Dear Reader,
It's been a busy week with three book launch events for author friends followed by a quick day in NY for Advertising Week and now one more speaking gig today before heading home. It's also one month to go before Future Words comes out so it's going to be a fun October!
For stories this week, we'll start with a look at a few trends that stood out from Advertising Week, an inside look at the world's fastest growing race and what it can teach you about the upside of being boring and the story of the twenty-five-year journey to invent a new apple variety. In bonus stories you'll read about Korea's surprising birth rate news, a surge in CD sales (yes, actually), and how Seattle is now the first city to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores.
Enjoy and stay curious!
Rohit
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4 Trends From Advertising Week In New York
I spent the first half of this week in New York for Advertising Week where the latest in ad tech, media buying and creator tech was on full display. Among the side conversations and stage panels, a few themes stood out for me and are worth thinking about, whether you work in the marketing space or just have a curiosity about the evolution of media and consumer behavior.
- The AI Data Pollution Problem - As the conversation about AI turns to how data analysis can be automated and dashboards can get sexier, the central problem many companies have no solution for is the pollution of their own data. Put simply, they have a lot of garbage data that is blending with useful data and the process to separate them is missing. This is a major problem that needs a solution.
- The Creator Economy Is Evolving - Everyone was talking about creators, working with them, monetizing their content and attracting them as brand spokespeople. While creators once were happy to read a script and take the check, more are rejecting those scripted deals and opting for a "take it or leave it" deal focused on authenticity instead. The smart brands agree to take it, because they know it works.
- Automation Is No Longer An Advantage - When everyone has access to the same technology and tools, simply automating tasks is no longer an advantage. This speaks to a broader shift that I'm seeing in organizations that ran towards the allure of automation to replace human expertise ... they are pivoting back because that human insight is proving less replaceable than it seemed.
- Advertising's Dirty Little Secret Stays Under the Radar - There was curiously little conversation on stage this week about the dark money generated by midterm election political spending (estimated at nearly $12 billion). This is a cash cow that is mostly dishonest, manipulative, and 86% of Americans hate it. While the history of free speech in American makes it unlikely to be banned, we could at least remove the exemption from existing Truth In Advertising laws that political ads currently enjoy. Sadly, if David Ogilvy himself couldn't make it happen despite his famous quote calling for it to be banned, then it's probably pretty unlikely in my lifetime too.
The World's Most Boring Race May Be Onto Something
By many accounts, the HYROX race is exploding in growth as the world's fastest growing fitness race. For the past annual season, nearly 1.5 million people will take part in at least one of their races across the globe. Unlike many other races, the secret to HYROX's success may be in its boring consistency. Every HYROX race runs through the same eight stations starting with a 1,000-meter run, a 1,000-meter ski erg, a 50-meter sled push, a 50-meter sled pull, 80 meters of burpee broad jumps, a 1,000-meter row, a 200-meter farmers carry, 100 meters of sandbag lunges and a closing set of 100 wall balls (watch the race).
Hyrox's expansion rests on a single design decision: because the eight runs, eight stations and their order never change, the sport works as one continuous global ranking system rather than a scattering of unconnected local events. A time is a time, wherever it was posted.
That is harder to pull off than it sounds. Road races are shaped by elevation, surface and weather. Obstacle events rebuild their obstacles around whatever terrain a venue offers. Other fitness competitions vary their programming on purpose, so athletes cannot prepare for the exact test. Fixing the format in place gives Hyrox results that mean the same thing on every continent.
The effect on behavior is straightforward. Competitors treat a finish time the way a runner treats a marathon personal best — a number to beat at the next event — which turns a single entry into a repeat habit across a season.
The success of the race comes not only in its ability to allow anyone with a relatively good level of fitness to participate without months of training, but also in its attraction for people to compete over and over, in order to set a personal best time.
One of the consistent challenges in any industry is finding a way to encourage repeat customer loyalty. Despite the temptation to try and always customize or create a unique variety of experiences, sometimes the best option can also be the most boring. That's a non-obvious winning formula worth considering.
The Invention of the Sunpunch and a Fascinating Future for Apples
There's an apple variety coming to a grocery store near you called Sunpunch that has been twenty-five years in the making. Apples are among the most durable of all fruit, with a stability far beyond almost any other fruit. It's no wonder it's the most valuable fruit crop in Canada, according to the Walrus, and the testing ground for some long- term research that may also shape the way we grow, store and consume food in the future too.
In Virginia where I live, the average farmer's market stall has no less than ten varieties of apples. Contrast this with the well-known story of banana homogenization and you can see two parallel histories. Varieties of apples have survived and thrived, while new varietals are being introduced every year. In the world of apples, innovation and creativity are working overtime. The banana has become the global symbol of the dangers of monoculture and in many cases, is now criticized among banana afficionados as mostly tasteless.
The bigger story about apples is that all the experimentation may be leading to other innovations too. By measuring evolving climate data and working to produce a variety that can sit on a desk for four months without losing flavor or going bad, Canadian apple scientists are learning things that could be applied to the global food industry as well. This is the sort of story I love to share. One invention, creativity from an unexpected place and a lesson that the rest of us can use.
