Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Fast Company’s Brands That Matter is designed to honor the brands that plant their flags firmly at the intersection of business and culture in unique ways. But there are also bigger companies that manage to succeed in that task with multiple brands. The five 2025 Brands That Matter family of brands honorees didn’t just excel with a single brand—they’ve created cultural moments and sales momentum for multiple brands across their businesses. While being bespoke for each brand, the efforts are nonetheless able to drive solid results on engagement and overall business performance. Coca-Cola When you make the world’s top-selling soda, it might be easy to let the market shar…

As the holidays approach, and I walk through our historic mill in Faribault, Minnesota, I’m reminded of how much work matters—not just for what it produces, but for what it represents. At Faribault Mill, we make artisanal wool and cotton blankets the old-fashioned way: spinning, weaving, and finishing under one roof, much as we have since the company’s founding in 1865. We also design, market, sell, and ship those same products directly to consumers across the country. In a world where most companies outsource one step or another, we do it all. That makes us one of the few fully vertically integrated manufacturers left in America, and it gives us a unique perspective…

Since Pantone began naming its Color of the Year in 2000, we’ve seen two flavors of both brown and yellow, three variations of purple, blue, and turquoise, and four distinct takes on orange. But for the first time ever, Pantone’s color is essentially a non-color. Or you could call it every color. Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year is a white. In Pantone language, that’s code 11-4201—aka Cloud Dancer. Pantone—which operates somewhere between a trend forecaster and social psychologist—argues that Cloud Dancer is part of a great cultural reboot. In the era of AI, everything feels like it’s changing on a daily basis, and the overstimulation of the internet is only increasi…

As Sir Isaac Newton discovered, the core scientific law of gravity is that what goes up must come down. The principle applies in many areas, which is why markets are jittery about the near-unchecked, three-year growth of stock prices fueled by the strength of the generative-AI revolution. The market is on a tear, with a large gap growing even wider between public market valuations and the significantly higher private-market valuations of AI-exposed companies. The top five tech companies in the U.S. are, collectively, valued at more than the combined size of the Euro Stoxx 50, the U.K., India, Japan, and Canada—and account for around 16% of the entire global public equ…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Baiju Shah is constantly bridging different worlds. His formative years were shaped by observing his mother, who trained as a commercial artist, and his father, who was an engineer. As global CEO of agency AKQA, he leads an organization that deploys creativity and technology on behalf of clien…

When Levi’s CEO Michelle Gass was in Japan last summer, she and chief product officer Karyn Hillman wandered down the street from the brand’s store in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku neighborhood to a small, unassuming vintage shop called BerBerJin. They took the stairs down into its cavernous basement, where it keeps racks and racks of its best denim finds, and began the slow, laborious task of searching for treasure. A couple of hours later, Gass walked out with a pair of 1947 vintage 501s and an even rarer 1952 trucker jacket. “We tried on so many, many pairs of jeans,” Gass tells me over coffee in her San Francisco office in September. “You appreciate the nuances and beauty …

Enterprises have often dreamed about AI systems that can reason across their most sensitive data, execute multistep tasks, and explain their logic while remaining inside a highly governed environment. Snowflake and Anthropic are betting they can finally crack the code. Through a multiyear, $200-million expansion of their agentic AI partnership, the companies plan to deliver an operational “control plane” that uses Anthropic’s latest Claude models, such as Sonnet and Opus 4.5, to power enterprise intelligence. The announcement landed alongside Snowflake’s Q3 earnings for fiscal year 2025, which showed the company maintaining strong momentum. Snowflake reported $1.21 b…

AI promises a smarter, faster, more efficient future, but beneath that optimism lies a quiet problem that’s getting worse: the data itself. We talk a lot about algorithms, but not enough about the infrastructure that feeds them. The truth is, innovation can’t outpace the quality of its inputs, and right now those inputs are showing signs of strain. When the foundation starts to crack, even the most advanced systems will falter. A decade ago, scale and accuracy could go hand-in-hand. But today, those goals often pull in opposite directions. Privacy regulations, device opt-ins, and new platform restrictions have made high-quality, first-party data harder than ever to ca…

Remember earlier this year when everyone on your feed was wearing bizarre shoes, like Maison Margiella’s ballerina flats with split toes and mesh ballet flats? Or when statement scrunchies were all the rage? Don’t feel bad if you missed it. Blink, and the trend was over. Over the past 15 years, the pace of fashion trends has sped up thanks to social media and fast fashion brands. But over the past five years, with the rise of TikTok and Shein, they’ve gotten out of control. Micro-trends pop up in a subculture of the internet, lasting for just a few days before fading into oblivion. It’s gotten to the point where many people have lost interest in fashion trends altogeth…

During the week of Christmas, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced food recalls for several holiday treats. Before you begin enjoying your holiday snacks, it’s a good idea to check whether any of the goodies you have at home were recently recalled. Here’s what you need to know. The following food products are part of recent food recalls: ​Atwater’s cookie tins Choceur cookie butter holiday bark Choceur pecan, cranberry and cinnamon holiday park Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies You can find more details about each product recall below. Atwater’s cookie tins On December 22, 2025, Baltimore-based Atwater’s recalled…

Muhammad Ali once joked that he should be a postage stamp because “that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.” Now, the three-time heavyweight champion’s quip is becoming reality. Widely regarded as the most famous and influential boxer of all time, and a cultural force who fused athletic brilliance with political conviction and showmanship, Ali is being honored for the first time with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp. “As sort of the guardian of his legacy, I’m thrilled. I’m excited. I’m ecstatic,” Lonnie Ali, the champ’s wife of nearly 30 years, told The Associated Press. “Because people, every time they look at that stamp, they will remember him. And he wi…

The State Department says it will suspend the processing of immigrant visas for citizens of 75 countries whose nationals are deemed likely to require public assistance while living in the United States. The State Department, led by Secretary Marco Rubio, said Wednesday it had instructed consular officers to halt immigrant visa applications from the countries affected in accordance with a broader order issued in November that tightened rules around potential immigrants who might become “public charges” in the U.S. The suspension will not apply to applicants seeking non-immigrant, or temporary tourist or business visas. “The The President administration is bringing …

Is the future of concert venues more spheres? It seems so. Following on the success of Sphere in Las Vegas, plans are underway to bring a smaller-scale version to the National Harbor in Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, announced on Sunday that the state and Prince George’s County are working with Sphere Entertainment Co. and Peterson Companies to develop a 6,000-seat sphere, its second venue in the U.S. “This will be one of the largest economic development projects in Prince George’s County history,” Moore said in a statement. “We’re excited for what this means for our people, and how it will showcase the best of wha…

Curving walls of clay brick and the dappled light of a forest canopy make up the design of the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion, the annual architectural installation that has become one of the field’s most prestigious commissions. This year’s pavilion is being designed by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo of LANZA atelier, a Mexico City-based architecture studio. An annual installation outside the Serpentine art gallery in London’s Kensington Park that is freely open to the public from June through October, the Serpentine Pavilion is high-brow design that’s unusually accessible. Isabel AbascalAlessandro Arienzo Hitting the premise on the nose, LANZA atelier’s desi…

Efficiency dominates conversations about AI. We celebrate its ability to automate and optimize so businesses can move faster and people can work smarter. But AI is becoming more integrated into people’s lives in ways that go far beyond productivity. In a world obsessed with speed and efficiency, the future of AI isn’t just intelligent—it’s beautiful. AI is now a force that enhances creativity, self-expression, and confidence. AI does not just optimize life—it elevates it. Consumers are embracing AI for everything from recipe creation and travel planning to interior design and fitness regimens. They are turning to AI for recommendations on shows, movies, music, restaur…

Below, Chris Bailey shares five key insights from his new book, Intentional: How to Finish What You Start. Chris is an author and lecturer who explores the science behind living a more productive and intentional life. He has written hundreds of articles on the subject and garnered coverage in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, and Harvard Business Review, among many other outlets. What’s the big idea? Most of us struggle with follow-through, not because we lack discipline, but because we don’t understand what’s driving us and accommodate that which holds us back. When you clarify your core values, lower the friction to getting started, and align small inte…

Most factories still run on fossil fuels, whether they’re making potato chips or steel. But a new “thermal battery” could make it cheaper to do the same work with clean energy. Electrified Thermal Solutions, a startup spun out from MIT research in 2021, just fired up a demo battery that can hit 1,800 degrees Celsius—hot enough to make steel, cement, or chemicals. The battery uses power from the grid to heat its custom bricks when electricity is cheap. When a factory needs hot air later, it’s provided by the superheated bricks. It’s also cheaper to use than natural gas, so factories don’t need a climate goal to be convinced to make the switch. “This is …

It’s more obvious than ever why recording encounters with federal agents matters: without bystander videos, it would be much harder to disprove the government’s Orwellian lies about how Alex Pretti was killed last Saturday. But there are also risks when you pull out your phone to take a video at a protest or if you see an ICE agent abducting, say, a 5-year-old child. Here’s what to know about how to protect your technology and yourself. The First Amendment gives you a right to record “It’s really important to start with the fact that individuals have a First Amendment right to record police officers and law enforcement,” says Maria Villegas Bravo, counsel at t…

Shares of Facebook owner Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) are surging in premarket trading this morning after the company announced its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings yesterday afternoon. The earnings not only exceeded investor expectations, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg also laid out his vision for how artificial intelligence is set to transform the company—and personal computing—in the years ahead. Here’s what you need to know. Meta reports strong Q4 2025 earnings Expectations for Meta’s Q4 2025 were relatively high, but when the company announced its latest quarterly earnings after the bell last night, they exceeded what most investors had hoped for. Here are the…

Can I say it? If you have ever scrolled on social media and felt like you joined a conversation halfway through, with no context at all, you are not alone. Over the past few weeks, a type of posting has resurfaced online with the sole purpose of ragebaiting everyone. It is called vagueposting, and it involves being intentionally cryptic as a form of engagement bait. Common vagueposts include “can I say it?” without ever saying anything, or insisting “you won’t like the answer” without ever revealing the answer. Or “oh that’s not…” What? WHAT? The practice is not new. The term was originally called vaguebooking, which referred to posting emo Facebook statuses t…

Meta announced on February 10 that it’s introducing a new AI animation feature that lets users turn their still profile photos into AI-generated looping videos. It reads like an uncanny valley version of yesteryear’s Boomerang. The option to animate appears when users click “Animate profile picture” on their Facebook avatars, and the feature gives a limited set of animation options, including party hat, confetti, wave, and heart, in which a photo’s subject makes a heart shape with their hands. Meta says there will be additional options in the future for “seasonal moments and special events.” The tech is imperfect and can only work with what it’s got. Meta says…

James Van Der Beek was one of the biggest stars of the late 1990s and early 2000s. His family still couldn’t afford the cost of cancer. The actor, 48, best known for his portrayal of Dawson Leery in the ’90s hit Dawson’s Creek, died Wednesday. Van Der Beek’s passing comes a little more than a year after he announced on social media that he was battling colorectal cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2023. And while the actor and father’s untimely death is undeniably tragic, there’s another heartbreaking piece of the story to be told. His family was desperately struggling to afford the cost of his cancer treatment. Despite Van Der Beek’s successful career, w…

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. A February 9 blog post about AI, titled “Something Big Is Happening,” rocketed around the web this week in a way that reminded me of the golden age of the blogosphere. Everyone seemed to be talking about it—though as was often true back in the day, its virality was fueled by a powerful cocktail of adoration and scorn. Reactions ranged from “Send this to everyone you care about” to “I don’t buy this at all.” The author, Matt Shumer (who shared his post on X the following day), is the CEO of a startup called OthersideAI. He explained he was addressing it to “my family, my friends, the people I care about who keep…

Could a film industry entirely crafted from AI ever exist? Social media is abuzz with movie scenes made with Seedance 2.0, the latest tech in AI video generation, including everything from a fight scene between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise to an alternate ending for The Lord of the Rings. The tech’s proponents predict AI is the future of movies—but an actual brain behind Hollywood hits, Ben Affleck, is trending for his counterargument: AI may be a powerful tool, but it’s nothing without human creativity. Affleck recently shared his take on AI-generated writing in an appearance on a podcast. As an Oscar-winning screenwriter himself for Good Will Hunting (not to mention…

OpenAI, the maker of the most popular AI chatbot, used to say it aimed to build artificial intelligence that “safely benefits humanity, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” mission statement. But the ChatGPT maker seems to no longer have the same emphasis on doing so “safely.” While reviewing its latest IRS disclosure form, which was released in November 2025 and covers 2024, I noticed OpenAI had removed “safely” from its mission statement, among other changes. That change in wording coincided with its transformation from a nonprofit organization into a business increasingly focused on profits. OpenAI currently faces several lawsuits related to i…