Highlights from the Cannes Lions, Algospeak and the Most Meaningless Stories in America 

Dear Fellow Non-Obvious Thinker,

What’s the most useless kind of story in America? That’s one of the lead ideas as we take a look at some of the top Cannes Lions award winners from this week of creative celebrations and also explore an app that promises a clever solution to the global problem of media bias. These stories and a book of the week recommendation all about the rise of “algospeak” are below.

Enjoy the stories and stay curious!

This Week’s New Videos …

Now You Can Automate Your Automation with Prompt Generators

Anyone who has used AI actively over the past few years knows that the only way to get what you truly want out of an AI content generational tool is to write extremely detailed prompts. It’s the equivalent of learning a machine language. The more input you give in the right format, the better the result. The problem is that this skill takes time to develop. Unsurprisingly, there is now an AI tool to help solve an AI centric problem: the AI prompt generator.

All you need to do is enter what you really want, and the prompt generator will revise it to be in the style that can be used with any AI tool. You can even have it customized based on the AI tool you’re using for optimal results. Many frequent AI users are already publishing their notes on which tools are best for which tasks. Built into these are the assumption that each of us will have the right knowledge and skill to prompt each tool with the right syntax, depth and language for it to perform best. That’s rarely the case.

So despite the inherent oddity of turning to automation to help automate another automation (did I lose you?) … these prompt generation tools are not only inevitable, they might actually be useful too.

The Indianis Dentris and Other Big Winners from Cannes

There’s a new flower discovery that has been shifting perspectives in India. Well, actually, it’s not really a new flower but rather a closeup of a “flowering” toothbrush which is badly in need of replacement. This clever campaign to use the metaphor of “India’s newest flower species” was a public awareness campaign from Colgate India that reached millions of people in a way they couldn’t unsee to remind them to replace their toothbrushes for better oral health. Watch the full ad below:

This is just one of the memorable campaigns coming out of the Cannes Lions winner announcements happening right now. There are more announcements to come this week, so for anyone fascinated by some of the world’s best advertising creativity, this week should offer you plenty of good creative talent to watch.

The Most Meaningless Stories in America Are About Lawsuits

Seeing information visualized is one of my favorite types of media. In the past I’ve also recommended the Information Is Beautiful site as one to add to your reading list. They do beautiful work. This week, I did come across a recent visual which showed the limitations of their craft. The chart, which focused on the question of who is suing whom in AI includes lots of arrows pointing between companies. The problem is that this question has become one of the most meaningless in America for several reasons.

First of all, anyone can sue anyone regardless of merit. This leads to lots of lawsuits that have no resemblance to the actual reality of a situation. Sadly, much of this meritless litigation ends with some sort of settlement as one party decides that the truth is too much trouble to fight for, and it’s easier to just pay for the issue to disappear. This is the second problem because it obscures the issue and detaches the truth from the victor. It’s a system that routinely allows the bad guys to win.

Finally, tracking the lawsuits themselves can effectively bury the real story that deserves more attention through the gag orders and NDAs that prevent the truth from ever emerging. If you have a solution for this, I’d love to hear it. Until then, I’ll probably retain my skepticism for any stories that emerge about lawsuits in the future too.

The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week

Ground News

Is there such a thing as truly unbiased media today? No matter what you answer to that question, the assumption built into it is that there certainly is such a thing as biased media. Assigning media sources to the left, right or center is what this media service called Ground News does, and their killer feature is a slider that appears against any new story where you can choose for yourself to see how that story is being covered in media that leans right or left.

It’s a beautiful idea to encourage open mindedness bundled around a tragic concession that there can be no such thing as balanced media. Regardless, it’s easy to see why this app has more than 2.4M downloads and has been named Apple’s App of the Day five times. Download this one today – or even better, add the browser extension to your web browser so you can immediately check bias on any future story you read.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

Algospeak

As I work on Future Words, I’ve become even more of a student of language, and this book was one of my favorites on the topic from the past year. Algospeak is an exploration of the intersection between social media and the way that we speak. If you find the evolution of language as fascinating as I do, this book is worth a read. Aside from his own observations on the linguistic shifts in culture, Aleksic also includes “original surveys, data, and internet archival research” to explore the future of how we communicate in a quantified way.

Buy-on-Amazon

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 new 2025 speaking reel on YouTube >>

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