Dear Fellow Trend Curator,

This week’s non-obvious story collection starts with a deep dive into the truth about voter transparency in America. We continue with a look at the return of Victoria Secret’s Runaway show meeting mixed reviews, how the diet industry is quickly dying thanks to weight loss drugs and an airport that limits hugs to three minutes or less.

On the travel front, I’ll be doing the last two dates on my tour with Chase in New Orleans tonight and New York next week. It has been really educational hearing the real challenges around growth that small businesses are facing and trying to help develop strategies for them to win. If you’re just joining this list from one of those events, welcome to our non-obvious community!

Enjoy the stories this week and stay curious!

Rohit

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Victoria's Secret Brought Back Their Runway Show As An Example of How They’ve Changed. Did It Work?

Six years ago, Victoria’s Secret shelved their popular runway show after significant blowback from media and consumers alike who felt the show was objectifying women. Since then, the brand has had to go through leadership changes and significant soul searching about what it stood for. This week they brought back their runway show in an attempt to “reflect who we are today, plus everything you know and love.” The show had some notable changes, including featuring more plus-sized models and leaving out the diamond-studded bras and other lingerie that no one would ever wear in real life. The brand also made sure women were driving the production team behind the show. Despite the changes, the reviews were mixed.

The New York Times called it “a relic of another time,” suggesting that “parading scantily clad bodies, no matter what size or age, down a runway is simply not about empowerment. It’s about objectification — even if it’s equal opportunity objectification.” Another review felt the brand was pretending: “Fenty was built from inclusivity and truth, it wasn’t publicly dragged into it via focus groups. Consumers are smart, and we know when it’s real and when it’s pandering,”

On the positive side, some reviewers called it a step in the right direction and felt the revised show actually did demonstrate some reinvention on the part of the brand. So what do you think?

Can a brand like Victoria's Secret actually change or is this just another example of superficial marketing from a fading brand desperate to go back to their past glory?

Mail In Voting, Ballots and the Truth About Voting Transparency in America

I already voted. Millions of Americans have too. In Virginia, you can register to vote by absentee ballot and just mail in your vote early. The majority of states have similar mail-in options for voters. I do that in every election. No standing in line. No awkward conversations with pollsters asking how I voted. Just fill in the ballot and mail it. Yet, some people are afraid to vote this way, and this fear is being manipulated by stories about how showing up in person is the “safest” way to make sure your vote is counted. That is simply not true.

Manipulative politicians are stoking fears that ballots can be lost or recorded incorrectly. The truth is, in every state in America transparency is built into the system. While I still can't vote online, I can log into my account at any time using my voter registration and see if my ballot was received, how my vote was recorded and confirm my vote was recorded properly. This is particularly important given the concerns about how the US Postal Service will deal with all the mail in ballots likely to be cast.

In addition, multiple research reports and non-partisan groups studying voter fraud have concluded that this is a myth. While fraud can always happen, in American elections it happens rarely, is relatively quickly identified and corrected and definitely does not occur at a volume that would impact the outcome of a national election.

This is an important message to share as we are just weeks away from the U.S. election. The voting system in America certainly isn’t perfect and the problem remains that all votes are not equal because of the electoral college system. But the system does have transparency built into it, and that’s a fact all Americans should know and share.

New Zealand Airport Institutes 3-Minute Hug Limit When Dropping Off

New Zealand’s Dunedin Airport launched a sign that limits the time you can hug someone to say goodbye in an effort to ease airport traffic congestion. It went predictably viral, with people calling the sign and rule behind it "inhumane" while sharing it widely. All those detractors might be missing the point. This is clearly an example of the old PR adage that any attention is good attention since the world is now talking about an airport in the otherwise often forgotten, second largest city on the South Island.

Somewhat proving the point, Fast Company did a feature on it while calling it an example of "great information design" - exploring how it was better at communicating the need for brief goodbyes than broader but less human signs that say things like "no waiting" or "no passenger pickups." They might be right. Or it could just be a great example of someone doing something they knew would get people talking ... like great marketing is supposed to.

The End of the Diet Industry May Be Here

Oprah Winfrey stepped down from the board of Weight Watchers ending her longtime affiliation with the brand. If you're looking for a bellwether to judge the future of the diet industry, this may be as good as any. Earlier this year she had admitted to taking a GPL-1 weight loss drug, and shortly after her move, Weight Watchers shares had a significant drop. In another indication of this upheaval in the diet industry, and Weight Watchers has also joined the party by releasing their own GLP-1 drug.

For years, the diet industry has focused on habit formation and encouraging willpower while offering things like diet meals and prepackaged food products. Thanks to the results people are seeing now from weight loss drugs and how they work to combat hunger by mimicking the body's satiety response ... diet programs are quickly becoming obsolete. As new formulations come on market, usage of these drugs become more widespread - the question is what these current diet programs will become. Or whether they might disappear altogether.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz

In Four Lost Cities, science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on a journey to explore the rise and fall of four ancient cities: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River.

For any fan of historical non-fiction or futurist works, Four Lost Cities brings both together in a unique way by exploring elements of the forgotten past that might offer lessons for any of us living in cities today. In the process, the book reveals how we might repeat history for better or worse … and what anyone eager to understand history on a far vaster time scale should be thinking about right now.

About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I will be featuring a new “non-obvious” book selection worth sharing. Titles featured here may be new or from the backlist, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great books that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I'm able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

• Okra Water: Why TikTok Is Buzzing For This New ‘Miracle Vegetable’

• Retailers Locked Up Their Products—and Broke Shopping in America

• The Beauty of Being Alone

• American Express Global Meetings & Events 2025 Forecast

• Liquid AI Is Redesigning the Neural Network

• What You Should Know About UN’s Global Media and Information Literacy Week (24-31 October)

• New Startup Uses AI To Give Old LEGO Bricks A Second Life

How are these stories curated?