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Mere weeks into his new role as CEO of Starbucks, Brian Niccol joined an earnings call with investors and trumpeted an iconic brand. But it wasnt Starbucks. Bringing the Sharpies back to our baristas, Niccol declared last October, will give them the opportunity to put that additional human touch on every coffee experience by writing each customers name or an inspiring note on their cup. Were tracking down the Sharpies, Niccol later told CNBC, estimating the company would need about 200,000 of them. The comments drew attentionStarbucks even followed up with a TV ad featuring baristas jotting on cupsbut in a way, they revealed more about Sharpie than they did about the coffee giant. Sharpie defines a category. Its simultaneously universal and personal, instantly recognizable, and ubiquitous. Its such a strong brand, in fact, that Starbucks, a global juggernaut with a market cap of more than $100 billion, is in effect leaning on it for support. Yet when the CNBC hosts mused that maybe it was time to go long on whoever makes Sharpies, they werent certain which company that was3M, maybe?until they looked it up. Its Newell Brands, the Atlanta-based conglomerate behind Rubbermaid, Mr. Coffee, and Oster appliances. Sharpie is part of a suite of learning and development brands that includes Paper Mate, Elmers, Expo, and Prismacolor, which is the companys most profitable division, says Kris Malkoski, the segments CEO. Nobody at Sharpie knew the Starbucks announcement was coming. We were totally psyched! says Gina Lázaro, vice president of brand marketing for Newell’s writing segment, who recalls being bombarded with congratulatory messages from within the company and without. Newell CEO Chris Peterson even reached out to Niccol to say thanks. The real significance to Sharpie wasnt the wholesale order. A five-pack of Sharpies runs about $5 at Walmart; at that price, 200,000 markers would work out to $200,000, not exactly a game changer for a company like Newell, with 2024 revenue of $7.6 billion. It was the free, and highly complimentary, publicity. Its amazing when a fantastic brand calls out your brand by name, Lázaro says. [Photo: Heami Lee; prop stylist: Christine Keely] Not that Sharpie doesnt market itself. Newell advertises the marker brands vast spectrum of products and colors across digital and social media, in stores, and at events such as SXSW and Comic-Con. And the brand promptly chimed in on Instagram to amplify Starbuckss endorsement; it also sent its promotional Sharpie Bus to a nearby Starbucks in Atlanta to give out markers. But Sharpie, like a crafty Zelig, just has a way of quietly turning up. Artists rely on the markers. Actors and athletes sign autographs with them. Their scent has inspired perfume (Love the smell of permanent markers? reads the marketing copy for Sharpie, by Wicked Good) and candles. Stephen Colbert has made a running gag of sniffing them. When President Trump drew on a map to offer his unsubstantiated take on a hurricanes potential path, well, that became #sharpiegate. Trump, who uses Sharpies for all official business and has boasted about having them custom-made, isnt even the first president to endorse Sharpie: George W. Bush was a fan, too. With its familiar script logo and unflashy form factor, Sharpies core attribute is dependability, says Paola Antonelli, senior architecture and design curator and director of research and development at the Museum of Modern Art. You can trust a Sharpie to do exactly what it says itll do, without trying to wow you with any special effects, she says, distilling its appeal into three words: Consistent, definitive, indelible. Dependability might not be the sexiest brand attribute, but it sure seems to work. The company says that it has sold an estimated 21 billion Sharpie markers worldwide over the past 60 years, and nearly five billion over the past decade alone. In a 2024 survey commissioned by the brand, respondents said they owned, on average, about seven Sharpies, and that at any given moment there was one within 10 feet. Three in four said that the markers made them more creative. [Photo: Sharpie] It sits right in the middle of that Venn diagram of office supply and art supply, says Austin Kleon, the artist and writer of illustrated books such as the New York Times bestseller Steal Like an Artist. Ive joked for years that I use them because you can steal them from any office supply cabinet. Its been about 40,000 years since our ancestors figured out how to leave expressive marks on cave walls, kicking off centuries of design and technology improvements in tools for handmade communication. Ballpoint pens, first patented in 1888, became the epitome of a mass writing tool. The felt-tip, introduced in 1910, had more versatility. A permanent version, the Magic Markerwhich used quick-drying ink that worked on glass, metal, and plasticwas invented by entrepreneur Sidney Rosenthal in 1952. It proved popular both on the factory floor and in the kitchen drawer. But its fat tip yielded much cruder marks than a regular pen, limiting its use. It took a nearly century-old American company to figure out a solution. Sanford Ink Co. started out in 1857 as an ink and glue manufacturer in Worcester, Massachusetts. It moved to Chicago, narrowed its focus, and became a successful ink manufacturerNorman Rockwell illustrated an ad marking its 70th birthday in 1927. But by the 160s, the market for ink for fountain pens was dwindling, leading Sanford to create its own writing instrument. The first-ever pen style permanent marker, with a slimmer barrel and a tip made from extruded acrylic fibers that came to a sharp point, debuted in 1964. It was called the Sharpie Fine Point. In a precocious influencer-courting move, Sharpie sent some markers to Johnny Carson, who loved them and mentioned them on The Tonight Show. This, according to Sharpie lore, evolved into a sponsorship with NBC and endorsements from such other personalities as Jack Paar and Hugh Downs. It wasnt until the 1990s that Sharpies story got colorful again, after Newell acquired Sanford in 1992. Newell absorbed Sharpie and the dry-erase marker brand Expo, then smartly decided to expand the Sharpie line when big-box retailers like Staples and Office Depot were on the ascent. [Photo: Sharpie] Five new Sharpie marker styles debuted between 1997 and 2002, along with the first new colors in decades, including aqua, berry, turquoise, and lime. The brands first TV campaign aired in the late 1990s, emphasizing the many ways to use a Sharpie. Small packaging tweaks allowed the product to fit into a range of retail settings; Sharpie ended up everywhere from Costco to Tractor Supply Co. to Blick Art Materials. Sharpie started making self-expression part of its core brand message. At the same time, the brand owed a good piece of its growth to a parallel phenomenon that probably wasnt in its business plan: the rise of celebrity culture and the memorabilia market. Sharpie became an essential part of autograph signings, notes Sharpies Lázaro. The markers work on jerseys, footballs, baseballs, and bats, making them the writing instrument of choice for fan interaction, she says. The company introduced the Sharpie Autograph Pen in 1992the first and only made just for getting and giving autographs. Connecting the Sharpie to autograph seeking did the brand a favor, creating a link between an everyday quotidian tool that sits in a kitchen drawer or supply closet and something more rarefied and aspirational. The association with sports stars, in particular, emerged as a primary Sharpie branding strategy. The company lined up endorsement deals and ads with golfer Arnold Palmer, Nascar drivers including Kurt Busch, and, later, soccer superstar David Beckham. The brand currently promotes a Rookie of the Year initiative, highlighting top college football players poised to Sharpie-sign more autographs and NFL contracts. But the moments that gave Sharpie its biggest brand boosts continued to be those in which it was an accessory in someone elses spotlight. A memorable example: San Francisco 49ers star receiver Terrell Owens catching a touchdown pass in 2002then pulling a Sharpie from his sock, signing the ball, and handing it to his financial adviser in the stands. The stunt prompted the NFL to institute a rule against players bringing foreign objects onto the field. It became a legendary end-zone celebration, with Sharpie playing a discrete yet vital role. Terrell Owens of the San Francisco 49ers signs a football after scoring a touchdown against the Seattle Seahawks during their game on October 14, 2002. [Photo: Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images] More recently, Sharpie has highlighted its connection to another constituency: creators. Its most recent new products, S-Gel pens and water-based paint pens called Sharpie Creative Markers, are aimed explicitly at this cohort. As part of its World Is Your Canvas campaign, the brand recruited Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and Blavity cofounder Morgan DeBaun in 2023 to promote the S-Gel pens; last year, the Sharpie Bus visited New Yorks Gov Ball, San Diego Comic-Con, Miamis Art Basel, and other festivals, giving out hundreds of packs of Creative Markers to help people uncap creativity. Sharpies creative audience has been core to its success all along. Timothy Goodman, an artist and designer, and author of the graphic memoir I Always Think Its Forever, remembers adopting the Sharpie largely because there were just a lot of them around. But he says that the decisiveness of a permanent marker fit well with his playful, there-are-no-mistakes style, and he used Sharpie paint pens to create a mural for the Ace Hotel in New York that gave his early career a boost; later, he published the book Sharpie Art Workshop, full of Sharpie-centric projects by him and other artists. Artists are picky consumers, finicky about their tools (Goodmans work these days involves thicker-nibbed Molotow paint markers and Montana markers and spray paint). Yet for many, that classic Sharpie becomes a mainstay. Portland, Oregonbased artist Jason Sturgill started using one while working as a designer at Nike. Its ridiculous, he says, how many tools I have in this space, and I still just have a bucket of Sharpies and thats kind of my go-to. My drawing is very simpleI try to not have a lot of detail. So its easy for me to wield. Kate Bingaman-Burt, an artist and professor of graphic design at Portland State University, uses Sharpies for zine-making workshops, where that confident line emboldens studentsand photocopies well. For many, the flagship Sharpie functions as a gateway drug, leading to an interest in a wider range of creative tools that, increasingly, Sharpie itself provides. (Bingaman-Burt is a fan of the new Creative Markers.) [Photo: Sharpie] In design thinking workshops, Allan Chochinov, founder of the School of Visual Arts Products of Design program, distributes classic Sharpies and Post-it Notes, because the combination of those two toolsan unforgiving marker and limited space to markforces action and concision. Its like permission, he says. It frees you up to not worry about your skills and still get on with the messy and imperfect process of creating. Which isnt to say that every idea will be a gem, let alone every autograph, executive orderor personalized coffee-cup message. Starbucks really did order a significant number of Sharpies, says Lázaro, though she declines to say whether it was actually 200,000, and in Starbuckss earnings call in late January, CEO Niccol cited the companys reintroduction of handwritten notes on cups to better connect with customers as a pillar of the companys effort to reestablish Starbucks as the community coffeehouse. That said, sales at Starbucks are still down year over year, and some of its customers reportedly find the mandated return of the human touchvia written names and well wishesto feel a bit forced, even cringey. You cant blame the Sharpie Fine Point marker for that. It may be a powerful tool, but what it expresses is still up to the user.
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If youve worried that AI might take your job, deprive you of your livelihood, or maybe even replace your role in society, it probably feels good to see that the latest AI tools fail spectacularly. If AI recommends glue as a pizza topping, then youre safe for another day. But the fact remains that AI already has definite advantages over even the most skilled humans, and knowing where these advantages ariseand where they dontwill be key to adapting to the AI-infused workforce. AI will often not be as effective as a human doing the same job. It wont always know more or be more accurate. And it definitely wont always be fairer or more reliable. But it may still be used whenever it has an advantage over humans in one of four dimensions: speed, scale, scope and sophistication. Understanding these dimensions is the key to understanding AI-human replacement. Speed First, speed. There are tasks that humans are perfectly good at but are not nearly as fast as AI. One example is restoring or upscaling images: taking pixelated, noisy or blurry images and making a crisper and higher-resolution version. Humans are good at this; given the right digital tools and enough time, they can fill in fine details. But they are too slow to efficiently process large images or videos. AI models can do the job blazingly fast, a capability with important industrial applications. AI-based software is used to enhance satellite and remote sensing data, to compress video files, to make video games run better with cheaper hardware and less energy, to help robots make the right movements, and to model turbulence to help build better internal combustion engines. Real-time performance matters in these cases, and the speed of AI is necessary to enable them. Scale The second dimension of AIs advantage over humans is scale. AI will increasingly be used in tasks that humans can do well in one place at a time, but that AI can do in millions of places simultaneously. A familiar example is ad targeting and personalization. Human marketers can collect data and predict what types of people will respond to certain advertisements. This capability is important commercially; advertising is a trillion-dollar market globally. AI models can do this for every single product, TV show, website, and internet user. This is how the modern ad-tech industry works. Real-time bidding markets price the display ads that appear alongside the websites you visit, and advertisers use AI models to decide when they want to pay that pricethousands of times per second. Scope Next, scope. AI can be advantageous when it does more things than any one person could, even when a human might do better at any one of those tasks. Generative AI systems such as ChatGPT can engage in conversation on any topic, write an essay espousing any position, create poetry in any style and language, write computer code in any programming language, and more. These models may not be superior to skilled humans at any one of these things, but no single human could outperform top-tier generative models across them all. Its the combination of these competencies that generates value. Employers often struggle to find people with talents in disciplines such as software development and data science who also have strong prior knowledge of the employers domain. Organizations are likely to continue to rely on human specialists to write the best code and the best persuasive text, but they will increasingly be satisfied with AI when they just need a passable version of either. Sophistication Finally, sophistication. AIs can consider more factors in their decisions than humans can, and this can endow them with superhuman performance on specialized tasks. Computers have long been used to keep track of a multiplicity of factors that compound and interact in ways more complex than a human could trace. The 1990s chess-playing computer systems such as Deep Blue succeeded by thinking a dozen or more moves ahead. Modern AI systems use a radically different approach: Deep learning systems built from many-layered neural networks take account of complex interactionsoften many billionsamong many factors. Neural networks now power the best chess-playing models and most other AI systems. Chess is not the only domain where eschewing conventional rules and formal logic in favor of highly sophisticated and inscrutable systems has generated progress. The stunning advance of AlphaFold2, the AI model of structural biology whose creators Demis Hassabis and John Jumper were recognized with the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2024, is another example. This breakthrough replaced traditional physics-based systems for predicting how sequences of amino acids would fold into three-dimensional shapes with a 93 million-parameter model, even though it doesnt account for physical laws. That lack of real-world grounding is not desirable: No one likes the enigmatic nature of these AI systems, and scientists are eager to understand better how they work. But the sophistication of AI is providing value to scientists, and its use across scientific fields has grown exponentially in recent years. Context matters Those are the four dimensions where AI can excel over humans. Accuracy still matters. You wouldnt want to use an AI that makes graphics look glitchy or targets ads randomlyyet accuracy isnt the differentiator. The AI doesnt need superhuman accuracy. Its enough for AI to be merely good and fast, or adequate and scalable. Increasing scope often comes with an accuracy penalty, because AI can generalize poorly to truly novel tasks. The 4 Ss are sometimes at odds. With a given amount of computing power, you generally have to trade off scale for sophistication. Even more interestingly, when an AI takes over a human task, the task can change. Sometimes the AI is just doing things differently. Other times, AI starts doing different things. These changes bring new opportunities and new risks. For example, high-frequency trading isnt just computers trading stocks faster; its a fundamentally different kind of trading that enables entirely new strategies, tactics, and associated risks. Likewise, AI hs developed more sophisticated strategies for the games of chess and Go. And the scale of AI chatbots has changed the nature of propaganda by allowing artificial voices to overwhelm human speech. It is this phase shift, when changes in degree may transform into changes in kind, where AIs impacts to society are likely to be most keenly felt. All of this points to the places that AI can have a positive impact. When a system has a bottleneck related to speed, scale, scope, or sophistication, or when one of these factors poses a real barrier to being able to accomplish a goal, it makes sense to think about how AI could help. Equally, when speed, scale, scope, and sophistication are not primary barriers, it makes less sense to use AI. This is why AI auto-suggest features for short communications such as text messages can feel so annoying. They offer little speed advantage and no benefit from sophistication, while sacrificing the sincerity of human communication. Many deployments of customer service chatbots also fail this test, which may explain their unpopularity. Companies invest in them because of their scalability, and yet the bots often become a barrier to support rather than a speedy or sophisticated problem-solver. Where the advantage lies Keep this in mind when you encounter a new application for AI or consider AI as a replacement for, or an augmentation to, a human process. Looking for bottlenecks in speed, scale, scope, and sophistication provides a framework for understanding where AI provides value, and equally where the unique capabilities of the human species give us an enduring advantage. Bruce Schneier is an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Nathan Sanders is an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Is America in a Second Gilded Age? Evan Osnos thinks so. In this episode of Most Innovative Companies, Osnos unpacks how extreme wealth, corporate influence, and political inequality are transforming American life. If youve ever wondered how the 1% really operate, this is the deep dive you need.
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