The100: The great exhaustion, pivoting and the accordion

London calling – are you listening?

More from the excellent event we had in May, this time featuring some of the things we took away on listening. Lots of people in the room that day have since told me how much they loved this from Avi Kluger:

“The quality of the listener dictates the quality of the speech.”

Are you listening, mother? 

Pivot!!

I know this will be the most popular link in The100 this week, but I do have a bit of an issue with crystal ball reports (you can say almost anything you want in these things with very little comeback). However, Dentsu have published their vision of the consumer in 2035. In this ball you can look at the future of tech, culture, brands and consumer:

“To succeed in the 2030s, brands will need to pivot from insight to foresight and present consumers with emotive and instinctive solutions that will dictate not only whether they prefer a brand but also if a brand even crosses their radar in an AI-filtered and culturally reshaped reality.”

There are lots of words used, not necessarily all needed, but apparently…

”Consumers’ increasing eccentricity will first and foremost manifest in a pivot from only thinking about data in terms of privacy to thinking of data in terms of agency: consumers manifest their personalities online and will increasingly think of the data trail will leave as their own IP that they want to further curate, customize and potentially monetize in their interactions with other consumers, with AI, and with brands alike.”

My favourite pivot will always be this.

How to fill your empty briefcase

Jon Steel wrote some thoughtful notes for people starting a new job (and probably for those who are already in a job) – it’s a lovely, easy read with some sage advice on how to ‘be’ at work. 

“When it comes to the critical moments – the key new business opportunities, a crisis that needs to be fixed – who are the individuals who the company leaders want in the room to help them seize that moment or solve that problem? Your aim, from the moment you step into your first job, should be to become one of those people.”

That is if you have a job in 3 years – some don’t think they will. 

The revolution will not be advertised

An interesting piece on the changing of advertising with Vox saying that your favourite brand no longer cares about being woke. They say:

”One can glean the social and political tone of American life through the advertising that envelops it. It doesn’t just sell product; it implicitly sells conventional wisdom about the world. And even when brands front like they’re being “daring” or “brave”, that’s usually based upon safely reading the room first […] Burger King championed net neutrality; a frozen-meat brand soliloquized about the perils of disinformation on social media; on January 6, Axe body spray declared its faith in the “peaceful transition of power.”

The great exhaustion

Brands also need to be preparing for the great exhaustion (coming to you in 2026, folks). Apparently there will be a widespread sensation of burnout resulting from a host of factors. It’s about getting away from our devices, embracing rational optimism, and divorcing ourselves from consumerism. We’ll see 😏

Maybe it will be a reaction to the information addiction that is convoluting our brains. You can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email 😉

Indeed, Gurwinder says the digital age is creating ‘junk info’:

”cheap to produce and satisfying to consume, but high in additives and low in nutrition. It’s also potentially addictive and, if consumed excessively, highly dangerous […] Ask yourself, if I consume this info, how will I feel about it in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years?”

Design for all

I’ll soon be sharing a case study on an awesome project involving designing-for-all (email me if you want an advance copy) and how to assess your products for inclusivity; so it was interesting to see an example of this during WWII where modifications made for the mainly female workforce resulted in innovation that made the work easier for everyone:

“These redesigns not only made it possible to use women […] laborers, but also simplified and streamlined the production process — factory managers realized that if a women could do a job swiftly and easily, a man could too, and ‘practically every job in the catalog was revolutionized’.” 

And finally…

Just keep scrolling if you want to see an analysis of what makes an album the greatest of all time.

Not featured in the Top 500 albums, and whilst not the greatest fan of the accordion, this changed my mind (honestly, it’s incredible) and also look at the happiness music can generate.

And without looking it up on Google, all these albums came out within 2 months of each other in what year?