Free Coffee for Gossip, a Millennial Hobby Comeback and the Future of Animation

Dear Fellow Trend Curator,

Millennials are reclaiming joy through “hobby energy,” ditching hustle culture to embrace unmonetized, feel-good pastimes like flower arranging. Meanwhile, Lyft’s AI chatbot hints at a better future for gig workers, and AI-powered animation is the first and fastest moving frontier in Hollywood’s emerging relationship with AI. In Europe, a coffee shop is going viral for offering free drinks in exchange for juicy gossip … proof that personality marketing works.

Plus, how to get a signed graduation gift copy of my only career + life advice book: Always Eat Left Handed. Don’t miss this week’s roundup of non-obvious insights plus a quirky bonus story of the town that set the Smurfiest record for most people painted blue and dressed as Smurfs.

Enjoy and stay curious!

rohit

This Week’s New Videos …

What Is Millennial Hobby Energy?

Example of a dahlia flat-lay … an increasingly popular millennial hobby.

Doing things for fun is making a comeback. That may seem like an odd statement, but there is a time in many people’s lives when everything feels too busy to indulge in hobbies. When we get that inevitable question of what we do for fun, often the answer starts with the saddest statement ever: what I used to do is _______.

According to writer Anne Helen Peterson, many millennials have “trudged through burnout and are trying to figure out who they are outside of work.” This leads many toward spending time on non-monetized hobbies, something that was demonized for much of their younger years:

Hobbies that didn’t produce something, or help someone, establish you as superlative, or in some way highlight your entrepreneurial spirit weren’t really hobbies at all. They were fucking around: invisible, if not altogether shameful.

Now those hobbies are making a comeback and as work increasingly gets more automated and the idea of finding more life purpose gains attention, it’s easy to imagine this trend toward hobbies not only continuing but accelerating. Which leads to a slight revision to the question I shared before … what do you do for fun now? 

Lyft Introduces AI-Assistance to Help Drivers Optimize Time

Lyft is beta-testing an AI chatbot tool for drivers to help them optimize their earnings on the platform. It’s still on a waiting list for access, but the idea is that drivers will be able to input the areas they prefer to stay in, where they would like to end their shift, and other tools to help them “optimize their time on the road.” With real time data about flight arrivals, busy times at various locations and suggestions for where to go where demand is highest, this sort of tool is a good forecast for the potential future of AI tools as resources to help gig workers maximize their revenue.

If we see this same level of usage of AI data and insights to make gig work on other platforms more appealing, it could help to solve a need for everyone. The workers themselves want to make more money. For customers, having more availability or getting tasks done faster is the obvious payoff. More importantly, this is an all too rare example of a platform actually prioritizing their non-employee workers and making life easier for them.

The Future of Animation Will Be 90% Faster Than Before

A few years ago, lip-syncing one minute of animation used to take about four hours. Now it can be done in 15 minutes. That’s just one of the dramatic time-saving features of AI when it comes to animation, but what’s most interesting about these tools in the world of Hollywood is just how quickly they are being implemented specifically for animation. Unlike much of the rest of the film industry that can occasionally be tech-averse–animation has been computer assisted for decades.

This fact is making the field of animation and cartoon development ground zero for seeing the vast time savings and creative shifts happening in the process of getting shows from production to air. Contrary to what some fear, the future likely won’t include complete displacement–as one executive shared:

“Our goal is for A.I. to get it 70 percent there. A.I. just gives you the base, it’s our job as artists to add a personality — a visual personality — because animation has historically been very expensive and taken a long time to do, a lot of talent has been kept out — particularly young talent. We don’t think animation should be a private club. And with A.I., it’s not going to be.”

As with many early embracers of AI, the future painted in this quote is perhaps overly optimistic. The other fact from the story linked above is that a production which used to take 500 people can now be done by about 50 … so clearly there are some roles which will no longer be needed. The big question is whether the increase in productions will create enough opportunity to offset those losses.

The Coffee Shop That Accepts Gossip and Rumors as Payment

Good News Coffee might be my new favorite coffee shop. Unfortunately for me, they only have locations in Barcelona, Paris, Madrid and Amsterdam so far. They are quickly building a reputation for unusual promotions designed to get their customers off their phones, away from social media and actually interacting with real humans. Their latest effort to give people free drinks in exchange for oversharing is just one in a long string of inventive promotions:

“Gossip-for-beverages joins other initiatives the brand has playfully implemented to foster real-world social interaction at its locations in Barcelona, Paris, Madrid and Amsterdam. Earlier this year, for example, GoodNews launched a local book club, offered free drinks for joining a barista-led conga line and handed out drinks to customers who could get the next person in line to laugh at a joke they told.”

This is personality marketing at its best. One woman admitted she got a secret nose job. Another exposed a friend who is cheating on her boyfriend. The gossip is fun to hear, but it works because this is so unique, memorable and easily shareable. The shop already has more than 100k followers and is generating lots of unexpected conversation … and people coming by for coffee too.

The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week

More About Advertising

Described as “the alternative voice of advertising, marketing and media,” the site More About Advertising is really a B2B media source reporting on the inside machinations of the marketing industry. Both agencies and companies are profiled here, but even if you’re not in those industries – this site may be worth adding to your reading list for one very specific reason.

The future and present of media can often be quantified through the movements in the marketing industry. You can read about rising and failing platforms, consumer trends, industry shifts and regional priorities all through the way the marketing industry and funding for advertising move around. As a result, this is the best kind of niche news source … one that teaches you how an industry works while also lending insights into things far beyond that one category.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

Always Eat Left-Handed … And Other Secrets for Killing It at Work and in Real Life

Back in 2013, I wrote a career and life advice book. It was my third book and before I really understood what it took to get a book into the market. Five years later, I released a redesigned and updated version, and it quickly eclipsed the first release. Over the past few years, right around graduation season it has been my most popular book filled with plenty of irreverent advice for young people and a unique perspective on what it really takes to build a career (and life).

Several universities have used the book as part of their First Year Experience program for incoming freshman and so this week I’m bringing it back as a suggestion for a fun and useful graduation gift for any young person in your life. You can get it from Amazon or Bookshop via the links below – or if you want to have a signed copy you can also pick one of those up with FREE shipping (US only) from my website here >>

About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Looking for a speaker to inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers through a keynote or workshop? 

Watch my 2024 speaking reel on YouTube >>

This Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter is curated by Rohit Bhargava.Copyright © 2024 Non-Obvious, All rights reserved