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From forecasting to post-peak analysis, here’s how advanced PPC teams turn demand volatility into long-term growth. The post How To Manage Demand Fluctuation During Key Ecommerce Shopping Seasons appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Strategy textbooks taught us that sustainable competitive advantage that commanded premium prices was best protected by powerful barriers to entry. Build a moat, create switching costs, leverage access to high costs of entry, own distribution channels, and it would be difficult for startups to compete for your markets. But the forces of disruption operate by different rules, systematically destroying the very foundations of pricing power by making the previously difficult and expensive suddenly easy and cheap. The basis of competition changes, from excellence along well understood dimensions of merit to “good enough.” The ‘good enough’ revolution in pricing I have sympathy for incumbents. They’re accustomed to working really hard to deliver on demanding criteria for quality, reliability, and excellence, only to find that fickle customers are spending their money on “good enough” that do just fine. Consider some examples: “Peak book” and the advent of e-readers. E-readers lack the tactile satisfaction of turning pages, the smell of paper, and the aesthetic appeal of a beautifully bound book, not to mention the satisfaction of having an author personally sign your copy (if the latter doesn’t matter to you, please don’t break my heart and tell me). Yet e-books offer instant delivery, the ability to carry thousands of books in one device, adjustable fonts, built-in dictionaries, and search functionality. For many readers, that’s good enough. Further, Amazon can sell bestsellers for $9.99 because the marginal cost is near zero, undermining hardcover pricing power. And we’re now in a world where AI makes it easy for anybody to author a book, commoditizing the authority that being a book author used to convey. Digital Board Games vs. Physical Board Games. Electronic games lack the social ritual of gathering around a table, handling physical pieces, and reading opponents’ body language. But they enable play with friends anywhere in the world, handle all rules automatically, provide instant matchmaking with strangers, and eliminate setup/cleanup time. A $40 board game becomes a $5 app. Of course, there is a big debate about whether becoming subservient to the companies that want you to rent, rather than own, is a good thing or not. Streaming Fitness vs. Gym Memberships. Peloton, Apple Fitness+, and YouTube workouts can’t replicate the full equipment range of a commercial gym, the fine-tuning of a professional coach, or the energy of in-person classes. But they eliminate commute time, remove scheduling constraints, offer unlimited class variety, and provide privacy for self-conscious exercisers. A $30/month digital subscription undermines $150/month premium gym memberships for many users. In the industrial age, you could count on scarcity. It was hard to manufacture with quality at scale. It was hard to do advanced engineering. It was hard to source and assemble materials. For many of us, disruptors change the basis of competition entirely by removing the constraints that once justified premium pricing. The mechanics of price erosion Traditional pricing power rested on three pillars: scarcity, complexity, and friction. Companies could charge premiums because their offerings were hard to access, difficult to replicate, or cumbersome to replace. Disruptive technologies attack all three simultaneously. Take professional photography. The scarcity of skilled photographers, expensive equipment, and darkroom expertise once justified substantial fees. Smartphone cameras and AI-powered editing apps haven’t just reduced these costs—they’ve eliminated entire categories of photographic services. The wedding photographer still commands premiums, but passport photos, real estate listings, and product shots have been democratized beyond recognition. The financial services industry offers another compelling example. Robo-advisors now provide portfolio management that once required expensive human advisors. The algorithms aren’t more sophisticated than what top wealth managers offer, but they’ve made “good enough” portfolio management available for basis points instead of percentage points. When Charles Schwab can offer comprehensive financial planning for free as a customer acquisition tool, traditional advisors’ ability to charge 1-2% annually becomes increasingly tenuous. Strategic implications for incumbents In a world where technology makes everything easier and cheaper, competitive advantage increasingly comes from business model innovation rather than product superiority. Amazon Web Services doesn’t charge premiums because its infrastructure is superior; it dominates because it transformed computing from a capital expense to an operating expense, fundamentally changing how companies think about IT resources. The most successful responses involve three strategic moves. First, companies need to be open to unbundling their offerings, recognizing that customers will no longer pay premiums for features they don’t value. Second, they must shift from product-centric to ecosystem-centric thinking, finding new sources of value in sticky network effects and data rather than in the core product itself. Third, they must embrace the reality that in many categories, the price will trend toward marginal cost—which in digital goods means effectively zero. The new basis of competition As traditional pricing power erodes, new sources of competitive advantage emerge. Speed of innovation, ecosystem orchestration, and customer intimacy become more valuable than product features. Creating stickiness that makes it hard to switch, adding value to the experience and reinforcing new forms of scarcity – perhaps embedded in algorithms – are all powerful ways that digital firms sustain competitive advantage. Spotify, for instance, operates in a world where recorded music is effectively free. Its pricing power doesn’t come from exclusive content but from its recommendation algorithms, social features, and ecosystem integrations. The premium isn’t for the music—it’s for the experience around the music. And for artists, their revenue is increasingly coming from what is scarce – the experience of attending a live performance. The bad news is that for many experts with years of investment in the old paradigms, the good enough revolution will make their experience less valuable. The good news is that democratizing who can create what’s good enough can be a basis for massive growth. View the full article

Timothée Chalamet just posted an 18-minute-long video to his Instagram to promote his upcoming A24 film, Marty Supreme. It might be his best role yet. In the video, Chalamet—sporting a bright yellow tank top, buzz cut, and dainty necklace—joins a Zoom call full of supposed marketing executives who will be leading the promotional campaign ahead of the film’s release on December 25. After awkward introductions, Chalamet proceeds to fill up the meeting’s airtime with increasingly ridiculous suggestions for the film’s marketing efforts, leaving the eight other members of the call scrambling to accommodate his wild ideas. On A24’s YouTube channel, where the video is posted under the title “Timothee_Chalamet_internal_brand_marketing_meeting_MartySupreme,” it’s gained almost 100,000 views. And on Chalamet’s personal Instagram, it’s been watched almost 10 million times. The campaign, which is a parody of an actual marketing meeting, sees Chalamet fully commit to the part of “snobbish actor with no regard for his coworkers”—and clearly, it’s resonating. The meta concept sticks the landing by balancing absurdist humor with an uncanny eye for the moments that make our digital workplaces just a little bit universally awkward. An absurd ad campaign you just might buy into Marty Supreme, directed by Josh Safdie, is a sports-comedy film loosely based on the life of American ping-pong player Marty Reisman. The most information that we have about the film thus far comes from A24’s official trailer, released on November 11, in which Chalamet embodies a version of Marty who’s brash, determined, and extremely self-confident. Those characteristics come out in full force through the new Marty Supreme ad, which plays like a surrealist comedy of errors about how not to behave in a Zoom meeting. Less than two minutes into the call, Chalamet has already taken control of the meeting, explaining that his philosophy for the movie’s marketing is led by three principles: “culmination,” “integration,” and “fruitionizing” (which he admits is not a real word). Things only get weirder from there. First, Chalamet suggests that his character, Marty Supreme, appear on boxes of Wheaties cereal. Then he gears up to introduce something his creative director has been “working on for six months,” only to reveal a single orange color swatch. Finally, he escalates to suggesting that Marty Supreme’s marketing should include a fleet of blimps, an activation at the Statue of Liberty, and an orange Eiffel Tower. As Chalamet’s ideas get more and more grand, the other people on the call are forced to keep a straight face. It’s a particular genre of humor that plays unbelievable absurdity against the everyman, a concept that’s seen success in shows like Nathan for You, The Rehearsal, and I Think You Should Leave. Subtly skewering Zoom meetings for the sake of cinema Where the new Marty Supreme ad really shines, though, is in its subtle dissection of the awkward Zoom call, an experience that almost every remote worker suffered through during the pandemic. From the painfully long introduction sequence to the clunky shift to screen sharing (during which Chalamet reveals a computer background of himself receiving an award), constant interruptions, and sprinklings of corporate-speak, every beat feels like a truly torturous meeting. While it’s unclear exactly why A24 chose to advertise Marty Supreme through advertising parody (considering that it’s a movie that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the marketing world), the video does seem particularly geared toward an online audience of young Chalamet fans. By balancing the ridiculous with the real, the ad strikes a relatable note that’s perfectly suited to attracting modern viewers. “i feel like I am an imposter in a professional zoom meeting,” one Instagram user wrote under the video. “i know this is supposed to be a joke, but I’ve been in a lot of entertainment marketing meetings, they are exactly like this,” another fan wrote on YouTube. Some may argue that Dune or Call Me by Your Name represent Chalamet’s best work. Marketers everywhere know it’s “Timothee_Chalamet_internal_brand_marketing_meeting_MartySupreme.” View the full article

Here’s the thing about Wellington boots: They’re great when it’s raining, because they keep your toes dry and toasty. But when the rain stops, you feel a little silly stomping around in heavy rubber boots. But what if your rain boots looked like any other fashion-forward boot you’d be comfortable wearing rain or shine? What if they looked like, say, a classic pair of Dr. Martens? I have good news. Dr. Martens has designed a rain boot that mimics one of its most iconic designs, the 1460 eight-hole lace-up boot, which first came to market in 1960. It has a lot of the hallmarks of a Dr. Martens boot, like the heel tab for easy pull-on, the grooved sole, and even the stitching. What’s different though, is that each component is waterproof, ensuring that your feet will stay dry in puddles and downpours. “You style this boot just like you would any other Dr. Martens,” says Adam Meek, Dr. Martens’ chief product officer. “You could wear them to a festival, or a night out on the town.” The Comfort Boot That Became A Sensation Dr. Martens was originally founded by a German doctor, Klaus Martens, in the post-war years. At the time, most boots were made from hard leather and provided very little arch support. After he hurt his ankle in a skiing accident, he began tinkering with the design of a new kind of boot made from softer leather with soles that had air pockets that provided cushioning and bounce. This distinct insole was later branded “Airwair” and has been incorporated into the Dr. Martens logo. The shoes he prototyped were so comfortable that he decided to sell them for £2 (£68.31 or $90 in today’s money). Within five years, the brand was selling so many shoes that Martens decided to open his own factory and sell them globally. In 1960, the brand launched the 1460, a lace-up boot distinctive yellow stitching and a pull tab, which went on to become the brand’s best-selling style, and continues to be popular today. Dr. Martens shoes immediately took off with working class people who needed durable, comfortable everyday shoes. They were quickly adopted by postal and factory workers. But as the brand entered the ’60s and ’70s, the brand became popular with youth subcultures, including mods, punks, goths, new wave musicians, and hippies. And today, Meek says the brand continues to have a very wide range of customers. Last year, the brand generated £787.6 ($1.03 billion) in global revenue, which was a 10% dip from the year before, partly due to the overall slow down in the U.S. market. “From a design perspective, we stick very closely to the brand’s original design principles, which are grounded in simplicity and comfort,” he says. “But that has allowed for enormous versatility, and allows people to use it as a vehicle for self-expression. We sell boots to young people trying to make a statement, and older people just looking for comfort.” Designing a Rain Boot That Doesn’t Look Like One While many Dr. Martens fans wear their boots out in inclement weather, since many styles are fairly water resistant, the brand hasn’t designed many truly waterproof boots in its 78-year history. To design the new 1460 rain boot, Meek went back to the brand’s archive, and found boots that the original Dr. Marten designed before he even launched his brand. He found one that was waterproof, but did not have the silhouette of the Wellington boot, which has become the de facto rain boot design of our time. This inspired the team to think about how to reinvent the rain boot to look more like a traditional Dr Martens boot. “It was obvious there was a need for more rain boots,” he says. “Extreme weather means that it is becoming wetter in many parts of the world. We wanted to create a versatile boot that stayed true to the brand.” The team took the structure of the 1460 boot, but tried to make it fully waterproof. The boot is made from PVC plastic. All elements that would let water seep in have been eliminated, such as laces. And while there appears to be stitching around the heel, these are actually faux stitches: The heel is actually heat sealed to the upper using Goodyear Welting technology used to make tires. And the sole features that same comfy AirWair technology. Fashioning for Durability For the original working class people who embraced Dr Martens, it was important that the boots were durable, because they didn’t have a lot of disposable income to frequently replace footwear. Meek says that that durability continues to be an important design principle. Most boots within the brand’s catalog are designed so they can be easily re-soled by slicing off the sole with a heated knife, and sewing on a new one. In fact, the brand has a resale site where customers can send in old boots, which will be resoled and then resold. The company is in the early stages of developing a system that will allow customers to send in their old shoes to be refurbished so they can hold onto them for longer. These rain boots have been designed along the same principles. They’re made from heavy duty materials that will live up to years of inclement weather, and eventually, when the sole wears out, it will be possible to replace them with a welting process. For Meek, this is important because this encourages more environmentally-friendly behavior. “We approach sustainability through longevity,” he says. “I like to think of our products as something you can hand down to a family member, along with all the stories they carry.” View the full article

For much of its history, marketing thrived on creativity, intuition and an almost magical ability to connect with audiences. Campaigns were conceived in brainstorming sessions, executed over weeks or months and celebrated (or dissected) once the results rolled in. Theodore Levitt’s “The Marketing Imagination” stays on most marketers’ bookcases alongside their team’s awards. Much of the technology we buy inside marketing is mostly isolated and gives fractal views of the customer, never a complete one and never of the customer in motion (with or without us). The one platform to solve it all has been the misnomer we have been hunting for but will never find. The promise of a single point of heuristic overview is as unlikely as a nirvana state. That model is rapidly disappearing. In its place is a new reality for new college entrants, mid careerists and senior management looking to break the glass ceiling into the board room. Marketing as a continuous, data-driven and precision-engineered system. The artistry remains, but it’s wrapped in structures, processes and toolchains more familiar to software developers than to Mad Men. This isn’t theory. It’s the inevitable outcome of digital transformation — the central premise of “The Digital Helix,” which frames modern business as a living, adaptive DNA strand. In this DNA, marketing stops being a series of isolated campaigns and becomes an always-on engine of growth, fueled by data and shaped by customer signals in real time. From campaigns to continuous systems In the analogue era, campaigns had clear beginnings and endings. Teams worked in long arcs — brief, create, launch, measure, repeat. But digital customers don’t wait. They move fluidly across channels, expecting brands to respond instantly to their behaviors and preferences. This forces a shift from episodic campaigns to continuous systems: self-correcting, learning and evolving without the need for a restart. Engineers call this continuous integration; in marketing, it means messaging, content, and offers can change dynamically mid-stream, without pausing for a quarterly review. In this new environment, marketing isn’t just storytelling. It’s system design and it needs constant engineering (sprints, scrums, design, match up and perform and adjust mindsets). How we work — and the skills and mindsets we’re looking for — are going to transform who we are, and fast. Add agents, add GenAI and our teams need to think like learning software engineers, evolving from an MVP launch into something highly tuned and ongoing. Why the shift is happening now There are five key forces pushing marketing into an engineering mindset. 1. Data as the core material In engineering, everything starts with inputs. In marketing, those inputs are data: every click, search, purchase and pause in a video. These signals act like sensors, feeding an engine that decides what happens next. Modern marketing teams use real-time customer telemetry to guide decisions, trigger automated responses the moment certain conditions are met and maintain predictive models the way developers maintain codebases. Data isn’t an afterthought. It’s the raw material from which every experience is built. It is the DNA of these situations and not data as an afterthought from opinion. Not all data is perfect; most is directional but frequent review and adjustments with it gets marketing the north star. Every day, marketing leaders should be looking at the data that signals, shapes and even lets them construct new Origami ideas from it. 2. Modular, reusable assets drive everything. Think Lego, think Tesla, think Amazon — sovereignty over your assets is a moat. Software developers rarely build from scratch. They use libraries and frameworks. Marketing is adopting the same principle. Instead of creating bespoke content for each campaign, brands are building modular content objects: video snippets, dynamic templates, copy blocks — all designed to be reused, recombined and deployed across platforms. Some forward-thinking brands are even developing “APIs for brand” — structured repositories of logos, imagery and copy that partners and products can tap into instantly. And just like engineers, marketers are adopting version control, tracking the evolution of creative so they can roll back or iterate faster. Lego does this extremely well. There are 3,400 different molds and tens of millions of different models or set possibilities. Tesla is 100% dedicated to module design. Software developers use containers to move code around. The world has gone modular. Just look inside an Amazon warehouse. It’s all modular. Marketing has been too slow to embrace this global precedent. 3. Agile becomes the default, not the exception. This means comfort with degrees of success and learning, not winning or losing. Agility is no longer optional. Annual planning cycles can’t keep pace with shifting customer expectations. Marketing teams are moving to sprint-based workflows, borrowing directly from Agile software development. This means Scrum-style stand-ups across creative, analytics, and operations, the ability to deliver rapid prototyping of offers and messages, tested live with small audience segments and most importantly iteration based on performance data, not assumptions or beliefs. Agile marketing turns the department from a lumbering ship into a nimble fleet of fast-moving vessels — sort of your own version of Drake against the Spanish Armadas. 4. Journeys as living architectures require shepherds of the TQM The “funnel” is dead. What we have now is more akin to an experience architecture — an interconnected network of pathways that adjust based on customer behavior. Journey orchestration platforms function like traffic control systems, routing customers to the most relevant touchpoints in real time. When performance dips, marketers diagnose the “experience outage” and reroute flows, much like engineers reroute network traffic. In this model, journeys are not diagrams on a wall. They’re dynamic, reconfigurable systems based on connected moments where a target might enter, abandon, store, or share with others. Think in the target’s journey and the moments of choice, not in the outcome you want. The journey must be stewarded and curated at every point, and everybody owns the quality of that experience and not just the piece they might touch. Think TQM for marketing journeys. 5. AI and automation as the toolchain will lead to agent-to-agent marketing as the norm. In software development, toolchains manage the build, test, and deployment process and invariably vast swathes of the testing. In marketing, AI and automation are becoming our equivalent. Generative AI accelerates creative production and personalization. Predictive AI identifies high-value customers and moments to intervene. Automation frameworks ensure consistent execution across regions and languages. The marketer’s workstation of the future will look as much like a developer’s IDE as a designer’s studio. If this scares you, that is a legitimate concern. Orchestrated machine learning will lead to agent-to-agent futures in marketing where agentic and intelligent agents work together around parameters to deliver work products. Engineers with empathy — Marketing’s new mandate If all this sounds mechanical, it’s worth remembering one of the key truths from “The Digital Helix”: transformation doesn’t erase humanity — it enhances it. Engineering disciplines still require deep user understanding. Marketing’s human touch, empathy and creativity remain essential. The difference is that these qualities now operate inside scalable, measurable systems. Tomorrow’s marketers (as in, truly, tomorrow) will be comfortable discussing APIs, automation triggers and model accuracy. They will need to be fluent in design thinking, data science, and automation logic from a senior and a very junior perspective and they will have to be able to be storytellers who test and refine narratives the way engineers prototype features. A new marketing playbook The parallels between engineering and marketing are striking: Engineering PrincipleMarketing EquivalentExampleModular designReusable campaign componentsA product launch template that auto-localizes for each regionContinuous integrationAlways-on optimizationCreative that self-adjusts daily based on engagementAutomation pipelinesOrchestrated journey flowsTriggered nurture sequences tied to live customer signalsMonitoring & alertsExperience dashboardsInstant alerts when sentiment dropsVersion controlIteration managementTracking every revision of messaging This playbook isn’t theoretical. It’s already in use by leading brands. The Digital Helix in practice and the inevitable future In a true Digital Helix organization, marketing and engineering mindsets merge. Data intelligence and customer empathy twist together in every decision. Systems are designed for continuous improvement, not one-off success. Getting there requires technology investment in modular content systems, automation and analytics, cross-disciplinary learning between marketers, engineers and data scientists, shifting KPIs to measure system health and adaptability, not just campaign ROI. Customer expectations are being set by the smoothest, fastest experiences they encounter — whether ordering a coffee, streaming a show, or booking a ride. Meeting those expectations demands precision, speed, and adaptability. Engineering disciplines have excelled at this for decades. Now, marketing must follow suit. The marketers of tomorrow will think like engineers, design like architects, and create like artists. They’ll build systems that run 24/7, learning and improving in the background, while they focus on what no algorithm can replace: the human connection. That’s the future of marketing — and it’s already being built. View the full article

New York City scaffolding is so commonplace it has become a kind of extra architectural skin covering the city. It’s estimated that there are more than 9,000 of these “construction sheds” (another term for scaffolding) installed across the city, enough to stretch nearly 400 miles if they were put end to end. They do the important work of shielding pedestrians from potential falling debris during building construction and renovation projects, but they also shroud large swaths of sidewalk in dark and cloistered tunnels made of an unfortunate jumble of steel poles and plywood. Construction scaffolding is the city’s ubiquitous, utilitarian, and mostly unpleasant necessary evil. And now, a new effort aims to rethink their form with a series of new, more appealing designs. Six new designs for scaffolding have just been announced by New York City’s Department of Buildings, and they replace the dark and convoluted sheds of today with bright, airy, and open versions. The new scaffolding designs come from two design teams led by the New York-based architecture and urban design firm Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) and the global design and engineering firm Arup. Simplified and minimal, each of the six designs turns the workaday construction shed into a more open and accessible add-on to the built environment. Time for a makeover The new designs are a result of the “Get Sheds Down” initiative, an effort launched by the city in 2023 to update the look of construction sheds and revise the rules and regulations that govern when and where they’re used. The sheds currently in use in New York—and many other cities—have been largely unchanged since the 1980s. Usually hunter green and made up of a kit of parts consisting largely of steel poles and plywood, the current shed system is a boxy shield, but it’s also an obstacle for people moving down sidewalks, entering buildings, or getting in and out of vehicles on the street. After a public bidding process, the city hired two design teams led by PAU and Arup to reimagine the shed. They were asked to create six designs for alternative sheds that maintain public safety while also improving the pedestrian experience, beautifying the streetscape, and keeping the cost of installing sheds reasonable for building owners. PAU’s three designs use a slanted form, a transparent roof, and a streamlined kit of structural parts to make a much more open and airy shed. “We were very focused on the pedestrian experience,” says Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder of PAU. “The slanted design lets more light and air in. It’s a very simple thing.” Just as important, Chakrabarti says, was the elimination of the cross bracing between columns, X-shaped metal poles that act almost like walls on the existing sheds. PAU’s design makes each column stronger so that only one horizontal beam is needed to connect them. The baseline version of the shed uses this configuration with a transparent roof. A large version can be used for bigger buildings and broader sidewalks with more widely spaced structural columns that double up to provide more strength. And for smaller-scale projects or emergency installations, PAU has designed a version that uses a high-strength netting on its slanted side, offering safety and a nearly clear view to the sky above. A new take on an old form Arup’s three designs also bring in noticeably more light than the existing shed system, while also offering variability for the different conditions found across the city. One design, named the Rigid Shed, uses a grid-based structural system with prefabricated connection nodes, minimizing materials and connections during assembly. Another design, the Flex Shed, has a similar grid approach but with an even simpler set of posts and beams that can be adjusted in three dimensions to accommodate things like street trees, fire escapes, and the dozens of types of street furniture and infrastructure that exists on city sidewalks. Maybe the most elegant of all the six solutions, the Air Shed is a balcony-like cantilever that only anchors to the sidewalk at points alongside the building. Rather than creating a tunnel people have to traverse, it forms a thin canopy overhead that some people might not even notice. “The inspiration for the Air Shed is essentially a wall-mounted shelving system,” says Seth Wolfe, a principal at Arup. Arup has been working on these ideas for more than a decade. The firm first got involved back in 2009 when it partnered with the architecture firm KNE Studio on a submission to another city-led shed redesign effort. KNE Studio’s design was a finalist in that design competition, and the two firms remained in contact and continued to work on new shed designs in conjunction with the shed installing company Core Scaffolding. When the Get Sheds Down initiative launched, the team was primed to participate. “We had momentum going into the RFP,” says Kevin Erickson of KNE Studio. “We had stuff cooking on the backburner.” The six new designs resulting from the “Get Sheds Down” initiative join a range of scaffolding types in use in cities around the world, with a range of materials and price points. The winner of New York City’s 2009 shed design competition, Urban Umbrella, is now a provider of upscale sheds across the city. Simpler approaches are also in use. Chakrabarti notes that scaffolding in Hong Kong is still made from bamboo. He even suggested early on in the Get Sheds Down process that maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea in New York. “I actually asked the question,” he says. “I got laughed at.” New York City’s Department of Buildings is now working with PAU and Arup to make the designs available for public use by builders and contractors doing construction and renovation work on buildings across the city. Next, each of the new designs will be made into mockups that can be evaluated and tested. Some of these new shed designs could begin appearing at building sites and on city sidewalks before the end of 2026. The six new designs add to what Chakrabarti calls a “menu” of options for builders in the city, some of whom may still opt to use the existing system. He says providing more choice is a way to achieve the main goal of the initiative, which is to improve the experience of people in New York City who will inevitably encounter construction sheds. “You can use a Lego set to build an ugly thing, or you can use a Lego set to build a beautiful thing,” Chakrabarti says. “But the first thing you’ve got to do is understand the Lego set.” View the full article

Ways to rank in AI Overviews include focusing on long-tail queries, carefully structuring content, etc. View the full article

For its 2026 postage stamps, the U.S. Postal Service is going colorful and graphic. USPS gave a first look at some of the stamps set to be released next year, including the latest edition of its Love stamp, stamps commemorating the 250th anniversary of the U.S., and stamps depicting figures including a boxer, a martial artist and actor, and a pair of published poets. The stamps will be released on a rolling basis beginning in January and available at Post Office locations and online. “This early preview of our 2026 stamp program underscores the Postal Service’s commitment to celebrating the artistry and storytelling that make stamps so special,” Stamp Services director Lisa Bobb-Semple said in a statement. “Each stamp is a small work of art — an entryway into a larger story that connects people, places and moments in history.” Many of the stamps are bright or use typography in bold or creative ways. The 2026 Love stamps are a series of four illustrations of stylized red, white, and blue birds by illustrator James Yang that were inspired by midcentury U.S. design and Japanese children’s book illustrations, according to USPS. Stamps for Muhammad Ali designed by USPS art director Antonio Alcalá show an Associated Press photo of the boxer with his gloves up and his last name in big, all-caps, sans-serif type in red and black that evokes a boxing match promotional poster. A painting of Bruce Lee by artist Kam Mak shows the martial artist and actor against a yellow brushstroke background as he kicks the words “USA FOREVER” and “BRUCE LEE,” which were cleverly angled to look like he snapped them in two. For its “Figures of the American Revolution” stamps, multiple artists depict 25 people, from household name Founding Fathers like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin to lesser known figures as Deborah Sampson, the only woman to earn a military pension in the war after she dressed up like a man called Robert. The diverse selection of people were chosen to represent the Revolution as a collective effort, USPS says. “It’s unusual to design a pane of stamps featuring 25 different portraits” USPS art director Ethel Kessler said in a statement. “But that number felt essential. How else could you begin to tell the story of the Revolution’s complexity with fewer?” The typographic “Declaration of Independence” stamp also marks next year’s anniversary with “1776” written out in feather quill pens by typographer Juan Carlos Pagan. The “Lowriders” stamps pay homage to customized lowrider cars with photos by Philip Gordon and Humberto “Beto” Mendoza and gothic-style type paired with flourishes borrowed from lowrider paint jobs. Photographer David Schwartz contributed images for the “Route 66” stamps, which celebrate the 100th anniversary of the iconic highway. Other forthcoming stamps including “International Peace” showing an origami crane by Peace Crane Project founder Sue DiCicco, “Bald Eagle: Hatchling to Adult,” a pane of five stamps depicting the life of America’s national bird, and a stamp commemorating Colorado’s 150th anniversary. Writer Phillis Wheatley, who published what’s believed to be first book by a woman of African descent in the American Colonies, appears on the 49th Black Heritage stamp by artist Kerry James Marshall. Sarah Orne Jewett, a novelist and poet, appears on the 35th Literary Arts series by artist Mark Summers. Next year’s Lunar New Year stamp shows a horse mask by Sally Andersen-Bruce. USPS says more stamp announcements are forthcoming, and it’s also planning to rerelease an old stamp next year as part of its Stamp Encore Contest. View the full article

Spend a few minutes on developer Twitter and you’ll run into it: “vibe coding.” With a name like that, it might sound like a passing internet trend, but it’s become a real, visible part of software culture. It’s shorthand for letting AI generate code from simple language prompts instead of writing it manually. In many ways, it’s great. AI has lowered the barrier to entry for coding, and that’s pulled in a wave of hobbyists, designers, and side-project tinkerers who might never have touched a codebase before. Tools like Warp, Cursor, and Claude Code uplevel even professional developers, making it possible to ship something working in hours instead of weeks. But here’s the flip side: when AI can move faster than you can think, it’s easy to run straight past the guardrails. We’ve already seen how that can go wrong, like with the recent Tea app breach, which shows even polished, fully tested code can hide critical vulnerabilities if humans don’t review it thoroughly. Optimizing for speed over clarity lets AI produce something that works in the moment, but without understanding it, you can’t know what might break later. This isn’t just technical debt anymore; it’s a risk to customer trust. The instinctive reaction to solve this trade-off is to throw more tech at the problem: add automated scans, add a “secure by default” setting. Those things matter. But I’d argue that failure in vibe coding doesn’t start with tooling, it starts with leadership. If you don’t lead your team through this new way of working, they’ll either move too slow to benefit from AI or move so fast they start breaking things in ways a security checklist can’t save you from. The real job is steering, not slowing down When we built agentic coding agent Warp 2.0, we put a simple mandate in place: “Use Warp to build Warp.” That means every coding task started with prompting an AI agent. Sometimes it nailed it in one shot; sometimes we had to drop back to manual coding. But the point wasn’t dogma, it was to force us to learn, as a team, how to work in an agent-driven world. We learned quickly that “more AI” doesn’t automatically mean “better.” AI can write a thousand lines of plausible-looking code before you’ve finished your coffee. Without structure, that’s a recipe for brittle, unmaintainable systems. The real challenge was getting people to treat AI-generated code with the same discipline as code they wrote themselves. That’s a leadership problem. It’s about setting cultural norms and making sure they stick. Three things leaders need to get right 1. Hold developers accountable The biggest mental trap is treating the AI as a second engineer who “owns” what it wrote. It doesn’t. If someone contributes code to a project, they own that code. They need to understand it as deeply as if they typed it out line by line. “AI wrote it” should never be an excuse for a bug. Leaders can’t just say this once; they have to model it. When you review code, ask questions that make it clear you expect comprehension, not just functionality: “Why does this query take so long to run?” “What happens if the input is null?” That’s how you set the standard that understanding is part of shipping. 2. Guide AI with specifics Using large, one-shot prompts is like cooking without tasting as you go: sometimes it works, but usually it’s a mess. AI is far more effective when you request small, testable changes and review them step by step. It’s not just about quality, it also builds a feedback loop that helps your team get better at prompting over time. In practice, this means teaching your team to guide the AI like they’d mentor a junior engineer: explain the architecture, specify where tests should live, and review work in progress. You can even have the AI write tests as it goes as one way to force smaller, verifiable units of work. 3. Build the review culture now In AI workflows, teams move fastest when AI and humans work side by side, generating and reviewing in small steps. The first draft of a feature is the most important one to get eyes on. Have someone review AI-generated work early and focus on the big-picture questions first, like whether it’s secure, reliable, and solves the right problem. The leadership challenge is making reviews a priority without slowing anyone down. Have teams aim to give feedback in hours, not days, and encourage finding ways for work to keep moving while reviews happen. This builds momentum while creating a culture that values careful, early oversight over rushing to get something done. Guardrails only work if people use them Safety tools and checks can help catch mistakes, but they don’t replace good habits. If a team prioritizes speed over care, AI guardrails just get in the way, and people will find ways around them. That’s why the core of leading in the AI era is cultural: you have to teach people how to integrate AI into their workflow without losing sight of the fundamentals. The teams that get this right will be able to take advantage of the speed AI enables without bleeding quality or trust. The ones that don’t will move fast for a while, until they ship something that takes them down. Vibe coding isn’t going away, and I think that’s a good thing. So long as teams lead with people, not just technology, they will come out ahead and create better experiences for users along the way. View the full article

Finance of America is buying Onity's MSRs and loan pipeline in this niche as PHH retains its role as a subservicer and remains involved in buyout securitization. View the full article

Adobe's purchase of Semrush signals the growing importance of SEO platforms as digital marketing struggles with AI-driven uncertainty. The post SEO Community Reacts To Adobe’s Semrush Acquisition appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

US president endorses move to restrict regulation by states after lobbying from Silicon Valley View the full article

Tech giants are making grand promises for the AI age. The technology, we are told, might discover a new generation of medical interventions, and possibly answer some of the most difficult questions facing physics and mathematics. Large language models could soon rival human intellectual abilities, they claim, and artificial superintelligence might even best us. This is exciting, but also scary, they say, since the rise of AGI, or artificial general intelligence, could pose an uncontrollable threat to the human species. U.S. government officials working with AI, including those charged with both implementing and regulating the tech in the government, are taking a different tack. They admit that the government is still falling behind the private sector in implementing LLM tech, and there’s a reason for agencies to speed up adoption. Still, many question the hyperbolic terminology used by AI companies to promote the technology. And they warn that the biggest dangers presented by AI are not those associated with AGI that might rival human abilities, but other concerns, including unreliability and the risk that LLMs are eventually used to undercut democratic values and civil rights. Fast Company spoke with seven people who’ve worked at the intersection of government and technology on the hype behind AI—and what excites and worries them about the technology. Here’s what they said. Charles Sun, former federal IT official Sun, a former employee at the Department of Homeland Security, believes AI is, yes, overhyped—especially, he says, when people claim that AI is “bigger than the internet.” He describes the technology simply as “large-scale pattern recognition powered by statistical modeling,” noting “AI’s current wave is impressive but not miraculous.” Sun argues that the tech is “an accelerator of human cognition, not a replacement for it. I prefer to say that AI will out-process us, not outthink us. Systems can already surpass human capacity in data scale and speed, but intelligence is not a linear metric. We created the algorithms, and we define the rules of their operation. “AI in government should be treated as a critical-infrastructure component, not a novelty,” he continues. “The danger isn’t that AI becomes ‘too intelligent,’ but that it becomes too influential without accountability. The real threat is unexamined adoption, not runaway intelligence.” Former White House AI official “I was worried at the beginning of this . . . when we decided that instead of focusing on mundane everyday use cases for workers, we decided at a national security front that we need to wholesale replace much of our critical infrastructure to support and be used by AI,” says the person, who spoke on background. “That creates a massive single point of failure for us that depends largely on compute and data centers never failing, and models being impervious to attacks—neither of which I don’t think anyone, no matter how technical they are or not, would place their faith in.” The former official says they’re not worried about AGI, at least for now: “Next token prediction is not nearly enough for us to model complex behaviors and pattern recognition that we would qualify as general intelligence.” David Nesting, former White House AI and cybersecurity adviser “AI is … fantastic at getting insights out of large amounts of data. Those who have AI will be better capable of using data to make better decisions, and to do so in seconds rather than days or weeks. There’s so much data about us out there that hasn’t really hurt us because nobody’s ever really had the tools to exploit it all, but that’s changing quickly,” Nesting says. “I’m worried about the government turning AI against its own people, and I’m worried about AI being used to deprive people of their rights in ways that they can’t easily understand or appeal.” Nesting adds: “I’m also worried about the government setting requirements for AI models intended to eliminate ‘bias,’ but without a clear definition of what ‘bias’ means. Instead, we get AI models biased toward some ‘official’ ideological viewpoint. We’ve already seen this in China: Ask DeepSeek about Tiananmen Square. Will American AI models be expected to maintain an official viewpoint on the January 6th riots? “I think we’re going to be arguing about what AGI means long after it’s effectively here,” he continues. “Computers have been doing certain tasks better than people for nearly a century. AI is just expanding that set of tasks more quickly. “I think the more alarming milestone will be the point at which AI can be exploited by people to increase their own power and harm others. You don’t need AGI for that, and in some ways we’re already there,” Nesting says. “Americans today are increasingly and unknowingly interacting online with fake accounts run by AI that are indistinguishable from real people—even whole communities of people—confirming every fear and anxiety they have, and validating their outrage and hatred.” Abigail Haddad, former member of the AI Corps at DHS The biggest problem currently, Haddad argues, is that AI is actually being underused in government. An immense amount of work went into making these tools available inside of federal agencies, she notes, but what’s available in the government is still behind what’s available commercially. There are concerns about LLMs training on data, but those tools are operating on cloud systems that follow federal cybersecurity standards. “People who care about public services and state capacity should be irate at how much is still happening manually and in Excel,” she says. Tony Arcadi, former chief information officer of the Treasury Department “Computers are already smarter than us. It’s a very nebulous term. What does that really consist of? At least my computer is smarter than me when it comes to complex mathematical calculations,” Arcadi says. “The sudden emergence of AGI or the singularity, there’s this thing called Roko’s basilisk, where the AI will go back in time and—I don’t remember the exact thing—but kill people who interfered with this development. I don’t really go for all of that.” He adds: “The big challenge that I see leveraging AI in government is less around, if you will, the fear factor of the AI gone rogue, but more around the resiliency, reliability, and dependability of AI, which, today, is not great.” Eric Hysen, former chief information officer at DHS When asked a few months ago about whether AI might become so powerful that the process of governing might be offloaded to software, Hysen shared the following: “I think there is something fundamentally human that Americans expect about their government. . . . Government decision-making, at some level, is fundamentally different than the way private companies make decisions, even if they are of very similar complexity.” Some decisions, he added, “we’re always going to want to be fundamentally made by a human being, even if it’s AI-assisted in a lot of ways. It’s going to look more long term like heavy use of AI that will still ultimately feed for a lot of key things to human decision makers.” Arati Prabhakar, former science and technology adviser to President Biden Prabhakar, who led the Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Joe Biden, is concerned that the conversation about AGI is being used to influence policy around the technology more broadly. She’s also skeptical that the technology is as powerful as people foretell. “I really feel like I’m in a freshman dorm room at 2 in the morning when I start hearing those conversations,” she says. “Your brain is using 20 or 25 watts to do all the things that it does. That includes all kinds of things that are way beyond LLMs. [It’s] about 25 watts compared to the mega data centers that it takes to train and then to use AI models. That’s just one hint that we are so far from anything approximating human intelligence,” she argues. “Most troubling is it puts the focus on the technology rather than the human choices that are being made in companies by policymakers about what to build, where to use it, and what kind of guardrails really will make it effective.” This story was supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. View the full article

Michelle had barely knotted her apron strings before the day turned ugly. “When I told her I could only serve regular coffee—not the waffle-flavored one she wanted—she threw the boiling-hot pot at me,” she tells Fast Company, recounting one violent encounter with a customer. Working at a popular all-day breakfast chain, Michelle has learned that customer “service” often means surviving other people’s rage: “I’ve been cussed out, had hot food thrown on me…even dodged a plate thrown at my head,” she says. Lately, the sexual comments from male customers have gotten worse. (Workers in this story have been given pseudonyms to protect them from retaliation.) Still, she shows up, because she hopes to save enough to launch her own business soon. Once upon a time, “the customer is king” was a rallying cry for better service. Today, it’s a management mantra gone feral. What began as good business sense, touted by historic retail magnates like Marshall Field and Harry Selfridge, has curdled into a corporate servitude that treats employees as expendable shock absorbers for awful behavior and diva demands. With the holiday rush looming, customer-facing workers in cafés, call centers and car garages are bracing themselves to smile through every client’s tantrum—no matter how absurd. Rampant hostility—and it’s getting worse At Michelle’s workplace, the patron always comes first, while the safety of staff barely makes the list. Even after several viral videos of incidents at the chain’s restaurants, she says her complaints rarely go anywhere. One of her managers will step in if he sees something on the floor that’s out of line, but others just ask what she did to provoke it. “It makes me angry, yet I feel I just have to take it,” she says. “It’s an epidemic.” That dynamic is baked into North American service culture. “The ‘customer is king’ mantra has become a free pass for people to act however they want, with impunity,” says Gordon Sayre, a professor at Emlyon Business School in Lyon, France, who has been studying its impact on employees. “It breeds entitlement—and that entitlement gets abused, leaving workers with almost no room to push back.” The mantra dictates that service staff stay deferential—careful about their every word and gesture—while clients hold the upper hand. With some workers getting all of their take-home pay from tips and gratuity, customers can quite literally decide how much an employee earns. And according to Sayre’s research, that mix of financial power and enforced politeness makes sexual harassment at on the job more likely. The data mirrors reality. In a 2025 survey of 21,000 US frontline workers in healthcare, food service, education, retail, transportation, more than half (53%) said they’d recently faced verbally abusive, threatening or unruly customers. There’s also been a meaningful uptick in customers acting out. According to Arizona State University’s annual National Customer Rage survey, 43% admit to having raised their voice to show displeasure, up from 35% in 2015. And since 2020, the percentage of customers seeking revenge for their hassles has tripled. Such encounters take a toll: employees on the receiving end are twice as likely to report that their jobs are damaging their physical health, and nearly twice as likely to feel unsafe at work, according to analytics platform Perceptyx. ‘Management didn’t back my coworker’ Madison has been a server for more than a decade, bouncing between casual spots and fine dining rooms. These days, she’s at a former Michelin-starred restaurant in New York, and she’s long since accepted the industry’s devotion to ‘customer is always right.’ She sees it play out nightly, usually when someone insists a dish isn’t cooked properly, or worse, admits they just don’t like it. “There’s a specific type of persnickety person who gets drunk on the power of being rude and demanding,” she tells Fast Company. “Once I spot a table with that vibe, I know I’m in for a long night.” The problem is, the mentality rewards bad behavior. Recently, a diner claimed he’d only had one beer—when it was clearly two. “Management didn’t back my coworker, and the guy was charged for just one, which ultimately comes out of our tip pool,” says Madison. “He might have left with a bad taste, but he still got what he wanted.” Most hospitality staff Fast Company spoke with said the same thing: comping drinks, desserts, and even entire checks has become routine when someone complains. That generosity, however, comes at a time when restaurants and bars can least afford it. Across the US, the industry is being squeezed from both sides—soaring labor and ingredient costs on one end, and cautious consumer spending on the other. Growth in 2025 has been even slower than during the pandemic lockdown years. So why are so many establishments still giving freebies to difficult customers? Because in the age of online reviews, every unhappy diner is a one-person marketing department, ready to dish out brutal takedowns. A single post can tank a spot’s reputation, and naming individual staff is common practice. To avoid bad publicity, businesses are trading profit for peace, and making sacrifices to get those all-important five-star ratings. Even a middling three-star review, which most customers equate to a good or average experience, can obliterate visibility on platforms like Yelp or Google. For individual frontline employees, those digital judgments hit harder. A dip in ratings can mean being moved to a slower section or losing a lucrative shift. And in the platform gig economy, where algorithmic rankings rule, a single bad review can mean less work, or none at all. Danielle, a salon owner in Washington, remembers when an unhappy client not only left a bad review, but recruited 200 others to do the same. “I’ve no idea how she found so many people, but it was traumatizing watching one-star reviews just flood in,” she says. Danielle has contacted Google and Yelp in the past, but they refuse to remove reviews. Even on online platforms stuffed with fake and fraudulent bot reviews, the customer is always right, right? ‘Rest assured, we’ll be talking about you behind your back’ The real problem with the beloved slogan isn’t the complaints or stingy tips. It’s the emotional contortion required to stay polite while being treated like a punching bag. Rose Hackman, author of Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power, interviewed service workers across the industries for her book and found a resounding answer: what counts isn’t the service, it’s the smile. “Emotional labor is highly devalued, feminized and rendered invisible, despite it being one of the most central forms of work in our economy,” says Hackman. “We need to value it more.” Of course, that responsibility sits not just with consumers, but with employers too. Until the culture actually changes, employees cope the best they can. Avery, a server in an upmarket seafood restaurant in Philadelphia, has gotten better at protecting herself with age. “I used to fold like a beach chair to their needs and demands, but I’m less willing now,” she explains. “Outside of this job, I’m a performer, and there are similarities there: I put on a mask, act out a show, then the lights come up, I clock out, and I get to be someone else.” Sadly, no coping strategy is perfect. “Closing yourself off and faking an emotion—also known as surface acting—can look professional, but it impacts your mood,” explains Sayre. “Trying to fix the situation or reframe the customer’s behavior can protect your emotional health, but hurts performance.” Instead, venting with trusted coworkers acts as a vital pressure valve—a place to express real emotions and recover from the constant stress. Jesse, a New York bartender, is amazed by the “rancid” behavior he sees on the daily, but the camaraderie with his team keeps him sane. “If you walk in and make my life harder, talking to me in a way you would never speak to a friend or your mother; babe, you’ve decided what our relationship is gonna be,” he says. “Rest assured, we’ll be talking about you behind your back, laughing and joking about how you’re dressed.”With ‘customer is king’ still reigning, America desperately needs a reminder about the inherent social contract of emotional labor—a contract that only works if respect flows both ways. Without it, the whole system falls apart, leaving behind burnt-out staff and sour customers. As Jesse says: “You’re a guest in my home, so I’m gonna take care of you. All you have to do is enjoy your night, and pay me for the work I do.” View the full article

You’ve just finished a strenuous hike to the top of a mountain. You’re exhausted but elated. The view of the city below is gorgeous, and you want to capture the moment on camera. But it’s already quite dark, and you’re not sure you’ll get a good shot. Fortunately, your phone has an AI-powered night mode that can take stunning photos even after sunset. Here’s something you might not know: That night mode may have been trained on synthetic nighttime images, computer-generated scenes that were never actually photographed. As artificial intelligence researchers exhaust the supply of real data on the web and in digitized archives, they are increasingly turning to synthetic data, artificially generated examples that mimic real ones. But that creates a paradox. In science, making up data is a cardinal sin. Fake data and misinformation are already undermining trust in information online. So how can synthetic data possibly be good? Is it just a polite euphemism for deception? As a machine learning researcher, I think the answer lies in intent and transparency. Synthetic data is generally not created to manipulate results or mislead people. In fact, ethics may require AI companies to use synthetic data: Releasing real human face images, for example, can violate privacy, whereas synthetic faces can offer similar benefit with formal privacy guarantees. There are other reasons that help explain the growing use of synthetic data in training AI models. Some things are so scarce or rare that they are barely represented in real data. Rather than letting these gaps become an Achilles’ heel, researchers can simulate those situations instead. Another motivation is that collecting real data can be costly or even risky. Imagine collecting data for a self-driving car during storms or on unpaved roads. It is often much more efficient, and far safer, to generate such data virtually. Here’s a quick take on what synthetic data is and why researchers and developers use it. How synthetic data is made Training an AI model requires large amounts of data. Like students and athletes, the more an AI is trained, the better its performance tends to be. Researchers have known for a long time that if data is in short supply, they can use a technique known as data augmentation. For example, a given image can be rotated or scaled to yield additional training data. Synthetic data is data augmentation on steroids. Instead of making small alterations to existing images, researchers create entirely new ones. But how do researchers create synthetic data? There are two main approaches. The first approach relies on rule-based or physics-based models. For example, the laws of optics can be used to simulate how a scene would appear given the positions and orientations of objects within it. The second approach uses generative AI to produce data. Modern generative models are trained on vast amounts of data and can now create remarkably realistic text, audio, images, and videos. Generative AI offers a flexible way to produce large and diverse datasets. Both approaches share a common principle: If data does not come directly from the real world, it must come from a realistic model of the world. Downsides and dangers It is also important to remember that while synthetic data can be useful, it is not a panacea. Synthetic data is only as reliable as the models of reality it comes from, and even the best scientific or generative models have weaknesses. Researchers have to be careful about potential biases and inaccuracies in the data they produce. For example, researchers may simulate the home-insurance ecosystem to help detect fraud, but those simulations could embed unfair assumptions about neighborhoods or property types. The benefits of such data must be weighed against risks to fairness and equity. It’s also important to maintain a clear distinction between models and simulations on one hand and the real world on the other. Synthetic data is invaluable for training and testing AI systems, but when an AI model is deployed in the real world, its performance and safety should be proved with real, not simulated, data for both technical and ethical reasons. Future research on synthetic data in AI is likely to face many challenges. Some are ethical, some are scientific, and others are engineering problems. As synthetic data becomes more realistic, it will be more useful for training AI, but it will also be easier to misuse. For example, increasingly realistic synthetic images can be used to create convincing deepfake videos. I believe that researchers and AI companies should keep clear records to show which data is synthetic and why it was created. Clearly disclosing which parts of the training data are real and which are synthetic is a key aspect of responsibly producing AI models. California’s law, “Generative artificial intelligence: training data transparency,” set to take effect on January 1, 2026, requires AI developers to disclose if they used synthetic data in training their models. Researchers should also study how mistakes in simulations or models can lead to bad data. Careful work will help keep synthetic data transparent, trustworthy, and reliable. Keeping it real Most AI systems learn by finding patterns in data. Researchers can improve their ability to do this by adding synthetic data. But AI has no sense of what is real or true. The desire to stay in touch with reality and to seek truth belongs to people, not machines. Human judgment and oversight in the use of synthetic data will remain essential for the future. The next time you use a cool AI feature on your smartphone, think about whether synthetic data might have played a role. Our AIs may learn from synthetic data, but reality remains the ultimate source of our knowledge and the final judge of our creations. Ambuj Tewari is a professor of statistics at the University of Michigan. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

It took the Equinox Group—the parent company of luxury gym chain Equinox, Equinox hotels, and Soulcycle—around five years to recover from COVID. But the company has recovered, claiming that 2025 will be a record year from a profitability perspective. This year, it announced big plans for expansion. Harvey Spevak, executive chairman and managing partner of Equinox Group, tells us about the company’s plan to open 40 clubs in new markets, its expansion into the Middle East, and the real reason it ditched Kiehl’s for Grown Alchemist. In the next couple of years, Equinox plans to open 40 new clubs. What is driving this growth? We’ve always been a high growth company leading up to COVID. COVID was pretty rough. The way we thought about our strategy was to rebound the business and then get back to growth and transformation. We’re back to high growth from a financial perspective. From a growth perspective, there’s tremendous demand for the Equinox brand and the Equinox offering in existing markets, and also in lots of new markets. Over the last 12 months, we’ve built a pretty robust pipeline, like you’ve mentioned. That 40 locations is probably closer to 50 at this point. We’ve opened a bunch of locations in new markets this year. We opened our first in Philadelphia Rittenhouse, which is performing extremely well; better than we expected. We opened our first in Seattle in June, also exceeding our expectations. In the fall, we’re opening our first in San Diego. By the end of the year [we’ll have opened], San Diego, West Loop of Chicago, another one in New York, another one in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. We’re excited about all of these. We’ll open five locations between now and by January. How do you decide which new markets to enter? Our real estate team is very knowledgeable about all the markets where we’ve always wanted to go. When I say the markets, it includes cities as well as zip codes, if not by block. That’s a big part of why our unit economics are so strong. But the world has changed in terms of where there is demand. While there continues to be great demand in some of our existing markets like Manhattan, Southern California, Northern California, there’s new markets where we didn’t exist before. I mentioned Philadelphia or Seattle, but then there’s also the South. We recently announced our first location in Nashville that’ll open next year. We think South Florida will become our third biggest market outside of New York and Los Angeles. And a lot of that’s because of the migration of people from New York and other markets. We’re opening our first location in West Palm Beach next month. We sell memberships in advance of opening, and the response has been absolutely outstanding. In West Palm Beach, we started selling memberships in June—the worst time of the year it could be selling memberships, but we did that because we were going to open in November and we’re going to open with a member count that is higher than what we thought we would achieve in four years. We’ve all read about the migration to Florida, but what do you think are the factors leading for places like Nashville to become new markets? These markets are evolving rapidly and there’s greater desire for health and wellness broadly. It’s become a bigger priority during and coming out of COVID than ever before. That’s a global phenomenon. Then you think about the Equinox offering and the authority the brand has around high-performance living; it’s just kind of a perfect storm. Are you opening more Equinox hotels? We have a pipeline on the hotel side of around 10 to 12 new hotels. The difference is the gestation period for a hotel is much longer, particularly when you’re building a new hotel as compared to a club. It takes years. Our next hotel is opening in the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia in spring of 2026. Why the Red Sea? Because there was demand for our brand, our hotel, our club, our entire offering. We also have branded residential there, which is another part of our offering now. But there was a lot of interest in bringing us to a resort location. It’s a beautiful setting. It’s some of the most magnificent water you’ve seen in the world. It’s an undeveloped piece of real estate in Saudi Arabia. So in partnership with the government there and the Sovereign Wealth Fund, they have built out a big area, a marina. Us and some other hotels are going to be operating there. Ours is designed by David Rockwell, and we’re excited about that. We’ve already announced another hotel in Saudi Arabia. There’s one unannounced that’s coming—there’s potentially one, if not two, more in the region. Then we’ve also announced one in Nashville. There’s one we’re working on the Caribbean. It’s remarkable who stays at our hotel now. It’s literally a who’s-who of Fortune 100 companies to people out of Hollywood or in the music industry. Why is the Middle East an attractive location for you to set up shop? It’s fascinating what’s been going on there over the last four or five years. And it varies by country and city, but there’s so much interest in health and wellness, hospitality, living a healthy lifestyle, and the Equinox brand. The brand awareness is very high because a lot of the 30 and 40 year olds in the Middle East have been educated here in the U.S., and they’re educated in a lot of cities where we have big portfolios of clubs. After billionaire real estate developer Stephen Ross, whose company Related is a majority owner of Equinox, held a fundraiser for then-republican candidate Donald The President in August 2019, a lot of customers boycotted Equinox and Soulcycle clubs. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to respecting human rights. Do you worry about the reputational risk to your brand this might have? Fair question. When Stephen did the fundraiser back in summer of 2019, we definitely [were] given a very hard time by our members, our prospective members, what we call our alumni members. It was a time when cancel culture was a very big thing, and we definitely took our hits during that. But what I would also say is that, [it] is because people are so emotionally attached to the Equinox brand. We got a list of all of corporate America that at that time was donating to Donald The President or the Republican Party. It’s a who’s-who of American household names. We don’t donate to any party. We’ve always been, in effect, Switzerland and we believe we’re an inclusive community. I don’t mean that just by race or gender. Everybody can have their political views, everybody can have their religious views. That’s the magic of Equinox, that it’s such a diverse and inclusive community, both from our employee side and from our member side. What struck me was because people love us, they expect more from us. At CVS where you buy toothpaste, nobody cared that CVS was one of the biggest donors to Donald The President at the time. Nobody was canceling them. Stephen Ross, who is obviously a significant investor and a partner, made a personal decision to do something with supporting Donald The President. It was really from a business perspective more than anything, but that was his decision. It was unfortunate that it affected Equinox and SoulCycle at the time. As we move forward, we’re not going to weigh in on politics, we’re not going to weigh on religion, but people are allowed to have their personal points of view. That’s how America was built. It was an unfun time, but we’re always sensitive about who we partner with, big and small. When you talk about the Middle East, everybody is partnering with a lot of these countries, including Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia is transforming and undergoing substantial reform. We’re not alone in deciding that it’s okay to do business there. Equinox is in the middle of transforming its wellness offerings—last year you launched Optimize, a $40,000-a-year health and longevity program that involves lab testing, personal training, and nutrition and sleep coaching. Tell me about your investments in that category. It’s soon going to be a $10 trillion global category. There’s no brand that’s better positioned than Equinox to take advantage of what we refer to as high-performance living. If you listen to the true respected longevity gurus, they align with this philosophy. We talk about it from a science perspective. How do you live a high-performance lifestyle? We talk about movement, which is working out and being active. We talk about nutrition—I prefer the word nourishment because nutrition is medicinal. Nourishment is just eating well and eating in a way that gives you energy and fuel for the body. Then there’s recovery and sleep is at the core of that, but there’s other aspects to recovery at this point. A lot of the biohacking comes into that. Then there is community. Nobody’s written that narrative more so in the community than we have. We introduced Optimize last year through a partnership with Function Health [which does lab testing]. We take biomarkers [from blood tests] and then you are assigned a concierge who quarterbacks your program with a team of specialists, your personal trainer that is referred to as a coach, your nutrition coach, your sleep coach. Then we retest to see how the progress is going. You also have programs to support members using GLP-1s. Has their increasing prevalence changed the business? I don’t think it’s had a dramatic effect on the business, but I definitely think the needs and wants of certain members have changed. So early on when GLP-1s exploded, there was lots of press out there asking, does this mean gyms are dead? But what the world has learned through lots of science and research and the different experts is if you use that as a kickstart, but then compliment it and move towards living a different lifestyle, meaning all the stuff around being active, strength training, eating well…those are the people that are getting the greatest results from GLP-1. We saw it as an opportunity to create a special GLP-1 training program. I think what’s definitely part of the GLP-1 effect is that people realize strength training is more important than ever before. You’ve mentioned Optimize, your GLP-1 program, and Equinox Living. There’s another chain, Life Time, that has similar offerings. How do you view that competition? There’s some similarities in the programming, but the offerings are very different. They are much more of a rural to suburban play, and we’re much more of an urban play. We’re much more luxury, high touch service oriented and more boutique-oriented versus. But there is some overlap programmatically. I think that at the end of the day though, what I would say is if you want the Equinox experience, you’re not going to get it at Life Time. If they want to follow a lead on some aspects, that’s up to them, that’s flattering. I have a lot of respect for what they’ve been able to accomplish, but what we’re doing is very unique and our community loves what we do. So I don’t really view it as competition; I just view it as someone else operating in the category. And I think there’s plenty of room for both of us and others. Why did you ditch Kiehl’s for Grown Alchemist products in your locker rooms? I am going to be too transparent. I’m going to get yelled at by my team afterwards. Kiehl’s was a very successful relationship for a very long time—since 2009. But through all the changes of their leadership, which seemed to be very frequent, the product was, in our mind, a little stale, and they weren’t innovating around it. And there were some things in the product, which in the world of getting clean were not good ingredients, and they were reluctant to change [them]. So we said, this is not the right product for our members. Despite what they’ve said in the market, we decided to end the relationship. Interestingly, I’m going to point out—and this is where I’m really in trouble—is that other brand that you mentioned, that started in Minnesota… they’ve picked up our sloppy seconds [and started offering Kiehl’s in their locker rooms]. Nobody likes sloppy seconds. That’s certainly not us. So we ended the relationship. We decided to go another direction. There’s no doubt that the other direction caused an uproar. Clean is tricky, and Grown Alchemist is clean, but it comes with issues. It doesn’t suds as much. So anyway, to make a long story short in this regard. I would just say stay tuned for more announcements in the not too distant future. Were your customers asking for clean products? There was some of that, but also we were looking to say, what’s the future here versus what’s yesterday? We felt that Kiehl’s was yesterday, and we wanted something more progressive. And so we went in direction. There’s no doubt a lot of our members love the direction we went in. And other members were like—as you saw on Reddit—what are you doing? This is ridiculous. You’re cheapening out. It’s actually more expensive. Just so we’re clear, it was not us cheapening out. [But] we have some things coming in the not too distant future. What’s your own workout routine? I’ve practiced what I preach. I’ve had the same coach for 20 years who’s been amazing. I strength train with him three times a week. Then separately, I love to sprint. I probably sprint more than I should, but I sprint probably four times a week and do cardio like six times a week. I eat really clean although I believe that pizza’s a separate food group because that is my kryptonite, that’s my weakness. I’m a big believer in the sleep side. I do all the biomarker stuff that I mentioned early on to inform this, but I make sure I get my sleep regardless of what’s happening. Which Equinox club do you visit the most? That’s like asking which is your favorite child. I have twins, and I often joke about when I’m with one or the other, I tell them “you’re my favorite.” And then I tell the other one, she’s my favorite. You’re going to be paying a lot of psychiatry bills down the line. Probably, so far it’s worked out okay. But I like so many clubs for different reasons. Because my offices are at Hudson Yards, I use the Equinox at Hudson Yards most frequently. View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Earlier this month, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its annual survey, which found that the median age of first-time U.S. homebuyers in 2025 climbed to 40. That’s up from 38 in 2024—and far above the median age in 1992, when it was 28. At first glance, it appears that deteriorating housing affordability—driven by the Pandemic Housing Boom and the 2022 mortgage-rate shock—has pushed the age of first-time buyers higher. However, when you look across other data sources, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Census Bureau, you don’t see the same spike. ResiClub dug deeper into the data to figure out what’s really going on. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the average first-time homebuyer in 2024 was 36.3 years old—just a little younger than NAR’s estimate of the median first-time homebuyer age of 38 in 2024. Initially, one might suspect the difference simply stems from the fact that the New York Fed reports an “average” while NAR reports a “median.” However, when you peel back the onion, you’ll see there’s a large historical divergence between the two organizations’ figures. That raises the question: How did they each collect their data? The NAR data series is calculated by an annual survey. For this year’s survey, NAR mailed out a 120-question survey to 173,250 recent homebuyers. The recent homebuyers had to have purchased a primary residence home between July 2024 and June 2025. In total, 6,103 responses were received this year. The New York Fed doesn’t collect its data by survey. Instead, it’s looking at credit report data, which it says has “5% of nationally representative individuals since 1999.” Back in August, ResiClub emailed both NAR and the New York Fed to get their thoughts on the first-time homebuyer data divergence. Jessica Lautz, NAR’s deputy chief economist, told ResiClub on August 14: “The Federal Reserve is basing their data on credit data. The Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers [from NAR] is based on a survey of those who purchased a primary residence home in the last year. Thus, the NAR survey includes the 9% of first-time buyers who paid cash for their home and did not finance their purchase. Excluded are first-time buyers who purchased a vacation home or mom-and-pop rental as their first purchase. A trend which has popularized as young adults are unable to achieve homeownership in the expensive areas they may live in. The NAR data collection is mid 2023 to mid 2024 vs. a calendar year. Lastly, NAR uses medians as a measure of central tendency vs. average.” Donghoon Lee, an economic research adviser in microeconomics at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, told ResiClub on August 13: “We can’t tell you how the NAR annual survey was constructed, but in our previous blog, we wrote about a comparison between our data and NAR source. Here are some of the unsophisticated differences. New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel is a panel of credit report data where we follow 5% of nationally representative individuals since 1999, and is not a survey. We are not subject to any low response rate issue of the respondents. We identify first-time homebuyers when a mortgage account appears for the first time on the individual’s credit reports. If a home purchase was made without a mortgage (such as a cash purchase) then we don’t see them, and not included in calculating the statistics.” My takeaway? I’m going to take this particular first-time homebuyer data—especially the NAR series—with a grain of salt going forward. Instead, I’ll lean more on generational homeownership rates by age. And when you look at those figures, they clearly confirm that younger generations are entering homeownership more slowly than their older peers. ResiClub also messaged Apartment List to get its latest calculation. See below: Apartment List’s analysis shows that with each successive generation, homeownership rates take longer to ramp up. This pattern isn’t unique to Gen Z—baby boomers were slower to reach key homeownership milestones than the Silent Generation, Gen X was slower than the boomers, millennials were slower than Gen X, and Gen Z is slower still. The fact that each generation takes a little longer to enter homeownership—during both periods of “good” and “poor” housing affordability—suggests an underlying secular shift that isn’t just driven by affordability. In my view, that secular shift largely comes down to lifestyle/cultural shifts. With each new generation, Americans are spending more years in school, marrying later, having children later (and having fewer kids), and ultimately buying homes later. I call this phenomenon “lifestyle delays.” Given how homeownership rates are calculated (the number of owner-occupied housing units divided by the total number of occupied housing units), it’s likely that the gradual slowdown in homeownership by generation is actually understating the true drop-off. In plain English, what do I mean? If someone in their twenties or thirties is still living with their parents, they technically aren’t counted as their own household and therefore aren’t included in the denominator. And when you look closely at the generational data (see the Apartment List analysis above), you’ll note that with each generation, Americans are taking longer to move out of their parents’ homes. If you adjust for this, the “real” homeownership rates by generation—something John Burns Research and Consulting has analyzed—you find that the generational homeownership drop-off is indeed larger than the headline data suggests. View the full article

Even to the detriment of greater profits, the sector is offering ultra-low terms via temporary buydowns combined with larger forward commitments. View the full article

BFCM — Black Friday and Cyber Monday — is an exhilarating but often daunting time of year for business owners and marketers. Now that fantastic deals are table stakes, it can feel like shouting into a crowded room to ensure your brand gets the attention it deserves. But capturing market attention is well worth doing over this high-spend period. According to Adobe Analytics, Black Friday 2024 alone generated $10.8 billion in online sales (up 10.2% from $9.8 billion in 2023), and Cyber Monday saw $13.3 billion. The full 2024 holiday season reached a record $241.4 billion in online spending, making 2025 poised for another record-breaking year. To help you stand out from the crowd, here’s some guidance to help shape your Black Friday marketing strategy — complete with tried-and-tested Black Friday marketing ideas. In this article, you’ll find a host of tips, tricks, and tactics that can help you boost your already-planned Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns. If you haven’t started getting your marketing plan together, there’s still time — Black Friday in 2025 is on November 28th, and Cyber Monday, December 1st. Happy BGCM planning! Jump to a section: 1. Partner with media brands 2. Showcase your brand values 3. Stand out from your other sales 4. Make your sale invite-only 5. Go anti-black Friday 6. Leverage user-generated content (UGC) 7. Try live shopping 8. Tap into TikTok for authenticity 9. Make a ‘mistake’ Think ahead for and beyond BFCM 1. Partner with media brandsTake it from a former lifestyle journalist — Black Friday marketing was also wild in the media. Many online publications take advantage of affiliate sales links with product recommendations and round-ups. Brands like Women’s Health, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping started rolling out their Black Friday campaigns weeks ago. They will undoubtedly have several writers exclusively focused on new reviews and round-ups on the day (so it's not too late to reach out!). Reach out to publications within your niche, particularly if you can offer a commission on sales for loyal customers via their website. Getting your brand featured on their site is hugely beneficial beyond just the additional eyeballs. As anyone in content marketing will know, backlinks on a high-authority site do wonders for your SEO (search engine optimization). You’ll also be building relationships with journalists in your niche, so your brand is top of mind when an article you might be a fit for comes up. It’s a win-win. 2. Showcase your brand valuesFor many people, the over-the-top consumerism of Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be a little jarring. Consider if that might apply to customers in your target audience — would launching a high-stakes Black Friday campaign erode trust with your long-time buyers? Outdoor apparel retailer REI has led the charge here, opting out of Black Friday for years on the trot. They even closed their stores and sent their employees home. Their goal was for their loyal customers to feel empowered to skip Black Friday and #OptOutside. Patagonia is another brand at the forefront of this movement. In 2011, they took out a full-page ad in the New York Times emblazoned with the headline, “Don’t buy this jacket.” The initiative was part of their ongoing Common Threads initiative, which aims “to address the issue of consumerism and do it head on.” @patagonia's 'dont buy this jacket' campaign integrated their #ecofriendly core values into their marketing- they believe in #sustainability, encouraging consumers to support their thread-up intiative and reduce their waste. #uwamktg6 pic.twitter.com/ykwwVBX3XR — Charlotte Gibbs (@Charlottemg2000) March 22, 2021 Lush has also used Black Friday to show off their brand values, albeit slightly differently. Over Black Friday weekend in 2017, the UK-based luxe skincare brand launched 14,600 special edition orangutan soaps at £8.25 each, with 100% of proceeds going to the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS). The soaps sold out within hours. In 2020, sustainable footwear brand Allbirds did something similar by raising their prices by $1 across the board. All the proceeds went to Fridays For Future, the youth-led international climate movement founded by climate activist Greta Thunberg. “Black Friday deals may satiate momentary desire, but their impact on the planet is a lot more long-lasting,” said the company in a release. “That’s why Allbirds wanted to do things a bit differently this year, flipping tradition and doubling down on our commitment to sustainability.” 🫶If this sounds like a good fit for your brand, check out our guide to purpose-driven marketing.3. Stand out from your other salesIf Black Friday is your biggest sale day of the year, why not go all-in? Cult skincare brand Glossier does this brilliantly by having only one website sale yearly — around Black Friday. The fact that this is the only time make-up lovers can nab their favorite products at a discounted rate makes the sale a newsworthy event in and of itself. Widely followed publications like Elle and Glamour started covering the big event several weeks early, and the r/glossier subreddit is already buzzing with chatter. 4. Make your sale invite-onlyFor certain target markets, exclusivity makes sense. You could use your Black Friday marketing to make your most-valued customers feel special rather than just another beep on the proverbial cash register. A great way to do this is to send out invites or special discount codes to certain segments of your audience. Amazon is the most obvious example of this with their invite-only sales, where customers effectively have to opt in for specific products on big sale events like Prime Day. While leveraging your current subscriber or mailing list in this way is a great option, you could use the opportunity to forge deeper connections with a smaller group of valued customers. Try pinpointing your most engaged newsletter subscribers or social media followers, or most frequent customers and then reaching out with a more personalized message and discount code. Sure, it might involve a little extra legwork, but a personal touch goes a long way when it comes to building trust with loyal customers. 5. Go anti-black FridayAs is the case with REI and Lush, it’s not uncommon to see businesses advertising how they’re not going to jump into the seemingly money-grabbing fray. If it makes sense for your brand, you could also take a stand against the Black Friday marketing frenzy — but in a more tongue-in-cheek way. Cards Against Humanity has gained notoriety for going all in on this tactic multiple times over the years in increasingly clever ways. That includes increasing the price of a deck of cards in a “once-in-a-lifetime” deal and a wild 99% off sale on an array of random items. One customer apparently nabbed a Ford Fiesta car for under $100. Un-ignorable marketing idea from: @CAH In 2021, Cards Against Humanity didn’t offer any Black Friday deals They actually raised their price by $5! The move generated a ton of buzz The result? They sold MORE games than the previous year—genius, right? pic.twitter.com/fStgftcBJE — Katelyn Bourgoin 🧠 (@KateBour) November 19, 2022 In 2015, they made headlines for charging customers $5 for… absolutely nothing. Astoundingly, it worked. The company reportedly made over $70,000. Of course, having a cult-like following of customers who delight in the bizarre certainly helps. 6. Leverage user-generated content (UGC)You probably have a lot of content to create around these busy holiday dates, so it can be quite a relief to get some user-generated content (UGC) from your community by re-sharing the content that they’re already making. This could take a lot of different forms, like photos of your brand and product or positive user reviews. It’s especially easy on Instagram Stories, where you can reshare someone else’s post to your Stories with just a couple of taps. Some companies go the extra mile and create programs to incentivize users to create and share content about the brand, particularly around big sale events. You can tie giveaways into this strategy — offer prizes to random winners who have used a certain hashtag or commented on a post. This tactic works especially well on TikTok, where brands like BPerfect Cosmetics and Gymshark dominated Black Friday 2024 with funny, authentic videos that championed their brand identity while showcasing deals. TikTok's algorithm rewards genuine, engaging content — making it perfect for user-generated campaigns. Here are some more examples: Ask your community to share a photo of their must-nab product in the saleAsk followers to vote on which item they want to see on sale on BFCMEncourage them to share a snap of them with their Black Friday purchase7. Try live shoppingThere is so much untapped potential for social media lives when it comes to Black Friday marketing. All the major social platforms offer some sort of live streaming features (here’s our full guide to Instagram Lives), which could be used in a plethora of ways to build hype, share deals, and gain traction online. Some options could include: Live vox pops in store with customers (with their permission, of course)A live unveiling of the biggest Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals in the run-up to the dayA live event with exclusive discount codes for the attendeesMeUndies is often cited as the brand that pioneered the latter with its Black Friday Drawer Buster Event. “Skip the stores on Friday and watch us live for secret promotions only being offered to you, our MeUndies Fans,” they teased in the event promo. “We're giving the best deals you have ever seen from MeUndies.” The event (which even featured a live DJ) didn’t disappoint. As more and more people joined, they unveiled bigger and bigger deals. According to this report from Shopify, over 13,000 people tuned it, with attendees converted at a rate of 25% — that’s 13 times the average conversion rate MeUndies sees on Facebook. Live shopping has evolved significantly on TikTok and Instagram, with brands increasingly using these features for Black Friday 2025. The format works particularly well for younger audiences. BPerfect Cosmetics (more on them below) already has a TikTok Live event scheduled for the kick-off of Black Friday 'week' in 2025. 8. Tap into TikTok for authenticityTikTok emerged as one of the biggest success stories of Black Friday marketing 2024, with brands seeing significant returns on investment — particularly when targeting Gen Z shoppers. The key to success on TikTok is authenticity over polish. Brands like BPerfect Cosmetics crushed it with humorous, low-production videos that felt native to the platform. They used trending sounds, relatable memes, and quick, punchy messaging about their deals — no fancy production necessary. Gymshark took a slightly different approach, partnering with fitness influencers across Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. The videos feel less marketing, more in-the-moment windows into the world of the brand's best-loved ambassadors. Gymshark has also made it really easy for shoppers to take advantage of the Black Friday deals, putting the sale link front and center on all their social bios. 9. Make a ‘mistake’The tweet below might seem like every social media manager’s worst nightmare — but it may have been part of a clever Black Friday marketing tactic by McDonald’s all along. Black Friday **** Need copy and link**** — McDonald's Corporation (@McDonaldsCorp) November 24, 2017 I’m inclined to think so — the fact that the tweet still exists (and was quickly followed up with a clever response) seems to indicate it was planned. Regardless, the seemingly innocuous mistake garnered 1.1K responses, 21K retweets, and over 60K likes. The play wasn’t attached to any kind of special deal, discount, or sale, but, as one commenter put it, “It's genius. It's Black Friday, and everyone is talking about them now. Coffee to fuel their shopping habits!” If your social media tone of voice is not quite as cheeky as McDonald's, you could adopt a tactic more along the lines of the ‘marketing intern’ email sent to Brooklinen’s entire subscriber list, which was supposedly only meant to go to their superiors for checking. Source: Architectural DigestAfter some speculation, the linen brand confirmed it was planned. "We wanted to surprise our customers (and the people who have supported us over the years) by making Black Friday accessible for a full week!" a spokesperson said. They also reassured those worried about the intern in question, Mark. "We also wanted to pay homage to the Mark in all of us, for all the accidental emails we’ve sent over the years!" Think ahead for and beyond BFCMThe Black Friday weekend is almost a four-day affair, if not more. There’s Gray Thursday, which is U.S. Thanksgiving Day, then there’s Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, which some companies extend for the whole next week. If you’re thinking of using multiple days for your marketing plans, consider some of the unique behaviors of your audience on these days. For instance, on Black Friday, you might tie some of your marketing into Buy Online/Pickup In Store specials (commonly referred to as BOPIS), and on Cyber Monday, offer special discounts for online customers exclusively. It’s worth getting ahead of the curve, too. Around 43% of consumers start their holiday season shopping before November, the NRF reports. There are several reasons for this, including spreading out their budget (60%), avoiding the stress of last-minute shopping (46%), and avoiding crowds (45%). Consider the behavior of these buyers when launching your BFCM campaigns, too — many will be happy to nab a good deal ahead of the stress of November 20th. If you haven’t yet finalized your Black Friday or Cyber Monday plan yet, fear not. The higher spending time will, of course, continue well into the festive season. The NRF also found that the majority of shoppers (62%) expect they won’t finish until December — so there’s plenty of time for that groundbreaking marketing campaign. Do you have a genius Black Friday or Cyber Monday campaign you think is worthy of this list? We’d love to hear about it! Message @buffer on Threads, LinkedIn, or Instagram to get in touch. View the full article

President The President recently promised to make America the “crypto capital of the world.” And his administration is working hard to make that pledge a reality. White House officials have established a working group on digital asset markets and directed federal agencies to craft a strategy to cement U.S. leadership. The president’s legislative team, meanwhile, helped push the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act),through Congress earlier this summer, thus creating the first federal framework for stablecoins. And they’re working to pass the Clarity Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act), which would finally settle disputes over which regulator oversees digital assets. It’s refreshing to see our political leaders working to bring digital assets into the financial mainstream, especially after years of hostility from the prior administration. But the work is far from finished—and achieving universal legitimacy will require not just favorable laws and regulations, but also behavioral changes at leading crypto firms. Conflicting guidance For more than a decade, crypto innovators faced a patchwork of state regimes and conflicting federal guidance. The lack of clear regulation led to a proliferation of scams and bad actors—and kept many investors on the sidelines. Big banks and other legacy financial institutions hesitated to adopt cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology they’re based on, even as top financiers acknowledged blockchain’s potential to reshape the entire industry. The GENIUS Act represents Washington’s first serious attempt to genuinely regulate—rather than ignore or suppress—one of the leading forms of cryptocurrency. The new law requires stablecoin issuers to maintain dollar-for-dollar reserves and submit to audits. Far from rejecting this level of regulation, crypto leaders practically begged for it. They recognized that federal oversight and transparent standards are needed to transform what the public previously viewed as a speculative product into a reliable payment instrument. That’s why industry leaders are also working with the White House and Congress to finalize the Clarity Act, which would define the boundaries of authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, delivering the kind of predictability that underpins every functioning capital market. Cultural shift But better regulation alone won’t bring about the mainstream approval that industry leaders seek. Only an internal cultural shift—and rigorous self-policing—can deliver that. Every blockchain transaction depends on various forms of intellectual property—from patents on mobile crypto wallets and bitcoin mining data centers to trade secrets in proprietary trading algorithms, and copyrights protecting exchange software to trademarks that build consumer trust. Coinbase, for instance, holds nearly 200 active patents. But most of the intellectual property powering today’s blockchain activity belongs to third parties outside the crypto industry. Yet even as leading platforms generate billions in revenue, the industry remains reluctant to acknowledge the legitimacy of IP rights. This reluctance is playing out in court. In May, Bancor’s nonprofit arm sued Uniswap, alleging that the leading decentralized exchange built its multibillion-dollar business on Bancor’s patented automated market maker technology without authorization. And earlier this summer, Malikie Innovations filed suits against Core Scientific and Marathon Digital, claiming their bitcoin mining operations infringe on Malikie’s patents for elliptic curve cryptography. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), a cryptographic technique developed and patented by Certicom years before crypto went mainstream, was licensed by companies like Cisco and Motorola as well as the National Security Agency. Cases like these highlight the tension: Crypto companies depend on IP to function, but too many are willing to disregard the IP rights of others, even as they clamor for legitimacy. Not how respectable companies operate This simply isn’t the way respectable companies in mature industries operate. Spotify and Apple Music wouldn’t enjoy their positive reputations if they refused to pay royalties to artists and record labels. Streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu would be pariahs if they pirated films. Banks would be shunned by investors alike if they treated software licenses as optional. If leading crypto firms want to be seen as respectable, investable pillars of the global economy, they need to meet those same standards when it comes to intellectual property. Digital assets are here to stay. But universal legitimacy will come only from a combination of comprehensive regulation and a cultural shift within the industry itself. View the full article

Learn AI search optimization tactics to get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Start capturing high-intent traffic. View the full article

If you slip a tiny wearable device on your fingertip and slide it over a smooth surface like a touchscreen, you can feel digital textures like denim or mesh. The device, designed by researchers at Northwestern University, is the first of its kind to achieve “human resolution,” meaning that it can more accurately match the complex way a human fingertip senses the world. In previous attempts at haptic devices like this, “once you compare them to real textures, you realize there’s something still missing,” says Sylvia Tan, a PhD student at Northwestern and one of the authors of a new study in Science Advances about the research. “It’s close, but not quite there. Our work is trying to just get that one step closer.” The wearable, made from flexible, paper-thin latex, is embedded with tiny nodes that push into the skin in a precise way and can move up to 800 times per second. Past devices had low resolution—the touch equivalent of a pixelated image or an early movie from the 1890s with so few frames that the movement looks jerky. Using nodes and arranging them in a particular density improves that resolution. Earlier devices were also bulky. The ultrathin new technology, which weighs less than a gram, is designed to be comfortable to wear. “A big goal was to make it very lightweight so you aren’t distracted by it,” Tan says. “And [to make] something that we call ‘haptically transparent’—that means that even when you’re wearing it, you can still perceive the real world, so you can perform everyday tasks.” In the study, users could identify fabrics like corduroy or leather with 81% accuracy. The technology is still in development, but in the future, it could make it possible to feel products as you shop online. It could also have more immediate uses for people who are visually impaired, like making it possible to feel a tactile map or translating text on a screen to braille without a large, expensive device. On devices like microwaves, where physical buttons have often been replaced by flat touchscreens, the wearable could help a visually impaired person know where to push. It could also help improve human-robot interfaces. “In the medical field, the Da Vinci robot has very good kinesthetic force feedback,” Tan says. “But getting a surgeon to feel exactly what’s happening at your fingertip as you move the angle of your finger is not quite there. And that’s very important for high-skill workers.” View the full article

When it comes to podcasting, it’s Joe Rogan’s world. The Joe Rogan Experience was the most popular podcast of 2025, according to Apple’s just-released rankings. This is the first year Rogan has topped the Apple charts. Last year, he took the bronze medal, behind The Daily and Crime Junkie (both of which still made the Top 10 this year). Two years ago, he didn’t make the list (thanks to an exclusivity agreement with Spotify, signed in 2020—where he also currently holds the No. 1 spot). Rogan’s podcast certainly had head-turning guests this year, including a much-listened-to interview with Elon Musk. The Daily, from The New York Times, was Apple’s second-most popular podcast this year, with The Mel Robbins Podcast debuting at No. 3, after not making the list in 2024. Robbins, whose podcast offers advice to people who want to change their lives, said she was shocked by the high placement. (Her podcast was also the most followed show on Apple in 2025 and had the most shared episode.) “I just can’t believe it,” she wrote to listeners on social media. “Our small team, you, and this global community turned this little podcast that started in a room above my garage into one of the biggest podcasts in the world. I am so proud and so grateful.” Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy and The Ezra Klein Show were the other new additions to the 2025 list. True crime, news, and big podcasting names dominated the top shows. Here’s how the list ranked the podcasts for 2025. The Joe Rogan Experience The Daily The Mel Robbins Podcast Crime Junkie Dateline NBC SmartLess Call Her Daddy This American Life Huberman Lab The Ezra Klein Show Amy Poehler’s Good Hang with Amy Poehler was the top new podcast of the year, followed by Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce and several true-crime offerings. Among Apple’s top series, The Telepathy Tapes, which investigates the controversial claim that some nonspeaking individuals with autism have telepathic abilities, was the leader. That podcast, hosted by Ky Dickens, has been particularly polarizing among listeners, with some listening obsessively and many calling it a grift. “An incredible and humbling honor,” the podcast team wrote on social media. “Thank you to everyone who shared, listened, and opened their minds. We are so beyond grateful for all of the listeners.” The most surprising ranking of the list, though, was likely the podcast that didn’t top the charts. Among the most listened-to podcast episodes of the year, Taylor Swift’s appearance on New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce only ranked third, behind offerings from The Telepathy Tapes and Crime Junkie. In fairness, the Swift podcast aired in August, while The Telepathy Tapes episode that topped the list was from September 2024 and the Crime Junkie episode was from April, giving both more time to gather listeners. Here’s how the other lists ranked this year. Top new shows Good Hang with Amy Poehler Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce Deadly Mirage Blink: Jake Haendel’s Story Murder in the Moonlight Devil in the Desert What Happened to Holly Bobo? Cold Blooded: Mystery in Alaska Unicorn Girl The Best People with Nicolle Wallace Top series The Telepathy Tapes The Binge Cases Deadly Mirage Blink: Jake Haendel’s Story Dateline Originals Murder in the Moonlight Serial Three Devil in the Desert CounterClock Top episodes The Telepathy Tapes: “Unveiling the Hidden World of Telepathic Communication in a Silenced Community” Crime Junkie: “Murdered: The Feeney Family” New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce: “The Taylor Swift Episode” The Joe Rogan Experience: “#2223 – Elon Musk” The Daily: “The President, Again” Blink: Jake Haendel’s Story: “Blink” Deadly Mirage: “Death in the High Desert” SmartLess: “Amy Poehler” Good Hang with Amy Poehler: “Tina Fey” Murder in the Moonlight: “In Cold Blood” View the full article

Here’s a sad story: The other day, my wife and I woke up and realized we were out of coffee. Honestly, if you want to throw a wrench into the Murphy household and hamper our routine, take away the coffee. Anyway, the story ends much better; I threw on a baseball hat and drove to the supermarket down the road. But it also reminded me of a study I’ve wanted to share here, led by researchers at Tulane University who analyzed data on 40,725 Americans and their coffee-drinking habits over nearly a decade. In short, they found something remarkable about when people drink their coffee. Drink it in the morning The study, supported by the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, was published in January in the European Heart Journal. It determined that people who drink coffee primarily in the morning had significantly lower mortality rates than people who either don’t drink coffee at all—or who drink it throughout the entire day. Examples: Morning coffee drinkers had a 16% lower risk of dying from any cause during the study period compared with non-coffee drinkers. They also had a 31% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease specifically. People who drank coffee all day long, by contrast, showed no significant reduction in mortality risk compared with non-coffee drinkers at all. “Research so far suggests that drinking coffee doesn’t raise the risk of cardiovascular disease, and it seems to lower the risk of some chronic diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes,” said Lu Qi, who led the study at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “Given the effects that caffeine has on our bodies, we wanted to see if the time of day when you drink coffee has any impact on heart health.” Morning type versus all-day type The study included adults from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2018. Researchers identified two distinct patterns of coffee drinking among participants: Morning-type drinkers (36% of participants): People who consumed most or all of their coffee in the morning hours. All-day-type drinkers (14% of participants): People who spread their coffee consumption throughout the day and evening. The remaining 50% of participants either didn’t drink coffee or didn’t fit cleanly into either pattern. Over a median follow-up period of 9.8 years, researchers recorded 4,295 deaths from all causes, 1,268 deaths from cardiovascular disease, and 934 deaths from cancer. After adjusting for factors like total caffeine intake (both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee), sleep hours, diet, and other lifestyle variables, the morning-type pattern emerged as significantly protective—while the all-day-type pattern did not. More coffee, better results—but again, only in the morning Here’s where it gets even more interesting. Among morning coffee drinkers, the protective effect increased with the amount of coffee consumed. People who drank moderate amounts (two to three cups per day) or heavy amounts (more than three cups per day) in the morning showed the strongest associations with lower mortality risk. But among all-day coffee drinkers, no such association appeared. Drinking more coffee throughout the day didn’t provide any measurable mortality benefit at all. “Coffee drinking timing significantly modified the association between coffee intake amounts and all-cause mortality,” the researchers wrote. “Higher coffee intake amounts were significantly associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality in participants with morning-type pattern but not in those with all-day-type pattern.” Why timing might matter The researchers proposed two potential mechanisms to explain their findings. First, consuming coffee in the afternoon or evening may disrupt circadian rhythms. A previous clinical trial found that heavy coffee consumption in the afternoon or evening reduced peak nighttime melatonin production by 30% compared with controls. Lower melatonin levels have been linked to higher oxidative stress, elevated blood pressure, and increased inflammation—all risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Second, coffee’s health benefits come largely from anti-inflammatory compounds. Pro-inflammatory markers in the blood follow a circadian pattern—they’re typically highest in the morning and gradually decline until reaching their lowest levels around 5 p.m. Therefore, drinking coffee when inflammation is naturally highest may amplify its anti-inflammatory benefits more effectively than spreading consumption throughout the day. Not the first time We should acknowledge that this study shows correlation, not causation. It’s possible that morning coffee drinkers have other habits or characteristics researchers didn’t identify that contribute to their longevity. That said, this study takes its place alongside a growing body of research suggesting that coffee consumption is associated with significant health benefits. Among them: A 2018 study of 500,000 people in JAMA Internal Medicine found a clear across-the-board increase in longevity among people who drink lots of coffee. A 2025 study of 47,513 women from Harvard found that drinking at least one cup of coffee daily was associated with significantly higher odds of “healthy aging”—defined as reaching 70 or older with good mental and physical health, no memory problems, and freedom from 11 major chronic diseases. Every additional cup increased those odds by 2% to 5%. A study published in 2022 following 171,616 people in Great Britain found that both men and women between ages 37 and 73 who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee each day had up to a 30% lower chance of dying from any cause during the seven-year study period. A 2023 study in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association that followed 12,583 participants over 20 years found that those who drank copious amounts of coffee were twice as likely to avoid becoming physically frail as they aged into their 70s. Perhaps most intriguingly, a 2019 study from the University of South Australia analyzing 347,077 coffee drinkers found that health benefits increase with consumption—but only up to about five cups per day. Beyond that, the risk of heart disease starts to increase. Head to the market I’m not going to suggest you should race out and start pounding five cups of coffee before noon. But for those of us who already drink coffee in the morning—and I don’t think the Murphy household is a rarity at all in this—it’s reassuring. Just don’t run out. That’s when the drama starts. And keep a baseball cap near the door, in case you forget and have to make an early shopping trip. —Bill Murphy Jr. This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

If there’s an AI application in media that has had a rough road, it’s the chatbot. With the runaway success of ChatGPT, the whole idea that chat might be the next big thing in audience experiences took on new value, and several publications dove in, offering portals or widgets that enable readers to explore their content in a new way. I think it’s fair to say none of these have been home runs, but some are more promising than others. Chatbots from Skift, USA Today, and The Texas Tribune have all seen some quiet success in user engagement, and while “chat” likely won’t save the media industry, it may well play an important role. Beyond the wins of improving site search and providing unique audience data, publisher-owned AI chat experiences may chart a path to the most mythical of all beasts in the AI era: the new business model. This is where Time’s new AI Agent comes in. Time recently unveiled a new AI experience—yes, a chatbot, but one trained on the entirety of Time’s archive, about 750,000 articles going back to 1923. It has common AI-powered features like summarization, translation, and the ability to read an audio version of the article, but the main point is that the foundation of its knowledge base is a large corpus of human-verified journalism. Right now it’s deployed only on politics and entertainment stories, according to Axios. Time’s Agent vs. Perplexity I’ve been trying out the Agent to see if it provides a better experience than a more generic AI portal like Perplexity or ChatGPT—evaluating the outputs by looking at accuracy, recency, structure, and sourcing. Exploring the topic of the recent government shutdown and how it compares to other shutdowns in the past, I queried the Agent with the following prompt: Give me a briefing on the history of U.S. government shutdowns, breaking down succinctly why each happened, when they happened, how long they lasted, and which party was presumed to have “won.” It responded in six lengthy bullet points, each one summarizing the shutdown across the dimensions I asked for, along with a journalistic caveat at the end saying, “Time’s coverage emphasizes that ‘winners’ are often a matter of political framing rather than an objective metric.” When I asked for the breakdown as a table, it said it wasn’t able to create one, though it created a more structured, numbered list as a consolation prize. Specific Time articles were linked in each bullet. The Agent appeared a bit challenged to bring up-to-the-minute information to the query. Absent from its summary was any mention that the shutdown was on the verge of ending (I performed these searches on November 12), and it was imprecise about the length, twice saying it had lasted 35-plus days. To be fair, that figure is probably what’s most relevant to the query, since day 35 is what made the shutdown the longest in history, and the query itself is clearly focused on historical data rather than what’s happening now. On Perplexity, the chatbot responded with a table as the primary output, plus it was more precise about the shutdown’s current length (43 days) and mentioned a tentative deal had been reached. The response had less prose overall, and it harvested the information from several different sources (the main feature of Perplexity), including Wikipedia, CBS News, ABC News, CNN, NPR, and others. The (AI) business of information Based on what I experienced, I’d probably call it a tie, so points to Time and its partners at Scale AI for creating a user experience comparable to a multibillion-dollar company. But user experience is only one dimension of why you’d turn to Time’s AI Agent. The real value is in: The reliability of the information. As I said at the outset, because the Agent is “grounded” on the publisher’s content, which is guided by journalistic standards, it has the advantage of not potentially being skewed by unreliable sources. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t ever hallucinate or make errors of omission, but it’s starting with verified raw material. The licensing of that information. While everyday consumers typically aren’t concerned with whether the AI chatbot they’re using respects copyright, businesses who want to build on top of AI products are. By targeting the Agent solely at its archive, Time is addressing a key fear of any partners: Will they be held liable for surfacing content that doesn’t belong to them? That provenance is especially important for compliance teams in regulated industries that want to plug an agent like this into internal research tools or customer-facing products. All this points to the deeper strategy behind just launching a new reader experience with the “agent” label. If Time’s archive can power an AI experience to visitors of its website, that can also be adapted to anyone who wants to pay for it. And it wouldn’t require handing over any IP—once a deal is signed, you’d need to create just a simple technical handshake, presumably via MCP (model context protocol) between a client’s front end and Time’s Agent. A bank, for instance, could wire the Agent into its internal policy portal so staff can query vetted news content without ever leaving the company’s systems. This is conceptually similar to the licensing deals that Time and others have already signed with AI companies like OpenAI, but it’s technically different in an important way. A typical licensing agreement involves permission (often retroactive) to use the site’s content for training, plus access to the site for AI search crawlers so it can summarize news stories in response to user queries. Those searches rely greatly on metadata, the process is far from comprehensive, and there is limited visibility in how the content is used. A better system would mean the publisher owns the agent layer and interface, which is what Time has done. Once you’ve done the hard work of formatting, ingesting, and processing your archive for AI, it makes its information much more reliable and easy for systems to parse, and you can choose to license it on your own terms. That has an effect on the overall power dynamic of any deals; the publisher now becomes a “tool vendor” as much as a content supplier. So new kinds of deals are possible, but the question is: Will anyone make them? Time has a big archive, but it’s still small compared to the entire news output of the media industry—something ProRata is closer to building with its Gist search engine (which also includes Time). Then again, if buyers can get what they need from only a few specific sources, why not just pay for access to those and be done with it? This mirrors the age-old debate around cable channels: Will customers of this kind of information want to get it as a bundle, or à la carte? Either way, the transformation of big archives into AI-ready corpuses, easily plugged into information portals (public or private), could end up being a large part of how media companies monetize their content in the future. Creating new business models is a phrase that gets tossed around all the time in the media, but hardly ever seen, kind of like Bigfoot. We might have just had a sighting. View the full article