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In an age of high-turnover trends, ubiquitous screens, and fractured attention spans, a lengthy televised parade organized by a venerable department store sounds like a relic of a bygone era. But somehow, the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade has in recent years proved itself to be startlingly popular and relevant. In 2024, the parade drew an estimated 31.7 million viewers on NBCs broadcast and Peacock streaman all-time record, and a bigger audience than the Oscars or any entertainment broadcast. This years parade will include, along with balloons featuring legacy characters like Snoopy and Minnie Mouse, a Pop Mart float with an oversized Labubu, a Stranger Things float featuring a Demogorgon, and performances by a singing trio from KPop Demon Hunters and Wicked: For Good star Cynthia Erivo. Macys is stubbornly unforthcoming on the economics of its parade, and a spokesperson told Fast Company that it was unable to discuss and disclose financials of the event. But it certainly appears to be a bright spot for the retailer, which over the past decade has closed scores of locations and laid off thousands of workers. Various reports suggest the 2024 version cost an estimated $13 million to produce, with longtime partner NBC paying $20 million for broadcast rights. Macys and NBC announced a new 10-year deal earlier this year, and while terms were not disclosed, The Wall Street Journal reported the new proposal was on the order of $60 million for annual rights to the Thanksgiving parade, a July 4 special, and a new event thats to be determined. This reflects how valuable the parade, in particular, seems to have become for its ability to draw a mass audience, with NBC reportedly selling 30-second ad spots for $900,000. The Friendsgiving in Pop City float will be featured in the 99th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 27. [Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Macy’s] A successful, unchanged formula The parade dates back to 1924 and has been televised nationally on NBC since 1954. While Macys describes it as a gift to the nation, its one that has long since become a business in its own right. According to a report from 2019, a brand sponsoring a new balloon could expect to pay around $200,000 in construction and parade fees. But this, of course, yields a couple of minutes of on-air discussion of the brand or entertainment propertys balloon (or float or performance) from the broadcast hosts. This is how the parade has worked for decadesand maybe that essentially unchanged formula helps explain its success. By now its an iconic event, deeply embedded in pop culture via numerous appearances in movies and TV shows, and countless memories. Even if you havent watched the parade in years, you know the gist. So one theory of the events resilient popularity is that it is, like turkey and stuffing, an elevated variation on comfort food. A decade-plus ago, as many mainstream broadcast events began to see their audiences shrink, the parade held steady, in effect growing its influence simply by standing still. But in the last few years, that audience hasnt just stood still but actually begun to grow, topping earlier viewer records. The Macys spokesperson credits the talented Macys Studio team of artisans and other experts who craft the event, and certainly the proceedings are as lavish as ever. Among the character balloons set to fly high above Manhattan at this years parade are Mario of Super Mario Bros. fame, and recurring favorite Freida the Dachshund. [Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Macy’s] A more interesting theory, though, is that a broadcast parade is ideal for a fractional-attention world. Theres something new every few minutes and none of it requires deep concentration. This years event includes 34 balloons, 28 floats, 28 performers, 11 marching bands, and 33 clown crews, meaning the parade is nonstop novelty. It is essentially an analog, marching scroll. In a kind of virtuous circle, the audience attracts pop culture brands, which attracts a bigger audience. A Macys executive involved in producing the parade told the Freakonomics podcast last year that the goal is to balance legacy characters against new characters, in effect addressing an all-ages audience. Even better: All the content is basically escapist and certainly apolitical, providing an endless stream of excuses to change the subject to something benign when that cranky uncle starts looking for a squabble. And while Macys may be opaque about the business details that help shape the specific contents of any given years parade, achieving that balance between contemporary relevance and timeless tradition is likely a key to attracting its audience. And sure, the whole thing is essentially an intertwined marketing eventa series of pop culture and brand promotions, under the auspices of Macys own brand. But nobody really seems to mind. Perhaps on the eve of Black Friday this is exactly what many are looking for. A Macys spokesperson calls the parade the official kickoff to the holiday season. That seems to be truer than ever.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its long been the uniform of management consultants and finance bros, but now the humble quarter zip is being embraced by a rather unexpected demographic. Over the past few weeks, FYPs have become dominated by the workwear staple. Young men who previously mightve been seen exclusively in Nike Tech, have now traded them in for quarter zip sweaters. Across social media, they are sharing styling tips and hosting meetups at malls, all clad in business-casual. The trend gained widespread attention when, in early November, TikToker @whois.jason shared a video of himself sipping a matcha (the beverage of choice for the performative male) with a friend. Both are wearing quarter zip sweaters. We dont do Nike Tech, we dont do coffee. Its straight quarter zips and matchas around here, he says in the clip. We upgraded in life; we wear glasses now. Since it was posted, the clip has gained over 25 million views. No more DMs we on outlook and teams, one comment read. Another wrote: We on linkedin not instagram. The hashtag #quarterzip currently has over 55,000 posts on TikTok. Theres T-Pain in Louis Vuitton talking about 401k and a quarter zip. Rapper Central Cee hung up his customary Nike Tech fleece for a cream Ralph Lauren one. Nike techs most loyal person just switched up, one comment read on his TikTok post. The basketball video game NBA 2K account announced the addition of quarter zips to 2K26 last week, not long after the topic started trending on TikTok. Even brands are jumping on, a sure sign as any that a trend has run its course. Some say the co-option of quarter zips signals a vibe shift that goes beyond fashion. Fortune calls it a subtle signal of ambition and adaptation in a job market that feels almost insurmountably tough for many young adults today. The New York Times described the shift as an aesthetic pivot toward the expectations of the professional world. Its true, the quarter zip has long been a signal of soft professionalism. If a LinkedIn connection was an item of clothing, it would be the quarter zip (perhaps under a fleece vest to complete the uniform). Others have connected the trend to the history of Black dandyism, a cultural movement and fashion style intended to subvert racial stereotypes, inspiring last years Met Gala theme. While the lifecyle of a TikTok trend is often no more than a few days or weeks at most, retail data shows a 25% sales rise for quarter zips among 18- to 24-year-olds since mid-2024. Google Trends shows a 2,250% increase in searches for 1/4 zip pullover men’s business casual over the past 12 months. Has anyone checked in on the finance bros?
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E-Commerce
What do Marriott, Peloton, and Major League Baseball (MLB) have in common? Each has recently navigated a major crisis in the court of public opinion. Marriotts licensing agreement termination with Sonder left guests stranded and fuming mid-stay. Peloton announced its second product recall in just two years. And the MLB is the latest major sports organization whose players have been swept up in sports betting scandals. Crisis is everywhere. And while big brands may dominate the headlines, smaller companies face equally urgent situations. Regardless of a companys size, leaders must be prepared when the ever-turning wheel of misfortune lands on their spotbecause it will. Despite this inevitability, less than half of U.S. companies have a formal crisis plan in place according to a 2023 report by Forbes. I see it in my workshops all the time. Fewer than a fourth of the countless leaders Ive worked with have a dedicated crisis plan or team in place to help them navigate a crisis. Whether they are consciously kicking the can of crisis preparedness down the road or simply dont know where to start, the consequences are the same. Its not if you will ever experience a crisis, its when and how severe. Failing to prepare can shatter reputations, destroy careers, and cripple revenue in a matter of moments. Here are four actionable steps to ensure you arent caught off guard when crisis hits. 1. Create a crisis plan Planning is the most effective way to manage a crisis, yet many leaders find excuses to put it off. Some believe it will never happen to them; others underestimate the value of crisis planning because it does not generate revenue. In reality, crisis can happen to anyone, at any time, and facing a crisis without a plan is a major revenue drain, especially considering all the emergency expenses needed to manage it. A crisis plan is an essential tool that serves as a roadmap for navigating crisis response: In the same Forbes report, 98% of leaders who had activated their crisis communications plans found them to be effective. A plan doesnt need to be long30 pages is more than sufficientand should include an introduction, lessons learned from past crises, company information, crisis team member information, the companys risk profile, and key questions to ask during crisis to get as many details as possible. 2. Develop a crisis team The crisis team is a designated group of people from inside and outside an organization that assembles at a moments notice when crisis hits to help gather the facts and take appropriate action. This group of people will help leaders navigate the most sensitive moments of their careers, so its imperative to choose team members who will not only provide sound insight, but will also hold the company and its leaders accountable when necessary. A crisis team should be limited to no more than 12 people and should include representation from the President/CEO, senior VPs, division managers, IT, legal counsel, communications, HR, and finance. Each of these members brings valuable perspective from different departments and may represent different groups of stakeholders. Smaller companies can have as few as three individuals on their teamyou should never try to navigate a crisis alone. 3. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable As disconcerting as it can be for leaders to address the myriad risks their company faces on a daily basis, envisioning worst-case scenarios and developing a risk profile enables the development of a crisis management strategy before one hits. Worst case scenarios can range from a data breach that compromises proprietary information to an on-the-job employee injury. As there is a virtually unending list of worst-case scenarios, a companys risk profile will depend on the specific organization and industry. In the AI era, theres no reason for leaders not to have a tailored risk profile. Getting started is as easy as typing in your companys details. (Note: AI is not an appropriate tool to draft public-facing statements.) Once the risk profile has been established, you can predraft holding statements for each scenario that will serve as a guide during active crisis and save 20 to 30 minutes of precious time. 4. Learn how to recognize a crisis in your organization Crises often catch leaders off guard because the buildup that caused them goes unrecognized. Most crises are the result of an unsolved business problem. If the problem can be identified and addressed, its far less likely to snowball into a full-blown crisis. Take the example of Pelotonin 2023, it recalled 2 million bikes after broken seat posts led to multiple reported injuries. The business problem? Poor quality product posing a safety risk to riders. In November 2025, Peloton recalled nearly 900,000 more . . . for the exact same reason. This unresolved business problem created a crisis cycle that eroded consumer trust. Other business problems that commonly lead to crisis include weak security that invites cybercrime, failing to prioritize employee safety resulting in death or injury, or a lack of succession planning that leads to a companys downfall in the event of a CEOs death or departure. While leaders cant prevent crisis, they can prepare for it. Crisis planning could be the most valuable investment a leader ever makes. Because in business its not if a crisis will ever happen, its whether youll be ready when it does.
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E-Commerce
Just know this: Theres going to be a conversation about artificial intelligence at Thanksgiving this year. An AI superfan is going to gush about chatbots and go on, at length, about how These things just seem to know everything. The dinner tables funnyman will play a highly cringe video they made with the technology. Someone else will either be flummoxed or horrified. A proud guest will declare a vow of abstinencein fact, theyve never even used ChatGPT, they will reveal. One self-important guest will feel very smart when recounting the time they caught an AI making a mistake, once. Theyll tell everyone about it. These conversations will be bad. There will be camps: the Luddites, the accelerationists, the skeptics, and the 85-year-old ChatGPT power users. There will be the extant Elon evangelists, the people who are very tuned in, and the people who have not been paying attention to any of this. Conversations will touch on both the anticipation and the terror of the tech. The economy. The tech oligarchy. The environment. The bubble. No one will really be talking to each other. Not in any meaningful sense. Have the conversation anyway. Not because youll form some sort of consensus, but because these long human conversationsat their bestcome with love and also tension. AI provides neither. Of course, the major hurdle to reaching any sort of common understanding is that AI is too ambiguous a term to serve as a stable jumping-off point for a coherent discourse. For some, the term references a capital-intensive recipe of hyperscaled data centers and transformer models. For others, AI means the consumer-facing, knowledge-loaded models like Sonnet 4.5 and Grok 3. For others, there are simply the characters of Grok and ChatGPT and Claude. To many, AI is simply synonymous with the current age, some loose sense that the internet is increasingly automated and agentic. A good number of people simply use AI, increasingly intermingled with social media and the internet, as a shorthand for all technology. All of these definitions are, in their way, completely accurate, and too divergent for having any meaningful discussion about AI. Proceed, still. We do not choose our familiesor at least our blood relatives. AI, meanwhile, promises potentially limitless self-selection. Eras past gave us the YouTube rabbit holes and personalized algorithism. Now chatbots promise private universes of confirmation bias, personalization, and sycophancy. Younger generations are growing up with an unprecedented level of intimacy, and confidentiality, with these bots. Worse, people are forming deeply psychological and romantic relationships with AI tools, plopping their deepest selves into a digital abyssinstead of their loved ones or human professionals. This siloing away of our intimacy leaves us with impossibly difficult-to-predict consequences for our social skills and human relationships. For this reason, many people who have eschewed AI are protecting themselves, while the rest of us are still looking to define the relationship we want with the technology. The challenge, of course, is that AI companies already know what kind of relationship they want us to have with these chatbots: an all-encompassing one, an endless saccharine dialogue. We dont yet know what lifelong microtargeted conversational partners might do to us, but its probably not wonderful. This raises the stakes for our human interactions, including imperfect and ever-trying family holidays. AI firms want to woo us with frictionless interfaces for everything. The antidote is sitting across the table from the people we care about, and all the friction they come with, to discuss our interesting times and everything else.
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E-Commerce
At the start of the Introduction to Innovation class at Robert C. Hatch High School in rural Uniontown, Alabama, the face of a teacher fills a wall-size screen at the front of the room. Beaming in from far away like a Zoom call, the teacher is part of a new approach to providing specialized education in underserved communities. This is the Connected Rural Classroom. It’s a novel rethink of the typical high school classroom, designed specifically to increase access to niche, high-quality education for students in rural schools with limited resources. A remote teacher on a big screen is just one part of the classroom’s unique elements. Designed to emphasize science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses and increase students’ technological fluency, the classroom is outfitted with a range of built-in cameras, adjustable lighting, flexible seating, and a slate of hardware for tech-centric programming. The classroom is supported by the state of Alabama and was created by Ed Farm, a Birmingham-based nonprofit focused on closing the growing digital skills gap in communities across the Southeast. “Especially in Alabama, there’s just a lack of high-quality STEM teachers and math teachers that those students in rural areas have access to,” says Waymond Jackson, president of Ed Farm. [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani] A high-tech classroom In contrast to the typical linoleum-floored room filled with rows of rigid desks, the Connected Rural Classroom looks more like a modern office. There are movable collaboration tables, standing desks, rocking chairs, ottomans, stadium seats along the back wall, and a line of focus booths looking through windows at the trees outside. The large screen sits at the front of the room on a dark wall that encourages better focus, with a small stage-like area at its foot for presentations by in-class instructors and fellow students. Calming colors and sound-absorptive materials tame the sometimes chaotic effects caused by a roomful of teenagers, and linear cues in the ceiling and floor subconsciously direct their attention to the room’s main instruction area. [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani] The room’s lighting is optimized for circadian rhythms, mimicking daylight to augment the single wall of windows in the room. There are also four programmed lighting scenes that can be used during different class scenarios, from stage-lit formal presentations to full-light active collaboration to a subtle dim setting for times requiring quiet focus. There are multiple cameras that provide the remote instructor with views of all parts of the room, and embedded technology allows the instructor to beam to a specific screen to interact with small groups, or directly onto a student’s tablet for one-on-one instruction. [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani] The classroom was designed by the architecture firm Kurani, which has been designing unconventional and often tech-forward classrooms for more than a decade. Founder Danish Kurani says this is part of making the room work not just for students but also for the teachers who may be sitting behind a computer hundreds or thousands of miles away. “We went to great lengths to essentially try to make it easier for the remote instructor,” he says. “It’s far more difficult when you’re remote, especially when you’re dealing with high school students. Like, how do you have presence in the room? How do you connect with them?” [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani] The zoom of classrooms The classroom design was developed with feedback from students and instructors, and in close collaboration with Ed Farm, which launched in February 2020 with funding from a partnership between the Alabama Power Foundation and Apple. The goal is to expand technology education for students and upskill adults in rural areas. Apple CEO Tim Cook, an Alabama native, was in Birmingham for the program’s 2020 launch. “Ed Farm is about clearing a path for anyoneof any age, background, or interestwhether or not they’re destined for a career in technology,” he said at the time. From top: The classroom at Robert C. Hatch High School in Uniontown, Alabama, before the redesign; the Connected Rural Classroom today [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani] Ed Farm has made physical spaces a cornerstone of its work, and developed the Connected Rural Classroom design as a prototype for improving the places where technology skill can be acquired. “There was this absolute misalignment between today’s workforce, today’s classroom, and tomorrow’s workforce,” CEO Jackson says, noting that working with Kurani, there was always the goal of creating a classroom design that could work across Ed Farm’s primary geography in the Black Belt of Alabama, but also beyond. “This is truly a model that can be scaled state by state,” he says. [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani] That hope informed the earliest stages of the design process. Kurani says his team started by researching existing public school classrooms across the country to understand their spatial and architectural conditions. They found that the average classroom is between 700 and 900 square feet, tends to have its door close to a corner, and has a single wall of windows on the opposite side of the room. [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani] The design the architects developed is a prototype that matches those average conditions. Kurani sees it as a kit of parts that can be slightly adjusted based on the layout of a room or the location of its door and windows. “When it’s time to deploy it in schools, it’s very easy and we can tell all of them, Yes, we can easily bring this to your school. It will fit, Kurani says. Ed Farm plans to scale the Connected Rural Classroom design to other schools, but also to expand its focus on creating similar educational spaces for people of all ages. “One of the things that we were pushed on by Apple as we came up with our solutions, was to think about the problems and the things that we’re doing that are relevant to Alabama as a microcosm of what actually exists across this country,” Jackson explains. “We see community spaces and unused community assets as an opportunity to bring technology and technology infrastructure closer to those folks that we’re seeking to serve.” [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
Category:
E-Commerce
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