Dear Reader,
A big welcome to all my new SXSW subscribers! It was a week filled with gatherings, insights and connection and I'm thrilled at how well our events and plans to bring people together went. If you weren't there or didn't manage to make it for my new keynote, the good news is SXSW has already posted that online so you can watch it NOW (link below). If you requested them, you will also receive my slides by email later this week so stay tuned for that as well.
In stories this week, you'll find a sneak preview of my NEW BOOK Future Words coming in October, as well as stories about experiential advertising, limits on tech company greed, the Gen Z pout face, banks phasing out paper checks and why an uncensored library is coming to Minecraft.
Enjoy the stories and stay curious!
Rohit
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This Week's New Videos ...
Words That Don't Exist (Yet) - A Big New Book Announcement!
If you happen to catch some of the news coming out of SXSW last week, you'll already know that I made a big announcement from the stage about my new book coming out in October: Future Words. It is already up for pre-orders on all retailers and if you do pre-order a copy NOW and let me know by email, I have a few bonuses that I can share with you over the next few months including:
- An advance preview of the full book before it comes out
- A chance to contribute words (and get featured in the book!)
- More special, secret, non-obvious swag and cool stuff that I haven't come up with yet but will definitely be worth it! :-)
Regarding the book itself, the vision is to create a compendium of words that will exist in the future but don't yet, to describe scenarios, people, situations and emotions that we are currently living with, but that language has not yet been named. What kind of words?
Since I know you're wondering - here are a few words that I shared from the stage that we will probably include in the book:
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Angorithm - A system designed to use rage as a reliable method to incite engagement and capture attention.
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Credentropy - The gradual erosion of trust in institutions, experts and credentials until no one believes anything anymore.
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Riftmonger - One who deliberately sows division and manufactures chaos among others for personal gain.
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Sloptimism - The genuine inability to tell when the output from AI is noticeably terrible. Most often practiced by sloptimists.
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Shallowing - The active process of becoming less thoughtful and more coddled as a result of overly helpful technology.
Huggies Expensive Sh*t and the Age of Experiential Advertising
Stunts are nothing new in the world of marketing, but they are not usually done via live streaming or including quite so specific of a problem as diaper blowouts. When Huggies wanted to showcase their "blowout-proof" diapers that guarantee to keep that poop contained--they decided to prove it in real time. The resulting campaign dubbed "Expensive Sh*t" shows recently fed babies crawling around on top of expensive items like a white wedding dress or an expensive car.
The one-hour live stream is super watchable and brings the idea to life in a fun and terrifying way. It's also a technique that more marketers may turn to as a way to capture fractured attention and get past the hurdle of people increasingly dismissing things as potentially AI created. Thankfully, the diaper works and the blowouts are contained. Otherwise, that shit would get super expensive ... and no one wants to see that.
Meta and Amazon Both Prove In the Same Week That Tech Company Greed May Have Some Limits
This week, three seemingly unrelated stories offered a glimpse into a perhaps hopeful version of reality. After losing over $84 billion dollars, Meta finally shut down their VR platform Horizon Worlds. Over the same span of time, other virtual platforms such as Second Life (launched in 2003) have built a hugely loyal audience. Analysts suggest Meta's failure came down to their refusal to let creators copyright their content and their predatory commissions model only offering creators 52.5% of the revenue they create. In contrast, Second Life's virtual economy moves roughly $650 million per year, and Linden Lab has paid out $1.1 billion to creators over the platform’s lifetime.
The other two stories both involved Amazon, where the first is about the backlash against the brand for potentially causing a financial crisis at USPS due to their refusal to negotiate rates and allegedly demanding unsustainable concessions (a well known pattern for a brand known for using their monopoly to strong-arm partners in negotiations). The second is about the brand's announcement that they will start offering 1 and 3 hour deliveries in some cities, which experts also warn may lead to more injuries, accidents and other "human horrors."
What's the theme between these stories? Well, firstly the fact that they are stories at all. Often these sorts of impacts are hidden as the cost of doing business so it's a positive sign to see them getting so much attention. It does also point to a broader shift where companies increasingly need to answer for the human impacts of the ways that they choose to make money. For that reason alone, it's worth paying attention to and sharing.
