Someone slid into my LinkedIn DMs to say this newsletter partly influenced her bachelor’s thesis and was cited in it. When I started Accidental Insights, my aim was partly to make it something people would refer to in presentations and such, so this makes me incredibly happy.
On another note. I had forgotten how much I missed having Harper, Yas, and the rest of the gang on the screen. The new season of Industry is as good as I hoped. I highly recommend this interview with its creators, Konrad Kay and Mikey Down (in Swedish).
The most interesting things I’ve read, seen, thought about, or debated the last two weeks. High and low.
2016 REDUX. The return of 2016 is all over the internet. I don’t really know exactly what it means beyond people posting 10 years old photodumps of themselves. It seems like it has something to do with a more analog time with less AI slop. Also, it is said to be the return of 2016’s fashion. However, Woodstockholm just launched their new concept menu, and now it’s San Sebastian. Mid 10s was peak-Stockholmer-uploading-pictures-from-Bar-Nestor, so this makes complete sense in terms of bringing 2016 back.
HAND-DRAWN LUXURY. When analog is in, luxury brands bring back the paper and pen. Hermès just launched its new website featuring analog illustrations by French artist Linda Merad, among others. It kind of broke the designer-and-fashion-internet. Hugo Boss just collaborated with paper artist Julia Yus. Chanel’s Métier d’Arts in NYC was launched with a hand-drawn animation. Lacoste just launched an animated series with Rayan Takhedmit. Porsche did a hand-drawn Christmas ad with the French illustration studio Parallel. I previously wrote about fashion brands playing around with animé so it’s fun to see other luxury and fashion brands pushing it. Highsnobiety argues that 2026 is the year of the fashion illustrator (some nice examples in the article as well).
WEIRD BEAUTY. Beauty collabs are becoming incredibly weird (but maybe not as odd as Fenty Beauty’s Smurfette collab). Sephora has made chili-infused lip plumpers with Tabasco. Dove just launched a collection in collaboration with Bridgerton to market the new season of the Netflix drama. E.l.f. Cosmetics joined forces with creatives’ favourite water brand, Liquid Death, to launch a (now sold out) lip balm. The “Lip Crypt Keeper” looks awesome.
THE GREAT DATING MIX-UP. More and more people are using LinkedIn for romantic pursuits – stalking exes and screening potential love interests. At the same time, about a third of dating app users are using the apps to find a job, not a partner. Most people use it strategically: around two-thirds aim for people working at aspirational companies, and about three-quarters seek out matches who already have the jobs they want. The real lesson? No matter how much you design for an ICP, people will find out their own ways to use your product anyway.
PARTY SOFT. According to Business Insider, 2026 is the year of “soft partying”. In the US, 22% plan to participate in Dry January, and a fifth of adults under 35 are looking for alcohol-free events. Sweatpants is an app that connects people through workout events. Sober morning raves are growing all over the globe. Apparently, what you get out of a morning sauna rave is connection and community. But coffee isn’t the only drink for soft partiers, dopamine drinks (drinks that increase your dopamine, duh) are the new it-drink.
SAUNA ECONOMICS. Saunas have been a thing for a while, which means there’s money in it, which means major brands and investors are flocking there. Aesop is collaborating with Recess to open up a thermal bath in Montreal. VC-backed NYC sauna brand “Bathhouse” is extending its operation to Philadelphia. Vanity Fair covers the growing business and the competitive environment in its article on New York’s “Sauna Wars”. In Stockholm, restaurant Stockholm 1897 has its own sauna. In the UK, the number of saunas has risen from 10 to 450 since 2020. Saunas have a CAGR of 5.9%, projecting to be a $1,27 billion market (860M in 2023). The market is as hot as the saunas themselves. In Stockholm, the municipality seems to aim to open multiple public saunas as well, so the private sector is not alone in investing in sweat.
ENTERTAINMENT AS A STRATEGY. In today’s media landscape, entertaining is essential for brands. According to “Entertain or Die” by Tracksuit and Small World, brands that entertain grow fast. Entertainment as a strategy has led fashion houses to become “full-blown Hollywood producers” by funding and producing movies. Saint Laurent Productions recently produced its fourth film, “Father Mother Sister Brother” by Jim Jarmusch. Other brands entering the film market include Chanel, Lacoste, and Ami Paris. Maybelline just released a “bingeable holiday” microdrama to promote their “Instant Eraser Concealer”. Gap has hired a “Chief Entertainment Officer” to head up their “fashiontainment” – an effort to bridge the gap between fashion and entertainment.
PLEASURE PROMOTION. David Protein Bars just launched their “Bronze Bar” with the campaign “Men Disappoint, David Satisfies”. It includes a video of Julia Fox confessing her sins and admitting her lust for David to a priest. They also sent out protein bars and vibrators to some important people. Fashion brands are doing it differently. Moncler and Rick Owens’ new campaign unveils the intimate side of pleasure. Shot by Juergen Teller, portraying kisses between Rick, Juergen, and their partners Michelle Lamy and Dovile Drizyte. J.W. Anderson is taking the opposite route and solely wrote the word “Porn” on some clothes.
EUROPEAN CLOUDS. Local cloud storage is becoming an incredibly important (and regulated) thing in Europe. Microsoft opened a local Microsoft 365 storage late last year, and AWS just launched something similar. However, the biggest player on the market seems quite unexpected – German low-price supermarket chain Lidl. Hopefully, they manage to push prices downwards.
PHYSICAL ENTERPRISE. As brand marketers, we are obsessed with mental availability, but Marketing Architects highlights a LinkedIn/Ehrenberg-Bass paper on the importance of physical availability. Not in supermarkets but in B2B buying. According to the paper, B2B physical availability is a mix of websites, sales teams, distributors, and events. The main problem seems to be that since those are often the responsibility of other teams, marketing loses out on its potential. They recommend a three-dimensional framework for ensuring physical availability: presence (right place), prominence (easy to spot), and portfolio (the right product/offer). This makes complete sense since mental availability and physical availability work in tandem – without mental availability, you don’t capitalize on your physical availability, and mental availability without physical availability is, at worst, just a vanity project.
BEYOND BARBIE. Barbie gained headlines last year for launching a Type 1 Diabetes Barbie together with Lila Moss (daughter of Kate). Two years ago, they launched a Barbie with Down syndrome. They now complement it with an autistic Barbie. It comes with loose-fitting clothes to avoid fabric-to-skin contact and flat shoes for stability and ease of movement. They are all efforts to expand representation.
FRICTION FORWARD. FrictionMaxxing is the act of avoiding the simplest solutions and instead embracing a life of friction again. It is about tolerating and modelling everyday inconvenience by cutting off tools that remove effort (e.g., location sharing, ChatGPT), letting children experience boredom and imperfect independence, inviting social messiness, and accepting worry, effort, and inefficiency as normal parts of being human. Ana Adjelic writes about the “friction advantage” – products that lack all modern features being the ultimate premium products. Is this just a fad or will people actually adopt it?
ARTIFICIAL HEALTH. Are AI companies going to help us take care of our health? OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health – a feature that lets users upload medical records, read wearable data, and get diet, exercise, and GLP-1 guidance via wellness app integrations. Claude has launched Claude for Healthcare, “a complementary set of tools and resources that allow healthcare providers, payers, and consumers to use Claude for medical purposes through HIPAA-ready products.” Claude is also launching a consumer product similar to ChatGPT’s. According to some studies, AI is better than humans at diagnosing. Instead, the real trade-off lies in protecting your data, especially in legal cases.
ANALOG TREATS. As you all know, Gen Z has a love affair with all things analog. What is interesting is that Gen Z’s “little treat culture” is taking an analog turn. Young people brought back analog Christmas cards last year, and they are now leading a snail mail revival. 15,000 people are now members of the Facebook group “random cards of kindness”. Krux is selling pop cultural crossword magazines. Taylor Swift’s sourdough bread is this year’s hottest accessory. 43 million vinyl records are being sold every year (up from an all-time low of 9,000 in 2009). Even vices go analog – Gen Z swaps vapes for good ‘ol ciggies.
THE WORKER EMPLOYER DIVIDE. Business leaders are clear. It’s time to work harder. Tech companies demand that their employees show their work and are tracking it to a greater extent. Citi’s CEO is also clear that “old habits are out and performance is in”. What do the workers think? They prefer life over money. Work-life balance has overtaken money as the top priority for the global workforce, jumping to 65% from 59% since 2022. I am very curious where this divide will end up. Currently, the labor market is a buyer’s market, but soon again it might be a seller’s market.
FUNNEL REBORN? AI has apparently completely eliminated the funnel. Instead, there are two tasks: priming and proving, where the first is aimed at humans and the latter at LLMs. Also, the funnel is no longer linear but a flywheel since this is a continuous loop. The big disclaimer here is that priming and proving sounds very much like Les Binet and Peter Field’s “brand (emotional priming) and activation split”, or James Hurman’s existing “demand and future demand”, or Mark Ritson’s “TOFU and BOFU”. (Also, most people still treat the funnel as a continuous loop since kind of since McKinsey’s 2009 consumer decision journey model). Hence, the really important part is that LOFU now seems to be aimed at LLMs, not humans, which is quite a narrow point of view. The big shift in how AI affects marketing might not be that it fundamentally changes how the human brain works, but rather how the distribution, production, and analysis of marketing is executed. Just a thought. Clarification: the funnel is not dead due to AI.
Stuff I read, listen to, and watch. Some ladder up to bigger insights, and some are just great reading in their pure form. I’ll share them here.
Logomania didn’t die – it evolved. Today’s consumers still wear logos, but the IYKYK ones of restaurants, hotels, and hobbies instead.
Japanese and South Korean leaders bonded over playing K-Pop songs together on drums. K-Pop is truly the diplomatic tool of our time.
Aphex Twin has overtaken Taylor Swift on weekly streams on Spotify.
James Hurman talks about Future Demand. One of my favourite marketing frameworks.
Privacy Gear is the new status symbol in an age that sees everything.
Intel for Stockholm-based marketers. Hence, exciting job openings, new third places to freelance from, or random gossip.
Open position: Head of Marketing and PR at Sven Harrys Konstmuseum.
Svedjan is opening a dedicated Semla Café during the Semla season. Great for anyone responsible for bringing this year's batch of office Semlas.
WFA Global Marketer Conference is hitting up Stockholm for the first time ever this April. Speakers include James Tindall of System1.
During Stockholm Design Week, Sofo Beyond is an initiative where loads of showrooms on Södermalm will be open. At the same time, Stockholm Creative Edition is happening.
xoxo, stop gatekeeping and press the share button
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