The Song of Summer is a Flavor
The bidirectional hype halo turned a classic popsicle into a trending flavor. Food culture is now mass culture.
Yes this is a silly World Cup meme tweet.
But also yes this is a great line:
Some prices are not prices. They are promises.
What promises are you making?
Small business chapter 11 bankruptcy filings were up 36% year-over-year in May.
It’s not just small businesses, though the other deltas are smaller.
Insight of note:
The trend highlights the cumulative impact of elevated interest rates, persistent inflation, and higher operating costs. As access to affordable credit remains constrained, more businesses and consumers are turning to restructuring tools to stabilize and reset financially.
A persistent erosion of wallets and moods as the high tide of prices continues to rise.
The Ghost in the Map 🧭
Making a marketing strategy is a bit like making a map.
You plot the landscape. You mark the features you deem noteworthy.
You create potential paths between them.
Ultimately you end with a starting point, a destination, a recommended route between the two, and maybe a couple back up routes. (And hopefully a measurement system that lets you know when you get where you’re going.)
But just like the trap of proxy metrics, it’s important to remember:
Maps don’t show reality, they give you a way of visualizing it.
And much like a strategy or plan:
Every map focuses on some things and leaves other things out. Making a map means making choices about what’s important to you. What the world is really, truly like in every single detail doesn’t matter; what matters is what specifically about the world you want to show. Orientation’s part of that—it can help emphasize what information is significant. And you can orient a map however you want, as long anyone else who needs to read it can figure out how to orient it too.
from Ghosts of Greenglass House by Kate Milford 📚