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You might have seen that earlier this week I published a “Naan-Obvious” book with my wife to celebrate our love for delicious Indian bread. The book was a joke with purpose; a playful way to launch our new series called the Non-Obvious Guides which share advice that is “like having coffee with an expert. Despite the occasional clever idea (like Tinder’s height-verification program), this article notes that the April Fools Day pranks from brands this year were generally lacking. Roku created a pet-friendly remote control and Lego even launched a FindMyBrick app to let people locate lost pieces.

One of the most popular trends from this year’s edition of Non-Obvious was a trend I called RetroTrust – the idea that we trust in brands and experiences from our past. Last week I told the story at the IHRSA Conferenceabout a video game I used to play when I was a kid made by the renowned Japanese video game maker Konami. This week I saw a story that Konami is bringing back the game called Contra and a few of other beloved games too. The website for the hit new film Captain Marvel celebrated the era that the film is set in by creating a wonderfully 90’s style website.

One of the most consistent signs of our shifting future is how quickly new jobs and industries are emerging. Even as some fear technology making certain jobs obsolete, there are sci-fi sounding sectors like asteroid mining that are actually becoming reality

Everyone wants to be an online influencer, because it seems to pay well, but who is really benefiting? This article from the USA Today actually takes the unusual step of trying to reverse engineer a “rate” for influence and ended up with an estimate of “up to $100 for every 10,000 followers per sponsored post. ” The amount of money has created a rush of wanna-be influencers and big headaches for brands who have to deal with their unrealistic expectations