Brand users are 3 times more likely to remember ads than non users. In other words, market leaders (with more users) have an inherent advantage when it comes to getting noticed.
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ADHD diagnoses in America spike by 14% on Halloween, compared to the ten weekdays before or after that. Why? The children are examined on the day they get to wear a fun costume and collect bucketloads of candy – suggesting doctors often mistake simple excitement for ADHD.
Adobe increased retention rates by 8% with a simple tweak to their call centre scripts: instead of asking customers why they were cancelling, which had been the default question, agents now asked, “why did you choose Adobe in the first place?” A subtle change that reminded the customer of the reasons they chose Adobe in the first place.
An after-school centre in Israel started fining parents if they picked their kids up too late. But it made the problem worse: late pick ups increased as the fine was now seen as a ‘fee for services’.
It’s rarely thought of as the key to national productivity. But without it, people in hot countries can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. That’s why there is a strong correlation between GDP and temperature, and why Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, said “the first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked.”
When Nike first created the Air Jordan shoe, the NBA fined them $5,000 every time Jordan wore it because it wasn’t 50% white. Rather than changing the shoe, Nike re-framed the fine; for only $5,000, they could get their shoes on Michael Jordan for the entire 48 minutes of the game and look totally different from every other shoe out there. Air Jordans now earn Nike $7 billion every year.
The 2025 Washington plane crash showed that air traffic control is run by people not numbers. On the day, only one air traffic control worker was managing the Reagan National Airport tower – a job normally done by two people – which meant they were unable to co-ordinate all relevant departures safely. In fact a separate analysis has shown that 90% of all US airport towers are understaffed.
Airbnb is in the business of travel, not just accommodation. In 2016 it launched the ‘experiences’ feature, which allows guests to book everything from local tours to restaurants.
Airbnb recently launched a co-host network to make it easier for hosts to manage their properties. Co-hosts will create a listing on Airbnb, take photos, clean, and manage check-in with guests. It’s an effective way of encouraging potential hosts to promote their properties, and a big step for Airbnb in the battle to find supply.
In 2024 Airbnb introduced ‘Icons’ – experiences hosted by the greatest names in music, film, television, art and sports. Guests can stay in the floating house from Up, the Ferrari Museum in Maranello, Italy and even the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. A brilliant way of making the brand culturally relevant.
In the early days of Airbnb, its founders realised they had a problem: the subpar photos that property owners were taking on their iPhones would never work for customers looking for an alternative to a hotel. So they hired professional photographers to go to property owners’ homes to take inviting pictures. Hardly scalable, but a key step in showcasing quality and eventually dominating the market.
Airbnb was launched for conference attendees who were unable to stay in a hotel. “Finally, an alternative to expensive hotels” was its first tagline. But airbedandbreakfast.com (as it was then known) received little traction in the early days; only two people used it for the 2008 South by Southwest conference in Austin. So it shifted away from conferences and towards general travel.
When Designer Jeremy Myerson was working at Heathrow Terminal 5, he discovered that older people didn’t always go to the toilet for the obvious reason: they went to hear flight announcements. “They have trouble listening to and reading information in large, busy, open concourses, while ceramic-clad toilets have perfect sound and close-up graphics.”
The US accounts for one third of all the world’s airports, with over 15,000 to it’s name, but the vast majority of countries have fewer than 100.
Aldi makes it hard (actually, impossible) to buy branded goods and to have them delivered to your home. But this obstacle allows the brand to keep ruthlessly competitive prices, and frees up staff to assist customers in stores.