The Novel Weekly Update
Hi,
It feels like the last 16 months have been characterized by languishing more than anything else. We’re craving novelty*. And it’s taking far too long for it to return.
I hope you can stay safe, enjoy the long weekend and do something novel.
* Our Word of the Weekly Update (WOWU) is novelty. You probably know it well, but it has many interesting meanings.
Novelty might be an unexpected meeting of someone we know in a dog park, a random food delivery from a sourdough baking friend or ordering bressert** from a new SkiptheDishes restaurant.
Novelty also explains why your memories of the first month of the pandemic more than a year ago are stronger than your memories of almost any month since. The start of the COVID pandemic was off-the-charts novel, and the intervening periods have been in the pits. Novel experiences are closely tied to our memories through the idea of learning by surprise:
“One of the most important brain regions involved in discovering, processing and storing new sensory impressions is the hippocampus, located in the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex. Novel stimuli tend to activate the hippocampus more than familiar stimuli do, which is why the hippocampus serves as the brain’s ‘novelty detector’.”
In the same way, an unexpected fact or statistic will make your next report or presentation more memorable. This may also explain why our Zoom-based workshops are so highly rated – they are not what people expect or have experienced.
Novelties can also be delicious. The #1 ice cream novelty sold on Amazon is the Fla-Vor-Ice Popsicle Variety Pack. Popsicle had one of the first customized radio campaigns in the early 1980s. This was a time where when you bought radio, you got randomly inserted in the program the same way every day. (Usually sandwiched between Stevie Wonder and Kenny Rogers.) Popsicle negotiated a premium deal where they were only advertised when the daily temperature was forecast to exceed 75 degrees. Sales exploded – well worth the relatively minor increased media costs. (That was our Terry O’Reilly moment of the weekly update.)
If the wonderful heat of summer ever arrives, you will be able to combine our cerebral cortex insight with popsicles to get a brain-freeze – that summer sensation we all have a love/hate relationship with.
Brain freeze is caused by the rapid cooling and rewarming of capillaries in the sinuses near the sensitive nerves in the palate. Two cures can work:
Pushing your tongue to the roof of your mouth, which helps warm the area.
Covering your mouth and nose with your hands and breathing rapidly to increase the flow of warm air to the palate.
A suggested preventative cure is reducing the cold stimuli on the palate, which means avoiding large amounts of cold food or drink at once. Really… that is pretty naive summer advice.
The most popular novelty item this summer is the Squishmallow:
They have been likened to the Beanie Babies of the pandemic. Novelty king, David Feldbloom, GM of Royal Specialty Sales, says nothing compares to the Squishmallows’ success. “There are other toys that are similar, but Squishmallows outsells them all. Don’t toast them over the campfire this summer. Bad things will happen. Especially when your kids find out”
Novelty is important. Someone recently said of the COVID pandemic, “there’s no punctuation in our lives.” (Well, we still have #, @ and a myriad of emoticons, but they don’t count.) Unexpected and new moments will greatly enhance our coping with the pandemic. Don’t wait for the third wave to ebb before you try something different. Even if it is just a new kind of ice cream on a stick.
** The bressert is not a paid product placement. But the Weekly Update is open to the idea.