Tennis is experiencing a resurgence, with almost 26 million people playing in the U.S. alone. That number has been on an upward trajectory five years in a row. While the sports renewed cultural relevance can be attributed to multiple factors, brands across fashion, entertainment, and even sports leagues like Major League Baseball are capitalizing on the trend through unconventional opportunities.
On December 8, LoanDepot Park, home of baseballs Miami Marlins, will undergo a temporary redesign to host the Unified Events Miami Invitational, a one-night, first-of-its-kind exhibition featuring top tennis stars Carlos Alcaraz, Joo Fonseca, Amanda Anisimova, and Jessica Pegula in a city with a strong appetite for elite tennis.
Brazilian tennis player Joo Fonseca [Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
While they have the Miami Open, there is such a fervor for tennis in the Miami market, especially for those players, says Molly Pendleton, SVP of MLS, Touring, and Unified Events.
To tap into the markets enthusiasm, Pendleton and her team originally planned to host the event in a traditional arena, a common choice for these exhibition matches. However, due to scheduling conflicts and the time needed to set up the courts, Unified Events decided not to take that route. Since both United Events and the Marlins work with sports and culture company IMG, the partners explored creative ways to bring tennis to a baseball stadium. They selected LoanDepot Park because it offered optimal sigh tlines and a high-quality fan experience.
I was skeptical until I saw the renderings of what it could look like and what the fan experience would be, says Pendleton. [I] got on board with the idea [that] this could be a really unique experience for fans and the players.
Anthony Favata, Vice President of Operations & Events for the Marlins, and his team created CAD renderings to visualize the transformation, which sealed the deal.
We have an extremely versatile building, says Favata. Tennis was always on the road map.
A Stadium Built for Adaptation
[Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
Historically, LoanDepot Park, formerly known as Marlins Park, was built to accommodate a variety of events. After opening in 2012, it hosted an international soccer game, and over the years, expanded to other entertainment, including concerts. Now, with recent investments in its infrastructure, the organization is reimagining the stadiums design to expand its non-baseball slate.
For the Marlins operations team, months of site visits, engineering assessments, and software modeling informed how they will compress the stadiums 130,000-square-foot footprint with 37,442 seats into an 8,700-square-foot environment with 12,000 seats for a quality viewing experience.
Its very important that you have that intimacy and the premium feel of being as close to the court as you can get, Favata explained. One thing that [was] created for us is the need to remove the pitchers mound.
Design Challenges and Transformations
Unlike a tennis court, the typical dimensions of a baseball field is not rectangular but rather a snow-coned shape. To achieve the level of intimacy spectators want during a tennis match, the Marlins will place the court in front of home plate. Based on their CAD visualization, the team decided that the court will run diagonally from first base to third base.
[Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
One of the most complex design challenges in creating an intimate environment is the full removal of the pitchers mound, an undertaking requiring roughly eight hours by a dedicated five-person crew.
We’ll remove [the] clay, and we’ll make sure it’s flat so that our flooring can come on top of that mound and then we can come on top of it with the cork, explains Favata. This step ensures the installed court sits at the ideal distance from spectator seats so fans have up close and clear views of play.
Previously, LoanDepot Park featured a natural grass field. However, the stadium later transitioned to a turf surface. Leveraging the stadiums in-house flooring system has proven beneficial, allowing adaptability of its turf surface for various events. A team of up to 20 people will lay down a thick, plastic event decking or protective flooring called Terraplas directly on top of the clay comprising the pitchers mound. To further avoid impacting the clay underneath, the team will place a cork-rubber blend called Regupol Aktiv atop the Terraplas, followed by another layer of wood. Finally, additional workers will lay down the professional hard court, which will be transported overnight from the Charlotte Invitational happening just before the exhibition match in Miami.
[Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
The Marlins operations team will get a head start on the mound removal for another event occurring two days prior to the match. However, the majority of the conversion will happen overnight, involving about 37 people across multiple vendors working from roughly 10 p.m. on December 7 into the morning hours of December 8.
Enhancing the intimacy created by removing the pitchers mound will be the addition of roughly 600 temporary seats. The team will also recline the foul ball netting. While the main event will occur infield, the Marlins plan to restrict access to the outfield.
As Favatas team reconfigures the field into a tennis court, ensuring player safety is critical.
Although it’s an exhibition, we want to make sure that the court is at the highest level of play, Favata said. Some of the best in the world are going to be performing. We want to make sure it’s safe for them.
Creating a Premium Tennis Environment
Beyond the technical build, the team will deliver a complete tennis environment with premium courtside seating, hospitality, and signature cocktails (Miami Ace and Sunset Invitational) inspired by the U.S. Opens Honey Deuce. Partner brand activations include Segafredos specialty desserts and coffee, Geicos tennis bracelet activation, and Penguin Tennis Apparels pop-up retail shop to create an immersive experience.
[Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
Depending on its success, Unified Events anticipates this invitational being an annual event in Miami. Its already nearing capacity with about 9,500 seats sold, with tickets starting at $40.
In the meantime, the Miami Marlins are preparing for other events in the new year, like the Winter Classic in partnership with the National Hockey League.
We’re very much involved in trying to continue to put this venue at the forefront of the concert and live entertainment business [with] some of those sports that you don’t typically consider in a baseball diamond that are cool, that are splashy, that are global, Favata said. [We want to] draw an attendee base to the facility that may not already be familiar with the venue in hopes that we give them a great experience and they return for Marlins baseball.
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Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country.
This model looks at key indicatorsincluding home price changes, inventory levels, and days on marketto generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers.
Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power.
According to Zillow:
Score of 70 or above = strong sellers market
Score from 55 to 69 = sellers market
Score from 45 to 54 = neutral market
Score from 28 to 44 = buyers market
Score of 27 or below = strong buyers market
Nationally, Zillow rates the U.S. housing market at 48 in its October 2025 reading, published last week.
That said, Zillows reading varies significantly across the country.
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Among the 250 largest metro-area housing markets, these 20 are the HOTTEST marketswhere sellers have the most power:
Rochester, NY 120
Syracuse, NY 80
Hartford, CT 76
Bridgeport, CT 70
Racine, WI 67
San Francisco, CA 66
New York, NY 65
Albany, NY 65
Lancaster, PA 65
Manchester, NH 64
San Jose, CA 63
Poughkeepsie, NY 63
Anchorage, AK 63
Springfield, MA 62
Norwich, CT 62
Providence, RI 60
Kingston, NY 60
Richmond, VA 59
Buffalo, NY 59
New Haven, CT 59
Among the 250 largest metro-area housing markets, these 20 are the COLDEST marketswhere buyers have the most power:
Florence, SC 8
Jackson, TN 10
Gulfport, MS 14
Lafayette, IN 18
Longview, TX 19
Charleston, WV 20
Macon, GA 20
Terre Haute, IN 22
Brownsville, TX 25
Evansville, IN 25
Asheville, NC 26
Fayetteville, AR 27
Daphne, AL 28
Beaumont, TX 29
Hickory, NC 29
Lubbock, TX 30
Naples, FL 31
Saginaw, MI 32
Bowling Green, KY 32
Lincoln, NE 33
Does ResiClub agree with Zillows assessment?
Directionally, I believe Zillow has correctly identified some regional housing markets where buyers have gained the most powerparticularly around the Gulfas well as markets where sellers have maintained (relatively speaking) somewhat of a grip, including portions of the Northeast and Midwest.
Based on my personal housing analysis, I consider much of Florida (particularly southwest Florida) and chunks of Texas (particularly areas with a lot of new single-family home construction) the weakest/softest chunk of the U.S. housing market. Not too far behind are pockets of Colorado, Georgia, and Arizona markets where theres built-up unsold spec inventory.
What did this Zillow analysis look like back in spring 2021 during the pandemic housing boom? Below is Zillows October 2021 reading, published in November 2021:
This years busiest shopping day was a boon for live-shopping apps.
Even at a time of inflation and economic uncertainty, Americans were ready to spend come Black Friday. U.S. online spending was up 9.1% from last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
While holiday spending has typically been dominated by traditional e-commerce, live-shopping platforms TikTok Shop and Whatnot also reported record-breaking sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
On Black Friday, the livestream marketplace Whatnot reported more than $75 million in single-day live sales, tripling last years total. On average, shoppers bought 40 items per second.
One small business in the sports card category sold more than $1 million in a single show. The highest-priced item sold on Black Friday was a sports card box for $80,000.
“The way people shop is changing, and live is leading it, Armand Wilson, VP of categories an expansion, told Fast Company. People want more than a transaction. They want to connect with sellers, see the product live, and be part of the moment.
These record-breaking sales come as livestream content on the platform has reached 20 million minutes per week. Whatnot also reported a fourfold increase in first-time buyers this year compared with last years Black Friday event.
Whatnot isnt the only platform finding success with livestream shopping over the holidays. According to TikTok, its live-shopping feature also delivered a record-breaking performance this year.
Brands and content creators held more than 760,000 livestreams on the platform, generating 1.6 billion-plus views throughout the Black Friday period. These efforts paid dividends, with this years livestream sellers experiencing 84% more sales growth than last years, according to the company.
Pop Mart, maker of the viral Labubu toys, had one of the most popular livestreams during TikToks Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. The Skullpanda x Wednesday Plush came out as the top-selling item.
From household name brands like Crocs and Kim Kardashians Skims to small businesses and content creators, live shopping is gaining traction across the U.S.
Live shopping is where brand love starts. Its a dynamic, interactive experience that deepens how our users connect with brands on TikTok, Patrick Nommensen, head of strategic initiatives for TikTok Shop in the Americas, told Fast Company.
While it still represents a small percentage of the e-commerce market, consumer trend forecaster WGSN has found that conversion rates for live shopping are 10 times higher than those for traditional e-commerce.
That immediate, real-time engagementintroducing audiences to new products, demonstrating their value, and facilitating direct interactionis what builds trust, strengthens community, and turns interest into long-term loyalty, Nommensen said.
Nearly half (46%) of U.S. consumers have now purchased through a livestream event and would do so again, according to data from market research firm Mintel.
If this years Black Friday sales are anything to go by, that number is only going to go up.
Which terms best represent 2025?
Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a word of the year.
Sometimes these terms are thematically related, particularly in the wake of world-altering events. Pandemic, lockdown, and coronavirus, for example, were among the words chosen in 2020. At other times, they are a potpourri of various cultural trends, as with 2022s goblin mode, permacrisis, and gaslighting.
This years slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughtswhen words like w00t, blog, tweet, and even face with tears of joy emoji () were chosenthis years selections reflect a growing unease over how the internet has become a hotbed of artifice, manipulation, and fake relationships.
When seeing isnt believing
A committee representing the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English settled on AI slop for their word of the year.
Macquarie defines the term, which was popularized in 2024 by British programmer Simon Willison and tech journalist Casey Newton, as low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user.
AI slop, which can range from a saccharine image of a young girl clinging to her little dog to career advice on LinkedIn, often goes viral, as gullible social media users share these computer-generated videos, text, and graphics with others.
Images have been manipulated or altered since the dawn of photography. The technique was then improved, with an assist from AI, to create deepfakes, which allows existing images to be turned into video clips in surreal ways. Yes, you can now watch Hitler teaming up with Stalin to sing a 1970s hit by the Buggles.
What makes AI slop different is that images or video can be created out of whole cloth by providing a chatbot with just a promptno matter how bizarre the request or ensuing output.
Meet my new friend, ChatGPT
The editors of the Cambridge Dictionary chose parasocial. They define this as involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series . . . or an artificial intelligence.
These asymmetric relationships, according to the dictionarys chief editor, are the result of the publics fascination with celebrities and their lifestyles, and this interest continues to reach new heights.
As an example, Cambridges announcement cited the engagement of singer Taylor Swift and football player Travis Kelce, which led to a spike in online searches for the meaning of the term. Many Swifties reacted with unbridled joy, as if their best friend or sibling had just decided to tie the knot.
But the term isnt a new one: It was coined by sociologists in 1956 to describe the illusion of having a face-to-face relationship with a performer.
However, parasocial relationships can take a bizarre or even ominous turn when the object of ones affections is a chatbot. People are developing true feelings for these AI systems, whether they see them as a trusted friend or even a romantic partner. Young people, in particular, are now turning to generative AI for therapy.
Taking the bait
The Oxford Dictionarys word of the year is rage bait, which the editors define as online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.
This is only the latest word for forms of emotional manipulation that have plagued the online world since the days of dial-up internet. Related terms include trolling, sealioning, and trashposting.
Unlike a hot takea hasty opinion on a topic that may be poorly reasoned or articulatedrage baiting is intended to be inflammatory. And it can be seen as both a cause and a result of political polarization.
People who post rage bait have been shown to lack empathy and to regard other peoples emotions as something to be exploited or even monetized. Rage baiters, in short, reflect the dark side of the attention economy.
Meaningless meaning
Perhaps the most contentious word choice in 2025 was 6-7, chosen by Dictionary.com. In this case, the controversy has to do with the actual meaning of this bit of Gen Alpha slang. The editors of the website describe it as being meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical.
Although its definition may be slippery, the term itself can be found in the lyrics of the rapper Skrilla, who released the single Doot Doot (6 7) in early 2025. It was popularized by 17-year-old basketball standout Taylen Kinney. For his part, Skrilla claimed that he never put an actual meaning on it, and I still would not want to.
6-7 is sometimes accompanied by a gesture, as if one were comparing the weight of objects held in both hands. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently performed this hand motion during a school visit. The young students were delighted. Their teacher, however, informed Starmer that her charges werent allowed to use it at the school, which prompted a clumsy apology from the chastened prime minister.
Throw your hands in the air?
The common element that these words share may be an attitude best described as digital nihilism.
As online misinformation, AI-generated text and images, fake news, and conspiracy theories abound, its increasingly difficult to know whom or what to believe or trust. Digital nihilism is, in essence, an acknowledgment of a lack of meaning and certainty in our online interactions.
This years crop of words might best be summed up by a single emoji: the shrug (). Throwing ones hands up, in resignation or indifference, captures the anarchy that seems to characterize our digital lives.
Roger J. Kreuz is an associate dean and Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor at the University of Memphis.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
When people use hand gestures that visually represent what theyre saying, listeners see them as more clear, competent, and persuasive. Thats the key finding from my new research published in the Journal of Marketing Research, where I analyzed thousands of TED Talks and ran controlled experiments to examine how gestures shape communication.
Talking with your hands
Whether youre giving a presentation, pitching an idea or leading a meeting, you probably spend most of your prep time thinking about what youll say. But what about the ways youll move your hands?
I grew up in Italy, where gesturing is practically a second language. Now that I live in the United States, Ive become acutely aware of how cultures differ in how, and how much, people move their hands when they talk. Still, across contexts and cultures, one thing is constant: People do talk with their hands.
As someone who studies communication, Id noticed how some speakers seemed instantly clearer when they gestured. This made me wonder: Do gestures actually make communicators more effective?
The short answer is yes, but only when the gestures visually represent the idea youre talking about. Researchers call these movements illustrators. For example:
When talking about distance, you might spread your hands apart while saying something is farther away.
When explaining how two concepts relate, you might bring your hands together while saying these ideas fit together.
When describing how the market demand is going up and down, you could visually depict a wave shape with your hands.
One video included in the study provides an example of a TED speaker onstage gesturing as he presents his talk. [Photo: YouTube/TED David Agus: A new strategy in the war against cancer]
To study gestures at scale, my team and I analyzed 200,000 video segments from more than 2,000 TED Talks using AI tools that can detect and classify hand gestures frame by frame. We paired this with controlled experiments in which our study participants evaluated entrepreneurs pitching a product.
The same pattern of results appeared in both settings. In the AI-analyzed TED Talk data, illustrative gestures predicted higher audience evaluations, reflected in more than 33 million online likes of the videos. And in our experiments, 1,600 participants rated speakers who used illustrative gestures as more clear, competent, and persuasive.
How hands can help get your point across
What I found is that these gestures give listeners a visual shortcut to your meaning. They make abstract ideas feel more concrete, helping listeners build a mental picture of what youre saying. This makes the message feel easier to processa phenomenon psychologists call processing fluency. And we found that when ideas feel easier to grasp, people tend to see the speaker as more competent and persuasive.
But not all gestures help. Movements that dont match the messagelike random waving, fidgeting, or pointing to things in the spaceoffer no such benefit. In some cases, they can even distract.
A practical takeaway: Focus on clarity over choreography. Think about where your hands naturally illustrate what youre sayingemphasizing size, direction, or emotionand let them move with purpose.
Whats next
Your hands arent just accessories to your words. They can be a powerful tool to make your ideas resonate.
Im now investigating whether people can learn to gesture betteralmost like developing a nonverbal vocabulary. Early pilot tests are promising: Even a five-minute training session helps people become clearer and more effective through the use of appropriate hand gestures.
While my research examined how individual gestures work together with spoken language, the next step is to understand what makes a communicator effective with their voice and, ultimately, across all the channels they use to communicatehow gestures combine with voice, facial expressions, and body movement. Im now exploring AI tools that track all these channels at once so I can identify the patterns, not just the isolated gestures, that make speakers more effective communicators.
Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Southern California.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A meeting drags on. People are talking, but no one is saying the thing that needs to be said. Direction is unclear, the energy dips, and everyone is waiting for someone to speak with authority.
When you finally do speak, the words come out softer than you intended:
– Maybe we should consider . . .
– I think it might be good if . . .
– Sorry to interrupt, but . . .
One of the biggest challenges leaders face isnt just what they decide, its how they communicate it. Clarity, confidence, and authority are what set the tone for the room.
If you tend to soften your tone or worry about sounding pushy, being more direct can feel uncomfortable. I coach leaders through this all the time, and heres what they learn quickly: Directive leadership isnt about being harsh. Its about being clear. And clarity is what builds trust, drives ownership, and gets results without raising your voice.
Your words signal your authority or they undermine it.
From Apologetic to Authoritative
One of my clients, a senior director at a biotech firm in South San Francisco, was brilliant, respected, and deeply collaborative. But she had one blind spot: Her communication was consistently too soft. Her requests sounded tentative, her decisions felt optional, and her team often left meetings unclear on priorities.
She told me, I know what I want to say, but in the moment, I dont want to sound demanding. In one meeting, a project was slipping. She needed to make a call. Instead, she said, Maybe we could try moving the deadline? Im not sure, what do you think?
The team debated for 15 minutes with no direction.
We worked on one shift: aligning her language with the authority she already had. Not louder. Not more forceful. Just clearer.
Two weeks later, when another deliverable slipped, she said, This is a priority. Were keeping the original deadline. I need everyone aligned. The room settled. People nodded. The project got back on track.
Afterward she told me, It felt clear, decisive, and grounded. I felt in command rather than trying to keep the peace. This is what leadership is supposed to feel like.
What the Best Leaders Do Differently
Think about the leaders who command respect in your organization. Listen to how they speak.
– They dont hedge.
– They dont apologize for having an opinion.
– They say what they mean.
And heres the part many leaders get wrong: This isnt about personality. A significant number of the leaders I coach are introverts. Theyre thoughtful, measured, and often worried about coming across as too direct. But directive communication doesnt change who they are. It simply changes how clearly the room understands them.
Ready-to-Use Leadership Language
If being directive doesn’t come naturally, you need the actual words you can use in real situations.
Set clear expectations
I need you to . . .
This is a priority. Please focus here first.
This needs to be done by Friday. Let me know if theres a barrier.
Give direction confidently
Heres the plan were moving forward with.
Ive decided well handle it this way.
Im asking you to take the lead on this.
Own your authority respectfully
Im making this call.
Let me be direct . . .
Im accountable for this outcome, and I need your partnership.
Hold people accountable
This didnt meet our standard. Lets discuss how to improve.
What we agreed on didnt happen. Lets get back on track.
We missed the mark here. How do you plan to fix it?
Notice what’s missing from all of these: apologies, hedging, and room for endless debate.
The Leadership Mindset Shift
These aren’t just communication techniques. They reflect a deeper shift in how you see your leadership role. Youre moving from:
Seeking permission Providing direction
Hoping for consensus Making decisions
Avoiding discomfort Addressing issues directly
Clarity gives your leadership weight. Your team doesnt need you to be louder. They need you to be clearer. They don’t need you to wait your turn. They need you to step forward when direction is required.
Put It Into Practice
Pick three phrases from the lists above that match what youre dealing with right now: an unclear deadline, a drifting project, or a team member who needs firmer expectations.
Then choose one upcoming situation where you tend to get soft. Prepare your words in advance. Practice them out loud once or twice. Then use them in the moment.
The shift is immediate. People stop debating. They start executing. And you feel the difference between managing the conversation and leading it.
Because when you speak with clarity and authority, people dont just listen, they follow.
It’s been an unprecedented and brutal week for the advertising industry. The finalization of Omnicom Groups $13 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group (IPG) (the biggest takeover in advertising history) is affecting tens of thousands of workersmost immediately the 4,000 expected to be laid off by the end of the year.
Both Omnicom and IPG own many different ad agency brands, all of which will be profoundly impacted by the merger. Omnicom is retaining only McCann from the IPG roster of agency networks, while folding FCB into BBDO, and both DDB and MullenLowe into TBWA, in order to achieve Omnicom Chairman and CEO John Wren’s goal of $750 million in synergies.
These are more than just a collection of acronyms, though. They are major agency brands, built over decades and generations, that will now disappear as their parent holding company fights to grow, survive, and remain competitive.
You’d be forgiven if you think the ad world is an alphabet soup of who’s eating who. But there is another side to the business that’s steering clear from the publicly traded drama. Independent agencies are growing in number, and in the scale and scope of work theyre being assigned by major brands.
It’s a trend that has been bubbling up for years. According to an Ibis World report, the number of U.S. ad agencies grew 2.2% from 2019 to 2024. Even anecdotally, there has been a surge in new creative shops. Isle of Any, for example, was launched in January by former Droga5 execs, and has already done work for The New York Times, A24, OpenAI, and Coinbase.
Part of the indie boom is undoubtedly a cultural correction to the mess that is major ad holding companies, as talent flees corporate bureaucracy for greener, more creative pastures. But it’s more than that at this point. In recent years, major brands have shown an increased willingness to work with these small shops despite (or because of) their size.
For years, independent agency Rethink has been winning industry awards and getting business results for Heinz. Mother, an agency founded in London 30 years ago, has a range of big clients, including Buick, Uber, Cheerios, and Stella Artois. And, of course, independent agency Wieden+Kennedy is known for its work for Nike, McDonald’s, Ford, and Michelob Ultra.
Amid all the ad world chaos, I spoke to indie agency execs at award-winning shops Rethink, Tombras, Joan Creative, Haymaker, and Mother about what the ad industry landscape looks like from their vantage point at this moment. As technology, data, and, in particular AI, levels the playing field in so many ways, these independents see a distinct competitive advantage in the combination of original creative and strategic thinking. Most crucially, though? They see clientsnot investorsas their primary stakeholders.
Holding company drama
The massive consolidation of IPG-owned ad agencies is the latest in an ongoing trend among publicly traded advertising companies over the past decade to boost profits and efficiency. In 2018, holding company WPP combined Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson (JWT) into Wunderman Thompson, and VML and Young & Rubicam into VMLY&R. Then in 2023, it combined them all into just VML.
How did that work out? WPP shares are down more than 60% year to date, and have hit a quarter-century low. Reports emerged last month that France-based holding company Havas was exploring an acquisition or stake in WPP. Havas has denied the reports, but it’s the state of the industry that made it so believable.
Jay Kamath, founder and chief creative officer of Haymaker, says there’s nothing wrong with mergers if there is a strong vision behind it. These arent visionary mergers, theyre survival mergers. The model is aging, margins are shrinking, and they think scale is a life raft, says Kamath, who believes scale does little to really help clients. In reality, it’s speed, not scale that brands care about as they vie for customers’ increasingly divided attention. They need faster teams who bring sharper ideas and are accountable partners, he says.
Dooley Tombras, president of Tombras, a Knoxville, Tennessee-based agency with additional offices across the U.S. and in Buenos Aires, sees holding companies as a model in managed decline. As holding companies continue to consolidate to compensate for a loss of top-line growth, the winners will likely be in the independent space.
As they consolidate brands, offices, and people to deliver cost synergies to Wall Street, they will naturally shore up to protect the billion-dollar-plus clients, Tombras says. Many major national brands spending in the $50 million to $100 million annual budget level will get lost in the shuffle and look to make a move. And it will likely be to a scaled independent.
Advantage: independent
Tombras’s theory seems to be resonating. Geoff Cottrill, former CMO of Coca-Cola, Converse, and Topgolf, recently commented on LinkedIn: If I were still a CMO, Id be looking for creative partners outside these massive machines.
So I called him up and asked him to elaborate. His answer should be encouraging to any indie agency, and to many of the impending holding company exiles looking to be hired. Marketing, as an industry, has kind of lost the plot, says Cottrill of the industry’s infatuation with data, AI, and money.
He notes, If you’re a midsized brand trying to fight for attention, needing to get the right creative ideas, get the right service levels, account management, you’re better off with a smaller, more nimble creative shop like Wieden+Kennedy or someone like Opinionated (an independent ad shop out of Portland, Oregon, whose clients include Adidas, Panda Express, and Hinge).
For Lisa Clunie, founder and CEO of New York-based Joan, being independent is a superpower. Brands want partners who can prototype, pivot, and produce without waiting for multinational approval chains, she says.
This is not a new concept. Back in 2021, Domino’s took its brand to a small, 23-person indie shop called WorkInProgress. At the time, the pizza chain’s then-CMO, Art DElia, told Ad Age, I really feel that the independent agency model gives us more flexibility and less distractions.
Tombras believes that brand and culture are at an inflection point given the proliferation of AI. Machine value will decrease, he argues, while human value is poised to skyrocket. The whole reason brands have gone to agencies in the first place is to get highly unique perspectives on how to solve business problems, he says. Independents are in an exponentially better position to attract talent because people are tribal; we want to play for teams.
For Teri Miller, U.S. CEO of Mother, the holding company business model, and now consolidation, feels a million miles away from what is actually happening on the ground in the business of creativity. Its just a totally different vocabulary, rule set, body language, she says. Clients who have hired Independents as an antidote understand why: We know who we are, why we exist, what our strengths are. We arent trying to be everything to everyone.
Creative advertising versus Public Company
I’ve been covering brands and ad agencies in one way or another for almost 20 years, and I’ve seen that great creative work is not exclusive to independent agencies. Agencies owned by holding companies, including those being shuttered through the Omnicom consolidation, have produced incredible work over decades. In fact, McCann, FCB, the Martin Agency, and TBWA/Worldwide were all on Fast Companys 2025 Most Innovative Companies list earlier this year.
Still, holding company agencies are facing bigger challenges, as the media landscape continues to fragment and the demands of clients have become more complex and immediate. In a media era that prioritizes cost and efficiency, the great work these agencies are making increasingly feels like it’s despite being part of a public holding company, not because of it.
The global publicly traded conglomerate still has advantages in scale, particularly in media buying. But there is no discernible advantage in terms of solving business problems with creative ideas and strategy. Joan’s Clunie says creativity and public ownership aren’t enemies, they’re just bad roommates. While public companies optimize for shareholder value, independent agencies optimize for creative value.
“When you need to hit quarterly targets, the easy moves are cost cuts, procurement deals, and operational tweaks,” Clunie says. “The risky move? Betting on a bold creative idea that might take two years to prove itself. Guess which one gets the green light at 11:59 p.m. before earnings?
It’s not that public companies can’t do brilliant work, she says. It’s that their wiring makes the safe choice easier and the interesting choice harder. And in our business, interesting usually wins. Independence means we can take the long view. That’s not romanticit’s structural.
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Back in his 1996 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett famously wrote: If you arent willing to own a stock for 10 years, dont even think about owning it for 10 minutes.
That statement only makes the recent homebuilder stock purchases and sales by Berkshire Hathawayled by Buffett, who will step down as CEO at the end of 2025even more eyebrow-raising.
Heres the timeline.
August 2023: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that in Q2 2023, the company made a bet on U.S. homebuilders and bought 5,969,714 shares of D.R. Horton, 152,572 shares of Lennar, and 11,112 shares of NVR.
February 2024: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that in Q4 2023, the company had sold off 5,969,714 shares of D.R. Hortonthe vast majority of Buffetts big homebuilder bet he made early in 2023.
August 2025: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that during Q2 2025 (the three months ending June 30), the company made a bet on U.S. homebuilders by purchasing around 1.5 million shares of D.R. Horton (valued at around $191.5 million). In the first half of 2025, Berkshire Hathaway acquired just over 7 million shares of Lennar, valued at nearly $800 million.
November 2025: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that it has sold its D.R. Horton stake of around 1.5 million shares.
While Berkshire Hathaway has sold off its shares of D.R. Horton (No. 123 on the Fortune 500), it still owns around 7.2 million shares of Lennar (No. 129 on the Fortune 500) and around 11,112 shares of NVR (No. 396 on the Fortune 500), according to ResiClubs review of Berkshire Hathaways latest SEC filings.
Given Buffetts own adviceIf you arent willing to own a stock for 10 years, dont even think about owning it for 10 minutesits probably fair to avoid drawing sweeping long-term housing market conclusions from Berkshire Hathaways homebuilder stock trades over the past two years. After all, the firm bought them, sold them, bought them again, and sold them four times in just over a two-year window.
That said, if you forced me to speculate, Id guess Berkshire Hathaway initially eyed homebuilder stocks in the first half of 2023, after their sharp pullback in 2022, as builders adjusted to the rate shock. But heading into 2024, Berkshire Hathaway may have gotten cold feet on homebuilders as a long hold, as it became clear that the housing markets early-2023 firming was a bit of a head fakeand that a bigger power shift toward buyers, further housing-market softening, and additional homebuilder margin compression were still ahead.
After that played out, earlier this year, Berkshire Hathaway may have concluded that most of that margin compression had already been priced in and that it wanted back in on homebuilders.
That speculation does leave one remaining question: Why would Berkshire Hathaway now sell off D.R. Horton while still holding onto Lennar and NVR?
First, D.R. Hortons stock has had a stronger bounce-back over the past few months, while Lennar and NVR have not. (Perhaps Berkshire Hathaway believes that bounce-back still awaits.) So it might not be that D.R. Horton has fallen out of favor with Berkshire Hathaway, but instead simply that D.R. Hortons stock has already priced in much of its short-term upside.
Secondand this is me reading deep between the linesperhaps Berkshire Hathaway likes that Lennar has been more aggressive during this soft window in taking market share. While all the public homebuilders that ResiClub tracks have compressed profit margins over the past three years to offer larger incentives and affordability adjustments in an attempt to avoid a sharper pullback in housing starts, Lennar has been the most aggressive on that front.
In fact, Lennar has compressed its margins all the way back to 2009 levels, and is spending the equivalent of roughly 14.3% percent of final sales on incentives (compared with the typical 5% to 6% in normal times) in order to grow home sales and capture market share.
In September 2025, Lennar executives acknowledged that its finally time to pause [that strategy] and let the market catch up a little bit. That doesnt mean theyre completely reversing course or losing the market share theyve recently gained while using the strategy. Instead, it means they cant be as aggressive in early 2026 in pursuing additional market share, given how much margin compression theyve already absorbed.
Some investors, including Berkshire Hathaway, might like that Lennar has pursued a bigger market share through this choppy stretch and is now starting to defend margins.
Here’s what Stuart Miller, co-CEO of Lennar, said during the company’s September 19, 2025, earnings call:
For Lennar, this is n opportune time to pause and let the market catch up a little bit. Even though mortgage rates began to trend downward toward the end of the quarter, stronger sales have not yet followed. We have certainly begun to see early signs of greater customer interest and stronger traffic entering the market. With lower mortgage rates, purchasers are showing greater interest in considering their home purchase. And this is generally an early signal of stronger sales activity to follow, assuming rates remain lower.
And if interest rates continue to fall, we’re quite optimistic that this all will happen soon. The extended period of higher interest rates for longer than expected forced us, however, to adjust construction costs [lower average sales price] in order to enable sales in difficult market conditions. Our lower construction cost structure, together with reduced margin [bigger incentives], enabled us to meet affordability and support the supply-and-demand balance.
We drove sales pace to match production pace, and we fortified our market share and position in each of our strategic markets. We are now situated with a lower cost structure, efficient product offerings, and strong market positions to accommodate pent-up demand as rates moderate and confidence ultimately returns. As I said before, this is the right time. This is just the right time for us to pull back just a little bit.
We believe that we’ve gotten ahead of the current market realities, and we have built what we believe is a stronger long-term margin-driving platform. We know that this has taken some time as the market has remained weaker for longer, but we also know that our strategy has helped build a healthier housing market and has positioned Lennar for strong cash flow and bottom-line growth in the future.
While our deliveries were just below our goal for the quarter, and while we sold more homes than expected during the quarter, these accomplishments came at the expense of further deterioration of margin, which came down to 17.5%. Accordingly, we’re going to begin to ease back our delivery expectations for the fourth quarter and full year in order to relieve the pressure on sales and deliveries and help establish a floor on margin. We will reduce our delivery expectations for the fourth quarter to 22,000 to 23,000 homes, and we will reduce our full-year expectation to 81,500 to 82,500.
In addition to the Lennar and NVR homebuilder shares that Berkshire Hathaway still owns, the firm also fully owns Clayton Homesthe largest U.S. builder of manufactured and modular homesand HomeServices of America, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate (under Berkshire Hathaway Energy) that offers a wide range of real estate services including brokerage, mortgage origination, and title and escrow.
For years, philosophers and psychologists have debated whether empathy helps or hinders the ways people decide how to help others. Critics of empathy argue that it makes people care too narrowlyfocusing on individual stories rather than the broader needs of societywhile careful reasoning enables more impartial, evidence-based choices.
Our new research, forthcoming in the academic journal PNAS Nexus, a flagship peer-reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests this heart versus head argument is too simple. Empathy and reasoning arent rivalsthey work together. Each one on its own predicts more generous, far-reaching acts of assistance. And when they operate side by side, people tend to help in the fairest waysnot favoring some over othersand in ways that touch the most lives.
We studied two groups that regularly help others at personal cost. One consisted of living organ donors who gave kidneys to strangers. The other included effective altruists, who use evidence and logic to direct substantial portions of their income or careers toward causes that save the most lives per dollar, such as fighting extreme poverty or preventable illness.
All participants completed survey measures of empathyessentially, how much they care about and are moved by others suffering. They also completed survey measures of reasoning. These assess how often people slow down, reflect, and think through things before deciding what to do.
We also examined how these abilities related to a range of altruistic judgments and behaviors, from hypothetical choicessuch as deciding whether to help a close friend or a distant strangerto real-world donations.
On average, organ donors scored higher on empathy, and effective altruists scored higher on reflective reasoningslowing down and thinking things through. But across all participants, both traits were linked to broader, more outward-looking helping. People with either an elevated heart or head, and especially those with both, when compared with average adults, tended to support distant others and focus on helping as many people as possible.
Even among organ donors, whose empathic ability is far above that of average adults, empathy did not make them biased toward those who were close or familiar. When we measured their altruistic judgments and real-world donations, they were just as likely as average adults, and sometimes even more likely, to favor causes that saved the greatest number of lives.
These patterns challenge the assumption that empathy can narrow moral concern. In practice, we found, empathy can broaden it.
Why it matters
Relying on reason alone isnt enough to inspire people to help strangers. [Photo: Julia M. Cameron/Pexels]
Many of todays most urgent problemspoverty, climate change, global healthdepend on motivating people to care about strangers and to use limited resources effectively.
Appeals to empathy alone may inspire giving, but not necessarily the most effective giving. Appeals to reason alone can leave people unmoved, as often facts and numbers dont stir anyone to care. Our findings suggest that the most powerful approach may be to pair empathys motivation with reasonings direction.
Empathy provides the emotional sparka reminder that others suffering matters. Reasoning helps steer that motivation toward where help will have the greatest impact. Together, they encourage helping that is both compassionate and consequential.
Whats next
Future research needs to determine how empathy and reasoning can be strengthened in everyday decision-making. Could emotional stories paired with clear evidence about what works best help people choose actions that do the most good?
We also dont yet know whether people who focus their giving beyond the boundaries of their immediate social circles, like effective altruists, pay any social cost for doing soperhaps by inadvertently signaling less investment in close others. Promisingly, early evidence from organ donors shows that those who help strangers often maintain strong, stable relationships with their closest friends and family members.
Perhaps most importantly, researchers need to rethink how altruism is understood. Psychology lacks a clear framework for explaining how empathy and reasoning work together, for whom they work best, and the situations where they come apart.
Developing that kind of model would reshape how we think about helpingwhen helping expands, when it stalls, and why. While such core questions remain, the present findings offer reason for optimism.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Kyle Fiore Law is a postdoctoral research scholar in sustainability at Arizona State University.
Brendan Bo O’Connor is an associate professor of psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Stylianos Syropoulos is an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Most entrepreneurs are familiar with diminishing returns: how, when other variables stay constant, at some point putting in additional time and effort results in increasingly smaller results. Since resources are always limited, figuring out where to spend your entrepreneurial time so it delivers the best bang per hour is critical.
That same premise extends to health and fitness. If youre like many entrepreneurs, you try to stay reasonably fit not just because its good for you, but because exercise helps you perform better under stress. Can elevate your mood for up to 12 hours. Can even make you a little smarter.
Still: how healthy and fit . . . is healthy and fit enough?
If you want to run a marathon, your definition of fit will differ from most. But if you want to compare yourself with other people and see where you currently standand, more important, get a sense of where you would like to standhere are three simple tests you can do at home.
If you fall in the average range, thats good. If you fall closer to the excellent range, thats greatand may be a sign that doing more in an attempt to increase your score might push you into the land of diminishing returns.
So with all that said, here are the three tests.
Lower Body Strength
To conduct this test, find a chair that, when you sit on it, puts your thighs at a 90-degree angle to your lower legs. Then put your hands on your hips, lower yourself until your bottom grazes the chair, and then straighten back up.
Then do as many reps as you can, without resting, until you run out of (leg) gas.
Heres a graph so you can see where you stand. (All images are courtesy of research scientist Schalk Cloete; for more, check out his deep dive into the subject.)
Want to be able to do more? Like many things, increasing the number of squats you can do is just a matter of time and effort: do four or five sets of squats to failure three times a week, and in three weeks youll definitely be stronger.
And with a great outcome: squats can strengthen your lower body and core, improve your flexibility, and reduce your risk of injury.
Upper Body Strength
The American College of Sports Medicine recommends using a pushup test to assess upper body strength and endurance.
To do pushups their way, start at the top, go down to the 90-degree mark, and push back up without locking out at the top. Women can do plank-version pushups or modified (from the knees) pushups.
Then just count how many you can do in one set. (A few couple-second rest breaks at the top are okay.)
Heres the results graph:
Comparing yourself with others provides a reasonable sense-check.
But also keep this in mind: a Harvard study shows that men (unsure why they didnt include women) who could do 40 or more pushups were 96% less likely to experience a cardiovascular event than those who could only do 10 or less.
In fact, pushup capacity was more strongly associated with reduced cardiovascular disease risk than aerobic capacity.
So if you want to increase the number of pushups you can do, heres a simple process you can follow (scroll down to How many pushups do you want to do?). Do that routine three times a week for 10 minutes, and after three weeks youll definitely be stronger.
Cardiovascular Fitness
Since there are a variety of ways to evaluate cardiovascular fitness, this ones a little trickier. There are stress tests. Exertion/heart rate tests. Whether you can run a mile, and if so how fast you can run it, is a valid test.
Another is VO2 max, the maximal volume of oxygen that can be inhaled and absorbed by a body. Generally speaking, the higher your VO2 max, the btter your cardiovascular fitness (within genetic reason, of course.)
One way to estimate your VO2 max is to use a fitness calculator like this. Answer a few questions and youll learn your expected VO2 max (based largely on things like age) and your estimated VO2 max (based on activity levels, resting hear rate, and waist size.)
Or you do the one-mile walk test as described here.
Then see how you stack up:
There are a number of ways to improve your cardiovascular fitness. Walking (briskly) is a great start. So is jogging. So is cycling, rowing, elliptical training . . . or if you want to double-dip and get some strength gains at the same time, consider doing HIIT workouts. Research shows that 11 (intense) minutes a day can make a meaningful difference.
Which is where diminishing returns come into play. If you want to enjoy the benefits of reasonablenot extreme, just reasonablefitness, you dont have to spend hours on a treadmill. You dont have to spend hours at the gym.
You just need to do a few key things that make a big impact . . . and then do them consistently.
Which is surely the same approach you take to running your business.
Jeff Haden
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
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