Ben Guttmann

Status, language, and airports

What does it mean to be an "international" airport? Well, it depends on who's doing the talking. We use big words, fancy titles, and industry jargon when we’re afraid we won’t measure up. When we need the status, we call in the cavalry – but while these labels definitely say something about us, it might not be what we want.

September 21, 2023

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What are you arguing about? (There are only three options)

There are a lot of things we argue about. Politics. Manners. Money. Education. Sports. Business strategy. Vacation plans. Dinner plans. It’s one of our fundamental modes of interacting with others. But despite that infinite list of debate topics, all arguments can fit into just three categories: blame, values, or choice.

September 18, 2023

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Ads are everywhere, and it's only going to get worse

More. More. More. Not so quietly, we’ve found ourselves in a rapidly escalating battle with ads. Like sand after coming home from the beach, ads have found their way into everything – including some spaces that we’d really rather not have them. We’ve entered a new frontier of ad creep, and it’s only going to get worse from here.

September 11, 2023

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Everybody is blowing up their brands

I wish I could stop caring about Twitter. But this week, Musk again took centerstage with another antic that is so ridiculous you can’t help but pay attention: he’s changing the app’s name from Twitter to “X.” It's not the only brand to have hastily discarded years of equity recently.

July 24, 2023

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Brands can't stay cool forever

The ceaseless march of time comes for us all, and it has come for these hallmarks of millennial culture. To varying degrees many of the things that were at one point nominally “cool” or at least somewhat popular are now, as the reigning tastemaking generation would call it, cheugy. Is there a way out of this coolness death spiral?

May 16, 2023

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