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Back in 2015, Microsoft claimed our attention spans had dropped to eight secondsshorter than that of a goldfish. No ones definitively proven it, but it feels about right in the age of TikTok. Ten years later, goodness knows how long were able to hold it. Its one of the major social shifts of our lifetimes, and its one that a new generation of start-up brandsand their investorshave jumped on. These “dopamine” brands, such as Starface, Graza, and Poppi, provide younger generations with striking visual hits to draw them in with an instant high. Their packages, messages, and social content all pop, their drops sell out in minutes, and their fans queue virtually just to get their hands on them. Those limited drops, seasonal flavors, and unexpected collabs fuel hype and scarcity. These arent just products; theyre events. But with every dopamine hit comes a comedown, and many challenger brands are now struggling with staying power. Meanwhile the legacy brands languish on the sidelines, wondering what to make of it all as a chunk of their audience is tempted away. Theres a lot to learn in creating fresh news for these classic heroes, but they shouldnt feel threatened by the dopamine gang; rather, they should see an opportunity in it. If youve got iconic assets and built emotional trust over decades, youre more than halfway there. The nudge is to deliberately disrupt yourself by bringing ideas in from the outside, while finding ways to retain what it is people love about you at the core. Packaging is a powerful touchpoint to do it. Its your shop window, your sensorial hook, your cultural signal. When you get it right, it should create not just fleeting excitement, but a deep connection that creates a lasting memory. Here’s how to do dopamine design, without right. Inject hype at the edges, dont break the system Limited editions are an obvious, and often fruitful, place to start, but legacy brands can sometimes get overexcited here. Often there is a temptation to create disruption by sidelining the rule book and going crazy with the new news. When limited editions arent rooted in what people already love about the brand, they land as lazy, insincere. They often fall flat with consumers, who see straight through it. Smart design evolves from whats already there; celebrate the core brand essence by coming from a place of authenticity, then create the disruptive newness. So, when Jaffa Cakes was developing a limited-edition flavor, they began by acknowledging the product truth: the joy is in the jammy center. To make it feel more special than the established orange, an unexpected idea came about in cola-bottle flavor. This delivered an exciting dose of “Im not sure thatll work” intrigue mixed with reassuring nostalgia for the consumer. Crucially, we restrained ourselves with the packaging design in responding to this. We retained the existing layout and the brand’s visual consistency, while dramatizing the new story within it to create something new. Its a simple but effective technique, all too often brushed aside in favour of total “pack takeover” disruption. Short-term impact, long-term value Limited editions from brands work best when they riff on the thing people already love about them, whether it be format, flavor, origin story, or something else. These kinds of designs dont just deliver a momentary dopamine hit. When a drop gets it right, it builds trust and respect with consumers. Moreover it builds a momentum that has a positive halo effect back into the main brand. Look at Johnnie Walkers Squid Game Limited Editionanother entry from a brand that continues to cross-pollinate categories to deliver the unexpected. Here its bringing popular culture in to give its audience exactly what they never knew they needed. While the launch design felt dopamine, the core pack design confidently fused both brands’ assets together with mutual respect and consideration. It was a wisely thought through approach and showed us that the brand can deliver both quality whisky and moments of playful humor simultaneously. The total effect of such one-offs is that the entire brand benefits from them. Collaboration should amplify, not dilute The Heinz x Absolut collaboration was a good example of how good design can multiply brand value. Its success lay in both brands celebrating their distinctive assets in tandem in the launch collateral (Heinzs silhouette and red tones, Absoluts bottle shape and stripped-back typography). [Photo: Absolut Vodka/Heinz] The creative ideavodka pasta saucewas playful, but it was the campaign work and the packaging that sold the credibility, where the two brands came together in a way that felt creative and made sense for each partner. The most effective collaborations arent necessarily about giving each brand equal space, or one giving way for the other. Its putting egos aside to create something entirely new together, the genius child of both. Legacy brands at the center of culture Legacy brands dont need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant, but they do need to stay alert to whats happening around them. Packaging is a hugely impactful area to showcase this. It is the most visceral, sensorial, and tangible touchpoint a brand can have. A good idea at the heart can be taken to the next level when form, finish, and feel are also taken into account.Legacy brands should be more confident in the strength of their assets. Changing them creatively just a little can a have a powerful outcome. Building both brands assets through co-respect can help place a brand in the center of culture effectively enough for the audience to reappraise it on a deeper, more lasting level. It can reenergize products and brands, putting them in front of new audiences who will become the next generation of loyalists. A design that is oversaturated in dopamine can have the opposite effect, creating confusion around your brand’s identity, leaving your crowd alienated and cynical. The key is to build from what people already know and love. Thats what gives brands the permission to try something new on their packaging, and the credibility to be taken seriously when they do. Once youve cracked the code in an authentic way and succeeded at it, the stage is set for a future of endless creativity that people will come back for time and again.
Category:
E-Commerce
There’s an air of panic in the media world. The specter of AI has been looming large for a couple of years now, but the threat now appears to be solidifying. Publishers are reporting that search traffic is in free fall, and there’s overwhelming evidence that AI chatbots give very little in terms of referrals. What to do about “Google Zero” has gone from a theoretical destination to a reality that the media world must contend with. Of course, panicking is never a good strategy. But pivoting can be, and there’s been no shortage of that lately. Both Wired and The Verge announced this week a stronger push into newsletters, one of the more reliable ways to connect directly with readers. When Business Insider recently announced layoffs, it also said it would invest in live events. And even publishers that already charge for subscriptions are doubling down on them: Newsweek will launch new types for both consumers and businesses, and The Guardian now has a new, cheaper tier for readers who want to opt out of personalized ads. While AI may be the impetus behind a lot of these changes, they’re all directionally pushing toward building direct relationships with audience members. That is smart, but at a more basic level, they’re appealing to human desires that go beyond just getting informationa task AI fulfills very effectively. Offerings like newsletters, memberships, and events give a sense of belonging, encourage reading habits through consistency, and emphasize voiceeither that of the brand or the individual writer. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} Within all this is the beginnings of a post-Google content strategy for media. But really, it’s only half a strategy because it only accounts for humans. Much of internet activity in the future will be the result of bots, whether they’re hoovering up data to inform AI models or acting as agents on behalf of individual users. Data from TollBit indicates bot crawling is already comparable to what the big (non-AI) search engines dowhen everyone has their own AI agent, I would wager it will be the majority. Any forward-looking content strategy needs to take into account both humans and machines. The new organic audience Let’s start with the people. A few months ago, I hosted a webinar on the types of content that are most resilient to AI summarization. AI does a great job of summarizing news, but it struggles with voice and unique perspectives. The consequence: If you want good opinion and analysis, you’ll need to click through. Visual and interactive content is poorly conveyed by AI. And because AI is well known to hallucinate sometimes, anything that might inform a crucial decision for a readerlike context for health, legal, or financial decisionswill likely motivate readers to check the original source. Certainly, memberships and subscriptions are important mechanisms to build a loyal audience, but they also need to be centered around something readers can’t get anywhere else. That usually means narrowing the lens of focus rather than widening it. Niche subjectseven within a more general brandwill typically see higher engagement and more loyalty than general ones. Then there’s the stickiness of interactivity. One thing that emerging media platforms like Substack and TikTok do well is encouraging direct conversation between content creators and audience members. But being interactive doesn’t always have to be so hands-on: Semi-automated features like polls, quizzes, and games are all effective habit-buildersand cannot be substituted by AI. Rise of the machines If you think about it, there’s a kind of a “well, duh” quality to all the reports that confirm people don’t click through to sources when they use AI. (Pew Research just put out another, by the way.) That’s because removing the need to click is largely the point. Why go and read a whole bunch of articles when bots can do it for you? But that reveals the other side of the coin: Bots are now doing the searching and the clicking, and that activity is traceable, measurable, and potentially monetizable. In other words, the inevitable rise in bot traffic represents both an unprecedented threat and a massive opportunity. First, there’s the obvious idea of charging bots to scrape your site. Putting in paywalled endpointswhere AI bot operators pay a small fee to access contentmay work, especially now that Cloudflare is leading the charge in empowering website owners to block bots. However, it greatly depends on the scrapers acting in good faithand even if they do, it’s doubtful if the fee per scrape that publishers charge would ever be enough to build a sustainable business. What could help is winning the next SEO war: AIEO, or artificial intelligence engine optimization. Being one of the primary sources in an AI Overview or a ChatGPT answer might not seem like much of a prize, given the low click-through rates. But if you pair it with both a pay-per-crawl mechanism and a content strategy that focuses on the AI-resilient content types discussed earlierthe ones that have a higher chance of audiences seeking them outthe benefits could end up being more than mere bragging rights. This kind of AI-first content strategy does require a more sophisticated approach. You’d have to make use of the full search and AI toolbox, including things like Google snippets to ensure AI crawlers highlight the most enticing parts of your content without giving the store away, and MCP servers that can ensure bots have diect access to the content you green-light for them. While that can be technically cumbersome, the market is already adapting, with AIEO specialists like Scrunch AI offering one-stop-shop packages that essentially make a bot-friendly copy of your website so that crawlers can feast while humans enjoy your regular site. Smaller, better . . . robot-ier? The truth about the future of media is that the audience, the human audience, will be smaller for pretty much everyone. As more people get their information from AI portals, publishers will need to make the most of the few people who come directly to them. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Going small can ultimately be part of a healthier brand of journalism, as I argued in my very first column. But the parallel trend is that the bot audience is rising fast, and it undoubtedly will be a dominant force in the way information is distributed. Harnessing that force will be essential for the media. And though there are still a lot of unknownsthe best practices, the legal framework, even the potential rewardsat least it’s easy to see what not to do: wait. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
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E-Commerce
Its true that personal ambition fuels success. But we can reach a dangerous tipping point when healthy drive becomes hyper-ambitiona compulsive cycle of excessive striving that becomes self-defeating. Unlike healthy ambition that energizes you, hyper-ambition can leave you perpetually unsatisfied, overextended, and grinding to exhaustion. The cost isnt just personalhyper-ambition eventually undermines the very professional success it promises. Heres how to recognize if youve crossed into the danger zoneand take practical steps to realign toward healthy ambition. 1. You Feel Like Youve Never Achieved Enough and Are Never Satisfied Are you on a professional achievement treadmill, immediately shifting focus to your next goal after hitting a milestone? While accomplishments and rewards can provide short-term satisfaction, the challenge to getting into such a rhythm is that you may pursue goals without considering what you truly want. This can catch up to you when you realize youve met external expectations but never connected to your internal motivation, leaving you dissatisfied. Putting all your attention against the pursuit of professional validation can also lead to ignoring key areas of ones life that affect long-term happiness and well-being, such as your personal relationships, your health, and activities that fulfill and restore you. To realign to healthy ambition, orient your goals toward internal motivation firstits a better predictor of engagement and success. Research has shown that putting attention and focus on personal success linked to fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness begets external success, while the opposite focus doesnt hold true. Start with your values: test if a goal is aligned with what is important and matters to you, rather than solely meeting external expectations. Academic studies have shown that aligning our goals with our values leads to more satisfaction, higher persistence, and more goal attainment. Expand your ambition to include meaningful life goals and challenge what success truly means in your life. Studies confirm that once our basic needs are met, more income, wealth, or possessions dont correlate with lifelong happiness. Plus, Gallup research finds that well-being isnt tied just to career or finances, but also encompasses physical, social, and community well-being. 2. You Feel Constantly Over-Extended and Frustrated You Cant ‘Do It All’ Do you say yes to every opportunity without strategic prioritization, then feel stretched thin and frustrated by your inability to pursue them all effectively? This suggests you either think more is always better, leading to overload and overwhelm, or you may not have an approach to help you choose where to put your time and attention when faced with seemingly equally valid goals. To shift toward focusing on what matters, use strategic methods to make conscious choices. Create and visualize a goal system by identifying your core priorities and mapping how other goals connect. This can reveal if youre pursuing too much, show how aligned actions serve multiple goals, and reduce perceived friction between supposedly competing goals. You can maximize goal attainment by creating these positive connections, minimizing conflicts, and better understanding trade-offs you may make. When faced with choices, apply the urgencyenergy filter. Ask, What has urgency, and do I have energy for it? This reveals several strategies: Prioritize: Commit to high-urgency, high-energy ambitions Reinterpret: For high-urgency, low-energy goals, find ways to achieve the same outcome with less time and effort Postpone: Back-burner lower-priority ambitions Let go: With self-compassion, release goals that no longer serve you Learn to compromise wisely by focusing on what matters at this time rather than trying to do everything. 3. Youre Grinding Hard All the Time Without Recovery How often do you find yourself compulsively working, putting in excessive hours without recovery time, leaving you exhausted? Operating in a persistent high-performance mode leads to unproductive stress, causing your physical and mental health to suffer. Ironically, your productivity declines and your work suffers, too. To break this pattern, be strategic about managing your effort and prioritizing recovery. Our ambitions arent created equal. Be discerning about the effort put against your goals by asking three key questions: Aspiration: How good do I want to be at this? Determination: What is worth the hard work? Motivation: How much effort do I want to put in and whats required? Additionally, manage perfectionism. Be conscious about where you apply excellence and give yourself permission to say this is good enough for lower-stakes areas. Finally, make recovery a leadership imperative. Doris Kearns Goodwin, the celebrated presidential biographer, has said: The most underappreciated leadership strength is the ability to relax and replenish energy. Research shows we paradoxically neglect recovery practices when we need them most. We need a deliberate plan to sustain ourselves for the work that matters and to prioritize time to psychologically disconnect from work. Sustainable success comes from strategic ambition, not hyper-ambition. The idea that you have to choose between being ambitious and being well is a false choice. The goal shouldnt be to eliminate ambition, but to keep it in a healthy zone where it energizes rather than depletes youallowing you to achieve what you really want both professionally and personally.
Category:
E-Commerce
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