Those words ring in my ears to this day. So, it is with a great deal of humility, personal experience and a strong belief in the scientific method that I submit to you a reasoned rebuttal to the meme that “5G causes cancer.”

First and foremost, when researchers determine that something is a carcinogen (a substance, mixture or exposure circumstance that promotes the formation of cancer), they provide clear, specific protocols to avoid it.

So far, the only things related to 5G that have been classified as a carcinogen are cellphones. In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) put cellphones on its list of “Class 2B carcinogens.” Other Class 2B carcinogens include pickles, aloe vera leaf extract and being a firefighter. The warning about cellphones from the WHO is best paraphrased as “don’t use your cellphone as a pillow.”

That said, cancer is serious business, and this topic is more than worthy of exploration.

History of the idea

People have claimed that electromagnetic radiation causes cancer since the advent of 2G cellular networks. In 2000, Florida’s Broward County Public School system asked consultant Bill Curry to study the impact microwave radiation might have on schoolchildren. Curry concluded that the technology was “likely to be a serious health hazard.” As evidence, he referenced a graph labeled “Microwave Absorption in Brain Tissue (Gray Matter).” The graph has become a popular meme.

His report, methodology and conclusions have been called into question by so many scientists it would be impossible to name them all. However, Christopher Collins, professor of radiology at New York University, sums up the criticisms of Curry’s report concisely: Curry’s work failed to take “the shielding effect” of the human body into account. Dr. Kalil Abdullah, brain tumor neurosurgeon at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, agrees. There simply is no credible scientific evidence linking any cellular network (2G, 3G, 4G or 5G) to increases in brain tumors or other types of cancer.

Carcinogens

There are many known carcinogens. Some carcinogens, such as inhaled asbestos, certain dioxins and tobacco smoke, have nothing to do with radioactivity. Everyone knows the danger associated with inhaled asbestos, and anyone who has renovated an old structure knows what it costs (and the lengths to which one must go) to remove the cancer threat. Similarly, cigarettes (the main delivery vehicle for tobacco smoke) have carried a health risk warning from the Surgeon General of the United States for years.

Some electromagnetic waves are carcinogenic, such as the ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma-ray parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Should you avoid extreme exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation? Yes, as there is a known correlation between exposure to UV and certain types of skin cancer. This is why you are told to wear SPF 50 sunblock and avoid extreme exposure to direct sunlight. It is why there is a significant industry based on the thesis that humans need to be protected from UV radiation.

But unlike exposure to high levels of ionizing radioactive material such as the materials used in nuclear reactors, which deterministically cause radiation sickness and may lead to death, when one analyzes the effects of exposure to low levels of non-ionizing radiation, one finds that cancer is a stochastic effect.

In other words, the radiation we are going to discuss in this article only has a probability of correlation with the occurrence of cancer, which is a major reason (among others, including small sample size, inconsistent exposure rates and controls and short duration) peer-reviewed scientific studies have so far been inconclusive.

Some believe 5G may pose a threat

In 2016, the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) published a report. And while it’s not exactly light reading, the report details a study where mice and rats were exposed to extreme levels of radiation in the frequency range of cellphones. After two years of “whole-body exposure,” there was an elevated number of mice afflicted with heart tumors in the exposed group. This study has been highly criticized.

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Candidates on both sides of the aisle have linked their Madison Avenue consiglieri and strategist, with their street teams and war room colleagues. They are running projection polls, algorithms and side deals to connect their clients with the right segments of the population in the right ways. Reading the tea leaves is a bit complicated and requires some extra outreach to successfully maximize the potential impact on election day.

Political marketers need to grasp the reality: the multicultural vote, consisting of ethnic cultures, LGBTQ+ folks and various other factors, is key to win in 2020. African American, Hispanic American, Asian American and LGBTQ+ voters are critical to their chances of victory next November. Collectively, these consumers represent 30%-50% of the population in some key markets. Marketers can no longer be blind to the fact that without these votes, no candidate can win today.

Political marketers can and should double down on media that has proven to connect with these constituents. They can buy targeted media (radio, digital, social). Local radio is a huge grapevine tool. They can tactically utilize local OOH in key neighborhoods in key DMAs where the multicultural populations are high and easy to geotarget. They can reach out and connect with community influencers, opinion leaders and youth organizers. If candidates can get voters to believe in their messages and show them respect, the results will be golden.

Keynote marketers and advertisers need to realize that not all people of the same cultural backgrounds or lifestyles act and react the same. You must apply the same marketing rigor, depth and breadth of work to break through and connect. Industry focused and vetted organizations like Adcolor, the 4A’s and the AAF that can assist you in making sure you stay on the (true) straight and narrow will assist political marketers with connecting with these key audiences in meaningful and impactful ways. They’ll help with creating content environments, helping to identify and hire talent and advising on where to show up. They can also likely assist in your searches.

The longstanding excuse of “We don’t know where they are or how to reach them” is no longer acceptable or tolerable in this upcoming presidential campaign.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the visual manifestation of brands. These are just a few of the trends we see shaping logo design in 2020 and beyond.

Digital logos evolve as brands think screen-first

While personalization and variable design remain non-negotiables, 2020 will usher in increasingly sophisticated approaches as logos are tailored specifically for digital-first (or digital only) channels.

One of the most notable elements reflecting this trend is the use of three-dimensional gradients. While tough to handle in print, logos that leverage depth and dynamic spectrums through tapered gradients create energy by emphasizing contrasting colors and are perfect for screens. Combining colors in this way creates surprising results, and this type of gradient adds unexpected layers of sophistication and complexity to what are, on the surface at least, quite simple designs.

Thanks to the move toward screen-first visual branding, more elaborate motion design is another trend expected to dominate in 2020. Animated logos are nothing new, but as designers start to experiment with new technology and blend 2D and 3D animation with multiple moving parts, the style is reaching new heights and taking viewers on a narrative journey.

Adidas Running did this effectively when the brand worked with designer Jeroen Krielaars to create a number of complex abstract animations for their revolutionary Boost technology. You can see this below in the complex animation for Adidas Running Boost shoe and the below logo version of the animation.

Raw designs that demand the human touch

In direct contrast to the high-tech, sleek trends emerging around gradients and animation, many brands are bucking against digital perfection and embracing raw, imperfect logos instead. Proudly hand-drawn with a rougher, grittier edge, the feeling evoked is of stamps and sketchbooks as this trend taps into a more organic aesthetic through asymmetry, uneven lines and shading techniques like cross-hatching and contour shading.

A recent well-executed example can be seen in the hand-drawn ram created by design studio Kingdom & Sparrow for heritage beer brand Young’s rebrand. This craving for a human connection within logo design is perhaps inevitable as consumers demand increasingly high levels of both personality and authenticity from the brands they interact with.

Nostalgia never goes away

Finally, as one of last year’s biggest trends, one thing is certain: Nostalgia is here to stay. In a world of economic, political and social uncertainty, it’s safe to say that consumers enjoy the emotional resonance of the good old days.

Enough time has finally passed for the ‘80s to be cool again, and thanks to a variety of cultural events (here’s looking at you, Stranger Things) we’re seeing a resurgence of video games, music, fashion and the attitudes that came with them. Expect to see brands get in on the act with a nod to the 1980s through touches of chrome, neon and a lot of pixels in their logo designs.

Some brands are even more overt in their nostalgia. The Milwaukee Brewers, for example, just announced they are returning to their roots next season, adopting a slightly modernized version of their classic 1980s ball in glove logo on a permanent basis.

Another noteworthy and emerging nostalgic trend, albeit with a completely different visual style, is a move toward cartoon elements inspired by the 1930s. Almost 100 years later, the handcrafted comfort of expressive characters appeals to both brands and designers as they seek to connect with customers on a human level, so expect to see more vintage-inspired custom illustration work in logo design throughout the coming year.

From vintage throwbacks to futuristic complexity, disparate styles continue to coexist in visual branding. However, one thing is for sure: As the 2020s truly find their feet, designers will undoubtedly strike an exciting balance between the authentic human connection we all crave and our increasingly digitally-led world.

Deadspin has been a ghost town for a month now, since Nov. 4, when it last posted a story. It’s unlikely the website will ever regain the 30 million monthly views it had once garnered.

This stick to sports controversy is a lesson in the power of content and community in today’s marketing world. Those in leadership for new parent company G/O Media failed to understand that Deadspin’s freewheeling journalists, like Laura Wagner and Drew Magary, together with its audience were the brand. Deadspin accomplished what should be considered a Holy Grail: a tight-knit, lively relationship with a devoted audience. This example should have been inspiring to marketers and salespeople, who increasingly have the data and tools to drive 1:1 relationships that grow the business. Instead, the brand is effectively comatose.

Every CMO, brand manager or digital marketer can learn a few things from Deadspin’s demise. One major upshot is that content and community cannot be taken for granted. Another takeaway is to know who your biggest influencers are and not to underestimate what they mean to your brand.

Let’s look at what could have been, had Deadspin’s new owners recognized what made their brand special: the power of community.

Ethos can expand your business

The stick to sports mandate suggests brands should stay in their lane to succeed and inspire customer loyalty. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true.

We’ve learned that from REI closing its stores on Black Friday and encouraging customers #OptOutside instead of shopping. And we’ve learned that from up-and-coming retailer Outdoor Voices, which has become a $100 million company by building a community around being active while making its social media all about regular people wearing the fitness apparel brand in five years.

Deadspin was known for a style of creative freedom that attracted young readers until suddenly it didn’t stand for much at all.

Generally, anything that a brand creates—even if the creation isn’t in its original area of business—should develop a deeper connection with its audience. Red Bull didn’t “stick to energy drinks,” and the results have turned the brand into a juggernaut in the extreme sports world. Marriott didn’t “stick to hotels,” and it has become a content marketing machine. American Express didn’t “stick to credit cards,” and it created Small Business Saturday, among other initiatives that fall outside the realm of finance.

In the case of Deadspin, the stick to sports brouhaha seems to have been unnecessary. As Los Angeles Times editor Kim Janssen showed via a dive into the data, non-sports stories were less than 4% of Deadspin’s stories in September.

Commerce is now driven by a brand’s community

Every great brand has a community, and that community has a collective identity. REI, Outdoor Voices, Red Bull, Marriott and Amex obviously get this idea. Deadspin seemed like a community-first brand, but then it became clear that its proprietors didn’t understand what that concept meant.

Today’s customer experience is powered by information that is valuable and relevant to a specific audience. Direct-to-consumer beauty and skincare brand Glossier underscores this idea and shows that communities and content drive sales. The brand’s focus on community is at the heart of why it’s gone from a side gig to a $1.2 billion ecommerce company.

Nine years ago, Emily Weiss, founder and CEO of Glossier, launched her blog Into the Gloss, creating content around beauty topics before heading to her day job each morning. Within a few years, Weiss had millions of avid readers. That community had proven to be so strong that she eventually launched Glossier. With that in mind, it also seems fair to wonder whether Deadspin could have built a thriving ecommerce business around its content over time.

No matter what business you are in, your content and community are as responsible for your brand as your marketing or leadership is. Deadspin’s demise couldn’t have made that any clearer.

All of this takes me back to a debate I’ve been having with both my friend Randall Rothenberg of the IAB and my students at Duke’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative about the relative importance and staying power of brands in the rise of what Randy coined “the direct brand economy.”

What is not up for discussion is whether DTC is fundamentally changing the world of marketing. In many CPG categories, direct brands are capturing all of the category’s growth at the expense of legacy brands. Unlike legacy brands, they have direct access to its customers. They have the data to react to customer complaints and optimize for customer delight in real time. And as they move from online-only to omnichannel, they are changing the face of retail.

The argument against brand is that whoever masters the data wins, constantly optimizing programs to drive down cost of acquisition and growing customer retention. That’s a complete 180 back to the customer relationship management (CRM) origins of the web.

I would argue that brand has never mattered more, with We’s clumsy attempt at pulling the wool over investors’ eyes notwithstanding. Name a single product category in which any offering can claim meaningful and sustainable product superiority, and I’ll eat my proverbial hat.

Harry’s is happily stealing share in the shaving category with a razor that’s five generations behind current technology. Casper sells nice beds, but you can find a lot better. And Warby Parker’s glasses are not, in and of themselves, obviously better than those of either LensCrafters’ at many times the price or Zenni’s at a fraction.

Any product-level advantage a marketer enjoys is either too insignificant to convey a competitive advantage, or if it truly is a breakthrough, it’s one that will be copied in a matter of months.

We already have too many things competing for our attention. If we have to shop one company for our bed, another for our toothbrush, another for our eyeglasses, another for our cosmetics and yet another for our home-delivered meals, we are making a lot of decisions. The only way for a disruptor to win in that clutter is to create a brand that stands above the product offering itself. A brand that, in the greatest tradition of the most powerful and enduring brands of all time, stands for the emotional reasons people come to the category in the first place.

There are over a hundred startups competing with Casper to sell home-delivered mattresses. Some will find success through geographic and socioeconomic segmentation. But Casper is the one that is leading the disruption for a simple reason: even if they launched with a disruptive product, they dominate the space because they wrapped that product in a compelling and engaging brand.

So no, brands will not matter less. Because brand matters more.

But that takes us to the second question, and that’s about the staying power of brands in a DTC world.

The answer to this one is more nuanced because it starts with a simple fact: The barriers to launching a brand have never been lower. No need to start with a brick-and-mortar lease. No need to pay slotting fees. No need to own your supply chain or your marketing stack. It’s all available off the shelf, for rent.

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The popular narrative as to the reasoning behind this decision, fueled in many ways by the brand itself, is that Instagram’s platform changes were decided through a people-first, social good lens. Instagram isn’t claiming that hiding likes will fully reduce the pressures of social media. Instead, the platform suggests that people might gain back some of their mental health and actually start embracing the true mission of Instagram to “capture and share the world’s moments” by engaging with others in a more meaningful (rather than metrics-fueled) way.

I spot a different story underlying this shift, though.

The move away from likes also means a departure from a picture posting model and a movement toward story-based, quick-form social media behavior. To put it bluntly, at the end of the day, Instagram’s migration away from likes is really a disguised shift to push story-based content to garner more TV ad money. It’s a media play migrating the ecosystem of social to fulfill Facebook’s vision of higher content consumption, more ads and, ultimately, more money. The removal of likes is a strong step in forced adoption by socializing users away from posts and more traditional news feeds and toward story-based content where views are the new like and viewership tracking data is the new ad currency.

But even if this change is all a veiled effort to increase Instagram’s ad revenue, it’s not necessarily a bad move.

For starters, I don’t anticipate a drastic change in user behavior. People will continue to like and comment on the images they like. That’s what we’ve been conditioned to do over the past nine years. Early reports in like-free pilot markets have shown that Instagram engagement has actually increased in countries such as Japan, especially among micro-influencers. We’ll end up going where Facebook tells us to like we always have, just as they socialized us from a yearbook to a news feed, chronology to an algorithm, status to story.

Stories are also cleaner territory for influencer marketing. The massive amount of fraudulence across the industry both in terms of fake followers and fake likes are being derailed through this focus on views. Influencer fraud will decrease, and influencers will be valued based on true influence, not inflated metrics. The story shift puts more power into the hands of the people as brands are leveraging user-generated content on a frequent, almost real-time basis to compete with this new normal in social media.

For brands, engagement data may go away on the frontend, but the backend metrics will still be available. In fact, influencer performance might become more valuable than ever as brands have to become more thoughtful in the data they look at and make decisions from.

As for the more complicated news, stories require snackable content and a lot more of it. The news feed of posts that last forever has shifted to high volume, high frequency, short-form videos. Those require brands to be more creative in developing this content while also reconsidering their production norms to keep pace with frequency demands.

Finally, as we move toward stories, views may be the core focus now, but I suspect we will become increasingly more focused on traffic in the future. Unlike feed posts, the story model itself is specifically built to drive traffic to our channels. Brands will find their social strategy shifting from a focus on vanity metrics to more meaningful behavioral metrics that not only drive traffic but impact the bottom line.

At a certain point, we all grow up, find our niches in life and accept that we can’t be everything to everyone. Nor do we want to be because we have influence and thrive in our own universes.

But for some reason, this simple life lesson doesn’t seem to have penetrated the professional brand sector. In what feels like a never-ending high school popularity contest, brands obsessively collect potential consumers, often by latching onto cultural moments—like Pride Month—in a desperate move to be universally appealing and a part of every conversation.

Logic suggests the more people our brand attracts, the better our business. But the fact is that we simply can’t be everything to everyone. Trying to be is not strategic and is a waste of energy. At most, it’s also harmful and leaves people questioning our authenticity.

Here’s the uncomfortable part, too. All of this means someone, somewhere will disagree with what we’re saying. But if we’re going to accomplish our brand goals, we must learn how to be comfortable with that inevitable friction. We must learn why intention can make all the difference in the world.

Although controversial, these following brands share a hallmark. There’s no question about where they stand. To many, their messages might seem over-simplified. However, people understand and remember what they stand for.

Obama: Change and hope

Some politicians get this better than most, and they’re often polarizing.

Politicians with multi-dimensional platforms and seemingly more layered sensibilities struggle to define their brand in a way that people can grasp. To be clear, complexity and sophistication aren’t bad. They are essential to business strategies and long-term success, but they don’t belong in our core messaging.

Obama understood the power of intention. Everything rolled into his idea of change, a message soon distilled into a slogan: “Yes, we can.”

More than 15 million ballots were cast by new voters in 2008, of which 68.7% voted for Obama. Part of his appeal was the simplicity of his brand. His message resonated with people and focused on a feeling and an aspiration more than an understanding of his political policies, creating a winning strategy.

Patagonia: Responsibility and advocacy 

Let’s consider how this concept translates to a consumer-facing brand. Patagonia has been equally polarizing and successful in recent years while staying close to its roots and adopting a persona matching the activism of its founder Yvon Chouinard.

In 2017, after President Trump announced rollbacks of protections on the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, Patagonia took offensive maneuvers, issuing a campaign called “The President Stole Your Land.” This message lived on the Patagonia site, Chouinard threatened to sue the administration and later joined a coalition of grassroots groups and Native American tribes to do so.

While many brands would shy away from such overtly political messaging, the statement wasn’t about political gain. And instead of alienating its audience, people responded in favor. The day after the presidential rebuke, Patagonia’s external web sales were six times the regular rate.

Patagonia knows its audience and sticks to its brand values, and in the past decade, its revenue has quadrupled as it continues to develop its defense of public lands under the Patagonia Action Works program.

Disney: Joy and imagination

One brand has continued to build revenue with increasing speed while seemingly managing an impossible task: maintaining a simplified brand intention without risk of polarization. And that’s Disney.

Disney has built an empire on the concept of joy, delivering the three-letter word across every interaction and touchpoint in an imaginative way. “It all began with a mouse” in 1923, but the company has since amassed revenues of almost $60 billion. Disney’s empire spread from animation to filmmaking, then to franchise building in the form of Star Wars, Pixar and ESPN, and has now shifted into the lucrative streaming world in the form of Disney+.

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Nothing in common? Think again. It’s not their charm and wit or a social following over 1 million or their unwitting ability to turn heads when you pass them in public. They’ve all been canceled.

You might be thinking, they don’t seem to be canceled. I just saw Aziz at the Comedy Cellar. I wore Prada loafers to work today. I didn’t even know Tesla was canceled. The truth is that it’s complicated.

Cancel culture, with roots on Black Twitter from around 2015, is used to express cultural boycott and is intended to take away power, attention and capital from a person or brand, whether it’s digital, financial or cultural.

It usually goes like this. Someone well known says or does something problematic, which goes viral and leads to online outrage, which leads to that figure apologizing. Cancellation means that a person or brand possesses enough equity to cancel, derived from words spoken or disseminated online where their power is predicated on the attention economy. Therefore, cancel culture continues its offend-outrage-atone cycle until the platforms from which they derive attention, or society’s derivation of value, change.

Cancel culture encapsulates and amplifies what it means to be online. Our ubiquitous access to information allows us to see more things that are wrong and hear them more loudly. At the intersection of peak chaos and peak narcissism, cancel culture makes me as an individual feel like I have a voice that matters, that is making an impact and that can take back control over what’s happening around me. Canceling someone or something is transactional, socially performative and immediately rewarding with a low cost of entry. It’s essentially accountability arbitrage. Cancel culture is a space we feel we can hold public figures accountable so easily at the touch of a button.

But the truth is that outrage is less outrageous these days and often doesn’t translate offline. After Kanye West proclaimed slavery was a choice, Ye debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Tekashi69 committed the ultimate sin of ratting out his whole clique and signed a $10 million record deal from jail. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal (and all scandals thereafter) and a subsequent #DeleteFacebook campaign, Facebook’s numbers haven’t suffered. We behave much worse online than we do in real life. Perhaps nothing is ever truly canceled.

Canceling a person or brand is conceptual and is an attack on the method, as opposed to the underlying value system. Convenience, price or entrenched routines often outweigh brand trust and alignment with values. And because canceling has become so easy and frequent, cancel culture has become diluted. If you stacked up every brand you bought from in the last month against the causes you value, would you ever buy anything again? Keeping up would be a full-time job.

The impact of cancel culture on artist versus brand varies. It tends to be harder to separate artists from their work, and ultimately, there’s not a true direct replacement. This tends to make the cancel threshold higher but more permanent (think Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein versus Kanye West).

For brands, the effect of being canceled depends on comparable substitutes. If Charmin were to suddenly become an ardent Second Amendment supporter, it would be easy for those who passionately believe in gun control to shift to Scott or Quilted Northern. And the more differentiated a brand is, the higher the switching costs for consumers when a brand does something they disagree with (think Equinox or Dior). Therefore, it’s even more important for brands to monitor cultural conversations tied to business results.

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