If you plan to hand out chocolate this Halloween, you might be in for more trick than treat.
The price of cocoa remains high after spiking last yeara trend that has shoppers turning away from a perennial favorite sweet treat, even on a holiday that revolves around candy.
Compared with the Halloween season last year, chocolate costs more this year, and consumers are buying less of it. Overall, candy prices have risen a whopping 78% since 2020, according to an analysis from consumer finance site FinanceBuzz, which tracked candy prices across four major retailers. A 100-piece bulk bag of Halloween candy costs an average of $16.39 in 2025, up from $9.19 in 2020 and $14.06 just one year ago. Those yearly price surges have regularly outpaced inflation, which is already putting shoppers in a pinch.
In its earnings call Thursday, Hershey noted holiday sales this Halloween were disappointing and that it planned to study pricing, pack types, and its broader candy lineup through the lens of the consumer in light of underwhelming sales. The companywhich owns candy brands like Reeses, Kit Kat, and Yorkraised prices over the summer to cope with the rising cost of cocoa.
Because cocoa is a seasonal commodity, companies that rely on it lock in their prices in advance, leading to a lag time between the key ingredients price fluctuations and what consumers wind up paying in-store for a packaged product.
Sweet tooth alternatives
Price hikes have driven consumers away from chocolate, but theyve turned toward sugar-forward candies as an alternative. In the run-up to Halloween, U.S. chocolate candy sales had already dipped by 8% compared with 2024, and thats not including the sweets-buying rush closer to the Friday holiday this year, when the majority of Halloween candy is sold.
While chocolate demand softens, non-chocolate options like gummy and hard candies are getting more popular with younger consumers, according to a seasonal report from NielsenIQ.
Shoppers buying Halloween candy early broadly turned toward non-chocolate options, with sales up 4.5% this year through September, according to market research group Circana. In the same period, chocolate candy sales dipped by 13.7%.
Cocoa in crisis
Chocolate is more expensive now due to a complex interplay of factors, but climate-caused excessive heat and intense rains in particular have taken their toll in cocoas key regions, sending the commoditys price sky high. In the U.S., persistent inflation and Trumps chaotic trade deals have also impacted the price of imports like cocoa, which cant be grown domestically. Last year, the price of cocoa reached historic highs, rising past $10,000 per metric ton.
Because the global appetite for chocolate hinges on a single region in Africa, cocoa is uniquely vulnerable to forces outside of farmers controlparticularly extreme weather events that are worsening as the planet warms. The climate crisis is expected to cause accelerating agricultural losses for staple crops like corn and wheat around the globe, and cocoa is no different.
Cocoa prices leveled off some in mid-2025, but the substance that makes chocolate chocolate still costs triple what it did before 2023, leaving consumers to eat higher prices or leave the sweets on the shelf.
Even if shoppers stick it out with chocolate this Halloween, they might be getting less for more. Candy aisle faves like Mr. Goodbar, Rolo, and Almond Joy have quietly slipped into new packaging that no longer entices buyers with the promise of milk chocolate.
That change in verbiage is a hint that major candy companies like Hershey and Nestlé are dropping the cocoa content in some classics with new recipe reformulations that rely less on chocolates star ingredient. If your Halloween candy doesnt taste quite as sweet this year, it might not just be because you paid more.
Spot the robins egg blue of a Tiffany box, and you know theres luxury inside. Or the sturdy brown of the UPS truck, and you expect reliable service. Yellow Minions make you smile, and Valentinos vivid Pink PP Collection makes you want to step out and step up.
Color is more than decoration. Color is a powerful tool that drives business and creates cultural relevance. The right hues build trust, drive sales, and make brands unforgettable, while the wrong ones can cost you customers and credibility.
The launch of Coke Life in a green rather than familiar red can probably contributed to the products uphill battle with consumers. Even tinkering with a color combination as simple as the Gaps white-on-blue logo can face business backlash, as the company found out when it tried to rebrand in 2010, but the company soon returned to the original due to the rebrands unpopularity.
Leading brands use color strategically and employ trend forecasting to stay relevant as consumer expectations shift. Heres how to think about color like a leading brand.
COLOR SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO THE SUBCONSCIOUS
Simply put: Colors drive emotions, and emotions drive purchasing behavior. The brain processes visuals faster than text, so colors trigger subconscious associations that shape perception before other messages make their way in. For consumers connecting with a brand or product, color helps them instantly categorize products and streamlines their decision-making.
It happens fastcustomers form judgments about products within the first 90 seconds of interaction, with up to 90% of that assessment based solely on color. In less time than a commercial break, the right color choices can earn consumers trust, evoke their excitement, or tap their aspiration. The wrong choices can turn buyers away just as quickly.
This is why certain industries, informed by cultural appetites, gravitate toward specific palettes. In the United States, tech companies and banks often use blues and neutrals to project reliability, because American consumers associate blue with stability and trust.
Consumer perceptions of color vary globally, so brands must know their markets. In some cultures, for example, a bride traditionally wears white for a wedding, but in other cultures white signifies mourning. Getting it wrong can confuseor even repelconsumers.
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR COLOR
Companies that invest in a smart color strategy create lasting visual associations that foster trust and loyalty, which can be deepened even further by using signature colorsthink: iconic Tiffany Blue. Such associations help consumers understand what experience they can expect from the brand and are one of the fastest ways to communicate the brands value and build trust.
Color increases brand recognition by 87% and influences up to 85%of product purchasing decisions, according to Pantones proprietary research. In fact, a Rochester Institute of Technology study found that 69% of respondents said theyd forgo a product whose color was unappealing, even if they needed the product.
With color so consequential to consumers, it should matter just as meaningfully to brands. When Philips wanted to signify the revolutionary nature of their OneBlade Hybrid Razor to their target demographic of young Italian men, they selected a bold, tangy yellow-green that popped off the shelf and tapped into young mens quest for individuality.
The right color strategy enhances engagement, increases brand value, and strengthens market resilience, ensuring your company remains competitive over the long term.
COLOR DECISIONS ARE CRITICAL IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Brands that forecast color trends dont just follow the marketthey define the market. This is especially crucial for fashion, technology, and consumer goods, where trends change quickly, and aesthetics and emotional appeal strongly influence buying decisions.
Consumers are drawn to brands that are not just on-trend but ahead of the curve. Hitting the right color in one season is valuable, but consistently setting and capitalizing on trends cements a brands leadership.
And in an omnichannel world, consumers expect a seamless experience, so brands need to ensure their colors remain consistent across websites, apps, and retail displays. Specially designed Barbie Pink and Minion Yellow, for instance, brought the unique experience to life recognizably and consistently everywhere these fictional characters went.
Inconsistent visuals flout customer expectations, weaken brand recognition, confuse consumers, and even signal unprofessionalism or poor quality. Back in the Kodak Instamatic days, factories did not standardize the yellow packaging, with some boxes appearing darker and others lighter. Customers shied away from the darker yellow boxes, thinking they were older and contained older film.
COLOR CAN KEEP YOUR BUSINESS IN THE BLACK
The right color choices can mean the difference between profitability and missed opportunity. For example, Krafts decision to define and standardize a globally recognizable Heinz 57 Red translated into real results tableside in Turkey. The Heinz 57 Red-focused ad campaign strengthened brand discernmentwith 97% of customers able to visually tell the difference between Heinz and competitors post-campaignand supported both a 24% rise in usage of Heinz ketchup and 73% fewer non-Heinz ketchup refills by street food vendors. [KK1]
Color influences perception, drives purchasing behavior, and creates instant recognition, all factors that directly impact a brands bottom line. Consumers make snap judgments based on color, research shows, and those judgments translate into trust, engagement, and sales.
Investing in color isnt optional in todays competitive landscape color is key to staying relevant, recognizable, and in the black.
Sky Kelley is the president of Pantone.
Imagine living in a house with the latest smart home system: lights dim on voice command, your thermostat learns your schedule, your refrigerator orders milk before the carton runs out. Its practical yet delightful. It improves your daily life.
Now imagine that same house built on shaky foundations: the electric wiring is aging, and the plumbing is rotting. No matter how advanced your devices are the structure wont support them reliably.
Thats the difference between AI and blockchain. AI is the smart tech; blockchain is the well-designed infrastructure that ensures everything works reliably, predictably, and with integrity.
Similar to how a home needs both features and structure, our digital economy will demand both AI and blockchain. One amplifies capability, the other ensures resilience.
The real promise of blockchain
Just as cloud computing once seemed abstract until it powered every app, blockchain quietly is becoming the fabric woven into how money moves, contracts are enforced, and systems operate with one another.
For leaders, innovators, and builders, our job is to see past the surface-level headlines and recognize structural shifts. Thats where we are with blockchain. Paying attention now determines whether youll lead the next economyor scramble to adapt after the rules have changed.
Two areas in particular highlight how blockchain and AI together can reshape finance: programmable money and transparency in financial records.
1. Programmable money
One of the biggest opportunities is programmable money used by AI-driven agents. Programmable money is digital currency with built-in logic. It can move, settle, or trigger actions automatically based on predefined conditions and rules, releasing payment only when goods are delivered, paying employees instantly after clocking out, or compensating an AI agent the moment it completes a task.
An AI agent is a bit like a personal assistant. It interprets requests, figures out how best to deliver on them, and improves over time. They can act autonomously to complete tasks and make decisions to meet your requests.
These AI agents dont only work during traditional hours, and they dont have an identity according to traditional regulatory frameworks, yet they need reliable ways to be compensated in real time. Blockchain-backed stablecoins are a natural solution.
Consider an example of this powerful combination in real estate: An AI agent confirms the accuracy of documents, closes a transaction, and disburses funds. If its a Sunday morning and payment rails like ACH or wires are closed, how does the transfer clear? Stablecoins enable settlement on digital time, not bankers hours.
This is already moving from theory to practice. For example, Google just announced an Agents Payments Protocol, which provides a blockchain-based framework for ecommerce transactions conducted by AI agents. Other leading payment companies like PayPal, Mastercard, and American Express also are embracing this technology.
This is a clear example of the intersection of AI and blockchain for a pragmatic use case.
2. Financial transparency
Underwriting offers another example of the importance of applying blockchain principles to AI. AI is now shaping how risk is assessed, and loans are priced. That creates real concerns about fairness, bias, and explainability. Regulators and consumers alike want to know why a loan was denied and what data drove the decisions, breaking open the black box of financial decision-making.
Blockchain offers an answer. It can record AI-driven activity (data inputs, validation steps, approvals, compliance checks), creating a verifiable record across a variety of consumer products like mortgages or credit cards. Instead of a vague application denied, consumers would know the exact reason, like missing income verification or a high debt-to-income ratio. For approvals, the record would highlight the inputs behind the interest ratecredit score, income, loan-to-valueso borrowers know what mattered most. With the same validated data applied across applicants, regulators can verify fairness while consumers gain clarity.
Together, AI and blockchain dont just deliver speed. They deliver financial systems that are more transparent to regulators, more understandable to consumers, and ultimately more durable.
The long game belongs to blockchain
AI is transformative because it amplifies what we already do. Its the smart home app that learns your lighting preferences based on circumstance. Blockchain is different. Its the building department, inspector, and the wiring behind the walls: setting the rules for what can be built, verifying the work, and powering the entire system.
For consumers, opaque financial decisionslike sudden credit card fee increases, shifting interest rates, or unexplained loan denialshave long been the norm. The combination of AI and blockchain is poised to change that bringing clarity to the individual and accountability to the system.
For leaders and innovators, the blueprint for the future is straightforward:
Prepare for an AI future by building a strong blockchain foundation as rapid growth in transaction activity will demand scalable, composable infrastructure
Leverage transparent, fair, and accurate design principles so AI decisions can be explained, verified, and defended.
Move beyond pilots by embedding blockchain into mission-critical workflows where speed, settlement, and reliability are non-negotiable.
The intersection of AI and blockchain is shaping up to be a massive market reset. Those who embrace it now will define what comes next.
Michael Tannenbaum is the CEO of Figure.
Cheating has long been an unwelcome but expected risk in the hiring process. While most people are honest and well-intentioned, there are always a handful of candidates who attempt to game the system. Today, however, the problem is evolving at an unprecedented speed. Generative AI has made new, more sophisticated types of cheating possible for any position, from software development to finance to design. In my work with hundreds of employers helping them hire and develop talent, I’ve seen firsthand the myriad ways candidates attempt to game the system.
So, why are candidates resorting to these methods? Sometimes, candidates are attempting to secure a position theyre underqualified for, or otherwise gain a leg up in the hiring process. Other times, candidates pursue multiple full-time roles at oncea trend known as overemploymentwhich increases the likelihood that theyll cheat. Here are the four most common approaches candidates use to cheat, and what employers across all industries can do to detect and prevent dishonesty in their hiring processes.
THE FOUR CHEATING TYPES
1. Copy-paste plagiarism
This is the most widespread and fundamental form of cheating. A candidate is given a taskit could be a coding challenge, a writing sample, or a case studyand they simply copy or heavily borrow from existing resources found online. In some cases, candidates even use answer keys for standardized assessments, which are often sold or shared in online forums.
How to detect and prevent it: The ideal mitigation strategy for this type of cheating is to prevent it in the first place by ensuring multiple candidates don’t see the same questions. Think about the SAT, for examplethousands of versions of each question are created and dynamically rotated, but calibrated to be equally difficult. So if a question leaks, it’s unlikely that another candidate sees the same question. Assessment platforms should also crawl the web to see if submitted work matches known public answers, and flag if a candidate spends lots of time in a separate browser window.
2. Hiring a “ringer”
With this method, a candidate hires a highly-qualified individuala “ringer” or proxy interviewerto take a skills assessment or even a live interview on their behalf. This is a particularly sneaky form of cheating because the person taking the test is genuinely skilled, but they aren’t the person you’re considering for the job. The problem only becomes apparent later when the person you hired can’t replicate their performance on the job.
How to detect and prevent it: The best way to combat this is with identity verification and proctoring. This can be as simple as asking candidates to show a photo ID via webcam at the start of the assessment. Organizations can also use AI-powered proctoring to monitor a candidates behavior, flagging suspicious activity like multiple people in the room or eye movements that suggest they’re getting helpand verify this with human review.
3. Using AI to generate answers
This is where AI has truly changed the game. Instead of searching for an answer, a candidate can use a text- or voice-based AI tool to get a complete answer in seconds. These AI models are not only fast, but they generate original content that wouldn’t necessarily be flagged by a simple plagiarism checker. While some organizations may be okay with candidates leveraging AI toolsespecially if theyd be using AI on-the-jobothers are looking to see a candidates skill without the assistance of AI.
How to detect and prevent it: One solution is to use AI detection tools that can analyze text for patterns consistent with AI generation. A more robust approach, however, is to design assessments that require human-level reasoning and creativityand even allow candidates to leverage AI to produce their response. With this approach, employers can see how well candidates make use of all the tools theyd have at their disposal on the jobincluding AIto solve realistic challenges or tasks.
4. AI deepfakes
This is perhaps the most frightening new form of cheating, and it’s making headlines. A candidate can use AI deepfake technology to create a convincing, real-time avatar of themselves that takes a live interview. This AI-generated persona would not only answer questions but could also mimic facial expressions and body language, which makes it difficult for a human interviewer to distinguish it from the real person.
How to detect and prevent it: One way to spot deepfakes is with sophisticated AI-powered analysis. These tools can look for subtle inconsistencies like unnatural eye movements, a lack of blinking, or a disconnect between audio and video streams. Companies can also require a simple, real-time action from the candidate, such as holding up a specific object or moving their head in a certain way, that would be difficult for a deepfake to replicate perfectly.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The risks and costs of a bad hire are well-documented. An employee who lacks the skills they claimed to have will drag down a team, create poor quality work, and ultimately have a negative impact on the business. The integrity of your hiring process is a direct reflection of the quality of your future team.
While the rise of AI has introduced new risks to employers, it has also given us new tools to more accurately identify candidates with the right skills for the job. Used well, AI tools can be a powerful partner in our efforts to build a fair and predictive hiring process. By embracing these advancements, we can move beyond simply detecting cheating and build a future where AI empowers us with new ways to find and hire candidates who will take innovation to the next level.
Tigran Sloyan is CEO and cofounder of CodeSignal.
Leonardo da Vinci is often credited with writing the first resume in 1482, meaning the resume has been with us for more than five centuries. And though its layout has evolved over the years, the premise hasnt: a piece of paper that tells someone where youve worked, what you studied, and maybe a bullet or two about what youve accomplished.
Thats the problem. The resume is designed to tell us where someone has beennot what they can actually do. It shows what the last person who hired you needed done in their company that they thought you could handle. It looks backward when the world of work we live in today demands that we look forward. It inflates titles, overvalues brand-name employers, and reduces people to keywords designed to sneak past applicant tracking systems. Too often, the best resume isnt from the most qualified candidateits from the one who figured out how to game the system.
And yet resumes persist. Why? Because theyre easy. Theyre free to create. Most people (sort of) know how to make one. Employers ask for them. Entire hiring systems are built around them. Theyre the definition of mehits good enough.
But good enough is no longer enough.
WHAT BETTER LOOKS LIKE
Were in a labor market that is more dynamicand more inequitablethan ever. The resume does nothing to address that. It privileges polish over abilities. It amplifies bias through names, schools, and companies that often serve as proxies for race, gender, age, and class. It fails miserably at consistencyone candidates resume looks like a design portfolio, anothers like a plain-text listand leaves parsing software to guess what counts. No wonder amazing candidates fall through the cracks.
So what would better look like? A new standard has to do what resumes cant: Capture actual skills. Not just where youve been, but what you can doand what extras make you uniquely you and uniquely qualified. It has to be structured, so it can travel across technologies. Standardized, so hiring managers can make real comparisons. Accessible, so you dont need expensive software or a design degree to present yourself fairly. And anonymizable, so the three pound caloric monsters in evaluators skulls cant fall back on the same biased shortcuts resumes encourage.
Of course, the hard part isnt dreaming up the new standard. Its building the bridge. We cant assume every applicant will suddenly have the time or access to build a digital skills profile. And we certainly cant expect that employers will throw out their applicant tracking systems overnight (even if they might want to). We need technology that can translate existing resumes into skills-based profiles, while slotting neatly into the workflows companies already use. Thats how you shift the system: not by burning it down, but by giving people a clear path to make the switch.
I know some will say the resume is too entrenched, too universal to ever disappear. Theyre probably right in the short term. But history is full of standards that seemed permanentlandlines, CDs, even fax machinesuntil they werent. The resume has lasted 543 years not because it was brilliant, but because it was familiar. Familiarity isnt a good enough reason to keep failing candidates and employers alike.
If we want hiring to be fairer, faster, and more predictive, we need to blow up the resume and build something better. The future of work isnt about paper credentialsits about the skills that predict how a person will perform in a role. And its past time our hiring systems caught up.
Natasha Nuytten is CEO of CLARA.
AIs explosive growth depends on a backbone of vast energy-hungry, water intensive data centers, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in resources. The challengeand opportunityof the moment is ensuring this infrastructure scales without hollowing out long-term value.
Across the U.S., states are racing to attract data center facilities with lucrative incentives. The promise is economic growth and prestige. The reality is more complicated: hidden costs borne by communities, power grids, and ecosystems.
As a venture capitalist focused on hardtech and sustainability, I see this tension as both risk and opportunity. The future of AI will belong to those who reconcile scale with sustainability, building infrastructure that powers innovation without draining the very resources societies depend on.
THE ECONOMIC CASEAND THE HIDDEN BURDEN
Data centers are capital-intensive projects that can inject billions into local economies. Virginias 300 facilities, for example, contribute more than $9 billion annually. Illinois, with over 180 centers, has positioned itself as a hub thanks to land, fiber, and access to the Great Lakes. At the national level, the market was valued at $302 billion in 2023 and is projected to double by 2030.
Its easy to see why elected officials welcome them: construction jobs, tax revenue, and the prestige of being a digital gateway. But beneath the headlines, the numbers tell a different story. Subsidies can exceed $800,000 per job. One Alabama project sought $167 million in tax breaks for just 200 positions. Counties quickly become dependent on the revenue, creating pressure to approve more projects regardless of long-term costs.
Meanwhile, resource demands are staggering. A single hyperscale facility can consume a gigawatt of power, enough to supply 750,000 homes. Collectively, U.S. data centers used 17 gigawatts in 2022 and are projected to reach 130 GW by 2030, or about 12% of U.S. electricity demand.
That growth is already pushing utility prices higher. In Illinois, residential customers saw rates jump 45% in 2025, while businesses faced nearly 30% year-over-year increases. And with federal rollbacks of clean-energy tax credits slowing renewable development, much of that demand will be met by keeping fossil plants online, which undercuts climate goals.
Water use adds another layer. Cooling a single large data center can require 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the needs of a town of 50,000. Over five years, U.S. facilities are projected to consume 150 billion gallons, straining freshwater systems that are already under stress.
These burdens are not abstract. They reshape household budgets, increase business costs, and raise profound questions about equity. In Newton County, GA, residents face water shortages, rate hikes, and a possible water deficit by 2030 linked to data centers in the area. In Virginia, an African American cemetery dating to 1863 is now surrounded on three sides by data centers. The social and environmental costs are real and growing.
THE INVESTORS LENS: OPPORTUNITY IN THE CRISIS
None of this is an argument against data centers. They are indispensable to AI, and AI is indispensable to the future of industry, science, and society. But the current trajectory is unsustainable. Thats why investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers should treat this challenge as a growth opportunity.
Four areas stand out:
Cooling and heat sinks: With cooling consuming more than 40% of electricity, technologies like immersion cooling, direct-to-chip systems, and advanced heat sinks can dramatically reduce energy and water use.
Carbon capture and utilization: Data centers can serve as testbeds for capturing emissions at the source and converting them into usable inputs.
Long-duration storage: AIs variable load requires resilience. Hydrogen systems, advanced batteries, and other long-duration storage solutions can stabilize grids.
Advanced materials and compute efficiency: The frontier is not just bigger GPUs but better architectures, AI-optimized chips, and neuromorphic computing that deliver more performance per watt.
These are not speculative bets. They represent areas where margins are high, corporate demand is urgent, and public capital is increasingly aligned with private investment. They are the technologies that will allow AIs infrastructure to scale responsibly.
A SMARTER FRAMEWORK FOR GROWTH
Reconciling scale with sustainability requires a new playbook. Policymakers, utilities, and investors can align around four principles:
Transparency: Require audited disclosure of energy and water use.
Conditional incentives: Tie tax breaks to sustainability metrics, not just square footage.
Geographic balance: Encourage siting where renewable energy and resilient water supplies are abundant.
Community benefits: Ensure subsidies translate into tangible improvements for households, schools, and infrastructure.
This isnt about slowing AIs growthits about ensuring it creates lasting value. Done right, data centers can become engines for innovation rather than liabilities.
ALIGN SCALE AND SUSTAINABILITY
The paradox is clear: AI demands unprecedented computtional scale, but unchecked growth risks raising bills, draining water, and delaying climate progress. The alternative is equally clear: Align incentives, invest in breakthrough technologies, and embed accountability into every deal.
The winners of the AI era wont just be those who scale fastest. Theyll be those who scale responsibly and build the infrastructure of a digital future that is as sustainable as it is transformative.
Haven Allen is CEO and cofounder of mHUB and managing partner of mHUB Ventures.
Lets be real: No one has a perfect business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plan. And thats okay because perfection isnt the goalresilience is.
A client once told me they had a mature BCDR plan. Then a hurricane hit. Their primary data center flooded. Admins needed to reach a backup site in another state, but flights were grounded, roads iced over, and their own homes were underwater too.
Suddenly, youre asking people to choose between their jobs and their families. Thats not just a logistics problem; its a human one, reminding us that even the best plans can fall apart in practice.
But while FEMA estimates that one in four businesses never reopen after a disaster, you can take steps to avoid becoming that statistic.
BCDR today isnt just about systems and backups. Its about people, priorities, and preparation. And while no plan is perfect, I still see the same five challenges tripping up organizations. The difference now? The stakes are higher. Cyberattacks can paralyze your entire business. And AI, while promising, isnt a silver bullet.
So, lets talk about how to get your BCDR house in order.
1. Identity management: Whos really on call?
We used to travel to incident sites, plug in some cables, and run recovery drills. Now, its all remoteopening the door to new threats when your business is most vulnerable.
Ive seen attackers sneak into recovery calls using fake identities, with names just one letter off from real employees. Theyll log into calls, listen, disrupt, and make a bad day worse.
This is a human vulnerability. Having the right people in place and properly accounted forfrom IT to legalis still critical. Especially when a cyberattack can take down your entire IT infrastructure rather than a single facility.
Step to take: Build identity verification into your BCDR runbooks. Dont assume your Teams or Zoom login is enough.
2. Prioritization: Whats your minimum viable company?
You cant recover everything at once, so dont try.
Nearly half of organizations need more than a week to recover from a cyberattack. In that time, youre not making products, and your stakeholders are losing faith.
Ive seen companies try to bring back every system simultaneously. It never works. Focus on what matters most and build from there.
Start first with a business impact analysis (BIA) to figure out what keeps the lights on. Thats your minimum viable company and what you need to recover first. Everything else can wait.
Step to take: Run a BIA. Use it to define your recovery priorities and align them with your recovery time and point objectives. This helps you understand how quickly you need to be back up and running and how much data you can afford to lose. This is foundational to any serious BCDR strategy.
3. Incomplete recovery: Backups arent a plan
Many clients think, Weve got backups, so were good. No, youre not.
Backups are just data. If you dont have the configurations and environments to use that data, its useless. Ive seen clients with pristine backups, and no way to run them. Thats not recovery, its a false sense of security.
You also need to consider:
Systems available to process that data;
Where the data is stored because it may be gone;
The environment, since moving on-premises data to the cloud is difficult even on a good day.
Step to take: Map out your recovery scaffoldingidentity, network, infrastructureand test it. Tools can help automate this, but you need to know what usable recovery looks like for your business.
4. Documentation: Living plans, not dusty binders
Ask your team where the BCDR plan is. If they point to a binder, youve got a problem.
IT environments change daily, and your plan needs to change with them. That means version control, real-time updates, and integration with your infrastructure workflows, whether in the cloud, a data center, or at the edge. A static document is a liability.
Step to take: Treat your BCDR plan like codeversioned, updated, and tested. Use automation where possible, but keep people in the loop.
5. Testing: If you havent tried it, you dont have a plan
Because BCDR plans change so often, you need to test them regularly. If you dont, its more theory than plan, and things will invariably go wrong when you need it most.
Testing reveals the gaps. Its where you find out if your plan works or cracks under pressure. Think of it like a military exercise. You dont just write the battle plan. You run it. You red-team it. You revise it.
Quarterly or semiannually testing is the sweet spot. Any less than that, youre out of date. More than that, youre probably overdoing it or not automating enough.
Ask your teams when they last ran a full BCDR test. If its not in the last six months, its time to knock off the rust. The best plans just get more sophisticated along with all the technological advances we implement, and it may be advisable to lean on an outside consultant who can help you troubleshoot without bias.
Step to take: Schedule regular tests; quarterly is ideal. Include realistic scenarios, not just happy paths. And bring in your comms, legal, and HR teams. BCDR isnt just an IT exercise.
PRESSURE TEST IT NOW
At the end of the day, BCDR isnt about checking boxes. Its about protecting people, preserving trust, and proving your business can take a hit and keep going.
Ask yourself: If disaster strikes tomorrow, would our plan holdor would it fold? Dont wait to find out. Pressure-test it now, while you still have the luxury of time.
Juan Orlandini is CTO of North America at Insight Enterprises.
Picture this: You walk into a coffee shop, order a latte, and pay with your phone. To you, it feels like checking out with Venmo. And to the cashier, its business as usual. But behind the scenes, something different is happening: You just paid with crypto.
This isnt science fictionits already happening. From Starbucks to Walmart, retailers are rolling out crypto acceptance, and consumers are responding. Surveys show 39% of U.S. crypto holders have shopped with crypto (with 9% doing so daily), while 23% of non-holders say theyd use crypto if they could shop with it.
Thats millions of shoppers who want the choice to pay with digital assets, but dont realize that they already can.
A smarter way to pay retailers
For merchants, crypto isnt just another payment buttonits a way to improve the bottom line. Traditional payment rails come with added fees and delays that can get in the way. But now, crypto processors help convert crypto to fiat currencygovernment-issued currency that is not backed by a physical asset like the U.S. dollar, gold, or silverso merchants can accept crypto at checkout seamlessly.
Hows that possible? Its actually quite simple. These processors generate a wallet address for customers to pay (think of it as a crypto account number), then process the transaction, verify it on a blockchain, and automatically convert the crypto to the merchant’s preferred government-backed currency (like the dollar), depositing it directly into the retailers bank account. Conversion is handled immediately, and usually settled automatically at locked-in rates, avoiding any risk of the tokens price fluctuation.
And then there are stablecoinsa specific type of digital currency pegged to another asset like the dollar and designed to hold steady valuewhich retailers are also embracing as a way to accept crypto at checkout without having to navigate potential price swings.
To sum it up: Often with fewer fees than card networks and instant (or near-instant) settlement, crypto payments can improve cash flow and offer retailers global reach with fewer currency exchange headaches, and money in the bankwithout waiting days for funds to clear. That means less money paid to intermediaries and more money in the sellers pockets.
The hidden customer segment
Accepting crypto also allows retailers to appeal to a growing, eager customer base. Surveys show that more than 55 million Americans hold crypto today, and theyre looking for practical ways to use it. Offering crypto at checkout signals that your business is forward-thinking and inclusiveand can draw in innovative shoppers who actively seek out merchants who accept digital assets.
Big names are leading the charge. Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Chipotle accept crypto through payment processors like Flexa and Spedn. Sheetz enabled Bitcoin and Ethereum across its 750+ convenience stores, even layering payments into its loyalty program. Walmart piloted Bitcoin payments in 50 stores, using the same terminals as Apple Pay. Even PayPal now allows merchants to accept 100+ cryptocurrencies, converting them into dollars on the spot.
Everyday value for shoppers
For consumers, crypto payments bring tangible benefits that go beyond novelty. The added speed and savings that merchants gain can translate into special discounts and perks for customers, as crypto processors and retailers are experimenting with promotions and loyalty programs that turn everyday purchases into opportunities to earn extra value.
In August, Sheetz offered a 50% discount on in-person crypto purchases during peak hours; Starbucks and Shake Shack have piloted Bitcoin rewards and NFT-based loyalty programs; Nike and Sephora have integrated crypto rewards into purchases. With crypto, checkout becomes more than a transactionits a chance to unlock extra benefits.
And the checkout experience feels no different. Apps like BitPay, MoonPay, and PayPal work behind the scenes so the experience of paying with crypto feels the same as tapping your phone or swiping a card.
From experiment to expectation
The story of retail payments is one of constant evolution: checks gave way to plastic, plastic gave way to contactless, and now crypto is quietly stepping into the mix. What once felt novel is becoming normal.
For merchants, crypto is a chance to reduce costs, attract new customers, and build loyalty in ways that traditional payment methods cant. For consumers, its a way to shop faster, smarter, and with more rewards.
The question isnt if crypto will become part of mainstream retail, its when. And for forward-thinking merchants, the answer is now.
Stuart Alderoty is president of the National Cryptocurrency Association.
I keep seeing articles and conferences about humanizing AI in one way or another. And while I get the sentiment, I think theyre taking the wrong approach. Theres no point in making technologies more human. Being human is our job. If anything, AI is less an opportunity to humanize technology, than to rehumanize ourselves.
Lets start at the beginning. AI is just the latest, perhaps greatest advancement yet in what OG computer scientist Norbert Wiener dubbed cybernetic technologies. Unlike traditional technologies, cybernetic ones take feedback from the world in order to determine their functions. They work less like a machine you turn on than a home heaters thermostat, which turns itself off when the heat has reached a certain level. This, in turn, allows the room to cool. Then the thermostat snaps on again, using feedback from the environment to keep the room within a chosen temperature range.
Of course, the other kind of feedback we all know about is that loud screech you get when you point a microphone too close to its speaker. The microphone is hearing its own sound, then feeding it back to the speaker, then hearing that sound, and feeding it back to the speaker again. Each feedback loop adds more sound until it screeches out of control.
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People engaging with AI prompts are vulnerable to those very same positive feedback loops. You come up with an idea, pose it to your favorite chat, and the more supposedly human the AI, the more it tries to find a way to give you positive feedback. That sounds like a great idea for a new business, Douglas. Im intrigued! Shall I develop a proposal with possible action points?
Passive spectators
Round and around we go, the initial tiny utterance of a prompt getting cycled again and again, our human nervous system stimulated and reinforced by the positive feedback. Sure, we may contribute a bit to the process, but for the most part we are passive spectators of the phenomenon, marveling at how much history, logic, and speculation the AI can bring to bear. It can even create a slide presentation or video or simulated prototype of the idea suitable for presentation to others!
Go to any business conference these days, and youll run into more than one entrepreneur who is high on their own supply, sharing videos of their AIs crazy visions. Lord help the folks they convince to invest.
As I see it, the reason they fall prey to such positive feedback loops is that they are too ready and willing to pull themselves from the equation. The AI seems so authoritative, and so human, that surely its aware of what it is doing. It wouldnt be so on board with your ideas if it didnt have some sense that it would work, right?
Your agents are not your friends
Wrong. Dont accept the positive reinforcement. The AI isnt on board with the idea so much as committed to pleasing you, in the moment, like a person if its been trained that way. But its not a human, not even close, and doesnt hold a conception of the thing you are working on. No, you, the human partner in this feedback loop, are the only one who stands a chance of conceiving or contextualizing whatever it is youre working on.
Your agents, like your children, are not your friends. That doesnt mean you shouldnt care for them. Quite the contrary, it means you have to be the one to intervene on everyones behalf. You are the conscious actor in the system.
The way to prevent such positive feedback loops in our interactions with technology is to assume the role of the human. Dont get out of the AIs way in the name of efficiency or output. Its cool to see all that stuff coming out, but if youre not intervening in the processactively getting in the wayyoure not going to get anywhere at all.
Follow your instincts
Counterintuitively, perhaps, the way to do that is to become less mechanical, less results-oriented, less utilitarian, and more feeling, more process-oriented, and even less obviously useful. Yeah, slow things down. Nurture your intuition. Lean into your own experience, expertise, and sensibilities. Reconnect with your instincts. Pause and breathe. How does that make me feel?
For while cybernetic machines can iterate, only living beings can respirate. Instead of cycling through data, human beings can metabolize through our bodies. We can test ideas with our gut. Something doesnt pass the smell test. A proposal feels off. This strange moment in the digital age may just be an opportunity to reclaim the uniqueness of being living, breathing, metabolizing creatures in an otherwise digital, unconscious, contextless landscape.
Making AIs seem more human is not doing us any favors, especially when it tempts us to relinquish our roles as the living, breathing adults in the room.
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The health care industry, like many others, has traditionally relied on tried-and-true conventional, one-way marketing tactics. However, that strategy is no longer enough to break through to consumers.
More than 81% of consumers tune out generic ads and crave more engaged and personalized content, signaling that marketers need to adapt and stop ineffective communication that tries to pull consumers to them. Instead, we must go to our customers, meeting them precisely where their attention already lives.
We know a great story has the power to transcend demographics, evoke emotion, and build lasting connections. Ultimately, brands are collections of human beings, and people connect with people. By humanizing our brands and telling compelling stories about the individuals who compose them, we unlock a profound ability to resonate and connect with our audience on an emotional level.
However, where we share stories have changed: Weve seen the audience shift aggressively to at-home streaming and social media.
Understand your customers media habits
More consumers get their news from non-traditional news sources and streaming viewership has eclipsed traditional broadcast media. We are living through the atomization of content consumption.
Knowing how people watch is only half the battle. Each platformTikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix and othersis a distinct ecosystem. Savvy marketers understand customers unique consumption habits and user behaviors, then tailor their content and approach accordingly.
Too often brands hesitate, thinking they may be too small, not unique, or they question their own perspective. But everyone has a story, and every brand has an opportunity to fuel a human emotion.
Look at health care. We fuel your lives, your loves, your passions, and your careers.
Consider entertainment marketing
Last year we launched Northwell Studios to create impactful content that’s both entertaining and purpose driven. Our work, featured on platforms like Hulu and Netflix, has garnered billions of views. But more importantly, its humanizing complex issues, pulling back the curtain on health care, and sparking crucial dialogues around often taboo topics like gun violence and mental health. For example, our 2024 HBO Max docuseries, One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit, drove community support, awareness, and donations that enabled us to open a second mental health unit. That’s the ROI every marketer dreams of.
Entertainment marketing, when rooted in purpose, can be a powerful force for good, fostering positive cultural change while building brand affinity. Its not just about reaching viewers; it’s about making a difference.
Five factors to weigh before trying entertainment marketing
For brands ready to embrace the power of entertainment marketing, here are five factors to consider.
1. Authenticity: Before venturing into entertainment, identify the core values and stories that define your brand. If you have a product that is authentic, resonates with people, and provides value, then you have a platform to build a brand around that. Your entertainment content should be a natural extension of your brand’s identity, not forced.
2. Partnerships: Collaborating with experienced filmmakers, producers, or content creators is essential. They bring creative expertise and industry knowledge that can elevate your content and expand its reach. Seek partners who share your vision and commitment to quality storytelling.
3. Context: Entertainment marketing is not about just putting your product in a movie. It’s about crafting narratives that resonate with your target audience and subtly integrate your brand’s message.
4. Engage to change: Allow your audience to be part of the storytelling and the brand story. That means not just pushing content out, but allowing them to create content, engage with your brand, and share their passions, and their love for your brand.
5. Measure and adapt: Like any smart marketing campaign, be sure to track viewership, engagement, social media activity, and any other relevant impact on brand awareness and business outcomes that are important to you. Data-driven insights will help refine your strategy and optimize your return on investment.
Final thoughts
You must be fearless and bold. And you must be willing to fail and learn from those failures. The marketing landscape is transforming. Consumers are demanding authentic connections and engaging experiences. By embracing the power of entertainment, brands can break through the noise, build meaningful relationships, and achieve lasting impact. It’s time to move beyond traditional methods and embrace the power of the story.
Ramon Soto is senior vice president and chief marketing and communications officer at Northwell Health.
