THIS WEEK SUMMED UP

Blast from the past marketing is all the rage, our internet's about to get a whole lot faster, and Gen Z feels like crap (thanks, TikTok... 🙄).

Reading Time: 1 minutes and 57 seconds

THREE PARTS THAT MATTER

Marketing

It’s been 18 months of a risk-off environment, so there isn’t a lot of innovation out there - instead it’s an everything-old-is-new-again Spring ‘24. Old IP, new channels, some more obscure collaborations. Neopets has been revived, Coca Cola launched a Marvel Collab, there’s ‘Barbiecue’ sauce from Barbie and Heinz (we’ve been loving all their ketchup dispensing billboards in Chicago), Fallout the-game-now-the-TV-show on Amazon by the Westworld Nolan not Oppenheimer Nolan and Pringles is coming for Crocs. To be the bearer of bad news - Pringles Crush Boots did sell out in less than 24 hours this week but you can still grab some Pringles Classic Crocs for your summer vacay.

In that spirit, we’ve been discussing some oldie-but-goodies articles - McKinsey’s *turning creativity into growth* and *What is Modern Marketing* from Jim “The Oracle” Babb. They still hold true  - comforting when it can feel like everything is changing all at once.

TikTok are testing AI influencers for ads and LinkedIn is testing premium AI company posts so maybe there is some innovation after all 👀.

Culture

*Mid-life crisis-level depression* is hitting Gen Z early and technology, particularly social media, is likely to blame. Psychologist, Jonathan Hadit, says that the digital age has rewired the way children grow and learn, leading to a rise in mental health challenges.

*Florida* and *Texas* are responding to the idea that social media is causing the drop in reported happiness levels by regulating platform access based on age. Platforms are also introducing new regulations like Meta’s update to restrict targeting audiences under 18.

Sadly, sextortion is one of the biggest risks kids and teens face online, but most parents don't understand how it happens. We’re really proud to announce the launch of the *No Escape Room* - our collaboration with *Grow* for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to raise awareness of this issue and help protect kids.

Technology

*Bye bye buffering!* Fiber optic has been a pillar of technological innovation since 1988 when the first cable was laid across the Atlantic Ocean. A group of researchers based in the UK, U.S. and Japan have *developed a method* to drastically increase transmission capacity of fiber optic cables using an optical amplifier to increase the wavelength of data being transmitted by different colors of light (“bands”).

Long story short, this breakthrough took the typical speed of fiber optic cable in the UK (where the experiment was done) from 69.4 megabits per second to 301,000,000 megabits 🤯. That’s *4.5 million times faster* than typical broadband speed. (Yes, the U.S. has faster internet than the UK but this improvement would still make our internet over 1 million times faster!).

The real news with this breakthrough: it requires no updates to fiber optic infrastructure already in use. That means millennial cables will be supporting Gen Alpha’s and our AI overlord's internet needs long into the future.

WHAT ELSE WE ARE READING