What Caught My EyeCulture · Brands · Design · BuildingWeekly Links by Mike LitmanIssue #006Ten Links. No Filler.Claude, Gummies & the Smartest Ad of the WeekCurated, Not AggregatedWhat Caught My EyeCulture · Brands · Design · BuildingWeekly Links by Mike LitmanIssue #006Ten Links. No Filler.Claude, Gummies & the Smartest Ad of the WeekCurated, Not Aggregated
Weekly Links
What Caught My Eye
Curated links on culture, brands, design and building.
Week of 17 April 2026 · Issue #006
↓ ten links. no filler. your weekend reading, sorted.
AI & BuildingCulture & BrandsDesign & ProductStrategy & BusinessWild Card
Sam Lessin (Slow Ventures) argues the real danger of AI isn't job displacement -- it's the destruction of the stories we tell ourselves about why to struggle, build, and get out of bed. Drawing on Viktor Frankl, he identifies three sources of human meaning (creation, pleasure, dignity in struggle) and makes the case that AI threatens all three simultaneously.
Everyone is modelling AI's impact on labour markets. Almost nobody is modelling what happens to human motivation when the work ladder disappears. Lessin's framing feels more useful than most economic analyses I've read this year -- and significantly more uncomfortable. Worth reading slowly.
the real question
Send to:anyone who thinks the AI debate is mainly about jobs
Anthropic has rebuilt the Claude Code desktop app from the ground up for agentic, parallel work. Sidebar session management, drag-and-drop workspaces, integrated terminal and file editor, improved diff viewing. The framing says it all: "many things in flight, and you in the orchestrator seat."
This is a meaningful signal about how Anthropic sees the future of AI-assisted development. Not a chatbox, not a co-pilot -- a control room. For anyone building AI-native products right now, the UX metaphor here matters as much as the features. Orchestration is the new interface paradigm.
the control room, not the co-pilot
Send to:anyone still thinking of AI as a helper rather than a system you manage
Uber's CTO told The Information that Claude Code has already blown through the company's entire 2026 AI budget. 5,000 engineers got access in December. Usage doubled by February. Individual monthly costs hit £400-1,600 per engineer. The productivity gains are real -- 11% of live backend code is now AI-written -- but the financial model nobody planned for.
This is the story everyone in tech is about to have. The tools work, engineers love them, adoption is faster than any internal forecast assumed, and suddenly the CFO is asking where half the R&D budget went. The question now is not whether to use it -- it's how to budget for something that compounds this fast.
budget? what budget
Send to:any CTO who just signed off on an AI tools budget for the year
Equinox's "Question Everything But Yourself" campaign used deliberately unsettling AI imagery to critique artificial content, then revealed "real bodies. Real athletes. Photographed, not prompted." The twist: Equinox uses AI extensively in its longevity platform and massage beds. The ad attacks AI as content, while embracing it as infrastructure.
The sophistication here is real. Equinox didn't reject AI -- they used the anxiety around it to reinforce one very specific brand value: authentic physical effort. The distinction between AI as content versus AI as infrastructure is a framing the best brand strategists will be building into briefs for the next three years. File this one carefully.
the anti-AI ad that loves AI
Send to:every brand team wrestling with whether to embrace or avoid AI in their next campaign
On (the Swiss sportswear brand) had Zendaya co-create a full footwear and apparel collection alongside their design team and her collaborator Law Roach. Spike Jonze directed the campaign film, "Shape of Dreams," set inside Zendaya's imagined design world. This is a long way from a logo placement.
The unlock, as Matthew Kerbel puts it, is "enlist celebrities who share your values and worldview, then align incentives." On transformed an endorsement into a genuine creative collaboration with skin in the game. In an era where every brand has an ambassador, the ones making their ambassador a co-creator are the ones worth watching.
co-creation beats endorsement
Send to:any brand manager still using celebrities as a logo on a jersey rather than a genuine creative voice
Gruns, the gummy supplement startup founded in 2023, has been acquired by Unilever for an undisclosed sum. In under three years the brand hit a $300 million annualised run rate and landed on shelves at Walmart, Target, Costco and Amazon. Modern Retail has the full timeline of how it got there.
The Gruns story is a case study in format-led disruption. The bet wasn't "make better supplements" -- it was "make supplements people actually want to eat." The gummy format removed the compliance problem that kills most supplement brands. Unilever paying up for this is an acknowledgement that the wellness category is being rewritten by consumer behaviour, not formulation science.
format is the product
Send to:anyone building a CPG brand who thinks better ingredients are the competitive moat
For Burberry's 170th anniversary, CMO Jonathan Kiman opened the brief internally -- 500 submissions from across the company. The idea that became "The Trench, Portraits of an Icon" (Tim Walker, 23 cultural figures, black and white) came from that process. The campaign is confident because the brief was fought for internally first.
Everyone talks about the campaign. Nobody talks about the internal process that made it possible. Burberry didn't brief an agency and wait. They opened it up, created internal competition, and bet on their own people. That sequencing -- earn the creative trust inside before you spend the media budget outside -- is the actual lesson here.
500 briefs, one winner
Send to:every CMO wondering why their brave campaigns keep getting watered down before they ship
Dezeen's highlights preview for Milan Design Week 2026, running 20-26 April. Samsung, IKEA PS, Kelly Wearstler for H&M Home, Formafantasma's new collectible fair Salone Raritas, and Lotus Cars are among the standouts. Good read before it opens.
Milan DW is increasingly where you see the gap between "design as craft" and "design as brand storytelling" at its widest. The Samsung exhibition -- "Design is an Act of Love" -- is either the most earnest thing in the city or the most cynical, and I'm not sure which is more interesting. Worth watching what actually generates coverage vs what was designed to generate coverage.
opens Monday
Send to:anyone flying to Milan next week who hasn't made a plan yet
Treatwell's creative team had out-of-home ads rejected by Transport for London. Hollie Heffernan's response: "if everything gets approved first time, you're probably not doing anything that challenges the norm." Some readers called them "gross." The creative team took that as a compliment.
There is a real craft to making something polarising on purpose rather than by accident. The TfL rejection is free press, but the more interesting thing is the internal culture it reveals: a creative team confident enough to make work that divides opinion and frame the division as success. Most brand teams would have panicked and pulled the work. This one leaned in.
"gross" is a win, apparently
Send to:any creative director whose bravest work keeps getting killed by a risk-averse approvals process
Sustainable footwear brand Allbirds has announced it is abandoning shoe manufacturing entirely to pivot into GPU-as-a-Service. The company will sell its footwear assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million, rebrand as NewBird AI, and use $50 million in convertible financing to acquire high-performance GPU hardware for long-term lease. Stock jumped over 400% on the news.
This is either the most audacious pivot of 2026 or a cautionary tale in the making. The comparison to 2017's Long Blockchain Corp. -- a drinks brand that renamed itself to chase the crypto wave, surged, and was eventually delisted -- writes itself. What is genuinely interesting is what it says about the state of the GPU market: even shoe brands are calculating that owning compute is more valuable than owning a brand. Whether that thesis holds is a different question.
wool trainers out, VRAM in
Send to:anyone who thought they understood what business category they were in
decrypt.co
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