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A San Diego restaurant owner who serves many immigrant customers has seen business plummet. A cleaning woman avoids bringing tools to work to avoid drawing attention to herself. Her husband, a construction worker, has been unemployed for over a month. A California farm had to hire an attorney to protect workers with approved visas from deportation. Californiaand other states across the countryrely heavily on the labor of immigrants. Many of those workers are living in fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, making it harder to do their jobs. Experts say this fear is restricting the rights of all workers and hurting the states broader economy. Capital & Main spoke to workers and an employer in California about how President Donald Trumps campaign against immigrants is affecting their ability to work. All of them requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the federal government. The restaurant owner said traffic to his business dropped immediately after ICE officials targeted another restaurant, Buona Forchetta, in a highly visible operation that drew community protest and a violent response from ICE. Since then, the owner said, his sales have dropped by 30% to 40% because immigrant customers arent leaving their homes except for essential tasks like work. The owner, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said one of his workers self-deported at the beginning of the Trump administration and another is out on maternity leave. He hasnt replaced either of them. The restaurant owners experiences line up with findings in a recent research brief from the University of California, Merced, Community and Labor Center, which found that fewer Californians, both citizens and noncitizens, went to work the week that intense immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June. Private sector employment in the state declined just over 3% from the previous month, researchers found. Edward Flores, faculty director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center, said that shift is significant. The only time we see a decline in private sector employment like that at that time of year is really comparable to the Great Recession or to COVID, Flores said. That decline continued the following month, the researchers later said in an update. Flores listed several possible reasons for the drop, including that workers were afraid to go to work, a supply chain slowdown from missing immigrant labor could be creating less available work oras in the restaurant owners casefrightened customers might be shopping less. Flores said the fact that U.S. citizens showed a significant drop in employment goes against the Trump administrations claims that deporting noncitizens will free up jobs for people born in the U.S. Most people that understand economics pretty well will tell you thats not how the economy works. Its more complicated than that, Flores said. Were seeing the actual consequences of people very aggressively being takenwithout any due process in some casesand, confronted with those realities, if the administration continues to advance their very aggressive efforts to have the largest deportation campaign in history, we have to wonder what is the actual intent of it. The intent is clear to many undocumented workers, including a woman who cleans buildings and houses. Things are getting more difficult for the simple fact of the color of our skin, the woman said in Spanish. We are the most looked for [by ICE]. She said shes been in the U.S. for more than two decades and has two U.S. citizen children with her husband, who is also undocumented. The pair met in San Diego soon after she arrived from Guerrero, Mexico, she said. The woman said there arent enough workers in her industry. She said shes afraid to go to work, but she has no choice because she has bills to pay. She added that construction work has slowed down since Trump came into office, leaving her partner without a way to make a living. She works for a cleaning company full time and cleans homes as a side job. She works seven days a week. She said she tries not to carry as many tools and supplies when she goes to work at the private homes so that she doesnt attract attention to herself. I never felt so afraid since the time I got here as in this time period since January 20, 2025, she said. She admitted that she often avoids going out for anything besides work, preferring to skip birthday celebrations and other events to stay safe at home. Sometimes people dont want to pay her after she finishes cleaning, she said, and they threaten that they will call immigration officials if she objects. Those situations have always caused some fear, she said, but its even more so now. She and her partner are seriously considering returning to Mexico after their youngest finishes high school, she said. She is afraid to go back to Guerrero, where her family has experienced the violence that has caused many to flee the state and seek asylum elsewhere. But, she said, in the current situation, she feels more afraid to be here. Its not the American dream anymore, as they say, she said. Satomi Rash-Zeigler, executive director of the University of California, San Diego, Labor Center, said that Trumps policies have a chilling effect not only on immigrant labor but also on workers ability to advocate for their rights, regardless of their immigration status or country of origin. By targeting the folks that are the most vulnerable, we are undermining all workers, basically creating a system where you have bad employers that will be able to thrive with little to no accountability, Rash-Zeigler said. She said employee fear of reporting hazards in the workplace can lead to public safety issues, such as farm workers not feeling safe to report an employer using a toxic pesticide on crops. Rash-Zeigler said documented and undocumented workers alike are afraid of ICE raids because of the violent tactics that the agency has used. People dont want to interact with that, she said. They try to keep their heads down and not be caught in the fray of these sweeps. Its impacting everyone. She said even U.S. citizen workers could be afraid to report workplace abuse because it could attract the attention of immigration officials. Fear is a policy tool of fascism, Rash-Zeigler said. They want the boss to have all the power. They want to keep workers silent and compliant under any and all circumstances and thats justits not good for workers. Its not good fr our country. A woman from Sonora, Mexico, said she hasnt been looking for work even though her family is struggling because she is afraid of ICE. She said she knows firsthand about the struggles with workplace exploitation as an undocumented worker. She worked for more than a decade at a bakery in San Diego. When it was her shift, she said, she was the only one on duty in the kitchen. Eventually, the work wore her down physically, causing debilitating arthritis in her hands and knees, she said. She asked for help from her employer so that she wouldnt have to do the work alone. Instead, the bakery cut her hours, she said. When they hired other workers to replace her, she said, the bakery staffed more people in the kitchen. A doctor told her she could no longer do the work, but the bakery has refused to compensate her. The truth is I feel sad because what one wants is to work, and one puts in a lot of effort, and thats not the way they should behave with one, she said in Spanish. Her oldest daughter, who was born in the U.S. and is still in high school, now works to help support the family. But the family struggles to make ends meet, often receiving support from friends and neighbors. As immigration raids have grown increasingly common, the mother has stopped leaving the house, she said. Her daughter does the grocery shopping and other errands. The mother feels proud of what she has been able to provide for her children during her time in the U.S., she said, but she also worries that her life is now at a low point. She has thought about trying to find another job that she can do in her condition, but she said she hasnt because of fear of the raids. That fear has even reached agricultural workers here on visas. On a recent day at the immigration court in downtown San Diego, a group of men faced potential deportation even though they said they were here on current H2A visasthe visas given to temporary or seasonal agricultural workers. The men had previously been in the U.S. working for the same employer, according to Kathrin Mautino, an attorney. The employer, a farm in Fallbrook, California, had tried to extend the mens visas last year, but the men ended up leaving for the winter holidays to go home, many to Jalisco, Mexico, before the date on their original visas, according to the attorney and several of the men. The men came back again in June and July. They werent afraid when they entered the country, one of the men said, because they thought all of their paperwork was in order. But then documents indicating they had pending immigration court cases arrived at their workplace. Were clean. We thought everything was fine, the man said in Spanish standing in the hallway of the immigration court. We didnt expect this. Now theyre nervous, and losing time at work to show up for court hearings. Their employer paid for Mautino to represent them. Work is the same, but all of a sudden youre thinking, Theyre going to send me to Mexico again, one of the men said. One man said he had just entered the country the week prior, and a customs officer informed him that he had a pending deportation case. Were coming legally and leaving legally, one of the men said. Its a little bad what theyre doing. We have papers. Kate Morrissey, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main.
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E-Commerce
When Everett Rogers introduced the S-shaped diffusion curve in the first edition of his book, he was directly following the data. Researchers like Elihu Katz had already begun studying how change spreads and noticed a consistent pattern in the adoption of hybrid corn and the antibiotic tetracycline. Yet it was Rogers who shaped our understanding of how ideas spread. Publishing more than 30 books and 500 articles, he studied everything from technology adoption to family planning in remote societies and just about everything in between. In doing so, he laid the foundation for an evidence-based approach to change. Still, while Rogers showed us how change works, he didnt offer much insight into why it works that way. This is where I think Michael Morriss book, Tribal, can be helpful. By exploring how our tribal instincts lead us to adoptor resistchange, we can learn to work with human nature rather than against it. Smart leaders dont try to override instinct. They harness it. The peer instinct: Connecting outside the community Humans instinctively learn from our peers in ways other animals do not. Research by Michael Tomasello at the Max Planck Institute found that while human infants can share intentions by pointing, apes cannot. In a similar vein, Esther Herrmann and her colleagues found that humans have evolved unique skills for social cognition such as social learning, communication, and theory of mind. This peer instinct shapes how we perceive and respond to risk. For the Iowa farmers in the hybrid corn study, their judgments were grounded in the concerns of their local community, such as rainfall, crop infestations, and other dangers. Most doctors were understandably reluctant to prescribe a new medicine that they were not familiar with. One of the first things researchers noticed in both studies was that the early adopters were more connected outside their communities. The Iowa farmers who adopted hybrid corn early also traveled to Des Moines, the nearest city, more often. The doctors who were early to prescribe tetracycline were also the ones that most often attended out-of-town conferences. David McRaney made a similar observation in his book How Minds Change. People who changed their minds about something important to them, like those who abandoned conspiracy theories or found the courage to leave cults, tend to have a change in their social networks first. Being around different people helped them see the world in new ways. Everett Rogers saw the peer instinct at work in his own family. Although his father loved new electromechanical gadgets, he was reluctant to adopt hybrid seed corn. But during a severe drought in 1936, he noticed that his neighbors crop thrived while his own wilted, and that finally convinced him to make the switch. The hero instinct: Spreading success One of the most interesting aspects of both studies is that the farmers and the doctors reported getting information from conventional sources. In both cases, about half said they first heard about the innovation from salespeople and nearly a quarter from direct mailtogether making up roughly 75% of respondents. (Radio and TV were still nascent.) Yet while conventional media introduced the innovation in both sets of studies, respondents reported being most influenced by someone they knew. Other research has shown something similar: Weak social ties tend to provide information, while strong social ties shape decisions. Morris calls this the hero instinct. When we see people who are successful and admired, we tend to imitate them. Its why kids not only want to wear their favorite players number, but copy how he walks up to the plate. These hero codes act as ideals we aspire to. And unlike the peer instinct, we dont need to know the person. Stories of success are enough to shape behavior. Hero codes act as models for behavior. In the Soviet Union, stories of miner Alexei Stakhanov not only served as a Communist ideal, but were featured on the cover of Time magazine and influenced HR practices in the West. In Latin America, soap opera heroes were shown to positively influence literacy and family planning. While the peer instinct drives adoption in the earlier stages of the S-curve, the hero instinct drives its acceleration. The ancestor instinct: Making change stick One of Rogerss most consistent findings was that the tipping point for change usually lies between 10% and 20% participation. Thats also the point of maximum resistance. Some innovations, like lean manufacturing and agile development hit that threshold and stay stuck there for decades, never reaching the steep part of the S-curve. Leaders often use precedent signals to leverage our respect for tradition. Its no accident that Abrahamic holidays often fall on the same dates as earlier pagan rituals. For many of the same reasons, when Lou Gerstner set out to turn around tech giant IBM in the 1990s, he frequently invoked the companys history and culture to support changes he made. Morris calls this the ancestor instinct and it can be incredibly powerful. We have a natural reverence for what has come before us and pass down traditions through the generations. These can be religious traditions, legal precedents like the U.S. Constitution, or, as in the case of Lou Gerstner and IBM, elements of organizational culture. Framing omething new as being rooted in old traditions can make it feel safer to adopt. Both hybrid corn and tetracycline eventually became part of the fabric of their industries. Today, we grow 20% more corn on 25% less land due to innovations like hybrid corn. Tetracycline represented a new class of antibiotics, but soon became a standard of care. What was once new, exciting, and even a little scary, became mundane, ordinary, and routine. Putting tribal instincts to work for you The S-curve has become so ingrained in the lore of innovation and change that we scarcely think about where it came from or what drives it. We know that change starts slowly, with a few enthusiasts experimenting with something new. If it gains traction, adoption can accelerate exponentially before the market saturates and levels off. Yet Michael Morriss work on tribal signals can help us understand the original research in new and interesting ways. Weve long known that early adopters tend to venture outside their communities to explore. But when we understand the peer instinct and prevalence signals, we can begin to see how the structure of our social networks affects what we can achieve. In a similar vein, understanding the hero instinct and prestige signals allows us to accelerate adoption by celebrating success stories and telling them well. Leveraging the ancestor instinct and precedent signals can help us frame new things in terms that honor and respect traditions that people already value. At its root, innovation is less about technology and disruption than it is about people. Good ideaseven great onesfail all the time. If you have an idea you care about and want it to succeed, you cant ignore the basic instincts that drive human nature. You need to harness them and let them work for you instead of against you.
Category:
E-Commerce
To play is human. Its how toddlers experience and learn about the world they just entered. Its also how we as adults rewire our brains and learn new things most effectively. In a world in which consumers are flooded with choices, companies are fighting ferociously to capture and maintain the consumers attention. The business leaders who are successfully steering their organizations in this digital-first world are using a secret weapon that taps into our most human desire to play: video games. Eighty four percent of all internet users regularly play video games. That comes out to 3.4 billion people globally that play video games almost dailya number that is projected to reach 3.8 billion by 2027. Contrary to the still far too common stereotype around what constitutes a “gamer,” gaming is the only medium that actually reaches all demographic cohorts. Yes, GenZ and Gen Alpha spend more time in games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox than on all social media channels combined. But according to a report from the Entertainment Software Association, over 35 million Americans over the age of 50 play video games for at least an hour a day. Video games are a multigenerational force. Companies are starting to wake up to this reality and leverage video games as a touch point in their strategies to engage consumers more effectively. Here are four strategies of how companies from any industry can leverage video games for their own business. Integrate with existing video games Identify an existing video game that offers your brand access to an already established audience youd like to reach and integrate with that game. Without a doubt this is the easiest jumping-off point to get into gaming and the best place to start for companies who want to dip their toes into the gaming waters to learn. In 2021, in search of ways to engage with a younger audience, casual dining company Chipotle integrated a Halloween-themed gaming experience into Roblox, a multiplayer online game that features a vast library of user-generated games spanning everything from racing to role-playing games. The collaboration allowed players to dress up their avatars in Chipotle-inspired costumes like Burrito Mummy or Guacenstein, visit the companys first virtual restaurant, and navigate the Chipotle Boorito Maze. The first 30,000 Roblox players to visit during the four days leading up to Halloween received a code they could redeem online, on the Chipotle app, or in a restaurant for a free entrée. In total, Chipotle gave away $1 million in burritosan investment that resulted in 5.2 million gameplays and over two million unique visitors, but also went beyond generating brand exposure. The collaboration delivered a top 10 enrollment day of all time for Chipotles rewards program. Create new video games This is a harder, costlier, and riskier approach that offers greater upside. This is a great fit for companies who are committed to making video games an integral part of their customer engagement strategy instead of using them for isolated marketing campaigns. Creating a new game from scratch means you get to shape the entire gaming experience so that it aligns perfectly with your companys brand and goals. This also opens up a path towards creating and learning from highly valuable first-party data you own about your customers. The New York Times Games offering is a perfect example. A key part of the NYTs digital subscription offering, Games, now includes nine different word and puzzle games that have been the primary driver of the companys digital subscription growth to over 11 million subscribers since the NYT decided to double down on video gaming in 2014. Subscribers that engage with both news and games in a given week exhibit the strongest long-term retention metrics among its customer segments. The Atlantic is now pursuing this strategy. Leverage Web3 games This strategy includes the previous two approaches, but offers distinct opportunities for marketing and monetization due to the underlying blockchain technology. For example, luxury fashion house Burberry partnered with game developer Mythical Games to launch its latest fashion line in their Web3 game called Blankos. Blankos is a multiplayer game that lets players play a variety of mini games with friends as well build their own levels. Burberry created limited-edition in-game characters for Blankos alongside digital clothing items from its newest collection. In just 22 seconds, the entire virtual collection sold out, generating $225,000 in revenue while giving Burberry direct engagement with a different audience. Make the video game the product This is the most advanced strategy where the video game itself becomes the product. Companies embarking on this path ideally have staff with game design experience. For example, fitness company Peloton created a video game called Lanebreak that riders of the Peloton bike can engage in as their workout content. Rather than following instructions from a trainer, the video game simulates a workout in the form of an immersive bike race. The results have been astonishing: 50% of all workouts done on Peloton bikes are now completed in the video game, and those riders tend to complete more and longer workouts in a given week. Video games provide business leaders with the unique opportunity to let their brand come to life in ways that are much harder to achieve in other channels such as social media. Business leaders who want to ensure that their organization is equipped to meet consumers where they are and drive engagement should consider gaming as a strategy. Games are fun, authentic, and most importantly highly effective at driving engagement.
Category:
E-Commerce
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