Upstream #186

status update 🤴, software ⎔, stakes 🌍, light speed 🏎, rhubarb 📖

Hey. How’s it all? Busy few weeks. Went to Porto and ate well. Became a LEGO SERIOUS PLAY designer and facilitator. Awesome. Right, let's go.

"Your life’s a nanosecond; if you have a contribution to make, then make it. Don’t bitch about it, just do it."

Richard Serra

culture // status update

Status is a huge ugly force we rarely talk about. Material wealth and conscious consumption, has driven a lot of our behaviour. But stuff is cheaper. And mostly, easy to get. So conferring status with things, is weaker and has less meaning. Rob Henderson believes we have decoupled social status from goods and reattached it to beliefs. While Columbia Professor Silvia Bellezza, believes status doesn't come from where you're going in the cultural landscape, but from how far you are from others. His paper "Distance and Alternative Signals of Status” breaks down how status used to be a directional game (moving up), but now it's a distance game and proposes a framework of alternative signals along six dimensions: time (new/old), quantity (many possessions/few possessions), conspicuousness (conspicuous/inconspicuous), aesthetics (beautiful/ugly), culture (highbrow/lowbrow), and pace of life (slow/fast). Status games are ever present, but the rules have changed. Keep up.

brands // software

The consumer funnel can apparently get in the f*cking sea. It lives in the old world, and Gen Z don’t live there anymore. This is according to new research from youth agency Archival, who found that Gen Z’s have broken the marketing funnel. Instead of the traditional linear AIDA model, their life on social media, is an infinite loop of inspiration, exploration, community & loyalty. A world of influencers, algorithms, and impulse at light speed. A world increasingly mediated by software. So software brands are growing up and becoming more influential. We're in the era of modern software companies as lifestyle brands. Beyond utility, they’re now focussed on delivering an experience and forging resonant identities. We may see: Haute Couture software, Luxury software, DIY software, Economy software, Indie software. Some examples are: Arc, Linear, Amie, Pitch, Craft, Arena, Superhuman, Loop, June, Campfire, Notion. And as software brands become more “brand'y”, should brands become more like software? Should we be viewing brands as operating systems? The great blur continues.

creativity // stakes

Brian Collins is great. He recently wrote about resilient futures and how, what happens now matters, because what happens next depends on it. He says, “our job as designers is to help companies and organisations see, create and communicate their places in the future” and how "we have to look beyond the stakeholders of today….First and foremost, even before stakeholders, we have to think about stakes”. Everything has consequences. But this line in particular, sat with me "we are at a moment in history where almost everything needs to be rethought, reimagined and done different: How products are made. How services are delivered. Packaging. Materials. Business models. The stakes couldn’t be higher”. Change is a creative act. Creativity needs to act. Which may mean changing our beliefs, to focus on what we really value. Adam Grant talks about the dangers of letting beliefs become our identity. If we define ourselves by our beliefs, we see questioning them as a threat. But curious lifelong learners, see changing their mind as a moment of growth.

technology // light speed

Another day, another AI story. Coca Cola are using GenAI A LOT. They’ve found 10-30X faster concept iteration cycles and 38% higher audience testing scores and they're getting 32% of content creation & 17% of R&D ideation from AI. Pfizer are flying with their AI platform, Charlie, improving the company’s content supply chain, along with content creation and editing, It also helps with fact-checking and legal reviews. Meanwhile Under Armour just launched an AI ad. It features Anthony Joshua in various scenes, but no additional footage was shot. Just AI generated footage. Working with production company Tool, they're creating a dataset representing UA’s “visual DNA,” It’s growing fast and spreading. Zoe Scaman wrote a field guide on strategy in the age of AI. And here some artists give feedback on Sora (from OpenAI so hardly unbiased). It’s all happening. But still let’s not forget that sh*t that arrives at light speed, is still sh*t.

five random (ish) things:

1. What addiction feels like 😳.
2. Digital ecommerce trends 📱.
3. Quiet is the new loud 🤫.
4. 10 women. 6 days. From Lululemon 🏃♀️.
5. Story about loss, objects & memory 🎧.

watching // rhubarb

Some things matter. Some things are meaning-full. Beautiful story about growing, family, legacy and change from organic perfume brand Ffern. Enjoy.