Not to be cliché, but spring has sprung, people! 🐣 Soooo you must be feeling an itch for a change up, yeah? Maybe a new motto? A new direction for your personal or company brand? Maybe it’s time to say buh-bye to something that’s weighing you down?
Well, do we have a newsletter for youuu!
Starting with bite sized wisdom from teens who’ve clearly lived several past lives. Here’s a sampler:
“We struggle with being wrong instead of what we learned by being wrong.” — Karis
Ok, Karis.
Enjoy the reads and listens below, enjoy the ever-increasing sunshine, and we hope you’re all doing well! 🌞
What lies below
Wisdom from (really deep) high school kiddos
Brands are bored with navigating the pandemic
How the Casper brand has evolved past mattresses (FYI)
Legit great advice on rethinking a bad decision
👶 Farnam Street Twitter thread feat. deep aphorisms from high school students
4ish mins
For those also not in the know → aph·o·rism (noun): a pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it.”.
//Faaiza: Do you guys listen to The Knowledge Project podcast? I love it! Recently, a high school class in Florida studied Shane Parrish’s book on mental models. This tweet thread is a collection of some aphorisms created by students after reading the book.
What’s your fave? Mine is “The only hurdle to overcome is yourself.” — Ryan
//Moly: “Silence should not be seen as ignorance nor disinterest.” — Mikaelah (and all the rest of Mikaelah’s in that thread—I like her vibe!). There’s no pressure to talk if you’re still thinking or if you’ve got nothing to say.
//Moirae: There are so many good quotes in this thread. I have put a few on my mirror to wake up to and inspire myself. Here are a few of my favs.
“Don’t be the guy everyone fears. Be the person everyone aspires to be near.” — Kanijah
“With your eyes constantly focused on the map, you will miss the territory and everything around it.” — Ryan
“Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture allows us to understand the whole problem.” — Karis
💉 Vox | We’re ready for the pandemic to end and so are brands
6ish mins
Read the article
Don’t be fooled, though. The summer of 2021 could possibly be the horniest of our lifetimes: We’ve missed the anonymous comfort of dark, crowded spaces and the adrenaline-fueled messiness of a night out among strangers.
//Moirae: It is Interesting to see how much the voice and tone of brands have changed since the start of the pandemic. It started out with so much uncertainty of how to navigate, pivot, and replan campaigns that many brands were staying silent. Fast forward to 12 months and we now have many brands tailoring their messaging towards optimism and humour and making light of our current global pandemic.
I agree with what this article outlines, that we already live in large part in excess, so we don’t need brands to tell us how to live and experience pleasure again—it is rather simply just a matter of time before we experience what we are lacking. And with that, I hypothesize it will come with a boom for many industries, particularly tourism.
//Moly: 2020 was a crash course in creating appropriate communications. I am absolutely ready to have more fun and be more free with messaging as this article implies is on the horizon—but I will never (I hope) fail to pause and consider all the angles of perception and world events. A little extra care in prep is much more preferable to cleaning up a tone-deaf mess.
👻 Modern Retail: Casper’s Emilie Arel on how its branding and product line has evolved
33 mins
//Faaiza: Evolving your brand should feel natural and make sense to your customers. In Casper’s evolution from a “mattress” brand to a “sleep” brand, Emilie talks about how they change their imagery and voice, and walks through how it impacts product development. Using sleep as an anchor, they looked at what comes next—what is within arm’s reach of your bed, what works in conjunction with your mattress to give you a good sleep?
//Moly: Emilie’s emphasis on training wholesale partners to be equal to Casper employees in standalone stores was another proof point for the power of consistency—which I’m all about when it comes to marketing.
I think about it through messaging a lot of the time, especially during the pandemic when Jobber’s in person events are on hold, but it’s nice to reflect on the time we’ve spent as an events team figuring out how everyone we meet in person can get the same welcoming experience our Sales and Success teams provide on the phone.
And this is a good reminder and reinforcement from a super experienced executive that those discussions and details are so valuable.
🙏 Worklife with Adam grant: How to rethink a bad decision
38 mins
Accompanying tweet:
//Moly: According to Adam, ‘escalation of commitment’ is what keeps us stubborn about sticking with an idea or venture when it’s not working out—our egos are afraid of letting go. (I think a more common/similar term for this is ‘sunk cost.’) So to avoid that, it’s interesting to think about spending time figuring out what your ‘kill signal’ is for a project, job, anything and using that objective signal to make a tough decision.
I think it’d be fun to start a project with identifying a ‘kill signal’ and calling it that—so dramatic in addition to being useful.
//Moirae: “Normalize failure” has me thinking how much revenue companies would actually save if more organizations encouraged employees to establish a kill signal before diving into the project, rather than pushing forward with something that is not working. This also minimizes bruised egos, especially when the call to kill a project that isn’t working is celebrated.
//Faaiza: The tweet says it all.
I loved hearing about the Google X Rapid Evaluator who used her evaluation methodology to kill her own project when it deserved to be. And 👏👏 to her manager for building a culture that normalizes failure!
Spoiler alert: although she killed her project at Google, it became the basis for her new venture!
This message is a nice complement to the quote I read in James Clear’s latest newsletter:
"If you never fail, you’re only trying things that are too easy and playing far below your level... If you can’t remember any time in the last six months when you failed, you aren’t trying to do difficult enough things."
Normalizing failure will inspire teams to reach further. Clearly this is a message I needed to hear this month!
A little background
North & Now started as an idea for a conference in 2016, and though we shelved that, we’ve continued to gather around these beliefs:
1. Look at leaders in other industries in order to be leaders in your own
2. Identifying opportunities is a learned skill (this one’s our favourite)
3. A fresh perspective on something familiar to you can be a game changer
If you want to send us links you think we’d like or want to discuss a fun idea, hit reply or send us a note:
Faaiza → Twitter (most active) / Instagram (infrequent posts, frequent scrolls)
Moirae → Instagram (her stories are 🔥) / Twitter (all business, no play)
Moly →Instagram (follow for wine/podcast recs) / Twitter (all things community)