Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

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When advertising executives describe themselves as cockroaches, they are not being self-deprecating. Admen have shown a remarkable ability to survive what look like extinction-level events. Copywriters adapted to radio in the 1920s; artists embraced tv in the 1950s. Agencies clung on in the early 2000s as ads moved online. This week, in the face of another technological revolution, the admen steadfastly held their annual jamboree on the French Riviera.

The latest upheaval, brought by artificial intelligence (AI), is testing the cockroaches as never before. Advertising is one of the sectors most radically affected by AI so far. As such, adland offers a postcard from the future for other industries. Three lessons stand out.

The first is that the moat between human workers and chatbot rivals is narrower than most people think. Creative work is often seen as immune from automation. Large language models (LLMs) are designed to predict the most likely answer, which is often the opposite of the most original one. The best ads remain too weird and wonderful for any machine to have dreamt up: consider the campaign that attached step-counters to chickens to advertise free-range eggs.

Yet this week in Cannes TikTok, Meta, Google and other ad platforms showed off AI-powered features that can create passable video or rewrite ad copy at the click of a button. Their output will not win any awards. That does not matter. Most of the $1trn that is spent on ads each year goes towards workmanlike campaigns, rather than Cannes trophy-bait. Sam Altman’s prediction that AI will one day be able to do 95% of marketing may sound like boosterism for his firm, OpenAI. But the inspired human-made content that people present as a counter-argument is firmly within the remaining 5%. Robots will content themselves with the rest.

Another lesson is that the biggest companies have the most to gain. This runs counter to a popular narrative, that AI will democratise skills and intelligence. It is true that the new tools from Meta and co will allow millions of micro-businesses to produce video ads of a quality that was once out of their reach, and translate text into several languages. Global campaigns can now be launched online for hundreds of dollars; TV-worthy commercials are being put together for a few thousand.

But take a step back and it is clear that the serious money is being made by the giants. The selling of ads was already becoming more concentrated: four tech firms that accounted for a third of the global ad market five years ago now account for half of it. And America’s biggest companies are ramping up their AI investment at a faster rate than the rest. No wonder: AI requires computing muscle and large data sets, both of which are expensive. Whereas human intelligence is more or less randomly distributed, the artificial kind can be bought. Rather than democratise access to intelligence, AI may allow the richest to hoard it.

The last lesson from adland is that AI’s spread will have unpredictable consequences. Some advertisers are shifting their budgets from tv to the humble outdoor billboard. Why? In part because AI has made it possible to infer from vast data sets whether consumers who saw the ad bought the product, allowing marketers to measure the campaign’s effectiveness rather than guess at it. Another unexpected winner is old-school public relations. As consumers switch from search-engines to chatbots, brands need to persuade LLMs to speak highly of them. The most effective way to do that is to influence the sources that the model pays most attention to, such as news articles. In the AI age, high-tech “search-engine optimisation” may be less effective than offline schmoozing (or so, at least, marketers can insist when presenting their post-Cannes expenses claims).

Adland is an outlier in important ways. Ad spending is highly cyclical, so the industry has benefited more than most from the AI-fuelled boom of recent years. The big tech firms that are active in ads also happen to be leaders in AI, and have used ads to test their newest products. And not everyone has the admen’s knack for survival. But the rest of the business world should pay attention to the cockroaches of Cannes. The revolution in adland is a taste of what is to come.

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Living comes with a side effect: aging. Despite what you might hear on social media or in advertisements, there are no drugs that are known to slow or reverse human aging. But there’s some evidence to support another approach: cutting back on calories.

Caloric restriction (reducing your intake of calories) and intermittent fasting (switching between fasting and eating normally on a fixed schedule) can help with weight loss. But they may also offer protection against some health conditions. And some believe such diets might even help you live longer—a finding supported by new research out this week.

But the full picture is not so simple. Weight loss isn’t always healthy and neither is restricting your calorie intake, especially if your BMI is low to begin with. Some scientists warn that, based on evidence in animals, it could negatively impact wound healing, metabolism and bone density. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits—and risks—of caloric restriction.

Eating less can make animals live longer. This remarkable finding has been published in scientific journals for the last 100 years. It seems to work in almost every animal studied—everything from tiny nematode worms and fruit flies to mice, rats, and even monkeys. It can extend the lifespan of rodents by between 15% and 60%, depending on which study you look at.

At least it’s good news for lab animals. What about people? Also on Wednesday, another team of scientists published a separate review of research investigating the effects of caloric restriction and fasting on humans. That review assessed 99 clinical trials, involving over 6,500 adults.  Those researchers found that, across all those trials, fasting and caloric restriction did seem to aid weight loss. There were other benefits, too—but they depended on the specific approach to dieting. Fasting every other day seemed to help lower cholesterol, for example. Time-restricted eating, where you only eat within a specific period each day, by comparison, seemed to increase cholesterol, the researchers write in the BMJ. Given that elevated cholesterol in the blood can lead to heart disease, it’s not great news for the time-restricted eaters.

Cutting calories could also carry broader risks. Dietary restriction seems to impair wound healing in mice and rats, for example. Caloric restriction also seems to affect bone density. In some studies, the biggest effects on lifespan extension are seen when rats are put on calorie-restricted diets early in life. But this approach can affect bone development and reduce bone density by 9% to 30%.

It’s also really hard for most people to cut their caloric intake. When researchers ran a two-year trial to measure the impact of a 25% reduction in caloric intake, they found that the most their volunteers could cut was 12%. (That study found that caloric restriction reduces markers of inflammation, which can be harmful when it’s chronic, and had only a small impact on bone density.)

Unfortunately, there’s a lot we still don’t really understand about caloric restriction. It doesn’t seem to help all animals live longer—it seems to shorten the lifespan of animals with certain genetic backgrounds. And we don’t know whether it extends the lifespan of people. It isn’t possible to conduct a randomized clinical trial in which you deprive people of food from childhood and then wait their entire lives to see when they die.

It is notoriously difficult to track or change your diet. And given the unknowns surrounding caloric restriction, it’s too soon to make sweeping recommendations, particularly given that your own personal biology will play a role in any benefits or risks you’ll experience.

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CEOs of MNCs are frequently asking how to reimagine their operating models for the future. While answers vary based on the nature of each business and where it is headquartered, one truth spans all scenarios: The MNC model will need to move beyond enabling growth and efficiency to also embedding the adaptability to capture opportunities and the resilience to withstand geopolitical shocks.

Successful MNC leaders will increasingly make business decisions informed by the impact of geopolitics on their strategic priorities. In particular, they need to weigh the implications of ten geopolitical factors, most of which increase the complexity of doing business globally supported by formal governance and organizational structures.  Ten geopolitical factors affecting global business are:  Trade; Tariff, Domestic Industrial Policies; Domestic Environmental, Labor, and Immigration Policies; Export, Import, and Capital Controls; Foreign Investment Restrictions; Sanctions; Technology, Data, Intellectual Property and Cyber Controls; and Conflicts and Multilateral Security Agreements.

These geopolitical factors will have varied, and sometimes contradictory, implications for multinational companies. Some, including export controls, sanctions, and investment restrictions, may constrain MNCs’ ability to operate globally, limiting their scale and growth prospects. Conflicts and tariffs may affect their supply chains, causing costly operational disruptions for companies that have not made contingency plans. Other drivers, however—such as domestic industrial supports and trade and security agreements—may create paths for MNCs to expand into new markets and trade corridors and take advantage of significant new investment opportunities or incentives. Critically, these shifts will have a different impact depending on the company’s business and geographic mix, thereby affecting competitors’ relative advantages. MNC leaders should be prepared to both protect their current franchises and propel forward to create value.

As the impact of each geopolitical driver unfolds, new norms will in time take form. In the meantime, MNC leaders should prepare for different scenarios stemming from the geopolitical shifts by exploring three fundamental aspects of their organizations: value at stake, governance structure, and organizational structure.  

Multinational corporations have created significant value for their stakeholders by harnessing the opportunities created in a low-friction global order. As the geopolitical climate changes, so must MNCs’ design. With the right adaptations, global companies can access new opportunities and maintain resilience in the face of shocks. The challenge for their leaders will be making cohesive choices in developing their strategies, governance, and organizational structures in the face of persistent uncertainty.

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Anytime a brand grows—or tries to grow—by attracting new segments, it risks creating conflict with the old ones. And the larger a brand gets, the more heterogeneous its customers will become, increasing the likelihood that tensions will arise.  

Avoiding that problem—or solving it when it does emerge—requires a deeper understanding of the relationships between customer segments.

The authors suggest, based on their research and consultancy, four basic ways that customer segments relate to each other. We need to understand these types of relationships, see how conflict arises from them in predictable ways, and then learn how to identify and eliminate that conflict. These tactics work whether your company is proactively seeking to avoid clashes or is already waist-deep in them and needs a way out of the morass.

Two key factors govern the nature of the relationship between segments. The first is whether the value each segment seeks from the brand is unique and independent (what we call divergent value) or depends on the use of the brand by another segment (what we call collaborative value).  The second factor is the sensitivity of the segments to other types of customers. Some are indifferent but some brand users are influenced by each other—for good or ill.

These two factors combine in four ways to create the basic relationship types in our framework: 

1. Separate communities.  These segments value disparate things in a brand and its offerings, and each can seek its respective value without stepping on the toes of the other.  A growth strategy built on separate communities has the advantage of compartmentalization: Brands can grow simply by courting each new segment independently, in a serial fashion, since each is self-contained and has minimal influence on the others. The disadvantage is that growing in this way can be relatively costly, since each segment requires its own marketing mix (though not necessarily its own product line), and the potential for organic growth beyond each community is limited.
2. Connected communities.  In this type of relationship, the brand becomes more valuable as more customers use it, even when those additional users come from other segments.  Connected community relationships offer brands the opportunity to multiply their growth as users attract more users. But they can also lead to catastrophic collapse when one or more segments start abandoning the brand.
3. Leader-follower segments.  This relationship is hierarchical. Leader segments have higher status than follower segments—whether they’re cooler, more expert, or more authentic. (They don’t need to be more numerous, however. Sometimes the follower segment vastly outnumbers and outspends the leader segment.) When leaders use a brand’s offerings, it attracts people who want to emulate them.  A leader-follower strategy can be a cost-efficient way to acquire multiple segments: When leaders become customers, followers often find their own way to the brand. Leaders can serve as evidence of a brand’s credibility, quality, trendiness, or cachet.  The risk with a leader-follower strategy is that a leader segment could abandon the brand, since followers tend to go out the door right after them. Consequently, when brands serve leader-follower segments, it’s crucial that they maintain their association with the leader segment and not become too focused on followers.
4. Incompatible segments.  This is the relationship most prone to conflict. Incompatible segments derive different kinds of value from a brand’s offerings, but because they influence each other, they’re unable to comfortably coexist.   Intersegment conflict wreaks havoc on brands. Brands should steer clear of trying to serve customer segments that are incompatible.

To avoid or resolve a conflict, strategists and brand managers must first understand where it comes from.  

1. Functional conflict.   This occurs when one customer segment impedes another segment’s ability to enjoy a brand’s products or services.
2. Brand-image conflict.  People buy a brand’s offerings for more than just their utility; the brand’s image also is a source of value and self-expression. When a brand attracts a new segment or makes changes to try to do so, it can threaten the authenticity, credibility, or purpose of the brand for other customers.
3. User-identity conflict.  Brands frequently become associated with specific groups of users. Sometimes this happens because of a brand’s functional properties, sometimes it happens for more-symbolic reasons. Once these associations are established, brands often become symbols of consumers’ identification (or nonidentification) with certain groups.  User-identity conflict arises if people in one customer segment think they can no longer use the brand to reliably signal their affiliation with a particular group because another segment has become associated with the brand.
4. Ideological conflict.  This occurs when a segment has values or beliefs that differ from or clash with those of another segment. Not all brand purchases are ideologically motivated, of course.

Escaping conflicts between customer segments most often requires nudging them into either a separate-communities relationship or a leader-follower relationship. Occasionally, it requires the difficult decision to jettison one of the segments completely. (Forward-looking brands can use these same strategies to tamp down conflicts before they ignite.) The right approach often depends on the source of the conflict.

1. Separate the segments.  This is the most common approach for resolving conflicts. It can give each segment the space it needs to get what it wants from the brand without rubbing other segments the wrong way. Brand managers can create that distance by employing several tactics— perhaps simultaneously if the conflict is severe.  Brands can also turn down the heat through product development and differentiation.  Sometimes the design of physical spaces or websites can create barriers between segments.
2. Define leaders and followers.  Creating or reestablishing a hierarchy among consumers can turn a previously incompatible relationship into a leader-follower relationship.  One way to do this is through subbrands, which can demarcate the status between customer groups.  Subbrand hierarchies can also reduce the risk of user-identity conflict.  Pricing and availability can also establish a hierarchy.
3. Fire a segment.  If the continued use of a brand by one segment makes it difficult for the brand to attract or retain other, more-valuable customers, it’s often wise to nudge that segment toward the door.

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Many of us have experienced situations where we or someone else was problematically stereotyped, inappropriately dressed down, or held back from opportunities. In these cases, we’d like to think we wouldn’t be a silent victim or bystander. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests otherwise.  At other times, our response to situations like these isn’t silence but is equally problematic: We do speak up in real time, but in a way that only harms ourselves or the person we were trying to help. That kind of reaction also does nothing to change the offender’s behavior, because all of their attention shifts to mentally (or verbally) labeling us as inappropriate, out of control, or some other negative descriptor.

If our goal is to strongly defend our own values and act as an ally to others, why do we often use such ineffective strategies in the moment? Because “fight or flight” is humans’ instinctive, and therefore automatic, response to stressful situations.  If we don’t work hard to overcome these natural tendencies, we’re likely to keep reacting the same way every time.  And we will keep regretting that.

So, what can you do? The authors recommend that we choose a couple of phrases that we want to be able to reliably and skillfully use when faced with disrespectful, inappropriate behavior. Then we should practice using them until the phrases become automatic even when we are significantly stressed.

Which type of phrase to use in a given situation will depend, at a general level, on how you implicitly weight two objectives: to unambiguously condemn the current action, or to create a change in the beliefs or behavior of the offender.

1. Asserting: Set Clear Boundaries.  Use assertive responses when a statement is clearly inappropriate and you want to make it known that such comments are unacceptable to you.  

“I don’t appreciate that comment.”  “That’s not appropriate in a professional setting.”  “That stereotype is harmful, and I won’t ignore it.”  “If you wouldn’t want that said about your family or friend, don’t say it here.” Keep in mind, though, that assertive responses are the most likely to provoke defensiveness, so tone and delivery matter most of all with these kinds of statements.

2. Educating: Encourage Awareness and Change.  If the speaker perhaps didn’t realize that their comment was problematic, an educational response delivered in a nonaggressive manner can help foster understanding.  “That sounds like a stereotype. I used to think that too, but I’ve learned …”  “I noticed that comment, and I want to share why it can be harmful.”  “I feel uncomfortable with that statement because …”   “I don’t think you realize the impact of what you just said.”  Educational responses work well when the goal is to broaden perspectives and encourage learning rather than simply call out the offense.
3. Inquiring: Spark Reflection and Dialogue.  Sometimes, asking a question is the most effective way to challenge problematic comments and prompt self-reflection.  “Can you clarify what you meant by that?”  “Could you tell me why you think that’s true?”  “What led you to that conclusion?”  “Are we making assumptions here that deserve a second look?”  Inquiry-based responses encourage two-way conversation. This strategy allows you to challenge a statement without direct confrontation and can therefore be especially useful when the person who offended you holds more power.

Choosing a few phrases that sound authentic to you is a necessary but insufficient first step. You’ll also have to practice those phrases over and over, if you hope to be able to skillfully use them when your brain’s deeply ingrained evolutionary and social fight-or-flight instincts take control.  Here’s a process for practicing your phrases:  Consider your identity factors.  Practive a loud.  Practive in low-stakes situations.  And reflect and adjust.

Snf if you have the power to do so, help strengthen your organization’s culture of response by doing the following:  Protecting people who speak up.  Recognizing and rewarding those who speak up.  And holding leaders — especially those in senior roles — accountable for the behavior they model.

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Between constant interruptions, shifting priorities and global uncertainty, staying focused at work feels increasingly impossible. Research from the University of California, Irvine, reveals that our attention spans on work screens have plummeted from an average of 2.5 minutes in 2004 to just 47 seconds today. Meanwhile, a new study from Insightful shows that 92% of employers consider lost focus a significant problem in the workplace.  Here are five reasons you can’t focus at work, plus techniques you can implement today to regain your focus and transform scattered workdays into periods of meaningful productivity.

1. Burnout Steals Your Energy.  Some of the solution are:  Schedule regular recovery breaks throughout the day. Step away from your screen for five minutes every hour.  Take brief walks outside or practice a few minutes of deep breathing to reset your nervous system.  Schedule your most demanding cognitive work during peak energy periods.  And prioritize physical health.
2. Lack of Purpose Destroys Focus.  Solutions that work:  Identify aspects of your current role that align with your personal values or long-term goals.  Keep a “meaning journal” documenting how your daily tasks connect to larger outcomes.  Look for ways to develop skills or build relationships that serve your broader career aspirations.  Reconnect with your “why” by asking: How did my work impact someone today?  Find mentoring or teaching opportunities within your role to create additional purpose and fulfillment.
3. Digital Distractions Hijack Your Brain.  Solutions that work:  Create distraction-free work blocks by silencing all non-essential notifications during designated focus periods.  Move your phone to another room or place it in a drawer where it requires deliberate effort to access.  Schedule specific times for checking email, Slack or news (many experts recommend just three times daily: morning, midday, and end of day).  Use website blockers during deep work sessions to prevent unconscious browsing.  Set up your phone’s home screen with only essential apps, moving social media and entertainment apps to secondary screens.
4. Constant Interruptions Fragment Your Attention.  Solutions that work:  Use visible cues to signal when you need uninterrupted time, such as noise-canceling headphones, a small sign on your desk or strategic body language.  Position your workspace to minimize visual distractions from high-traffic areas.  Communicate your focus needs proactively by letting colleagues know when you’ll be available to answer questions.  Create structured opportunities for social interaction to prevent colleagues from feeling shut out.  Schedule brief coffee breaks or walking meetings to maintain relationships while protecting uninterrupted work time.
5. Unclear Priorities Create Decision Paralysis.  Solutions that work:  Schedule regular check-ins with your manager to discuss which projects deserve your primary focus.  Ask specific questions: “If I can only complete three things this week, which three would have the greatest impact?”  Start each day by writing down your three most important tasks before checking email or attending meetings.  When priorities shift, ask for explicit guidance about what should be deprioritized rather than simply adding new items to your list.  Document priority conversations to refer back to when new requests arise.

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According to the author earlier this year he traveled to Omaha, Nebraska to attend what turned out to be the final Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting led by Warren Buffett.  The author was sitting in the stadium audience, stunned like everyone else, when the 94-year-old announced he would step down as CEO at the end of the year.  In the months since Omaha, according to the author, he has read everything he could about Buffett and his late partner Charlie Munger, who died in November 2023.

Plenty has been said about the two’s voracious reading habits, though Munger in particular embraced the idea of “worldly wisdom” which gave him such a wide yet incisive aperture on business and life.  

He believed the best decisions stemmed from a combination of mental models and lessons drawn from many — rather than few — disciplines.  Thinking clearly about investments did not come from a narrow understanding of finance, in his view, but from a “latticework” of ideas that married concepts from physics, philosophy, literature, biology and so forth.  Munger believed that people who work to understand at least the most important ideas of every discipline at even an elementary level are superior decision-makers.  This multiple-model approach acts as a sort of hedge against any single faulty model.  

Thinking about a problem purely mathematically, for instance, has pitfalls if the equations rely on bad assumptions. Drawing on physics, law and poetry, meanwhile, broadens the surface area with which you can tackle an issue.

To borrow the language of Wharton professor Philip Tetlock, Munger would be a “fox” — someone who knows a little about a lot — rather than a “hedgehog” — knowing a lot about a little.  Munger made these labels moot.  He simply knew a lot about a lot, and he also knew a little about everything else, as described by Tren Griffin in Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor.

“You have to believe the truth of biologist Julian Huxley’s idea that ‘life is just one damn relatedness after another,’” Munger said, according to Poor Charlie’s Almanack. “So you must have the models, and you must see the relatedness and the effects from the relatedness.”

Like Munger, according to the author, he reads books not in an attempt to be smart but to avoid being dumb. The “worldly wisdom” framework tells us that good decisions come from asking the right questions from all disciplines.  Success to Munger didn’t come from mastering one domain, but from refusing to silo the mind.

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Growing up, most of us were raised on a handful of core values: Be respectful, work hard, go to school, and try to find a “good job.” That kind of advice served a purpose — until you stepped into the world of entrepreneurship.

Once you start building companies, managing risk and making decisions that impact other people’s livelihoods, you quickly realize that much of the real-world playbook wasn’t passed down at the dinner table. There are rules no one told you — lessons that only become clear through experience, failure and a few bruises along the way.  Here are three truths your mom probably didn’t mention, but every entrepreneur eventually learns.

1. Relationships matter more than money — don’t burn bridges.  Money gets a lot of attention. In business, it’s often treated as the ultimate scorecard. But ask anyone who’s been through multiple cycles — booms, busts, exits, restarts — and they’ll tell you the same thing: Relationships are the true long-term currency.  Too many people early in their careers treat business like a zero-sum game. Win the deal. Beat the competition. Squeeze every cent. But what they don’t realize is that business is a marathon, not a sprint. And the bridges you burn now could be the ones you need to cross later.  People remember how you made them feel. They remember how you showed up when things were good and how you behaved when things weren’t.  Business isn’t just about capital — it’s about trust. When the tide turns, it won’t be your profit margins that save you. It’ll be the people who trust you enough to bet on you again.
2. Don’t just look for a job — build a career that points forward.  Most people are trained to look for stability. A job with a paycheck, a title, maybe benefits. But entrepreneurship requires a different mindset — one that’s focused not just on the next role, but on the next direction.  If you’re constantly looking straight ahead, reacting to what’s in front of you, you’ll miss the bigger picture. The best founders don’t just ask, “What should I do next?” They ask, “What kind of life do I want to build? What impact do I want to have?”  Looking up means identifying a bigger vision. It means saying no to short-term moves that don’t serve the long game. It means thinking in terms of legacy, not just tasks.  Every great company starts with someone who wasn’t satisfied with the status quo. Someone who refused to settle for “just another job” and instead chose to take a risk on a bigger idea. If you’re serious about entrepreneurship, your job isn’t to chase opportunities — it’s to shape them.
3. Go to college — but not for the reasons you think.  We’ve been told since childhood: “Go to college. It’s the only way to succeed.” And sure, if you’re planning to be a doctor, attorney or engineer, that advice still holds up. But for the rest of us? The real value of college has little to do with the diploma and everything to do with the people.  College isn’t just a classroom. It’s your first real network. Your first taste of navigating relationships, learning to pitch an idea, convincing others to join your vision and failing publicly — then bouncing back. That’s not something you learn in a lecture hall.  Some of the most successful founders of our time didn’t finish college, but they were smart enough to immerse themselves in a social ecosystem where ideas, ambition and bold personalities collided. College is where you find your tribe. Your co-founders. Your early supporters. Your future business partners.  So if you’re going to invest in college, don’t do it for the framed degree. Do it for the four years of social capital you’ll never get back. Skip the resume-padding clubs and find the circles where ideas get challenged, risks get taken and relationships get built.  Because ten years from now, no one’s going to ask what grade you got in Econ 101 — but they will ask who you built something with.