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INSIGHT DOWNLOAD

The most interesting things I’ve read, seen, thought about, or debated the last two weeks. High and low.

THE HUMAN DIFFERENCE. According to a Reid Hoffman interview with Netflix founder Reed Hastings, “learn to code” is no longer the mantra. Instead, he believes that in the age of AI, we should double down on emotional skills. Including self-awareness, reading people, building trust, and navigating complexity. According to Forbes, there are four core skills that AI can’t replace, and they are all incredibly human: emotional intelligence, persuasion and influence, critical thinking, and relationship building. This is the core thing that makes humans different from AIs. Management consultancies are following. Since junior grunt work is being automated, they are changing their interview process to test candidates’ ability to read the room, engage in real-time business conversations, and demonstrate creativity and decision-making. However, the outcome might be that you end up spending more time in meetings.

Excitingly, it’s also true for brands as well. An analysis by Barron’s concluded that “It’s not just X, it’s Y.” has completely taken over corporate writing. The State of Brand calls this “the great flattening” – since models produce the statistical average of everything ever written, every company starts to sound like the average of every other company. This opens the opportunity for every company to find its unique voice that differentiates its brand from the average. Marketing strategists have begun searching for solutions to overcome the AI sameness trap, including the Australian LLM Flint, which is designed to score higher on output novelty than mainstream LLMs. Maybe the most efficient solution is to leverage their human side instead.

(Reed Hastings getting interviewed by Reid Hoffman).

MENTAL OUTSOURCING. A recent peer-reviewed article looked into what happens to our brains when we outsource our work to AI. The verdict? It eats away our faith in our own abilities, leading to lower confidence in our independent reasoning. But there is good news: people who used AI without completely outsourcing everything to it, but rather edited, questioned, or scrapped the AI’s output, became more confident in the final output. The bad news? It seems like a lot of execs have completely outsourced their thinking to AI. A recent Substack post by Rachel Karten examines how bosses check everything their employees do through AI, believing the AI can do nothing wrong, and even just telling employees to “ask Claude”. Hence, the workers begin to believe that the boss trusts AI more than they trust themselves or their employees. The scary part? A Reddit thread suggests even the execs’ high-end consultants have outsourced their thinking to ChatGPT.

THE NEW CPG EQUATION. A new McKinsey report explores how the old model of CPG Food and Beverage brands – mass-market brand building and product innovation, distribution through grocers, cost-efficient operating models, and consolidating markets through M&A – is slowly collapsing. In the new CPG landscape, legacy CPG brands face competition from both cheaper private-label offerings and challenger brands offering differentiated functionality that meets two core consumer needs – affordability and higher-benefit products (including healthiness as a new core driver).

MILLENNIAL COLLAPSE. Brands like Glossier, Allbirds, and Dollar Shave Club grew rapidly by combining digital D2C distribution with low-cost social media marketing. But the future looks gloomy for this generation of millennial brands. Facing challenges such as a 40-60% increase in online customer acquisition costs, incumbents catching up, and a new generation of Gen Z influencer brands. Allbirds tried a new rope trick and pivoted from shoes into an AI company. Millennial food brands are also suffering. Brands like Chipotle and Sweetgreen are seeing declines since customers believe prices are too high and bowls are too sloppy. However, not all brands have understood this and continue to treat Gen Z like older Millennials, self-harming their bottom lines.

AI VS. THE PEOPLE. There is a growing negative sentiment towards AI among regular people. 73% of experts are positive about AI’s long-term positive effects, but among the public, only 23% are. Young people are driving this attitudinal shift. A recent US Gallup survey shows that 31% believe AI makes them feel angry (up 9 pp from last year) and only 22% claim AI makes them feel excited (down 14 pp from last year). It is partly due to their relationship to work. 48% of respondents claim AI risks outweigh the benefits in the workplace (up 11 pp from last year). Some take action. 29% of knowledge workers in a US, UK, and EU survey admit to sabotaging the AI rollouts. Among Gen Z workers, it’s a staggering 44%. A recent survey in Sweden concludes that young readers are the ones most critical of AI literature. Some people have taken their disgust for AI way too far, like this person who tried to throw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house, yet many Gen Zers are celebrating online.

STREETWEAR’S RETURN. Spotted: Streetwear plotting a comeback. At least new Supreme drops have shown up more than usual in my feed lately. The brand did a smashing collaboration with Margiela that recreated 2016-esque lines outside their stores, and Highsnob claims the brand “feels like 2016 again”. Gap launched a collab together with NYC street brand Awake. Brooks Brothers California just announced a collab with Brain Dead. WSJ is not happy and believes it is off-brand.

THE NEW TAYLORISM. AI creates opportunities for corporations. Like tracking exactly what your employer does. Last year, Microsoft rolled out a Teams feature that automatically updates your geo location – no work from home. JP Morgan is monitoring their junior employees’ keystrokes, video calls, and meetings, for “wellness purposes”. Amazon has developed a tool called Clarity that tracks developers’ AI usage to ensure it meets its target of 80% of devs using AI for coding at least once a week. Meta just announced that it will track its employees’ keystrokes and mouse movements to train its AI model. This is not an exception. 80% of companies track their WFO employees, and 71% of employees in general are tracked, and employee monitoring has reached an all-time high.

CHESS SUPERSTARS. Are chess players the new top athletes? The New York Times reports on NYC’s new generation of young chess stars and their victories in national competitions in the US. They compare it to street basketball and claim, “Some New York City kids carry that street chess edge as they play in the tournament chess.” An article in SvD breaks down how some local entrepreneurs managed to bring chess superstar Magnus Carlsen to a tournament in Malmö, and how they debated whether to use dynamic pricing to mitigate ticket supply-and-demand. Last year, Chess became a part of the Esports World Cup. WSJ recently portrayed chess superstar Javokhir Sindarov as any other famous athlete. Premier League players like Erling Haaland and Mohammed Salah are “addicted to chess,” and Haaland is an investor in the new international chess tournament Total Chess World Championship Tour. Recently, Twitch top streamer Jynxzi won Pog Champs 6-7, a chess tournament for Twitch streamers.

MILITARY MERCH. Beyond writing viral manifestos, Palantir is trying to play the cool kid game. They launched a set of merch that was wildly inspired by the seminal streetwear brand OFF-WHITE. Wanna get down with that “techno-fascist fashion”? You can buy it here. They recently also launched a chore coat, which received some criticism since chore jackets are a French garment, while Palantir is all about the United States. The defense-tech company is now venturing into tennis gear. Last year, they opened a two-day pop-up in Seoul’s Seongdong-gu district. However, they are slightly late to the party. Lockheed Martin already dropped a streetwear collection in Korea in 2023.

BROKE BEHAVIOURS. The inflation is changing consumer behavior. Rich people are now starting to embrace thriftiness. They try to save money on mundane purchases like yogurt by using discounts, instead of splurging on something they truly enjoy, like wellness or travel. Some have fully cut alcohol, but those who haven’t have re-introduced the concept of pre-gaming before hitting the bars, as well as bringing some small bottles to chug down in the bathroom. Is this sudden cost-consciousness the reason Ebba Von Sydow recently tried to steal a limited edition Zoega’s box at some influencer event?

AUTONOMOUS ENTERPRISE. Last year, speculations about how AI could create the world's first one-person unicorn arose, and now we are starting to see it in practice. There is a café in Vasastan that is entirely run by AI agent Mona. Mona has composed the sandwich menu, hired an employee, and secured a permit for outdoor service. Mona was created by Andon Labs, a Swedish startup aiming to build “autonomous organizations without humans in the loop”. They already run a store entirely through AI and an AI vending machine. In the US, two brothers have used AI to start an online vendor of GLP-1 drugs and are projected to reach a $1.8BN revenue in 2026.

LAYOFF SEASON. We are now officially in the mega layoff era. Snap and Disney are cutting 1,000 jobs each. Meta and Microsoft are planning to trim 10% and 7% of their workforces, respectively. Block is laying off 40% of its staff. Some CEO’s claim it’s due to AI, but according to Altman, falsely blaming AI is just “AW-washing”. Cuts are hitting the ad industry as well. WPP will cut staff but hasn’t announced how many yet, and Omnicom is laying off 4,000. However, there are early signals that this is prompting people to start their own businesses, creating a new generation of entrepreneurs and founders.

OLDMAXXING KIDS. There is no news that Gen Z wants to live in the past, but new studies are constantly coming out proving it. A new NBC poll claims a majority of young Americans would live in the past if they had the opportunity. If you can’t live in the past, you can cosplay the past. Gen Z is taking up “boomer hobbies” like crocheting, knitting, growing plants, fishing, and even bird watching. Their inspiration? Nonnas. The concept is called nonnamaxxing (sic!), which is basically about walking everywhere, cooking for others, spending time with family, and getting all up in everyone’s business in order to live a longer life.

LUXURY LISTENING. I reported on luxury brands’ venture into listening rooms earlier this year, and also linked A$AP Rocky’s state-of-the-art home recording studio. They are not alone in elevating the visual experience of sound. Spotify’s new listening lounge in London looks astonishing. In NYC, audio-centric members’ club Stylus is opening with two luxury listening rooms that are supposed to “end all listening rooms”. The club is designed by O’Neill Rose Architects, and Michelin-starred chef Anita Lo is in charge of the food. This Instagram carousel shares examples of a new generation of luxury DJ booths sitting at the intersection of architecture, contemporary art, and music. This is a testament to the fact that music is much more about how it looks than how it sounds.

OUTBOUND INSIGHTS

Things I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to. Some connect to bigger ideas. Some are just nice reading on their own.

Rizzolio is publishing a Bella Hadid book.

Jonathan Mannion is Morrison Hotel Gallery’s Photographer of the Month. You can order prints here.

The Account Planning Group in the UK has launched the Media Planning Group, which is called MPG and is like APG but for media planners.

CULT100 is here, update your influencer strategies asap.

Karolina Ramqvist is trolling Keith McNally.

Scaling Europe 50 is here. Lovable is no. 1, and Legora is no. 4. Sweden is no. 1 in median growth. The Silicon Valhalla narrative still holds up.

BEYOND INSIGHTS

Intel for Stockholm-based marketers. Jobs, new spots, and occasional gossip.

Hotel History interviewed the MD of the newly renovated Sheraton Stockholm. After listening, I have an urgent need to work from their lobby.

The theme for this year’s Berghs Festival is “friction”. You can visit May 22-23 in Norra Djurgårdsstaden.

New spots: A House is opening in Hagastaden. Volca Coffee Roasters is opening on Södermalm.

Jobs: Global Digital Commerce Director at Acne Studios. Communications Manager at Red Bull. Junior Strategist at NORD.