What’s In This Issue?
This Week’s Main Stories
Story 01A Beautiful Reality Show About Nothing Teaches Us About Life
Story 02Should A Brand Be Allowed To Erase Its Past?Story 03Why Millennials Love Perfume That Makes Them Smell Like ThemselvesEven More Stories
- Stephen Hawking's Most Dire Predictions Of The Future
- Study Finds People Morally Outraged By Those Who Don't Want Kids
- Sierra Leone Holds World's First Blockchain Powered Election
- Netflix's New "Cake Fails" Cooking Show Probably Inspired By Data
- National Geographic Transparently Reckons With Its Racist History
- Facebook Tests Advertising Tool That Anticipates Your Intent To Travel
- Huge MIT Study Proves Fake Stories Get Shared More Widely
A Beautiful Reality Show About Nothing Teaches Us About Life
Last year while writing the chapter on "Virtual Empathy" for Non-Obvious 2018, I first discovered the Japanese reality show known as Terrace House where you watch a dozen or so housemates on hidden cameras as they go about their daily lives. Unlike the Americanized versions of this cliche reality show format, the Japanese version has no artificial drama. There are no unlikeable people added solely to create tension. The show makes the commonplace beautiful, and signals a new media format that is emerging as an understandable antidote to the hard-to-believe sensationalism that otherwise surrounds us.
Should A Brand Be Allowed To Erase Its Past?
This week the marketing team at Dos Equis beer decided to remove all videos of the iconic "Most Interesting Man In The World" campaign from their YouTube channel. Though debatable, the rationale was what you would expect ... a new marketing team feeling that the longstanding campaign was overshadowing the brand. Taking the videos down does raise an interesting question: what responsibility should brands have to preserve their advertising or provide access to stories that often become part of popular culture? It is an interesting parallel to last week's story about the individual right to be forgotten.
Why Millennials Love Perfume That Makes Them Smell Like Themselves
Why would anyone wear perfume that smells like nothing? Here's the answer from this article: "The makers of these new scents are betting millennials (and the Gen Z-ers slinking behind them) are averse to pouring on a prepackaged personality. Instead, they simply want to smell like their glorious, unique selves, only better." Individualism and an appreciation for quirkiness have long been traits of the younger generation of consumers and this is an interesting example of a new product direction that relates directly to that.
