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We've only covered the Department of Justice vs Google documents here and there but here are some documents that may be of interest to the community here. Google said Navboost is not a machine learning system, instead it is more of a big table. And there are more documents including one on hand crafting signals and another on a debugging interface.View the full article

Federal ethics rules now seem little more than decorationView the full article

Ever wonder what fuels a productive (and happy!) team behind the scenes? Well, we recently did a quick poll around our virtual water cooler to find out which collaboration tools truly make our workday sing. The results are in, and we thought it would be a fun peek into how we operate and, just maybe, inspire your own team's workflow. So, grab a coffee, and let's dive into our top picks! View the full article

Ryan Moulton, a Google Search engineer who worked on Google's search rankings algorithms for over 18 years now, went to X to call out some of what the courts are saying as not true. He went on to say, "This is now the second time I've seen my work cited prominently in a major lawsuit against Google, and I have to say, it has not given me a lot of faith in the court process around issues like this."View the full article

Google's John Mueller explained that just because you use hreflang tags on your pages, it doesn't mean those pages will be indexed and/or ranked in Google Search. He said on Bluesky, "hreflang doesn't guarantee indexing."View the full article

By now, most marketers have at least dabbled with generative AI (GenAI) tools and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. They’ve heard that their competitors are using the technology to practically create entire campaigns with the push of a button. And they’re aware that AI is reshaping marketing and perhaps are both excited and a little worried about what the future will bring. To date, much of the early conversation about putting AI into production at scale has centered on the need for good prompt engineering — the ability to ask the right questions of this powerful technology. We’ve been told our successful use of the technology hinges on this skill, with the implication we can hire our way out of the problem. While organizations like big tech companies and AI labs are busy hiring prompt engineers, much of the emphasis on prompt engineering is a holdover from the very early days of GenAI, when familiarity with token length limits, model behavior quirks and methods to avoid hallucinations was unicorn-rare. Today, “prompt engineering” is often just a fancy name for giving an AI model better, more explicit instructions. And, as illustrated above, even LLMs are getting pretty good at writing effective prompts. The truth is, prompt engineering is important—but even the best prompts can’t overcome GenAI’s limitations without RAG. What is RAG – and why does it matter? Retrieval-Augmented Generation, or RAG, involves supplying GenAI models with external context — carefully selected data or content — to produce more accurate, relevant and targeted outputs. One of the biggest challenges with GenAI models is that they will always provide a response, regardless of whether they’ve received the right context or high-quality inputs. Without sufficient data, they frequently produce convincing but inaccurate outputs (hallucinations) or generic, off-brand results that aren’t fit for purpose. RAG directly addresses this problem. To understand RAG in its simplest form, think of your GenAI model as a fresh-out-of-school new-hire – a resource with enormous potential, skills, and general knowledge, but lacks specific knowledge of your business. RAG acts as the crucial onboarding process—equipping your AI “new-hire” with precise organizational context, brand guidelines, policies and, perhaps most critically, targeted resources and reference information. This “onboarding” transforms your “new-hire’s” basic capabilities into accurate, focused, and brand-aligned outputs, making RAG an essential foundation for enterprises relying on GenAI to deliver business-critical results. It all begins with data Just a few years ago, we assumed the only way to get accurate, relevant results from GenAI was to develop custom models. This approach, however, dramatically underestimates the time, complexity, cost and expertise involved. RAG represents a viable and cost-effective alternative. But first, you need to have an optimized set of data. For traditional text-based marketing use cases, you should curate a collection of existing marketing content that best represents your brand, tone of voice, and how you typically structure different types of collateral and communications. This context will enable a GenAI model to output results that require minimal review and human intervention. However, there are two core challenges here: RAG input data needs to be machine-readable. GenAI models perform well with single-page content, but tend to struggle with longer-form, more complex documents, like whitepapers, which typically embed graphics, images, charts and perhaps even tabular data. You need to properly prepare these long-form documents for ingestion by an LLM. RAG data must be precisely queryable. A very powerful aspect of RAG is the dynamic “retrieval” of relevant data. However, the effective use of RAG is dependent on being able to retrieve exactly the information you want to feed to your model – nothing more and nothing less. In short, to get the most out of RAG, you need data that is both well-structured and well-tagged. One approach to address this need is called “semantic layering” — a precise, structured representation of a document, complete with tables, data extractions for charts and graphics, tabular data and even detailed descriptions of embedded images. XML is a preferred format because it is both easy for GenAI models to understand and provides extensive tagging for document queries. Another advantage of a semantic layer is that it can be reused across multiple use cases and GenAI applications. As I discussed in my last MarTech article, there are also a number of compelling GenAI use cases related to working with graphics, images, and other digital assets. The requirement for RAG is very much the same here — you need well-tagged inputs with meaningful, structured data that can be readily queried. For example, if you want to use GenAI for asset enrichment utilizing your own taxonomy or ontology and unique metadata (e.g. product IDs, color schemes, etc.), you have to be able to provide the model with the right context to both accurately identify the image content and generate the corresponding metadata. I would add that while commercial GenAI models can generally identify simple image attributes — like recognizing that an image contains people, a hat or a car — they typically fail to capture nuanced brand aesthetics, cultural references, tone or emotional resonance. Marketers and creative professionals need much more rigorous, detailed asset metadata that aligns with a very specific vision and brand voice. Simply put, RAG implementation for visual assets demands thoughtful curation and detailed metadata tagging of images and videos, ongoing refinement of visual training data and careful management to ensure outputs remain aligned with evolving creative strategies and brand standards. Getting GenAI to pay attention One of the powerful features of RAG is that retrieval (the “R” in RAG) is dynamic, not static. In order to populate your RAG input, you are running a dynamic search based on a given set of parameters to retrieve the most relevant and up-to-date information. However, an underappreciated issue with most GenAI models is the limited context window. Models have limits (measured in tokens) on the amount of information they can process and understand at one time. Think of it as the model’s short-term memory or working memory. Once you exceed the context window, a model will start to lose track of earlier input, affecting the quality of output. Because of this limitation, marketers cannot simply throw hundreds of documents or thousands of images at a model with RAG and expect it to produce the desired results. Data preparation enables you to be highly selective with retrieval. Some may argue the superiority of one search technique over another, e.g., graph is better than vector (semantic) search, or vice versa. But I believe that no technique is inherently better than another, and often, the best results come from combining techniques. Regardless, without quality data preparation, no search is going to be terribly accurate. To be effective with RAG, you need to be able to query a large set of information and select only the necessary data to provide the right context for the model. If you cannot be selective in your retrieval, you risk exceeding the context window (typically 100,000–300,000 tokens) or, even worse, you provide the wrong inputs and context to the model, and the quality of your results suffers. (For reference, one page of text is about 400–500 tokens.) The best way to deal with GenAI’s limited context windows is to begin with a well-prepared data set and to be very precise, very targeted with your retrieval. Lighten the load with intelligent agents If all of this sounds like a heavy lift, it certainly can be. A recent survey found that up to 50% of the time spent in building new GenAI apps/agents was attributed to data preparation. However, there is hope. Recently, people have begun to leverage LLMs and GenAI agents to automate data preparation and to create semantic layers. With a simple prompt, agentic workflows can act autonomously and make use of various tools and techniques to access and retrieve the precise RAG inputs needed to generate the best response for a given task or activity. This approach provides two critical benefits: It enables non-technical users, like marketers and creative professionals, to effortlessly leverage generative AI for sophisticated projects, dramatically reducing complexity and learning curves. It automates labor-intensive processes, such as data preparation, significantly improving the quality of GenAI outputs and accelerating time-to-value for new GenAI applications. All of this is why, in my previous article, I made the point that GenAI isn’t “plug and play” – there are deeper complexities and RAG is one. But there are tools and platforms that make this journey quicker and easier, helping to build custom GenAI apps and agents without the inherent costs and complexities. This isn’t to suggest that RAG will give immediate access to push-button brand campaigns, at least for now. But RAG does present the opportunity to repurpose existing marketing assets in ways that create new value for very little effort — and in a way that retains the brand identity and voice that marketers have worked so hard to establish. Learn more about agentic RAG with Vertesia. Written by Chris McLaughlin, Chief Marketing Officer at Vertesia View the full article

The top five lenders had an average of 30,887 loans guaranteed in 2024. View the full article

For its first six decades in business, Target sat on the sidelines when a new U.S. president entered office. But on January 10, ahead of Donald The President’s return to the White House, the big-box retailer broke with tradition and donated $1 million to the The President Inaugural Committee. Two weeks later, the corporate giant offered the new administration a different kind of gift: It announced that it was pulling back on its diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments, eliminating programs designed to increase its Black workforce and the number of Black-owned brands on its shelves. The backlash was swift. Rallied by civil rights leaders like Jamal Bryant and Al Sharpton, customers began boycotting Target’s stores. This is the same retailer, after all, that had mobilized to support the Black community in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, which took place 10 minutes from its headquarters. Within a year of that tragedy, the company had committed to spending $2 billion with Black-owned businesses and adding products from more than 500 Black-owned brands to its shelves by the end of 2025. Now even the web page that tracked these commitments has disappeared. Many saw Target’s abrupt capitulation to the The President administration as a sign that it had never really believed in social justice in the first place. For months now, consumers have been registering their unhappiness by staying clear of Target. Since late January, weekly foot traffic across Target’s fleet of nearly 2,000 stores has been down between 3.8% and 7.7% compared to last year, according to Placer.ai, which tracks people’s locations based on their mobile data. Target’s stock has plunged around 40% over the past year. The company is also facing the consequences of The President’s trade war. Even a 30% tariff on China means that the 30% of products from Target-owned brands that are still produced in that country will be much more expensive. And then there are the innumerable goods from other brands—and other countries—impacted by The President’s so-called reciprocal tariffs. There’s no question that Target is dealing with a barrage of setbacks this year, but the retailer’s troubles date back even further. (Target turned down Fast Company’s request for an interview, but responded to questions via email.) After explosive sales growth in 2021 and 2022, the company has been flatlining: Net sales dropped $1.7 billion, or 1.6%, in 2023. Last year, they declined as well, though comparative year-to-year sales were up about 1% (2023 was a 53-week year). Target was projecting 1% growth for this year—before the tariffs were announced. Meanwhile, CEO Brian Cornell’s 2024 pay, which is tied to the company’s performance, dropped to $9.9 million—a 45% decline from the previous year. It wasn’t so long ago that Target had a reputation for providing a delightful shopping experience, with tidy, brightly lit stores and shelves stocked with well-designed products at affordable prices. Under Cornell, who became chief executive in 2014, the company built up a portfolio of more than 45 private-label brands, which are now worth more than $31 billion in annual sales. The retailer also became the exclusive launch partner to dozens of pioneering direct-to-consumer brands, helping to cultivate the retailer’s “Tarzhay” mystique. But that charm has been fading due to a series of missteps that the company made coming out of the pandemic. For one, it overestimated demand and bought too much inventory, which weighed on profits. (The company’s operating income dropped by more than 50% in 2022. And though it’s recovered ground in recent years, operating income was still down 38% last year from its 2021 high.) As the company wrestled with this excess inventory, the store experience seem to degrade: Customers started complaining about messy, disorganized aisles and long checkout lines. More recently, Target’s reliance on selling discretionary products, which make up 50% of its business and most of its owned brands, has held it back at a time when consumers are feeling the pinch of inflation. Target remains one of the biggest legacy brands on the American retail landscape, generating $106.6 billion in revenue last year. The question now is whether it can pull itself back from the brink, or whether its best days are over. How Shopping at Target Stopped Being Fun The weekend before Easter, Target dropped a limited-edition collaboration with Kate Spade. Collabs like these were once highly anticipated affairs that drove shoppers into stores. A decade ago, shoppers mobbed stores to get their hands on items from Target’s Lilly Pulitzer and Missoni collections. But on the morning of the Kate Spade drop, only a handful of women showed up at my large store in the Boston suburbs. When the doors opened at 7 a.m., customers found employees still unpacking Kate Spade merchandise from cardboard boxes and putting it on shelves. Fifteen minutes later, as shoppers got impatient, a manager said they could just go through the boxes themselves to fish for the bracelets and purses they had come to buy—giving the whole experience more of a bargain-basement vibe than a partnership with a beloved, high-end designer. The problems continued from there. While the store has a dozen changing rooms, only one was unlocked. Customers tried to find an employee to open up the other stalls, but nobody was available. Some shoppers just gave up on their quest, abandoning piles of clothes on the floor. Target says the Kate Spade collab resulted in the company’s largest launch day for a limited-time collection in the past decade. Even so, Placer.ai’s data shows that there was a 4.7% drop in foot traffic at Target stores compared to the previous year during the week of the collection’s launch. Shopping experiences like mine seem to have become increasingly common at Target, according to our own reporting and reporting from The Wall Street Journal and Vox. “The stores are disorganized, product is never where it’s supposed to be, and I’ve seen expired product on shelves—which is the worst thing you can do as a retailer—and there’s no one you can even complain to,” says Sucharita Kodali, principal analyst at Forrester, who specializes in retail. “These are serious executional problems.” This decline of the in-store experience didn’t happen overnight. For years, Target stood out from low-cost competitors like Walmart and Costco by offering a more pleasant shopping experience than their warehouse-like, no-frills ambience. But things began to devolve in the wake of the pandemic. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, many retailers saw an enormous boost in online sales as consumers used their stimulus checks to shop. Target’s sales exploded by $15 billion, or 20%, in 2020 as it sold customers garden furniture and decor for their home upgrades, and sweatpants for their homebound lifestyle. But consumers’ shopping behavior shifted quickly when society opened back up, a change that caught Target by surprise, according to Mickey Chadha, a retail analyst and vice president at Moody’s. To head off supply chain issues during the pandemic, Target had placed advance orders for products that people would want while stuck at home. But when lockdowns were lifted, “suddenly it had a lot of inventory that it couldn’t sell,” Chadha says. “It would take them a long time to recover from that decline in profitability.” Soon after, customers started voicing concerns about messy shelves and long checkout lines. A year ago, Fast Company spoke with Target customers and employees who complained the retailer was understaffing stores. A student at Illinois Wesleyan University wrote an op-ed in her college paper describing how she has found empty shelves and trash on the floors of her local store, and urging college students to take their business elsewhere. Redditors vented that Target’s grocery and bakery sections were out of stock, and inventory was often misplaced. Target also put many products behind plexiglass in 2023 in response to a wave of organized retail theft. “Target’s strategy used to be to wow customers with their assortment of exciting, higher-end items in store,” says Nicole DeHoratius, professor of professional practice at Columbia Business School who studies retail operations and supply chains. “But if you can’t touch and feel the products, or even read the packaging, why would you even go to the store?” DeHoratius points out that a poor in-store experience is likely to drive customers to shop online. But this presents another problem for Target since its e-commerce operations are still just a fraction the size of Amazon’s and Walmart’s. For several years Target has invested $3 billion to $5 billion annually to speed up its online deliveries. It’s also partnered with Shopify to bring more brands into Target Plus, its third-party marketplace. These efforts have been working: Target’s digital sales now make up nearly 20% of its overall business, generating $20 billion in revenue. But Walmart’s e-commerce sales, which reached $100 billion in 2024, are growing roughly twice as fast as Target’s. And Walmart continues to invest in its delivery infrastructure. In February, it announced that it was offering same-day delivery service to 93% of U.S. households (Target reaches 75% through its delivery service, Shipt). Walmart followed up with news in April that it has redesigned its approach to shipping and could now serve an additional 12 million households. “Walmart’s online shopping experience is more sophisticated,” says DeHoratius. “If a Walmart customer doesn’t shop in store, [it] can capture that sale online, but Target is unable to do that.” Unsplash Choosing essential groceries over affordable luxuries Target is working through its operational issues. A year ago, in an acknowledgment of customer frustrations with the slow checkout process, Target said it would open more checkout lines and launch express self-checkout with limits of 10 or fewer items. But a bigger issue for the company is that its unique value proposition—of offering better-designed products at good prices—may no longer resonate with American consumers. The Kate Spade collaboration was part of Target’s 25-year-long strategy of partnering with high-end designers, from architect Michael Graves to fashion designer Proenza Schouler, to create more accessible versions of their products. Target has also invested heavily in its more than 45 in-house brands across the fashion, home, and beauty categories. Many of these lines closely mimic the aesthetic of other popular brands. (Auden underwear is a cheaper alternative to ThirdLove; Open Story luggage is similar to Away’s minimalist suitcases.) “Target’s cachet was that they offered good products at a decent price,” says Chadha, the VP at Moody’s. “Their private-label strategy was very successful because you could only get those products at Target, and their margins were very high.” Target’s appeal to middle-class consumers was that they could visit a store to buy essentials like toilet paper and dish soap while also browsing for affordable luxuries. This led to the “Target effect” of stopping at the store to buy a few basics, and leaving with $100 worth of products you didn’t know you needed. But over the past four years, consumers have consistently felt worried about the economy. And in this environment, they are less eager to spend on discretionary purchases. This gives Walmart yet another advantage. For one thing, Walmart’s entire brand centers on offering low prices. (Since 2007, Walmart’s motto has been “Save money. Live better.”) Walmart is also continuing to expand its grocery offerings, which now make up roughly 65% of the store, and is currently building five new high-tech distribution centers for perishable products. “In an inflationary time, consumers shift from discretionary to nondiscretionary products, which basically means food and essentials,” says Chadha. “Walmart has gained market share because of its food offerings. But it has also improved its own in-house brands, which means customers pick up a few other things on their grocery run.” Target’s competitors are, indeed, finding more success with their in-house brands. Costco’s Kirkland brand now generates more revenue than Nike, and Walmart’s new private-label grocery brand, Bettergoods, is one of the country’s fastest-growing. (Target’s ultra-cheap Dealworthy brand, launched last year to compete with Amazon and Costco, is also growing quickly.) Though grocery currently makes up 23% of Target’s selection, the company is starting to move that needle. Target generated $23.8 billion from food and beverage in 2024, up $9 billion from five years ago. To keep up with this growing demand, it’s opened three new food distribution centers over the past two years, bringing its total to eight. It’s opening yet another in 2026. Then Came the Boycott Target was already on shaky ground as 2025 dawned. And then The President took office. For years, Target had positioned itself as a progressive company, supporting Pride month with rainbow merchandise and running commercials celebrating “Black joy” for Black History Month. Chadha points out that Target’s social justice stance made sense because it generally aligned with the company’s customer demographics. Walmart tends to have very large-footprint stores in rural locations that are more right-leaning; Target, conversely, tends to have smaller stores in more left-leaning urban areas. “Geography matters,” says Chadha. “Target’s stores are in places that generally skew blue.” Target took a particularly bold stance in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. In addition to its commitment to buy inventory from Black-owned businesses, Target vowed to increase its Black workforce by 20% over three years, to donate $100 million to support Black-led nonprofits, and to offer scholarships to students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The directive came from the top. In an interview with the ​​Economic Club of Chicago a year after George Floyd’s murder, Cornell said the killing had compelled him to rethink his leadership at Target. “I recognize that it’s time to take it to another level, and that as CEOs, we have to be the company’s head of diversity and inclusion,” he said. But when The President took office in January of this year, his administration took aim at DEI, saying it would draw up a list of private companies that could be investigated for “illegal DEI discrimination.” Target abruptly announced it was pulling back on all of its DEI initiatives. Target was far from alone in capitulating: Dozens of companies, including Amazon, PepsiCo, and Walmart, quickly eliminated DEI programs. But Target’s reversal was more painful, says Jamal Bryant, the Atlanta-based pastor who helped kick-start the Target boycott. To Bryant, it revealed how superficial and performative Target’s promises to the Black community had been. “We’ve never asked Target for a handout; we were looking for a handshake,” he says. “And for Target to withdraw that hand so suddenly was disappointing.” On February 2, Bryant used his pulpit at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, to urge people to “fast” from shopping at Target during Lent, the 40-day period before Easter. He wasn’t sure whether the boycott would have any impact. But according to Placer.ai, foot traffic to Target across all stores has been down by at least 4% every week of the boycott compared to last year. Meanwhile, Costco and Walmart were seeing increases in foot traffic. “I was shocked,” Bryant says. “You have to understand, this is the largest boycott by Black people since the Montgomery Bus boycott.” For weeks, Target didn’t acknowledge the boycott. But days before Easter, Cornell sat down with Bryant and Reverand Al Sharpton, who had also supported the boycott. The civil rights leaders asked Target to restore its internal DEI efforts, deposit $250 million into Black-owned banks, establish new partnerships with HBCUs, and renew its commitment to invest $2 billion in Black-owned businesses. Cornell committed only to the last issue, so Bryant says the boycott is still on. (The week of April 28, Target’s foot traffic was down 5% compared to last year, according to Placer.ai.) The question is whether there’s any way for Target to bounce back from these many intersecting crises. The analysts I spoke with believe there is still time for Target to turn things around. For one thing, Target is a very big company; it has the resources to invest in fixing its operational problems and making inroads with the communities it has alienated. It wouldn’t be the first big retailer to rebound. Just a decade ago, Walmart’s stock plunged amid worries that it couldn’t keep pace with Amazon. But Walmart managed to beef up its e-commerce operations and is in a much stronger position today. Kodali, the analyst at Forrester, acknowledges that Target is at a low point, but she believes it can recover. “Retail is cyclical,” she says. “Target has lost its mojo, but it is not irreparably damaged. It needs to refresh its store experience, its technology, its employee training programs, but it can make a comeback. Target is too big to fail.” She says that 30% tariffs on Chinese goods—if that rate sticks—could actually help Target, along with other value retailers. “The tariffs will affect inflation more than lower sales for any mass merchant,” she says. As long as Target can improve its shopping experience, it could be a destination for what she calls “essential goods.” Last week, Cornell sent around an email to staff acknowledging the “tough few months” Target has faced this year. “There’s been a lot coming at us—macro challenges in the environment,” he wrote, “but also headlines, social media and conversations that may have left you wondering: Where does Target stand? What’s true? What’s not?” He noted that “silence” from the highest levels of the company have exacerbated this uncertainly. Cornell has yet to speak publicly about the company’s DEI rollback, and his message to employees didn’t mention it either. “I want to be very clear,” he wrote. “We are still the Target you know and believe in.” Whether he was stating a fact or an aspiration, however, remains to be seen. View the full article

It can be tempting for business leaders to overly rely on data to drive their decision-making. But so often that approach can sacrifice the human connection that’s needed between leaders and their employees and customers. At Fast Company’s annual Impact Council meeting last week, Elyse Cohen, chief impact officer of the Selena Gomez-founded beauty brand Rare Beauty; and David Ko, CEO of mental health and sleep assistance platform Calm, took to the stage to discuss why leading like a human is so important, particularly at a time of striking technological advancement. Data-driven human connection Although Calm leverages AI, the company predominantly uses those capabilities to democratize access to its app, which includes guided meditations, bedtime stories and soundscapes, and video lessons for movement and stretching. According to Ko, Calm is using AI to translate these features into other languages, expand content options, and increase people’s comfort levels with the technology. Ko wants to employ what he calls “human-centered AI,” which puts the user at the center of data insights. “We want to use the data to continue to evolve, to make the product better, so that ultimately we can make you healthier and be with you in your mental health journey every step of the way,” Ko said. For Cohen, AI plays a limited role in her day-to-day operations. Rather the data she looks to comes from robust customer interactions and feedback, which, in large part, stems from the company putting mental health advocacy at the core of their business from day one. “We didn’t anticipate a community like this. It really was launching this company at a time when a global pandemic was happening. Our audience was experiencing more loneliness than ever. And so by default, we created these virtual ways to connect, which then turned into this powerful community,” she said. “As the brand grew, it became quite clear that our community was the heart and soul of this brand.” Letting Gen Z lead Many of the lessons that Cohen and Ko have learned from their customers and employees about human connection comes from younger generations, who appreciate transparency in the workplace and want to see their values reflected in the brands they work for or spend money on. “The way everyone is so open about a therapy appointment, or being stressed, it’s not the same moment of hiding those feelings,” Cohen said. “It’s a lot more of wearing them on your sleeve and opening up the conversation for a leader to then ask how they are—and they will tell you.” As important as it is to allow employees to be open about their mental health in the workplace, Cohen also noted that it’s important for company leaders to engage with “kitchen conversations” across the board with their employees. “When it comes to the personal part of their life, that’s where they’re open and willing to talk and wanting to talk,” Cohen said. “I could tell you every employee that went to Coachella.” To Cohen, it’s about understanding “the whole person” and who they’re showing up to work as. “Our employees come to the office ready to talk and ready to actually share,” she said. Making mental health conversations company-wide Cultivating an environment where people feel like they’re actually being listened to can create space for vulnerable conversations, which build trust and are crucial to companies that create products and build communities centered around mental well-being. For Calm and Rare Beauty, that ethos originates at the internal level. Ko said that he’s dealt with panic attacks since the age of 14, but he didn’t start to think about how his own mental health impacted the environments he worked in—including, initially, at Calm—until later in life. “What I started to do was to open up dialogue around [my mental health], show my own vulnerability and talk about what I have been through,” he said. “If we really want to have conversations around mental health and the workplace, it’s got to be supported at all levels. If the conversation is just for HR [and] the benefit managers, it’s not enough.” Cohen agreed that the tone company leaders set permeates the business as a whole. “I think we forget that it’s how we show up every day,” Cohen said. “We can bring in every benefit we want. We can say that we focus on mental health. But it is truly how a leader shows up that creates the culture, and it’s the full ripple effect because it’s what everyone is following.” View the full article

To calculate market share, divide your company revenue by industry revenue. Then multiply by 100. View the full article

Common personal care and beauty products like lotions, soaps, shampoos, eyeliner, and even eyelash glue can contain formaldehyde or preservatives that release formaldehyde—a known carcinogen that has been linked to cancer. And Black and Latina women could be at particular risk. Formaldehyde is a preservative (it’s a key ingredient of embalming fluid) and so it’s sometimes added to beauty products as a way to extend their shelf life and inhibit the growth of bacteria or mold. Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives are seen as an alternative to formaldehyde, but these chemical compounds do the same thing: they extend shelf life while slowly releasing formaldehyde into the product over time (just how much depends on multiple factors, but studies suggest longer storage times and higher temperatures lead to more formaldehyde released). That formaldehyde could then be absorbed by the skin, and even though the amount may be small, experts say low levels of formaldehyde still pose health risks. Personal care products are often used frequently, so repeated exposures could add up. These chemicals have already been found in hair-straightening products, which are predominantly used by Black women. A new study, recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, found that this risk extends beyond chemical hair relaxers to all sorts of beauty products: lotions, shower gels, face creams, shampoo and conditioners, hair oils, eyeliner, eyelash glue, and so on. In that study, researchers asked a group of Black and Latina women in Los Angeles about their use of personal care products over a week. More than half reported using items that contain formaldehyde-releasing preservatives—and many of those products are ones that the participants used daily, or multiple times in a week. Finding formaldehyde in beauty products For the study, 64 Black and Latina women were tasked with tracking all of their beauty product use, logging the information in an app developed by the Silent Spring Institute, a research organization focused on the environmental causes of breast cancer. (Silent Spring chemists authored the study, and it was part of a larger research effort between Silent Spring, Occidental College Black Women for Wellness, and Columbia University.) That app also asked them to take a photo of each ingredient label, which allowed the researchers to analyze the ingredient lists for formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives. Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives often go by complex chemical names like 1,3-dimethylol-5,5-dimethylhydantoin, also called DMDM hydantoin or DMDMH, meaning they don’t actually appear as “formaldehyde” on ingredient lists. Fifty-three percent of participants said they used at least one product with formaldehyde releasers on its ingredient label, and DMDMH was the most common. Of the items that contained any formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, DMDMH was in 47% of skincare and 58% of hair products. The fact that these toxic chemicals are in so many products highlights the health risks women face, particularly Black and Latina women. One woman in the study used three products with formaldehyde-releasing preservatives: a leave-in conditioner, rinse-off conditioner, and a body wash. Some women used these products multiple times a day, like hand soap or lotion. Over a five day period, 20 study participants used lotions with formaldehyde-releasing preservatives for a total of 76 times. One eyelash glue even specifically listed formaldehyde as an ingredient. The preservatives were also found in hair gels, oils, curl creams, and edge controls, predominantly used by Black women. The study didn’t list specific brands or product names containing formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, though it did note that 12 such lotions were from Bath & Body Works. “While this study does not specify which of body lotions its participants were using, we rigorously test formulas for all our personal care and home fragrance products, including FRPs to meet regulatory and safety standards,” a Bath & Body Works spokesperson said in a statement. Protecting consumers from formaldehyde releasers Formaldehyde exposure is linked to adverse health effects, including increased risk of multiple types of cancer. Researchers say there’s been a growing concern about formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, and how personal care products that contain them could pose a risk to women’s health, particularly Black and Latina women. Previous studies have connected the use of hair relaxers to an increased risk of uterine cancer in Black women. Others say these formaldehyde-releasing chemicals aren’t a concern. Unilever, for example, has a web page about how it doesn’t use formaldehyde as an ingredient but does use “formaldehyde donors” like DMDMH. It says they’re safe to use, per the U.S. Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel and Europe’s Scientific Community on Consumer Safety. Still, in Europe, products with formaldehyde are more regulated. The European Union has banned formaldehyde in cosmetics, and requires any cosmetics with formaldehyde releasers above a 0.001% concentration to have a warning label. The U.S. currently doesn’t ban formaldehyde in cosmetics (a federal ban on formaldehyde and formaldehyde releasers in chemical hair straighteners was considered back in 2023, and is currently stalled after President Donald The President paused all federal regulations). At least 10 states, including California and Oregon, have enacted or considered laws to regulate formaldehyde in cosmetics—either by banning it, or requiring warning labels for formaldehyde releasers. There has been a drop in products containing formaldehyde in California after the state’s Safe Cosmetics Program began in 2007, but experts say even beyond warning labels, banning formaldehyde releasers completely across the country would be the best-case scenario to reduce risks. The researchers suggest people avoid products containing DMDMH. Silent Spring has resources for how people can avoid formaldehyde releasers, including by noting the other chemical names for such preservatives that may appear on ingredient lists. Black Women for Wellness also has resources for consumers concerned about chemical exposure. “We’re trying to do the right thing,” Janette Robinson Flint, executive director of Black Women for Wellness, says in a statement. “But there needs to be more government oversight. We shouldn’t have to be chemists to figure out what kinds of products will make us sick.” View the full article

In large organizations, HR usually has a process for documenting concerns about employees’ effectiveness that can be used either to help fix those problems—or to provide a basis for later termination. One of the central records used for this purpose is the dreaded performance improvement plan, or PIP. If you get called in to see your supervisor and get hit with a PIP, you’re likely to experience a range of emotions. Understanding your emotional reaction and how to cope with it is an important part of moving forward successfully. Let’s consider a range of emotions you might be experiencing and what you should do: Feeling Grief One possibility is that the PIP comes out of the blue. You may be thinking that work is going fine and you suddenly find out that there are concerns. Because work is often an important part of both your identity and your ability to maintain your life and lifestyle, it represents a tear in the fabric of your life story. And that will trigger a grief process. The five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) don’t necessarily have to happen in that order, but you should recognize that they may accompany the news that you are struggling in your job. You have to resist the urge to act on the basis of these emotions. If you get angry, you should not lash out at your bosses or the organization in email or on social media. If you feel like bargaining, take a beat, and avoid making promises that you will regret later. Instead, give yourself a few days to reflect on the situation. Were you dismissing warning signs about your performance? Are there elements of your job that you have been ignoring? Do you think the organization is looking for a way to show you the exit? After that reflection, schedule a meeting with your supervisor to talk over the situation. In preparation for that session, make a realistic plan for how you will address issues discussed in your PIP. Develop a list of questions you have about the path forward. Wait to schedule that meeting for a time when you feel that you can really hear the answers to your questions. Feeling Relief Perhaps surprisingly, you may find that the PIP brings with it a feeling of relief. You may have been struggling to complete your job responsibilities. Perhaps you feel that you’re in over your head. You might even hate your job, but were soldiering on by inertia. If the PIP brings a feeling of relief, it’s probably time to look for a new job. The feelings you’re having are helping you see that you can have a more fulfilling work life by changing paths. Make a list of the things you really like about your job, as well as those you don’t. Think about the characteristics of a job that would be appealing. Consider talking with your supervisor or someone in HR about alternative paths. Often, your supervisor wants you to be successful—even if that success means that you should be working elsewhere. They may have great suggestions about a role that would best suit your talents. Feeling Clarity Sometimes—particularly early in your career—you have a nagging sense that there is something wrong at work. You’re doing your work as well as you can, but feel like you’re missing something. You may have the sense that everyone else is working from a different version of the script than you are. In this case, the PIP may actually help to clarify what is going wrong. This can happen when you have a supervisor who is not good at providing regular feedback and coaching. In this situation, you can really dive into the PIP (after taking a day or two to see this as an opportunity, rather than a punishment). Sit down with your supervisor and other team members and talk about the elements of your performance that have raised concern. Ask about training and classes you can take to improve your performance. Find a peer who is good at these tasks and ask for some mentorship. The people who emerge most strongly from a PIP are those who embrace the opportunity for growth and lean into the chance to improve skills. As this process moves forward, talk with your supervisor about how to get more timely feedback on your performance. This conversation is likely to help you improve, and may also provide some feedback to your supervisor that can lead to their growth as well. View the full article

This chimes with what we’re seeing in Ahrefs Brand Radar, our new marketing intelligence tool which lets you track your brand presence in AI search. We analyzed 25M AI overview keywords in the two-month window of our analysis. Here’s what…Read more ›View the full article

Amid the ongoing evolution of digital privacy laws, one California proposal is drawing heightened attention from legal scholars, technologists, and privacy advocates. Assembly Bill 1355, while narrower in scope than landmark legislation like 2018’s California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)—which established sweeping rights for consumers to know, delete, and opt out of the sale of their personal information—could become a pivotal effort to rein in the unchecked collection and use of personal geolocation data. The premise of the bill (which is currently undergoing analysis within the appropriations committee) is straightforward yet bold in the American legal landscape: Companies must obtain clear, opt-in consent before collecting or sharing users’ precise location data. They must also disclose exactly what data they gather, why they gather it, and who receives it. At a glance, this seems like a logical privacy upgrade. But beneath the surface, it questions the very structure of an industry built on the quiet extraction and monetization of personal information. “We’re really trying to help regulate the use of your geolocation data,” says the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward, who represents California’s 78th district, which covers parts of San Diego and surrounding areas. “You should not be able to sell, rent, trade, or lease anybody’s location information to third parties, because nobody signed up for that.” Among types of personal information, location data is especially sensitive. It reveals where people live, work, worship, protest, and seek medical care. It can expose routines, relationships, and vulnerabilities. As stories continue to surface about apps selling location data to brokers, government workers, and even bounty hunters, the conversation has expanded. What was once a debate about privacy has increasingly become a concern over how the exposure of this data infringes upon fundamental civil liberties. “Geolocation is very revealing,” says Justin Brookman, the director of technology policy at Consumer Reports, which supported the legislation. “It tells a lot about you, and it also can be a public safety issue if it gets into the wrong person’s hands.” For advocates of the new legislation, the concern goes beyond permission screens. It’s about control. When location data is collected silently and traded without oversight, people lose agency over how they move through the world—and who’s watching. A power imbalance at the heart of location tracking To understand the urgency behind proposals like AB 1355, look at how current data practices operate. The core issue isn’t merely that companies collect information—it’s how relentlessly and opaquely they do so, often without real accountability. Consent, when obtained, is typically buried in lengthy and confusing policies. Meanwhile, data brokers operate with minimal regulation, assembling detailed behavioral profiles that may influence credit decisions, hiring, and insurance rates. Most people have little knowledge of who holds their data or how it’s used. For example, a fitness app might collect location data to track your exercise routes, but then sell that information to a data broker who assembles a profile for targeted advertising. This same information, in the wrong hands, could also be used to stalk an individual, track their movements, or even determine their political affiliations. “A lot of people don’t have the luxury to know that they should opt out or that they need to know how to find out how to opt out,” Ward says. Equally troubling, Ward argues, is who benefits. The companies collecting and selling this data are driven by profit, not transparency. As scholar Shoshana Zuboff has argued, surveillance capitalism doesn’t thrive because users want personalized ads. It thrives because opting out is hard, if people even realize they’ve been opted in. AB 1355 proposes a shift: Consent to collect and share data must be given proactively, not retracted reactively. Rather than requiring users to hunt through settings, the burden would fall on companies to ask first. That rebalances the relationship between individuals and data collectors in a way that could set new norms beyond California. “It’s designed to take a lot of the burden off of consumers, so they don’t have to worry about micromanaging their privacy,” Brookman says. “Instead, they can just trust that when geolocation is shared, it’s being used for the reason they gave—if they agreed to it in the first place.” Industry groups, unsurprisingly, have raised concerns about operational impacts and innovation costs. In particular, critics warn that the burden on businesses could stifle innovation, particularly in sectors reliant on data-driven services. The California Chamber of Commerce wrote in an opposition letter that was shared with Fast Company that AB 1355 would create “confusion in operability for businesses” and impose costly new compliance burdens. “Changing the rules has real economic cost to businesses and consumers,” the letter states. “Constantly doing so without adequate justification or need is irresponsible at best.” A state bill with national stakes The bill is part of a larger trend among states moving to fill the federal vacuum on privacy regulation. Since the CCPA’s passage, several states—including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Texas—have enacted their own data privacy laws. These measures vary in scope and strength, forming a state-by-state patchwork that complicates compliance but signals widespread concern. While most of these laws are general-purpose, a handful—such as recent efforts in Maryland and Massachusetts—have begun to zero in on specific risks like geolocation tracking, mirroring some of AB 1355’s core protections. Broadly speaking, California’s evolving legal framework, from the CCPA to its 2020 update via the California Privacy Rights Act (which expanded privacy protections in part by establishing the California Privacy Protection Agency) and now AB 1355, often sets informal national standards. Many companies adopt California’s rules across the board simply to streamline operations. That precedent-setting role isn’t lost on Ward. “I would hope that this could be model language that others could be able to adopt as well,” he says. But location data adds urgency. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, digital trails have taken on new weight. GPS data near abortion clinics or health apps tracking reproductive health are no longer abstract risks—they’re flashpoints in the national conversation about privacy, autonomy, and the role of technology in our most personal decisions. View the full article

More doesn’t necessarily mean better. Think emails in your inbox, glitter on a Mother’s Day card, hot sauce… That applies to social media metrics, too. You might be surprised to hear it. The more information you have, the better you can tailor your social media strategy, right? Well, not exactly. Not all social media metrics are created equal, and which ones to focus on comes down to your specific social media goals. You might be testing a new format, tracking audience growth, or trying to understand how people interact with your posts. And while it’s tempting to track everything, more data doesn’t always mean more clarity. Metrics are most helpful when they guide your next move — whether that’s adjusting your content, switching up your posting schedule, or even thinking up new products. In this guide, I’ll walk you through 12 social media metrics that are especially worth a look at in 2025, when they’re most helpful, and how you can use what you learn to support your social media marketing goals. What are social media metrics?Social media metrics are the numbers you look at to see how your content is performing against your social media goals. Any time you check how many people liked a post, clicked a link, or followed your account, you’re working with social media metrics. Each one tells its own story about your content’s reach and impact. You may hear people refer to them as “social media KPIs” or key performance indicators. They sound similar, but they aren’t exactly the same. Metrics include every single thing you can measure on your social media channels. KPIs are the specific metrics you’ve chosen to track towards your goals. Let’s look at the key metrics that deserve your attention. Social media metrics that show what’s landingSome metrics help you get a better sense of how people are responding to your content. When you track these specific signals, you start to see clear patterns in what your audience enjoys and comes back for. 1. Engagement rateEngagement rate tells you how much your audience is interacting with your content — not just seeing it, but actively responding to it. Things like likes, comments, shares, or saves all count towards engagement rate. It’s a quick way to understand whether your content is catching people’s attention and prompting them to respond. Engagement rate is expressed as a percentage you can calculate with this formula: Freelance social media marketer Rebecca Broad uses this metric as a gut check while creating content. “Keeping engagement rate in mind means I constantly assess visuals and copy and ask ‘why would anyone care?’” says Rebecca. “Why would someone who sees this post stop scrolling, and spend precious time and energy engaging with it?” It’s a perspective that can help you keep your audience at the center of every creative decision. You can track engagement rate: for a single postacross a campaignover time on a platformEach view gives you slightly different insights — from how well a specific piece of content landed to how your audience is engaging week over week. Post engagement ratePost engagement rate shows you which posts are making people stop and react — not just scroll by. This type of social media engagement also tells the algorithm your content is worth sharing more widely, though they’re often weighted slightly differently on each platform. For example, shares (especially in DMs) are a strong signal to the Instagram algorithm. Meaningful comments carry weight on LinkedIn, especially when they get a conversation going. Track this metric when: you're experimenting with new content formatsyou're promoting a message you want to stand outyou want to keep a general eye on what your audience responds toHow to use post engagement metrics When you see a spike in engagement, don’t stop at the number — figure out what’s behind it. Was the post tied to a trending topic? Did you ask a question that got people talking? Did the visual pop in the feed? Those are the kinds of clues that can guide what you post next. And if something really clicks, look for ways to repurpose it elsewhere — Rebecca often reworks strong LinkedIn posts into blog CTAs (calls to action). On the flip side, if engagement is low, that’s your cue to experiment. Change up the format, try a different tone, or shift your focus and see what sticks. Campaign engagement rateWhen you want to know how an entire social media campaign is landing — messaging, post timing, and creatives — campaign engagement rate gives you the full picture. Because campaigns often span multiple formats and run over several days, this metric can reveal patterns you may not spot while looking at individual social media posts alone. Track this metric when: you're launching a new product or serviceyou're running a seasonal promotion (Black Friday + Cyber Monday, anyone?)you're raising awareness on a topicHow to use campaign engagement metrics For brands, campaign engagement rate is a helpful way to adjust your approach mid-campaign. If engagement’s low, you might rethink your next post or shift your ad spend. It’s also a practical way to test influencer or creator partnerships before making bigger commitments in future campaigns. Creators can include strong campaign engagement rates in pitches and media kits. A solid campaign engagement rate shows brands that you won’t just get them in front of people — you’ll get people talking, following, and maybe even buying. For a brand looking for its next partner, that kind of result stands out. Platform engagement ratePlatform engagement rate gives you a broader view of how your content is performing across an entire social media platform. When you track this over time, you’ll start to see whether your audience is still responding or if engagement is beginning to dip. Track this metric when: you’re evaluating whether your overall social strategy is working or needs a shiftyou want to know if the platform is still worth your time, or if your focus might be better placed elsewhereHow to use platform engagement metrics If engagement is steady or trending up, it’s a sign that the platform is worth continued time and effort. If it starts to fall, it could mean your content needs a refresh, your posting rhythm needs tweaking, or your audience is moving elsewhere — and it might be worth following them. 2. Average video watch timeAverage watch time (sometimes called average view duration) is the number of seconds people spend watching your video. It’s one of the clearest video performance metrics — a higher average watch time means viewers are sticking around for longer. It matters even more on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where watch time influences what gets recommended or shown to more people. Depending on the platform, you might be able to track average watch time for your full library or just individual videos. YouTube gives you both; Instagram Reels focuses on video-by-video performance. Track this metric when: you’re experimenting with different video lengths or formatsyou’re comparing video content performance across platformsyou want to see which topics or styles keep people watchingHow to use video engagement metrics A longer average suggests your content is working — whether it’s the pacing, the topic, or how the video opens. Use that insight to guide what you create next. If people are dropping off early, take a closer look at your hook, story structure, or visual pacing. Small adjustments can make a big difference in how long people stay. Social media metrics for tracking your content’s visibilityContent can’t make an impact if no one’s seeing it. Visibility and awareness metrics help you understand how often your posts are being shown, and how far they’re reaching. 1. ReachReach tells you how many different people saw your post or ad. Each person is counted once, whether they saw that post one time or five times. If a post has a reach of 15,000, that means 15,000 different people saw it. It’s one of the key metrics that Hailley Griffis, Head of Communications and Content at Buffer, tracks. “Different communities and social networks will engage differently, but if you are reaching an increased number of people, then you’re doing something right,” says Hailley. Reach helps you compare what formats, topics, or platforms are getting seen the most. Track reach when: you’re testing different formats to see which ones grab more attentionyou want to understand which topics or messages your audience cares most aboutyou want to see if posting at different times or on different days helps you reach more peopleyou’re reviewing which platforms your audience is most active onHow to use reach Just like you did with engagement rate, start by checking which posts had the highest reach, then dig into the context. Was it the topic? The timing? Did someone share it and extend your audience? Hailley reviews her reach every couple of weeks to find these patterns and make small adjustments that add up over time. One thing she’s noticed: showing up regularly makes a difference. “My reach continues to increase on Threads the more I stay consistent,” says Hailley. “I’ve spotted the same pattern for other creators too. While my Threads engagement is still growing, I’ve also seen increases in overall reach in the last few months of maintaining consistency.” 2. ImpressionsImpressions count how many times your content is shown on someone’s screen, even if it’s to the same person more than once. For example, say someone taps through to an Instagram post from your stories and then also sees the post in their feed the next time they open the app. This counts as two impressions, even though it’s the same person. It’s easy to confuse impressions with reach, but they measure different things. Reach tracks how many unique people saw your posts. Impressions count all views, including repeat ones. For Meryoli Arias, Head of Social Media at Glide, impressions are a north star metric. “As a social media marketer, my main focus is top-of-mind relevance. And the amount of times my message and brand is in front of X amount of people (impressions) helps me with that,” she says. Track impressions when: you’re testing or comparing content formatsyou’re checking if the algorithm is showing people your postsyou’re measuring overall brand awarenessJust keep in mind: a post can rack up thousands — even millions — of impressions without leading to more followers or engagement, or meeting your business objectives. “I had a viral post that hit 2 million impressions. Something that took me two minutes to create was being appreciated by so many people,” says Meryoli. But despite its success, the post didn't do much to boost any of Meryoli's business goals, like increase click-throughs or sign-ups. “I learned that virality is not and should never be the goal of social media. A good tap in the shoulder for the ego does not equal business success.” How to use impressions Look at which formats, topics, or post styles get the most impressions, then tweak things like hashtags, posting schedule, or content collaborations to build on what’s working. If your impressions start to slide, it may be time to revisit your content formats, test a new posting rhythm, or experiment with topics your audience hasn’t seen from you in a while. ⚡Need help with hashtags? Buffer's AI-powered Instagram hashtag generator can create the perfect # for your posts in seconds. Try it for free →Social media metrics for understanding your audienceAudience metrics give you a sense of who’s following along and how that community is growing or changing. They help you see who’s in the proverbial room, so you know who to talk to in your content. 1. Follower growthFollower growth tracks how many new people are choosing to follow your account over time. It’s one of the most visible social media metrics, and often one of the first numbers people look at when trying to measure progress. For Meryoli, it’s another north star metric. She uses follower growth to see whether her content is reaching new people and growing her audience — a sign that it’s drawing attention and building momentum. Track this metric when: you want to see if your content or campaigns are reaching fresh eyesyou're measuring the impact of a recent launch, collaboration, or experimentyou're setting goals for overall brand awareness or community growthHow to use follower growth Follower growth can be a helpful KPI, but it’s most meaningful when paired with metrics like engagement and conversions. A rising follower count on its own doesn’t say much about whether those followers are taking action. That’s why it’s sometimes called a “vanity metric” — it reflects potential reach, not impact. Use it as a signal, not the final measure of social media success. If your follower count is going up but comments, likes, or clicks aren’t, it might be time to adjust your content or CTAs to better engage your followers or reach the right audience. 2. Audience demographicsAudience demographics show you what kinds of people make up your audience — details like age, gender, and location. It’s a simple way to check whether you’re attracting your target audience. You can use that information to create more content for the people already following you and adjust your social media strategy if you need to reach someone else. Track this metric when: you want to know if you’re attracting your target audienceyou're considering a shift in content style or topics and want to check fityou're preparing a brand or investor pitch or media kit that needs audience proofHow to use demographics Brands can use this data to shape social media content for different groups. That might mean changing tone or visuals, adjusting timing, or running targeted ads based on who’s most likely to respond. If you’re a creator, demographic data can strengthen your pitch to brands. When you show that your audience lines up with who they’re trying to reach, you become a much more appealing partner. Social media metrics for learning how people feel about your brandUnderstanding if — and how — people talk about your brand can help you see what’s working and where there’s room to improve. Social media monitoring and listening tools make it easy to track those conversations and see how people feel. 1. Brand mentionsBrand mentions measure how often your brand name pops up in posts, captions, or comments, whether someone tags your @handle or just types your name. Not every mention comes with a tag, so if you’re just relying on notifications, you’re likely missing pieces of the bigger conversation. You can keep tabs on your brand name, key hashtags, and any phrases associated with you across different social media platforms. There’s no fancy formula here — it’s simply the total count of how many times you’re mentioned across the time you’re checking for. Track this metric when: you want to measure brand awareness across multiple platformsyou want to catch early signals from campaigns, partnerships, or product launchesyou’re keeping an eye out for potential issues before they escalateHow to use brand mentions Brand mentions can show patterns in who’s talking about you and what gets them sharing. Maybe a campaign hashtag takes off, or you notice more chatter after a launch or big announcement. This data helps you fine-tune your ad targeting, spot potential brand advocates, and even connect with super fans who are already cheering you on. Brand mentions also play a key role in tracking brand sentiment (coming up next), which digs into the mood and emotion behind those conversations. 2. Brand sentimentBrand sentiment measures how people feel about your brand, content, or product — whether their comments and posts are mostly positive, negative, or somewhere in between. While mentions tell you how often your brand comes up in conversation, sentiment reveals what’s actually being said and how people feel. Reading through comments and mentions yourself gives you a sense of sentiment, but this gets tricky as your audience grows. Sentiment analysis tools can help by reviewing those mentions automatically and tagging the tone behind each one. For example, “This candle smells incredible and lasts for days” would register as positive. A comment like, “This package took ages to arrive and came damaged” would lean negative. Track it when: you’re checking reactions to a product launch, seasonal campaign, or new collaborationyou’re seeing a spike in mentions and want to understand what’s causing themyou’re exploring ways to turn positive sentiment into testimonials or social proofHow to use brand sentiment For brands, check sentiment on specific campaigns to see if you’ve nailed it — or if there’s something you need to adjust. Are customers complaining about shipping times? Check if the issue is with the carrier or internal logistics. Are they unhappy that you’re non-responsive? A tool like Buffer’s engagement features can help you stay on top of comments. For creators, sentiment can help you spot which products or resources are really hitting home. Combine that with metrics like sales or click-through rates (more on this below) to figure out what to offer next. Are people loving your habit tracking template? A goals template might be a natural next step. Social media metrics for tracking business outcomesIf you’re deciding where to invest time or budget, business outcome metrics can point you in the right direction. They help you see how your content is driving results like growing your audience, increasing website traffic, or making better use of your ad spend. 1. Click-through rate (CTR)Click-through rate measures how often people click on a link after seeing your post or ad. If you’re sharing a link to your latest blog article, product, or signup page, CTR reveals how effective your post is at turning an impression into a visit. CTR is expressed as a percentage you can calculate with this formula: Most major social media platforms — including Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky — support clickable links in posts. Instagram is a little different: you can’t add links to regular posts, but you can add them to stories with link stickers. If you use a trackable link — known as a UTM — you can find out exactly how many people landed on your site from a specific post. Rebecca tracks CTR for posts that send people off a social media platform to understand what’s catching people’s attention and prompting them to click. CTR isn’t a conversion metric — it won’t tell you if someone actually bought those earrings or joined your course. But it’s a strong sign your content is drawing people one step closer to your business objectives. Track this metric when: you want to direct people a product page, landing page, or signup formyou’re checking whether your ad spend is leading to site visitsyou want to compare how different CTAs or headlines perform💡Buffer’s free UTM Builder can generate trackable links within seconds to help you stay on top of your traffic.How to use click-through rate A high CTR is a good sign that your copy, images, or CTA are piquing your target audience’s interest. If CTR isn’t where you hoped, that’s your cue to try something new: tweak your message, refresh your visuals, or experiment with different CTAs to see what gets people clicking. Brands can use CTR to spot which ads or posts are compelling enough to get people to click through. If a product drop post isn’t driving many clicks, consider changing up the copy or shifting your targeting for the next round. Creators can use a strong CTR as a powerful talking point in brand pitches — it proves you can send real traffic, not just rack up views. If CTR drops, see it as a nudge to switch up your post structure, test new formats, or experiment with fresh ways to encourage clicks. 2. Cost-per-click (CPC)Cost-per-click — or CPC — is an ad-specific metric that tells you how much it costs you for each click on your ad. It’s a useful way to keep tabs on how your ads are performing when your goal is to bring people to a specific page. Because CPC measures cost, this is one social media metric where a higher number isn’t always a good thing. A lower CPC, on the other hand, means you’re paying less each time someone clicks. CPC is a core paid social metric and is easy to calculate: You can calculate CPC for individual ads or look at it over an entire campaign. If you spent $50 on an ad that received 100 clicks, your CPC for the ad would be 50 cents — $50/100. If you spent $500 dollars on a campaign that received 2,000 clicks, your CPC for the campaign would be 25 cents — $500/2,000. Track this metric when: you’re running ads to drive traffic to a site, store, or signup pageyou want to compare CPC across social media channels to see where your budget goes furtheryou’re testing ad variations to see which one drives more clicks for lessHow to use cost-per-click Start by looking at the range of CPC across your ads. If one version costs more to get a click, look at the difference in copy, visuals, or CTA — did one include a clear benefit? Was it shorter, more specific, or better matched to the audience? Use this information to adjust new ads in the campaign. Compare CPC by platform, too. If one consistently gives you lower costs, consider shifting more of your ad spend there or repurposing what worked in the creative or copy on other channels. 3. Return on ad spend (ROAS)Return on ad spend (ROAS) measures how much you earn for every dollar spent on ads. It’s one of the clearest ways to check whether your paid campaigns are turning clicks into income. While CPC measures how much your ads cost you, ROAS measures how much your ads earn you. Here’s how to calculate it: So, if you made $5,000 from a Facebook campaign and spent $1,000 on ads, your ROAS would be 500%. Digital marketing consultant Laura Holyer considers ROAS (and revenue) one of the top paid social media metrics to track. It’s a platform-specific metric, and both the revenue and the ad spend data come from the same place — usually the social media platform’s own tracking tools. That means your numbers can be affected by things like cookie restrictions or missing conversion data. That’s why, says Laura, you should take the numbers “with a pinch of salt” if they’re coming from the platform itself. “Then we look at Blended ROAS figures as one of the top metrics,” she says. Instead of looking at each platform in isolation, Blended ROAS looks at the bigger picture: how much total revenue you’re earning across all channels — organic social media, Google searches, email newsletters, paid ads — compared to what you’re spending on advertising. Here’s the formula for Blended ROAS: If your business brings in $8,000 overall after spending $1,000 on ads across all channels, your Blended ROAS is 800%. Track this metric when: you want to measure whether your ad spend is converting into salesyou’re comparing which channels are bringing in the most returnyou’re trying to decide where to shift budget or prioritize spendHow to use return on ad spend Use ROAS to spot which campaigns are bringing in sales and which ones might need a change in direction — whether that’s updating the offer, tweaking the creative, or rethinking the channel. Laura points out that the impact of a campaign also shows up in ways other than revenue. If you’re running a brand awareness campaign, you might not see sales right away — but you might notice more people searching for your brand. These kinds of shifts show that your campaigns are working, even if it takes people a little longer to act. How to track your social media metricsOnce you know which metrics to pay attention to, the next step is figuring out how to track them. Most platforms offer built-in analytics tools, but there are also third-party options that may offer a more complete view. Platform native insightsMost social media platforms come with built-in analytics, so you can keep an eye on key metrics without ever leaving the app. What you’ll see (and how much detail you get) depends on the platform, and sometimes on your account type, but nearly all of them cover the basics: impressions, reach, engagement, follower growth, and demographic data. LinkedIn analytics offers these metrics at both the post and account level. Instagram creator and business accounts go even deeper with their analytics. The data breaks down: impressions and engagements from followers vs. non-followerspercentage of impressions by content (and audience) typeYou also get data about when your audience is most active each day of the week. X/Twitter analytics are only available to premium users. These detailed metrics include both tweet- and account-level impressions, engagement, link clicks, and follower growth. Link clicks are an important metric here, since tweets directly support clickable links. Free users still get access to basic insights at the tweet level. Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube all have built-in metrics you can use to measure your social media performance on those channels. It’s always helpful to see all those metrics right where you create and post, but there are a few limitations — network-specific metrics tools only show you what’s happening on that one platform. If you’re sharing content on more than one social channel (and chances are, you are), these built-in dashboards aren’t going to give you the whole story. Third-party social media analytics tools come in handy if you’d like to zoom out for a birds-eye view and see how all your channels stack up together. For a more complete view of your social media efforts, you might want to explore third-party analytics tools. Social media analytics toolsWhile platform-native metrics are helpful, social media analytics tools give you a more complete picture of your performance — especially if you’re working across multiple platforms. Here’s why they might be worth considering. If you manage several social media accounts, third-party analytics tools save you bouncing back and forth between apps. You can bring all your numbers together in a single dashboard and get a look at how your social media efforts stack up across every platform you use. Some tools — like Buffer — offer both metrics and personalized insights. Think: which day of the week your posts do bestwhat types of content get the most engagementhow many times a day you might want to post for the best resultsTracking mentions and sentiment is another big win. While native tools are often limited to basic social media metrics, many third-party platforms help you keep tabs on these brand metrics. And if you’re putting together reports for your team or clients, these tools make that job a lot simpler. Most offer customizable reporting features so you can create reports that match your specific social media KPIs. Buffer’s analytics tools help you with detailed, personalized metrics and insights that help you achieve and measure social media success — you’ll even get recommendations on when, what, and how much to post based on your data. Sign up today to test it out for free. 🥳 View the full article

Only one in four U.S. employees strongly agree that their organization cares about their overall well-being, with stark implications. Gallup reports that high employee well-being leads to improved performance, fewer sick days, and lower rates of burnout and turnover. “When your employees’ well-being suffers, so does your organization’s bottom line,” the group noted. At one time we may have thought that workplace well-being was separate from personal well-being. But now with digital overload, remote work, and a blurring of lines between work and home, it is a critical area for addressing how we feel about life in general. So how can organizations make mental health a real, lasting priority in the workplace? Here, experts offer eight strategies. 1. Speak up from the top and lead with experience “As leaders, the most important role you can play in creating a mentally healthy workforce is to tackle stigma by having conversations in the workplace around mental well-being,” says Zoe Sinclair, founder of the workplace mental well-being consultancy This Can Happen. Sinclair suggests leaders share their own lived experiences—like periods of stress or burnout—through internal company blogs, panels, or team meetings, to normalize mental health conversations. “Leaders have the power to create change directly from the top down. Ensure that you’re consistent in your approach and that mental health is regularly a part of your conversations in the workplace,” she adds. “This will truly help to tackle the taboo.” 2. Call out toxicity and don’t let it fester Reinvention coach and Uncaged author Katia Vlachos argues that one of the most overlooked contributors to mental distress at work is unchecked toxic behavior. “One of the most powerful things a leader can do to support mental health at work is to name the dysfunction, and actively protect their people from it,” she says. Vlachos has seen firsthand how unspoken dysfunction, from subtle gaslighting to exclusion, can erode trust and well-being. To foster a mentally healthy workplace, she says, leaders must “have the awareness and courage to say, ‘This [toxic behavior] is not okay. And I won’t allow it on my watch.’ ” “Protecting mental health means protecting people’s dignity,” she adds. To do that, she says, it’s important to create “clear, safe channels for employees to speak up—without fear of facing retaliation or of being dismissed as ‘difficult.’ ” “When people feel safe to be themselves at work, they don’t just survive; they thrive. And so do their organizations.” 3. Rewire workplace conversations Most workplace conversations start with problems (for example: We’ve missed our targets for the second quarter), say David Pullan and Sarah Jane McKechnie, leadership experts and the authors of The DNA of Engagement: A Story-Based Approach to Building Trust and Influencing Change. But this approach triggers our brains’ defense mechanism. A small shift in the structure of how we communicate can significantly improve psychological safety, and that can be done via Pullan and McKechnie’s “DNA” model: Dream-Nightmare-Action. This method starts with leaders acknowledging the Dream (a team’s aspirations), then addressing the Nightmare (challenges), and finally moving to Action (the solution). This sequence creates psychological safety because people feel understood before they feel challenged, the authors add. Collaborative conversations lead to engaged teams co-authoring innovative solutions. It’s practical neuroscience: “connection before correction.” 4. Use Generative AI to remove the emotion from employee feedback AI is more often associated with productivity gains than emotional well-being, but Michael Wade and Amit Joshi, professors at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) and authors of GAIN: Demystifying GenAI for office and home, argue otherwise. “We believe that organizations and leaders can also leverage this technology to strengthen psychological safety within organizations—when implemented thoughtfully,” they say. They propose a GenAI-powered “anonymous feedback system,” a way of collecting, analyzing, and acting upon data or feedback from employees. Advanced AI systems can collect employee feedback while completely disconnecting it from identifying information, they explain. These tools can then analyze patterns to identify systemic workplace issues. Rather than simply passing along potentially charged emotional language that might trigger defensive responses from leadership, AI can reframe feedback into actionable, solution-oriented recommendations while preserving the substance of concerns, Wade and Joshi say. They add that for discussions involving sensitive workplace issues, AI-mediated communication channels can help establish psychological distance that enables more open and honest conversation. 5. Make accommodations, even if they’re small, for people who think differently Alex Partridge, neurodiversity advocate, founder of LADBible, and author of Now It All Makes Sense, knows from experience how conventional workplaces often ignore neurodiverse employees’ needs: “Being neurodiverse and trying to fit in isn’t always easy. For some people, the office can be a difficult place to focus and a sensory nightmare,” Partridge says. Seemingly simple accommodations—like remote work where possible and setting meeting agendas ahead of time—can be transformative, he says. “There are many times I have sat in meetings and been unable to think clearly enough to contribute,” he adds. “Time and time again, the outcome of the meeting was decided by the loudest and most confident voices, but often the best ideas were trapped inside anxious minds.” Partridge recommends forward planning to help all employees get the best from meetings. “All the information to be presented in the meeting should be sent to attendees via email, and then everyone has a deadline—24 hours works well—to put forward their solutions and ideas. “Small accommodations in the workplace can make a huge difference, and they’re something that all neurodiverse employees are entitled to.” 6. Redefine ‘productivity’ and model it from the top Leaders need to rethink “busy-ness” as a byword for productivity, which has a knock-on effect across teams, says Philip Atkinson, organizational coach and author of Bee Wise: 12 Leadership Lessons From a Busy Beehive. “Ask someone how they are, and the answer is often, ‘Good, thanks. Busy.’ We’ve bought into the idea that being constantly busy is success.” He points out that speed often leads to poor decisions and chronic fatigue—we might be ticking things off for a dopamine hit, but may be acting before we think. “We’re always on, always available. It’s become a badge of honor.” Instead, Atkinson suggests leaders prioritize what really matters. “Our competitive advantage, in the age of AI, doesn’t come from doing more but thinking harder. Instead of a ‘to-do list’, let’s try making a ‘to-don’t list.’ ” 7. Respect your people’s work-life boundaries “Every time you email someone a quick question at 10 p.m., you’re effectively saying that personal boundaries are optional,” says Nik Kinley, leadership coach and author of The Power Trap: How Leadership Changes People, and What To Do About It. He warns leaders to think carefully about after-hours communication, because what starts as a convenience or habit becomes a silent expectation. “People need time away to recharge their batteries and be fully productive. So, lead by example and cut the off-hour emails,” he adds. “Schedule all but the most urgent to be sent early the next day. If you see others sending nonurgent emails out of hours, ask them to schedule them, too. Publicly lay down the ground rules.” This isn’t just about mental health, Kinley says. “It’s about people sustaining high productivity and performance levels through extended periods of pressure.” 8. Prioritize human connection Leaders under commercial pressure often seek out quick solutions and focus relentlessly on results, says Josephine McGrail, wellness coach and author of The Morning Miracle, Messages of Love, and Fall in Love With You. “What people truly need is human connection: a place to speak and be heard, not judged, not fixed. We need to remember our human element in the workplace,” she says. According to McGrail, outdated management practices and paradigms such as “Don’t let down your guard” are part of the problem, and are actually unsustainable in the long term. “People thrive when they feel included—like they matter and their input matters.” “Fear and anxiety at work arise when we feel a deep sense of isolation and can’t relate to each other. Therefore, your team needs to see you present authentically as a leader,” she says. McGrail suggests leaders not only visibly celebrate big wins but also speak honestly about how they deal with disappointment and stress. By prioritizing human connection, leaders can better motivate and inspire their teams, she says. View the full article

I was mid-text argument with my colleague John when I caught myself, again, hovering over the “send” button, rewriting the same defensive message for the third time. It was about politics. But frankly, the content didn’t matter. What mattered was how my nervous system was lighting up like a pinball machine. I wasn’t responding. I was reacting. So I stopped. I paused the conversation, switched from text to voice note, and eventually asked if we could meet in person so that I could show up in a way that honors him. That single decision, to press pause, completely changed the tone and outcome of the conversation. By meeting in person, John and I demonstrated that we both really cared about each other, and we ended up not only resolving the disagreement but also learning more about each other’s upbringings and communication styles. Research done on international conflict suggests that taking repeated breaks from conflict can improve the odds of reaching an agreement. I call this the “strategic pause.” A PAUSE IS NOT A SHUTDOWN During my disagreement with John, I realized that I was operating from Superior Self Justin. In other words, I was approaching the conversation by thinking that I was better than him and, as a result, my words and tone were dehumanizing. I teach leaders to recognize the three “selves” that show up during conflict: Superior Self: I’m right and you’re wrong. Inferior Self: I’m wrong and I always mess this up. Equal Self: We’re both humans here. Let’s work this out together. Most shutdowns happen when we’re stuck in Superior or Inferior mode. We lash out or retreat. But a pause from Equal Self sounds like: “I noticed this conversation is starting to feel unproductive. I’d like to take a break so I can come back with more clarity and respect.” This is different from disappearing. It’s about signaling your intent to return (not escape) and taking responsibility for how you want to show up, even when you can’t control how the other person will respond. THE 90-SECOND RULE The brain isn’t wired to have a rational conversation in a heightened emotional state. When the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, is triggered, it hijacks your ability to think clearly. That’s where the 90-second rule comes in. Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, found it takes just 90 seconds for the initial surge of stress hormones to clear from the body (if you don’t re-trigger them by rehashing the moment). But here’s the caveat: 90 seconds might not be enough. Especially if the issue touches a core value or past trauma, or you’re entering the conversation already emotionally depleted. Sometimes it can take 10 minutes. Sometimes it’s hours, days, or even weeks. APPLY THE STRATEGIC PAUSE IN REAL TIME I will be honest. When my amygdala hijacks my rational brain, I don’t always catch myself in time to practice the strategic pause. The term “amygdala hijack,” introduced by psychologist Daniel Goleman, PhD, describes situations in which the amygdala overrides the rational prefrontal cortex, leading to impulsive reactions. Luckily, our brain’s neuroplasticity allows it to adapt and change in response to experiences and practices. Engaging in regular emotional regulation strategies, such as mindfulness and illeism, can strengthen the neural pathways associated with the prefrontal cortex, enhancing our capacity for self-control and emotional awareness. If you recognize that you’re in a dysregulated state in time (it’s okay if you don’t; we’re only human), the next step is asking for a break. To effectively communicate that you want a break, avoid accusatory statements such as: “You are making me feel triggered and angry, so we need to take a break.” Instead, use “I” statements. For example: “I’m feeling overwhelmed and want to pause so I can come back with more respect and intention.” WHAT YOU DO DURING THE BREAK MATTERS THE MOST A strategic pause only works if you use it well. I’ve seen people step away, then spend the entire time stewing in righteous anger, rehearsing comebacks, or screenshotting texts for third-party validation. That’s not a reset; it’s an escalation. During my disagreement with John, I asked myself: “What would Equal Self Justin do?” Equal Self Justin would want to know how the conversation could go better. He would listen more, and ask John about his story, upbringing, and value system. A powerful tool for regulating and accessing our Equal Self is illeism. This is the practice of talking to yourself in the third person. For instance: “Why is Justin so upset?” instead of “Why am I upset?” This creates just enough cognitive distance to reengage the rational brain. Strategic pauses aren’t a cure-all. You may still get stonewalled, the other person may escalate, or they might refuse to reengage. Unfortunately, you cannot control the outcome. But when you return as your Equal Self—who is clear, respectful, and regulated—you give the conversation its best chance to move forward constructively. View the full article

This past weekend, there were more disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport due to Federal Aviation Administration equipment outages. It has added to the air travel chaos at Newark over the past month, which has included air traffic controllers losing communication with planes for up to 90 seconds, and led to the delay and cancellation of hundreds of flights. On Monday morning, there were at least 59 flight delays and more than 80 cancellations at Newark, according to FlightAware data. Air traffic controllers and the 79,000-member Air Line Pilots Association, are calling on the FAA to update its aging infrastructure to ensure the system is as safe and efficient as possible. At least five Newark air traffic controllers have taken 45 days of trauma leave after the radar and radio communication loss during the busy afternoon of April 28. Caught in the middle of the issues at Newark is United Airlines, which is the most active airline at the New Jersey airport. While the problems lie with the FAA system, the airline is where people often aim their frustrations over cancellations and delays. This presents United with a unique brand challenge. The brand must find solutions and communicate clearly with its customers about a problem that it’s ultimately not responsible for, or in control of. United was forced to cancel at least 35 flights per day last week (as of Friday). Josh Earnest, United’s executive vice president of communications and advertising, says that while people understand that United Airlines is not responsible for running the air traffic control tower, the brand still has to act. “People know it’s not our equipment or employees managing the airspace, but our brand is so big, and our presence at Newark in particular is so large, that they expect us to do something about it,” Earnest says. Transparency is key For Earnest, the key to navigating a situation like this is for the brand to be as transparent and clear as it possibly can. United has a responsibility to ensure and assure its customers that not only are its flights safe, but that the cancellations are directly related to that safety. “We don’t usually aggressively promote the fact that we had to cancel a bunch of fights,” Earnest says. “But in this case, we did because people expect us to do something about the problem. And by taking 35 fights out of the schedule [each day], that makes it much more likely that the other 293 fights, or whatever it is, will operate on time. The airport’s less crowded, there’s less congestion. That’s us taking proactive steps to try to solve that problem.” The next step is communicating this to customers. So far, United has been utilizing social media and earned media to do that. The Newark outage story has been getting such a bright media spotlight that the brand has used it to get its own message out. United CEO Scott Kirby appeared on CBS’s Face The Nation this past weekend to talk about the issues. And Kirby’s original May 2 memo about Newark flight cancellations appeared in The Wall Street Journal just an hour after it was sent. Safety first Canceling flights would initially qualify as kryptonite to any airline brand. But Earnest says that while it may cause some short-term pain, it’s an investment in the brand’s long-term health. “The most important issue that people should associate with our brand is safety. The operational environment is messy, but the reason that it’s messy is that we’re keeping it safe,” he adds. “So when there’s a lack of staffing in the control tower or some other issue, the right thing to do is to slow down the operation at the airport, with more separation between the planes. That’s something that we’re going to need to continue to reinforce, and we’re going to spend our credibility to do it. The good news is that’s not a tough decision to make because it’s actually our first and highest priority.” The situation in Newark hasn’t slowed down United’s marketing operation. This week, the airline unveiled and prompted its first flights featuring Starlink Wi-Fi. Earnest says that in times like this, the brand is provided an opportunity to really shine. “If we handle it well, we will earn credibility with our customers in those moments,” he says. “As challenging as this is, it is an opportunity for us to actually earn even more of our customers’ confidence.” View the full article

If you saw a group of millennials out on a Saturday in the mid-2010s, they were most likely wearing leggings—the uniform of that era. And there’s a good chance they were Lululemon’s Align leggings. Ten years ago today, Lululemon’s designers developed a new material called Nulu that was buttery soft, thin, and stretchy. It put them into a $98 pair of leggings called Align. The fabric proved so irresistible that women started wearing the pants right out of the yoga studio and into the rest of their lives. On the newly launched Instagram app, you would see twenty- and thirtysomethings wearing the pricey leggings out to brunch, or for school pickups, or on long flights. Some women even wore them to the office with a crisp button-down oxford shirt. If the Align legging didn’t kick-start athleisure—blending activewear with everyday outfits—then it certainly accelerated the trend. And it helped propel Lululemon from a scrappy yoga startup into a global activewear giant. Over the past decade, Lululemon has generated more than $1 billion on its Align franchise. And it has spawned so many copycats from other brands that two years ago it launched an entire “dupe swap” marketing campaign, where it invited people to trade in their dupes to get the real thing. Chip Wilson, a yoga obsessive, launched Lululemon in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1998. For its first decade in business, the company remained small and focused on designing high-quality clothing that was perfect for yoga, which was taking off throughout North America. But by 2010, the company’s growth accelerated as it went public and began expanding its network of stores. In 2012, Lululemon hit $1 billion in annual revenue. After the Align leggings launched, the company scaled quickly, growing from $1.8 billion to $10.8 billion over the past decade. Today, Lululemon is celebrating the anniversary of the Align pants by launching a range of new products, including a dress and a new version of the pants that offer a seamless construction in the front, developed with customer feedback. But the company is also thinking ahead about how it must evolve beyond this comfortable legging into entirely new categories of clothing. I sat down with Antonia Iamartino, senior director of franchise innovations, research, and product innovation, to hear about how she created the Align pant and how she’s thinking ahead about how to spin out the next billion-dollar franchises for Lululemon. Antonia Iamartino Designing a Billion-Dollar Pant Back in 2015, most people went into the yoga studio wearing sweatpants or compression leggings designed for running. Iamartino joined Lululemon in 2005, shortly after she trained as a fashion designer in Vancouver. A decade ago, she was promoted to oversee the yoga category. In this new role, she wanted to design a pair of pants that were ideal for the practice, which involves a variety of physical postures and movements. At the time, Lululemon had developed a very specific design philosophy called the “science of feel,” which was about creating garments that responded to the way people wanted to feel in a particular moment, rather than the purely technical features of a garment. In focus groups, Iamartino began to get a sense of how yogis wanted to feel throughout their yoga practice. “They talked about wanting softness and warmth,” she recalls. “They wanted pieces that felt cozy and inviting.” Iamartino set out to find a material that would meet these specifications. This was a challenge, because many of the fabric mills that Lululemon worked with were used to creating athletic apparel. “Our inspiration was the texture of a rose petal; something that felt soft and textured,” she says. “But it was hard to find this among the nylon fabrics on the market.” Over the course of 18 months, she worked with various mills, providing details about what she was looking for. After co-creating 10 different iterations of the material with the mills, she landed on the fabric that would become Nulu. The material had a very soft texture thanks to a process called napping that creates a fuzzy, velvet-like feel on the surface. The matte texture of Lululemon’s leggings made them different from much of the slick, shiny sports apparel that was popular at the time. The material was also very lightweight and had just enough compression to make the wearer feel gently hugged but not tightly restricted. “When we landed on this material, the feedback was unanimous and quick,” Iamartino remembers. “It was clear we had found something that was very appealing to yogis.” Beyond the Yoga Studio When the Align leggings launched, they were an immediate hit. On social media, women raved about how comfortable they were for yoga. But over time, as word about them spread, customers realized they wanted to wear the pants all the time. Iamartino says that Lululemon happened to catch some important fashion trends along the way. For one thing, skinny jeans were in style back then. Black leggings were aesthetically similar, and could be paired with the same tops you might wear with denim. Fashion was also becoming more casual, so some people felt comfortable wearing leggings to college classes or even to some workplaces. Finally, fitness and wellness were taking off, as people invested in their health by working out and doing yoga, creating a $100 billion global industry. But mostly, Iamartino believes Align was successful because of how it made the wearer feel. Store managers began to report about how customers would come out of the changing room and do a little dance in their Align pants, feeling the leggings with their hand and bouncing around. Ultimately, Iamartino believes that staying laser-focused on the goal of creating comfort helped Lululemon achieve a pair of leggings that transcended the practice of yoga. “We likely wouldn’t have gotten the same result if we had set out to design the best casual pant,” she says. “It was really the purity of our intention that helped us achieve this fabric, which had this universal appeal. All the tenets that we designed against—the quality, the stitching, the texture—really transcended the experience of yoga in the end.” But What Comes Next? Over the past 10 years, as the Align pant exploded in popularity, Iamartino helped transform the garment from a single product into a franchise. She worked with her team of designers to develop new products, like shorts and wide-leg pants. Now there’s even an Align dress. The next step is helping Lululemon think about how it can create the next big franchises. In many ways, the COVID-19 lockdowns took clothing to its casual extreme, with people wearing sweatpants for months on end. But in the post-pandemic world, Iamartino believes people are moving in the other direction and opting for clothing that is dressier. In conversations with customers, Lululemon staffers found that fewer people are wearing leggings and joggers to work; they’re looking for pieces that are drawn from a more formal wardrobe, like trousers and blazers. “But what’s different, this time around, is that they are unwilling to compromise on comfort,” Iamatino says. “So pieces need to look more formal on the exterior but feel much more comfortable.” Lululemon’s designers are now focused on creating pieces that do just this. The company made its first foray into clothing that could be worn to the office in the mid-2010s, as it launched trousers for both men and women that looked a lot like khakis but were made from technical fabrics. Over the years, as customers began to see Lululemon as a brand that could outfit them for work, the brand has expanded its range of professional garments. This year, one of its bestsellers is its women’s Daydrift trousers, which have the silhouette of old-school men’s trousers, with pleats and a waistband. But they’re actually pull-up pants made from a stretchy fabric that’s infused with Lycra. They feel extremely soft to the touch. The trousers have been very popular among working professionals, and Lululemon has been struggling to keep them in stock. Iamartino is now thinking about how Daydrift could also become a franchise. The brand is launching Daydrift shorts for the summer, with more possible products in the pipeline. Lululemon is launching other garments that are designed for the office, and much like with Align, the company spends a lot of time developing the right fabric for these pieces. For its blazer, for instance, Lululemon has created a till fabric with a textured feel akin to cotton or wool that is made from a wrinkle-free synthetic material. Lululemon’s success over the course of its history has come down to innovation. It began as a yoga brand, but over the years it has created garments for a wide range of activities. Now it’s next evolution is to create clothes that allow you to move comfortably through the rest of your life. And the lesson that Iamartino takes from designing the Align pants is that the way to succeed is to thoughtfully design products that make people feel good no matter what they’re doing. “We know people today want to feel polished but also comfortable as they’re moving throughout their life,” she says. “We can design around that.” View the full article

The odds of winning the lottery are about one in 300 million. If you have a tattoo of an old Mountain Dew logo on your body, your odds of winning Mountain Dew’s new sweepstakes are much, much higher. The soda’s owner, PepsiCo, is launching the contest to celebrate Mountain Dew’s new logo hitting store shelves. It’s asking people who have a tattoo of the old Mountain Dew logo to upload a photo to social media and tag Mountain Dew for a chance to win a trip for two to Las Vegas to get a tattoo of the new logo. Last year, Mountain Dew retired its jagged, abbreviated “Mtn Dew” logo introduced in 2009 for a new logo that spells out the citrus soda brand’s entire name. If the old visual identity was styled in the fashion of Y2K-era extreme sports and gaming, the new one was designed to look modern, outdoorsy, and retro-inspired. The new brand mascot, “Mountain Dude,” wears long hair, aviators, and a green fur coat to convey its new brand persona. The contest is a bid to promote the rebrand with the drink’s most devoted fans: people who love Mountain Dew so much they already made it permanent. Entrants just have to post a photo of their tattoo with the hashtag #DoTheDewTattooSweepstakes on Instagram or X—and no cheating, since tattoos have to be from before May 6, 2025, when the contest began. PepsiCo estimates there are “hundreds” of people with the old logo, though a cursory search shows just five accounts have posted photos of old Mountain Dew logo tattoos. The contest will award five winners, so if you’re a legal U.S. resident of one of the 50 states or Washington, D.C., and at least 21 years old with an old Mountain Dew logo tattoo, you could likely win one of the sweepstakes prizes: round-trip flights for two to Las Vegas, a three-night’s stay at the Mandalay Bay luxury resort and casino, and some spending money ($500 for fun and $900 in credits for food and beverage). Who is getting this tattoo? Getting a logo tattoo is a high-commitment act of loyalty to a brand, but companies have found plenty of willing fans to trade their skin for prizes. There were 381 people who agreed to get Domino’s logo tattooed on their bodies to win a “100 pizzas a year for 100 years” promotion in Russia in 2019, and Subway awarded as many as nine winners to get tattoos to win free sub sandwiches in 2022. For Mountain Dew, though, it’s latest promotion is all about fan service and the love of the game. It’s not handing out free cases of soda in return for getting a tattoo like brands have done before. Instead it’s rewarding people who already had tattoos of the logo. It’s a branding stunt, sure. But it’s also a brand heritage play, since it’s all about past iterations of the logo. Should winners feel attached to their current Dew tattoo, the sweepstakes fine print is on their side: Instead of getting inked with the new Mountain Dew logo, they can just pocket the $2,000. View the full article

BESSEMER, Ala.—They all came here for peace, and so far, the land has given it to them. For Marshall Killingsworth, the peace comes from the owls whose hoots echo across the valley as he sits in his favorite spot in his garden. For David Havron, it’s looking up at the stars at night as the moonlight glistens off the lake just outside his back door. For Mary Rosenboom, it’s the calls of the songbirds as the sun slowly sets over the hilly terrain. For Becky Morgan, it’s the view of the mountain from her recliner—through the long windows that line the sides of her home. But all these residents in this area of rural Jefferson County are afraid—fearful that their peace may soon be disturbed. “Town is moving closer to us,” Jeff Lowe said last week. “And we’re not happy about it.” Marshall Killingsworth Killingsworth, Havron, Rosenboom, Morgan, and Lowe are just a few of the residents whose homes are adjacent to a 700-acre, wooded plot of land that soon may be transformed, through years of construction, into a 4.5-million-square-foot data processing center located just within the city limits of Bessemer, Alabama, a city of about 25,000 southwest of Birmingham. If built to planned capacity, the data center would be one of the largest in the United States and could become one of the largest single consumers of electricity in the state. Of nearly a dozen residents interviewed by Inside Climate News, none expressed support for the project as planned. Instead, all shared fear and frustration over their inability to obtain information about the $14.5 billion proposal from politicians charged with representing the public. Efforts by Inside Climate News to speak with public officials in Bessemer about the proposal, called Project Marvel, were met with silence. The mayor, his chief of staff and the city’s attorney all signed a nondisclosure agreement with the developer, staffers said, and would not be able to answer questions about the project. Members of the Bessemer City Council, tasked with approving or rejecting the rezoning necessary for the proposed data center, have repeatedly refused to comment. “I thought I answered your question,” said Carla Jackson, a council member who represents the area of Bessemer where the data center is planned. “And I was so sweet about it. Right now, while it’s under litigation, I’m not going to talk about it.” The Details on Data Centers In the last decade, technological evolution has quickened pace, with massive data centers now in demand for more intensive computational tasks like cryptocurrency mining and processing artificial intelligence requests. That digital demand, in turn, has made its way into the physical world as tech companies search for cheap land, electricity, water, and resources necessary for the development of large data processing centers like the one being proposed in Bessemer. A data center is like a city with computer servers as the buildings, requiring network cables, power sources, and cooling infrastructure, like roads, power lines, and sewer networks in a municipality. Data flows like traffic. Similar to the police and surveillance in a city, a data center also has security infrastructure—electric fences, anti-ram barriers, infrared cameras, alarms, lights, and sometimes even guard stations and other surveillance systems to protect against attacks. As of early 2025, the United States has more than 5,000 data centers, according to industry reports, compared to around 1,000 just five years earlier. And with that increased demand comes an inevitable, increased demand for resources. Project Marvel The proposed data center campus in Bessemer, if realized, would consist of 18 buildings, each larger than the average Walmart Supercenter, that would house massive server farms for data storage and processing. Located on about 700 acres of wooded land currently zoned for agricultural use, the proposed physical infrastructure would require the permanent clear-cutting of at least 100 acres of forest. The company behind the project is a newly created limited liability company, Logistics Land Investments, first formed in May 2023, according to records from the Delaware secretary of state. The company’s registered agent is not a person, according to business records, but the Corporation Trust Company, also based in Delaware—an entity that has been used by large tech companies like Google and Apple for corporate dealings in the past. Despite its brief history, Logistics Land Investments has already found itself in at least one legal battle. Court records show that company has been sued by the First Baptist Church of Red Oak, Texas, a place of worship that was located on land the development company was interested in buying for another project. After the sale fell through, the church sued, arguing that the company had breached their agreement. The president of Bessemer’s City Council, Donna Thigpen, was the only public official interviewed who confirmed she had not yet signed an NDA. In fact, Thigpen said, she’d been largely left in the dark on the proposed data center thus far. “We have not met with the builders yet,” she said. “We know nothing about it.” She referred further questions to the mayor’s office, though she noted he’d signed an NDA. The mayor’s office did not respond to several requests for comment. The only information about the project made public so far has been in limited answers from the company’s attorneys to residents’ concerns in planning and zoning meetings held earlier this year. Those few answers provide only small, fragmented insights into what could be one of the largest capital outlays in recent state history. But even that information is probably more than is legally required to be given to residents, according to arguments made by an attorney for Bessemer in a recent court hearing. “There’s no provision in the code of Alabama that authorizes the asking of questions, the furnishing of environmental reports or development plans, or anything of that nature,” he told a Bessemer judge. “You have a right to be heard as to whether you agree with that ordinance or not. Nothing more, nothing less.” The city had landed in court after a group of residents filed suit, claiming that property owners weren’t given proper public notice ahead of a recent public hearing on the proposal. Because residents packed the meeting room, the city argued in court, there was no deficiency in public notice. Monica Agee, a Jefferson County Circuit Judge in the Birmingham division, issued a temporary restraining order on April 14 preventing the Bessemer City Council from voting on the proposed rezoning of the property from agricultural to industrial. After issuing the restraining order, Agee transferred the case to the county’s Bessemer division, where the matter was scheduled for a hearing. Agee’s temporary restraining order was “wrong and illegal,” attorney Shan Paden, representing the city, told Bessemer judge David Hobdy at an April 23 hearing. Hobdy scolded the lawyer for his comments about the judge. “I take issue with the fact that you’re saying that judge knew what she was doing was wrong,” Hobdy said. “That’s a circuit judge of Jefferson County, too, so I think she had appropriate authority to act at her discretion.” Lawyers for both the residents and the city of Bessemer brought up the size of the project in making their respective arguments about how the judge should eventually rule. “This is a $14 billion project,” Paden said. “To give you the scope of that, the entire value of all the real estate in the city of Bessmer in 2018 was $345 million dollars,” Paden said in part. Public officials should be judging the merits of such a project, the lawyer argued, not a judge. Lawyers for the residents living near the proposed data center site, on the other hand, argued that the size of the project demands robust public notice and close adherence to relevant law. “This is about protecting property owners’ rights to protect their land from money-grabbing AI developers who have devastated many, many communities across the country,” the residents’ attorney, Reginald McDaniel, said. John Parker Yates, another attorney for the residents, reminded the judge that the identity of the developer and its potential client is still not known. “This could be a Chinese data center,” he said. “And that’s scary—that could be happening in our backyard and us not know.” In the end, Judge Hobdy chose not to dismiss the lawsuit outright as lawyers for the city of Bessemer had asked him to do. Instead, he told both parties that he planned to hold over the case long enough for city officials to begin the public notice process and rezoning process again, in accordance with Alabama law. If and when that process is complete, the judge said, he’d consider ordering a dismissal in the case. Hobdy set a status update hearing in the case for August 1. Despite the delay in the necessary rezoning achieved through the residents’ lawsuit, community members opposed to the project now have another, likely more difficult task ahead: to convince public officials to vote against moving the proposal forward. Marshalling the Troops Marshall Killingsworth walked in his garden on a recent afternoon, his daylilies blooming in the warm Alabama sun. Killingsworth, 80, retired after working for decades in IT at major companies, including Blue Cross Blue Shield and Drummond Coal. Even in retirement, though, he’s busier now than ever. He spends much of his time outside, tending to an elaborate, well-kept yard overlooking a wooded valley where the data center is now proposed to be built. Soon, Ron and Becky Morgan, married nearly 28 years, came and sat with Killingsworth. Ron, an Army veteran, jumped into the conversation as soon as he arrived, talking intensely about potential noise, light pollution and the environmental impact of the necessary clear-cutting and construction. Becky placed her arm on Ron’s leg. “We just got here,” she said, laughing. “Other people want to talk too.” “You Can’t Turn It Off Like AC” In Alabama, almost all the new electric demand that the state’s largest energy company, Alabama Power, has projected is for data centers, said Daniel Tait, executive director of Energy Alabama, a nonprofit organization that advocates for clean energy in the state. Many data centers use alternative energy sources, including solar, wind, nuclear and hydrogen, to reduce carbon emissions and reduce their reliance on the electric grid, although investors in the Bessemer project have not outlined any such plans. Lawyers representing Logistics Land Investments did not respond to requests for comment. As demand for digital content grows, an “arms race” has escalated between tech giants to build digital warehouses and bring their services to market first. Data centers were initially smaller and demanded 50 to 200 megawatts of power to run. Driven by the development of AI, a new, second round of data centers uses five times more energy, averaging 2 to 3 gigawatts to sustain operations. They are considered “high capacity” because once the center is running, it doesn’t stop. “You can’t turn it off like the AC,” Tait said. If built to full capacity, the Bessemer data center campus is projected to consume around 1,200 megawatts of energy and could feasibly consume around 10.5 million megawatt hours per year. That’s more than 90 times the amount of energy used by all residences in Bessemer and more than 10 times the amount of energy used by all residences in Birmingham annually. Increased demand for energy, or at least the potential for it, is already driving Alabama Power’s desire to double down on fossil fuel investments. The company, an effective monopoly, has asked the state’s Public Service Commission to approve its purchase of a gas-powered power plant in recent days, potentially exacerbating the state’s reliance on dirty energy that contributes to climate change. When a technology company proposes to a municipality to build a new digital storehouse, however, sometimes “elevated demand load is overstated because every party is financially invested in overstating the need,” Tait said. Even as the city moves forward with its plans, for example, there is no guarantee the data center will have customers once built. Jefferson Traywick serves as Jefferson County’s first ever economic development adviser. In an interview, he said that there are multiple potential customers engaging with investors about potential end use. Traywick said he’d signed an NDA as well, so he couldn’t say who those possible customers might be. “I really don’t even know,” he said. Ideally, data center companies should pay for their own infrastructure, but in practice, this often doesn’t happen, Tait said. The vast majority of these infrastructure projects benefit only the data center, not the broader customer base. Tait believes building these operations “should not be on the backs of regular people to benefit the wealthiest corporations in America.” These corporations, he said, “should pay their fair share. If anything, they should pay more than their fair share.” Brenda Small and her daughter, Brianna, live in a small trailer park just outside the boundaries of the proposed development. Last month, they were quick to express their opposition to the project. Small said her power bills are already approaching $500 some months. “That’s ridiculous for one month,” she said. Small worries her bills will soar even higher because of increased energy demand from the data center. Brianna In Georgia, tech companies and consumer advocates have negotiated and agreed that the data center operators cover their own infrastructure costs rather than passing those expenses entirely to consumers. Georgia has also been more forward-thinking about clean energy, Tait said. But Mississippi’s approach to cost allocation is a “free-for-all.” Last year, Mississippi passed a state law that declares anything Amazon needs to build is automatically in the public interest, with no Public Service Commission review. This approach is “the most egregious example we see in terms of a cost allocation problem,” Tait said. Alabama law contains tax carve-outs for capital projects, including a specific, 30-year tax abatement meant to attract large data centers. If approved by Bessemer officials, a tax abatement under the economic development law could amount to a tax cut of more than $500 million. Not a Drop to Drink? So-called hyperscale data centers like those used by Google, Meta, and other large tech companies can consume hundreds of gallons of water daily and millions annually. Smaller centers often use less than 100,000 gallons daily but can still consume a significant amount of a town’s water supply if not properly managed. To cool heat generated by thousands of servers in one data center, a chilled water system is typical for a hyperscale data center. The central chiller cools the water, circulates it through heat-absorbing coils, and dissipates the heat into the air through a cooling tower. The water then recirculates. In smaller centers, water can be piped to nearby wastewater facilities. Lawyers for Logistic Land Investments have said in documents that the proposed Bessemer facility’s end user may choose to rely on a so-called “closed loop” cooling system meant to reduce water usage and waste, but it’s unclear exactly how that system will work—what the water demand will be and where wastewater would be discharged. Despite the rapid construction of new data centers driven by the demand for AI, cryptocurrency mining, and cloud computing, Alabama lacks a comprehensive water plan. Under state law, if you own land next to a river or stream in Alabama, you can use the water without a permit. Businesses using more than 100,000 gallons of water daily are required to file a certificate and declare the water usage as beneficial, but the reporting is largely self-regulated without meaningful oversight, and penalties are nonexistent for noncompliance, according to Cindy Lowry, executive director of Alabama Rivers Alliance. Most states in the east have a regulated water withdrawal system, she said. Alabama does not. “We have virtually nothing,” said Lowry. If different sources pull from one river, like the Black Warrior River, and everyone is filling out a certificate, “There’s nobody looking to say: ‘How much can the system handle? How many straws are in the system?’” Lowry said. By consuming large amounts of water, a data center, like the one proposed in western Jefferson County, has the potential to become the largest water consumer in the state. Already, 80% of water withdrawals in the state are for cooling coal, gas, and nuclear plants, Lowry added. Often, utilities may not have initially planned for such massive water demands. With their high water consumption for cooling systems, data centers pose several significant water challenges for Alabama. A data center can strain local water utilities capacity, increase water bills for existing customers, disrupt the natural flow of rivers, reduce the water available for downstream users, and potentially destroy local ecosystems. Dynamics like these worry Ron and Becky Morgan. The couple is among the few residents in the area on well water, Becky explained, putting them at risk of becoming victims of groundwater contamination—water used to cool data centers is mixed with chemical coolants—or more general water scarcity. “We’re on the front lines when it comes to water,” she said. Jeff Lowe, a retired firefighter, said he worries about the impact the facility will have on the ability of first responders to adequately address fires in the area. “They say Warrior River is going to supply it,” Lowe said of the local water utility. “But I don’t know if they can. They can’t even keep the fire hydrants around here going.” Lowe said he also wonders about the additional fire risk posed by the data center itself, potentially replete with electronic equipment and lithium batteries, in a community with limited resources to respond to large, industrial fires. “I just don’t know if they have the resources to deal with something like that before it gets out of hand,” he said. The Loss of the Land On the whole, residents fear perpetual daylight will replace starlight and the 24-hour mechanical whir of machinery will be their surround sound, drowning out the birdsong. They foresee the banks of Little Blue Creek and other wetlands being deforested, the lakes flooded with potentially toxic runoff laced with coolants, and wildlife driven from their habitat. David Havron, president of the Rock Mountain Lakes Landowners Association, is one of the residents who filed suit against the city, resulting in the restraining order that delayed the city council’s vote to move the project forward. David Havron He worries that the nighttime view from his dock, just a stone’s throw from his back door, will soon be ruined in favor of a project that he believes will provide little benefit to his neighborhood or those living in it. “It’s going to look like a sunset,” he said of the light pollution. “A constant haze in the sky.” With less vegetation to absorb rainwater because of the clear-cutting necessary to complete the project, Havron said residents are worried flooding could become worse in the area, with runoff potentially filling the lakes around which many of the residents have built their homes and lives. Then, there’s the risk to wildlife. “It’ll all be gone,” Havron said. “It’ll run off. There’s a set of bald eagles. There’s deer and coyotes, racoons and turkeys and everything else here. It’ll all be gone. . . . It’s going to have to be cut.” “We’re Going to Fight” Not long after Ron and Becky Morgan had arrived at Marshall Killingsworth’s garden gathering, Mary Rosenboom came and sat down among the daylilies, completing the circle of neighbors brought together by the fight to save their community from an unwanted development. A sales professional, Rosenboom said she’d never delved into political or environmental issues until the data center came knocking at the community’s door. Once she began to look into the potential impacts, she quickly realized this was a fight she was willing to join and, if necessary, help lead. Now, she’s become an accidental activist. “It was absolutely an accident, but here I am,” she said. Sitting in front of her was a brightly colored binder, filled with research on data centers, city governance, and what the impact could be in her community. It’s a hard fight to win, Rosenboom said, when there’s so little information being provided about the specifics of the project. The non-disclosure agreements, the residents said, was one of their top concerns. “When you’re dealing with public funds and public ordinances, there should be no NDA,” Ron Morgan said. Even if public officials are unwilling to talk about the possible impacts of the project, the residents around the site say they’re ready for a war. Securing the restraining order and delaying the process was a battle won, they said, but the fight is still well underway. Becky Morgan, also a plaintiff in the suit against the city, said previous public hearings have been largely a formality, with officials doing little to meaningfully engage with citizens’ concerns. “It’s just a farce,” she said. And when it came time for officials to ask questions of the developer, there was little desire on the part of public officials to push the data center representatives for more substantive information. “They already had their marching orders,” her husband, Ron, said. “And now we have ours.” The next stage of the fight is already underway. The last week of April, more than 100 residents gathered inside Rock Mountain Baptist Church to hear from lawyers McDaniel and Yates about what may come next. The pair characterized securing a delay in the rezoning process as a win but warned residents that a protracted legal fight could drag on for years and cost the community upwards of six figures. John Parker YatesReginald McDaniel Outside the legal realm, the lawyers said, residents should do all they can to press local political leaders to oppose the project and provide as much information about the proposal as possible before and during newly scheduled planning and zoning commission and city council meetings in the coming weeks. No matter what, the lawyers told the crowd, fighting a municipality with practically unlimited resources over a multibillion-dollar project will be an uphill battle. It was a reality many of the residents were already coming to terms with. They were ready for the fight. —By Lee Hedgepeth and Lanier Isom, Inside Climate News This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for its newsletter here. View the full article

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Nearly two years after catastrophic wildfires destroyed more than 2,000 houses and apartment buildings in Lahaina, Hawaii, only 10 homes have been rebuilt. Hundreds of others are under construction, but the process of rebuilding is painfully slow. One temporary neighborhood is an exception: called Ka La‘i Ola, it’s filled with modular, factory-built houses and is now home to more than 600 people. Hundreds of additional modular homes on the site will soon be ready for occupancy. And it might be a model for other communities that are trying to recover from disasters—though it also raises questions about the cost of building temporary housing. “The timeline was unlike anything that we’ve ever experienced,” says Kimo Carvalho, executive director of HomeAid Hawaiʻi, the nonprofit leading the development of the project in partnership with the state of Hawaii. The team secured land in February 2024 and broke ground at the beginning of May. One hundred days later, the first families started moving in. Vetting 130 modular housing companies Before the fires in Maui, the nonprofit was focused on building housing for the most vulnerable Hawaii residents. (HomeAid Hawaiʻi is the local chapter of a national group created by the building industry to help tackle the affordable housing crisis.) In August 2023, after the wildfires, the nonprofit started working with the state on the disaster response. Immediately after the fires, the state was inundated with calls from modular housing companies; it realized that factory-built modular housing would likely be an important tool in the recovery. So while the nonprofit scoured the area for a place to build temporary housing, the group simultaneously started vetting more than 130 companies that make modular homes. “Everyone said, ‘I can absolutely get you 400 homes within three months,’” Carvalho says. “And as a realist, I was able to break that down and ask about the specifics that got us to a true understanding of their timelines, production schedules, transportation, what the work would be looking like on site, and basically coming up with a real budget.” They realized that a single company wouldn’t be able to supply the 450 homes that they wanted for the project. So the team made a short list of finalists, visiting their factories in person to do due diligence, and ultimately choosing five providers. Finding a site to build At the same time, they were racing to find land. The 57-acre site they ultimately chose had challenges, including the fact that it was covered in volcanic rock. Preparing the land for construction meant an expensive process of using dynamite to blast through enough rock to install sewer, water, and electrical lines. The land sits on a slope, and engineering the right foundations for the locations was another challenge to solve. The site also has a complex history. The land originally belonged to Hawaiian royalty; it was ceded to the U.S. government when the monarchy was overthrown in 1893. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, the parcel was part of a larger collection of land that went to the state government, with the intent that it would be used to help native Hawaiians. Now, the state plans to use the site for emergency housing only for five years, as it makes plans to build permanent housing there for Hawaii residents. It’s not yet clear what will happen to the modular homes when the five years are up. But the land was relatively close to some employment, a critical factor for fire survivors who were struggling with transportation. So the team moved forward. While the lease for the land was being finalized, the modular providers were getting ready to begin shipping units as soon as possible. An accelerated timeline Permitting happened quickly, as the government used its emergency declaration to speed up the process. “We brought the stakeholders together in one room, so it wasn’t five different agencies looking at a permit set that would otherwise take eight months,” says Carvalho. “We got our grading permit in two weeks. I think the project has demonstrated not only what modular manufacturing can do, but also what government can do to truly just get housing built.” Construction also happened quickly. Most of the work on the modular homes happened in factories, with construction crews handling other steps like putting in foundations, steps, and decks. “I don’t think we would have been able to meet our timeline had modular not been an option,” he says. The first families moved into the homes in August 2024, a year after the fire. The homes, which range in size from studios to small three-bedroom houses, are limited to survivors who weren’t eligible for help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has also built some modular housing in Lahaina. The majority of residents are renters. Others are homeowners with specific challenges. For example, one couple didn’t qualify for FEMA aid because they had insurance coverage, but their insurance settlement doesn’t actually cover the cost of rebuilding their home. Rent at Ka Laʻi Ola is free until August, and then they’ll pay below market rate, helping them save up to cover the cost of rebuilding. A lifelife for residents For the residents who’ve been able to move in, the site has been a lifeline. “You see a sigh of relief when they receive keys, and know that they don’t have to jump around from hotel to hotel for the next four years,” says Cesar Martinez, the director at Ka La‘i Ola. Martinez and his family also lost their own rental home in the fire. Like others, they didn’t get any official warning the day of the catastrophe. Gale-force winds had taken out power and cell service. Martinez and his girlfriend and children fled when smoke filled the air and they started hearing explosions in the neighborhood. Cesar MartinezPatricia Nebrida They were able to safely escape by driving up a dirt road into the hills and spending the night at a hotel where Martinez and his girlfriend had worked in the past. But when they returned a couple of days later, everything was gone. “We drove to the property where we lived and confirmed with our own eyes that nothing was there,” he says. The house they’d rented had burned down. The place where Martinez worked was gone. His children’s school, which had been scheduled to start a new school year the day after the fire happened, was also gone. Like thousands of other Lahaina residents, they stayed temporarily in hotels. But the shortage of housing, and the extreme cost of the little housing that was left, meant that they considered leaving Hawaii. When they were able to move to Ka La‘i Ola, they knew that they would have a place to live until 2029, and that was incredibly important for their mental health. “There’s a lot of uncertainty,” he says. “A lot of people who didn’t have much, now have even less.” Meeting their new neighbors also helped. The modular homes are arranged in pods of 14 or 16 units. “We placed units strategically in ways where there would be intentional community connections,” says Carvalho. The community also has access to financial literacy classes, mental health counseling, a mobile food bank, and a mobile vet clinic that offers free care for pets. The site itself, with a view of the ocean, is peaceful. The name means “The Place of Peaceful Recovery” in Hawaiian. A steep cost It’s undeniable that the development happened quickly—and for that reason, aspects of the approach could be useful for other areas. Changing permitting rules was key, and so was the use of modular homes. Carvalho has been meeting with groups from California that are currently working on plans to rebuild areas that burned in January around Los Angeles. He has offered, he says, to share HomeAid’s analysis of all of the modular housing companies. But the homes come at a steep cost: The project costs $185 million, or more than $400,000 per home. (The nonprofit says that’s still $52 million less than the state would have spent with typical construction; the project saved $14 million because of donated materials and labor. The Hawai‘i Community Foundation also contributed $40 million from funds collected from global donors.) Most of the cost went to building underlying infrastructure, from sewer and water connections to grading the land, since it was an undeveloped area; the base cost of each home was only around $122,000. The same infrastructure can later be used to support permanent housing for Hawaii residents, and the modular housing itself can likely be used much longer than the current five-year plan. Still, critics argue that costs were higher than necessary because the developer didn’t get bids from multiple contractors in order to speed up construction. Critics are also concerned that HomeAid hasn’t been transparent about specific costs; the nonprofit acknowledges that it’s behind in providing receipts. And while the project has undeniably helped its residents, 12,000 people were displaced by the fires; one development can’t help everyone. The cost is also a reminder that as climate change makes disasters more common, communities also need to invest more in prevention—repeatedly rebuilding is financially unsustainable. In L.A., for example, the fires this year were 35% more likely because of climate change. The same extreme conditions will happen again, and neighborhoods need to be better designed with that in mind. At a national level, the The President administration recently shut down a program that helped communities become more resilient in order to limit damage in disasters. But some cities are still trying to do more. In Berkeley, California, for example, homeowners in neighborhoods that are at the highest risk from fire will now be required to clear “defensible space” around their homes so fires can’t spread as easily. View the full article