On Running has hit 2025 at full speed, reporting Q1 earnings on Tuesday that saw the company grow sales by 43% year-over-year.
Its a reflection of the overall growth trajectory the Zurich-based athletic lifestyle brand has been on since it launched in 2010. With a healthy direct-to-consumer business, growing retail footprint (with 53 stores around the world), and cutting edge product innovation, On has built its brand around its product quality and sleek, simple design.
But cofounder and executive cochairman Caspar Coppetti says that despite the healthy numbers, the brand still has plenty of room to grow, and it’s using its own unique combination of culture and athletics to do it.
Our global brand awareness last year was only 20%, while Nike is at 95%, says Coppetti. We’re not trying to be the next Brand X or Brand Y. We’re writing our own script, and that script is: We want to be the most premium brand in sports, really elevating the whole brand experience.
Zendaya [Photo: On]
Premium culture
Every athletic shoe company has its own approach to building out its audience. Nike has recently rejuvenated its swagger aimed at competitive athletes; Adidas has leaned on big names like Patrick Mahomes, Jude Bellingham, and Anthony Edwards; and Hoka is going all-in on runners.
On, meanwhile, has built its brand around a unique combination of innovative design and elevated fashion sense.
Elmo [Photo: On]
That’s something we’ve always had in the brand, says Coppetti says. It began with its foundational cushioning technology, Cloudtech, an engineered solution to absorb impact that looked distinct from any other sneaker. That was combined with a Swiss design ethos that’s very reductionist and clean. Our products always look different and also quite fashionable,” says Coppetti. “And when performance and fashion collide, that’s when magic happens.
This year, the brand took that magic in some compelling directions. While some athletic brands have steered toward competition and the athlete mentality, Ons brand work went in a different, pretty damn quirky direction.
In February, On dropped a Super Bowl ad featuring Roger Federer and Sesame Streets Elmo debating the brands logo. Subsequent spots in the Soft Wins campaign had Elmo talking about running for fun as opposed to competitive fire.
Then in April, the brand launched a trailer for a fake sci-fi movie starring Zendaya (who signed as a brand ambassador last year) to hype its new lifestyle bodysuit. With a new FKA Twigs partnership inked earlier this year, On has squarely positioned itself as the workout gear of choice for people who care about art and style.
In its Q1 earnings report, On credited its Zendaya partnership as one of the driving forces of the brands impressive momentum.
These kinds of things have the potential to go viral, says Coppetti. Consumers are also not seeing us as just another brand shoving advertising in their face, but seeing that its actually kind of cute and clever, and that resonates.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2025, the brand is looking to open 25 more stores around the world, and continue to hype it’s Lightspray shoe technology, and its expanding apparel line. Coppetti says that the challenge is to make sure people see On as a head-to-toe brand, as opposed to just sneakers.
Now were expanding our market share from the feet up.
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
No matter where you live, NSF-supported research has also made your life safer. Engineering studies have reduced earthquake damage and fatalities through better building design. Improved hurricane and tornado forecasts reflect NSF investment in environmental monitoring and computer modeling of weather. NSF-supported resilience studies reduce risks and losses from wildfires.
Using NSF funding, scientists have done research that amazes, entertains and enthralls. They have drilled through mile-thick ice sheets to understand the past, visited the wreck of the Titanic and captured images of deep space.
NSF investments have made America and American science great. At least 268 Nobel laureates received NSF grants during their careers. The foundation has partnered with agencies across the government since it was created, including those dealing with national security and space exploration. The Federal Reserve estimates that government-supported research from the NSF and other agencies has had a return on investment of 150% to 300% since 1950, meaning for every dollar U.S. taxpayers invested, they got back between $1.50 and $3.
However, that funding is now at risk.
Since January, layoffs, leadership resignations, and a massive proposed reorganization have threatened the integrity and mission of the National Science Foundation. Hundreds of research grants have been terminated. The administrations proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2026 would cut NSFs funding by 55%, an unprecedented reduction that would end federal support for science research across a wide range of discipines.
At my own geology lab, I have seen NSF grants catalyze research and the work of dozens of students who have collected data thats now used to reduce risks from earthquakes, floods, landslides, erosion, sea-level rise, and melting glaciers.
I have also served on advisory committees and review panels for the NSF over the past 30 years and have seen the value the foundation produces for the American people.
American sciences greatness stemmed from war
In the 1940s, with the advent of nuclear weapons, the space race and the intensification of the Cold War, American science and engineering expertise became increasingly critical for national defense. At the time, most basic and applied research was done by the military.
Vannevar Bush, an electrical engineer who oversaw military research efforts during World War II, including development of the atomic bomb, had a different idea.
He articulated an expansive scientific vision for the United States in Science: The Endless Frontier. The report was a blueprint for an American research juggernaut grounded in the expertise of university faculty, staff and graduate students.
On May 10, 1950, after five years of debate and compromise, President Harry Truman signed legislation creating the National Science Foundation and putting Bushs vision to work. Since then, the foundation has become the leading funder of basic research in the United States.
NSFs mandate, then as now, was to support basic research and spread funding for science across all 50 states. Expanding Americas scientific workforce was and remains integral to American prosperity. By 1952, the foundation was awarding merit fellowships to graduate and postdoctoral scientists from every state.
There were compromises. Control of NSF rested with presidential appointees, disappointing Bush. He wanted scientists in charge to avoid political interference with the foundations research agenda.
NSF funding matters to everyone, everywhere
Today, American tax dollars supporting science go to every state in the union.
The states with the most NSF grants awarded between 2011 and 2024 include several that voted Republican in the 2024 electionTexas, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvaniaand several that voted Democratic, including Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Colorado.
More than 1,800 public and private institutions, scattered across all 50 states, receive NSF funding. The grants pay the salaries of staff, faculty and students, boosting local employment and supporting college towns and cities. For states with major research univesities, those grants add up to hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Even states with few universities each see tens of millions of dollars for research.
As NSF grant recipients purchase lab supplies and services, those dollars support regional and national economies.
When NSF budgets are cut and grants are terminated or never awarded, the harm trickles down and communities suffer. Initial NSF funding cuts are already rippling across the country, affecting both national and local economies in red, blue, and purple states alike.
An analysis of a February 2025 proposal that would cut about $5.5 billion from National Institutes of Health grants estimated the ripple effect through college towns and supply chains would cost $6.1 billion in GDP, or total national productivity, and over 46,000 jobs.
An uncertain future for American science
Americas scientific research and training enterprise has enjoyed bipartisan support for decades. Yet, as NSF celebrates its 75th birthday, the future of American science is in doubt. Funding is increasingly uncertain, and politics is driving decisions, as Bush feared 80 years ago.
A list of grants terminated by the Trump administration, collected both from government websites and scientists themselves, shows that by early May 2025, NSF had stopped funding more than 1,400 existing grants, totaling more than a billion dollars of support for research, research training, and education.
Most terminated grants focused on educationthe core of science, technology and engineering workforce development critical for supplying highly skilled workers to American companies. For example, NSF provided 1,000 fewer graduate student fellowships in 2025 than in the decade beforea 50% drop in support for Americas best science students.
American scientists are responding to NSFs downsizing in diverse ways. Some are pushing back by challenging grant terminations. Others are preparing to leave science or academia. Some are likely to move abroad, taking offers from other nations to recruit American experts. Science organizations and six prior heads of the NSF are calling on Congress to step up and maintain funding for science research and workforce development.
If these losses continue, the next generation of American scientists will be fewer in number and less well prepared to address the needs of a population facing the threat of more extreme weather, future pandemics, and the limits to growth imposed by finite natural resources and other planetary limits.
Investing in science and engineering is an investment in America. Diminishing NSF and the science it supports will hurt the American economy and the lives of all Americans.
Paul Bierman is a professor of natural resources and environmental science at the University of Vermont.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Theres a good chance that your drinking water contains forever chemicals. PFAS, the type of chemicals used in products like some nonstick pans and waterproof jackets, is present in water systems for nearly half of Americans. But the Trump administration now wants to roll back Biden-era rules that would have cleaned up certain types of the chemicals.
Theres a catch: an anti-backsliding provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act says that any new standard for drinking water safety cant be less protective than the old standard.
The provision is really simple, says Dave Owen, a professor at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. The only way they could get around it is to say we have discovered new evidence that clarifies that revising the standard will do nothing to reduce protection of public health. And Id be shocked if they have evidence that would substantiate that claim.
In 2024, the Biden-era EPA issued a rule with new limits for six types of PFAS (or “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances”), which have been linked to cancer and developmental problems. Under the rule, public water utilities have to monitor water for the six compounds, notify the public of unsafe levels, and treat the water. The rule gave them until 2027 to comply, though it allowed for an extension of an extra two years because of the expense of setting up new treatment systems.
This week, the EPA announced that it would rescind the rule for four of the PFAS types on the list (known as PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA or GenX, and PFBS). For two othersPFOA and PFOSit would delay the requirement for utilities to comply.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claimed that the agency didn’t necessarily want to weaken the limits for the four chemical compounds, just “reconsider” the rule. (To try to make a change, they’ll also have to go through a long rulemaking processthey can’t simply get rid of the rule automatically.) But water utilities and the chemical industry have been fighting to get rid of the limits, and said the administration’s announcement was a step in the right direction.
If the EPA does eventually attempt to loosen the limits, environmental groups could sue under the anti-backsliding provision. There’s clear evidence that the compounds aren’t safe for people’s health. “There are literally hundreds of studies that show that these chemicals are dangerous,” says Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at NRDC. “The evidence is very strong. That’s why EPA issued those regulations.”
In the case of the other two compounds, Olson says the EPA can’t legally extend the deadline for utilities to comply. The Safe Drinking Water Act allows for a maximum of five years for utilities to meet new requirements, and that’s already in place.
An EPA spokesperson said that the agency would “follow the legal process laid out in the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
But even though the rules are still in place, and the administration shouldn’t be able to roll them back, the current situation means that utilities are likely to delay progress. (The administration has also made it clear that it’s willing to disregard laws.) “It creates a lot of confusion when you’re a water utility,” Olson says. “Utilities get five years to comply because they have to have contracts. They have to get funded. They have to do all this stuff in order to build a treatment plant. And if a utility senses, oh, I may not have to do this, are they going to invest in a new water treatment plant to protect their customers? Or are they going to wait and see and hope that EPA isn’t going to enforce some of these rules?”
There’s also a risk, he says, that utilities might invest in treatment systems that only work for PFOA and PFOS, the two older types of “long-chain” PFAS. Those chemicals have mostly been phased out and replaced by newer types of PFAS. Some treatments for PFOA don’t work for newer types of the chemicals.
That’s another fundamental problem with the regulation in the first place: There are thousands of different varieties. As certain types get regulated, the industry replaces them with others that often are just as risky. The chemicals should be regulated as a class, rather than by specific type, Olson says.
“Big manufacturers in the U.S. agreed to phase out their manufacturer [PFOA and PFOS] many years ago,” he says. “But what they did is they just had ‘regrettable substitutions,’ as we call them. Other new ones popped up, like Gen X . . . It’s a classic [situation] where a chemical company stops making one thing and just jumps to the next.”
Water utilities are fighting the rules because of cost. But funding exists for cleanup, including $9 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and $12.5 billion in a settlement with chemical manufacturers last year. “There’s $21-plus billion that’s sitting there,” Olson says. Under Biden, the EPA had estimated that PFAS treatment would cost utilities around $1.5 billion a year, though other estimates range up to $3.8 billion a year. “If the utilities want to go ahead and start building this treatment technology, they should be asking for that money, rather than dragging their feet,” he says. “If you think about it, what is a water utility’s job? They have one job. And that is to supply adequate, safe water to consumers. And they’re just fighting, kicking, and screaming, against doing that.”
Americas fast casual restaurants are almost universally struggling. But a few chains are betting on one universally beloved fried finger food to draw customers back into booths: the humble mozzarella stick.
Over the past year or so, the fast casual sector has faced a chilling effect as inflation and rising menu prices continue to drive consumers away. Last year, chains including Red Lobster, Tijuana Flats, Buca di Beppo, and BurgerFi all sought bankruptcy protection. Others, like Dine Brands (the owner of Applebees and IHOP) and Darden (the owner of Olive Garden) have recently reported lackluster financial results.
Amidst this dreary environment, Chilis, the fast casual restaurant known for its margaritas and appetizers, is having a shockingly good year. The brand saw a 31% jump in sales in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, alongside a nearly 20% increase in traffic. Chilis parent company, Brinker International, raked in total sales of about $1.3 billion in the second quarter of 2025 compared to about $1.1 billion in 2024.
A good portion of Chilis success can be attributed to several viral appetizersmost notably, its fried mozzarella stickswhich have boosted the restaurants visibility in the cultural zeitgeist. Now, TJI Fridays seems to be taking a page out of Chilis book to revitalize its dying brand by putting mozzarella sticks front and center.
[Photo: Chili’s]
Chili’s pioneers mozzarella stick-Tok
In a January earnings call, Chilis CEO Kevin Hochman laid out a few of the changes driving Chilis recent success, including simplifying the menu, upgrading ingredients, and, crucially, investing in a social media marketing campaign centered around appetizers.
Back in April 2024, Chilis partnered with a number of social media influencers to market its Triple Dipper, an appetizer plate that lets customers choose three different dishes (the mozzarella sticks, which were added to the menu in 2002, being one of the most popular choices.) The collabs took off, spawning dozens of TikToks with viewership in the hundreds of thousands of influencers sampling both the Triple Dipper and the mozzarella sticks by themselves.
The mozzarella sticks developed a kind of cult online fanbase both for their chunky rectangular form factor and for their cheese-pull properties, a measurement of how stretchy melted cheese is thats a sought-after characteristic for food-based content creators. The appetizer was so popular among young fans on TikTok that the company introduced two new flavors in 2024, Nashville Hot Mozz and Honey Chipotle Mozz, which, predictably, spawned another wave of Chilis mozzarella stick reviews.
In all, Hochman told investors, interest in the Triple Dipper doubled year-over-year, jumping from accounting for 7% of total sales to 14%.
[Photo: TGI Fridays]
TJI Fridays goes stick-for-stick with Chili’s
It looks like TJI Fridays is now hoping to dip into the mozzarella stick craze in an effort to revive its business.
It’s been a rough several years for TGI Friday’s. In early 2024, the chain abruptly shuttered a series of underperforming stores. Then, in December, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing financial difficulties from the COVID-19 pandemicas the main factor driving the decision. Today, the company has whittled down its presence in the U.S. to just 85 stores, compared to 600 during its heyday in 2006.
Now, under CEO Ray Blanchette, who previously ran the company between 2018 and 2023 and returned again in January, TJI Fridays is taking a bold risk to turn its fate around. In an interview with CNN this week, Blanchette shared that the company is planning to change 85% of its menu to streamline the available options and attract both Gen Zers and millennials to the chain.
[Photo: TGI Fridays]
To start, the company is paring back on the more out-there items on the menu (at one point, oddly, that included sushi), introducing a new signature sauce, and revamping its cocktail menu. According to Blanchette, the new drink offerings include seven signature cocktails from the companys early days, now with eye-catching colors, and theyre intended to entice Gen Zers who love speciality beverages. Chilis has used a similar strategy for some time, debuting a margarita of the month in neon hues that often take off on socials (like last summers Berry Shark Bite Marg and this months 90s-inspired Radical Rita.)
And, of course, TGI Fridays is introducing its own spin on the saucy mozzarella sticks. Blanchette says that the brand has offered mozzarella sticks for decades, and actually helped turn them into a staple on menus across the industry. On its new menu, the chain will go stick-for-stick with Chilis through flavors including Franks RedHot Buffalo, Garlic Parmesan, and Whiskey Glaze.
For us, mozzarella sticks are not a trend, Blanchette told Fast Company. [. . .] When we saw others leaning into sauced versions, we knew it was time to remind everyone who did it firstand now were raising the bar.
To spread the word, TGI Fridays has a new socials team thats already jumping on mozzarella stick-Tok, including with a video posted this week of mozzarella sticks getting tossed in sauce to George Michaels sensual Careless Whisper. Chilis may have paved the way, but TGI Fridays will be the first testcase of whether mozzarella sticks are enough to save Americas fast casual restaurants.
Steel has long anchored modern construction, but its environmental toll is staggering: producing a single ton emits nearly two tons of CO2. Steel is also complex to manage in construction processes, which prevents smaller contractors and projects from using it.
A material invented at the University of Maryland will soon offer a radical alternative. Called Superwood, it has a 50% greater tensile strength than steel and a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better. It’s lighter, tougher, and also locks away carbon. After seven years of development, the startup commercializing the technology will begin mass production this summer.
Weve spent years perfecting our molecular reconfiguration process to maintain the extraordinary properties demonstrated in the lab, while making the process commercially viable, Alex Laucofounder and executive chairman of InventWoodtells me over email.
[Photo: InventWood]
The company was founded in 2016 by Dr. Liangbing Hu at the University of Maryland, after he developed the first transparent wood as a better insulating alternative to glass. What began as pioneering academic work evolved through several breakthrough iterations, Lau says. Hu turned his research into Superwood in 2017. The work was documented in a 2018 Nature paper that revealed a method of transforming ordinary wood into a substance rivaling titanium alloys. The discovery held the promise of a sustainable, CO2 negative construction material that was better than steel, but it was far from commercialization.
During this time, Dr. Hu focused on further refining the technology and bringing manufacturing costs down. Then, in 2021, Lau recognized that the technology had reached sufficient maturity for full-scale commercialization. At that point, I helped pull together a complete team to kick off the manufacturing process, he says. Since 2021, we’ve been intensely focused on creating a scalable process and ensuring the quality standards necessary to bring SuperWood to market.
Magnified images of (left) untreated wood and the same wood treated by a new process (right) invented by UMD engineers that compresses the natural structures of wood into a new material five times thinner. [Images: courtesy University of Maryland]
How Superwood is made
Making Superwood is a complex process, but it requires two primary steps. First, lignina polymer that stiffens wood and gives it its brown hueis partially dissolved using food-grade chemicals. As Orlando J. Rojas, a professor at Finlands Aalto University, noted back when the discovery came out in 2018, the trick is to remove just enough lignin to maximize hydrogen bonding between cellulose fibers without compromising its structural integrity. Next, the wood is compressed at 150°F, collapsing its cellular structure into a dense matrix. The result is a material five times thinner than the original, but 12 times stronger and 10 times tougher.
This molecular reconfiguration eliminates woods inherent weaknesses. Natural wood is porous and prone to rot, but Superwoods tightly packed cellulose fibers create a barrier against moisture, termites, and fungi. Its Class A fire ratingachieved without chemical flame retardantsstems from its density, which starves flames of oxygen. Lab tests proved its ballistic resistance: A projectile pierced untreated wood, but it lodged halfway through a same-thickness Superwood block. Unlike steel or carbon fiber, it requires no energy-intensive smelting or synthetic resins.
Initially, it took weeks to make a single plank of Superwood, but Inventwoods team streamlined the process to just a few hours, enabling bulk production of the material.
Lau tells me that the companys first facility in Frederick, Maryland, will produce one million square feet of Superwood annually starting this summer, focusing initially on interior finishes for commercial and high-end residential projects. A second phase in fall 2025 will introduce exterior-grade panels for siding and roofing. He envisions structural beams and columns within a few years, pending certification. Their plan is to build a larger facility that will scale to over 30 million square feet, enabling use in infrastructure and large developments, Lau says.
If you are wondering about how architects and crews can actually use this to build, you are not alone: If its stronger than steel, does it require special tools? According to Lau, contractors can cut, drill, and fasten Superwood with standard woodworking tools, though its density may demand adjusted techniques. No specialized tools are required, making adoption straightforward, Lau says. The materials stability minimizes warping, and polymer coatings enable outdoor use without sacrificing aesthetics. Its compressed fibers deepen natural grain patterns, yielding finishes akin to tropical hardwoods.
[Photo: courtesy University of Maryland]
It can change everything
Lau didnt disclose information about price, tought he did say Superwoods initial pricing will be premium but competitive with top-notch tropical hardwoods and hybrid woods, which are composite materials that combine wood with other materials like steel or concrete. This means that, pound by pound, it will be much more expensive than steel at this point, more than 10 times in fact: $12.50 to $25 per pound for Superwood as opposed to steels $1 to $2 per pound.
But then you need to factor in other factors to understand its true cost. If Superwoods offers 10x superior strength-to-weight ratio, a 10-pound beam could match the load-bearing capacity of a 100-pound steel beam, in theory effectively reducing its effective cost to $1.25 to $2.50 per pound when adjusted for performance.
[Photo: InventWood]
You also need to factor in its resistance to corrosion and rot, plus the fact that you can make a building entirely out of Superwood and eliminate the need for other structural elements and wall materials. Then theres the economical and environmental cost of fire retardants, since the material naturally retards fire even if its wood. Since wood comes from the most effective living carbon sequestration system on the planettrees!it will actually suck CO2 out of the atmosphere (the material is made from wood from sustainable tree farms).
Clearly, Superwoods long-term value proposition narrows the gap with steel in relative and absolute terms. The company expects to achieve better economics as they scale up production too, Lau adds.
Superwood, in theory, could extend beyond construction. Early research proposed applications in vehicles, aircraft, and furniture, leveraging its moldability and cost savings over carbon fiber. For now, InventWood is focused on buildings, however, where steel and concrete account for a massive carbon footprint, pollution, and economic bill. We want to get to the bones of the building, Lau says. He believes that Superwood can transform the construction industry. We will see when the first batches roll out this summer and companies start using them.
Gen Alpha, the youngest generation of active consumers in the market, are teetering on the onset of teen angst. For many of them, an unavoidable trigger of it will be those pesky hormonal-triggered breakouts.
Its a moment for the skincare industry to once again swoop in and offer tweens and teens a smorgasbord of problem-skin creams, gels, patches and facemasks treatments. That part hasnt changed for generations of consumers. Whats evolved are the strategies brands are using today to reach the youngest of them.
Previous generations of teens, for instance, would see ads for acne brands in glossy magazines, newspaper inserts, on TV during Nickelodeon commercial breaks and on the radio. None of this will effectively work with Gen Alpha, a fully digitally native cohort. They live and breathe the internet, gaming and social media.
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So in March, Switzerland-based Galderma, maker of skincare brand Cetaphil and Differin (a popular over-the-counter acne treatment sold in Walmart, Target, Ulta and on Amazon), for the first time took its acne brand to one of Gen Alphas most popular hangoutsthe gaming platform Roblox.
Roblox has about 98 million active daily users, with 80% of them below the age of 25. On average, users spent a total of 21.7 billion hours on the platform just in its first quarter this year, up 30% from a year ago.
The when, the where and the why of [our] effort is very rooted in data, says Tara Loftis, global president of dermatological skincare at Galderma. Acne impacts 85% of people between the ages of 12 and 24. Where are tweens and younger GenZers spending most of their time? The answer is gaming. Loftis and her team partnered with marketing agency Dentsu and dreamed up what it would look like for Differin to integrate directly into Roblox.
[Screenshot: Galderma]
A novel approach for skincare
Walmart, Fenty Beauty, Crocs, H&M, PacSun, Nike and e.l.f. Beauty are among dozens of major brands that have created their presence in the Roblox metaverse. However, Differins entry, according to industry experts, makes it one of the first brands in the acne-care category to now be on Roblox.
It is a novel approach by skincare brands trying to connect with young consumers, says Larissa Jensen, senior vice president and global beauty industry advisor at market research firm Circana.
Cosmetics brands, such as e.l.f, have been turning to Roblox to reach a very specific younger demographic. That isnt new. But, for skincare [brands], its a little bit more challenging to integrate skincare into a gaming platform, Jensen says. With makeup, you can engage with the brand through gameplay where you put makeup on your avatar. Its harder to interact in the metaverse with skincare. If Galderma has success with this strategy, you can bet that other brands will be paying attention.
The Roblox activation for Differin involves three mini games (for players ages 13 and up) as part of the brands Level Up Lobby.
[Screenshot: Galderma]
In one game called Foam Blaster, the challenge is to use a blaster to clean hovering faces with Differin’s 10% benzoyl peroxide maximum strength foaming cleanser. Players in Power Patch Splat launch Differin power patches at the right moment to splat pimples.
In Zit Zapper, the objective is to zap zits as they appear on hovering faces with Differin’s 10% Benzoyl Peroxide spot treatment.
The goal with these roblox games, said Loftis, is to create brand awareness and educate Gen Zalpa (Gen Alpha and younger GenZers) about skincare through gamifying acne care and integrating Differin into that experience.
Although players cant buy Differin products on Roblox, they are able to upload their receipt for any Differin purchase to unlock virtual rewards in the games.
What we didnt want to do was to have this look like ad necessarily, in the traditional sense, says Loftis. Two reasons for that. We are not able to target anyone under the age of 13, or to target people specifically that have acne. But what we can do is make that assumption about where 80% of acne sufferers are. They are Gen Zalpa and theyre on Roblox.
[Screenshot: Galderma]
Chasing the Roblox Gold Rush
Clay Colarusso, head of TeenVoice, a teen market research and insights company, is very familiar with the Gold Rush of brands to the Roblox metaverse as they strive to capture the attention of the youngest hoppers and influence their future spending habits.
Marketers trying to unlock the tween and teen markets and the billions of household dollars that theyre either influencing their parents to spend, or the dollars theyre spending directly, has been happening for decades, says Colarusso.
Im a child of the 80s and I distinctly remember the toy and breakfast cereal commercials that would play one after another as I watched Saturday morning cartoons, says Colarusso. Kids back then would go to mom and dad and ask them to put the toy on the birthday wishlist.
The difference today, he says, is that the path to purchase is much shorter through digital marketing than it was with traditional media in the 80s.
If Im on Roblox and I have an opportunity to buy, and maybe even have my parents credit card already preloaded in there, I can purchase immediately. Or, I can influence my parents to buy it for me, Colarusso says. Its a marketers dream. But where it gets tricky is on the data side.
Brands have to be careful when they target young consumers. The Federal Trade Commission, through its Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA), prohibits companies, websites and online services from collecting personal information of children under 13 without parental approval.
The concern is really less about brands marketing to this demographic, with certain obvious exceptions, and more about data collection and privacy concerns especially when dealing with consumers under 13, Colarusso says. This is why folks get really nervous when they think about marketing or how to market to kids, and rightfully so. They need to behave in a judicious and prudent way.Roblox says on its website that the platform is compliant with the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) and other international regulatory standards.” For people 13 and older who are eligible to see ads, Roblox said ads must be clearly and prominently disclosed using simple and understandable language.
Hate to be sold to
According to Galderma, in less than 30 days after the Differin Roblox games launched, the Differin Level Up Lobby campaign (which ends on May 31) has attracted more than three million visits with more than 365,000 mini games and nearly 12,000 hours of brand engagement on the gaming platform.
We know that Gen Zalpha hates being sold to. These are games. If they struggle with acne, we hope to educate them about skincare through gaming that resonates, says Loftis. If not, its still a fun game.
So far, she says a fairly high number of people playing the games are playing them completely.
We went big on our gaming, which means we basically moved away 100% from traditional advertising for Differin, Loftis says. Gen Zalpha isnt going to buy an acne patch because they see an ad. Theyre going to buy it because they see a really compelling before and after result that their favorite gamer or TikToker talks about.
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A question I often get when I train editorial teams on the use of AI is, “Is using AI cheating?”
Although it’s a yes or no question, it’s obviously not a yes or no answer. The short answer is sometimes, but the key to figuring out the long answer is using the tools with an open mind. If you’re a professional in a field like journalism, you’ll generally be able to tell when it’s speeding up drudgery and when your judgment and expertise are most needed.
However, the recent viral story in New York magazine about how colleges and universities are struggling with rampant, unauthorized AI use from students got me thinking about what’s happening much earlier in the pipeline. After all, those college students who are using AI to cheat on essays and admissions interviews eventually get jobs in the workforce. How will entry-level reporters, editors, and interns regard the use of AI, and how can newsrooms guide them so they develop the critical skills good journalists need?
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Prioritize people, not just output
This highlights an area of AI policymaking that often gets the short shrift. Newsroom AI policies are rightly concerned with the integrity of the information the publication is putting out and transparency with audiences, primarily. What AI might be doing to the skill-building of junior staffers is a tertiary concern, at best. Left unchecked, however, this problem has the potential to be existential: How do you produce competent senior staff when the junior staff is either replaced by AI oras the New York piece suggestsreplacing themselves with AI.
You start with the first principles. Most AI policies begin with some kind of affirmation that humans remain at the center of what journalism is about. That lens needs to turn inward in a real way, with a commitment to balance innovation and efficiencies with professional development. In a newsroom, a healthy AI policy also ensures staff in entry-level or junior roles have opportunities to build core journalistic competencies.
The policy should be clear to those workers even before they walk in the door. These days a lot of interviews happen over video conference, and many newsrooms that aren’t explicitly local have gone fully remote over the last few years. The fact is, if a candidate is on the other end of a video interview, hiring managers should be assuming they have some kind of AI helping them, even if there aren’t telltale signs like delayed answers and rote wording.
And there are still ways to adapt the hiring process to this reality. Where possible, newsrooms should incorporate in-person interviews and testing. For remote workers, real-time teamwork exercises will reveal a lot more than “take home” ones like memos and writing tests.
Why junior staff need their reps
A good AI policy spells out exactly which tasks are allowed to be partially or totally done by AI, while still leaving room to experiment in noncritical areas. (The New York Timess policy is a good example.) In selecting those tasks, however, efficiency and productivity shouldn’t be the only factors. How that mix of tasks changes between junior and senior staff should be taken into account.
A good way to think about this: Just because AI can do a task doesn’t mean it should do it always, in every instance. Yes, an AI tool can now competently turn a three-hour school board meeting into a news story, but reporting and writing “rote” stories like this are a fundamental part of learning the ropes of journalism: taking good notes, finding the story in a sea of information, checking facts, and getting the right quotes. Newsrooms need to ensure this kind of foundational exercise, essentially “getting your reps in,” is still a priority for reporters just starting out.
This approach runs the risk of emphasizing newsroom hierarchy and increasing frustration among junior staffers who know that AI could speed up their work. That’s why it’s important to have a clear path out. For instance, new hires might need to complete training modules that emphasize foundational journalistic skills before they gain broader access to AI tools. That would send the message that using AI is a privilegeone earned through demonstrating competence.
How to future-proof journalism
So, using AI might be cheating in some cases and not cheating in otherseven for the same task. That might be confusing, but it also might be a sign of a thoughtful AI policy that doesn’t see increased output as the be-all and end-all of success.
Because in the end, an AI policy isn’t just a rule book that allows or forbids offloading certain tasks to robots in the name of efficiency. It should be a map for how a newsroom preserves the integrity of its journalism and the trust of its audience as it navigates one of the most impactful technological changes in history. If you try to sail into the future without thinking about the long-term health of your staff, you risk arriving at the destination with a crew of nothing but robots.
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Across the country, nonprofits are confronting a sudden and severe financial shock: federal funding theyve long relied on is being pulled backabruptly, and in some cases, entirely. In recent weeks, the Trump administrations spending cuts have triggered frozen contracts, rescinded grants, and stop-work orders across federal agencies.
The moment has highlighted the financial vulnerability of many institutions, and underscored the importance of building more resilient, diversified funding models that arent solely dependent on federal dollars.
Organizations that once built multi-year budgets around government commitments are now rewriting financial plans weekly just to keep up. Delays, backlogs, and revenue gaps have become routine. According to the Urban Institute, between 60% and 80% of nonprofits that rely on public funding would face serious financial shortfalls if that support disappeared.
Due to resource constraints, many nonprofits have treated financial management as a day-to-day operational function, with less emphasis on its role as a strategic driver of mission impact. But in todays environment, that approach is no longer sustainable. Volatilityfrom elections, markets, and geopoliticshas become a permanent feature of the landscape. Organizations that fail to adapt risk not only missing opportunities but also jeopardizing their ability to weather the next downturn.
To meet this challenge, nonprofits must elevate financial strategy to a central pillar of leadership. That starts with three critical shifts:
Investment oversight must be proactive, not passive
In todays climate, checking in on financial performance once a year just isnt enough. Many nonprofits are now reviewing liquidity monthly or quarterly and running scenario planning exercises to stress-test how unexpected shiftslike a delayed government payment or a rescinded grantwould affect their ability to meet payroll or sustain core programs.
Boards can support this work by ensuring theres a clear investment policy aligned with the organizations real-world cash flow needs and risk tolerance, and by revisiting that policy regularly. Investment committees, in turn, can work with advisors to shift more assets into more liquid investments, giving them flexibility when contract payments are late or major gifts dont come through.
Donor strategy must become a financial strategy.
With once-reliable federal funding no longer a given, nonprofits must actively cultivate alternative revenue streamsand that responsibility shouldn’t fall solely to the development team. Donor engagement must be tightly integrated with financial planning. That includes segmenting and expanding donor bases to identify those with capacity to give more, using predictive analytics to anticipate giving patterns and gaps, and aligning fundraising calendars with financial forecasts.
Finance and development teams, or external financial partners, should work together to build models that estimate how different donor strategies impact year-end liquidity and long-term planning. In short: Strengthening donor revenue is not just a development goal, its a financial imperative.
Endowments must be treated as mission-sustaining tools.
Endowments are more than rainy-day fundstheyre meant to ensure the perpetuity of the organizations. Over the past two decades, nonprofits have taken important steps to diversify their portfolios. In fact, average exposure to public equity and fixed income has dropped from 70% to 39%, while allocations to alternatives such as private equity and hedge funds have more than doubled. That shift can offer stronger returns, but diversification isnt a one-size-fits-all strategy. For organizations that depend heavily on government contracts or grants, an overly rigid or illiquid portfolio can create real vulnerabilities in times of stress.
Take, for example, some of the nations most prestigious universities. Even institutions with multi-billion-dollar endowments have recently moved to sell private equity holdings to increase liquidity, citing political and financial uncertainty around federal funding. When organizations of that scale and sophistication reconsider their exposure to illiquid assets under stress, its a clear signal: Alternative investments must be approached strategically, with a careful understanding of both short- and long-term cash needs and risk tolerance.
A tiered approach to liquidityreserving some assets for near-term access while investing the rest for long-term growthcan help organizations stay resilient, especially those that rely heavily on government grants or contracts to fund operations.
Ultimately, resilient philanthropic missions require resilient financial models. That means seeking expertise not only in investment performance, but in governance, risk management, and long-range planning. Advisors and teams that understand how to connect financial oversight to mission outcomes can help institutions build confidence internally, with donors, and with the communities they serve.
The current crisis has made one thing clear: Static portfolios and static strategies are liabilities. Financial oversight must evolve from a compliance checkbox into a dynamic leadership function, one that safeguards todays operations and secures tomorrows mission.
Adam Becker is a science journalist and astrophysicist. He has written for The New York Times, BBC, NPR, Scientific American, New Scientist, Quanta, Undark, Aeon, and others. He also recorded a video series with the BBC, and has appeared on numerous radio shows and podcasts, including Ologies, The Story Collider, and KQED Forum.
Whats the big idea?
Tech billionaires like to hype up delusional doomsday fantasies in which they are the saviors and overlords of civilization. Many people may just laugh or disregard these outlandish claims, but a closer look reveals the scary truth of how seriously, specifically, and consequentially these thought leaders are committed to their ridiculous visions for the future. They abstain from making meaningful choices to improve the here and now because of their faith in unreasonable techno-solutions. It is important that society stays aware that their nightmares and promised utopias are founded in fiction.
Below, Becker shares five key insights from his new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valleys Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. Listen to the audio versionread by Becker himselfin the Next Big Idea App.
1. Tech billionaires have ludicrously implausible power fantasies about the future.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other tech billionaires have made surprisingly outlandish claims about what a good future for humanity should look like. Elon Musk has spoken repeatedly about the need to set up a colony on Mars. He has said that hes going to put a million people on Mars by 2050 by sending one rocket launch a day for years, and that the colony needs to be self-sufficient, surviving even if the supply rockets from Earth stop coming. Musk contends that this is vital for the future of humanity, claiming that our species will go extinct if it doesnt happen soon. He claims Mars is our lifeboat for civilization.
This is all pure fantasy: Mars is too inhospitable to allow a million people to live there anytime remotely soon, if ever. The gravity is too low, the radiation is too high, theres no air, and the Martian dirt is filled with poison. Theres no plausible way around these problems, and thats not even all of them. Nor does the idea of Mars as a lifeboat for humanity make sense: Even after an extinction event like an asteroid strike, Earth would still be more habitable than Mars. Mammals survived the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs, but no mammals could survive unprotected on Mars today.
Putting all of that aside, if Musk somehow did put a colony on Mars, it would be wholly dependent on his company, SpaceX, for supplies. Thats one feature that tech oligarchs fantasies have in common: they all involve billionaires holding total control over the rest of us.
2. AI isnt going to be as good (or bad!) as the tech industry claims.
Silicon Valley billionaires and thought leaders have been making wild promises about AI. They claim that AI will soon become superintelligent, far outstripping human intellect, and this will lead to a total revolution in human civilizationif these godlike AIs dont destroy humanity first.
Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, says that superintelligent AI is coming within the next four years. He also claims that once we have it, every product and service will halve in price every two years as AI takes over the economy. Bill Gates has made similar claims, suggesting that AI will free us for a life of leisure as it caters to our every need. Other industry leaders claim AI will revolutionize science, ushering in an unprecedented era of discovery and near-magical technology.
Theres virtually no evidence for any of this: it is specious reasoning amplified by tech industry money and hype. These are narratives based on science fiction. They fundamentally misunderstand both the nature of intelligence and how current AI systems operate. Even calling something like ChatGPT AI is misleading; its a marketing term thats gotten way out of hand.
3. Were not colonizing space.
Tech billionaires like Musk and Bezos have dreamed of colonizing space for decades. Despite their promises, its not happening. Musks dreams of Mars are modest compared to some of the other specious fantasies spun by tech billionaires and the think tanks they fund.
Bezos doesnt want to put a million people in spacehe wants a trillion people living in a fleet of giant cylindrical space stations with interior areas bigger than Manhattan. He claims this is the best way to ensure future generations thrive. Otherwise, he warns, our species will stagnate on Earth. Yet such space stations would be staggeringly difficult and phenomenally dangerous to build. And Bezoss concerns about stagnation are based on a mix of faulty reasoning and an attachment to long-discredited ideas about sociology and history.
Others in the tech industry (or funded by tech billionaires) have advocated for a future beyond our solar system, pushing humanity to take over the galaxy or the entire universe. This is even more unlikely to work: the distances between stars are too great, and theres little reason to leave the solar system.
The impossible promise of an interstellar empire is held out as a shiny fantasy to justify the actions of tech billionaires. Musk has used the supposed need to colonize Mars as an excuse to ignore details like worker safety at SpaceX. Bezos has said that the pursuit of such a future is the most important thing he could be doing with his fortune, more important than addressing Earthbound problems here and now.
4. How Big Tech gets science wrong and distracts from present threats.
Tech industry leaders often present themselves as scientific experts on everything from human biology to astrophysics to nuclear fusion. The truth is that they are business leaders, not scientists, and frequently get in far over their heads when discussing scientific concepts. They believe that their wealth makes them general experts on everything.
Musk has repeatedly gotten facts about Mars wrong, even when hes been publicly corrected. He has repeatedly claimed that Mars can be terraformed (made into a more Earth-like planet) by using nuclear weapons to melt the Martian ice caps. Musk contends this would beef up the Martian atmosphere enough to allow humans to live there, but this isnt true: There arent nearly enough frozen gases in those ice caps to get the job done. When scientists pointed this out to him, he doubled down.
Hes not alone in this. Altman has never given good justification for his claims about AI. Bezoss ideas about space come from old plans from the 1970s that were later shown to be unworkable. These arent just careless mistakes about unimportant details. Getting these scientific facts wrong allows these tech billionaires to maintain faith in their power fantasies and gives them an excuse to ignore todays problems. Altmn has said that the AI systems he believes are coming soon will be able to solve global warming quickly and easily, and therefore, hes not concerned about new AI data centers requiring huge amounts of power. Pushing humanity toward the impossible goals of tech oligarchs will lead to destructive consequences for everyone.
5. The racist origins of the tech industrys core ideology.
Underneath the bizarre proclamations of tech billionaires, there is an ideology that technology can solve every problem, even fundamentally social and political problems like strife in the Middle East or political polarization in the United States. This ideology of technological salvation stems from a toxic mix of misunderstood science fiction, fringe religious movements, and racist pseudoscience.
The same online subcultures that spawned the ideas about AI that Altman, Musk, and the rest have swallowed also have connections with the American far-right and a troubling history of promoting scientifically discredited claims about fundamental differences in innate intelligence between different races. This goes hand in hand with their obsession with AI: They believe that AI can become godlike because they believe that intelligence is a single measurable trait corresponding to IQ, and that a sufficiently powerful AI would be able to simply dial up its IQ to an arbitrarily high number. But IQ has always been used for eugenics and institutional racism, and theres little evidence that it measures anything real about people. Its mostly just been used to say that some groups of people are inherently better than others.
Its no surprise that such stories are attractive to billionaires who want to justify their desire to remain in power over the rest of us forever. Recognizing the hollowness of these ideas is the first step to taking back our power. They want to set the terms on which we imagine the future, but the future isnt theirs for the taking. The future is something we all build together. They want us to believe that their promised utopias and nightmares are our only option. But in reality, the future is open.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Leaders today are stretched to the breaking point. Many managers enter their roles wanting to coach and care for their teams. But in todays workplace, that vision is colliding with a lengthening list of competing pressures: performance metrics, shifting workplace norms, and the unrelenting emotional labor of guiding teams through crisis after crisis.
As one manager told me, I want to be an empathetic leader and support my team, but we still have to make the numbers. Mostly, I just stay later myself. Another admitted, Last year I ended up in the hospital.
Newly released workplace data from Gallup reflects this worrying reality. In 2024, global engagement declined for just the second time in the past 12 years. It fell in 2020, as the pandemic swept across the globe, and it fell again last year. Importantly, Gallup reports, the drop in engagement was not due to worker engagement levels. It was entirely due to declining engagement levels among managers.
The rise and fall of manager engagement
So why are managers feeling less engaged on the job? Gallup cites workplace disruption over the past five years due to the pandemic, a hiring boom and bust, workplace restructurings, supply chain challenges, and changing expectations around technology and flexible work.
The political and social upheaval of recent years has likely also taken a toll, particularly as managers are often tasked to pull teams together through fractious times.
In a 2024 survey by mental healthcare provider Headspace, 98% of employees reported that global events affect their mental health at work. According to a recent report by mental health benefits broker Lyra, 85% of human resources leaders agree that managers are an integral part of our workplace mental health strategy. Unfortunately, just 39% also agree that they provide those managers with resources to support mental well-being at work. The disproportionate stress that managers face, the report adds, is due to high expectations for supporting workforce mental health paired with limited resources.
We can observe demographic differences in who is the most impacted, too. Notably, Gallup found the steepest declines in engagement among managers under 35 (down 5%) and female managers (down 7%). In my experience, these are also the managers most likely to absorb emotional labortaking on additional responsibility for their teams mental health while struggling to set boundaries for themselves. Its a recipe for leadership fatigue.
How managers can overcome leadership exhaustion
So where does that leave todays leaders, especially those torn between showing up for their teams and preserving their own capacity? The answer isnt to dial down your empathy: Its to practice that empathy in ways that are sustainable. That means setting boundaries, protecting your own energy, and modeling healthy leadership. Here are a few ways to start.
Stop fixing and start coaching. Its natural to want to help when a team member brings a problem to you, but jumping in with solutions can create dependency and drain your reserves. Instead, respond with curiosity: What have you tried so far? or What do you think would help? This approach empowers your team to develop resilience and creative thinking while also preserving your bandwidth. They may even come up with some great solutions that hadnt occurred to you.
Structure routines to preserve your own energy. Theres no rule that says good leaders need an open-door policy or a standing Monday meeting. If your current routines are depleting you, change them. Could you cluster one-on-ones into two days a week? Shift updates to asynchronous channels like email or Slack? Your energy is a finite resourcestructure your week to protect it.
Interrogate urgency. There are some emergencies, but not everything is an emergency. Preserve your energy for when you really need it. Start asking, Does this need to happen now? and Whats the worst that happens if this waits? Helping your team (and yourself) reset expectations around urgency can relieve pressure and improve decision-making.
Pursue your own goals. Your identity is not just the person holding everything together. Leaders need renewal, too. Whether its training for a marathon, learning to play the piano, or pursuing a professional certification, make sure you have something on the horizon thats just for you. These personal goals restore energy and remind you that your needs matter, too.
Delegate and celebrate others strengths. Delegation isnt just efficientit builds trust and engagement. Maybe youre not great at spreadsheets, or memo-writing, or icebreakers. Somebody on your team probably is. Hand over those responsibilities and praise mightily their superior expertise in the areas you despise, both to them and in front of others, so theyre recognized for that work. Identifying where others excel and delegating effectively can alleviate pressure and allow others to shine.
Leading with presence and compassion isnt easy, but it shouldnt be unsustainable. Empathy isnt a blank check on your energy or availability. By setting healthy boundaries, modeling sustainable practices, and protecting your own well-being, you can lead with strength and compassion over the long term.
Start with one small shiftsay no to a nonessential meeting, delegate one lingering task, or block an hour for something that restores you. Your team doesnt just need you to care. They need you to last.
