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Another Google court document from the DOJ trial showed that Google said it is currently rethinking its entire search stack, from the ground up, with LLMs playing a more fundamental role. The doc said:View the full article

The details from the DOJ and Google monopoly case hearing exhibits just keep on flowing and with that, we have another mention of how Google does look at clicks from the search results. This one talks about how the position of the link can be a bias towards the number of clicks that result gets, so Google had to develop an adjustment of sorts to counter that bias.View the full article

Earlier this month, Google updated its Ads Transparency policy to specify that it will display the payment profile name as the payer name for verified advertisers. Well, now we are starting to see a new section that says "Ads funded by" on the "My Ad Center" section of the search ads.View the full article

Google is rolling out device targeting controls and features within Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. We knew this was coming and now it seems to be rolling out to some (not all) advertisers. This allows you to target based on device type, such as computers, mobile phones, tablets and/or TV screens.View the full article

World’s biggest retailer reports rise in first-quarter sales in the face of The President’s trade warView the full article

Google is testing showing the vertical search category a query belongs to in its autocomplete search suggestions. When you click into the Google Search box, even before you begin typing your query, Google shows search suggestions and some of those search suggestions have a label that says "short videos," "images," etc.View the full article

Competitive intelligence is actionable information about your competitors, target customers, and market. View the full article

Broken promises played midwife to Brexit and are capable of powering Reform — or a Conservative facsimile — into officeView the full article

Google is testing a new sub or secondary menu under the search bar in Google Search. This secondary menu, or sub-menu, is below the main search vertical options and is missing the bubble format that we've seen Google use for this sub-menu.View the full article

Website demographics describe the characteristics of the people who visit your website. View the full article

Instagram is quietly testing a new feature that could change how creators and brands share content — and I’m pretty excited about the potential. In their words: Unlockable reels are designed to encourage “a new, IYKYK way” of engaging with your community. The new Instagram Reels, also called “locked” or “secret code” reels, will require a (you guessed it) secret code to view. These password-protected videos offer a fresh way to build excitement, reward your most engaged Instagram followers, and share content with a more targeted audience. Also, they’ll be a delight to puzzle fanatics like me. After some initial testing, The Weeknd was the first creator to officially use an unlockable reel, teasing a clip from his new film. (Did anyone else not know he was doing movies now?) Let’s break down how it works, why it matters, and how you might use it when (or if) it rolls out more broadly. What are unlockable reels?Unlockable reels are videos that are hidden behind a code. Instead of tapping play, you’ll be prompted to “Enter secret code” before you can view the content. In some cases, creators will offer a clue instead of just giving you the code outright — for example, “my birthday” or “1st hashtag in the caption.” Once you crack the code, the reel plays like any other. In April, an unlockable reel was quietly shared from the Instagram @design account, prompting followers to enter a code to access the video. Before entering the code, the thumbnail appears blurred out. Here’s how the post looks in the feed and when you tap on it: Not long after, @theweeknd shared an unlockable reel, now deleted, teasing a clip from his new movie, Hurry Up Tomorrow behind a code: ‘ICANTSING*’*. As far as we know, these are the only two password-protected reels shared on the platform yet, but I predict we’ll soon see the feature rolled out to more big-name creators. Source: Social Media TodayWhy would you want to share an unlockable reel?Good question! On a platform where views and impressions are often treated as the be-all and end-all, why would you want to share a ‘secret’ reel? Well, we know that Instagram has been more focused on its community-building features of late (think subscriptions, broadcast channels, or even Threads). Password-protected reels offer a way for creators and brands to offer something special to superfans (of followers who love a good puzzle). It’s unclear if these reels will be eligible to appear in the main reels or explore page. My prediction is they’ll be targeted mainly at current followers (and be more likely to appear in users’ home feeds). The Instagram algorithm will likely count clicks and attempts to unlock the reel as engagement signals. According to Instagram, this is a new way to “help people connect in a new, IYKYK [if you know, you know], way.” The feature is intended to: Build buzz around exclusive contentFoster connection over shared interestsReward superfans with hidden gems⚡Be more consistent on Instagram: Having an all-in-one tool like Buffer helps you plan, post, engage, and track. Get started for free today and see for yourself.How creators and brands might use unlockable reelsIf you’re a creator, marketer, or small business owner, there’s a lot of potential here for fun posts and campaigns with this new feature. As a creator and marketer, I’m definitely looking forward to playing around with them! Think: Exclusive drops for your mailing list: Share a secret code with newsletter subscribers to unlock behind-the-scenes content, bonus tutorials, or sneak peeks — a creative way to reward your most engaged audience (and grow your subscribers).Early access content for loyal fans: Let superfans or private community members get first dibs on a new product, video, or announcement by giving them the code before anyone else.Promo codes for repeat customers: Share limited-time offers through a locked reel that only your existing customers can access — either by emailing them the code or including it in a thank-you note.Launch hints or teaser trailers for product reveals: Build anticipation by hiding teaser content behind a code that followers have to figure out — perfect for gamifying a product drop or campaign launch.Region-locked content for specific markets: Share updates or offers tailored to a local audience by distributing codes through regional mailing lists or in-store signage.Private posts just for friends: Share a code with just a few close friends or collaborators to keep it personal.It’s a fun, lightweight form of content gating, without the need for paywalls or subscriptions. Watch this spaceUnlockable reels aren’t available to most users just yet. It’s not clear when — or if — this feature will be rolled out more widely, but it’s one of my top social media platform features to watch at the moment. I’ll be sure to update this article when I know more. To an unlockable reel in action, check out @design, which used a caption clue to unlock their reel (“1st # in the caption,” which is threads). View the full article

Legal and compliance overtook verification issues as the top cause for application defects during the fourth quarter, according to Aces Quality Management. View the full article

The states with the highest percentage of non-current mortgage loans had an average year-over-year change of 0.7%, as of March 31. View the full article

You’ve made it past the recruiter and the first round of interviews. Now you’re meeting with the hiring manager. They’ll likely ask you a series of behavioral questions to evaluate whether you’re a good cultural fit for the team. They’ll also assess whether they believe you are up to the managerial and leadership challenges facing the role. Preparing for behavioral interviews can be nerve-wracking. The stakes are high, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the possible scenarios they could throw at you. I’ve spent over a dozen plus years of preparing folks for interviews and talking to people on the hiring side. As a result, I’ve developed an approach to behavioral questions that will help you shine in the behavioral interview. It’s all about ensuring that you start strong. The STAR framework and why it doesn’t quite work Many people use the STAR framework to structure interview responses. This method helps candidates describe their experiences to illustrate desired competencies. Start with “S” the Situation they faced, “T” their Task, “A” what Action they took, and “R” the Result they achieved. Now, this framework does help you organize your thoughts and distill a story to illustrate your experience and competencies. Unfortunately, this approach fails rhetorically because it lacks a strong start. When you lead with situations or context before getting to the task, the interviewer has to wait too long for the payoff. You risk losing the interviewer before you get to the action and results. An interview is like any presentation, you have somewhere around 30 seconds to hook your audience. Starting strong means a clear, concise statement of value that captures what kind of leader or manager you are. It also provides the interviewer a blueprint of what to listen for in your response. How behavioral interviews work Behavioral interviews are based on the premise that past experience is a predictor of future performance. The questions are generally less about getting the “right” answer. It’s more about helping the interviewer understand your approach, how you think, how you relate to others, and your values. As one hiring manager told me, “When a candidate explains how he or she thinks about solving a problem, I get a lot more insight into what it would be like to have them on my team than I do from them reciting the solution.” In my view, the STAR formula focuses too much on the story and not enough on the meaning. To borrow language from Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle model for organizations, interview candidates who strictly adhere to the STAR approach focus too much on the “what” and not enough on the “how” or the “why.” When you start your answer by naming the principles or values that guided your action, you get to the heart of the matter quickly. You also cue the interviewer on what to listen for as the story unfolds. How to prepare for behavioral interviews The STAR method is a good start to help you distill the narratives that illustrate your experience and competence. But to ensure that you have a strong start for each STAR story. Reflect on the foundational values that guided your actions. That might be empathy, accountability, collaboration, customer focus, data-driven decision-making, fairness, relationships, trust, or transparency. Articulating these principles will help establish what kind of leader, manager, or contributor you are. Examples of strong answers Once you’ve identified a set of 5–8 principles or values, you can use them to frame almost any answer. For example: Behavioral question #1 “Tell me about a time when you had to influence without authority.” “Influencing without authority was a key part of my role at ABC Company. There were three things I always tried to keep in mind: empathy for my cross-functional stakeholders, transparent communication, and relentless customer focus. On xyz project, as the product manager (situation) I needed to influence my engineering counterpart to commit to an aggressive timeline (task). I knew that her team was under a lot of pressure. I had a series of 1:1 conversations with her about the requirements. I made sure to listen with empathy so that I understood all her constraints (action). I also shared the potential customer impact of the feature. It turned out that her team had been expressing frustration about not feeling valued. So it was key that she could motivate her team to work on a more visible feature (action). We found some compromises and were able to land on a timeline that would be a stretch for her team but that she was excited about (result).” Here are some other examples of strong starts: Behavioral question #2 “What was a time when you failed?” “First, let me start by saying that in order for a goal to be meaningful, it needs to be beyond what you’ve done before, and so there is always a risk of falling short. The key is to communicate to stakeholders as soon as I know we are going to miss, take ownership of the failure, and use it as an opportunity for learning. An example of this is when I led a team in product marketing at xyz . . .” Behavioral question #3 “How have you managed conflict within your organization?” “Well, conflict is inevitable, and in my view, if it is handled with empathy for both participants while maintaining accountability for results, it can be an opportunity to learn more about each other and build trust and improve collaboration. The conflict I want to talk about was between someone who reported to me and someone on another team and was related to overlapping roles and responsibilities . . .” The importance of principles Once you have a strong list of principles, you can plug them into almost any behavioral question and nail the response. And if your interview is on video, you can write each of your values on a post and attach them to your monitor. This will act as a reminder to cue you during the interview. Then you can kick off any response with an articulation of your values and priorities. This will ensure that your interviewer gets a true sense not just of what you’ve done, but of how you approach problem-solving and what you stand for. View the full article

President says he has ‘a little problem’ with tech group’s CEO Tim Cook over effort to avoid tariffs on ChinaView the full article

Use this strategic tool to compare your company‘s offerings against competitors’ in a visual format. See how. View the full article

Britain would pay countries to take deported migrants, PM confirms during Albania tripView the full article

The government should not waste money by rushing to hit a 2030 deadline for net zero powerView the full article

Check out our newest 360° camera, the Meeting Owl 4+, for the most advanced, engaging experience yet. View the full article

SpaceX owns 98% of global rocket launches, a monopoly with virtually no competition. Only China is competing with Elon Musk at this point in number of launches and, while the country is getting closer to mass-producing reusable rockets, it appears far from making that happen. The world needs to scramble. We can’t let a single company dominate the future of humanity—and much less one that is owned by Musk. “If you copy SpaceX, it’ll take you 10 years to get where they are today,” Lin Kayser, cofounder of Dubai-based engineering AI firm Leap 71, tells me in a video interview. “But in 10 years, SpaceX won’t be where they are today. The game will be over.” Startups and nations need to catch up to Musk, but that means solving a brutal equation: designing engines with comparable thrust (measured in kilonewtons, or kN) and efficiency, but without the decade-long development cycles. And to beat SpaceX, you also need to be able to mass-produce the rockets. This is now more important than ever because the stakes are even higher than just five years ago. Satellite constellations like Starlink, which may soon enable direct-to-phone internet, threaten to sideline telecom operators and centralize control of earth’s critical communication infrastructure on top of controlling the space economy. “Every region needs sovereign launch capability,” Kayser contends. “Otherwise, you’ll pay 10 times what SpaceX pays to access space—if they let you.” His company may have a solution to fix that conundrum. Leap 71 developed artificial intelligence called Noyron that, so far, has successfully designed two rocket engines. Kayser believes that his company, legacy rocket makers, and startups will be able to leverage this synthetic rocket engineer to create a cheaper match to the SpaceX Raptor—and beat Musk at his own game. The 10-foot-high Raptor—which powers the Starship—is arguably the most advanced Western rocket engine in production. Its latest iteration produces 280 tonnes of thrust at sea level, surpassing competing engines like Blue Origin’s BE-4. It uses methalox, an efficient fuel that can be manufactured in places like Mars, which makes it key for deep-space exploration. But the Raptor’s importance lies in the fact that it is the first operational full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) engine in history. This means that it optimizes efficiency and thrust while minimizing thermal stress, so you can reuse it many times, the key for cheap, sustainable space exploration. Only two other FFSC engines have been tested, but they’ve never flown. Leap 71 now wants to achieve the same spaces but better, with fewer 3D-printed pieces, which will make it less expensive than Musk’s engine. Computational blueprint Leap 71 describes its Noyron computational model as an “engineer brain in a box.” Unlike generative AI tools that require human oversight because they are just guessing what could work, Noyron encodes physics, material science, and manufacturing rules to autonomously design rocket engines. It generates not just shapes but also functional hardware ready for 3D printing. “Traditional parametric CAD is geometry-driven. Ours is physics-driven,” Kayser explains. “Calling it parametric CAD would be like saying ChatGPT is autocomplete.” The system’s first breakthrough came in 2024 with a 5 kN rocket engine. The compact, high-efficiency rocket was fully designed by AI and 3D printed in one go as a single-piece copper engine with intricate internal cooling channels. During trials in an old World War II bunker in the U.K., the engine fired flawlessly, validating Noyron’s ability to predict thermal stresses and fluid dynamics. Then, in January 2025, Leap 71 really pushed the envelope by designing one of the most challenging and elusive rocket engines in the aerospace industry: a cryogenic aerospike thruster, an engine capable of working at every altitude to eliminate the need for multiple rocket stages, minimizing elements and costs in the process. Now the company wants to scale up this approach to engines 400 times larger. The new road map includes two reference designs: the 200 kN XRA-2E5 aerospike and the 2,000 kN XRB-2E6 bell-nozzle engine, equivalent to SpaceX’s Raptor. The first, he says, is slated for testing within 18 months of April 2025 (placing it around late 2026). The second is targeted for readiness by 2029. For rocket engine development—with design and testing cycles measured in decades—this is incredibly ambitious. But the timeline is achievable because of how Noyron works, Kayser says. Instead of manually iterating prototypes, Noyron treats all engines as variations of a unified “DNA.” And instead of having to be programmed, its edge lies in its ability to absorb decades of engineering knowledge—even from obscure sources. For its new model, Leap 71 has not only incorporated learnings from its past tests (like data on cooling efficiency and material strain), but also vast amounts of new information, including digitized Soviet-era rocket manuals. “We plug these into Noyron to refine our thermal models,” Kayser says. The AI also learns from every test, creating a feedback loop that collapses design cycles and speeds up the development process. Noyron is not generative AI, but a computational model capable of producing deterministic results that are consistent every time. They are accurate according to the actual physical world and data. It understands. It doesn’t just guess. Input the same specs, and it generates identical designs (try that with ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney, or Sora). This is critical for aerospace reliability. “Human engineers can see the rationale behind every decision,” Kayser says. “It’s not a black box.” The challenges While Noyron can design a rocket engine in minutes, proving it works in the physical world is the real test. The company’s ambitions collide with a stark reality: Even the most advanced AI cannot shortcut the laws of physics and bureaucracy. Securing test facilities for large engines is another hurdle. While smaller subsystems (like the 28 kN turbopump it wants to test this year) fit on existing stands, the 2,000 kN engine’s sheer size demands specialized infrastructure. “The critical path here is test-stand availability,” says Kayser. Current options are scarce and scattered around the world. Shipping engines abroad triggers export controls and delays—a problem compounded by geopolitical tensions. Moving a small engine from Germany to the U.K. already takes “two to three weeks,” Kayser tells me. That’s why Leap 71 is in talks with governments in Dubai, Singapore, and New Zealand to co-locate manufacturing and testing. Oman’s planned spaceport and New Zealand’s remote Tāwhaki facility, with its vast sound-dampening landscapes, are leading candidates. “You can’t just put a loud rocket engine next to a city,” Kayser says. The other challenge—the actual production of the engine—has only just become possible, with China’s new 3D-printing behemoths capable of producing parts that are 6.56-by-6.56-by-3.60 feet. In fact, this is what led Kayser and his partner, Leap 71 cofounder Josefine Lissner, to believe that making a Raptor-class engine was even possible. Called the EP-M2050 (and manufactured by Eplus3D), this colossal 3D printer uses 36 lasers to turn metallic powders into all the parts needed for next-gen rocket engines, including the nozzles, which will be much taller than your average human. The printers are so new that quality assurance is still a question mark. Surface roughness, inherent to layered metal printing, disrupts fluid dynamics in cooling channels. Rough walls increase friction, altering fuel flow and thermal stability. Post-printing, parts undergo rigorous cleaning to remove residual metal powder, a task that until now has been handled by German firm Solukon because “any impurities could cause an explosion,” Kayser says. Material uniformity is another gamble. While printers handle alloys like copper-chromium-zirconium, ensuring consistent strength in massive components—especially under the violent vibrations and thermal swings of a firing engine—remains unproven at this scale. The turbopump, which forces fuel into the combustion chamber at extreme pressures, epitomizes this challenge. Leap 71’s 28 kN test rig validates principles for larger designs, but scaling amplifies risks. Turbines spin at supersonic speeds, generating centrifugal forces that warp metal. Rapid temperature shifts—like the -297°F cryogenic oxygen flow meeting 5,430°F exhaust—threaten cracks. “Sealing, material fatigue, and transient conditions during start-up and shutdown are critical,” Kayser explains. “These are not just design problems—they demand practical testing.” That’s why the most unnerving hurdle of rocket development with this method is “blind testing.” Leap 71’s aerospike engine, printed as a single copper block with internal cooling channels, could not be inspected internally before firing. “We had to test blind,” Kayser says. During trials, imperfect oxygen flow led to higher-than-expected temperatures. Although it all worked, it forced an early shutdown. “Instead of risking additional runs, we cut the engine in half to analyze it,” Kayser adds. Each failure feeds back into Noyron’s models, but iteration consumes time and capital. For now, Leap 71’s strategy hinges on incremental validation—testing subsystems like injectors and turbopumps individually—while lobbying governments to fund dedicated test facilities. The road ahead While these are big challenges, they are not insurmountable. The space industry knows it and, according to Kayser, wants a piece of the action. Everyone is looking for a way to leapfrog several years and catch up to—or surpass—Musk. Right now, Leap 71 collaborates with about 15 rocket startups. Kayser can’t disclose their names under confidentiality agreements except for the Exploration Co., which is developing a European Moon lander. These partners lack SpaceX’s vertical integration but want tailored engines without decade-long R&D. “The engine is the most expensive and complicated part,” Kayser emphasizes. “Everyone else just buys them. But there’s no supply.” L3Harris—which now owns the legendary rocket engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne, makers of the Apollo engines—wants to sell them, but it doesn’t have anything comparable to the Raptor. Blue Origin makes and sells engines for the United Launch Alliance (ULA), but nobody else. The Russian NPO Energomash once dominated the global rocket engine market, supplying the RD-180 that powered ULA’s Atlas V rocket for decades. But RD-180s are now considered relics—and are under sanctions because of the Ukraine war, anyway. “[Current design processes] are actually a problem for many of the micro launcher companies right now,” Kayser says. “So they have relatively small engines. And if they now want to play in the higher leagues, they basically have to embark on a completely new project, create a completely new rocket.” The main differentiation between sizes is the engine, because the rest of the rocket is scalable. It’s harder to scale up the engine because it has completely different specifications and requirements. By using Noyron, Kayser says customers will be able to fine-tune to their own needs and input thrust, fuel type, and size to receive bespoke engine designs for every need. A startup might tweak an aerospike for methane fuel, while another firm could optimize for cost. Some engines will be small and some could be Raptor-class. We will know if it all works in just a couple of years, so we won’t have to wait long: Kayser tells me that he and Lissner expect the first hot firing of the 200 kN XRA-2E5 aerospike engine in October 2026. Full-scale testing of the large 2,000 kN Raptor-class engine is tentatively planned to begin in 2028, with qualification for flight readiness stretching into 2029. If Leap 71 can pull it off, it will be phenomenal for humanity. A new process for rocket development will challenge Elon Musk at his own game and democratize the means to reach orbit for every country on the planet. Plus, if it happens, the dream of having Tony Stark’s J.A.R.V.I.S.-like AI to aid humans to build the future will be real. Kayser certainly believes in it: “We’re building a world where anyone can engineer complex machines.” View the full article

Brawny just went big on bulk. The Georgia-Pacific paper towel brand introduced a new logo set in a thicker font and breathed new life into its lumberjack mascot, the Brawny Man—all as part of a shift to stand out on store shelves and launch a new product, three-ply paper towels. “We weren’t just evolving a visual identity,” Amanda Earley, Georgia-Pacific’s brand director for Brawny, tells Fast Company. “We were launching a new product, shifting our full lineup, and repositioning the brand in culture, all while protecting what made Brawny special in the first place.” Bringing all this to market at the same time was a challenge, Earley says, but necessary to achieve the company’s overall goals: to grow household penetration, drive category growth, and convert the brand’s entire portfolio from two-ply to three. A bolder Brawny logo The logo is one part of that. “We modernized the logo to make it bolder, more confident, and unmistakably Brawny,” Earley says. The typographic beef up was also a strategic decision to “signal product superiority at shelf, reinforce brand strength, and help us stand apart in a space that often feels like a sea of sameness,” she says. Companies like Amazon, OpenAI, and Walmart have all recently made their logos bigger and bolder, but for Brawny, doing so was an imperative because of its brand promise. A paper towel brand that calls itself the strongest can’t be set in a skinny font, especially after announcing plans to increase the ply of its products by 50%. So the company made a few changes to indicate its new weight class. Its logo uses flat, bold, black-and-white letterforms, removing the red shadowing of the previous version. It’s also now set on a firm horizontal instead of a slant. The logo type is sans serif, except for the letters B and A, which have serifs that extend like eaves on a rest stop or ranger station icon. A bulked-up Brawny Man Introduced in the 1970s, the Brawny Man has undergone multiple makeovers over the years and worn his facial hair in various ways—the brand even had Brawny women as part of a 2016 campaign. In this newest iteration, the Brawny Man appears on packaging in the form of an illustration of a handsome, hunky outdoorsy type suitable for casting on The Bachelorette wearing his signature red-and-black plaid shirt. He appears oversize in new commercials, like Brawny’s own Paul Bunyan—and he’s eager to help clean up messes, whether they happen to be in the aftermath of a 40th birthday party or at a treehouse sleepover full of superstitious tween girls. Too often brand mascots “live frozen in time,” says Jaime Robinson, cofounder and chief creative officer at Joan Creative, which helped develop packaging and worked on the Brawny Man’s refresh. “When you have such legendary brand IP like the Brawny Man, you want to approach it thoughtfully but bravely,” Robinson says. It was all about striking the right balance between familiarity and modernity, according to Holly Karlsson, creative director at Bulletproof, the agency that worked on Brawny’s visual identity and packaging design. And by “retaining his rugged dependability while evolving his personality to feel more authentic, warm, and human,” she says, Bulletproof hoped to do just that. The new Brawny Man is a gentle giant with a bold logo to match. View the full article

Loneliness isn’t just a well-being risk, it is an acute business risk. The effects of loneliness don’t just permeate an individual’s personal life, it can negatively impact their professional life. When employees don’t feel a sense of camaraderie or belonging at work, their performance suffers. According to research from Gartner, employees who are satisfied with camaraderie in their organization show a high enterprise contribution of 23%. But employees who are dissatisfied with the camaraderie in their organization show a high enterprise contribution of only 13%. Organizations have taken early steps to mitigate loneliness by targeting interactions within the workplace and beyond, like mandating employees to return to the office to boost collaboration and connection. But proximity alone isn’t a cure for employee loneliness. It ignores the root causes of the issue. Moving forward, CHROs need to address loneliness in the workforce through two primary strategies: improving in-role connectedness to boost productivity and supporting out-of-work connectedness to meet employee well-being needs. Improving in-role connectedness to boost employee productivity Employees should have autonomy when it comes to building personal connections, as well as guidance from HR on how to make the most of their interactions. That requires CHROs to foster guided interactions that engender interpersonal cohesiveness and naturalize sharing behavior, which establishes a new, more human-centered set of collaboration norms. There are three simple actions CHROs can take to achieve this: 1. Empower employees to personalize connection-building CHROs should give employees ownership of building their connections with one another. Not only does this promote personalization of how they strengthen these relationships, it also encourages them to make connections according to their own needs or preferences. CHROs can help employees fortify these peer connections over time in partnership with communication leaders. In turn, they can grow employees’ connection with the organization’s culture and community through socialization. 2. Encourage employees to be intentional about their collaboration needs Gartner analysis found that satisfaction with collaboration significantly impacts employee performance. Now, not all collaboration supports connectedness or productivity. Intentionality helps employees think carefully and understand which mode of collaboration best suits both the nature of their work and their individual preferences. Through guided collaboration and actively reshaping the needs and norms of how individuals interact, CHROs can equip teams to have intentionality and reciprocity when collaborating. Gartner found that organizations that practice guided collaboration achieve profit goals 10% more often than those that don’t. 3. Support affinity groups that connect employees and encourage breaks CHROs should foster connections between employees beyond work-related tasks. Affinity groups, akin to employee resource groups, connect employees based on common interests that align with the company’s business model and values. Imagine a surfboard company offering time off for employees to surf together. These benefits can boost engagement and lead to a more motivated workforce. Support connection outside of work to boost well-being Employees who feel their employer supports their lives outside the office are more motivated to perform in the workplace. There are several ways CHROs can support employee connection outside of work: 1. Offer employees “volunteer time off” (VTO) VTO policies grant employees paid leave for volunteering activities. Some corporations allow staff to take a set number of hours each week, while others grant up to a week of leave. VTO initiatives can enhance employee engagement, build connections with local communities, and showcase corporate social responsibility. 2. Provide interpersonal, out-of-work connection perks Some progressive organizations offer enhanced support to help employees find and make meaningful personal connections outside of work. This includes things like offering stipends for bike passes to encourage well-being in connected social settings. These out-of-office perks also provide talent attraction and retention benefits. 3. Make it easier to take a break with global recharge days With many employees either not taking vacation days or working while on vacation, some organizations encourage employees to use their vacation days jointly to disconnect from work. If most, if not all, employees take vacation together, they can all fully disconnect from work and recharge. Many factors have contributed to the epidemic of loneliness in the workplace, and these feelings of isolation have real business implications for organizations that don’t address them. With CEOs hyper-focused on growth in 2025, and seeing employee productivity as key to achieving it, HR has an important role to play in removing any productivity barriers, including hidden ones like loneliness. By treating loneliness, and outside of the workplace, organizations reap the benefits of a healthier, more productive, and engaged workforce. View the full article

At its annual Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View next week, Google will try to rally developers around one of its next big bets: Android XR. Later this year, Samsung is set to release the first VR headset powered by the spatial computing operating system, and Google is aiming to attract as many developers as possible to build apps for the device. That’s no small task for a company whose history with AR and VR has been marked by inconsistency. Google was among the first to experiment with AR glasses, gave millions their first taste of VR through low-cost mobile viewers, and even launched a stand-alone immersive VR headset before Meta—only to abandon each project in rapid succession, leaving partners frustrated. “Google has burnt a lot of bridges in the XR community,” cautions an industry insider who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. Still, there’s a sense of cautious optimism among AR and VR developers that this time might be different. One reason: the competitive landscape has changed. With Apple and Meta investing tens of billions into immersive technology, the pressure is on. Android XR also aligns with Google’s current strengths, particularly in AI and in its push to expand Android’s reach. A Google spokesperson declined to comment for this story. Daydreams and Glassholes Google’s first foray into AR/VR remains one of the industry’s most infamous missteps. Unveiled in 2012, Google Glass paired a camera with a tiny display and was touted as a peek into a post-smartphone world. Instead, it became a cautionary tale. Critics were unnerved by the device’s always-on camera, dubbing users “glassholes.” A $1,500 price tag and limited usefulness sealed its fate, and Google soon dropped its consumer ambitions for Glass. Despite that bruising experience, the company didn’t fully retreat from the space. In 2014, Google introduced Cardboard, a DIY viewer that turned smartphones into rudimentary VR devices. That effort later evolved into Daydream, a more comfortable headset with a controller, supporting immersive videos and simple games. Cardboard and Daydream did reach millions of users, but their reliance on smartphones made them impractical for sustained use. “We were looking for that spark of adoption,” says a former Google employee who worked on Daydream. (Former employees were also granted anonymity by Fast Company out of fear of reprisal.) That spark never came. “It never became a toothbrush use case,” the employee adds, referencing the goal of making the device something people use daily, like brushing their teeth. Over time, Google did achieve that with many of its products: Billions now use Gmail, Chrome, and Maps every day. But that success may have distorted expectations for VR. “You tend to forget how hard it is to get billions of users,” says a second former Google employee involved in VR. Expecting too much too soon may have doomed these projects. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” the first former employee says. A Long List of Cancelled Projects Google eventually moved beyond smartphone-based VR with a stand-alone headset built in partnership with Lenovo in 2018. Running Daydream, the device had potential to compete with Meta’s Quest, but Google scrapped it a year later. “When it didn’t become a huge success overnight, they pivoted,” says the industry insider. Daydream joined a growing list of abandoned Google AR/VR efforts: the immersive storytelling series Spotlight Stories, the cloud-based video platform Jump and its professional camera line, the 3D modeling tool Blocks, the asset platform Poly, and several consumer VR cameras created with hardware partners. Some of these projects were open-sourced upon cancellation. The popular VR painting app Tilt Brush, for example, lives on as a community-driven project on Meta’s Quest. Others survived the internal shakeups: Owlchemy Labs, acquired by Google in 2017, still thrives. Its whimsical title Job Simulator remains one of the best-selling games on Quest. Many of Google’s early AR/VR projects had real potential—if only the company had stayed the course. “Google had all these weird, cool, fun projects and acquisitions that they made very early, but they just didn’t follow through with them,” says the industry insider. A Lack of Conviction Beyond high expectations, insiders point to a deeper issue: Google’s hesitation to publicly commit to AR and VR. “Google was not willing to put a shoe on the ground the same way Meta has,” says the first former employee. “The difference was that Mark [Zuckerberg] was out there, publicly saying: I’m staking my future on this,” agrees the second. “I never felt that we had that type of conviction from [Google CEO] Sundar [Pichai].” Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm for VR and the metaverse has been widely mocked, but Meta’s persistence has paid off. The company has sold tens of millions of Quest headsets, and its Ray-Ban smart glasses have found surprising success. Apple’s Vision Pro and its reported investments in smart glasses further validate the space. Now Google is returning with big ambitions of its own. Having turned Android into the world’s most widely used mobile OS, the company wants to replicate that success with Android XR. Unlike Apple and Meta, Google plans to build this future through partnerships—starting with Samsung—rather than relying on in-house hardware. There’s precedent for this kind of turnaround. After an underwhelming start, Google’s Android TV platform eventually matured into one of the top smart TV ecosystems, with over 270 million monthly active users on Google TV-powered devices. Google’s Assets: Android and AI To replicate that success in XR, Google will once again leverage its mobile ecosystem. “Google will look to work with developers to port existing Android apps to Android XR, much like the way Apple brought iPadOS apps to the Vision Pro,” says CCS Insight analyst Gebbie. “This could give Google an advantage over Meta.” Google’s massive AI investments could also prove pivotal. The company has already demonstrated how AI can enhance AR glasses, and Gebbie believes AI will be key in simplifying interaction within spatial computing systems. With the tech in place, Google’s future in XR hinges on one factor: commitment. “This time around, Google must fully commit to Android XR if it is to seriously try and build an ecosystem,” says Gebbie. “If Google makes another false start, then its partners may look elsewhere.” “As long as Google has conviction, I would never bet against them,” agrees the second former employee. View the full article

For years, global stars have traveled to West Africa as ambassadors of humanitarian and anti-corruption efforts: Rihanna in Senegal urging world leaders to donate aid, Bono in Ghana championing transparency as “the best vaccine against corruption.” All the while, Vincent Bolloré, the billionaire power broker who wields significant influence over the parent company behind their music labels, was busy building an industrial empire in those same countries. That empire is now at the center of corruption trials, sexual abuse allegations, and a sweeping criminal complaint filed by West African nonprofits. “Vincent Bolloré stole money from our communities and used it to build an empire,” Jean-Jacques Lumumba, the head of the anti-corruption watchdog group Restitution for Africa, alleges in a statement to Fast Company. For some UMG musicians, the accusations against Bolloré present a jarring contradiction: Artists are using their platforms to fight injustice, while a powerful figure profiting from their music built his fortune through actions that critics say undermined democracy. The Bolloré family’s industrial empire traces back over two centuries to its origins in cigarette and Bible paper manufacturing. Over time, its global success allowed the family to pivot into West African industries like rubber, palm oil, and port operations. More recently, the family gained what French courts described in April as “effective control” of the media conglomerate Vivendi. Until 2021, Vivendi owned all of Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s leading music company, and Bolloré’s fortunes were widely seen as tied to it. In 2021, Vivendi spun off UMG as a publicly traded company, unlocking $53 billion of value on its first day of trading, while allowing the Bolloré family to retain their position as UMG’s largest shareholders. Worldwide, UMG manages five million titles across some of the industry’s most iconic labels: Interscope, Capitol, Def Jam, Island, Republic, Virgin. Technically the Bollorés control just 28% of UMG—10% directly and another 18% through Vivendi. But that gives the Bollorés outsized sway. (Kanye West once claimed he was going to bypass label execs with contract complaints and take his grievances straight to the top: “Don’t need the Arnaud meeting anymore,” he tweeted in 2020, referring to Vivendi’s CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine. “I will be meeting with Vincent Bolloré.”) This complex web of corporate control casts a long shadow, even as UMG artists champion causes in regions where Bolloré’s other ventures have come under fire. In 2022, Usher and SZA, whose songs include UMG distribution deals, went to Ghana to headline the Global Citizen Festival benefiting West Africa. That same year, fellow UMG client The Weeknd also launched a UN humanitarian fund benefiting the same region. But those actions coincided with a wave of divestment from Bolloré’s businesses on the part of European investment funds: Switzerland’s largest pension funds put his companies on their exclusion list, and Norway’s $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund—the world’s largest—pulled out entirely, citing human rights reports alleging abuses in Liberia, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone, including land grabs and rape. That financial pressure mirrored growing legal scrutiny. Over the past decade, Bolloré has faced a series of corruption investigations in France tied to his business dealings in West Africa—ranging from election meddling to bribery and port monopolies. He was indicted in 2018, and French prosecutors continue to pursue charges related to those allegations. Critics of Bolloré contend that artists who remain silent risk inadvertently reinforcing the same exploitative systems many of them seek to challenge. “Dirty money off the backs of African communities” Last month, the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office said it was still working on Bolloré’s corruption trial related to the Togo bribery claims. This came days after Bloomberg News ran a 4,000-word investigation into the sexual coercion of women working on Bolloré’s Liberian rubber plantations. Workers recently set fire to the office and manager’s home to protest the squalid conditions. Now, a coalition of 11 West African nonprofits known as Restitution for Africa (RAF) has filed a brand-new complaint with French authorities accusing Bolloré of using “corruption, favoritism, and influence peddling” to win port contracts in three additional countries: Ghana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire. The complaint, also filed with the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office and reviewed by Fast Company, accuses the Bolloré Group of a criminal graft where it conspired with corrupt politicians to build a massive port, rail, and logistics monopoly across West Africa—then cashed out, selling that subsidiary (Bolloré Africa Logistics) for $6.2 billion, more than Sierra Leone’s annual GDP. The complaint argues the money earned should be given to citizens of those African nations. The coalition is calling the complaint “unprecedented in its pan-African character.” RAF followed that by launching a public petition on Thursday called “Global Billionaire Accountability Project.” Over the past month, it has worked to solicit support from 50 major artists under contract with UMG labels—they include Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Sam Smith, The Weeknd, Usher, SZA, U2, Sting, Alicia Keys, and Billie Eilish. The group sent a letter asking them to demand that Bolloré divest from UMG, arguing that UMG artists are financially tethered to “a corporate entity accused of profiting from illicit and exploitative activities.” The letter concludes: “We want to ensure you’re aware that these ill-gotten gains have been funding Bolloré’s ownership of UMG—dirty money off the backs of African communities.” UMG declined to comment. A representative for Vincent Bolloré and the Bolloré Group did not respond to multiple inquiries by Fast Company. Restitution for Africa says so far none of the artists have responded to their letter. Fast Company also sent requests for comment to the publicists of more than a dozen UMG artists who prioritize social impact work. This includes all the artists mentioned above, other industry heavyweights like Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar, as well as Angélique Kidjo, the French-Beninese five-time Grammy winner who has served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in Africa since the mid-2000s. Their representatives did not respond. Bono’s ONE Campaign—publisher of 2014’s widely read “Trillion Dollar Scandal” report warning that “shady business practices” in places like West Africa were siphoning up to “a trillion dollars every year from developing countries”—also didn’t respond to an inquiry. While many artists publicly support causes that would seem to pit them against Bolloré’s business pursuits, stars might fear speaking out could carry contractual and professional risks. In recent years, boldface entertainment names have publicly accused UMG of prioritizing profits over artist interests. Musicians from Drake and Iggy Azalea to Limp Bizkit have spoken out—even sued—over unpaid royalties, licensing conflicts, and disputes over control of their work. And to be sure, pressuring UMG is not without risk, particularly for smaller artists who depend on the corporation’s support to stay afloat. Restitution for Africa is led by the anti-corruption watchdog group Transparency International and Jean-Jacques Lumumba, a former a former banker who in the mid-2010s exposed billions of dollars worth of embezzlements by Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s government and now lives in exile in Europe. At Restitution for Africa, he’s turned to different corruption occurring in his part of the world. “This is not a man who global musicians at Universal Music Group should be OK with taking money from,” Lumumba tells Fast Company. The French government has long grappled with its role in allowing political leaders in postcolonial Africa to steal from their own people, then park that stolen wealth back in France, or elsewhere. In 2021, President Emmanuel Macron’s government enacted a new law strengthening the legal pathway to return such corrupt assets, once seized, to their countries of origin. This followed years of high-profile cases involving hundreds of millions of euros laundered by leaders of countries like Equatorial Guinea and Congo to fund lavish Parisian real estate, high-end art, and expensive cars, the types of corruption Bono protested while in Africa and his ONE Campaign called out in its “Trillion Dollar Scandal.” Past cases primarily targeted corrupt heads of state and their families. But more recently, nonprofits have sought restitution for “ill-gotten” corporate gains. The most prominent example involves French energy giant TotalEnergies’ operations in Congo. In 2019, two anti-corruption nonprofits filed a criminal complaint against Total alleging that it won oil exploration rights through bribery. The case is still being argued five years later, demonstrating the complexities of expanding the target to include companies. But if a whistleblower hadn’t revealed a web of suspicious financial transactions tying Total and Congolese political elites to various bank accounts, it wouldn’t have had legs. That person was RAF’s Lumumba. In 2021, under mounting pressure, Bolloré Group parent company Bolloré SE paid €12 million to settle the Togo bribery charges brought against the corporation. Two years later, the Bollorés sold Bolloré Africa Logistics and started investing more heavily in the media industry, similar to a certain “free speech absolutist” tech billionaire in America. The African sale, combined with UMG artists’ profits, has helped breathe life into a rightwing French media juggernaut. Chanez Mensous, head of litigation and advocacy at the French corporate ethics watchdog Sherpa, calls this “quite symptomatic” of the Bolloré business approach. (Sherpa has joined previous criminal corruption cases against Bolloré, and will be a party to his individual trial next year, distinct from the 2021 corporate settlement, involving the Togo port bribery allegations.) “They prey on countries with weak governance standards,” Mensous says. “They have the financial strength to consider sanctions and fines a reasonable economic risk they can absorb. Their relative impunity is made possible by the control they have over the media. They use SLAPPs [strategic lawsuits against public participation] to silence civil societies and journalists covering these cases.” The family currently controls the telecom giant Canal+, Europe 1, various magazines, and France’s only Sunday newspaper—along with CNews, a free Canal+ channel that Harvard’s Nieman Reports recently criticized for “its role in mainstreaming far-right ideas.” That shift began accelerating after 2017, the year Bolloré took over the channel. Since then, CNews has added figures like Éric Zemmour, the far-right TV pundit turned politician repeatedly convicted of racial and religious hate speech. In the past few years, the network has been a place to find anti-vax histrionics, calls for Muslims to renounce their faith, interest in the Great Replacement Theory, suggestions that immigrants caused Paris’s pre-Olympics bedbug infestation, and full-blown panic over le wokisme—this as many UMG artists worldwide were busy promoting COVID vaccination efforts, calling out police brutality, and condemning white supremacy. Last summer, CNews rose (briefly) to the rank of France’s #1 news channel. Bolloré is also credited with empowering the far-right French leader Marine Le Pen—echoing her brand of nationalism, as well as her warm feelings toward Russia. Weeks ago when Donald The President berated Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Bolloré’s outlets took cues, turning friendly fire on Ukraine’s European allies. “The far-right broadcasters and newspapers owned by Vincent Bolloré are backing Vladimir Putin,” Le Monde told readers. “The French Rupert Murdoch” Meanwhile, Bolloré’s outlets have undergone an ideological purge serious enough to inspire Reporters Without Borders to produce a documentary chronicling their “repeated attacks on press freedom and the independence of editorial offices,” then denouncing them as “an unprecedented threat to democracy.” During France’s latest elections in 2022, hundreds of journalists and activists formed Operation Stop Bolloré, a coalition that accused Bolloré media of “breaking with all journalistic ethics,” arguing “it is no longer a matter of informing citizens, but of transforming minds.” On top of that, Bolloré lawyers have done their best to silence critical reporters and nonprofits that dig into the company’s business operations, like in 2016 when three newspapers (Mediapart, L’Obs, and Le Point) and two nonprofits (Sherpa and ReAct) reported that a Bolloré company bulldozed West African villagers’ land. In 15 years, the company has hit journalists and activists with at least 20 gag lawsuits. The Bolloré media arm is eyeing expansions back in Africa, too: If a deal awaiting approval closes, the Bollorés will own South African-based satellite TV provider MultiChoice, via the continent’s largest-ever media acquisition, giving them a subscriber base in sub-Saharan Africa of more than 20 million viewers. Of course, Bolloré’s right-wing crusade puts UMG artists in a bigger bind—whether they champion African causes or not, do they want their music profits to flow, in part, to a so-called “French Rupert Murdoch” who is bankrolling a political agenda many of them have publicly denounced? UMG’s ownership structure already presents an ethical dilemma for its most socially conscious performers: Beyond the Bollorés’ 28% control, the next largest shareholder, with 20%, is Tencent—the Chinese tech giant the U.S. government labels a Communist military asset. Noted The President booster Bill Ackman controls the third most, with 10%. Taylor Swift isn’t active in Africa, but she has repeatedly condemned racism and the oppression of women, and has lamented the “naiveté that we used to have about [bigotry].” The Imagine Dragons band members, signed to Interscope, are vocal official ambassadors of the Ukrainian state charity United24. Kendrick Lamar’s music criticizes racial injustice and systemic oppression, while Lady Gaga has used her platform to condemn far-right rhetoric as an attack on democracy and human rights. And that’s just four of UMG’s better-known artists. While Bolloré Group got blacklisted by Swiss funds in 2023 over human rights abuses, it’s harder to find examples of controversial investors caving to public pressure and divesting from publicly traded companies. That highlights the challenge of holding powerful billionaires accountable who can shield themselves from accountability. It also explains RAF’s long-shot strategy of seeking to leverage the platforms of celebrities whose careers aren’t directly impacted by a French shipping mogul, and who have largely ignored outside requests to speak out against him. However, since RAF’s letters went out, one artist has taken note of Bolloré’s business practices: Drake. The rapper is currently suing UMG over Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss track “Not Like Us”—a blistering takedown featuring the line “Drake, I hear you like ’em young,” with cover art showing a sex-offender map plastered with pins around Drake’s Toronto home. Just days after receiving the petition, Drake’s lawyers referenced Bolloré’s growing scandals in a legal filing, arguing that “recent headlines involving UMG’s largest stakeholder” call for greater transparency from the label. View the full article

Back in the 1930s, Robert W. Woodruff, president of the Coca-Cola Co., would carry a red swatch in his wallet. Of course, it wasn’t just any red. It was Coca-Cola red. And so anywhere he went and encountered his brand—painted on a wall, wrapping a refrigerator—he would pull out the little swatch to check that it matched. Woodruff understood the importance of Coca-Cola’s brand equity as it expanded globally—a challenge that has only grown since, now that Coca-Cola sells 2.2 billion servings a day across 200 countries, 150 languages, and 30 million points of sale. But where Woodruff used a swatch, Coca-Cola’s design team has spent the past four years dreaming up a modern operational upgrade to its 400 pages of brand guidelines. Teaming with Adobe, it developed Project Fizzion. Trained specifically on Coca-Cola’s design logic, it’s a brand-managing AI that lives inside Adobe platforms like Photoshop and Illustrator, generates designs, and, most of all, helps keep designers across the globe brand-compliant as they dream up the next big campaign. In a design world that’s equally dependent upon and terrified of generative AI tools, Coca-Cola is clear that Fizzion is not about cost cutting via AI. As it’s integrating Fizzion globally, it’s doing so with no reduction in spending on brand campaigns. Instead, the company believes it’s charting a path forward that’s sustainable for creatives to drive better work and eliminate headaches under deadline. “Fizzion was never a design automation tool,” says Rapha Abreu, global VP of design at Coca-Cola. “It’s a creative copilot that is powered by AI but guided by designers.” Dreaming up a new AIWhen Abreu joined Coca-Cola in 2021, his design team—who spent countless hours in meetings explaining to external agencies that their seemingly great ideas broke brand guidelines—became almost philosophical in imagining another way forward. Given that any Coca-Cola campaign can include up to 5,000 separate assets, it had become nearly impossible to manage. “We had this kind of crazy idea,” Abreu recalls. “What if the Coca-Cola logo could learn what to do and what not to do?” They imagined software built so a designer literally couldn’t place the logo in the wrong context. And if that could work for the logo, maybe the same thing could be true for colors, typography, and imagery associated with Coca-Cola campaigns. It was an enticing thought that was ahead of its time, but only a little. Within two years, ChatGPT and other GenAI tools would drop upon the world to automate all sorts of tasks that never before seemed possible. Companies including Adobe and Canva quickly whipped up GenAI tools that could suck in brand guidelines via PDF, then apply them to design templates. Sometimes they worked. And sometimes they didn’t. These sorts of guidelines can have trouble scaling to new, complex projects, and of course they do. Guidelines are just words trying to articulate visual relationships that are sometimes as instinctual as they are codified. Coca-Cola’s idea, led largely by its global head of AI design, Dom Heinrich, was to start with the images themselves, and to train a machine on Coca-Cola’s visual sensibility rather than a written rule set. Given that Coca-Cola and its partners were already working inside Adobe products, partnering with the company on building out such an AI system made a lot of sense. “It happens inside the tools that creatives already use,” says Abreu. “For us, that was the most important thing.” Together, the Adobe and Coca-Cola teams developed a different approach to training AI and deploying it at scale, which they call Project Fizzion (what seems like a most certain nod to Coca-Cola’s carbonated roots). How does Fizzion learn?Many AIs are already trained on images, but Fizzion takes a slightly different approach. It’s trained more on visual design systems, stuffed full of actual Coca-Cola assets. This means Fizzion isn’t analyzing a century of soda campaigns in order to hallucinate a polar bear dressed as Santa Claus sharing a Coke. It’s specifically not generating imagery like Adobe’s own Firefly or DALL-E, but it will create a new variation on an existing design, mixing and matching Coca-Cola assets to do so. Fizzion lives like Microsoft Copilot right inside Adobe software, considering the interdependencies of things on the screen. “When you’re designing a visual identity system, the model should be able to learn, not just from the images but from the relationships between all the components, how the text maps to the images’ other elements that need to be part of it,” says Ash King, senior director of Firefly enterprise solutions at Adobe. “That allows [the designer] to test various aspect ratios, free-form.” Fizzion can see the canvas a designer is working on in real time, complete with the positioning of logos, imagery, and typefaces. The AI learns from Coca-Cola’s own designers only when a project is finalized. Once a designer has a product they like—and knows works with brand standards—they save it as what they call a Style ID that adds to the AI’s knowledge. That’s basically the visual logic of one Cola-Cola campaign. At this time Fizzion also collects all necessary brand assets for that campaign so that it can incorporate them perfectly whenever necessary. (In other words, Fizzion is pulling the Coca-Cola logo fresh every time, rather than dreaming up what it’s supposed to look like from old references.) This is how Fizzion is trained to learn new styles. (It also incorporates background from Coca-Cola’s 400-page brand guidelines, via Adobe Firefly.) From there, Fizzion sits atop a global production pipeline that allows partners to tweak the visual formula without breaking it. How teams across Coca-Cola use FizzionBuilding a marketing campaign in Fizzion can start with a prompt to generate—something like “Coca-Cola polar bears on the ocean”—or with a blank canvas as Fizzion watches along. At the very top of the stack, the Coca-Cola design team has full access to build or alter anything across the brand that it wants. Partner agencies that Coke hires to make ads have more limitations. They can generate a new aspect ratio for a campaign on demand, and the AI will piece it all together. But if they want to stretch the logo—real bad—Fizzion won’t let them. However, they can send that change as a request to Coca-Cola proper through the platform to get approval (saving a meeting). As design teams go down the chain from America to local markets, more and more of the design process becomes about localization. These teams have the least amount of access to tweak a campaign—certain assets and layers may be locked—though they can still make requests up the chain. This might sound controlling (and of course to an extent Coca-Cola is very much controlling its brand). But the design team argues that having these brand guidelines integrated into design tools is ultimately more freeing for design partners. “One thing that we speak a lot internally about this global system is that we need to help designers and creatives downstream do the right thing, right. So it cannot be a burden for them to try to be compliant with the brand,” Abreu says. “We need to make this as easy as possible.” However, with kerning off the table, Coca-Cola argues that it leaves time for creatives to focus on everything else about a campaign: “storytelling, having ideas, making sure cultural nuance is applied, and [focusing on] emotional resonance,” Abreu says. Indeed, despite all of the checks and balances in the system, Coca-Cola’s designers are hoping that their creative partners continue to push back. In fact, they are depending on it, as that’s the only way they believe a brand can grow and evolve. “If everybody builds on the same LLM, it just follows the same kind of way of interacting with an AI. We will just get a lot of the same,” says Heinrich. “We believe that designers need to be more in charge. . . . [They need to] be more creative in order to push the AI to the next level. The better you are at your job and the better you push, the better the outputs are and the more uniqueness comes from them.” For now, Coca-Cola is all-in with Fizzion. Since March of this year, every partner agency that’s building a campaign is required to create it with a Fizzion Style ID. And the Coca-Cola team believes Fizzion is so efficient at handling design standards that its 400-page PDF guidelines will fall out of use. As for Adobe, it’s built a powerful design tool that, no doubt, many companies using its platform would benefit from. However, it’s also been designed to meet the gargantuan needs of Coca-Cola, meaning it’s probably too big and multitiered for many teams to adopt efficiently. “Few companies are thinking on the scale as Coke is right now. So we need to take a future-forward look at this and figure out how it’s best applied,” says King. “We like to start with the use cases. We like to have something very concrete that a customer wants to do and then build backwards into what we’re [shipping].” View the full article