The heatwave in Europe is no laughing matter, but UK cinema chain Showcase pulled off a brilliant lighthearted marketing stunt: offering free movie tickets to redheads who are “often more vulnerable than most to the sun’s rays.” They’re calling it the SPF (“Sun Protecting Flicks”) promotion.

While the move is a loss leader, costing Showcase ticket sales in the short term, it earned the company viral press and long-term goodwill from the freckle-prone among us. (Then again, the tickets-for-loyalty strategy didn’t quite work out for MoviePass.)

All Greek to me: Should we leave stoicism in ancient history?

Out of Print: Literary T-shirts with an incredible mission.

Burrito brilliance: College students’ tasty invention.

(Source: Shutterstock)

In 2014, author Ryan Holiday had a surprise No. 1 bestseller with The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph, which applied the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy of stoicism to modern problems. It was a major hit in the business world, leading to an empire of follow-ups such as Ego Is the Enemy, Stillness Is the Key, Lives of the Stoics, and The Daily Stoic.

This Stoic Virtues series sold millions of copies, but did we maybe get too carried away with it over the past decade?

What does stoicism teach?

On paper, there’s certainly merit to stoic thought from a business perspective. These are some of the basic tenets:

• Control what you can; ignore what you can’t. (Stoicism saw a surge of popularity during COVID-19 lockdowns, when most people felt less in control than ever.)
• Let wisdom and temperance guide your behaviors and intentions.
• Don’t attach yourself to outcomes — like whether you succeed or not — but rather the process of achieving an outcome.

Before you embrace stoicism as the golden rule to run your business, however, consider the potential drawbacks.

Emotions have a place in business

Stoicism argues that emotions are destructive and chaotic, so curbing our emotions is necessary to stay centered. Sure, that might be good advice when you get into a disagreement with your CFO, but did Steve Jobs lack zeal? Does Elon Musk lack it today? (If anything, the two most successful CEOs of the modern age have been emotional loose cannons!)

Taken literally, stoicism can lead to an overly clinical mindset that leaves you without the passion, imagination, or authenticity that made you an entrepreneur in the first place. Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is perhaps more important than IQ.

Your employees aren’t all stoics

You can’t expect your workers (or your customers) to bury their own feelings just because you’ve studied Marcus Aurelius. Psychologists have found over and over — and over — that a company dedicated to fostering positive emotions will have more staff creativity and less burnout.

The Silicon Valley fad is a little ironic

It’s easy to roll your eyes at tech giants embracing a philosophy that centers on avoiding distractions and outbursts. Their entire business strategy is based on keeping us tethered to our smartphones in a state of outrage!

What’s beyond your control still impacts you

The ancient stoics believed that because reputation is ultimately outside of your control, you shouldn’t waste time worrying about it. However, this will lead you to a modern PR nightmare. In our social media age of hyperconscious consumers, public perception has never been so important. Any advice to the contrary might be a Trojan horse.

5,000,000+

Copies of the Stoic Virtues series sold since 2014

(Source: Amazon)

(Source: Out of Print / Instagram)

Love literature? Show your affection for the written word by wearing clothes and accessories designed for readers at Out of Print, which began selling book-cover T-shirts in 2010 and has since branched into a bibliophile lifestyle brand available online and in over 1,000 retailers.

Out of Print wants to spread the love of reading. For every purchase, it donates a book. (That’s more than 5 million books to date.) Along with funding literacy programs in underserved communities, Out of Print supports authors. For instance, 10% of a recent week’s sales went toward the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. So, order a shirt featuring your favorite novel or author; it’ll nurture fellow bookworms!

(Source: Johns Hopkins University)

Barbacoa, guac, brown rice, black beans, roasted corn salsa, and queso blanco might be a delicious Chipotle burrito order, but it is in no way structurally sound. Enter Tastee Tape, a fully edible adhesive from Johns Hopkins University engineering students.

Revealed at the university’s annual Engineering Design Day, Tastee Tape isn’t just food-grade and organic; it’s a fibrous scaffold with more than enough sticking power to keep that double-pinto two-cheese monstrosity secure. The formula, which took months to prototype, is still secret while the young engineers wait for their patent, but team member Tyler Guarino assures the public that the ingredients are “common food and dietary additives” with enough strength for you to “put full faith in your tortilla.”

With $114 billion in growth predicted for the Mexican food market over the next few years, that patent may be a Tastee business proposition indeed.

(Source: Twitter)

“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Written by Ali Saleh, Jane Meggitt and Dan Ketchum.