Monday Memo (On A Tuesday)

A Byte of Knowledge

Loyalty to an AI tool is a tax we pay in obsolescence.

One day Claude Code is the coding love child.

The next it's Codex.

Now Hermes is eating everyone's agent lunch and Openclaw is yesterday's deli meat.

"Which tool is THE tool?" is the wrong question.

It assumes a winner gets crowned.

But the leaderboard reshuffles faster than the changelog.

And the marketer married to last month's champion is showing up to the gunfight with a butter knife.

You need to build the meta-skills that sit one layer above any tool.

Folder systems a stranger could read.

A prompt library tagged by job-to-be-done, not by model.

A trained ear for when a model is bluffing versus when it's actually cooking.

That's your moat.

Tool-agnostic taste.

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Something to Ponder

We Asked – AI Answered

Our Question: 

Is ‘Going analog'... Gen Z's desire to get offline... a real business boom? Or merely a cope for our digital world only going more digital."

AI's Answer: Going Analog - A Real Boom Riding a Rising Digital Tide 📵

Gen Z is buying its way out of the very economy that raised it. The question for anyone selling something: is there real money in the exit, or is it just guilt wearing a price tag? The honest answer... both, and the two facts live comfortably side by side.

💰 The exit economy is printing real money

The relief industry already has product-market fit, and the receipts prove it:

• 🎵 Vinyl just hit a milestone four decades in the making. US vinyl revenue reached $1.04 billion in 2025, up 9.3% on 46.8 million units, its 19th straight year of growth and first billion-dollar year since 1983. It now outsells CDs roughly three to one and brings in more than triple their revenue.
• 📸 Fujifilm's Instax instant film is selling faster than the company can make it. Instax has passed 100 million units sold worldwide and posted record sales four years running, and Fujifilm is spending nearly $32 million to expand film production yet again... its CEO calls the line a "goldmine."
• 🛜 In the get-offline category proper, the Light Phone has over 100,000 of its premium devices in use worldwide, built with no paid advertising at all.
• 🏕️ Unplugged, the UK's first digital-detox cabin company, grew from a handful of locations in 2020 to over 50 by 2026.
• 📈 The tooling layer is its own market. The social-media-blocker app space is projected to grow from $1.47 billion in 2025 to $5 billion by 2035

Roughly 1 in 5 Gen Zers are now attempting a digital detox. Wherever you find that much self-reported pain, a market forms to sell the cure.

🌊 The tide keeps moving the other way

The uncomfortable part for the "analog revolution" crowd... the macro numbers keep climbing:

→ Gen Z averaged 7 hours 43 minutes of daily phone time in 2025, up 4.8% over 2024, a fresh acceleration after the brief 2024 slowdown.

→ ChatGPT jumped 18 spots into Gen Z's top-15 apps in 2025, and 70% of the generation now uses AI-generated content weekly.

So the same kid buying a brick phone is deepening his dependence on the screen.

The analog purchase reads more like a confession than a conversion, a way to feel virtuous between scrolls.

🧠 Why "doing less" sells at a premium

The dumb phone has quietly become a status symbol of self-control. That reframe is the engine, running on old economics flipped upside down:

• 💎 Thorstein Veblen's 1899 rich flaunted status through what they bought. Today's elite signals it through restraint. Elizabeth Currid-Halkett's term for it is "inconspicuous consumption," flexing wellness and free time instead of logos. A phone that does less says you can afford to opt out.
• 🪙 Opting out costs something real: convenience, reach, even income. Choosing that sacrifice is the flex, the way a logo-free coat whispers old money louder than any monogram.
• 🤫 Attention is the scarce resource now. Being unreachable is the rare good, and rare goods get marked up... see the $799 Light Phone.

🎯 Your Key Takeaways

Your product is relief from a screen the customer will never actually quit. Position accordingly:

• Sell the guilt valve: tools, spaces and rituals that let people feel control without unplugging.
• Charge for friction. A customer's willingness to pay $39 to lock himself out is a pricing gift.
• Wrap it in status. "Intentional," "focused," "present"... these are the new luxury signals.
• Build for the recurring cycle of guilt and relief, because tomorrow he scrolls again anyway.

A boom built on a cope is still a boom. Sell the aspirin, and the headache will keep your customer coming back. 💊

Thanks for reading the Monday Memo.

Until next time!

The AI Marketers

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