Nike! Lego! Uber! Alienation! And the sneaky practice of “coffee badging”
Summer’s over. What a relief!
As the northern hemisphere summer comes to an end, who can blame anyone for seeking distraction from the train wreck, dumpster fire, roller coaster of life in 2024? Whether you’re Netflix-and-chilling, zoning out to a DJ, playing Candy Crush (still?) or cheering on your pro sports team, there’s nothing wrong with transcending daily reality through entertainment.
But I do wonder whether the accelerated pace and digital anonymity of life have us seeking something beyond distraction. Maybe, deep down inside, we’re craving relief.
Back in my student days I was exposed to Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, which, according to the distinctly non-capitalist Wikipedia, describes:
“the estrangement of people from aspects of their human nature as a consequence of the division of labor and living in a society of stratified social classes. The alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of a social class, the condition of which estranges a person from their humanity.”
So this kind of alienation is all about powerlessness due to the economic and social structure of the world we live in. Without getting all political-philosophical, there’s another, more contemporary way, to interpret alienation.
Social media, friends, and family all bombard us with how we should be living our lives. Think of them as scripts for a movie in which we are the star. Or roadmaps with a destination already marked. Or as zones that we never asked to be pushed into. Maybe we could call them “discomfort zones”.
We are told to hustle while also chilling, to plan for the future while also staying in the now, to consume more while also protecting the planet, to see the world while also respecting tourist destinations, to learn AI while also raw-dogging flights, to be brat while also remaining very demure, very mindful.
A line that was repeated in many different contexts in the 1950s and 60s was “Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat”. It’s funny because it’s true. “Working for The Man” was a downer for the hippies and nowadays it’s a downer for everyone. As I wrote in an article a year ago, the metaphor obscures the wider systems at play. And it seems as though the members of Gen Z are this century’s hippies, judging by how return-to-office has fizzled, and when employees do show up, it’s for as little time as possible (“coffee badging” – see further down the newsletter).
Alienation in 2024 goes way beyond a disconnect from your job or being stuck in a social caste – it’s realizing that you’re following somebody else’s map. So this back-to-school season might be a good time to ask yourself not where you’re heading but who gave you the map you’re following. What if there’s a different map? Are you striving to own a home, to pay off a mortgage, to move to the city, to move out of the city? Any one of these options might be right for you. But if you distract yourself from the choices you’ve made so far in your life, you aren’t doing your older self any favors.
Distraction simply means that you’re looking away from the map someone has thrust into your hands. Relief would be tossing the map aside, parking the car, and using your own mind to decide where you’d like to drive next. Or maybe walk. It’s up to you.
Nike’s logo twist
Rule number one of a corporate logo is you don’t mess with the logo. Everyone in marketing has seen that page in brand guidelines called “Don’ts” or “Misuse”, where a logo is squished, reversed, or messed with in a way that makes art directors want to stab their eyes out with a pencil. (Okay, maybe that’s excessive, but it’s really annoying when a logo is misused.) So what on earth is Nike doing on its soccer jerseys this season? The famous swoosh has been rotated by about 90 degrees to point upward on shirts for teams like Liverpool, Inter Milan, and Atletico Madrid, as well as clubs in Mexico and Brazil.
Why has nobody given a red card to these new designs? The angled logo is intended to draw attention to the “ascendency of Women’s Sport” around the world as part of a corporate campaign called Together We Rise. The growth in women’s soccer is impressive: attendance at the U.S. National Women’s Soccer League up 26% last year, while Deloitte forecasts that revenues from women’s sports could top $1 billion in 2024.
Lego’s moon shot
Pharrell Williams is a prime example of personal brand meeting corporate brand. Not only has the musician and producer been menswear creative director for Louis Vuitton since 2023, he’s the creative force behind Lego’s Over the Moon toy set, which is scheduled to be released on September 20.
What makes this latest collection of colored toy bricks extra special is the ability for kids to see versions of themselves in the characters they create by providing a range of seven skin tones for the 51 customizable minifigure heads, including two that represent Williams and his wife, fashion designer Helen Lasichanh. Lego also announced last week that the storied Danish firm will be eliminating the use of oil in its bricks, to be replaced by renewable materials and recycled plastic, after testing more than 600 materials. And although production costs are expected to rise by 70% as a result of this sustainability initiative, Lego has promised that the price of its sets will not increase as a result and that it is fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032.
Uber’s Nairobi challenge
As a response to rising fuel prices and other cost-of-living factors, Uber drivers in Kenya have formed a union and published an increased rate card for passengers. Needless to say, Uber isn’t happy and neither are many customers who now have to negotiate fares while en route instead of relying on the app rates. The complicating factor is that drivers can rate passengers, so any that complain see their rating decline, making future pickups less likely.
It will be fascinating to see how this situation plays out. Gasoline prices have doubled since Uber first revved up in Kenya. This battle will be between one group of people (shareholders) and another group of people (drivers) on two sides of the Atlantic. And it’s emblematic of economic conflicts we frequently see in deregulated, tech-based markets.
Matt Beane, researcher, founder, and author
Would you use a motorized wheelchair if your legs are able to walk just fine? You could get things done so much faster, right? Except that if you never use your legs, they’ll wither and atrophy, meaning that you’d be stuck needing that wheelchair. Now apply this little scenario to AI. Sure, ChatGPT can compose your emails and maybe that’s fine. But if you consistently use it, will your brain turn to mush? Matt Beane’s new book is called The Skill Code - How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines, and in it he examines how we can put generative AI tools to good use without rendering our skills obsolete.
Q. You’ve come up with the idea of “cognitive prostheses” as a way of framing artificial intelligence platforms and tools. Can you explain what you mean and why this perspective might help combat career anxiety as generative AI is introduced to workplaces?
A. Physical prostheses are technologies that augment or correct bodily functions. Telescopes augment, glasses correct. AI is a technology that does the same for our mental capabilities.
The critical insight from this analogy is that neither tool does anything alone. We're the ones that put it to use. On the augmentation side, it can synthesize art, writing, or code to solve problems you couldn't have tackled before - perhaps that you would have thought were impossible. On the corrective side, generative AI can give you solid material you could otherwise have struggled towards in mere moments. A pair of glasses for knowledge work. At least for the foreseeable future, these cognitive prostheses are not going to function on their own. That means - for the vast majority of us - that we'll be facing job change much more often than we face job loss. Just as you have to change the way you walk, read, or look at the night sky with a new physical prosthesis, you'll have to learn how to do knowledge work differently (perhaps quite a bit differently) to take advantage of generative AI.
So if you're going to be anxious about something related to your career, be anxious about learning. About skill development. How quickly - and how well - can you learn how to use these new tools to do your job differently? That includes the skill and discernment to know when you shouldn't use them, by the way. Skill development is the massive, hidden challenge - and opportunity - lurking in front of billions of us, right now. This is the core message of my recent book, of course: we need to find ways to work with intelligent technologies that preserve and amplify human skill, not erode it. The book is a roadmap as to how to do that - how to futureproof your skills given the advent of intelligent machines.
The core of that roadmap is the skill code itself - three characteristics to keep healthy in your work so that you can be sure you're building valuable skill, and helping others do the same. I call these components the "three Cs": challenge, complexity, and connection. Work near your limits, engage with the bigger picture, and build bonds of trust and respect. For instance, an AI writing assistant could handle routine drafting tasks, allowing you to tackle more challenging and complex projects. If you take those on, using AI could preserve healthy challenges while potentially expanding the scope of work you can undertake. In terms of complexity, cognitive prostheses can help us manage and make sense of vast amounts of information, enabling us to engage with more complex problems and scenarios. If you use it right - don't skip over the detail, but rather seek more advanced, farther-reaching understanding - using AI won't simplify your work to the point of deskilling - it will do the opposite.
As for connection, if you prompt - or even program - AI correctly, it can nudge you towards more bonds of trust and respect through more meaningful collaboration with colleagues, novices, and mentors. I give a more detailed account of this in my Substack post called "Don't Let AI Dumb You Down". The key is to use this cognitive prosthesis in a way that enhances the skill code. Then we can see the stars or read the fine print while enhancing our skill.
Matt Beane does field research on work involving robots and AI to uncover systematic positive exceptions that we can use across the broader world of work. His award-winning research has been published in top management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review, and he has spoken on the TED stage. Beane is an assistant professor in the Technology Management department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Digital Fellow with Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab and MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.
Coffee badging
We may be back to work this week, but work from home is here to stay for many companies and their staff. Quiet quitting was all the rage during the pandemic, and presumably we hear less about it now because its proponents have, you know, quietly quit. But do you know about the third option for hybrid work? The new practice colloquially known as coffee badging is a sneaky way of showing up, then bowing out.
In a nutshell, coffee badging involves going into the office for enough time to grab a coffee and attend a meeting or two before heading home early to beat the traffic. The term was first used in a 2023 report by Owl Labs which revealed that 58% of hybrid workers admitted to “showing face at the office and then leaving”.
Of course, unethical or downright fraudulent employee behavior happens at the management level too. An “engineer” at a major South African firm was just handed a 15-year jail sentence for faking his CV by claiming he had multiple university degrees despite only finishing high school.
Coffee badging and quiet quitting are symptoms of the overarching alienation felt by many employees who refuse to become cogs in machines. Striking the right lifestyle balance is likely to be an ongoing struggle for staff and employers in developed economies as AI tools and other “efficiencies” dehumanize the workplace.
Giving life to Liquid Death
The Uncensored CMO podcast by British branding expert Jon Evans is a treasure trove of interviews with top Chief Marketing Officers from the UK and beyond. In this episode, Evans finds out how Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario succeeded in breaking into the biggest beverage category in the US on a shoestring budget. It’s a challenger brand’s dream, and Cessario spills the beans on how he marketed water to rebels.
The latest Liquid Death marketing initiative features a cross-brand collab with high-end cooler manufacturer Yeti. The casket cooler is a one-off promotional item that was auctioned online last month. The publicity stunt received over eight hundred bids and the winning bidder bought the Yeti X Liquid Death casket cooler for a cool $68,200!
The ultimate Gen Z commercial?
British appliance and electronics retail chain Currys has been in business since I was a kid (that’s a few years, FYI). To connect with a younger clientele, they’ve produced this TikTok video that uses almost every current bit of Gen Z lingo known to man, woman, and trans person, right up to last month’s “demure-mindful” trend.
When my 21-year-old son watched it, he said it made him want to kill himself. Currys understood the assignment.
Did you enjoy this issue of Discomfort Zone? You can comment directly in the Substack app or drop me a line by emailing me at john@johnbdutton.com.
And why not connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven’t already?
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