The legendary investor drafts his annual letters with his sister Bertie in mind. “She’s smart, but she’s not active in business and she doesn’t read the business pages every day… so, what would interest Bertie this year?”
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Waymap is a revolutionary navigation app that works underground and in crowds, when conventional services are notoriously unreliable. It was borne out the frustration of Tom Pey, who lost his sight after falling from a roof. “We saw that there was a problem for blind people, which actually mirrored a similar problem for everybody. Google Maps and its equivalents only work outdoors for some people, some of the time, and work indoors for no one.”
It’s an idea popularised by films like Limitless, but it has no basis in science. fMRI scans show that even simple activities require almost all of the brain to be active.
This is statistically true. But it’s largely because child mortality was so high – around one half of children died before they were 10 – and because many people died in battle. For those who safely made it into adulthood, life expectancy was actually good. Romans routinely lived until their 70s, and in fact to be consul you had to be 43 – eight years older than the US’s minimum age limit of 35 to hold a presidency.
Weather is not just for small talk – it has a greater impact on a store’s sales than either inflation or unemployment. Interestingly, of the four weather conditions assessed, high are by far the most likely to influence shopping.
Selling your car?
58% of (white) Americans say they are spending too much on welfare vs too little (15%), yet 56% think they are spending too little on assistance to the poor (vs 16% too much). The difference? Welfare is a heavily loaded term.
When the Welsh rugby team played France they had just signed a new shirt sponsor: the ale Brains. Unfortunately, French law meant you couldn’t advertise booze on the shirts – so they changed the logo from Brains to Brawn, all in the same recognisable font.
In memory tests, only 6% remember a mundane fact: “160,000 trolleys are sent off to be fixed each year.” But recall triples when the same information is brought to life visually: “That’s the equivalent of 2 full Wembley Stadiums.”
Westpac Bank flipped impulse spending on its head, creating a smartphone that allowed customers to save money with one simple click.
Tim Martin started Wetherspoons in the 1970s, basing the name of his company on a former teacher who believed he wouldn’t amount to anything.
It’s no wonder WH Smith disappeared from British high streets in 2025. It is really a travel business, generating £1.5 billion in sales from branches in airports and stations vs £452 million from those on high streets.
As Andrew Tenzer shows, marketers get this question very wrong; significantly overestimating the level of consumers’ extrinsic aspirations.
Historically, it refers to both the device – the radio set – and the medium itself. But that is changing. According to Ofcom, one quarter of radio listeners say they use Spotify’s ‘radio’ function which automatically creates a custom playlist curated around any song, album, playlist or artist.
Reddit has an excellent thread based around this question. Being really into wine, getting money from the government and wearing hoodies to work are some of the answers that show the same behaviour can have two very different connotations.