Z-Files

One can argue that taste is a psychological experience as much as a sensory one. ("Is that bleu cheese or sweaty socks?")My kids showed me a video from a YouTube…

A surprisingly hot brand right now is Rummikub, a mid-20th century board game imported from Israel.Libraries love them some Rummikub.  Senior centers love Rummikub. Trendy millennials at swanky Santa Monica…

For the first time in company history, Disney has appointed a Chief Marketing and Brand Officer (CMBO) to unify previously siloed marketing teams across its far-reaching businesses. For a company…

Adweek just dropped a new podcast with Victoria Lozano, who was CMO at Crayola at the time of the recording last November.Among the topics:--The challenges of growing a heritage brand…

Gen Z consumers, who spent a good bit of their formative years locked down by COVID, are apparently yearning to break free. (Maybe.)On one hand, some stories portray Gen Z…

Thanks to OZ’s Kathy Shaw for sharing the latest episode of Shankar Vedantam's wonderful Hidden Brain podcast, which highlights how metaphor shapes the way we think about medical conditions.For years, people thought fevers were…

Credit: Clear Channel Billboards in San Francisco are at a premium and command top dollar, largely due to relentless demand from AI firms. But chances are the messages on these…

The trend of adults playing with toys, especially post-COVID, has been fairly well-documented. But another interesting trend is children playing with toys that look more adult.This observation comes from the anonymous blogger…

credit: Dr. Seuss Enterprises Dr. Seuss Enterprises has taken the concept of escaping into a book to the next level. In partnership with the agency Known, the global entertainment company…

‍ ‍ Credit: Coach Coach demonstrates that even in the era of AI and synthetic data, the deepest marketing conversations occur when people talk to people.Not coincidentally, Coach's CMO, Joon…

From a friend of the OZ family, Nancy Cox, comes this examination of a new OOH (out-of-home) campaign from British Airways called Reflections.Like most memorable OOH campaigns, this one is…

On Twitter/X, the account @polltracker2024 posted two screenshots of campaign logos for some of the most prominent 2026 midterm election candidates. We have posted those screenshots above. Fittingly, the Democrats are on…