The Upside of an Ego-Driven Space Race, Cup Noodle Ice Cream and An Insanely Useful Color Picking Tool | Non-Obvious Insights #277

Dear Newsletterest,

What's the right color for hot dogs? You probably don't care, but the website that helps answer that question might be a useful design tool for your next color-picking challenge. Other stories this week feature NBCU is on track for it's most profitable Olympics ever, the big small business opportunity coming to the financial sector, the necessary space race between billionaires, and a non-obvious new ice cream flavor I wish I could try. Enjoy the stories this week!

Tokyo 2020 Olympic - Non-Obvious Story Spotlight:
NBCUniversal Will Still Have Its Most Profitable Olympics Ever

There have definitely been losers in the global business ecosystem surrounding the Olympics. Vendors have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Ticket vendors, tourism operators, real estate investors, hoteliers and so many others who had planned to recoup their investments in Tokyo during the game are all in a bad situation now since foreign spectators are not allowed. NBCU, however, doesn't seem to be sharing that same pain. The Olympics are projected to be as popular as ever when it comes to TV rights, and industry trade news reports that NBCU projects this Olympics will be even more profitable than the Rio 2016 games. Which, I suppose is good news for the longer term prospects of the Olympics itself. The Games would have a lot more trouble surviving if everyone was losing money putting them on.

The Space Race Among Billionaires Might Be Just What Humanity Needs

The "space race" of the 1960s was a transformative time for space travel. And since then, many space lovers have been frustrated by the lack of urgency with which the world seems to have explored space ever since. This week the space race between three billionaires--Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk--just got a bit more egotistical ... if that were even possible. Branson announced he'll go to space himself nine days before Bezos. It's yet another move in a chess match among alpha-billionaires to be the first and most successful to bring humanity to space. And yes, it's totally ego-driven in the worst possible way. But after decades where humanity took its foot off the accelerator pedal of space exploration, it is also possible that it's just what future humans need to happen right now. So I say, let them shoot their rockets and try to one-up each other in any way they can. A hundred years from now, our descents might be glad for it.

New Color Picker Helps You Find a Color Based On A Word

What is the optimal color for hot dogs? Actually, no one cares. You might care that Heinz is finally launching a campaign to get the number of hot dogs in a package to match the number of buns. But neither are really the point of the story I wanted to share with you, which is actually about a platform called PhotoChrome. The way it works is you can put in any word and get a color palette for that word generated based on stock images that show up for that particular word. For anyone who has struggled to pick the right color for something, or to find several complimentary colors to use in a design - this tool is absolutely brilliant. Plus, if you ever do happen to need the correct color to depict hot dogs, now you know it's hex code is #802714. And you know Heinz is on top of solving that hot dog to bun ratio problem.

Summer's Best Treat? Nissin Cup Noodle Flavored Ice Cream!

I do love a good non-obvious ice cream, and Nissin's new Cup Noodle Ice Cream certainly qualifies. According to this story, the flavor "starts with a regular swirl of vanilla ice cream with all the dried ingredients found in its instant ramen – shrimp, cubes of meat, sliced green onions, small chunks of scrambled eggs." You haven't really tasted ice cream until you add cubes of meat and small chunks of dehydrated scrambled eggs to it, apparently. But the truth is, I'm kind of glad the only place you can have this is at the Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama, Japan. If this was around when I was in college, I probably would have been 25 pounds heavier. At least.

Why Small Business Owners Might Be Ready To Switch Banks En Masse

There is a concept in journalism called "burying the lede" where you hide the most important part of a story somewhere down the page instead of putting it front and center. It's usually not a good idea. As I was reading an article this week about Amex's new partnership with Kabbage to "disrupt the banking status quo," an interesting stat popped up in the article:

According to PwC, 22% of small businesses are considering switching banks. Although you might think that those businesses that received Paycheck Protection Payment (PPP) loans from their financial institution would be the most loyal to their bank, in fact, the opposite is true. PPP loans didn’t make small businesses stickier to their primary financial institution: Four times as many of those small businesses that say they would switch actually applied for PPP funding.

If the numbers are correct and nearly one-fourth of all small business customers are considering switching banks, this is a HUGE opportunity across the financial industry. In a sector where there are many reasons why people generally don't make big changes, you might even consider this a once in a generation opportunity. So this deserves the headline. It's buried in this particular story, but if you work in financial services, you are hopefully already working on this. And if you're a small business owner, this might be the time to actually make that change to a new bank if the incentives are right.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories ...

Every week I always curate more stories than I'm able to explore in detail. In case you're looking for some more reading this week, here are a few other stories that captured my attention ...

How are these stories curated?

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The Upside of an Ego-Driven Space Race, Cup Noodle Ice Cream and An Insanely Useful Color Picking Tool | Non-Obvious Insights #277

Tokyo 2020 Olympic - Non-Obvious Story Spotlight:
NBCUniversal Will Still Have Its Most Profitable Olympics Ever

The Space Race Among Billionaires Might Be Just What Humanity Needs

New Color Picker Helps You Find a Color Based On A Word

Summer's Best Treat? Nissin Cup Noodle Flavored Ice Cream!

Why Small Business Owners Might Be Ready To Switch Banks En Masse

Even More Non-Obvious Stories ...

Older messages

Euphoric Beverages, America's Weirdest Holiday and Teaching Asian Kids To Be "Proud of their Eyes" | Non-Obvious Insights #276

LEGO's Impossible Brick, Liberia's Bold Olympic Uniform and the Secret History of Monopoly | Non-Obvious Insights #275

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America's Greediest Family Escapes Again, Overspending on Branding and the World's Most Nutritious Food | Non-Obvious Insights #273

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The Upside of an Ego-Driven Space Race, Cup Noodle Ice Cream and An Insanely Useful Color Picking Tool | Non-Obvious Insights #277

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The Space Race Among Billionaires Might Be Just What Humanity Needs

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Tokyo 2020 Olympic - Non-Obvious Story Spotlight:
NBCUniversal Will Still Have Its Most Profitable Olympics Ever