Dear Reader,
It's less than a week to go before Future Words is available and I am so excited to share it with you! We've already had the book featured in The Guardian and Fast Company and the early reviews have been so exciting to see. I also shared a behind the scenes video of the beautiful gold foil covers of the book being printed (for all you book lovers).
If you want to pick up a copy early before the launch next week, I'm happy to share Henry and I have put together a few bulk ordering options with some fun bonuses including an exclusive behind the scenes webinar on the making of the book. The book makes a great holiday gift and your early support would really mean a lot to us.
SEE BULK ORDER OFFERS FOR FUTURE WORDS >>
In addition, we will soon launch a secret link for friends and family to buy individual copies of the book ahead of launch next week. Hit reply to this note and I will share that link with you TODAY ONLY. We have a limit of 50 copies available there (US shipping addresses only) so act fast if you want to get one of those!
In stories this week, you'll read about a fascinating idea for a flipped zoo in Europe where the people are in the cages, why Columbia Sportswear wants to give away a bunker, the tradwife reversal among women abandoning the idea and the best replacement of useless AI notetaking you'll ever see.
Enjoy the stories, please pick up your copy of the book and stay curious!
Rohit
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This Week's New Videos ...
Columbia Sportswear Takes Aim at Doomer Tech Bros and Their Bunkers
Fresh off the heels of the anti-billionaire sentiment we saw become a big issue during the midterm elections (and a ballot issue in California), Columbia Sportswear launched a pretty clever campaign in the Bay Area promising the payoff of a bunker to one person who shows real world skills worthy of the safe space:
“Since the beginning of time, people have predicted the end of the world. I don’t really buy into all that stuff,” [Columbia Sportswear chairman and CEO Tim Boyle] says in an associated two-minute promotional video. “But since Columbia helps protect you from nature’s worst, we figured, better safe than sorry. So we’ve created the Don’t Panic Room. A real-life, 40-foot survival bunker that’s engineered for whatever. Equipped with lots of Columbia gear to keep you warm when things get ugly. The tech bros may already have their bunkers, but they don’t have the skills to survive outdoors. Try starting a campfire with crypto or fly fishing with microchips. Good luck with that.”
This is the sort of campaign every marketing student should be forced to study. It's timely, visual, engaging, deeply on brand and something that it would be hard to imagine almost any other brand doing.
The Unexpected Resurgence of Indie Print Magazines
The death of magazines has been forecasted for some time now. And every decision from a formerly published in print publication to shift to online only seems to signal another nail in the coffin. But just as often, I see a story like this one https://mulatimes.com/article/print-revival-luxury-independent-magazines-tactile-culture which compares the continued existence (and perhaps even resurgence) of print magazines to the revival of other supposedly dying categories such as vinyl records or actual camera film:
"The economics of this print revival mirrors the vinyl record resurgence a decade earlier. Once digital screens absorbed the utilitarian function of delivering instant daily breaking news, physical paper was liberated from trying to be fast or cheap. Instead, print became an artifact of permanence, status, and uninterrupted contemplation—a physical extension of the digital detox and intentional media movement."
Magazines fill a unique need in the media market and as a big enthusiast for the format, I have subscriptions to more than a dozen magazines myself. Some offer the sort of beautiful luxuriously designed and printed reading experiences noted in the story linked above. It's a great example of what we termed "tactilism" in our Future Words book. Though we wrote about technology that has a tactile experience, the same principle works to describe what many of us love about magazines.
Look Inside the Amsterdam Zoo Where People (Not Animals) Are In The Cages
Imagine a reverse zoo where the humans are inside cages with the animals going free range. That's the concept that inspired the Art Zoo, a creation of Dutch artists Jaap Sinke and Ferry van Tongeren who trace the idea back to the old curiosity cabinets (otherwise known as “wunderkammers”) collected by wealthy Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries to showcase objects from the natural world.
"The display rooms in the 17th-century canal house where the Art Zoo is located are enclosed by brooding, black metal cages. “We really like the concept of having all the people in a cage and then all the animals free,” van Tongeren says. “In that way, the whole building becomes one artwork.”
It's an interesting way to subvert our perceptions about who is (or should be) in the cage and get you thinking about our place in the natural world.
