At long last, Central Perk Coffee Company has arrived in New York City. More than three decades after "Friends" premiered, an official ode to the sitcom's iconic hangout opened in Manhattan on Dec. 12-complete with its famous orange couch. Created in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Experiences, the shop's logo and decor pay homage to the '90s hit that made Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, and the late Matthew Perry household names.
As consumer behaviors shift and digital touchpoints multiply, the once-reliable linear marketing funnel is giving way to a far more dynamic customer journey. Audiences now move fluidly between channels, influence sources and brand interactions, often looping back or skipping steps entirely. To stay competitive, brands must embrace a more adaptive, experience-driven approach that meets customers where they are-whenever and however they choose to engage.
The underlying issue is a technological design constraint: You can either create something highly personalized or something that scales to hundreds of people simultaneously, but rarely both. A seismic change is afoot that will dwarf the previous chasm, like the shift from black and white film to color cinema. Multimodal AI is poised to eliminate the joint scaling and personalization limitation, enabling truly multidimensional, adaptive experiences where each person experiences something completely unique, all generated in real time.