The Secret of Flavor Dust, Dynamic Pricing Fears and Why Americans Stopped Hanging Out | Non-Obvious Insights #408

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Dear Newsletterest,

Why are some flavors of chips sold in some countries? Can an image-only app with no texting capability survive? Will dynamic pricing be a good thing for consumers? Have Americans really stopped hanging out? What's the unusual history of leap day? Why did the world's oldest unchanged brand finally update its logo? Is Tyler Perry's cancellation of his $800m studio expansion because of AI really a doomsday omen for Hollywood? Read all those stories in this week's edition of the non-obvious newsletter!

Stay curious,

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Getting Ready For The Dynamic Pricing Future Of All Things

This week Wendy's unintentionally stirred up some trouble as headlines popped up online that the fast food chain was testing "surge pricing" similar to Uber where they would charge more for food when demand was highest. The chain quickly backtracked with the relatively bone-headed explanation that they were actually using it to offer "discounts during slower times of day" ... which is pretty obviously a sneaky "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of argument.

Still, the story struck a chord because it taps into the fear that we may be headed toward a future where everything will be dynamically priced. Some think this could bring lots more friction into any buying experience (should I buy now or wait?), while others predict that consumers will learn to love it. There is an opportunity here too.

I recently purchased an airline ticket (a category where we are accustomed to minute by minute price shifts), but instead of buying directly from an airline, I purchased from my credit card's travel booking tool. As a result, I also automatically received ten days of "price protection" where I would get a refund if the price dropped. In a world with dynamic pricing, the retailers or financial providers who offer these sorts of protections will win. And consumers may be increasingly training themselves to use them in every situation possible.

Ever Wonder Why Certain Flavors Of Chips Are Sold In Some Countries and Not Others? Inside The Secretive World Of Flavor Dust ...

If you have ever been to another region of the world and been curious about how they ended up with the various flavors of crisps (chips to Americans) that are on store shelves, you'll find this article very interesting. It asks and answers everything you've wondered about how various flavors get reduced to the flavored dust sprinkled on top of chips.

Read this article to understand the secret food science behind chip flavor development, the rationale behind why "Lasagne" flavored Lays chips are only available in Thailand and not Italy, why it can take 7 years to introduce new flavors and the fascinating role immigration plays in which chips end up in which countries. This is the sort of article you'll read and then wonder immediately why it's not a book yet.

The Yolk App Shows The Challenges of Relying On User's Constant Creativity

Yolk is a new app that lets people "communicate through items that you see" and some reviews suggest they might be forging a new method of communication in the process. Just signing up requires you to invite a certain number of friends. There's no way to send a direct message or use any text. And the app is only available on iPhone. Despite these limitations, Yolk is getting accolades for it's ability to "lean into the social weirdness of identity building." It works by allowing users to create a segmented "sticker" around anything they point their phone at.

Early users are sharing everything from a reaction to a photo shared by a friend to using it as a "personal space to show off their fave custom stickers of cherished objects." The challenge with the app, as it is for others like it, is that you really do need to be willing to be constantly creative. I could be wrong, but my first reaction here is that I think most people on a daily basis just aren't able or willing to be that consistently creative.

Why American's Stopped Hanging Out and the Crisis of Social Fitness

A long read last week from The Atlantic offered this viral headline - Why American's Stopped Hanging Out. Around the same time, I came across a leisure study from a bunch of marketers about how people are spending less time at bars and pubs, even as they spend more time running marathons. All of it seems to point to yet another depressing statistic about why we're unlikely to emerge from our pandemic of loneliness anytime soon.

The more disturbing element of these stories is that the erosion of moments for us to hang out may be also leading to a crisis of "social fitness" - a term increasingly being used by researchers and business coaches alike to describe the habit of getting along with and being around more people.

You can name any social trend from the rise of virtual work to the increase of anxiety among young people and they all point to the fact that this crisis is real. What's the solution? According to this article, it might start with hanging out more. Actually, that could pretty much solve the problem.

Leap Day, the Longest Year and Julius Caesar's Year of Confusion

Today is February 29th - which apparently is a quite popular day to get married. Some couples think it's quirky or romantic. And let's be honest, a handful of people might be hoping they only have to celebrate an anniversary once every four years. Not that I identify with this idea at all, of course.

But aside from creative wedding dates or the various online support groups devoted to people born on leap day - today might also make you curious about the history of this correction of the modern calendar. For the backstory on this, we need to go back to 46BC - a moment history remembers as the Year of Confusion.

Before this date, the earliest Roman calendars were based on the cycles of the moon and had only 304 days spread across 10 months. The two months were no work was done in the fields were just ignored. Not a great recipe for an accurate calendar. After various earlier Roman rulers tried fixes - Caesar finally added two months to the year in 46BC which made this year 445 days long with 15 months.

This mostly had the calendar year line up with the movements of the sun but it was still slightly off. Hence the leap day and leap year were born. The full story has a few more characters and politics mixed up, but essentially we're up to date on on the cycles of the sun at least for the next several millenia.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories ...

Every week I always curate more stories than I'm able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Looking for a speaker to inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers through a keynote or workshop? Watch my new 2024 speaking reel on YouTube >>

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The Secret of Flavor Dust, Dynamic Pricing Fears and Why Americans Stopped Hanging Out | Non-Obvious Insights #408

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Why American's Stopped Hanging Out and the Crisis of Social Fitness

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