Suing Opioid Marketers, Vaccinating India and Why Everyone Hates "Instagram for Kids" | Non-Obvious Insights #269

Dear Newsletterest,

Facebook's idea to create a version of Instagram for Kids is actually brilliant, but what is the entirely predictable reason why every hates it? Should marketing agencies responsible for encouraging doctors to overprescribe opioids be held liable? Will there be a "great resignation" coming soon among all the people who stuck with jobs they hated through uncertain times? What if our space exploration of Mars ends up contaminating the red planet ... with life? There are just a few of the topics you'll find explored in this week's newsletter!

Also, next week I will be participating in an contest where 14 speakers share their short thoughts on how to break marketing. The winner will earn $10,000 for the charity of their choice and I will be competing on behalf of the Global India Fund's excellent work supporting the distribution of vaccines in India to help fight the severe crisis happening there now. If you can, please donate to their #VaccinateIndia efforts here and vote for my video here starting next week.

Instagram For Kids Is A Great Idea. Here's Why Everyone Hates It.

Kids lie about their age to get onto Instagram. That's a fact. It's also a fact that when kids have "adult" profiles, it's much harder to create tools and features to protect them. So it's left to parents to proactively fill the void. In theory, Facebook's recent push to create Instagram for kids is a great idea. Parents could more easily monitor activities. Cyberbullying could be more proactively addressed. Advertising could be banned. User information could be even more protected. These are all positive outcomes. So why are there petitions and congressional action happening to prevent it? In other words, why does everyone hate it?

Actually, the answer is pretty simple: because no one trusts Facebook. For years, the platform has enabled the spread of misinformation, offered a gathering place for hate and operated with complete autonomy. Now, multiple surveys rank the brand at dead last in terms of consumer trust. So if Facebook were to create Instagram for Kids, it's reasonable to assume they would find a way to "pivot" to monetizing the platform (despite their current promises not to), do little to combat the rise of social media addiction among kids and fail to build the platform in a way that minimizes cyberbullying. It's no wonder everyone hates it.

Should Marketing Agencies Be Held Accountable for the Opioid Crisis?

The Opioid crisis was fueled by doctors overprescribing the medication, but a recent court case has taken aim at the communicators who specifically worked to encourage that behavior. This case is against Publicis Health and spans from 2010 to 2019, during which time the team at Publicis built marketing campaigns for their client Purdue Pharmaceutical to encourage docs to write more prescriptions. The suit includes some damning emails, such as one where a Publicis PR exec writes: "Even if we can’t find the data, we can craft the message and tell the brand team what we WANT to say and see if their Medical Services group can come up with anything to support it?"

The dirty little secret of many marketing teams is that such conversations happen with regularity. But it's not because the people working on these campaigns are evil or just want to cash a client's check. When good people are fed cherry-picked data, they can justify the work they do to themselves. It doesn't feel like they are doing anything wrong - until much later when the truth comes to light.

In the coming weeks, I suspect this case will be closely watched by the entire marketing industry ... and may even inspire more discipline from agency people themselves

The "Great Resignation" Is Coming, As People Stop Waiting to Quit Jobs

As in-person work starts to come back and the economy rebounds, Professor Anthony Klotz believes the business world will likely see lots of people who had been holding off on resigning from their roles due to uncertainty but may now finally feel ready to make the switch. If the prediction does turn out to be true, the disruption will be felt in just about every industry. Even more significantly, though, this means that some great talent is about to become available in the market. So even if you're not specifically hiring right now, every smart business owner, manager or leader should be watching their networks right now. Your dream teammate or business partner might finally be available.

A Mind Blowing Chinese Skyscraper Made of Stacked Farmhouses

In China, the Hmong people are a "farming community being displaced by modern planning," and so an inventive team of architects have proposed lifting farmhouses by crane into a wood structure to effectively create stacked communities that elevate vertically. The design-centric article doesn't offer much background about the Hmong people, or why they are displaced in the first place, but this story was just so intriguing. What if we could relocate entire homes into vertical communities this easily anywhere? And what if skyscrapers, an urban idea, became an option in rural communities too? Yes, this story raised lots of questions for me.

Humans May Have Contaminated Mars ... With Life

"Clean rooms might serve as an evolutionary selection process for the hardiest bugs that then may have a greater chance of surviving a journey to Mars. These findings have implications for a form of planetary protection called 'forward contamination'. This is where we might bring something (accidentally or on purpose) to another planet."

Spacecraft are meticulously sterilized in clean rooms to minimize the potential of taking unintended bacteria to space, but recent research suggests that we might already have accidentally "forward contaminated" Mars. Based on the speed with which microbes can mutate, it's even possible that years from now if (or when) we do discover "life" on Mars, it might have evolved from something we brought there in the first place. Talk about a space paradox story ...

New Research Reveals Majority of Americans Do Not Believe Racism Is Systemic

"When asked whether racism is primarily an individual problem or a systemic one, over half of Americans continue to believe that racism comes down to racist people, not racist systems. Only Black Americans and those 18-34 identify the problem as systemic. For Corporate America, understanding the problem as systemic is the first step to creating the change that Black audiences, and others of color, hope to see."

These were the opening words of a viral LinkedIn post from new Edelman PR CEO Lisa Ross, as she introduced highlights from the firm's new Trust Barometer research on business and systemic racism. The bottom line: Corporate America has a long way to go, but it all starts with recognizing that "institutions, and the systems they create, are often the sources of racial discrimination." Once we acknowledge the problem, we can imagine the solution for it. Pretending nothing is wrong, as some leaders continue to do, won't get us there.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories ...

Every week I always curate more stories than I'm able to explore in detail. In case you're looking for some more reading this week, here are a few other stories that captured my attention ...

Watch Break Sh!t and Help the Global India Fund to #VaccinateIndia!

Every tention For the past several weeks, I have been part of an ambitious team that is working to support efforts in India to combat the COVID-19 crisis by addressing the fact that only 1.8% of India is vaccinated. Only vaccines offer a long term solution to the crisis, and the need is extreme right now. Just $12 is enough to provide one vaccine and a nutrition pack to one person. You can learn more about Global India Fund's efforts in this interview, and donate to the cause here.

I also have a chance to raise $10,000 for the Global India Fund. Next week I will be participating virtually in a speaking competition aimed at reimagining how to "break marketing" and do things differently. My short 12 minute talk will feature three lessons for doing marketing differently and the speaker with the most votes will win $10,000 for the charity of their choice. Watch and vote for my talk here >>

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Want to discuss how I could bring this thinking to your next event as a virtual speaker? Visit my speaking page >>

Be Part Of Our Community ...

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The Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter features this week's most underappreciated stories, curated for you. | View in browser

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Suing Opioid Marketers, Vaccinating India and Why Everyone Hates "Instagram for Kids" | Non-Obvious Insights #269

Instagram For Kids Is A Great Idea. Here's Why Everyone Hates It.

Should Marketing Agencies Be Held Accountable for the Opioid Crisis?

The "Great Resignation" Is Coming, As People Stop Waiting to Quit Jobs

A Mind Blowing Chinese Skyscraper Made of Stacked Farmhouses

Humans May Have Contaminated Mars ... With Life

New Research Reveals Majority of Americans Do Not Believe Racism Is Systemic

Even More Non-Obvious Stories ...

Older messages

Pee Color Charts, Pet-Friendly Offices, and the Age of Instant Recycling | Non-Obvious Insights #268

Skipping Mother's Day, NFT Nightmare Scenario and a World Without Men | Non-Obvious Insights #267

Ramadan Marketing, the YOLO Economy and 9 Interesting Earth Day Stories | Non-Obvious Insights #266

How To Build a Metahuman, Farts As Free Speech and Canada's Radical Immigration Idea | Non-Obvious Insights #265

VW's Underrated PR, Nike's Hypocrisy and the Myth of Sustainable Seafood | Non-Obvious Insights #264

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