Z-Files

Look what OZ’s Kathy Shaw made us do.She found this Wired article about brand communities – specifically, Taylor Swift’s brand community. In a hallmark of an especially tight community, her fans have adopted a…

Josie Weiss / Unsplash We bought a dishwasher right before the holidays, but a month later the control panel lit up like a Christmas tree and it stopped running. When…

We learned a new word this week – “skeuomorph.”  It is a form of metaphor. When you go to save something on your computer, you look for the floppy disk…

Last week, Scrub Daddy appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank for a 10-year update on how its business is going. The brand originally launched on the show in 2012, and since then has sold 25 million…

Thanks to Jerry Olson for sharing a Fast Company column that is about, among other things, emotional decision making.The author, Anne Marie Squeo, loves her Tesla.  It helps her live out her commitment to…

Marketing Twitter has spent the week debating this new McDonald’s ad in the UK.What makes it “controversial,” at least among marketers if no one else, is that it sets aside a…

billow926 / Unsplash Thanks to Jerry Olson for sharing this article about the gentrification of thrift stores.In short, it has become fashionable for people who are relatively well-off to shop…

Our perceptions are not etched in stone. For example, at no point in history would anyone have considered addressing the US Congress while wearing a sweatshirt. But, in December, Ukrainian President…

 UK retailer John Lewis is known for its annual holiday ads. Those ads boast somewhat of a cult following in their home country – and in advertising circles, for that…

What is with the Liver King?Cultural theorist Matt Klein suggests it is no coincidence that a guy who promotes a carnivore diet is popular now, in a time when meat…

What is the future of crypto and how does it recover from the FTX debacle and other recent dramatic implosions?Jerry Olson shared an article in Fast Company that critiques crypto…

The quirky 2021 documentary, The Automat, recalls an interesting slice of Americana.  In the film, Mel Brooks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Colin Powell, and others recall growing up on the East Coast and…