. Although we’re not quite out of the woods yet, that’s not stopping people for getting back on the roads and in the skies. [CNN]
3. Black Muppets
‘Sesame Street’ adds two Black Muppets to talk clearly about race and racism. Why should you care? To help kids understand racial literacy, Sesame Street is introducing new muppets Wes and Elijah – a Black father and son. Sesame Workshop, the educational nonprofit behind the new characters are also releasing a “Coming Together” series to support families who want to talk about racism with their kids. Sesame Street is not new to the concept of talking about race to children, but we’re glad to see them take it a step further with the inclusion of these new cast members. [Today]
4. LinkedIn Updates
LinkedIn has added cover letter videos (feels like instastories) and now has a place for pronouns in their profiles. Why should you care? Do you hate writing cover letters – then you might like LinkedIn’s new feature: a stories-like cover letter video users can add to their profiles. The thinking behind that was a stat that found that nearly 80% of hiring managers view video as an important tool for vetting candidates. They’re also adding a field where jobseekers can enter their preferred pronouns next to their names and a creator mode for LinkedIn influencers. In an everchanging world, LinkedIn is updating to meet those changes or at best, just making itself look more like Instagram. [Gizmodo]
5. Dove & Diversity
Dove is paying for other brands to put more diverse faces in their ads. Why should you care? In order to encourage more brands to consider putting more diverse models into their campaigns, Dove is offering up their own models at no cost to them (but covering the modeling fees on their end). So far, four brands have taken them up on the offer: Krispy Kreme, Magnum Ice Cream, Nedbank and Cif Soap. Dove’s pledge to diverse models was born out of a statistic that reported 70% of women do not feel represented in media and advertising. Though we think that the existence of Dove’s campaign of somewhat shaming other brands into being more diverse is a sad statement, we hope that it ends up being the nudge advertising needs. [Fast Company]
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