Why brands are cutting senior marketers, Lululemon's glow up, and Steve Jobs turns 70
Issue #45
Weekly Exhale
Time is a strange beast. Steve Jobs would have turned 70 this week. "Make something wonderful," read the email from his foundation marketing the occasion. It linked to a rare clip of Jobs at an internal Apple meeting. He observed that you may never meet the people, shake their hands, hear their stories, or tell yours. Yet, in the act of crafting something with great care and love for them, something meaningful is transmitted.
For so many years, everything Steve Jobs said was so cool. But in 2025, hearing another rap about paying respect to humanity through the power of technology felt not only dated but dangerous. Like I'd been to the puppet show and seen the strings.
A few things have changed since Job's death.
First, Apple became a trillion-dollar company and lost its soul. The book After Steve documents how Apple—and the tech industry—transformed from a homebrew movement of free thinkers to a techno-capital machine powered by monetising and manipulating human connection. As an Apple shareholder, I couldn't care less. But that magic I felt when Steve pulled something out of his pocket nobody saw coming? That hasn't been part of the play for a while.
Today, Apple doesn't need to innovate. It ships iPhone after iPhone, and the more pointless the update, the more buying one is a flex. The much-promised Apple Car? Nowhere to be seen, ceded to Tesla. Apple's zen domination is so complete that it only just bothered to show up to the AI party. A $500 billion investment in an AI factory of chips and flashing lights ought to do it.
Meanwhile, Severance is Apple's most-streamed title, raking in $200 million. The show portrays a dystopian company, Lumon Technologies, that looks suspiciously like Apple itself. Granted, the tech in the show is giving retro-IBM vibes, but the art direction is like an Apple store. Nothing is dirty. Everything is perfectly ordered one hundred per cent of the time. A sprawling spaceship-like headquarters shrouded in secrecy and control. Lumon, and Apple, are designed to ensure you never stray.
The more complicated twist is Steve Jobs, arguably one of the greatest visionaries of all time, who also turned out to be a selfish tyrant. In the archetypes of techno-capital, Steve honours a standardised formula: Vision x Demons = Asshole + Progress for All Humankind. Famous for his 'reality distortion field', Jobs denied the birth of his first daughter, Lisa. He even named a computer after her, then insisted it stood for something else. Then, just days before Apple's IPO made him one of the wealthiest men alive, he agreed to just $385 a month in child support.
After watching the clip, I switched channels to catch Elon Musk in a Beavis and Butthead-style MAGA hat and "Tech Support" t-shirt addressing the U.S. Cabinet. He was talking, but all I heard was Butthead's snigger: "uh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh".
Suddenly, I was sad.
My thoughts turned to my Dad, who also died at 56. He was a signwriter. On the back of the wall of his studio was a huge banner that read: "The greatest little creative team in town." Hand-painted in bright red, with a yellow drop shadow.
I felt love that had nowhere to go.
Love for creative stuff. Love for the flowing lines of brush script. Love for a time when unboxing a new computer meant more creativity, more beauty and more freedom.
And then I remembered that towards the end of his life, Jobs sent himself an email—an act of letting go:
“When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive. I did not invent the transistor, object-oriented programming, nor most of the technology I work with. I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well-being.”
It's poetic. It's profound. It's tricky to reconcile with a guy who got super rich and denied his daughter. So I got to wondering how the story of Jobs' relationship with Lisa ended.
If there are reparations, they're documented in Walter Isaacson's biography, released after Jobs's death. Decades later, Jobs admitted the Apple Lisa was "obviously named for my daughter." He confessed, "I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of," citing his denial of Lisa. He repeatedly told her, "I owe you one." Lisa added "Jobs" to her surname and was by his bedside when he died. And yes, she was left a multi-million dollar inheritance.
Ultimately, Jobs acknowledged that the only saviours were those who had saved him, including Lisa.
Apple and Steve Jobs are modern myths. Like all good myths, there's truth there, polished and packaged into a shared fiction of how we wish the world could be. Jobs fell into the traps of being a hot-headed 25-year-old tech millionaire but seemed to evolve with time, exponential wealth, fatherhood and no doubt a stage 4 cancer prognosis. He was one of the "crazy ones" —before the term became overused and literal. (Musk would later appropriate Job's quote to describe himself in the preface pages of his own Isaacson-commissioned biography.)
Reportedly, Steve Jobs' last words were, "Oh wow." But anyone who has held a parent's hand as they pass from cancer knows that nothing gets said. The pump administers a steady stream of peace. At that moment, success is nothing more than being surrounded by people who love you and peacefully drawing to a close.
My Dad had ideas about what happens after you die. He was clear that it's over—you're gone. But he believed that all our thoughts, dreams, and ideas disperse like particles surrounding the living as inspiration.
Jobs is survived by Laurene Powell Jobs, a philanthropist, who ended the email I received by hoping Steve's 70th birthday would inspire us to make something wonderful and put it out there.
And that's the challenge, isn't it? In a world where techno-capital digitises and prices all those particles of inspiration, are we still capable of making something wonderful?
If there's a myth worth believing, maybe it's that.
Let's rise together with every issue. ♡
Market Movements
Bank of England rate setter warns of higher UK inflation | Financial Times
China vows to retaliate in tariff wars | CNBC
U.S. economic growth falls back below average | Wall Street Journal
Brand Beat
A quarter of brands are cutting senior marketing leaders | Marketing Week
Mad//Fest apologies after leaving visitors out in the cold | Marketing Beat
Chipotle premieres sustainability film with cover by Hasley | Little Black Book
Disney marketing boss on the art of storytelling | The Drum
New Unilever boss set to offload Marmite and other food brands | The Grocer
Ben & Jerry's discuss buying back brand from Unilever | Bloomberg
Consumers shun brands that kowtow to Trump | The Guardian
Why Costco is targeting the rich | Fast Company
Amazon restricted vaginal health products for being embarrassing | Wired
Instagram may launch separate reels app to take on TikTok | BBC
Technicolor, owner of the Mill and MPC shuts down | Ad Week
Diet Coke is a symbol of modern office culture | Financial Times
Not all creativity is worth saving, David Droga speaks | Fast Company
How can brands navigate increasingly divisive consumer opinion? | Marketing Week
Mobile gaming ad tech AppLovin tipped as new TikTok | MediaCat
How 12 Americans see life after watching a lot of TikTok | New York Times
The brand impact of HBO's show The White Lotus | Vogue Business
Lululemon launches glow up studio in NYC | Instagram
Alcohol alternatives are missing their (marketing) marks | The Drum
100 years of Fendi | Dazed
An inside look at X's community notes | Lenny's Podcast
Trending: Immi, low-carb protein-rich instant ramen | Thingtesting
System 1's ad of the week is Nespresso | System1
Starting Up
Actual Veggies closes $7 million Series A | Nosh
8 black Fortune 500 CEOs with $228 billion in combined revenues | Fortune
AI agent startup ideas VCs want you to pitch them | Sifted
Maternity clinic Millie nabs $12m series A from all-star female VCs | TechCrunch
The 8-hour window most startups are missing | Marketing Ideas
Tech Tidbits
Apple's cheap new phone isn't so cheap | Wall Street Journal
OpenAI launches GPT-4.5- huge and compute-intensive | Wired
The 50 hottest fintech startups in 2025 | Forbes
DeepSeek spreads across China with Beijing's backing | Financial Times
Nvidia revenue jumps 80% | New York Times
Steve Jobs would have been 70 this week | Appleinsider
Venture Vibes
MrBeast new investment round, possible $5bn valuation | The Guardian
Just Eat bought in $4.2 billion post-pandemic deal | Forbes
Rolls-Royce's recovery is stunning | The Guardian
The women investors to know in defence tech | Sifted
Sequoia's Roelof Botha warns 'chumps' not to buy into SPVs | TechCrunch
Design Driven
Designers ode to great eBay finds | It's Nice That
These Redditors made a Trump Tracker | Fast Company
Penguin's 2025 cover design shortlist revealed | Creative Review
Happiness
The happiest people never do these 7 things | CNBC
2 step process for life's disruptions | Big Think
"Make something wonderful" Steve Jobs internal meeting from 2007 | Steve Jobs Archive
--
Stay gold 🙏🏻
Always free, always from the heart, so do subscribe and share. ♻️
Steve Jobs built a myth—one where technology wasn't just functional but deeply human. Apple, in its prime, was about *creation* rather than mere consumption. But myths evolve. Today, Apple thrives not on revolution but on routine, its magic repackaged into iterative updates and algorithmic efficiency.
The question for brands isn't just about innovation; it's about intention. Are they crafting with care, shaping culture, and adding meaning? Or are they simply refining the machine, optimizing for engagement while the soul fades?
Jobs’ last words—"Oh wow."—suggest a moment of awe, of realization. Perhaps the real challenge for brands today is finding their own version of *wonder* in a world that increasingly automates it away.