Nouns. Verbs. Emerging Issues. Yoko Ono. Sneakers. | Brigadoon Weekend

Brigadoon Weekend

Connecting curious minds to curious ideas.

December 11, 2021

Ross Rant:

Nouns. Verbs.

"I am the Vice President of Sweet Tooth Vending Machines."

"I am the Chief Marketing Officer for Acme Lollipops."

"I am the General Manager of Candy Wrappers."

These are all examples of being a noun.

These are statements for people who are telling what they are.

These people are nouns.

These are not statements for people telling you what they are doing.

Whereas.

"I am producing a film."

"I am innovating grass turf."

"I am solving medical challenges in the inner cities."

These are statements for people who are telling what they are doing.

These people are verbs.

These are not statements for people who are telling you what they are.

Don't always be a noun; embrace being a verb.

-Marc

Five Weekend Reads:

Five Weekend Reads:

Shein: The Chinese company storming the world of fast fashion: The brand has become the biggest in the US market by being cheaper and quicker than rivals like Zara. But is its model sustainable?
FT

The sublime spectacle of Yoko Ono disrupting the Beatles: In Peter Jackson's "The Beatles: Get Back," Ono is a performance artist at the height of her powers.
NYT

Sneakers are now 3D-printed and metaverse-ready: These startups push the footwear sector forward as sneaker sales soared.
Sifted

How Bake Off conquered America
Robert Jackman

An NFT collector hit Art Basel for a crash course. The WSJ tagged along. Felix Xu, a leading digital-art collector and co-founder and CEO of crypto startups Arpa and Bella Protocol, made his first visit to Art Basel Miami Beach and discovered much to respect.
WSJ


Quote of the Week:

"We had to manually give them food like in ancient times."

-- Kyle Lerner, a 29-year-old small business owner, tells the Wall Street Journal that his cats' automatic feeder stopped working due to the Amazon Web Services' outage this week.


Books of the Week:

The DO Team's 100+ must-read books in 2021
The DO Lectures

Brigadoon Events:


Photographer + Good Guy to Know: Brendan Kownacki
Tuesday, December 14, 2021 | Sessions available between 11:00 am - 3:00 pm ET
Sign up here.

Brigadoon Monthly Call: Train yourself to be more creative

Speaker: Major Tom Gaines + Dr. Angus Fletcher
Wednesday, December 15, 2021 | 2:00 - 2:45 pm ET
$15 - $45
Google Meet live or On-demand

Sign up here.

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Upgrade your competitive advantage in a fast-changing global business environment and grow your network.

We keep members hush-hush, but the network is entrepreneurs + independent thinkers worldwide working on emerging issues shaping commerce and culture.

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Have a great weekend.

-Marc

Marc A. Ross | Founder + Chief Curator @ Brigadoon

Brigadoon is Global Street Smarts.

Connecting curious minds to curious ideas.

More @ thebrigadoon.com

Emerging Issues Weekly | No. 1

Emerging Issues Weekly | No. 1 | December 10, 2021

Curating the top ten emerging issues from the week shaping commerce + culture.

ONE

16% of Americans say they have ever invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency, according to Pew.

+ Men ages 18 to 29 are particularly likely to say they have used cryptocurrencies.

Look for incumbent financial institutions to take crypto more and more seriously, just like Visa, which unveiled a crypto advisory service for its institution and retail clients.

TWO

Shein adds 6,000 new items online each day, far more than any comparable retailer manages.

Plus, it responds in real-time to trends picked up not by fashionistas and designers but by analytics, which trawls through shopping and social media websites.

Shein is also very cheap. The average unit price of their more than 600,000 products is just $7.90.

Look for more fast fashion companies to copy Shein, which has turned shopping into a form of online entertainment.

THREE

Get ready for the Beijing Splinter Olympics.

So far, no government officials from Australia, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Lithuania, or the US will attend the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Look for an increased hyper-politicization of global sport.

FOUR

100m = Number of Americans who signed up for Disney+ within its first 18 months on the market.

Disney executives see streaming as an era-defining opportunity.

Executives at the company say this is the most significant burst of innovation since the 1930s studio gold rush.

Look for increased convergence of entertainment and technology.

Disney alone has said it will spend $33 billion on content (including sports rights) in 2022, while Netflix plans to spend $22 billion and WarnerMedia $18 billion.

FIVE

The first round of the 2022 French presidential election is April 10, 2022.

Voting intentions for the 1st round of the French presidential election 2022:

23% Macron

18% Le Pen

14% Zemmour

14% Pécresse

11% Mélenchon

7% Jadot

Harris Interactive, December 3-6, 2021

Look for no candidate to win a majority of the vote in the first round and plan for a runoff between the top two candidates on April 24, 2022.

SIX

Horns With Heart says it will offer every University of Texas Longhorns offensive lineman on scholarship $50,000 annually beginning next August to use their name, image, and likeness (NIL) to support charitable causes.

Six Texas alumni and supporters founded Horns With Heart.

Look for more school alumni and sports boosters to develop NIL joint scholarship-charitable organizations.

SEVEN

Sales of NFTs reached $10.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021, up more than eightfold from the previous quarter, according to the market tracker DappRadar.

More than half of NFTs sold in Q3 were $101-$1,000.

Look for more gaming-related NFTs to surge with the development of "play-to-earn" for blockchain-based games.

EIGHT

About 49 percent of prepandemic moviegoers are no longer buying tickets. According to a study by Quorum, some of them, roughly 8 percent, have likely been lost forever.

"The research clearly shows that theaters are suffering because the pandemic intensified, accelerated, amplified all of the nascent trends that were already underway." -- Linda Ong, brand strategist @ Cultique

Look for theaters to offer better food and drink offerings with lower prices for classic concessions, newer seats, and better audio experiences.

NINE

Investment bank Cowen states that sneakers are emerging as an alternative asset class for Gen Z.

The sneaker resale sector grew by $4 billion in the two years to 2021, according to US bank Piper Sandler; Cowen estimates it has the "potential to reach" $30 billion by 2030.

A survey last year by the Harris Poll showed that 23 percent of US adults have or plan to purchase limited-edition sneakers, and 37 percent of these said they were motivated by the investment opportunity.

Look for more specialized online marketplaces to reduce the risk of counterfeits with authentication services.

TEN

Ralph Lauren is debuting its first digital fashion line in Roblox's virtual world.

Offering a "Winter Escape" experience in the online universe, Ralph Lauren's items will cost 125 to 300 Robux, or about $1.25 to $3.00.

Players often change the appearance of their avatars, with 1 in 5 doing so daily, said Christina Wootton, Roblox's vice president of global brand partnerships.

Look for online players to try on items in Roblox, then click on a button to get them delivered in the real world.

Make time to watch Get Back

"It shows how mundane creativity can be. I bet most songs begin as a bit of mumbling to oneself like Paul does. I usually write while I'm alone on a walk, singing nonsense until it crystallizes into something meaningful and worth repeating." -- Lucy Dacus, rock musician

Make time to watch Get Back.

Get Back is Peter Jackson's three-part documentary series chronicling the four weeks in January 1969 when the Beatles wrote and created "Let It Be" as well as performed their famous Rooftop Concert, which would essentially be their final performance in front of a live audience.

I know the series is over eight hours.

And sure, to get the most out of this documentary, you'll need to ignore your loved ones and delay mundane chores.

Plus, at times, watching this month-long recording session where all the participants are all at once collaborating, bickering, laughing, being bored, anxious, angry, and gleeful can be a slog.

But this slog is beautiful and worth the effort.

The documentary is you behind the scenes.

Jackson's series captures the inception of the creative process which produced music played the world over for decades.

And don't worry, your loved ones will still love you, and the chores will still be there.

How to be 2022 ready?

Be a pro.

Do two things.

Get a proper headshot.

Train yourself to be more creative.

Brigadoon is organizing a headshot photo session and a call to train your brain's superpower creativity to adapt to fast-changing environments to get you ready for 2022.

Headshot Photos and Monthly Brigadoon Call.


Headshot Photos

On Tuesday, December 14 Brigadoon is teaming up with photographer and good guy to know Brendan Kownacki (Kownacki Media Holdings) to make sure you look good for 2022.

Investing in a high-quality, professionally taken headshot is an investment in your brand and ensures you look good equally online as offline.

You will receive digital dropbox photos, including portrait and landscape versions suitable for bios, social media, websites, media kits, and leave-behinds.


Train yourself to be more creative

On Wednesday, December 15 Brigadoon will host speakers Major Tom Gaines + Dr. Angus Fletcher as they use their Modern War Institute article, The limits of logic: Why narrative thinking is better suited to the demands of modern combat, as a foundation for the call.

Major Tom Gaines and Dr. Angus Fletcher will speak about how you can use narrative and creativity to help gain the initiative and maintain momentum throughout your endeavors.


Book a photo session that works for your schedule and the call can be attended live or watched on-demand.

Be 2022 ready.

Sign up today - click here.