Nick

The AmEx marketing sells"premium perks."
The ground truth is a"No AmEx"sign in a Paris cafe.
Merchants can now legally refuse high-fee cards
The most valuable network isn't the one with the best "synergies." It's the one that actually works at the register.
#Fintech #AmEx #Visa #Payments #CX #Travel

The press release calls the new US Bank split-card a“flexible payment solution.”
It’s a BuyNow,PayLater scheme for your electric bill, launched just in time to prop up Q4.
The official story is"consumer choice." The ground truth is "consumer desperation."
#Fintech #Economy #Consumer #BNPL #Banking

ESPN's$2B betting failure wasn't a"strategic pivot."It was a catastrophic failure of imagination
Disney is SYNERGY. So why was ESPN Bet just a generic,reskinned app? Why no Star Wars pod-racing bets?They had the world's best IP and refused to use it.
#Disney #ESPN #BrandStrategy #Innovation #Synergy

Want to predict Disney's next earnings report? Go feel the napkins in the Magic Kingdom. They're thinner.
This isn't a supply chain issue
The layoffs, the reduced hours, and the cheap-o napkin aren't three problems. They're one spreadsheet-driven decision.
#Disney #CX #Brand #Investing #MagicKingdom

Stop reading analyst reports. They're lagging indicators.
Start reading the napkins. They're confessions.
The analyst sees "margin improvement."
The customer feels the napkin get cheaper.
The report is the curated story. The napkin is the ground truth.
#Business #Investing #Strategy #GroundTruth

open.substack.com/pub/nfhwfh/p...

Tiny, petty annoyances of the modern age: Every time this line I'm on hold with gives the, "Thank you for waiting, please hold for the next available..." spiel, the hold music resets to the beginning and so this song never actually gets across the bridge.

AI is coming for middle management.
Pushing a flood of highly-qualified people down into the entry-level job market.
The "great squeeze" is here. This is no longer a fringe idea. This is the central, practical case for a Universal Basic Income.
#AI #FutureOfWork #Economy #UBI #BasicIncome

The internet became our"third space."No wonder we're miserable and isolated.
We traded the coffee shop for a digital feed, and it hollowed us out.
The great rejection is coming.The next wave of business will be local,in-person,and sell real community
#ThirdPlace #Community #FutureOfBusiness #Culture

Looking for a Diner in #Dublin
24 hour preferred, of the Bobs Big Boy variety while not needed, appreciated.

#bobsbigboy
#diner
#ireland

Shopping is not freedom. It's a second, unpaid job. A labyrinth of 7,000 reviews just to buy a pen
The next great luxury is not more choice. It's the freedom of not having to choose
An AI agent you trust to just"handle it"is the great reckoning for brands
#AI #FutureOfCommerce #CX #Marketing #Luxury

The theme park model is inverting.
Disney is building"mixtapes":a physical feed of random IPs to scroll through
Universal is building"books":cohesive, immersive worlds
One is an IP-pop The other is a long-term bet on immersion A dangerous game
#Disney #Universal #EpicUniverse #Placemaking #Immersion

We are getting a sequel to the social network, can we reboot Silicon Valley?

Silicon Reconning?

#siliconvalley
#socialnetwork

The corporate creed of "good enough" is a rot.
The internal question isn’t "Is it great?"but"Is it better than it needs to be?" Excellence is a threat. It sets a new standard. A mediocre product, propped up by 50 years of nostalgia, is just a safer bet.
#Disney #CX #BrandStrategy #Zootopia #Business

The counter-signal has begun.
As AI floods the market with deepfakes and "personalized" slop, smart brands like Aerie and Heineken are marketing themselves as "AI-Free."
"Human-Made" is the new luxury. Trust is the only asset that doesn't scale.
#AI #BrandStrategy #Marketing #Trust #CX

Let’s not get married to that language.

#usgov #fdic #banking

The Great Detachment is here.
Since GPT 2.5, job postings are down 1/3, & the S&P 500 is up 75%.
Layoffs aren't a sign of failure. They're a strategy. Companies are freeing up cash for AI, betting their future growth is no longer tied to headcount.
#AI #Economy #FutureOfWork #Investing #Layoffs

We stand at a wonderful turning point. The old way of "taking" is giving way to a new challenge: "How do we create in a way that lasts?"
This isn't a limit; it's the start of our greatest adventure. A future where our prosperity and our planet grow together.

The Freedom of “Good Enough” Shopping is not about choice.

What does the Marketing funnel look like when there is no funnel?

open.substack.com/pub/nfhwfh/p...

So, the lights flickered! a new challenge, a new frontier.
We built a magnificent tower.
Now, our ingenuity is called upon to build something even better: not a single tower, but a resilient network, connected, distributed, and strong.
Singularity brings us too close to the sun
#AWS

The phone was more of a state of mind, than an actual physical product.

We are masters at building worlds.
So why do we build a magnificent, immersive world, only to chase people through it?
The public doesn't just want to be scared; they want to wonder. The future of immersion is in trusting the audience. Let them explore the magic you've built.
#HHN
#UniversalStudios

We are seeing startups make LLM “versions” of human-oriented sites. Definitely a patchwork, but likely it’ll be net-new sites that build after the pop and consolidation.

We have unlocked a fountain of creation.
New tools give us more of everything, instantly.
But abundance is not the same as wisdom.

The great new frontier is curation.

The future belongs to the storytellers and the guides who can find the true magic in all that noise.

#futureofwork

#futureofwork #ai

#stockrally #memestock

It's a curious game, this trading of symbols and sentiment.
But a ticker is not a product.
A rally is not a real business.
Real, lasting value will always be found in making something wonderful, something useful.
The future isn't a meme; it's what we choose to build.

We are building marvelous machines that do the work for us. And in their grand success,
humanity if freed for its next great challenge: to find our purpose not in the labor of our hands, but in the growth of our minds, our creativity, and our communities.

Progress doesn't ask for permission. We often make the mistake of protecting the process when we should be protecting the person.
Our job isn't to build a time machine to yesterday. It's to build a launchpad for tomorrow, giving everyone the security to take that great leap.