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Most people never change careers, which is remarkable when you consider how little evidence most of us had when we chose our first one. For many professionals, early career decisions are shaped less by talent or long-term fit than by convenience and coincidence. We follow friends into certain degrees, accept the first decent offer, listen to family advice, or pursue interests that feel meaningful at 18 but prove less durable at 38. These choices are understandable, but they are weak predictors of where our strengths will compound over time, or of what will sustain both performance and satisfaction across decades of work. In essence, we follow our own or other peoples intuition rather than facts or data, which is rarely a recipe for success. The problem is further compounded by how fast the ground has shifted, especially over the past decades. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Even before the rise of generative AI, career predictability had been steadily eroding. Globalization, repeated economic shocks, declining job tenure, the collapse of clear promotion ladders, and the shift from stable organizational careers to project-based and boundary-less work all contributed to rising uncertainty. Longitudinal labor data shows that occupational half-lives were shrinking well before automation became a mainstream concern, with entire roles emerging and disappearing within a decade. In parallel, individuals were expected to manage their own employability, continuously update skills, and absorb risks once carried by employers or institutions. AI has not created this uncertainty so much as amplified it, accelerating the obsolescence of skills, compressing career ladders, and blurring professional boundaries. Knowledge and technical expertise, once reliable sources of differentiation, are increasingly commoditized. At the same time, employers place growing value on judgment, learning agility, influence, and curiosity, capabilities that universities still struggle to measure or systematically develop. The result is a widening gap between what people trained for, what they are good at, and what the labor market actually rewards. It is therefore no surprise that career anxiety is rising, even among people who appear successful on paper. Gallup data shows that roughly 60% of employees feel emotionally detached at work, while fewer than one in four strongly believe their job aligns with their strengths. LinkedIn data consistently finds that the average worker will change roles every three to four years, yet meaningful career pivots remain rare and often delayed until dissatisfaction becomes acute. At the same time, mobility has slowed. After the Great Resignation came what economists now call the Big Stay: people feel stuck rather than settled. They are rethinking their careers cognitively, but postponing action behaviorally. In other words, job hugging has replaced job hopping. So how can you tell whether you are merely going through a rough patch or whether it is genuinely time for a career pivot? Decades of research on career development, identity, and motivation point to four reliable signals. 1. Your learning has stalled, not just your motivation One of the most robust predictors of engagement and career satisfaction is perceived progress. When people feel they are learning, they tolerate stress and uncertainty better. When learning stops, even high performers disengage. Professor Herminia Ibarras research on career transitions shows that people rarely pivot successfully through introspection alone. Clarity follows action, not the other way around. If your role no longer exposes you to new skills, perspectives, or problems, that is not a temporary slump but a structural constraint. Before quitting outright, experiment: Be ready to fail smart, in the sense of learning from your experience and becoming wiser as a consequence. As the saying goes, experience is what you get when you didnt get what you wanted to get. For example, take on side projects, advisory roles, or temporary assignments that test alternative identities. Stagnation becomes dangerous only when experimentation stops. 2. Your strengths no longer translate into value Many careers falter not because people lose competence, but because the market stops rewarding what they are good at. Technological change makes this especially common. Skills that once differentiated professionals are automated, standardized, or absorbed into platforms. As I have illustrated in one of my previous books, AI is far more likely to automate tasks within jobschanging the skills constellation needed to perform themthan actual jobs. Research on personjob fit shows that sustained misalignment between strengths and role predicts burnout and underperformance, even among conscientious high achievers. A useful diagnostic question is whether your best contributions still feel essential or merely adequate. Successful pivots rarely involve abandoning strengths. They involve redeploying them where they matter more. 3. Your career identity has become rigid Ibarras work highlights that career change is as much an identity transition as a skills transition. People delay pivots not because they lack optios, but because they are overly attached to who they think they are supposed to be. This is also why authenticity is overrated: Why limit yourself to your past and present self when you can instead create or sculpt a broader, more diverse, and richer version of yourself? This is where the squiggly careers concept, popularized by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis of Amazing If, is especially useful. Modern careers are no longer linear ladders but adaptive paths, shaped by lateral moves, pauses, reinventions, and redefinitions of success. If you feel compelled to defend your current title, industry, or trajectory rather than evolve it, you may be protecting a legacy identity rather than building a future one. Indeed, progress is not a straight line! 4. You are succeeding externally but disengaging internally One of the most overlooked signals is sustained performance paired with declining well-being. Longitudinal studies show that people can maintain output for years after motivation erodes, but at a cost to health, creativity, and long-term employability. If your reputation is strong but your curiosity, energy, or sense of meaning is steadily diminishing, that is not ingratitude. It is misalignment. Career satisfaction is not a soft outcome. It is a leading indicator of future performance and adaptability. In short, we tend to romanticize career pivots as bold acts of reinvention. But the evidence suggests the opposite. Successful pivots usually happen through small, low-risk experiments that reshape identity over time, guided less by passion than by a disciplined willingness to revise assumptions in response to reality. In an era where work will change repeatedly, the real risk is not changing direction too often, but staying in place long after the signals suggest you should move. The most resilient professionals are not those with fixed plans, but those who know when the cost of standing still has quietly begun to exceed the cost of change. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
The geopolitical implications of President Trumps controversial weekend attack on Venezuela and the capture and extradition of its president, Nicolás Maduro, are still being digested by legal and security experts in the two days following the shocking announcement. What is more certain is the immediate market reaction from a select number of publicly traded stocks that have the potential to be impacted by the military action. Heres how Americas top energy, defense, and tech stocks are moving on the first trading day after the U.S. intervened in the affairs of its South American neighbor. Americas oil and energy stocks soar Some of the most closely watched stocks today will be those of oil and energy giants traded on U.S. exchanges, particularly Chevron Corporation. The Texas-based oil company is the American energy giant with the biggest footprint in the region, notes CNBC, and thus the one primed to benefit the most from Trumps stated desire to start making money for the country. But Chevron isnt the only one that stands to benefit. In a Saturday press conference addressing Americas military intervention, Trump said, Were going to have our very large United States oil companiesthe biggest anywhere in the worldgo in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure. While the president did not name any specific companies, based on premarket trading this morning, investors seem to think that the following oil and energy giants stand to benefit from the intervention: Chevron (NYSE: CVX): up 7.3% ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM): up 4.5% ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP): up 7.3% Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL): up 10.3% One interesting thing to note: Two prominent oil companies that trade on the New York Stock Exchange are currently down slightly in premarket trading. Those companies are Shell (NYSE: SHEL), down 0.7%, and BP (NYSE: BP), down 0.7%. Shell is a British-Dutch company and BP is a British company. Investors may believe that Trump is unlikely to allow foreign oil companieseven those of its alliesto profit from Americas intervention in Venezuela. But investors are cautious about defense stocks Americas military intervention in Venezuela suggests that under Trumps second term, the U.S. may engage in a new expansionist hard power policy, directly using its military might to enforce changes around the globe. Indeed, as noted by Reuters, Trump has already threatened another military operation against a southern neighborthis time in Colombia. While the moral and legal aspects of such action are debatable, it’s undeniable that an expansion of Americas military action is good for the bottom lines of the countrys most prominent defense companies. However, investors so far seem to be taking a cautious approach to U.S. companies operating in the defense space, with many companies up only slightly in premarket trading on Monday: Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT): up 1% RTX (NYSE: RTX): up 0.7% Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC): up 1% General Dynamics (NYSE: GD): up 1% The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA): up 0.2% Defense-adjacent tech stocks are also up While many of Americas tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, have defense contracts, some smaller tech firms almost exclusively cater to the countrys military and security apparatus. Such companies likewise stand to benefit from increased U.S. military operations. Yet as of the time of this writing, investors also seem to be taking a more cautious approach to these stocks, which include: Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR): up 3.8% Honeywell International (NASDAQ:HON): up 0.2% L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX): up 0.7%
Category:
E-Commerce
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Twenty twenty-six will be a year of financial corrections, AI-driven biological breakthroughs, and new thinking about cybersecurity and executive protectionat least according to the CEOs I recently asked to provide bold prognostications. Heres how 12 of them responded. New threats, new protections Rick Caccia, CEO of AI security platform WitnessAI, believes 2026 will bring the first major AI-driven cyberattack that causes significant financial damage. After that happens, he predicts corporations will augment their existing security budgets, and those deals will close three times faster than current cycles as companies move fast to secure their systems. Currently, enterprise AI spending remains largely compliance-focused as companies prepare for regulatory requirements in the absence of active threats, Caccia says. An AI-powered attack will highlight the need for additional security investment, he says, adding, This will create a new market dynamic where AI security moves from nice to have to business critical overnight. Ted Bailey, founder and CEO of Dataminr, and Balaji Yelamanchili, CEO of ThreatConnect, see business leaders demanding threat intelligence thats tailored to their specific organizations in 2026. Amid tight budgets and staffing shortagesnot to mention AI threatscompanies need real-time intelligence about threats, communicated in the context of their businesses and investments. They say information that cant answer the question How does this affect my organization? is unhelpful, and that 2026 will see organizations matching data about external threats with the effectiveness of their internal controls to understand their true vulnerabilities. Filip Kaliszan, CEO and cofounder of software-driven building security company Verkada, predicts that attacks on politicians and executives will drive a new era of investment and standardization in executive protection. Rising threats, ranging from harassment and doxxing to high-profile physical attacks such as the killing of UnitedHealthcares Brian Thompsonwill prompt boards of directors to think differently about C-suite security. Just as cybersecurity teams measure dwell times, breach costs, and vulnerability exposure, executive protection teams will increasingly quantify risk reduction and operational impacthow many threats were identified, potential losses avoided, or disruptions mitigated, he says. AI infrastructure evolves KR Sridhar, founder, chairman, and CEO of Bloom Energy, maker of fuel-cell energy systems, predicts that AI data centers and large-scale manufacturing facilities that need massive, reliable energy will move to onsite power rather than relying solely on the central grid. As AIs explosive growth collides with grid limitations, businesses and regulators will accelerate adoption of next-generation energy models that deliver clean, affordable, and abundant power, Sridhar says. This is essential for building a future where innovation and sustainability go hand in hand. And Sami Issa, director and CEO of Global AI, believes the world will treat sovereign AIa nations ability to use its own infrastructure and data to produce AIthe same way it treats national energy grids. This shift may look sudden from the outside, but from my vantage point, the demand signals are already impossible to ignore, Issa says. Nations will compete to secure gigawatt-scale, single-tenant capacity, and the organizations that move early will define the next decade of AI capability and security. Evan Beard, CEO and cofounder of Standard Bots, predicts the United States will hit 45,000 new industrial robot installations as AI-powered robots prove they can handle sustained production. He believes that first-time automation buyers, especially small to midsize manufacturers, will embrace the technology as industrial robots become more accessible and affordable. By year-end, those new deployments will empirically confirm what American manufacturers already tell us: When companies adopt advanced robotics, they become more cost-competitive, improve productivity, and retain or grow their workforce in more technical and higher-wage roles, he says. AI: big and small Bam Azizi, CEO and cofounder at Mesh, a global payment network, predicts the true engine of growth for agentic commerceAI agents handling digital transactionswont be fueled by consumer shopping but by business-to-business applications, especially micropayment processing. “Agents are set to perform thousands of high-velocity, fractional transactions for API (application programming interface) calls and cross-border services that traditional card rails cant handle, Azizi says. Micha Breakstone, cofounder and CEO of biotech company Somite AI, predicts venture capitalists this year will prioritize investing in biotech companies that essentially transform cellular biology into a predictive engineering science that can transform medicine and drug development. He asserts that these companies will be valued less like traditional biotech and more like Tesla. The value proposition to investors is not just the individual car (the drug), but the autonomous driving software (the platform) that powers it. A coming correction A few CEOs expressed concerns about overheated financial markets. Ive been in private equity for 31 years, and Ive never seen anything like the current level of froth in the credit markets, says Graham Weaver, founder and CEO of Alpine Investors. Indeed, corporate bond issuance and growth in the $1.1 trillion private credit market showed little sign of slowing last fall. “I cant predict when this endsmaybe its 2026, maybe notbut as night follows day, it will end, Weaver says. When it does, and when debt becomes less available and the froth begins to fade, [over-leveraged] companies could face a very painful reckoning. My advice is to prepare now so the de-leveraging becomes a soft landing rather than a crash landing. Sam Miller, CEO and cofounder of payments app Kasheesh, offers an even starker warning: In 2026, America could face the largest financialcorrection in modern history, and AI will not be the safety net for everyday Americans. As AI scales, he says, corporations will gain efficiency and speed, but small businesses and consumers will struggle. We need AI built for inclusion, designed for those being left behind, to create a financial system that helps everyone rise, not just those already ahead. Then again . . . If these projections feel unsettling, you can always take solace in the words of Kunal Kapoor, CEO of Morningstar, who takes a refreshingly contrarian stance: I predict that most predictions will not come true! (Disclosure: Morningstars executive chairman, Joe Mansueto, owns Inc. and Fast Companys parent company.) Kapoor adds: Put me in the optimist camp when it comes to thinking about the impact changing technology will have on our industry, the economy, or business landscape. Indeed, being a Modern CEO requires a good measure of enthusiasm and sanguinity in the face of change and uncertainty, which were sure to experience throughout 2026. Your predictions What big changes are you anticipating in 2026? Send your bold predictions to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and Ill compile the most compelling prognostications in a future newsletter. Read more: unpredictable predictions Axios Pro Ratas Dan Primack collected one-line predictions on AI, life sciences, and more Three futurists weigh in on how AI will change the world in 2026 AI predictions from a ChatGPT pioneer
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E-Commerce
2026 will be a year of architectural showstoppers. Major projects, from corporate headquarters to sports stadiums and museums, will wrap construction and open to the public in 2026, bringing bold, sometimes audacious buildings to cities around the world. Here are nine buildings opening in 2026 to watch for. [Photo: Vincenzo Lombardo/Getty Images] Arena Milanoopening in FebruaryMilanDavid Chipperfield Architects Built partly to host ice hockey games during the 2026 Winter Olympics, Arena Milano is a 16,000-seat multipurpose arena that’s expected to become a new center for sports and concerts in Milan. Pritzker Prize-winning David Chipperfield Architects’ design, done in conjunction with Arup, is the standout venue for this edition of the Olympics. An inverted triple-decker layer cake that calls to mind Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York, the building is intended to evoke the elliptical form of the city’s former Roman amphitheater. Guests attend the LACMA First Look Reception on June 26, 2025 in Los Angeles. [Photo: Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for LACMA] Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleriesopening in AprilLos AngelesPeter Zumthor Inherently controversial, architect Peter Zumthor’s Wilshire Boulevard-spanning blob-like replacement of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA’s) main gallery buildings has been more than a decade in the making, with no shortage of hand-wringing about its shape, cost, and necessity. The concrete building’s ink blot form spreads across a single elevated floor, marking a hard departure from the museum’s mid-century campus design. One early reviewahead of a slightly odd three-day preview in June 2025 of what was essentially an empty buildingfound the execution of Zumthor’s vision flawed, but also calls the building a refreshingly risk-taking piece of architecture. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Studio Gang (@studiogang) Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theateropening in JuneGarrison, New YorkStudio Gang The Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center is the first permanent, purpose-built stage for Hudson Valley Shakespeare, an open air theater company that has been performing under a glorified tent since 1987. Tucked under a swoopy timber tortoise shell of a canopy, the new theater was designed by Studio Gang to shield performers and audience members from the elements and the sun’s glare during dusk performances. It’s also a picture frame for the site’s epic view, opening fully behind the stage to provide audiences a panorama of the ridgelines of the Hudson Valley. [Photo: Edward C. Robison III/courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of Art] Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Expansionopening in JuneBentonville, ArkansasSafdie Architects The 2011 opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Northwest Arkansas was a bold investment by Walmart heir Alice L. Walton in broadening access to world class art beyond the typical metropolitan centers of the U.S. Now, 15 years later, Safdie Architects has returned to broaden the museum’s reach even further. The project expands the museum’s space by 50% while extending the aesthetics of the original design. Future visitors may be unable to tell where the expansion begins, or that there ever even was one. [Image: Snhetta/Theodore Roosevelt Library] Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Libraryopening in JulyMedora, North DakotaSnhetta Set in the wide openness of North Dakota where Theodore Roosevelt ranched for years before becoming the 26th president of the United States, the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is a stunning earthship of rammed earth, mass timber, and a nearly camouflaged roofline. Designed by Snhetta to physically blend into the landscape, the building is meant to reflect Roosevelt’s environmental stewardship and deep connection to the landscape of the North Dakota Badlands. [Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images] Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadiumopening in summer 2026Orchard Park, New YorkPopulous The Buffalo Bills NFL team is moving on from its previous home of more than 50 years into a brand new 60,000-seat stadium. Despiteor possibly because ofBuffalo’s snowy winters, the stadium was designed to be an open bowl, welcoming the elements onto the field and all but the uppermost stadium seats. The stadium’s designer, sports architecture specialists Populous, calls it “one of the most intimidating home field environments in the league.” [Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images] Lucas Museum of Narrative Artopening in SeptemberLos AngelesMAD One of the most anticipated new cultural institutions in recent years, George Lucas’s $1 billion museum is hotly awaited both for its extensive art collection and its far-out architecture. Designed by MAD Architects with an integrated landscape by Studio-MLA, the spaceship-shaped building is a curvaceous modern behemoth in Los Angeles history-laden Exposition Park. Though his firm has built dozens of shapely museums and opera houses across China, this will be lead architect Ma Yansong’s first major cultural institution in the U.S. View this post on Instagram Atlassian Centralopening in NovemberSydneySHoP Architects When software giant Atlassian’s new headquarters building opens in 2026, this 39-story skyscraper will be the world’s tallest hybrid timber building. Made up primarily of six mass timber four-level buildings-within-the-building, the tower encases everything in a criss-crossing steel exoskeleton wrapped in operable glass windows. Designed by SHoP Architects, the tower is also a hybrid at ground level, preserving a historic train shed and converting part of it into the tower’s new lobby. [Photo: Sadak Souici/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock] Guggenheim Abu Dhabiopening TBDAbu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Gehry Partners Possibly the last major project to be designed by architect Frank Gehry before his death in December 2025, the long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is expected to open to the public sometime in 2026, 20 years after it was first announced. Appearing to be a jumble of funnels, tubes, and cubes, the museum fully embodies Gehry’s signature style. Its government backers hope the museum also taps into the energy of previous Gehry projects, like its counterpart museum in Bilbao, Spain. One official recently told a local newspaper the museum aspired to be “a civic space.”
Category:
E-Commerce
A few months ago, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video that stopped me in my tracks. It starred an animated frog, dressed in a wizard hat, robe, and pink nail polish, superimposed over a psychedelic background and speaking in a hypnotizing, ethereal voice. Its time to stop doing nothing, and start doing something,” he crooned. “I cast . . . motivation! Id stumbled across the Pine Wizard Froga recurring character on the official TikTok account of household cleaning fluid Pine-Sol. Pine-Sols page, with its surrealist visuals and hypnotizing songs, is an example of what I call brain-rot-brand TikTok: Its a subgenre of digital marketing that rejects traditional advertising in favor of the kind of content that actually performs well on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Rather than selling products directly, brain-rot-brand TikTok embraces head-turning, often nonsensical choices, like fried visuals, abrasive design, and unsettling storylines, to spread brand awareness andpresumablyboost sales. A few years ago, most companies wouldnt have touched brain-rot TikTok with a 10-foot pole. But as brands like Duolingo have built entire communities around bucking digital brand norms, others have gradually jumped on the bandwagon. Nutter Butter might be the first brand that went full brain rot, with hits like a Nutter Butter taking a trip to the playground on what appeared to be way too much acid. More recently, Brita, Amtrak, Sour Patch Kids, Brisk Canada, Mug Root Beer, and Dr Pepper have adopted some flavor of brain-rot branding. [Images: Amtrak] The strategy appears to be working. According to Clorox, which owns Brita and Pine-Sol, in the past year Pine-Sol was the only brand to crack the top 15 in TikToks #cleaning category (the other14 were creators with followings). In June, Britas TikTok content raked in more than 44 million views. In July, Amtrak scored its most-viewed Instagram post of all time by trying out a weirder brand voice. And multiple years into its brain-rot experiment, Nutter Butter still regularly amasses millions of views with its TikToks. But as someone whos now likely watched hundreds of these videos (for research, obviously), Ive been wondering: Is brain-rot-brand TikTok cringe yet? As more and more brands try to break through the crowded attention economy with wackier social concepts, at what point does it stop feeling like theyre in on the joke and more like a desperate plea for attention? To get to the bottom of this query, I rang up Ryan Benson. Hes the self-described social media menace who led Nutter Butters original brain-rot strategy, helped build Sour Patch Kidss uniquely threatening brand voice, and has since gone on to found his own creative agency, Loudmouth. We discussed Nutter Butter’s creepy 60s commercial, a tea brand that’s weirdly into cheese, and Dunkin’s horny spider donut. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Can you give a bit of background on the brand story you were telling with Nutter Butter? Why did it make sense to go so weirdeven weirder than Duolingo, which many people cite as the OG unhinged brand? With Nutter Butter, our agency contract was for I think 23 Mondelz brands. Nutter Butter was a tier threethere were three tiers, so they were on the bottom. Like a C-list snack? Yes, exactly. And that meant the resources that were available to each brand were fully dependent on what tier they were. So tier one is Oreo, and as you can imagine Oreo has six agencies working for it and endless resources. There are ads on TV, billboards, all sorts of agencies. Nutter Butter had $2,000 in an expense account and me. The narrative we were working with was, this is an old cookie, there’s not a lot of story here. What can we do to get people talking about Nutter Butter? And as we experimented with different formatsbrain rot being one of thosewhat we learned is people were left asking, Is Nutter Butter okay? And we were like, Hey, it’s not, How do I buy a Nutter Butter off the shelf, but they’re talking about this. [Images: Nutter Butter] So then we learned how to feed the conversations that they wanted to see. We picked up from the comments like, Oh, they’re talking about this aspect of the photolet’s make sure that we edit that into the next one. Or, They’re noticing that we put Morse code in the bottom of the image. Let’s make sure we put a message in a different coded language in the next one. It actually became a conversation. Through that, we developed Aidan and brought back the Nutter Butter man from the 60s commercial, and we really started to reintroduce all these creepy analog horror themes. [Editors note: Aidan is an original recurring character in Nutter Butters videos, based on one of the brands biggest online fans.] I think what some people miss when they’re like, Let’s copy and paste the Nutter Butter approach, is that we didn’t have to make things up. We were just pulling from the old commercial that exists already. If you were consulting for another brand, how would you advise them on whether they should get in on this strategy? The first question I would be asking is, Why? And if their reason is anything at all about Nutter Butter, I would tell them no. What made Nutter Butter so successful is that we already had the audience that was receptive to the weirdness. We were playing off of things that we sawthey were posting, they were reposting, they were interacting onso we knew that our audience had a shared interest. We understood that some of the outrage that we saw was actually fanship. They were following, they wanted to find out, they were up for the antics. And somehow, at the end of the day, we actually influenced people to go buy more off the shelves. Once the client saw that it was actually somehow affecting sales numbers, they were like, Okay, go for it. I encourage everyone to try out-of-the-box things and do new things for brands that haven’t had attention on them. But if the only reason you want to do it is because it worked for Nutter Butter, go back to the drawing board, because I don’t want you to waste your time. Sure, weird people might see it, but are you going to alienate all of your actual followers? Are you also noticing more of this brain-rot-brand strategy online? If so, Im curious if there are any examples that come to mind. Yeah, absolutely. One of my new favorite things that I’ve just developed as a personality trait is I attract people sending me things from brands that are going rogue or going brain rot, and they’re like, This is your legacy. You did this. Off the top of my head, some brands that I love that are doing the brain-rot approach right now: Mug Root Beer is insane; Brisk Canada is insane; Dr Pepper is doing a big one right nownot necessarily analog horror vibes, but they are deep-frying images, they’re purposefully low quality. Its stupid, irreverent humor. These are promising to me because they all seem like they’re playing off the same energy of like, Oh, it worked in the comments last time. Brisk Canada’s thing is cheese. They make tea in a can, but they love shredding cheese onto the can. They love just copious amounts of cheese. It makes no sense. They don’t sell cheese. [Image: courtesy Duolingo] What kinds of mistakes do you see companies making when they try this out? The thing that I see being a problem is that some of these brands have adopted this brain-rot strategy not understanding that it’s a means of communication that transcends traditional marketing. It does that for a reason, because we’ve developed this ability to communicate without selling. But then if a brand comes and co-ops this ability to communicate without selling in order to sell, theyre just kind of shitting on it. I think that we will continue to see brands try to adopt this, but I dont know how many will be successful, because they have to understand that at the end of the day, they’re selling to people who experience real things and experience a real world outside. There are two different worlds operating, and the mastery is understanding how to join these communities and have conversations that are two-sided, instead of just showing up and being like, Hello, you dumb kidsyou like cheese on your tea? Well, I have a six-pack and it’s $29.99. You lose people. And for some brands, all of this is just a ploy to sell, so it will have issues. [Image: Dunkin’ Donuts] I don’t want to make you burn any bridges with brands, but I am curious if you’ve seen anyone try the more unhinged strategy in a way that wasn’t really working for you. I don’t have any bridges here, so it may burn, but I’m not on the other side. Dunkin Donuts and their spider donut thing. They did a first post with an apology graphic, where they bolded certain letters and it spelled out spidey or something. That was actually duplicative of my work two or three years ago, where I posted an apology from NutterButter and bolded letters to spell Aidan. It was the exact same formatwith their logo and their colorsalmost down to the font. And then they did it again the next year. This last year, they put a lot of budget into an experiential drive-through where they decorated the store, but I did see some commentary of fans being like, Hey, we’re kind of done with the horny spider donut thing. They’re milking it. On that note, do you see a point at which we reach a critical mass of this kind of thing? Whats going to happen that makes people say, like, Ugh, this is stupidIm over it? Honestly, sometimes I question if we’re there. I think back to the evolution of the Nutter Butter account. When I started, we were not immediately posting these deep-fried, demon-in-a-closet-covered-in-peanut-butter-type vibes. We were posting memes and text posts on Twitter and doing brand things. So it’s not like we’re a full anomaly and we’ve never done the things that other brand accounts have done. We tried everything. So I question how many brands right now are in the early stages of what we did and are about to hit a wall of responses of people being like, Meh, because there’s already comments on my old stuff being like, Okay, guys, you’ve played this out too long. I also questioned the apology trend that hit a couple months ago. For me that was a turning point, because when we did it, we fully understood like, Hey, it’s not normal for brands to post an apology, it could go south. We understood this itself is a little bit risky, absurd, extreme. And then it devolved. I question how many brands are about to be shamed, because going back to what I was saying earlier, this method of communication is supposed to be human-based. I don’t know how many brands are pursuing it with that in mind. If you’re just deploying 15 assets in a campaign that are scheduled, you’re not doing any community management, so there’s no user insights in whatever you’re building. They won’t necessarily feel like they’re along for the ride. It will just be like, Oh, they’re doing an absurdist thing. If you add in another degree of people doing it just because it worked for Nutter Butter, there’s no natural tie-in. Now you’re just throwing a pizza party for the marketing team. It’s hard to make a prediction, but I just feel like we’re going to see a brand like Palantir get in on it, or were going to see something dystopian, and then everyones going to be like, Weve had enough. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I feel like we’ve been bordering on it.
Category:
E-Commerce
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