👀 Get ready

🔼 US stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all time high »»

🔽 American housing rents. They saw their biggest year-over-year drop since February 2020 »»

💬 “We were trained to tell them that their product was either ‘Louis Vuitton product’ or ‘not Louis Vuitton product’ — not to say ‘real’ or ‘fake.’” A former LV sales associate tells all »»

🛫 Miami’s Fontainebleau hotel brand has brought its “coastal charm” to Vegas with the opening of the 3,644 key (room) Fontainebleau Las Vegas »»

👗 No one did stealth wealth better than Angelina Jolie this year »»

💎 Wanna buy Rod Stewart’s ridiculously opulent LA mansion? »» 

Soho House stopped accepting new members in some cities »»

The human brain rewires itself after 40 »»

Off-White™ & Nike's newest drop is its best in years »»

“I reviewed the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 and I can't imagine a better social video camera” »»

Alicia Keys gave an impromptu performance at London’s St Pancras station »»

Tesla recalls nearly all vehicles on US roads over lack of Autopilot safeguards »»

Argentina’s new president devalued the peso by 50% to help relieve the country’s economic crisis »»

Frozen beverages are the next frontier, according to Taco Bell and McDonald’s »»

Pandemic savings helped keep the economy afloat. What happens when they’re gone? »»

Meet your new landlord: Google »»

OpenAI and Axel Springer strike unprecedented deal to offer news in ChatGPT »»

Notting Hill’s Juno will be London's smallest omakase restaurant: just 6 seats »»

2023’s most popular iPhone apps »»

Related: Apple now sells the AirPods Pro USB-C case by itself »» The newsletter's writer owns shares of Apple

Instagram now lets you make AI-generated backdrops for your Stories »»

A thought-provoking look at the trends on the horizon for 2024

LONG LIVE IRL

Earlier this week, I met up with the lyrical writer and thoughtful strategist Alexi Gunner. (I’ve quoted from his newsletter, Idle Gaze, several times over the past year.)

As it happens, he and I both happen to be in Australia, and it was great to finally meet someone whose thinking and writing I’ve enjoyed for a long time.

We spoke about the atomization of culture —a topic I've written about in these pages before— and Alexi shared an elegant unified theory for how he sees this trend.

We all might be listening to different music, watching different TV shows, and following different creators these days, but in actuality there are some unified undercurrents driving these expressions.

I love this way of thinking, because it can be really hard to make sense of how quickly —and in how many different directions— our world is moving.

So, with that, let’s explore some of the most common “vectors” I’ve noticed over the past year spent researching and writing this very newsletter, and look at which ones will continue to flow in 2024.

RETURN TO EXPERIENCES

As we all appear to be retreating deeper and deeper into our phones, a backlash is brewing. There appears to be growing desire/demand for actual, real life “doing things.”

Some data points we’ve shared with you in the past year:

Airlines are adding new routes, and buying new planes, in unprecedented numbers.

Huge global brands are opening gigantic new hotels in mature markets (like Las Vegas, London, and Paris), as well as in less well known markets, like the Asian islands of Borneo, Jeju, and Phu Quoc.

Meanwhile, hospitality groups like Belmond and Four Seasons are launching innovative new products like ultra luxury, week long train journeys, and continent hopping private jet itineraries.

Some hospitality providers are at full capacity. Soho House, for instance, said that it was not taking any more applications to some of its most popular houses, indefinitely.

The “experience economy” (ie., hospitality, retail, travel, food, drink, tourism, entertainment, the arts and events) may have its challenges —for instance, labor and energy costs, a crowded marketplace, and inflation— but businesses in the sector seem awfully confident about the future.

RETURN TO OFFICE

From what we see and read, return to office mandates are slowly pushing in person office attendance back towards pre pandemic rates. There are a number of reasons behind this. Some of them are well known, for instance, the generational gap: employees that paid their dues commuting into work to sit at the desk for five days a week for decades on end don't want to think all of those years were for naught.

At the same time, a lot of companies (ie., Apple, Goldman Sachs) have spent a lot of money on their physical premises and feel the pressure to utilize it.

There’s also the human factor: things like perceived productivity levels, or management wanting a better sense of who’s doing what, or a desire to quicken the pace of learning/training and development all comes into play.

It makes logical sense that there would be a benefit to being physically near other people who work for the same company. Look for the labor market to do a good job of balancing that benefit, against the time wasted commuting, and the increased quality of life that WFH brings many people to reach a consensus.

One trend that seems certain to continue in 2024: 100% remote jobs will decrease, while 100% in-the-office ones will continue to rise.

“THE DEAL” ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE

As I’ve written several times this year, the state of the marketing industry is strong. (Though it continues to splinter into countless mini disciplines: a quick Google search reveals well over 100 different sub fields of marketing. What’s a founder, brand, or marketing manager to do? Stay tuned for more on that topic in an upcoming issue of fv/pro.)

Look for advertising to continue to shift and morph over the next year, with three particular bright spots:

The rise and rise of American television advertising. I’ve long said that the US has a really strong inbuilt advantage/defense mechanism when it comes to maintaining the strength of the country’s TV ad market: American sports are built for commercial breaks. Unlike Soccer, the “big four” US sports have play stoppages for TV advertising literally written into the rules of the game.

But live sports has another boost: the rise of on-demand streaming services, and the explosive growth of TikTok and YouTube as entertainment engines.

Thanks to that, big time American sports are the last thing that can reliably draw a sizable television audience. Meaning, if you’re a brand that wants or needs to reach a mass audience at the same time, live, televised sports is pretty much your only option.

That’s good for the networks that broadcast those games —and for the brands who are in a position to commission advertising during them.

Look for US television advertising to continue to get bigger and better as this trend continues to play out.

(Related: advertiser-supported, free to stream TV services like Tubi, Freevee, and Pluto, plus hardware in built advertiser supported streaming services, like Samsung TV Plus, are also on the rise. Look for all of that to continue in 2024.)

The rise of the influencer. As I’ve written, it’s time to elevate influencer marketing to “The Deal” status. As our feeds become ever more niche, people of influence (thank you to reader Kim B. for this expression) are becoming ever more trusted mediums themselves.

Look for this branch of marketing to further professionalize, and for B2B and B2C brands who are ahead of the curve to start signing relevant influencers to all encompassing NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals, similar to the way luxury brands sign celebrities.

Ads x AI. In our view, ads are coming to ChatGPT and others —and soon. I’ve actually been saying this from the very beginning. It just doesn’t seem that hard (to me) for AI firms to sell search terms to the highest bidder, and then weave that advertiser-paid-for language into the chatbot’s “natural” answers.

The new news as the year draws to a close is that Google’s multimodal AI chatbot Gemini dropped last week in the US. (Multimodal is just fancy AI speak for a system that can understand and return words, images, and sounds.)

The AI “arms race” is heating up, and we users are definitely the winners here.

But. As I put it a few months ago:

FLYING SOLO, USING ROBOTS, AND MONETIZING YOUR KNOWLEDGE

The rise of the solo entrepreneur or “solopreneur” has been in the works for several years now, and this trend shows no sign of waning anytime soon.

The fuel powering the rise of the soloprenuer is the growing availability of tools to create content and grow an audience.

If you take nothing else away from this piece, make it this: there are people out there who are very interested in what you know how to do.

Whether that's woodworking tips, observations on classic cinema, Excel hacks, or whatever else motivates you.

As I’ve written, if you’ve ever had even the hint of a creative impulse, there’s literally never been a better time to share it with the world. The twin forces making this so is the shift of social media from a connection tool to a discovery engine and (of course) the growth of all sorts of AI tools designed to make creation easier.

My hope for 2024 is that people continue to monetize their knowledge. I love the idea of social media becoming more commercial, not less —allowing more people to improve their lives and others by sharing the professional information they possess with the world.

PS— Next week fv/ will spin off into two separate newsletters, each with its own clear and compelling value prop:

The “Got 60 seconds?” and “Got 2 minutes?” headlines/outlinks sections will come as its own weekly email called fv/. fv/ is a travel / culture / luxury / fashion / business newsletter that will focus on insider knowledge and trends, leaving you ready for any conversation, interview, date/dinner party chat or more.

Then, the “Got 5 minutes?” deep dive will be a separate weekly email called fv/pro. fv/pro will be a media / marketing / business / AI / creative industries newsletter, with an emphasis on practical advice, usable frameworks, tried and tested growth strategies, and actionable insights.

You can read more about my decision process to split this newsletter in two here, if you're interested.

Both will remain free. My aim is for either or both emails to be the favorite thing in your inbox.

As always, any feedback, simply reply.

Written by Jon Kallus. Thanks for reading.