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When Jon LaMantia, a Long Island-based business reporter, was in journalism school, his professor drilled one rule into his students: you get two exclamation points a year and no more. So if you use them in January, LaMantia recalls being told, you better hope theres nothing to exclaim for the rest of the year. The rule stuck. LaMantia still thinks about that rigid quota today. I use exclamation points all the time in texts and emails. If you dont, the message sounds more stern, he says. But I cant remember the last time I used one in a business article. Strong feelings about the exclamation point arent uncommon. People tend to either love it or loathe it; lean on it constantly, or avoid it religiously. Personally, I use multiple, but at work Ill only use one, says a woman who works in HR at an investment bank in New York City, who wasnt cleared to speak publicly but said she couldnt resist chiming in on this topic. People say Im bubbly and high-energy, so I use them to let my style come through in emailwhen appropriate. A consultant in Ohio, who also asked not to be named, tells me he uses them to lighten the tone of written communication or reduce formality. Others tread more cautiously. I use way too many and then feel embarrassed later on, admits an artist from Brooklyn. A Boston-based consultant says hes begun actively metering his usage to set the right tone. In short, exclamation points matter. They spark surprisingly strong feelings about tone, intention, and even etiquette. But according to new research, they also shape much more than just mood. Warmer, But Less Analytical A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, titled Nice to meet you. (!) Gendered norms in punctuation usage, found that women not only use exclamation points more frequently than men, but that this difference carries real consequencesboth for those writing and for those reading. Across several experiments, participants judged writers who used exclamation points differently across measures that included perceived warmth, power, analytical ability, and competence. Heavy usersa group that overwhelmingly skews femalewere seen as warmer and more enthusiastic, but also as less analytical. The study also showed that women were more likely to think about their punctuation choices, whether to end a sentence with a period or an exclamation point, for example, underscoring the invisible cognitive labor that often shapes womens communication. All of it illustrates how something as small as punctuation can reinforce the subtle forces still underpinning stubborn gender norms and divides both at work, and beyond. Unequal Cognitive Load Cheryl Wakslak, associate professor of Management and Organization at Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and one of the authors of the study, says she was particularly struck by how much mental energy women devote to these decisions. Women are putting a lot of thought into this, she says. On one hand, intentional communication is valuable, she adds, but its also a lot of cognitive energy that men are simply not spending.” Women, she explains, are constantly navigating what she describes as a warmthcompetence tightrope. Theyre worried about not seeming warm, so they use exclamation points to appear warmer. But theyre also worried about not being seen as competent or powerful, and they may worry that exclamation marks undermine that. Men, the research shows, largely dont think about any of that. Another finding that surprised her: the trade-offs of using exclamation points. Heavy users were perceived as more appealing collaborators and more enthusiastic, but also less powerful and less analytical. For me, the most interesting finding, though, was about competence, says Wakslak. We didnt see a clear effect in either direction. That matters to me because, when Im walking that tightrope, Im mostly worried about the competence trade-off, she adds. I dont need to seem powerful in every context, but I do want to seem competent. Still, she acknowledges that in some work environments, being perceived as analytical is crucial. In those situations, based on these findings, a woman might want to avoid using exclamation marks. Perpetuating Stereotypes Asked about the exclamation point research, Elaine Lin Hering, author of Unlearning Silence, a book about verbal and nonverbal communication, says shes not surprised. [The findings] illustrate the downside of the conditioning women have long received and the contorting women do to try to meet expectations. It is simply one of many examples of the double standards women are held to and the tension that women navigate every day, she adds. It’s akin, Hering says, to women being told to smile more in order to appear warmer and more approachableand then finding themselves being taken less seriously because they smile too much. And the issue extends beyond punctuation. Workplace communication norms are typically defined by the groups with the dominant identity. Not just that everyone should talk like a man, but that how people communicate should fit into the stereotypes that the dominant groups have of that other identity, she says. Social norms exacerbate inequality by perpetuating existing stereotypes that the dominant group holds, she explains, like that women are too emotional or Asians are good workers but not leaders or that Gen Z is lazy. So what can be done? As ever, when the problem is rooted in social conditioning, theres no easy fix. But Hering says that, especially in workplace settings, systems can be put in place to help control for biases like the ones that creep in when we read something someones written. We can challenge the social norms and exacerbated inequalities by having clear and consistent criteria for evaluating performance, she says. Research published in 2022, shows that womenbecause of systemic biasare often assessed in workplaces based on their actual performance, while men are assessed based on their future potential creating what the academics dub a gender promotion gap. Having more rigid criteria for assessment can offset that divergence. A wide awareness of the existence of these biases and this conditioning is alsoof coursecritical to making workplaces fairer. And Cheryl Wakslaks coauthor Gil Appel is the first to admit that. Appel, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the GW School of Business at George Washington University, says that spending time researching gender and communication has made himmuch more of a feminist. There are some things that men just dont have to think about at all, and women have to think about all the time, he says. Whether thats to ensure their safety, or whether its to make sure theyre coming across as competent, he adds. They just always have to be thinking. And beyond becoming more feminist, theres one other thing thats changed for Appel since working on the research: I have to admit, he says, I definitely use more exclamation marks now.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its been a tumultuous year for the legacy retailer, shaped by new tariffs, shifting consumer habits, and the constant flip between wartime and peacetime leadership. Macys Inc. Chairman and CEO Tony Spring shares why his team is now on version twenty-seven of the plan, and what it really means to court the next generation of shoppers. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Responsefeatures candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. The Thanksgiving Day Parade, the sprint to Christmas, it’s like your Super Bowl. What’s waw distinctive about 2025? I mean, the economic and shopping environment has been pretty chaotic. I think the news certainly makes things more complicated. I think people are confused. We had a terrific second quarter. We talked about the back-to-school business being pretty healthy, and yet we all see potential storm clouds on the horizon. So we’re trying to be cautiously optimistic You could stay up all night worrying But in reality, our job is to make sure we create a better shopping experience for the customer. There’s plenty of things that are out of our control that we could obsess about, but it really doesn’t satisfy anything or make you feel any better. And for the parade, how do you keep it fresh? Making sure every year the parade has, again, newness: We have partnerships with Disney, Pokemon, Pop Mart, Labubus We want to make sure that whatever is popular and whatever’s interesting weaves its way, not only into our merchandise strategy, but also into an iconic event like the Thanksgiving Day Parade. 32 million people approximately are going to watch it on TV, and we have several million more that come live in person in New York City on that day. Macy’s has an iconic place in American culture, although obviously it hasn’t been immune to the challenges in retail. You launched what you call a bold new chapter after becoming CEO in 2024. It’s showing traction in your financial results, but you’re still sort of in the midst of it. What’s working, what’s not? Well, let me break it into the three parts: The first was strengthening and reimagining Macy’s, and that included closing underproductive stores and betting on our future state stores, so putting more colleagues into the stores, putting new merchandise into the stores. We also improved our digital platform and doubled down on our luxury businesses, which include Bloomingdale’s and Blue Mercury. And then the final part of the strategy is end-to-end operations, and that’s making sure we’re utilizing automation and robotics and AI, and making sure the complexity that might exist in our business doesn’t affect the consumer. Your stores face pressure from everywhere, fast fashion and e-commerce and social shopping and live shopping. How do you think about in-person, human interaction, versus digital commerce? I talk to our team all the time about the word balance, and I don’t think the word gets enough volume or credit There’s some reports out now that the next generation is longing for socialization, and in-person shopping is a big part of what they’re doing together. There is a place, I think, for all these types of businesses, as long as we pay attention to what the consumer wants. Almost 70% of our business still remains in physical retail, which is very consistent with the industry averages. That doesn’t mean we don’t love our digital business. If we were selling paper towels, who wants to go shopping for paper towels? I’d like to have those delivered to my house right before I run out of them. But I think there are other things that are fun to do in person. And by the way, when we have a DJ on a Saturday, when we do bottle engraving, when we, people show how to do flower arranging, you can get people to turn out to the stores because it becomes an extension of what they want to do for the weekend. I think a big part of our bold new chapter is stepping up to the fact that a good retail experience, people are looking for. A bad or mediocre retail experience. People, people can do digital. They don’t need to exhaust themselves with that experience. I want to ask you about planning and decision-making in 2025. One CEO I talked to recently told me that things change so fast that he’s been forced to update his plans as often as weekly. You get new data constantly. I’m curious what you look at and how fluid you have to be with your plans? You have to be very fluid. I mean, to be candid, in the age of tariffs and in the uncertainty of supply chains, plans are the guardrails, and the longer the plan, the less accurate it is. So you do deal with a rolling operating forecast, which is something that we update on a weekly and monthly basis, and that kind of gives us a greater visibility into how to allocate inventory, how to plan our staffing, how to change our marketing, so that we’re doing it in real time, not based on some plan that we developed three or six months ago, which may at this point be somewhat outdated. I think we’re on version number 27 of our forecast and plan, because of the interesting environment that we’re operating in 2025. There’s an analogy that people sometimes use, that sometimes you need a wartime leader and sometimes you need a peacetime leader, and there’s a different strategy for each one of them. And I’m curious whether you feel like for Macy’s, is today wartime or peacetime? And how would you cast yourself in that? I’d like to say it depends on the day of the week you ask me, and I think the challenge for our business is, on Tuesdays, I might have to be a peacetime leader, and on the first day of November, you may need to be a wartime leader. And in the environment we’re operating with, with unexpected tariffs by the middle of the year that didn’t exist at the beginning of the year, there is a lot of wartime philosophy. The same time, we are in a business for the long term. We are not trying to just have a great third quarter. We’re trying to have a great business that lasts decades, if not more. What matters tomorrow is going to be different than what mattered yesterday. I use a phrase, graciousness and kindness don’t cost money. So, how do we make sure that we imbue and express those things on a regular basis? What’s your role when it comes to the Thanksgiving Day Parade itself? Stay out of the way.
Category:
E-Commerce
Twenty years ago, not too long after Youtube itself launched, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla started uploading videos to the platform. What started as two teenagers trying to make each other laugh turned into the biggest channel on YouTube. It was the first ever to reach 10 million subscribers. Eventually Smosh was acquired by a company called Defy Media. The company would expand rapidlymore videos, more cast members, even a moviebut then came turmoil and uncertainty for Smosh. Padilla left the company in 2017, largely due to creative differences with Smoshs parent company. He returned to the business in 2023, when he and Hecox purchased Smosh from YouTuber-led media company Mythical (which acquired the brand in 2019 following Defy Medias abrupt collapse). From left: Ian Hecox, Anthony Padilla, Ale Catanese [Photos: Brennan Iketani (Catanese)/courtesy Smosh] Alongside the purchase, Hecox and Padilla hired Alessandra Catanesean executive with over a decade’s experience in digital mediaas CEO. In the ensuing two years, the company has steadily expanded its content offering while picking up new subscribers across five YouTube channels. With more content in development than ever, and more than twice as many employees as it had in 2023, Smosh is moving into a 32,000-sq.-ft. Los Angeles studio thats roughly twice the size of its current headquarters. [Rendering: courtesy Smosh] Hecox, Padilla and Catanese joined me on the Most Innovative Companies podcast to talk about the companys growth, its new space, and how they approached designing a space for the next generation of the company. This interview has been edited and condensed. Smosh is making a big move in 2026. Can you tell me why now is the right time to expand? Alessandra Catanese: We physically just could not launch another show or take on a new project, no matter how much we loved it. So in this new building, it’s both going to allow us to expand what we’re doing, and more appropriately house the employees that we have and create a little bit more of a structured environment. Its really important to us to balance the structure with the startup vibe that we still feel we have today. We don’t feel this need to elevate ourselves to this corporate structure where there’s a lot more red tape and there’s a lot more rules. We do have a lot of guidelines, but we love that a lot of the things we have and processes we have in place here are very fluid. They have a sandbox in which they play in. And on the business side, I stay out of the creative decisions they do know to bring me things. So yeah, so we want to honor that. And then this building allows us to create more space and communal areas where we can celebrate what we do, but also be professional and feel a little bit more polished. [Image: courtesy Smosh] What will the new space help achieve for Smosh? Ian Hecox: I think one of the major focuses for this is just working out a better flow for production and talent, getting talent to the stages, production knowing exactly where the talent is. I mean, we love our cast, but sometimes it is herding cats. Creating a space for them to feel comfortable in and to congregate in I think was really important. And then we have, we’ll have a private room. If there’s maybe a celebrity coming in that wants a little more privacy, we can have a room specifically for AC: A proper green room with a closing door. Anthony Padilla: Not a weird little makeshift curtain. We wanted to level up the space and bring a level of professionality, but also we want it to feel fun and embody that element of creativity and working together as a team. Right now, a lot of our lights are big, fluorescent overhead lights and we wanted a lot more soft lighting and stuff that feels more comfortable. You’re hanging out with your friends, not at someone’s house, but you’re hanging out with your friends in a professional environment. [Rendering: courtesy Smosh Studios] Since the pandemic,office design has been moving towards a more living room, or lounge, feel. It sounds like you are embracing that as well. IH: I think we want it to be somewhere comfortable, but I also don’t want people falling asleep because I’ve seen some of these production companies and everything looks very calm. So I think it was striking a balance between comfortable, but also you’re going to stay awake, but also not hitting people with Nickelodeon greens. AC: We want it to feel grown up and mature, but in a way that still honors the comedy, the internet of it all. So I think we brought color in very intentionally. And Studio Keya obviously did an excellent job. [Rendering: courtesy Smosh] It’s amazing to be able to intentionally design a space for where you are now. Its been two and a half years since buying back Smosh, does this move feel like a completion of that transition or like you are officially making a home in the newest iteration of the company? IH: I don’t think we would’ve expected to be here this quickly. I think this was more of a five-year plan or a 10-year plan. We feel very grateful. We’re still doing this within our scope. We don’t have a giant backer. We’re trying to do everything in a sustainable way. AP: I think it’s really about continuing to hone in on what we do best. The comedy rooted in friendship element. You’ll probably start to see more faces on camera. There’ll be more people working behind the scenes. Really, we want to create an environment where people either in front of camera or behind camera get to live out some of those dreams that Ian and I got to experience in the early days. Smosh at VidCon 2024 [Photo: Smosh]
Category:
E-Commerce
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