The Greeks had a very precise meaning for the word ‘nostalgia.’ Let Don Draper tell you all about it. Today, though, nostalgia is more loosely defined, and we can find everywhere. On a daily basis we’re broadsided with new pieces of ’80s and ’90s nostalgia, whether we want it or not. A Lisa Frank movie? … Continued
My younger sister is a nurse. She is, without question, the most amazing person I know. She spent all of 2015 working at an orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal. The orphanage itself was just as people might imagine: no running water, spotty electricity on a good day, understaffed and overcrowded. This all, of course, made practicing … Continued
“Can you hear me now?” is an all-timer of a tagline. It ranks up there with the greats, like “Just do it” and “Think different.” Hearing it immediately brings to mind a campaign, a product and, most importantly, how that product outdoes its competitors. It’s a rhetorical question, a statement of differentiation, of preeminence. It … Continued
Poker players often talk about tilt, the adrenaline that kicks in after a big win or loss, causing your brain to float or blood to boil. You might get tilted after the person next to you hits a straight on the last card, or you maybe you go on tilt after you win the biggest … Continued
Sepia photographs passed down from generation to generation are a thing of the past. We live in the age of Snapchat, where our recorded experiences are fleeting, made to disappear after just several seconds. So it follows naturally that the world we live in itself becomes more ephemeral. Experiences, advertisements, even buildings themselves are intentionally … Continued
There is no shortage of doom and gloom when it comes to technology. The robots might revolt; the singularity could render humans irrelevant; the self-driving cars will ferry us into the ocean, one by one. But for every theory of technology going bad in the future, there are a dozen real-life examples of technology being … Continued
There’s an argument a friend and I often have, and to many I’m sure it seems petty. It’s about the Oxford comma (or the serial comma, if you’re less into England and more into long-form radio shows). Conversations have gotten so heated that she and I have agreed to not speak of the subject while … Continued
There are many competing theories as to what a day-to-day office culture should look like. Some espouse a rigid, no frills atmosphere where work is king and everything else—conversation, coffee, camaraderie—takes a strict backseat. Others believe in a familial workplace. They prefer that employees are more than just 9 to 5 acquaintances, but, dare I … Continued
Some brands are prone to bombardment. They buy up massive amounts of advertising space with zero strategic underpinning. Quite simply, it’s quantity over quality. For the biggest brands, this approach can work—ubiquity isn’t a bad thing, because they can afford it. For the great majority of brands, however, a system like this is both unwise … Continued
How do you brand outer space? That’s essentially the question NASA found itself asking several years ago. The agency had just shut down the shuttle program, and was looking at a future far different from its past. The public view of NASA had veered into nostalgia. The agency was a relic, associated with Kennedy and … Continued