👋 Not a good look: It’s our final email of 2024 and we’re spending it being unfaithful, talking all about a different year: 2025, and all the absurdities it has in store. We’ll be back to our usual schtick on Jan. 2, but until then, very sincerely, thank you for sharing parts of your past year with us.
🎧 On the pod:Nokia’s “taco phone”: ahead of its time, but also a disaster.
WEIRD YEAR
Top storylines for January
New year, same problems?2024 may be winding down, but it’s not going quietly. Later this week, as 2025 settles in and the world gets back to business, many familiar storylines will be picking up where they left off.
To keep you clued in, here’s a rundown of some of the biggest stories gracing headlines at the top of the new year.
Nothing like a labor strike to kick off the new year.
Prepare to feel the crush of ~45k US dock workers from Maine to Texas walking off the job this month. The International Longshoremen’s Association and the US Maritime Alliance have until Jan. 15 to reach a new deal and avoid a second strike that could cost up to $4.5B per day.
After a year of labor strikes that stretched from India to Germany, Moody’s Ratings predicts recent high-profile bargaining wins paired with strong public support are likely to fuel more work stoppages in 2025.
What else you can expect given an ILA strike: higher prices and shortages of goods like groceries, electronics, and clothing.
TikTok’s future hangs in the balance
The ByteDance-owned app has until Jan. 19 to either find a new owner or face a nationwide ban, the stipulations of a law passed in April. If implemented, the ban wouldn’t immediately shut down TikTok’s US operations, but would require the app’s removal from Google and Apple’s app stores, preventing new downloads and software updates.
How are things looking for TikTok and its 170m+ US users? This month, a federal court denied its petition to overturn the law, but the Supreme Court will hear its challenge against the law on Jan. 10.
And President-elect Donald Trump, despite having tried to outlaw the app himself in 2020, is expected to halt the ban following his inauguration.
Speaking of Trump’s inauguration, expect “yuge” celebrations, and costs.
President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, but the event’s pomp and circumstance will begin days ahead. Several inaugural events are lined up between Jan. 18 and the big day, including a “Starlight Ball,” Sunday service, and dinner with the Trumps. For those wanting in, an invite won’t come cheap — access packages start at $50k and run up to $2m. Who you might see there: Mark Zuckerberg — Meta donated $1m to the inauguration fund this month.
Post celebrations, it’ll be all business from there: Trump’s day-one plan includes imposing tariffs on imports from China, Mexico, and Canada, which experts warn would raise prices for American consumers on everything from fresh produce to electronic goods and cars.
And finally, some good news for consumers: The value wars will rage on.
Analysts expect the fast-food value wars of 2024 to bleed well into the first half of 2025, with more promotions on the horizon to draw inflation-weary consumers back into businesses. Kicking it off will be McDonald’s, which is debuting a new McValue menu, featuring its popular $5 Meal Deal, at US locations on Jan. 7.
Unfortunately, that good news is predicated on some not-so-good news: Food inflation is expected to remain high through early 2025.
INSIDER INSIGHTS
What’s top of mind for marketing leaders?
Last year’s playbook is basically ancient history. But 700+ leaders just spilled the tea on what’s actually working.
This 2025 field guide packs all of their insights into frameworks that’ll help you stay ahead.
Feast on our findings:
Four top trends everyone is watching
How strategists are integrating AI into workflows
How to elevate and differentiate your content
Notes on data privacy and intentionality
Survey data from chiefs in the trenches
Here’s what the heads have to say about exceeding expectations.
To midnight, per the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ last update in January 2024.
The Doomsday Clock is a metaphor for how close humanity is to destroying itself, with midnight signaling an apocalyptic event. When the clock debuted in 1947, it was set to seven minutes. In 1991, following the Cold War, we were the “safest” we’ve ever been at 17 minutes.
Today’s time reflects several modern concerns, including:
Russian threats of nuclear warfare
Increased nuclear spending in Russia, the US, and China
Wars in Ukraine and Gaza
Climate change
AI
The Bulletin will revisit the clock again in January.
ODD DUCKS
Weird companies getting up to weird things
AI may have been the hottest thing in 2024, sure, but that wasn’t the primary focus for these innovative companies:
Air buds: Bark launched Bark Air in May, a luxury service for pet owners who don’t want to put their dogs in carriers or cargo holds. Dogs are treated like first-class passengers, too, with calming music, snacks, and other perks.
Despite the steep price — one-way tickets start at $6k — Bark found enough of a customer base to add seven new routes in June.
In February, Bark Air will trial flights between NYC and Miami/Fort Lauderdale on larger planes, bringing fares under $1k, via a partnership with Air Wisconsin.
Exhausted? Yeah, you and one in three Americans, per the CDC. “Sleep tourism” is on the rise for the weariest and wealthiest among us, with hotels offering posh packages designed for guests who just want a good night’s rest.
Amenities include ~$6.3k AI-assisted Bryte beds, mocktails and herbal teas, sleep-centric spa treatments and retreats, sleep experts, and dark rooms sans screens.
Try this for a view: SpaceVIP began taking reservations for six-hour suborbital meals aboard Spaceship Neptune, a so-called “space balloon,” due to kick off in 2025. Chef Rasmus Munk of Alchemist, a two-starred Michelin restaurant, will handle the cuisine while diners enjoy views from the edge of space, 100k feet above sea level. If that makes you dizzy, imagine dropping the $495k it costs for the experience, assuming they pull it off.
Speaking of space, Sierra Space is building an inflatable space station to replace the ISS, which retires in 2030. The Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) is three stories tall, and though it sounds like a big balloon, it’s primarily made of Vectran, a chemically woven material stronger than steel.
When complete, it will be able to accommodate four to six people who can work on new technologies in microgravity for weeks at a time.
But that’s not all: Sierra is also working with Blue Origin on a commercial space station that tourists could potentially visit someday.
Is that a motor in your pants? Arc’teryx and Google X Labs spinoff Skip partnered on a pair of $5k motorized pants due in 2025. MO/GO pants (that’s short for mountain goat) have lightweight battery-powered motors in the knees for any time you need a boost, such as when going up- or downhill.
While motorized pants admittedly sound a bit silly, there are similar applications from other companies that make exoskeletons — like Verve Motion and Wandercraft — for people with disabilities or jobs that require heavy lifting.
Innovative fruits: Nothing against the old fruit, but startups are working on new fruits bred for a variety of benefits — e.g., climate resilience, denser nutrition, shelf stability, improved taste, etc.
Agrovision Corp., which produces berries, became a $1B brand in August thanks to its big, crunchy blueberries and plans to work on a seedless cherry.
Fresh Del Monte created a tiny pineapple, just 1.5- to 2-pounds each, to curb food waste among consumers who can’t eat, and therefore don’t want, a whole traditional pineapple.
Oishii and its luxe strawberries raised $150m and entered the Chicago market in 2024, and will continue to invest in expansion and R&D, as well as open an innovation center in Tokyo.
A computer that smells: Osmo is teaching computers to identify scents. It trained an AI model to recognize associations between various scent molecules and how humans described them, then asked it to predict what 400 scent molecules designed by scientists would smell like. It was surprisingly accurate for a machine without a nose.
There are applications in fragrance and insect repellant development, but Osmo’s end goal is tech that can identify diseases by smell.
SHOWER THOUGHT
“See you next year” jokes on New Year’s Eve are essentially the gateway drug to dad jokes.SOURCE
Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, and Singdhi Sokpo. Editing by: Ben “2024 apologist” Berkley.
