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Marketing success starts with listening. Learn how to turn customer interactions into powerful insights that improve lead quality and increase conversions in this ebook. The post Stop Guessing. Start Converting: The Key To Smarter Lead Generation In 2025 appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Microsoft is now placing quick buttons or tabs to quickly jump from the Bing Copilot Answer to Bing image or video search results. I am not sure why or when Bing decides to show this but they are, for some (not all) queries that respond with a Copilot Answer. View the full article

It's time for the monthly Google Webmaster Report - the April 2025 version. This month we had the Google March 2025 core update kick off and finish rolling out. Google launched AI Mode, AI Overviews are now powered by Gemini 2.0, we saw some weird AI search tests, expansion of AI Overviews and a whole slew of AI changes.View the full article

When you think of stand-out social media campaigns, what’s the first one that comes to mind? I’m willing to bet the likes of Spotify Wrapped or Dove Beauty are right up there. Lauded as these examples are (rightly so!), they’re far from the only ground-breaking examples from recent years. In fact, it was tough to trim down this list of innovative, memorable social media campaigns down to a readable number — so I’m confident there are several on this list that will stand out on your hunt for inspiration. We’ve got heartfelt stories, celebrity salads, and of course, reincarnating owls. Anytime you feel you’re in a creative rut, come back to this list, snoop, and scoop what you can for your own social media campaigns. Maybe we’ll soon be adding yours to this list! 👀 1. Duolingo’s death of the owlDuolingo, the language learning app, announced the death of their beloved owl mascot in February 2025. While the campaign evoked mixed feelings, it also sparked tidal waves of engagement — with the death announcement getting over two million likes and 40,000 comments. The company continued paying tribute to the mascot for two weeks — fully committing to the act — right before Duo made a ‘legends never die’ comeback. If you were in orbit, it was hard to miss the news. Everyone from me to Dua Lipa was talking about it. Garnering over a billion organic views across social media platforms, this was one of Duolingo’s most successful social media campaigns — which, considering how prolific the brand is on social, is really saying something. Why this campaign was successful: A famous (albeit fictional) face. In Duolingo’s case, Duo was the face of the brand and a household name, famous for its unhinged antics on social media.It piqued people’s curiosity — since the Duolingo team kept up the charade, people wanted to know how the mascot died. Some people didn’t think the marketing department would kill their biggest asset; others said their brand was just bonkers enough to do it. Either way, everyone was interested in how it would play out.Key takeaways: If your social media marketing efforts don’t have a face yet, it might be time to consider giving it one — with loads of personality. After all, plenty of brands have mascots, but few seem to have quite as much, er… character as Duo does. A mascot with personality could open doors to loads of fun, wacky, heartwarming stories (read: campaigns galore). That said, it’s a tough act to balance. Ensure you maintain a consistent brand voice across social media channels, though. You’ll want a fully fleshed-out, long-term strategy for this. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Duolingo’s successful social media campaigns are usually chaotic in nature (in line with their overall social media marketing strategy). Their social media team is constantly pushing boundaries, making them trailblazers in their field.Double down on your social media campaigns by expanding them into all the social media channels you’re on. You increase the chances of a campaign’s success by involving multiple platforms.⚠️ Note: Don’t copy-paste this campaign if your social media strategy already has a mascot (like many brands have already done). While it might get you engagement because the topic is trending and popular, it’s generally been fairly poorly received. People want originality and authenticity true to your brand, not a copy-paste version of what’s popular. 2. Loop Earplugs social media partnerships (especially during music festivals)Loop Earplugs is a pro at social media collaborations. They regularly partner with various creators (and adjacent businesses) to snag a spot in their social media feed. Recently, they partnered with Coachella to launch special earplugs just for the occasion. Some of their creator affiliates shared their unique discount code to promote the product and they also used the influencer content as ads. Why these social media campaigns are successful: Loop introduced vetted, trusted creators into their social media marketing efforts which enhanced the authenticity of their social media posts.Most of Loop’s partnerships relate to a certain segment of their target audience — people who live in loud cities, people who struggle with sleeping, and people who want to protect their ears during concerts. The relatability and diverse use cases help their target audience spot themselves in the content and see when, how, and where the product can help them.Key takeaways: If you have the budget and resources, partner with influencers in your industry to improve the visibility of your social media campaigns. It’s best to do this across multiple social media platforms, like Loop.Find seasonal events in your content calendar where your product or services are a natural fit. This will allow you to design social media campaigns that are timely and relatable.Find various use cases for your product or service and ‘show’ them in your social media posts so your target audience can see themselves in your content.3. Pringle’s Halloween product launchPringles launched a new product, called Pringles Mingles, in October of 2024. They created buzz by dropping hints before the launch and themed it around Halloween. Pringles continued to post about the initial flavors post Halloween — also adding influencer reviews and giveaways to the social media campaign. Why this campaign was successful: Pringles didn’t randomly drop a new product with no warning. They created excitement amongst their followers by dropping hints ahead of the launch.Influencer partnerships and giveaways helped create more visibility around the launch.Key takeaways: A winning social media campaign about a product launch needs preparation. Embed social media posts that build excitement and drop hints ahead of your launch date.Raise awareness about your new product or services by partnering with influencers, reposting user-generated content, and hosting contests or giveaways.4. Aavia’s hormone condition feature seriesAavia, a period tracking app, has embedded a genius content series into its social media strategy. They interview people about their journeys with hormone conditions, share it on their Substack newsletter, and repurpose it for social media marketing. Why this campaign was successful: The people featured in these series are often Aavia customers — building social proof amongst social media users.The repurposed posts fill the social media marketing content calendar, promote the Substack, and help Aavia’s target audience — all with one post.Key takeaways: Add more customer stories to your social media marketing campaigns. This will not only lend more authenticity to your efforts but also make your content more relatable.If you have other marketing efforts in motion, like a newsletter or blog posts, repurpose them to add more quality content to your social media marketing and promote your other marketing channels.5. Tl;dv’s skitstl;dv is an AI meeting assistant. The company regularly shares relatable, funny skits on its social media platforms that feature characters from a tech company. The videos show common, day-to-day interactions between a sales rep and a developer — like sales promising a feature that the product roadmap doesn’t include and then requesting the dev team to prioritize it. There are other characters like customer success, founder, and product manager, too. All of these are potential customers of tl;dv, but the product is almost never directly mentioned. While this example isn’t a ‘campaign’ isn’t in the strictest sense, it’s an ongoing social media series that has been wildly successful. The scores of videos they’ve shared have thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of views across Instagram and TikTok. Why these social media marketing campaigns are successful: There’s no hard selling, just entertaining content.It’s the kind of content people would find funny and share with their friends.Some social media posts say the quiet part of working at a tech company out loud — which makes tl;dv’s content more authentic, relatable, and engaging.Key takeaways: When appropriate and tasteful, poke fun at your audience’s pain points that will make them feel seen.Infuse more relatable and entertaining content around your target audience’s daily life into your social media marketing campaigns.Instead of always having the sales cap on, focus on creating memorable social media posts that foster a brand identity.6. KFC’s new fries launch in the UKKFC always got the same complaint: your fries aren’t finger-licking good. So, they heard their customers and launched new fries in the UK with the hashtag #NewKFCfries. For a while there, X’s feed rained fries (in the UK and Ireland). it’s raining KFC fries today in the UK! Click the hashtag 👉🏻 #NewKFCFries pic.twitter.com/Ms6NjIzAz6 — Stolen one (@Stolenone100) October 9, 2023 Why was this campaign successful: The campaign was super interactive — every time people clicked on the tag, fries rained down the screen! It was a fun element (possible because KFC partnered with X) that made the campaign memorable.KFC was responding to the complaints of their devoted brand advocates. This made customers feel heard and cared for.They laughed at themselves. There’s something quite relatable about a brand being able to poke fun at themselves in the way KFC subtly did here. They used phrases like “Finally” and “Me either” when fans expressed they couldn’t wait for the new version. Key takeaways: Practice social listening and monitor patterns in customer feedback. If you’re addressing something many buyers have asked for, show them you hear them in your social media campaigns.Have a branded hashtag around your social media campaigns to make user-generated content easier to track — particularly on platforms like X and Threads, where hashtags like this are easily clickable. It also makes your marketing campaigns more sticky and memorable among social media users.When doing a campaign for a product launch, don’t be afraid to put it front and center (KFC not only made it rain fries on X, but also changed their social media bio). Don’t let your successful marketing campaigns drown in the feed (especially if they’re time-sensitive).7. Blendtec’s ‘Will it Blend’ social media campaignBlendtec is a kitchenware company that sells mixers, grinders, and blenders. In 2021, they ran a ‘Will it blend?’ content series on YouTube where they’d blend various items in their mixer and see if their products could do the job. The campaign was so engaging that people are still talking about it. Why this campaign was successful: It encouraged engagement. People could interact with the content and ask for what they want to see blended next — and Blendtec would actually do it.The freshness of the idea also made ‘Will it Blend’ a successful campaign. Not only did it prove the product’s durability, but it also engaged people in a fun and silly way.Key takeaways: Effective social media campaigns are rooted in simplicity. Find fresh social media content ideas that’d spark conversation among your target audience and improve your social media engagement.Create content series (that hopefully don’t have to involve blending your iPhone) that can spark curiosity among your followers and make them look forward to the next episode.8. Black Girl Vitamin’s Black History Month limited edition bundleBlack Girl Vitamins did a social media campaign around Black History Month where they sold an exclusive offer to make your own bundle and also get a limited edition box. For the whole month, they also shared social media posts focusing on increasing awareness about Black History. They also ran various in-person fitness classes and a few live webinars across the U.S. to empower their community and foster more real-life connections. Why was this campaign successful: The focus allowed people to build a personal connection to the brand, especially if they align with Black Girl Vitamin’s values.The business also refocused its packaging to fully commit to the social media campaign.Giveaways and influencer partnerships also helped in increasing brand awareness.Key takeaways: The best social media campaigns align with your brand values. Use social media marketing as a channel to show what you stand for (and/or stand against), but be wary of being performative. Customers and followers will see right through it if you disingenuously jump onto a cause to get likes and views. Here’s some great advice on when and how to align your brand with causes from small business owner, Nyshell Lawrence.Let your audience know when a limited-period discount or offer ends by concluding your social media campaigns.9. Sweetgreen’s Renee Rap bowlRestaurant chain Sweetgreen launched a new salad bowl with singer and songwriter Reneé Rapp. Why Reneé? Because she’s a regular customer and had a custom go-to order that Sweetgreen wanted to offer all its customers. The songwriter had been a Sweetgreen fan for the last five years, so this partnership was authentic and a result of Reneé’s long-standing love for Sweetgreen. Why this campaign was successful: Reneé’s celebrity status definitely lends itself to the success of this social media campaign. She’s an influential voice and her stamp of approval carries a lot of weight to not only raise awareness, but generate leads.Creating a new bowl with Reneé’s name also puts a whimsical touch on the company’s products — anyone who’s a fan of the singer would want to try the salad.The chance to see a live show in the unique setting of a restaurant and get a meet-and-greet with the singer also makes this social media campaign a success.Key takeaways: You don’t always need a celebrity for this campaign’s success — find influential voices in your industry and partner with them to create content and maybe even co-create products.Share exclusive offers (like a meet and greet) with your influencer partners to increase the success of your social media campaigns.10. Beehiiv’s convert to Beehiiv kitBeehiiv is a newsletter platform that focuses on being the best in the business for creators. Recently, one of their core competitors rebranded (ConvertKit became Kit), launched a campaign to share the news. Beehiiv capitalized on the moment by offering exclusive discounts and incentives specifically for Kit’s customers. tired of your email company talking about their logo for 6 months? disappointed they ship updates slower than LA traffic? wish the platform didn't look like it was built in the 90s? don't worry — we @beehiiv are here to help 🤝 pic.twitter.com/mriYEtxUdC — Tyler Denk 🐝 (@denk_tweets) October 1, 2024 The campaign evoked a lot of debate on social media about whether or not dunking on your competitors is the right way to go. Either way, it generated serious buzz for Beehiiv on social media. Some people found it distasteful, but others loved Beehiiv’s edge and wanted to be a part of the movement. Why this campaign was successful: The timing of this campaign was just right — Beehiiv launched their exclusive offer the same day their competitor rebranded. It was already in everyone’s feeds because Kit had been hyping up the final date of their rebrand for a while.This campaign was a bold and risky move — but it helped Beehiiv find customers who truly love their brand for their attitude.Key takeaways: If you plan to run a head-to-head social media campaign with your competitor, prepare for the potential backlash you might receive. Make your potential customers an offer they can’t refuse. Beehiiv’s exclusive offer didn’t just gain traction because of the mocking, but also because the perks were unbelievably good for creators — free migration, free access to Beehiiv for six months, guaranteed premium sponsors, and early beta access to new features.Highlight your unique edge over competitors in your social media campaigns. You don’t need to take a go-big-or-go-home approach and name names but don’t be afraid to spotlight your product’s unique selling proposition.11. FZK Media’s $10,000/month challengeFZK Media is a personal branding agency helping founders reach their business goals via effective social media marketing. Their founder started a social media challenge to reach an income milestone from her creator's Instagram account, which she eventually shifted to her agency’s account. Why this campaign was successful: The content series is about building in public — which keeps people hooked and builds trust. Everyone wants to know if you fulfill the challenge you’ve taken on. People also appreciate you sharing your setbacks, failures, and struggles — fostering a strong connection.The founder shares an honest look behind her workflow, struggles, and wins. It’s not a glossy portrayal of success but an accurate picture of the process for people who share the same goal.Key takeaways: People love a peek behind the curtain. Launch effective campaigns that just share the behind-the-scenes of building your business. After the brand fulfilled this challenge, its founder continued the series by increasing the stakes (a $50,000/month challenge).Create authentic and vulnerable social media marketing content to truly resonate with your audience and help them learn from your mistakes.The campaign showed both the ‘why’ and the people behind the brand.Apart from the content itself, Fiza’s video editing skills were also A+ — the camera cuts were perfect, there was no fluff in any video, and her voice was crisp and clear. All these factors combined made every video a great watch.Use a scheduling tool to manage your social media campaignsCreating and engaging with your social media campaign is what should be spending your energy on — the last thing you want is to get bogged down manually posting your content every day. . The easiest way to automate this is to introduce Buffer into your social media management workflow: you can save ideas, schedule posts, measure campaign performance, and even engage with your customers from a single tab. The best part? When you populate all your content in advance in Buffer’s content calendar, you can also spot gaps in your social media marketing strategy. For example, maybe you notice a week’s looking quite light in terms of the number of posts, so you fill it with your best-performing content types. Have an interesting social media campaign example (perhaps yours 😉) that you think we missed? We’re always on the hunt for more fresh campaigns to feature here — share yours with us in the comments below! View the full article

When working as a member of a remote or hybrid team, strong communication is the key to success. This isn’t a new revelation, but a reminder that if you and your team have been running into speedbumps lately, your mode of communication may be the reason why. View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, home flipping surged as soaring home prices and ultralow-interest rates attracted more flippers, especially newcomers, to the market. However, as the market shifted due to the rate shock of 2022, home-flipping activity has seen the biggest pullback since 2007, and many of those newcomers pulled back. In the last quarter of 2018, there were 71,358 home flips. In the last quarter of 2021, that shot up to 120,531 flips, before falling to 87,851 flips in the last quarter of 2022. In the last quarter of 2024, there were just 69,929 flips. While some experienced flippers remain active, caution now prevails in the market. Regional challenges (including tight inventory in Connecticut and rising inventory in Florida) along with escalating costs have caused flippers to move forward with greater care. To better understand what’s going on in the home-flipping market, we’ve created the first-ever LendingOne-ResiClub Fix-and-Flip Survey. The flipper survey was fielded from February 1 to February 19, 2025. In total, 244 U.S. home flippers took the survey. To conduct the survey, ResiClub partnered with LendingOne, a private real estate lender. Our findings reveal that the home-flipping market in much of the Northeast remains competitive, as price appreciation, tight inventory, and aging housing stock create investment potential for fix-and-flip projects. However, home flippers in the region face intense competition for properties and elevated purchase prices. Here are some of the highlights: 1. Home flipper sentiment and plans Fix-and-flip activity: 89% of home flippers plan to conduct at least one fix-and-flip in 2025. 64% plan to convert at least one fix-and-flip project into a rental using the fix-to-rent method. Market outlook: 32% of home flippers say demand for fix-and-flip properties in spring 2025 is “very strong.” In the Northeast, 59% of home flippers described demand as “very strong.” 2. Financial considerations Renovation costs: 56% of U.S. home flippers say kitchen upgrades provide the best return on investment. 3. Flippers’ biggest concerns across the country Northeast: Housing inventory is the biggest challenge (34%). Midwest and Southwest: Competition for properties is reported as the top concern among flippers (31% and 34%). Southeast: Borrowing costs are the biggest concern, with several home flippers specifically noting trouble accessing enough financing for projects. West: Labor and material costs are the top challenge (24%). Below you will find the full results to the LendingOne-ResiClub Fix-and-Flip Survey. (Due to rounding, some total responses might not equal 100%.) View the full article

Google AIO trends are making it increasingly important to keep older content relevant, fresh, and indexed The post Data Shows Google AIO Is Citing Deeper Into Websites appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says Brussels could hit Big Tech services exportsView the full article

Government-backed investigation will examine efficacy and capability at the ONS amid concerns over reliability of official figuresView the full article

Cargill Kitchen Solutions is recalling more than 212,000 pounds of Egg Beaters and Bob Evans liquid egg products because they may contain a cleaning solution with bleach, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This recall comes at a time when egg prices have hit record highs as the country faces decreasing supplies due to an ongoing bird flu outbreak. Here’s what to know. What’s included in the liquid egg recall? The recall covers 212,268 pounds of liquid egg products, which were produced on March 12 and March 13 and distributed in eight states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas, and possibly nationwide, according to the USDA statement. The problem was discovered when the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service received a tip about the potentially contaminated products. Upon investigation, FSIS scientists concluded that use of this product should not cause adverse health consequences and the risk is negligible, resulting in a Class III recall. Cargill confirmed to CBS News there have been no reported illnesses or injuries associated with the products. How can I tell if I have one of the recalled liquid egg products? Here’s a list of the recalled items from the USDA: 32-oz. (2-lb.) carton of “Egg Beaters ORIGINAL LIQUID EGG SUBSTITUTE” with use by date August 10, 2025 32-oz. (2-lb.) carton of “Egg Beaters CAGE-FREE ORIGINAL LIQUID EGG SUBSTITUTE” with use by date August 09, 2025 32-oz. (2-lb.) carton of “Egg Beaters CAGE-FREE ORIGINAL FROZEN EGG SUBSTITUTE” and “Egg Beaters NO ENJAULADAS ORIGINAL SUSTITUTO DE HUEVO CONGELADO” with use by date March 07, 2026 32-oz. (2-lb.) carton of “Bob Evans Better’n Eggs Made with Real Egg Whites” with use by date August 10, 2025 The recalled products also have establishment number “G1804” printed on the carton. What should I do if I bought one of the recalled liquid egg products? Anyone who has these products in their fridge or freezer is urged to throw them away or return them. Although FSIS does not expect consumers to experience adverse health effects, and no illnesses have been reported, anyone concerned about illness should contact a healthcare provider. Consumers with questions can contact Cargill Kitchen Solutions at 1-844-419-1574; or the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 888-MPHotline (888-674-6854) or via email at MPHotline@usda.gov. View the full article

Ukraine’s war with Russia—sparked by Russia’s invasion in the spring of 2022—is now entering its fourth year. So too is Sine.Engineering, a company born amid the conflict. CEO Andriy Chulyk founded the company in April 2022, pivoting from running a standing-desk business in the Lviv region to supporting his country’s defense efforts through various drone technologies and components. The 150-person-company has scaled rapidly over the past three years; its parts are now used in drones made by more than 50 manufacturers worldwide. “Everyone thought something might change, that [war] would stop,” Chulyk says. “But we see clearly now that the situation is only getting harder. We need to be more effective on the front line.” The scale of drone deployment is staggering: Drones are responsible for about 70% of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, according to Ukrainian officials. In 2024 alone, Ukraine produced more than 2 million small drones for its war effort, with plans to manufacture 4.5 million this year. But such scale comes with a challenge—there simply aren’t enough operators to control them all. That shortfall is precisely why the company is focusing on autonomous systems, developing drones capable of operating semi-independently. The deployment of swarms of autonomous or group-controlled drones comes as a far cry from the early days of the conflict, when larger individual drones, such as the Turkey-produced Bayraktar UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), were put onto the battlefield. “They’re big targets,” Chulyk says of the Bayraktars. “The shift now is toward smaller, disposable systems. You fly a drone, it completes its mission, and if you lose it, it’s fine.” But ensuring drones reach their targets is no simple task. “Environments are very contested, and it’s hard to operate,” says Andriy Zvirko, Sine.Engineering’s chief strategy officer. In response to the growing drone threat, Russia has ramped up GPS jamming—disrupting the traditional navigation systems UAVs rely on. In response, Sine.Engineering has developed a solution that enables drones to navigate accurately without GPS. More pressingly, Ukraine must contend with a shortage of qualified drone operators—and here, again, Sine.Engineering’s innovations could prove a crucial boon to the country’s wartime efforts. The company is developing technology that will enable one operator, sitting hundreds of miles from the front line, to control dozens of drones simultaneously through a real-time electronic map. Eventually, the hope is that those drones can number in the hundreds. “It’s like StarCraft,” says Zvirko, referencing the iconic strategy game. “He will see everything, what is happening on the battlefield, and he can operate dozens of drones by himself.” That shift would be a significant scale up in capabilities for the Ukrainian armed forces. Sine.Engineering’s technology is already capable of controlling 10 to 15 drones simultaneously, with systems currently being deployed to the front line in recent weeks. That rapid pace of development is something Ukraine has achieved out of necessity—wartime demands quick iteration and adoption. But Chulyk warns that allied nations must speed up the implementation of new technologies like Sine.Engineering’s as the threat from Russia to the global West continues to grow. “Western countries need to move faster,” he warns. “They need to wake up—not just to help Ukraine, but to help themselves.” View the full article

When meeting clients, I make one promise—to see the world as it could be. That’s not a bad message right now. It’s a pretty weird world out there. The volatile political and socio-economic landscape can make us all feel like things are going to hell. And in the slightly less real world of marketing and advertising, that’s even more the case. The challenges of any agency or client team continue to escalate. Instability abounds. Then there’s the issue of client loyalty, reduced scopes, tighter timelines, and the not-so-secret plan of AI to take everyone’s jobs. And then the cynicism comes. As we know, misery loves company, so soon—if you want to find it—it can turn up everywhere. You’ll see it in status meetings, LinkedIn posts, industry events, and coffee machine catch-ups. Quickly it becomes less funny. In the end, it’s just a deluge of boring negative energy. That’s why optimism is a way out. We need radiators, not drains, in our teams and our businesses. But let’s be clear here, it’s not about smiling and hand clapping and whooping. Toxic positivity can be a nightmare, and will inevitably create a feeling of mistrust or emptiness from employees. It’s about harnessing a belief and way of working that will refuse to allow the status quo to take hold or accept that things are inevitably going to be terrible. Active optimism Let’s turn to the concept that I call active optimism. I see this as being willing to see what others don’t, to learn, and to try new things. It’s about fostering the growth mindset, which in turn allows people to be who they are and do things they never thought possible. Critically, as opposed to the cynics who are simply tiring to be around, active optimism creates a flywheel of energy that gathers people up and becomes a magnet for others. Now, don’t get me wrong, a little bit of skepticism is sometimes useful. But in the world we face today, active optimism can be a powerful tool. And you can embed it into an organization. Practically, I define active optimism as follows: Taking responsibility Some days it’s hard to be positive. We have to deal with the truth and honesty. Sometimes, the truth isn’t great. But we also know that our team needs us on our feet and to find a way forward. We need to take more responsibility for the environment, aspirations, and world as it could be. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan recently made a plea to the writing community – to take more responsibility by Writing More Good Guys. In a world that’s turning dark, taking responsibility is what a leader does. Adopting the ‘we can if’ mentality Adam Morgan and Mark Barden in their brilliant book, A Beautiful Constraint talk about the power of using ‘we can if…’ as a starting point for finding a solution when faced with obstacles. I’m obsessed with this approach. We spend so much of our time with challenges it’s so easy to default to ‘it’s not going to happen.’ In many cases, that seems a perfectly reasonable point of view (back to that point about healthy skepticism). But the moment we use ‘we can if…’ we’ve started to create an answer. From there we can build a way forward. Try it, I promise it works. Implementing a reality distortion bubble My good friend, the brilliant Rob Schwartz, introduced me to this. Like some kind of Rebellion Base in Star Wars, you need something to keep the dark side out. When the chatter or negativity can start to rise, having you and your management team able to take time to live in this reality distortion bubble means you can help each other believe and keep moving. Far too many of us spend time with people coming up saying things aren’t going well. Even if they are. So it can sometimes feel like there’s no good news, or that it’s only ever a problem. Sadly that’s the job, which is why protecting yourself and your leadership team from it can be so useful. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, this doesn’t mean not dealing with the truth or putting your head in the sand. It does mean don’t get taken down by these hits and occasionally give you and your team the opportunity to go into that bubble and think about the positivity in your journey to the world as it could be. Never wasting momentum A small win here, a positive meeting there. Grab them, socialize them, and understand why they went well. Learn and repeat. Negativity is toxic and can get into the corridors and crevices of a team very easily. But so can momentum. Surrounding yourself with the right people You want to spend most of your time with radiators, not drains. We’re the sum of the people we surround ourselves with. Get the energy in the room and, where necessary, change the people, or change the people! It can be hard to be optimistic when fortune doesn’t smile on you, and it’s even harder when you are surrounded by cynicism or negativity. Right now, many of us see a world and industry full of volatility and pessimism. But I believe for businesses, teams, and leaders, active optimism in seeing the world as it could be is the only practical course of action. View the full article

In Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth push past the local limits of its most vital natural resource. On one side: Georgetown, the fastest growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east. On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station, and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, have sued the developer to stop the project. A trial is set for the first week of May. “We’re going to fight this thing until the end,” said Bobby Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan. “It effectively drains the water source of the cities.” The pump and pipeline project to Georgetown, developed by California-based Upwell Water, is the largest of at least a half dozen similar projects recently completed, under construction or proposed to bring rural Carrizo Wilcox aquifer water into the booming urban corridor that follows Interstate 35 through Central Texas. It would eventually pump up to 89 million gallons per day, three times the usage of the city of Bryan, to Georgetown and its neighboring cities. “That basically stops all the economic development we have,” Gutierrez said. “We’re talking about our survival.” The fight over the Upwell project could well be a prelude for the broader battles to come as cities across Texas outgrow their water supplies. Lawmakers in the state Capitol are pushing to avert a broad scarcity crisis with funding to desalinate seawater, purify salty groundwater, and treat oilfield wastewater to add to the supply. But all of these solutions remain years from realization. In the near term, only import projects from freshwater aquifers will continue to meet the growing water demands of thirsty Texas cities. Regulation of such projects falls to a patchwork of small, rural agencies called groundwater conservation districts, which might not be fully equipped or empowered to manage plans for competing regional water needs that can affect entire cities for generations to come. Texas law offers limited clarity, generally preferring a landowner’s right to pump their own groundwater over regulations on private property. Despite fierce denunciations of the Upwell project from nearby city leaders, no one has alleged that its developers have broken any laws. “We’re following the rules. Why are we being vilified?” said David Lynch, a managing partner at Core Capital investment firm in Houston and a partner in the Upwell project. “I think they feel uncomfortable about what’s coming and their reaction is to make us go away.” After all, he’s not the only one doing this. Five years ago, San Antonio started pumping up to 49 million gallons per day through a 140-mile pipeline from the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer. Another pipeline was completed last year and will soon begin pumping to the city of Taylor and the new Samsung microchip manufacturing complex there. Another, scheduled for completion this year, will take water into the cities of Buda and Kyle. After the lawsuit delayed the Upwell project’s tight timeline, Georgetown commissioned two other pipeline projects from the same aquifer. “People are starting to pay enough for water to make these sorts of projects work,” Lynch said, driving his black Ford Super Duty Platinum truck down the dirt roads of Upwell’s 9,000-acre farm property and well field in Robertson County. “There’s no cheap water left in Texas.” In the middle of all this is the little Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District, based in the small town of Hearne and also a defendant, alongside Upwell, in the lawsuit. District manager Alan Day feels for the cities of Bryan and College Station. To an extent, he said, they’re right. The more pumping from the aquifer, the sooner everyone will reach conditions of scarcity, though he doesn’t think it will happen as quickly as city leaders say. At the same time, he said, “Bryan can’t claim the water.” Groundwater is a private property right in Texas as sacred as any other. Everyone is allowed to pump whatever their land produces. “Water is the new oil,” said Day, a former ranch manager of 27 years. “They have a commodity that can be sold and they have every right to sell it.” At this time, he said, he has no authority to stop landowners from pumping as long as they fulfill the requirements of the permitting process, which Upwell did. Even if he could do it, Day chuckled at the notion that state leaders would let his tiny office put the brakes on development along the I-35 corridor, home to manufacturing campuses of Tesla, Samsung, and Apple, and offices of Amazon, Meta, and Google, as well as one of the nation’s largest clusters of data centers and its fastest growing cities. However, Day said, there will come a day when that changes. The laws for his district, like all others in Texas, specify a threshold at which new rules kick in. It’s called the “desired future condition,” or DFC, a level below which the district is not willing to go. When they get there, everyone will face restrictions on pumping and the days of groundwater abundance will be over for the Simsboro portion of the aquifer. To date, no district in Texas has hit its DFC. Day said he’s only following the rules. He’ll honor the property rights of landowners who want to pump, and when they hit the DFC, he’ll implement restrictions district-wide. “What does that do to the growth of Bryan and College Station and Texas A&M and anyone else who is depending on Simsboro?” Day asked. “It stops it.” The Texas Miracle This situation follows a generation of steep growth and development that state leaders have dubbed the “Texas Miracle.” The population of Williamson County, seated in Georgetown, 28 miles north of Austin, doubled in 17 to 700,000 people while its median household income increased by more than 90%. Neighboring counties share similar stories, where sprawling subdivisions and shimmering tech campuses now cover former ranchlands. Georgetown needs to add millions of gallons per day to its water supply within the next several years. When it signed the pipeline contract in 2023 that stipulated deliveries beginning in 2030, it was acting on a much tighter timeline than decades that are typically considered for large scale water planning. “Based on hyper growth that we’ve seen in our water territory, we’ve seen the need for higher levels of contracted water sooner than we originally anticipated,” said city manager David Morgan. Most of the new water will serve new residential areas, he said, and will be used primarily to irrigate lawns and other neighborhood landscaping. Williamson County is also courting a cluster of five large data centers that it expects would bring another 100,000 people to the county. But what if Bryan, and the cities of the Brazos Valley, want data centers, too? The region is currently pursuing ambitious opportunities in semiconductors, nuclear energy, aerospace, defense, and life sciences, said Susan Davenport, president of the Greater Brazos Partnership, an economic development group. “These sectors, along with the growing workforce and families who support them, are directly dependent on access to our local water resources,” she said. Gold Rush on Water Although many major projects importing groundwater into Central Texas are just now being realized, the plans have been in the works for decades, according to Michelle Gangnes, a retired finance lawyer and co-founder of the Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund. In 1998, Gangnes moved from Austin to rural Lee County. That same year, San Antonio, 140 miles away, announced plans to import 49 million gallons per day from wells in Lee County on the site of an old Alcoa aluminum smelter. A prolonged fight ensued and the project was never realized, but many others would follow. “That’s what started the whole gold rush on water,” Gangnes said. “It resulted in all these groundwater districts being formed, trying to resist the water rush on the Simsboro.” The groundwater districts were formed by an act of the Texas legislature in 2001. But, when the time came to make groundwater rules, powerful interests kept them loose, according to Ken Kramer, who previously directed the Texas office of the Sierra Club for 24 years. Chief among them was T. Boone Pickens, the iconic Texas oilman who also wanted to export groundwater from his land holdings in the Panhandle. “There was heavy lobbying by groundwater exporters to make sure that groundwater districts could not stop exports,” Kramer said. “Groundwater then became more of the target for moving water to growing areas and populations.” Under a principle in Texas called the “right of capture,” landowners are allowed to pump from their land whatever they are able to. Changes made to the Texas Water Code in 2001 stipulated that withdrawals are allowed so long as they don’t affect other permit holders “unreasonably,” which lacks a firm legal definition. That leaves lots up to interpretation for the groundwater districts of Texas. “They live in a difficult world where it’s unclear exactly what their power is to tell somebody no,” said Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. “If you tell somebody no you’re almost guaranteed to get sued.” In recent years, several major pipeline projects into Central Texas came online. San Antonio eventually got its Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer water through a 6-foot-wide, 140-mile-long Vista Ridge pipeline which began drawing water from Burleson County in 2020, causing levels in neighboring landowners’ wells to plummet. The old Alcoa wells in Burleson County were also put to use. A developer called Xebec Holdings bought the 50-square-mile property in 2022 and signed deals to pipe almost 18 million gallons per day to the City of Tyler. “There’s constantly people out there trying to lease water rights to see if they could do a project to sell water,” said Gary Westbrook, general manager of the Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District. “We’re going to have to find a way to regulate. You can’t just say no.” The Gatehouse Pipeline is currently under construction to Georgetown, with another one called Recharge in development. Morgan, the Georgetown city manager, said those two projects were identified and accelerated after the lawsuit challenged the Upwell project. “We believe the lawsuit is going to likely delay getting that fully resolved,” he said. The Upwell Project Upwell Water, a San Francisco-based financing firm, announced in 2020 that it had raised $1 billion from investors “to monetize water assets.” Upwell partnered with CoreCapital investors in Houston, which bought its 9,000-acre Robertson County farm property in 2021. Lynch, the managing partner at CoreCapital, said he expected to sit on the property for 10 years until the economics of water made it attractive to develop a major export project. But as soon as he entered the market, he found eager buyers willing to pay well. “We bought it and all of a sudden we had everybody calling saying we need water,” Lynch said. “Then we said, we have more demand than we can supply, let’s talk to the neighbors.” Upwell recruited seven neighboring landowners to put company wells on their property and contribute to the export project. These aren’t regular irrigation wells, which in this area can tap water 40 feet down. These are 1,400 feet deep, cased in 2-foot-wide steel pipe, able to produce large volumes. Mark Hoelscher “It’s a million-dollar hole,” said Mark Hoelscher, one of the neighboring landowners involved in the project, as he looked up at one of the diesel-powered well installations. “It’s big time.” In October 2022, Upwell received permits for 16 wells to pump nearly 45 million gallons per day without any challenges in the hearing process. Four months later it received its permit to export the water out-of-district. Then in September 2023, the district issued permits for another 32 wells belonging to the seven adjoining landowners to produce an additional 45 million gallons per day. Until that point, authorities in the Bryan-College Station metro area, some 30 miles south, apparently remained unaware of the project transpiring in Robertson County. Not until September 2024, when the district considered applications for updated permits to export the combined 89 million-gallon-per-day production of all 48 wells, did Texas A&M University enter into the proceedings, filing a request for review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings. Texas A&M University declined to comment for this story. “No one has questioned the fact that we own the land and we have rights to the water underneath it,” said Hoelscher, a third generation landowner in the Brazos River Valley. “The fact of the matter is the water is ours.” The Lawsuit One week later, A&M filed a lawsuit in state district court seeking a temporary injunction stopping the groundwater district from recognizing any of the permits associated with the Upwell project until a hearing is held. A&M argued that the previously issued permits should be open for re-examination because some board members of the groundwater district were ineligible for service at the time the permits were originally approved. In November, Bryan and College Station filed papers to join the lawsuit. It said their “ability to produce groundwater from their Simsboro wells and the economic vitality of the region will be adversely affected if the Contested Applications are granted.” College Station Mayor John Nichols, a former professor of agricultural sciences at Texas A&M, said in a statement: “The transfer of groundwater from our district to users in other areas is one of the most significant issues facing the College Station/Bryan area. I’m a staunch proponent of private property rights, but we are deeply concerned about the long-term impact of excessive extraction on our community.” He called on lawmakers to adopt statewide groundwater regulations ensuring the rights of current permit holders over new water users. None of that, however, matters to the trial that will take place in early May. All the judge will decide is whether or not A&M and the cities have rights to challenge the previously issued permits. In court filings, Upwell argued A&M’s petition “demands that the Court turn back time and recognize a nonexistent ‘right’ to administratively contest final groundwater permits that the Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District properly noticed and issued to Intervenors months and years prior—all without any complaint or contest by any party, including Plaintiff.” If the judge denies A&M’s request, the permits will be issued and work will begin on the Upwell project pipeline. If the judge grants A&M’s request, the permits will head into a potentially yearslong process of state administrative hearings that could threaten the viability of the project and its promised returns to investors. Desired Future Condition Whether or not the pipeline gets built, other similar projects are likely to follow. The situation is headed in one direction: towards the DFC, the threshold at which restrictions begin. In the Brazos Valley and surrounding districts, that threshold is a 262-foot drop in water wells from levels measured in 2000. In the 25 years since then, pumping has led the wells’ water to drop by one quarter of that allotted reduction, according to district manager Day, suggesting ample water supplies remain. But, that remains to be seen. In total, Day said his district has issued permits for up to 291 million gallons per day of pumping from the Simsboro Formation, averaged yearly, of which 89 million gallons per day are associated with the Upwell project. However, only a fraction of that permitted volume is actually pumped. If all permitted pumping were to suddenly come online, Day said, computer models showed they would hit the DFC in six years. In reality it won’t happen quite that fast. The Upwell project plans to scale up its pumping gradually over years. And many farmers hold irrigation permits to pump much more water than they ever actually will, unless they also encounter the opportunity to join an export project. When the aquifer hits the DFC, the rules say it mustn’t fall further. That means all users would face mandatory curtailment. It’s unclear how such unprecedented measures would be enforced in Texas. For Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan, this management method creates a contest for investors to tap the water-wealthy Simsboro Formation and sell off its bounty before time runs out. “They want to exploit everything we have for their personal benefit,” he said. “It’s a race of who can take the most amount of water in the least amount of time to deplete a resource for their pocketbooks.” — Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. View the full article

Max just got a new logo. Again. Two years after rebranding from HBO Max to just Max with new a bright blue-and-white logo, the Warner Bros Discovery-owned streaming service is making an update to its logo. This time, it’s swapping blue for a metallic black and white logo. According to Max, the color change is part of a larger refresh. Max says the standalone logo will be in the black-and-white color scheme, but an updated color palette, chosen to allow for flexibility of the logo in app and in marketing materials, will be unveiled in the coming months. Why Max updated its logo Max includes content from HBO and other Warner Bros Discovery brands, like Adult Swim, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, CNN Films Discovery, and TNT, but the new logo appears to put HBO—which is responsible for top shows for the streamer like The White Lotus, The Sopranos, and Succession—back at the center. The new logo reflects the black-and-white color palette of HBO’s branding and retains the circle inside the counter of the A in “Max,” a callback to the circle inside the “O” in the HBO logo. Throughout the streaming wars, individual brands have updated their visual identities to stand out in a sea of blue logos. Disney+ updated its logo last year from blue to teal, and when Max first rolled out its blue logo, its former global chief marketing officer Patrizio Spagnoletto said the specific shade was chosen because it stood apart from Paramount blue and Prime blue. Together with the logo mark, the color communicated something about how the streamer wanted to be perceived, he said. “With our blue and the way that the logo is designed, what we were going for is a combination of premium but accessible,” Spagnoletto said in 2023. In black and white, the new Max logo seems to be amping up the premium aspect of its brand and downplaying the accessible. A Nielsen survey of the top 10 most-streamed shows in the U.S. may suggest why, with HBO shows like True Detective and The White Lotus among the few Max shows with enough viewers to make it onto the list dominated by Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu shows. It’s a strategy that just might work. View the full article

Google's Danny Sullivan says it doesn't matter how the content is scaled: "It's going to be an issue." The post Google On Scaled Content: “It’s Going To Be An Issue” appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Figure comes as ECB rate-setters consider whether to slow the pace of interest rate cutsView the full article

Ren Barrus was just an intern at Cotopaxi, an outdoor gear and apparel company, when he noticed piles of used backpacks and jackets sitting in boxes at the warehouse. The company was only 3 years old—still a startup—but already, customers were eagerly using its 61-year warranty. One broken zipper and the brand would send a completely new backpack, no questions asked. It wasn’t that consumers were gaming the system; they just expected durability. Two years later, by then a team lead, Barrus launched a guerrilla repair program: When customers sent in their broken gear, he’d drive it to his mom’s house in Utah where she would fix it up on her sewing machine, and ship it back. While no one at the company knew about it, this type of initiative was encouraged in Cotopaxi’s culture. Once he had a few success stories, he pitched it to leadership and they made it official in 2018. That homegrown effort laid the foundation for Cotopaxi’s now fully developed circularity program. Today, the brand starts with sustainably sourced materials and extends the life cycle of products through Mas Vida, its resale platform that sells “pre-loved” gear. Although the brand still offers a lengthy warranty, repairs—not replacements—are now the first line of defense. Lifetime warranties, which have long served as a signal of quality, used to be the gold standard. But in an era of fast fashion, shifting consumer habits, and rising climate urgency, that promise doesn’t carry the same weight. Some companies now use lifetime warranties more as a customer loyalty hack than a commitment to longevity—often because sending out a new product is cheaper than handling repairs or returns. While many customers love the convenience, others are growing tired of the waste. Reddit threads are full of users who’ve replaced an item multiple times, only to run into the same flaw again and again. Brands like Cotopaxi are rethinking what it really means to stand behind a product—and they’re betting that today’s consumers want something more lasting, thoughtful, and adaptable. From Policy to Practice Mattress company Saatva, which has been around for 15 years, is another example of a long-standing repair model. Through its “Friends for Life” warranty, the company replaces any defective mattress within the first two years, free of charge. “After that, we instead encourage our customers to repair if there’s a damage or defect versus disposing of a perfectly fine mattress,” says Rocco DiMilta, senior vice president of business operations. Of course, not every brand has the infrastructure to make this work. DiMilta explains that most bed-in-a-box mattress companies would struggle to manage returns and repairs through third-party services like FedEx or UPS, which can be prohibitively expensive. Saatva, by contrast, operates more than 150 distribution centers across the country, which makes localized logistics far more manageable. Still, even Saatva asks customers to share in the cost. “We ask the customer to understand that moving merchandise around isn’t cheap and that’s why they pay $149 for the transportation,” DiMilta says. While the in-house repair model works for Saatva and other brands, it also requires keeping spare parts in stock and having a team that can refurbish products. For highly technical repairs. Cotopaxi works with third-party partners: “Sometimes, it’s neither desirable nor effective to try to build out your own programs. There are already amazing providers in this space,” says Annie Agle, vice president of sustainability and impact at Cotopaxi. “We have a really amazing technical repair partner called Rugged Thread.” Companies can also outsource the job by having a network of affiliated repair businesses around the country that carry the parts or materials needed to repair the brand’s products, says Anna Sáez de Tejada Cuenca, circularity researcher and assistant professor of operations, information, and technology at IESE Business School in Spain. This also reduces the carbon footprint, because a customer can drop by a local store instead of shipping a product back. However, there’s no one-size-fits-all model. Each company should consider what works best for their materials and product category. When repair isn’t realistic, brands like Levi’s and Arc’teryx have implemented buyback programs—in which brands purchase the used product from a customer and keep the item in circulation through resale or material reuse. Designing for Longevity A repair program is only as good as the product it supports. “Brands and manufacturers have to make things designed to last a long time—designed to be repaired,” says Sáez de Tejada Cuenca. A poorly made item—one with thin fabric or weak seams—might fall apart before the zipper even has a chance to fail. Brands like Cotopaxi are using repair insights to inform future design choices. “If we see the same repair happening over and over again on the same product, then that information goes back to design and development so that on the next iteration of that product we can implement changes,” Agle says. Some companies are exploring modular design—products built with interchangeable or replaceable parts—to extend usable life even further. Running brand Nnormal, for example, created a shoe with replaceable midsoles, offering runners a more sustainable alternative to tossing the whole shoe once the cushioning is worn out. Fairphone takes a similar approach with its smartphones: Users can replace everything from the battery to the camera module with just a screwdriver. It’s a stark contrast to the sealed, short-lifespan design of most mainstream electronics—and a glimpse at what a more circular tech industry could look like. Building Buy-In Circularity programs work only if consumers understand and believe in them. “We try to educate the consumer from the very first moment that they’re introduced to our brand,” says DiMilta. “We make sure that we explain that the high-quality materials can be refreshed rather than discarded, right? Customers’ expectations are not only lived up to, but they’re known ahead of time.” For both Cotopaxi and Saatva, sustainability is baked into the brand ethos. They’re attracting many of their customers because of their earth-friendly policies—so many were already on board with these changes from the start. But some larger brands don’t have that kind of credibility. With less of a sustainability track record, companies may face more friction—and more skepticism. Still, they’re the ones with the reach to drive real change. “Big brands that already have the name should start taking the lead on these kinds of programs because the big impact is on the mainstream and the mass consumption,” says Sáez de Tejada Cuenca. “It’s a culture shift that needs to happen at the consumer and brand level at the same time.” Streamlining the Process For consumers to actually choose the more sustainable option, it has to be easy. “A lot of people want to do better for the planet but don’t have the money, or time, or skills,” says Riani Kenyon, consumer behavior analyst at Canvas8. “If their favorite brand gives them the tools that they need, it’s kind of like handing it on a platter like, I’ll make this easy for you. It allows people to bridge the intention-action gap when it comes to sustainability.” This means eliminating as many logistical barriers as possible: prepaid shipping labels, home pickups—anything to make repair or resale as easy as throwing something away. “If the experience of participating in these business models is as similar as possible to dropping something in your trash bin, more people will participate just naturally,” Sáez de Tejada Cuenca says. Saatva, which offers pickups, has found that when the repair process is simple and affordable, customers are often eager to take that route. “Customers are more likely to opt for the repair rather than the replacement option because they know that they can get the product fixed at no additional cost other than the transportation,” DiMilta says. That kind of frictionless experience also builds trust and brand loyalty. Still, Sáez de Tejada Cuenca notes that getting the average consumer to buy in remains extremely difficult. “Different consumers might need different reasonings to hop on board,” she says. For some, it’s about environmental values and reducing waste. For others, it might resonate more if framed around durability, craftsmanship, or even “Made in America” pride. In today’s polarized climate, brands may need to adapt messaging depending on their audience. A New Mode of Ownership For many consumers, a lifetime warranty no longer feels relevant. “People are going from working in the office to going freelance to moving to a new country,” Kenyon says. “When people don’t even know what the next year is going to look like for them, they want offers that keep up with their changing lifestyles.” Resale or rental opportunities are providing much needed flexibility for consumers who care about waste but don’t necessarily want to commit to owning something forever. Increasingly, brands like Cotopaxi, Zara, and Ganni are bringing these offerings in-house—launching their own resale and rental programs instead of relying on third-party platforms like ThredUp. Giving customers an easy, branded way to return, repair, or recirculate products builds more trust—and keeps them coming back. All of this doesn’t mean warranties should disappear. However, they need to be part of a broader, more thoughtful approach. “We need to rethink how we produce and consume things,” says Sáez de Tejada Cuenca. “Do we want to make a profit out of large volumes and thin margins? Or do we want to sell much less volume and establish long-term engagement with the consumer?” View the full article

Tres Xemeneies (Three Chimneys) is a former coal-fired power plant in Sant Adrià de Besòs. Think of it as Barcelona’s own Battersea Power Station, London’s iconic power station that has been redeveloped into a technological hub (and Apple’s new London digs). Like Battersea, Barcelona’s plant is set to undergo a radical transformation into the new Catalunya Media City—a cutting-edge hub for digital arts, technology, and education. The winning design is called E la nave va, a nod to Federico Fellini’s film of the same name, which translates to “And the Ship Sails On,” a reference to how this long-dead structure that resembles a three-mast ship will keep cruising history in a new era. According to its creators—Barcelona-based Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes and New York-Barcelona firm Marvel—the project promises to honor the site’s industrial legacy while propelling it into a sustainable, community-centric future. The project is slated to break ground in late 2025 and be completed by 2028. Three Chimneys looks exactly how it sounds: a gigantic structure dominated by three 650-foot-tall chimneys. The brutalist plant was built in the 1970s and faced controversy even before its opening. Many of the residents of Badalona and Barcelona hated it both for the aesthetics and the environmental implications. Its problems continued in 1973, when workers building the station went on strike for better working conditions, and one person was killed by police. The company that ran the station was also sued because of the pollution it caused, and the plant eventually shuttered. The structure is imposing. Its giant concrete vaults, labyrinthine floors, and towering chimneys presented a unique challenge to preserving its industrial DNA while adapting it for the 21st century. Guido Hartray, founding partner of Marvel, tells me over email that the building’s “dense structure and distinct spatial qualities” guided the strategy. Rather than force modern elements onto the existing framework, the team used the building’s features to organize its function. For instance, the lower floors—with their enclosed, cavernous spaces—will house vocational training classrooms and research labs, while the airy upper levels with their panoramic coastal views will host incubators and exhibition halls. “We kept the existing structure largely unaltered,” Hartray says, “retaining its experiential qualities and limiting modifications.” This approach ensures that the power plant’s raw, industrial essence remains palpable, even as it accommodates immersive media studios and a modern, 5,600-square-meter exhibition hall likened to London’s Tate Modern Turbine Hall. “The intervention isn’t a sharp contrast between old and new,” Hartray notes. “It’s a dialogue.” The architects leveraged the building’s robust concrete skeleton—a relic of its industrial past—as a sustainability asset. Barcelona’s mild climate allows the thermal mass of the concrete to passively regulate temperatures, reducing reliance on mechanical systems. Spaces requiring precise climate control, such as recording studios and laboratories, are nested in a “building within a building,” insulated from external fluctuations, according to the studios. The rooftop will double as a public terrace and energy hub, with 4,500 square meters of solar panels generating renewable power. This dual function not only offsets the energy demands of lighting and HVAC systems but also creates a communal vantage point connecting Barcelona, Sant Adrià de Besòs, and Badalona. “The rooftop’s role as both infrastructure and gathering space embodies our vision of sustainability as a social and environmental practice,” Hartray says. From turbine hall to coastal balcony The project’s most striking intervention—the “transversal cuts” that slice through the turbine hall—emerged from a meticulous study of the building’s anatomy. Marvel and Garcés de Seta Bonet identified natural breaks in the long, warehouse-like structure, using these to carve openings that link the interior to the outdoors. These cuts create fluid transitions between the industrial hall and the surrounding landscape, stitching together the Barcelona-Badalona urban axis and the natural borders of sea and mountains. The north facade’s new balcony, overlooking the Badalona coastline, epitomizes this connectivity. Jordi Garcés, cofounder of Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes, tells me via email that they have designed a proposal that plays with connections and knots—temporal, landscape, and territorial. “One of the key features will be linking the city with the sea, where users and residents can share a large communal space. For the first time, there will be a balcony facing the city of Badalona, north of Barcelona. The architectural elements at different heights will offer new landscape perspectives, as if it were a land art piece.” In this “shared communal space,” he says, residents and visitors alike can engage with the Mediterranean horizon. The building is the core of Catalunya Media City, which is a project that the regional government says will democratize access to technology and creativity. It claims that it will house educational programs for more than 2,500 students annually, including vocational training; research incubators partnering with universities and corporations; immersive installations and performances in a monumental hall with 56-foot-tall ceilings; and production studios, including an auditorium, soundstages, and UX labs. View the full article

Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds warns of ‘very serious and significant moment’ for economyView the full article

The psychological contract hasn’t just shifted around where we work. It has shifted, and continues to shift, around the entire relationship between organizations and employees. That shift in expectations feels most dramatic when we look at Gen Z, the latest entrants to the workforce. More than 40% of Gen Z employees have refused a work assignment because of ethical concerns. Nearly four in 10 have turned down a job with a company that doesn’t align with their values. In the workplace, they are driving the conversation around social justice, mental health, and work-life balance. More than 90% of workers say they’ve been influenced by Gen Z on issues of meaning at work, and more than six in 10 say Gen Z has made them more likely to speak up when they don’t approve of something at work. Career Stage vs. Generational Differences Some of the generational differences we’re experiencing are just career stage differences. While the Three C’s of meaningful work—community, contribution, and challenge—are important for everyone, different people will value different sources of meaning more highly. In particular, those newer to the workforce tend to want opportunities to learn and grow. Jennifer Deal, who has studied generational changes at work for many years, says, “When people talk about generations, what they do is they think about lumps of people cohorts that were born at a particular time, and that doesn’t really have as much of an effect in the workplace as does life stage, career stage, and level in the organization. Young people want to be challenged. While you should focus on all Three C’s for everybody, you might want to put more weight on challenge for people who are new to the workforce and weigh things differently for people who are middle or later career.” Other generational differences, however, represent a shift in employees’ expectations of organizations and their leaders. Arthur Brooks shares, “Every year I teach Harvard MBA students about happiness and its unique relationship to leadership. These students are almost all destined for tremendous success as measured in worldly terms: money, prestige, and power. To most people in our society, this seems like a dream come true and the secret to happiness. Yet each year, when I speak to my MBA students—both in class and in private office hours—many are concerned. Are they truly on the path to happiness because of their near-certain success? They talk to alumni who complain about workaholism, broken relationships, and trouble finding passion. This provokes a lot of anxiety about meaning.” What Gen Z can teach In our consulting work, we’re frequently called in to help leaders navigate the divide between younger and older employees. We commonly hear things like, “These kids just don’t want to work.” We find it more accurate to say, “These kids don’t want to work the way you did.” While younger employees of course have a lot to learn, we believe this generation also has some things to teach. As we move toward a new, better model of work, this rising cohort is challenging many long-held ideals and broken structures. They aren’t encumbered by the old system because they haven’t invested in it. Kahlil Shepard, a Gen Z worker, says, “I want to do things that matter. I want to feel like I’m constantly evolving. I want to work at a place where leaders are facilitating not just my growth broadly but also my ability to live out my values in the world.” Leaders can, and should, challenge this cohort to temper their ideals with practical realities. At the same time, leaders have an opportunity to take their aspirations of a better model and help bring it to life. This requires leaders to unlearn some of the meaning-killing behaviors that are a part of the old model and adopt better ways of working. The future holds the promise of better work for all of us. We all want meaningful work—work that builds community, that contributes to others, and that challenges us to grow. As a leader, you have far more influence than you think in creating this meaning for others. Small moments of meaning can create ripples that reach our families, friends, and neighbors. The impact of these moments can extend far into the future. We believe that now and into the future every job can, and should, be meaningful with the help of a great leader. We believe that leader is you. What if all jobs were meaningful? Imagine a world where every job is designed to be sustainable and fulfilling. Where jobs offer not just a paycheck but also a sense of contribution. Imagine work environments that prioritize relationships and connections over mere transactions. What if every employee was valued not as a temporary fix or a number on a balance sheet but as a crucial, long-term contributor to the organization’s success? Imagine a world where earning a living did not come at the cost of living a meaningful life. How would this shift in work impact our organizations, our society, and our personal well-being? Making work meaningful is not an item to check off your to-do list. It’s the critical lens through which you must view every decision, interaction, and task. Meaning is created—or destroyed—in daily moments. Every conversation in which you truly listen, every piece of positive feedback you give, and every project you assign that encourages learning and growth don’t just add up—they multiply. Excerpted from Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee. Copyright © 2025 by Wes Adams and Tamara Myles. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. View the full article

Things are tough right now, with complexity and uncertainty in the world driving stress and worry. You’re probably trying to stay positive and muscle through. But there’s an important difference between keeping appropriately optimistic and acting with toxic positivity. If you’re faced with toxic positivity in yourself or others, it’s probably based on good intentions that have run amok. But it can actually create a negative spiral that can make things worse. Staying positive during trying times According to a survey from MyPerfectResume, people are reporting record levels of exhaustion, anxiety, and stress with 88% who said they were burned out. In addition, 32% of respondents reported they felt anxiety, including 30% who had headaches and 25% who had muscle pain related to their burnout, according to the data. Attempting to stay optimistic is a reasonable response, but toxic positivity is what happens when that goes too far. It involves ignoring reality, suppressing negative emotions, and trying to be overly positive in every situation, regardless of reality. Those with toxic positivity may also try to impose their attitudes on others—to the annoyance of those around them. Toxic positivity has multiple negative effects. First, when people demonstrate toxic positivity, it can result in denying reality, and undermining their ability to respond constructively to negative situations. Second, an unwillingness to express real emotions can result in feeling isolated from others and can cause mental health challenges for the person expressing toxic positivity. Third, when someone is acting with toxic positivity and denying other’s emotions, it creates barriers to forming a trusting relationship, because others may feel devalued. Fourth, when someone is perceived as inauthentic, others may question their honesty or integrity—again getting in the way of building relationships. So, how can you be positive without embracing toxic behavior? There are some strategies that work. Be aware and be realistic You can avoid toxic positivity by staying aware of what’s going on—including the bad news or challenges that emerge. Repressing or avoiding difficulties or uncomfortable facts is a classic characteristic of toxic positivity. Avoid burying your head in the sand. Instead, seek information, stay in the know, and be aware. You don’t have to overdo negative thinking or marinate in bad news, but you will want to keep your eyes open to real situations and circumstances. It’s also important to be realistic. You don’t need to overcorrect toxic positivity by catastrophizing or anticipating all the worst outcomes, but it’s constructive to be clear about what’s going on and face up to the need for solutions. Put energy into responding to problems instead of investing energy in sealing them out. As you’re working through disappointment or discouragement with yourself or others, also avoid using insincere positive statements or gimmicks. A study published in Psychological Science found that most people believe positive statements can help their mood and their self-esteem. But in the experiment, people who struggled with low self-esteem and who also repeated positive self-statements like, “I’m a loveable person,” felt worse than they did before using the self-statement. The bottom line: Sometimes inauthentic or superficial solutions like hollow self-talk are worse than an honest assessment of what’s difficult and an intention to deal with it. Encourage and empower yourself and others, but stop short of using superficial feel-good statements that get in the way of authenticity or action. Be empathetic At the same time you’re aware of situations and realities, you’ll also need to stay in tune with people and be empathic toward them. Consider what they’re going through, ask questions, and listen to their points of view. By validating what people are going through and by being present with them in tough times, you can both support them and empower them to work through difficulties. This is helpful to them and it also builds the relationship, which is good for both of you. Also avoid imposing your attitudes on others. If you’re naturally an optimistic person, that’s fine, but avoid attempting to change others. You’ll want to support them, but if you try to convince someone that everything is okay despite all they’re going through, you’ll just irritate them and drive a wedge in the relationship. It’s okay to be optimistic While you’re avoiding a toxic approach to positivity, you can be optimistic. Look to the future and be hopeful about it—and take action to find solutions for the issues that are important to you. Optimism can lead to positive outcomes. In a study of over 70,000 people researchers from Boston University surveyed respondents about their optimism and compared it to their health data, over a 10 to 30 year period. They found that those who were more optimistic boosted their longevity by 11% to 15% and increased their chances of living to age 85 by 50%. These effects on longevity were in spite of participants’ age, education, diseases, or depression—and regardless of habits related to alcohol use, exercise, or diet. Researchers believe that optimism is so powerful because it may help people bounce back from stress and regulate emotions. The difference between toxic positivity and healthy optimism is a matter of degree. If you deny reality, you may be tipping into toxic territory. But if you can be empathetic and avoid imposing your positivity on others, you reach a reasonable balance and connect more deeply with others. View the full article

In the past week, I had “conversations” with two leaders who talked too much. They were good people with interesting stories to share. But they went on for far too long while I just sat and listened. Characteristically, they asked few questions and, when they did, didn’t seem to be interested in my responses. These two leaders were engaged but seemingly not curious or fully present. These encounters crystallized something I’ve observed repeatedly in my decades of executive coaching: A damaging leadership blind spot is the simple inability to stop talking. I call this a “leadership trap” because it ensnares otherwise effective executives in a paradox: The same verbal fluency that may have helped them rise through organizational ranks becomes a liability once they arrive in positions of authority. What got them noticed now gets in their way. The drivers of excessive talking As I reflected on these two leaders, I realized they reflected a pattern I’ve seen many times. Contrary to what many might assume, their excessive talking wasn’t rooted in narcissism or self-absorption. Instead, it flowed from more complex motivations they likely didn’t even recognize. The first executive, a fast-moving consumer goods leader, seemed driven by an underlying insecurity. Despite his considerable achievements, his need to recount every detail of his company’s growth story suggested he was still seeking validation. His monologues were attempts to prove his worth—a verbal résumé delivered even when no one had questioned his credentials. The second leader, a newly promoted senior vice president in healthcare, displayed what I’ve come to recognize as “the silence phobia.” Whenever our conversation reached a natural pause, she would quickly fill the gap with another anecdote. This discomfort with silence is not uncommon among leaders, who often experience momentary quiet as a vacuum that must be filled. Why leaders often talk too much In my coaching practice, I’ve identified several other drivers that cause well-intentioned leaders to monopolize conversations: Some leaders talk excessively due to underdeveloped self-awareness. They genuinely don’t realize they’re dominating discussions. Without deliberate attention to their communication patterns, these leaders never notice the subtle signs of disengagement around them—the avoided eye contact, the phones checked under the table, the contributions that gradually diminish. Others feel intense pressure to appear intelligent and in control, especially those promoted based on technical prowess rather than leadership ability. They may dive into excessive detail, not realizing that their desire to impress often achieves the opposite effect, frustrating employees who prefer clear, concise direction. The organizational cost When leaders don’t create space for others’ voices, organizations pay a steep price—often without realizing the source of their struggles. Both leaders I met last week lead sizable teams. I couldn’t help wondering how their communication styles were affecting their organizations. Were team members experiencing the same one-sided conversations? Were valuable insights going unshared because there was simply no space to offer them? This pattern creates what I think of as “conversational quicksand.” The more leaders talk, the less others contribute. The less others contribute, the more leaders feel compelled to fill the silence. Each interaction reinforces the dynamic, gradually pulling teams deeper into passivity. The business consequences extend beyond frustrating meetings. When employee engagement diminishes, team members feel their input is neither valued nor necessary. Innovation suffers as people become less inclined to voice their opinions, knowing they’ll struggle to find space in the conversation. Perhaps most damaging, leaders who talk too much paradoxically undermine their own influence. When someone speaks at length, their key messages get lost in the verbal deluge —important signals drowning in noise. Team members start tuning out, missing crucial information as they struggle to maintain focus through lengthy monologues. In exit interviews, feeling “not listened to” consistently ranks among the top reasons talented people leave organizations. The efficiency of team operations also suffers, with long-winded explanations making meetings feel like endurance exercises rather than productive gatherings. Breaking the pattern One of the most difficult challenges in helping verbose leaders change their approach is that many don’t recognize the problem. The first step toward change is typically a wake-up call—objective feedback that makes the pattern impossible to ignore. A structured 360-degree feedback process often provides this necessary reality check. One leader I worked with was genuinely shocked when his feedback revealed that team members felt “steamrolled” in meetings. For leaders ready to address this challenge, I recommend a simple but powerful practice: the “talk time” journal. After each significant meeting, they estimate the percentage of time they spent talking. One executive I coached was stunned to discover he was talking 70–80% of the time in meetings explicitly called to get input from his team. The “WAIT principle”—asking oneself “Why Am I Talking?” before continuing to speak—offers another practical checkpoint. This simple internal question helps leaders assess whether their contribution adds value or merely takes up space. Today’s technology offers additional support. AI-driven meeting analytics tools can monitor speaking patterns, providing objective data on who speaks and for how long—a communication fitness tracker where numbers tell the truth when perception might not. Many leaders benefit from enlisting a “communication buddy”—someone they trust to provide honest feedback with subtle real-time cues during meetings when the leader begins to dominate. Perhaps the most powerful technique is practicing strategic silence. By consciously pausing after asking questions and resisting the urge to fill quiet moments, leaders create space for reflection and encourage more thoughtful contributions from others. An increase in influence After my encounters last week, I reflected on a leader I’d coached several years ago. He had initially displayed the same pattern of dominating conversations but had committed to changing his approach. After six months of deliberate practice, he had reduced his talking time from approximately 60% to 30% of team meetings. The results were transformative—not just more engaged employees but also better decisions, faster execution, and ultimately stronger business results. “I used to think leadership was about having all the answers,” he told me. “Now I understand it’s about asking the right questions.” This paradoxical result—increased influence through decreased talking—emerges consistently in my work with leaders. When they create space for others’ voices, they not only access more diverse thinking but also elevate the significance of their own contributions. The goal isn’t to make leaders talk less just for the sake of it. Instead, it’s about helping them become more effective communicators who create environments where every voice contributes to success. When leaders master this balance, their influence increases even as their word count decreases. As I left my meetings with those two leaders last week, I wished I could offer them this insight: Your greatest impact as a leader often comes not from what you say, but from what you enable others to say. Leadership communication isn’t about holding the floor—it’s about creating the conditions for collective intelligence to flourish. The next time you find yourself dominating a discussion, ask yourself: Am I talking because it’s necessary, or simply because I can? Your leadership effectiveness may depend on your answer. View the full article

Are you tired of your social media efforts not achieving the results you hoped for? It might be time to scale up your social media optimization efforts. Your content might be good, but you could do various enhancements to make it stand out. For instance, your content needs proper metadata for X, Facebook, and the like to appear properly on each platform. Yoast SEO can help you do this quickly. Table of contents What is social media optimization? Facebook and other social media X Use templates for social media snippets What about Pinterest? Conclusion on social media optimization Sharing your freshly written (or optimized) content on social media is important. It helps you stay in touch with your audience and update them on news about your business and related topics. But to get their attention, you need to optimize your social media posts before you share them. In this article, we’ll explain how you can optimize your posts for Facebook and X, and how our plugin can help you with that! Lastly, we’ll briefly discuss Pinterest and the use of Rich Pins. What is social media optimization? Social media optimization is about improving how you use social media platforms to build your online presence. You do this not only by creating and sharing content for every platform you’d like to be active on but also by optimizing that content in such a way that you get traffic to your site. The goal is to build strong connections with your audience and to keep them engaged. Social media optimization starts with well-optimized, highly relevant content that grabs attention. For most platforms, images and video are best suited for this. You can test various formats and ideas to see what your audience prefers. You can use any of the social media analytics tools to do this. Also, find the best times to publish your content to get the best engagement. Your posts should also have metadata for specific platforms like X Cards or OpenGraph for Facebook to help these platforms understand your content. After posting, remember to engage with your audience. Respond to comments, participate in discussions, and listen to what people say about you and your content. Track your best-performing posts and use data to improve your content to stay relevant and engaging. Promoting your content on various platforms makes sense in most cases. Remember to share your articles, videos, and other content on whatever social media network makes sense for you and your audience. Read this article if you don’t know where to begin with your social media strategy. Facebook and other social media Years ago, Facebook introduced OpenGraph to determine which elements of your page you want to show when someone shares that page. Several social networks and search engines use Facebook’s OpenGraph, but the main reason for adding it is for Facebook itself. Facebook’s OpenGraph support is continuously evolving, but the basics are simple. With a few pieces of metadata, you declare: What type of content is this? What’s the locale? What’s the canonical URL of the page? What’s the name of the site and the title of the page? What’s the page about? Which image/images should be shown when this post or page is shared on Facebook? Social media preview in Yoast SEO When you use Yoast SEO, most of the values above are filled out automatically based on your post’s data. It uses the locale of your site, the site’s name, SEO title, the canonical, the meta description value, etc, to fill out most of the required OpenGraph tags. You can see what your post will look like when you click on ‘Social media appearance’ in the Yoast SEO sidebar: This preview tab allows you to edit how your Facebook post is shown when shared. Our plugin lets you change your social image, title, and description in your preview. This makes your social media optimization much quicker and easier, as you won’t have to leave your post to make these changes. Make more impact on social media with Yoast SEO Premium! Get Yoast SEO Premium today and make it quick and easy to manage how your social media snippets look. Get Yoast SEO Premium »Only $99 / year (ex VAT) If you use the options for social media optimization in Yoast SEO, your Facebook post could look like this when you share the URL of a post or page: So what do you need to do? First, go to Yoast SEO → Settings → Site representation, and fill in your social media accounts. Afterward, go to Yoast SEO → Settings → Social sharing, and make sure OpenGraph is enabled. Then, set a good default image under the site basics settings. This image is used when you have a post or page that does not contain an image. It’s important to set this image to ensure that every post or page has an image when shared. Facebook is forgiving when uploading images, but 1200px by 630px should work well. Lastly, follow the steps in this article to go to your personal WordPress profile and add a link to your Facebook profile, if you want to associate your Facebook profile with your content. If you do, be sure to also enable the ‘Follow’ functionality on Facebook. You can complete all of these steps in a few minutes. After that, Yoast SEO takes all of the work out of your hands. However, it is important to remember that Facebook sometimes doesn’t immediately pick up changes. So, if you want to “debug” how Facebook perceives your page, enter your URL in the Facebook Sharing Debugger and click the Debug button. If the preview that you see there isn’t the latest version, you can try the Scrape again button. But remember that it can take a while for Facebook to see your changes. OpenGraph for Video Content If you have video content, you must do more work unless you use our Video SEO plugin. This plugin handles all the needed metadata and lets you share your videos on Facebook. X X’s functionality is quite similar to Facebook’s. The name of this functionality is X Cards. X “falls back” on Facebook OpenGraph for several of these values, so we don’t have to include everything. But it still is quite a bit. We’re talking about: the type of content/type of card an image a description the X account of the site/publisher the X account of the author the “name” for the domain to show in an X card X preview in Yoast SEO As you might have seen in Yoast SEO, optimizing your X listings is also an option. Simply click that tab to preview how your page appears when it gets shared to X. By default, the plugin uses the title, description and image you enter in the search appearance preview. Of course, this tab allows you to change these for your Twitter post. Here’s an example of what your post could look like with all the required metadata our plugin helps you add: So what do you need to do? Ensure X card metadata is enabled by going to Yoast SEO → Settings → Site features → Social sharing and activating the X feature. This leaves a couple of values for you to fill out in the settings, which you can do using this guide on activating X Cards in Yoast SEO. Use templates for social media snippets Do you spend a lot of time tweaking the preview appearance of each page or post? You’ll be glad to know that Yoast SEO Premium also offers a very helpful feature: the ability to set default templates for your social snippets. With this powerful feature, you can design the ideal social appearance for all your content and feel certain that the output will always look great to whoever is sharing it. What about Pinterest? Pinterest’s Rich Pins allow for OpenGraph markup as well. Add variables like product name, availability, price, and currency to your page to create a rich pin. As this is mainly interesting for products, we decided to add functionalities to create rich pins to our Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin. Read more: How to promote your products and earn money on Pinterest » Conclusion on social media optimization So, go ahead and use Yoast SEO to optimize your social media. It isn’t very hard; it just takes a few minutes of your time, and you will reap the rewards immediately. As these social networks add new features, we’ll keep our plugin and this article up-to-date. So, be sure to update the Yoast SEO plugin regularly. Keep reading: Social Media Strategy: where to begin? » The post Social media optimization with Yoast SEO appeared first on Yoast. View the full article

And will wealthy consumers pull back?View the full article

Aircraft carrier Shandong makes closest pass as Taipei seeks to strengthen preparednessView the full article