Dear Reader,
Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Since I know you're likely already planning big celebrations for this momentous holiday, I'm resharing a video where I visited an American island that has been under 8 different flags (including a pirate one). Don't worry ... I have lots more to share than just evidence of me doing a bad pirate accent!
In stories this week, we consider whether there may be a secret message behind South Park's infamous missed episode last night that we're all missing and review a forgotten marketing strategy from the last decade that may soon be making a comeback. Also, you will read about the rise in grey divorces and what the new science says about how adult children are (or aren't) coping.
Enjoy the stories and stay curious!
Rohit
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The Clever Secret Message Behind South Park's Delayed Episode
There was a new episode scheduled for South Park on Comedy Central last night. It never aired. When the announcement was made, it came alongside this apology from the show creators:
"Apparently when you do everything at the last minute sometimes you don't get it done. This one's on us. We didn't get it done in time."
I don't recall ever hearing something like this from any other television show ever. The mixup comes on the heels of the show getting a wave of publicity for their season opener that mocked President Trump's ego, manhood and lawsuits. Whether you believe that they just didn't get it done in time or not, there is a quiet brilliance to proactively sharing this admission. It tells you something important about the show: it is obsessively updated in order to be relevant ... sometimes even up to the very last minute.
You don't have to like the show or be a fan in order to appreciate this dedication to recency. And if you're not a regular watcher, hearing this story might make you curious enough to at least catch an episode yourself to see what new thing they will satirize next. They may have missed an episode for what seems like unprofessional tardiness, but the upside may be even bigger if it drives viewer loyalty while simultaneously attracting a new audience.
The Tuna Cans Film Festival: A Perfect Throwback Marketing Strategy?
Would you make a movie about a can of tuna? Inspired by the Cannes Film Festival, Bumble Bee launched the Tuna Cans Film Festival - a search for the best storyteller and short film depicting tuna in some way with a cash prize of $25,000. If this idea seems familiar, it may be because this strategy of brands hosting a consumer generated ad contest was hugely popular years ago. Doritos famously ran a decade long campaign to show the winning consumer generated ad from their "Crash the Super Bowl" contest in an expensive Super Bowl ad slot. Then the idea was retired back in 2016 ... before being resurrected this past year.
What Doritos and apparently now Bumble Bee Tuna are both doing is something many other brands should consider too. Given the intersection of the rise of visibility for top creators and a growing number of AI tools that allow content creators to work more quickly and (potentially) produce higher quality results without big budgets, it seems we should be in a new golden era for consumer generated advertising.
Why shouldn't more brands put out invitations to their customers, offer up a cash prize and benefit from a flood of content produced by consumers to promote their brand for free? You might see this as manipulative, or a great potential marketing opportunity. Either way, I suspect film festivals about tuna cans are only the beginning of this trend.
The New Science of the Trend Towards Grey Divorces
Couples that get divorced later in life when their children are already adults was once a rarely studied field—particularly the effects on those adult children and their relationships with one or both parents. In the past decade, as rates for these so-called "twilight divorces" or "grey divorces" have steadily grown, many scientists have been studying the effects on family dynamics and made some interesting discoveries.
"Today, roughly 36% of people getting divorced are 50 and older, compared to only 8.7% in 1990. This is known as a "grey divorce." A longitudinal study in Germany of adult children aged 18-49, published in 2024, found that grey divorce brought the grown children closer to their mothers, in terms of contact and emotional closeness, while weakening the bond with the fathers."
Some adult children feel as though they are losing their support network. Others feel compelled to choose one parent over another and often these grey divorces result in fathers being more isolated and estranged from their children. And when those divorced parents come to their adult children for dating advice, it can also create some awkward conversations.
The increased visibility of this potentially traumatic event in life may lead to more than just awareness and potentially sympathy. It could open new business opportunities too. Everything from greeting cards to books and coaching programs. Teaching adults to cope with their parents late-life divorce may soon become big business.
