The online mattress brand is now no stranger to physical retail; it has over 50 stores worldwide, hosted a glamping trip during the last total solar eclipse, and even set up a pay as you go nap hotel in New York called the Dreamery.
All Threads
In the film Cast Away, Tom Hanks’ only desert island companion is a Wilson volleyball. A heartwarming friendship, and perhaps the most effective product placement of all time; Wilson paid nothing for the feature, which is unheard of in Hollywood today, and insiders say that it is still one of the top three things people know about the brand two decades later. In fact the brand still sells 20-25,000 ‘Cast Away’ balls per year.
Neutering dogs is considered normal, but it’s seen as barbaric when done to humans.
In ancient Egypt, cats were objects of worship – considered to be a manifestation of the goddess Bastet. Fast forward to Europe in the Middle Ages, and cats had become linked with witchcraft by the Catholic Church. Thus ensued a 300 year campaign of systematic feline torture and genocide, the goal of which was to exterminate cats entirely.
Cazoo’s £6 billion valuation hinted that all car buying would be done online. But the company has now gone into administration, after generating losses of £700 million in 2022.
In Japan 78% of music sales are still physical CDs. But it’s not because consumers love the audio quality – it’s because CDs allow fans to engage with artists, who will bundle them with perks such as concert ticket vouchers, invitations to meet-and-greet events, and voting cards.
Want to be a CEO? It helps to be tall. In the U.S, 14.5% of men are 6ft or taller. Among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, 58% are 6ft or taller (4x increase).
One of the main determinants of whether people donate to charity is not whether they can afford to but whether they are asked to. The percentage of people being frequently asked to donate plummeted during Covid-19. Sure enough, the percentage who donated fell – and only really recovered at the end of 2023, when charities started asking again.
Charli XCX used a text cover for Brat – her breakout album of 2024 – purely to save money. She didn’t think the album would appeal to lots of people, so didn’t want to waste money on the album design.
ChatGPT gradually spits out information as if it was thinking and responding in real time. In reality, the code was instantly ready when you clicked the prompt – but it presents the illusion of effort.
ChatGPT may dominate conversations on LinkedIn, but it’s still relatively niche: even among 18-24s, its biggest audience, only a quarter use it at least weekly.
The Chilean sea bass is a marketing invention. Lee Lantz, a fish wholesaler, wanted a more attractive way of describing the Patagonian toothfish so he could sell it to Americans.
The China playbook: go from bottom to top in a matter of years.
To overtake Johnnie Walker as market leader, Chivas Regel simply acted like market leader; putting the price up, and creating ads that didn’t show the pack (because number 1 is always recognisable).
Sending Christmas cards is a dying tradition, but it’s being kept alive by the social media generation. In a 2024 survey, under 35s were most likely to send at least one card, and the majority planned to send more than in the previous year.