This week a short but powerful piece from former model Paulina Porizkova casts a powerful light on the role of women in different cultures and her own struggles with being a woman first in the Czech Republic, then in Sweden and finally in her adopted home of America. Touching on sexuality, power, and politics –
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This week the entire US-based publishing industry is descending upon New York for a three day celebration of books known as the BookExpo. I’m here on behalf of my publishing company Ideapress, and so this week’s insights will focus on books. Below you will read about the bold new way that libraries are reinventing themselves
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What is the most hipster-centric product you could imagine? The answer is just one of the six interesting stories curated for you in this week’s newsletter. Along with the ironically true tale of the invention of the “Avolatte,” you’ll read about new efforts to become more relevant and innovative from the USPS, a promising new
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As I sat bombarded with the same stories over and over this week, I found myself longing for something different. I feel that way a lot. So this week, my curated stories deliver on just one promise: they are genuinely fascinating ideas for products and services. From a slow checkout line designed to offer a
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This week I kept seeing the recurring theme of convenience. Whether it was a story about how cell phones can be used for monitoring disease carrying mosquitos to a new Amazon Echo Virtual Stylist that will judge your new outfit. There is a new portable scanner that will test the pesticides in your fruit and
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This week a theme that emerged in the stories was that of the many faces of failure. There is a new museum in Sweden celebrating product and cultural failures of modern times. A former Silicon Valley darling chat app called YikYak failed and lost hundreds of millions of perceived/bloated valuation. The Met Gala stuck to
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This week the FTC sent warning letters to more than 90 “influencers and marketers” as a reminder to disclose when social media posts are paid for by advertisers. The move comes in a week filled with stories about the nature of influencer marketing, the sad reality of what it takes to be popular today and exactly
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The past week has offered plenty of stories that seem designed to invite outrage. From Pepsi’s tone deaf ad to Bill O’Reilly’s mistreatment of women to a passenger forcibly removed from a United flight. The common reaction online to all of these stories is one of shared outrage. It is an emotion we are feeling and
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Senior citizens now officially outnumber the young people in Taiwan, and there is a growing worldwide shift among brands to embrace older consumers instead of largely ignoring them in favor of their younger counterparts. This week’s stories feature brands in traditionally younger targeted industries like athletics and lingerie using older ambassadors. Meanwhile a new startup promises
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The stories this week are wide ranging – as I share one about an admirable new effort from Grey Advertising to promote diversity and offer more transparency into the diversity of their team supported by a few other programs that will help drive more inclusion in an industry that often lacks it. Other stories include
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