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  • March 2025 newsletter

    March 2025 introduction

    Welcome to my March 2025 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 20th issue. Or one score, as they used to say down the Mecca bingo hall. A score is a common grouping used in everything from selling produce to indicating the scale of an accident in a news headline. In Japan, it signals legal adulthood and is celebrated with personal ceremonies.

    I didn’t know that March was Irish-American Heritage month. I just thought that we had St Patrick’s Day.

    Hopefully April will bring us warmer weather that we should expect of spring. In the meantime to keep my spirits up I have been listening to Confidence Man.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here

    Strategic outcomes

    Things I’ve written.

    • I curated some of the best analyses on DeepSeek, and more interesting things happening online.
    • Pharmacies are blatantly marketing prescription-only medicines. It’s illegal, there is no GLP-1 permission that allows consumer marketing of prescription-only medicines used for weight loss and weight management.
    • Clutch Cargo – how a 1960s animation managed to transform production and show the power of storytelling.
    • A look back at Skype. I will miss its ring tone when it shuts down in May.
    • Looking at the Majorana 1 chip promising a new generation of quantum computing, generative AI production, refrigeration and an oral history of Wong Kar wai’s In the Mood for Love & 2046.

    Books that I have read.

    • Now and again you come across a book that stuns you. Red Sky Mourning by Jack Carr, is one such book, but not in a good way. Carr is famous because of his service in the American military which he has since parlayed into a successful entrepreneurial career from TV series to podcasts. So he covers all things tactical knowledgeably. Conceptually the book has some interesting ideas that wouldn’t feel that out of place in a Neal Stephenson or William Gibson novel. So Carr had a reasonably solid plan on making a great story. But as the saying goes, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Carr’s enemy was his own writing style without aggressive editing. The editing process is a force multiplier, breathing the artistic brevity of Ernest Hemingway into a manuscript and protecting the author from their own worst impulses. I found the book hard to read because I would repeatedly run up against small niggly aspects, making it hard to suspend disbelief and get into the story. Carr loves his product brands, in this respect Red Sky Mourning reminded me a lot of early Brett Easton-Ellis. Which got me thinking, who is Carr actually writing for? Part of the answer is Hollywood, Carr’s books have been optioned by Amazon, one of which was adapted as The Terminal List. I imagine that another audience would be young (privileged caucasian male) management consultant types who need a bit of down time as they travel to and from client engagements – after a busy few days of on-site interviews, possibly with a tumbler of Macallan 12 – which was purchased in duty-free. The kind of person who considers their Tumi luggage in a tactical manner. The friend who gave it to me, picked it up for light reading and passed it on with a degree of incredulity. On the plus side, at least it isn’t a self-help book. It pains me to end a review so negatively; so one thing that Jack Carr does get right is the absolute superiority of Toyota Land Cruisers in comparison to Land Rover’s products. If you have it in hard copy, and possess sufficient presence of mind, it could serve you well in improvised self-defence as it comes in at a substantial 562 pages including the glossary and acknowledgements.
    • The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji is a classic murder mystery. A university crime club with each member named after a famous fictional detective gather to investigate a murder on an isolated island. The book slowly unravels the answer to the K-University Mystery Club’s annual trip bringing it to a logical conclusion.
    • She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan was an interesting piece of Chinese historical fiction. It is less fantastic than the wuxia works of Louis Cha that dominated the genre previously. More here.
    • Chinese Communist Espionage – An Intelligence Primer by Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil tells the story of modern China through the story of its intelligence services. From the chaos under Mao purges and the Cultural Revolution to forces let loose by ‘reform and opening up’. More here.
    • In the early 2000s, as we moved towards a social web, we saw a number trends that relied on the knowledge of a group of people. Crowdsourcing channeled tasks in a particular way and became a popular ‘innovation engine’ for a while. The wisdom of crowds captured the power of knowledge within nascent question and answer platforms. Prediction markets flourished online. Superforecasting by Tetlock and Gardner try and explain who and why these models work, particular where they rely on knowledge or good judgement. The book does a good job at referencing their sources and is readable in a similar way to a Malcolm Gladwell book.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Why does humour in advertising work?

    My Dad is a big fan of the Twix bears advertisement, so much so, that he repeats the script verbatim when it comes on. We know that humour works and that it’s under-used in advertising, but it would be good to have data behind that in order to support it as a suggestion to clients.

    twix bears

    WARC have published What’s Working In Humorous Advertising which goes a good way to providing that support.

    The takeouts from the report include:

    • Humour as a memory hook: Comedy surprises and delights, it makes consumers stop, engage and then remember. Over time it builds into nostalgia.
    • It relies on universal insights – that work across age cohorts, cultures and geographies. Its also intrinsically shareable – and not just on social platforms.
    • Celebrity x humour drives fame: Well-executed humour paired with celebrity endorsements, (Ryan Reynolds being a standout example) boosting brand impact.
    • Well executed humour can supercharge marketing ROI. Ads with humour are 6.1x more likely to drive market share growth than neutral or dull ads.

    Accessible advertising

    The Ad Accessibility Alliance have launched The Ad Accessibility Alliance Hub, which made me reflect on accessibility as a subject. I can recommend the hub as it provides good food for thought when considering mandatories for creative. ISBA’s reframing accessible advertising helps make the business case beyond the social benefits of inclusivity. The ISBA also provides links to useful assets. Finally, I can recommend Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge which provides a broader context to help think about accessible advertising as part of a system.

    Social platform benchmarks

    RealIQ have done great research of engagement rates across thousands of brands in a number of sectors. What we get is an engagement benchmark set across platforms and industries. We can debate the value of engagement, and the different nature of platforms, so you can’t compare across platforms.

    Chart of the month.

    What I could compare in the RealIQ data was the rate in change in engagement rates year-on-year. The clear losers over time were Facebook and Twitter at an aggregate level. This also explains the x-tortion (as Forrester Research described them) tactics being deployed by Twitter. Combining high rates of engagement decline and reduced reach means that Twitter doesn’t look particularly attractive as a platform vis-a-vis competitors.

    Change in platform engagement

    Things I have watched. 

    Hunt Korean spy film

    Hunt (헌트) is a great Korean film. It provides a John Le Carré style spy hunt story in 1980s era South Korea prior to the move towards democracy. It’s a stylish, if brutal film that touches on parts of South Korea’s history which we in the west tend to know very little about. Hunt takes an unflinching look at the legacy of the military government as well as their North Korean rivals.

    Philip Kaufman‘s The Right Stuff is a movie adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s account based on US post-war fighter development through to the height of the Mercury space programme. The film went on to receive eight nominations at the Academy Awards. You have an ensemble cast of great character actors who deal with the highs and lows at the cutting edge of aerospace technology. The Right Stuff is as good as its reputation would have you believe. The film captures the drama and adventure that Wolfe imbued his written account of the journey to space. As a society it is good to be reminded that if we put our mind to it the human race is capable of amazing audacious things.

    Disco’s Revenge – an amazing Canadian documentary which has interviews with people from soul and disco stars including Earl Young, David Mancuso, Joe Bataan, Nicky Siano – all of whom were seminal in the founding of disco.

    It also featured names more familiar to house music fans including DJ Spinna, Frankie Knuckles, Kevin Saunderson and John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez – who was key in proto vocal house productions.

    The documentary also shows hip-hop was influenced by disco mixing.

    Along the way it covers the fight for gay rights in the US and its easy to see the continuum onwards to house music and the current dance music scene. It’s one thing knowing it and having read the right books, but the interviews have a power of their own.

    It takes things through to ‘club quarantine’ during the COVID-19 lockdown.

    I hate that’s its streaming only, rather than Blu-Ray but if you can put that one issue aside and watch it. If you try it and enjoy it, you’ll also love Jed Hallam‘s occasional newsletter Love Will Save The Day.

    I picked up a copy of Contagion on DVD, prior to COVID and watched it with friends in a virtual social manner during lockdown. This probably wasn’t the smartest move and I spent the rest of lockdown building my library of Studio Ghibli films instead. It’s a great ensemble film in its own right. Watching it back again now I was struck by how much Contagion got right from Jude Law’s conspiracy theorist with too much influence and combative congressional hearings.

    The film makers had the advantage of looking back at SARS which had hit Hong Kong and China in 2002 – 2004. Hong Kong had already been hit by Avian flu H5N1 from 1997 to 2002. Both are a foot note in history now, I had a friend who picked up their apartment on the mid-levels for 30 percent below 1997 market rates due to the buffeting the Hong Kong economy took during this time. The only thing that the film didn’t envision was the surfeit of political leadership in some notable western countries during COVID, which would have added even more drama to Contagion, not even Hollywood script writers could have made that up.

    Leslie Cheung photographed while playing

    Hong Kong film star Leslie Cheung was taken from us too early due to depression. But the body of work that he left behind is still widely praised today. Double Tap appeared in 2000. In it Cheung plays a sport shooter of extraordinary skill. The resulting film is a twisting crime thriller with the kind of action that was Hong Kong’s trademark. It represents a very different take on the heroic bloodshed genre. At the time western film critics compared it to The Matrix – since the US film was influenced by Hong Kong cinema. Double Tap has rightly been favourably compared by film critics to A Better Tomorrow – which starred Cheung and Chow Yan Fat.

    Useful tools.

    Knowledge search

    Back when I worked at Yahoo!, one of our key focuses was something called knowledge search. It was searching for opinions: what’s the best dry cleaner in Bloomsbury or where the best everyday carry items for a travelling executive who goes through TSA style inspections a few times a week. Google went on to buy Zagat the restaurant review bible. Yahoo! tried to build its own corpus of information with Yahoo! Answers, that went horribly wrong and Quora isn’t much better. A more promising approach by Gigabrain tries to do knowledge search using Reddit as its data source. I’ve used it to get some quick-and-dirty qualitative insights over the past few months.

    Digital behaviour ‘CliffsNotes’

    Simon Kemp launched this year’s Digital 2025 compendium of global online behaviours. It’s a great starter if you need to understand a particular market.

    Encrypting an external hard drive

    I needed to encrypt an external hard drive to transfer data and hadn’t used FileVault to do it in a while. Thankfully, Apple has a helpful guide buried in its support documents. From memory the process seems to have become more complicated over time. It used to be able to be done by using ‘control’ and click on the drive before scrolling down. Now you need to do it inside Disk Utility.

    The sales pitch.

    now taking bookings

    I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my March 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into spring, and enjoy the Easter break.

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

    Get in touch if there is anything that you’d like to recommend for the newsletter.

  • February 2025 newsletter

    February 2025 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my February 2025 newsletter, I hope that your year of the snake has gotten off to a great start. This newsletter marks my 19th issue – which feels a really short time and strangely long as well, thank you for those of you who have been on the journey so far as subscribers to this humble publication. Prior to writing this newsletter, I found that the number 19 has some interesting connections.

    In mandarin Chinese, 19 sounds similar to ‘forever’ and is considered to be lucky by some people, but the belief isn’t as common as 8, 88 or 888.

    Anyone who listened to pop radio in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s would be familiar with Paul Hardcastle’s documentary sampling ’19’. The song mixed narration by Clark Kent and sampled news archive footage of the Vietnam war including news reports by read by Walter Cronkite. 19 came from what was cited as the average age of the soldier serving in Vietnam, however this is disputed by Vietnam veteran organisation who claim that the correct number was 22. The veteran’s group did a lot of research to provide accurate information about the conflict, overturning common mistakes repeated as truth in the media. It’s a handy reminder that fallacies and trust in media began way before the commercial internet.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here

    Strategic outcomes

    Things I’ve written.

    • Zing + more things – HSBC’s Zing payments system was shut down and was emblematic of a wider challenge in legacy financial institutions trying to compete against ‘fintech startups. I covered several other things as well including new sensor technology
    • The 1000 Yen ramen wall is closing down family restaurants across Japan. A confluence of no consumer tolerance for price elasticity due to inflation driven ingredients costs is driving them to the wall. Innovation and product differentiation have not made a difference.
    • Luxury wellness – why luxury is looking at wellness, what are the thematic opportunities and what would be the competitors for the main luxury marketing conglomerates be successful.
    • Technical capability notice – having read thoroughly about the allegations that Apple had been served with an order by the British government to provide access to its customer iCloud drive data globally – I still don’t know what to think, but didn’t manage to assuage any of my concerns.

    Books that I have read.

    • World Without End: The million-copy selling graphic novel about climate change by Jean-Marc Jancovici and Christophe Blain. In Japan, graphic novels regularly non-fiction topics like text books or biographies. A French climate scientist and illustrator collaborated to take a similar approach for climate change and the energy crisis. Their work cuts through false pre-conceptions and trite solutions with science.
    World without end by Jancovici & Blain
    • Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski. Yablonski breaks down a number of heuristics or razors based on psychological research and how it applies to user experience. These included: Jakob’s Law, Fitt’s Law, Hick’s Law, Miller’s Law, Peak-End Rule and Tesler’s Law (on complexity). While the book focuses on UX, I thought of ways that the thinking could be applied to various aspects of advertising strategy.
    • I re-read Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal. Eyal’s model did a good job at synthesising B.J. Fogg’s work on persuasive computing, simplifying it into a model that the most casual reader can take and run with it.
    • Kapferer on Luxury by Jean-Noël Kapferer covers the modern rise of luxury brands as we now know them. Like Dana Thomas’ Deluxe – how luxury lost its lustre Kapferer addresses the mistake of globalised manufacturing and massification of luxury. However Kapferer points out the ‘secret sauce’ that makes luxury products luxurious: the hybridisation of luxury with art and the concept of ‘incomparability’. The absence of both factors explain why British heritage brands from Burberry to Mulberry have failed in their current incarnations as luxury brands.
    • Black Magic by Masamune Shirow is a manga work from 1983. Masamune is now best known for the creation of Ghost In The Shell which has been turned into a number of anime films, TV series and even a whitewashed Hollywood remake. Despite the title, Black Magic has more in common with space operas like Valerian & Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières than the occult. In the book Masamune explores some of the ideas which he then more fully developed in Ghost In The Shell including autonomous weapons, robots and machine intelligence.
    • Doll by Ed McBain. Doll was a police procedural novel written in 1965 that focused on the model agency industry at the time. The novel is unusual in that it features various artistic flourishes including a model portfolio and hand written letters with different styles of penmanship. The author under the McBain pen name managed to produce over 50 novels. They all have taunt dialogue that’s ready for TV and some of them were adapted for broadcast, notably as an episode of Columbo. You can see the influence of McBain’s work in the likes of Dick Wolf’s productions like the Law & Order, FBI and On Call TV series franchises.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Can money make you happy?

    Past research indicated that happiness from wealth plateaued out with a middle class salary. The latest research via the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania indicates that might not be the case instead, earning more makes you happier and there might not be a point at which one has enough. The upper limit on the research seems to have been restricted by finding sufficiently rich research respondents rather than natural inclination. As a consumer insight that has profound implications in marketing across a range of sectors from gaming to pensions and savings products.

    AgeTech

    I came across the concept of ‘agetech’ while looking for research launched in time for CES in Las Vegas (7 – 11, January 2025). In the US, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and American Association of Retired People (AARP) have put together a set of deep qualitative and quantitative research looking at the needs of the ‘aged consumer’ for ‘AgeTech’. AgeTech isn’t your Grandma iPad or your boomer CEO’s laptop. Instead it is products that sit at the intersection of health, accessibility and taking care of oneself in the home. The top five perceived age technologies are connected medical alert devices,digital blood pressure monitors, electric or powered wheelchairs/scooters, indoor security cameras, and electronic medication pill dispenser/reminders. Their report 2023 Tech and the 50-Plus, noted that technology spending among those 50-plus in America is forecast to be more than $120 billion by 2030. Admittedly, that ’50-plus’ label could encompass people at the height of their career and family households – but it’s a big number.

    It even has a negative impact on the supply side of the housing market for younger generations:

    The overwhelming majority (95%) of Americans aged 55 and older agree that aging in place – “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level” – is an important goal for them. This is up from 93% in 2023.

    The Mayfair Set v 2.0

    Spiv

    During the summer of 1999, a set of documentaries by Adam Curtis covered the reinvention of business during the latter half of the 20th century was broadcast. I got to discover The Mayfair Set much later on. In the documentaries it covered how the social contract between corporates and their communities was broken down and buccaneering entrepreneurs disrupted societal and legal norms for profit. There is a sense of de ja vu from watching the series in Meta’s business pivots to the UK government’s approach to intellectual property rights for the benefit of generative AI model building.

    It probably won’t end well, with the UK population being all the poorer for it.

    The Californian Ideology

    As to why The Mayfair Set 2.0 is happening, we can actually go back to a 1995 essay by two UK based media theorists who were at the University of Westminster at the time. It was originally published in Mute magazine.

    This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley. Promoted in magazines, books, TV programmes, websites, newsgroups and Net conferences, the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies. In the digital utopia, everybody will be both hip and rich. Not surprisingly, this optimistic vision of the future has been enthusiastically embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, innovative capitalists, social activists, trendy academics, futurist bureaucrats and opportunistic politicians across the USA. 

    It reads like all these things at once:

    • A prescient foreshadowing from the past.
    • Any Stewart Brand op-ed piece from 1993 onwards.
    • The introduction from an as-yet ghost written book on behalf of Sam Altman, a la Bill Gates The Road Ahead.
    • A mid-1990s fever dream from the minds of speculative fiction authors like Neal Stephenson, William Gibson or Bruce Sterling.

    What the essay makes clear is that Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison and Elon Musk are part of a decades long continuum of Californian Ideology, all be it greatly accelerated; rather than a new thing. One of the main differences is that the digital artisans no longer have a chance to get rich with their company through generous stock options.

    Jobsmobile

    Even Steve Jobs fitted in with the pattern. For a hippy he drove a 5 litre Mercedes sports car, parked in the handicapped spaces in the Apple car park and had a part in firing Apple’s first gay CEO: Michael Scott because of homophobia and Scott’s David Brent-like handling of Black Wednesday. It may be a coincidence that Tim Cook didn’t come out publicly as gay until over three years after Steve Jobs died.

    … a European strategy for developing the new information technologies must openly acknowledge the inevitability of some form of mixed economy – the creative and antagonistic mix of state, corporate and DIY initiatives. The indeterminacy of the digital future is a result of the ubiquity of this mixed economy within the modern world. No one knows exactly what the relative strengths of each component will be, but collective action can ensure that no social group is deliberately excluded from cyberspace.

    A European strategy for the information age must also celebrate the creative powers of the digital artisans. Because their labour cannot be deskilled or mechanised, members of the ‘virtual class’ exercise great control over their own work. Rather than succumbing to the fatalism of the Californian Ideology, we should embrace the Promethean possibilities of hypermedia. Within the limitations of the mixed economy, digital artisans are able to invent something completely new – something which has not beenpredicted in any sci-fi novel. These innovative forms of knowledge and communications will sample the achievements of others, including some aspects of the Californian Ideology. It is now impossible for any serious movement for social emancipation not to incorporate feminism, drug culture, gay liberation, ethnic identity and other issues pioneered by West Coast radicals. Similarly, any attempt to develop hypermedia within Europe will need some of the entrepreneurial zeal and can-do attitude championed by the Californian New Right. Yet, at the same time, the development of hypermedia means innovation, creativity and invention. There are no precedents for all aspects of the digital future. As pioneers of the new, the digital artisans need to reconnect themselves with the theory and practice ofproductive art. They are not just employees of others – or even would-be cybernetic entrepreneurs.

    They are also artist-engineers – designers of the next stage of modernity.

    Barbrook and Cameron rejected the idea of a straight replication of the Californian Ideology in a European context. Doing so, despite what is written in the media, is more like the rituals of a cargo cult. Instead they recommended fostering a new European culture to address the strengths, failings and contradictions implicit in the Californian Ideology.

    Chart of the month: consumer price increases vs. wage increases

    This one chart based on consumer price increases and wage increases from 2020 – 2024 tells you everything you need to know about UK consumer sentiment and the everyday struggle to make ends meet.

    Consumer prices vs. wage increases

    Things I have watched. 

    The Organization – Sydney Poitier’s last outing as Virgil Tibbs. The Organization as a title harks back to the 1950s, to back when the FBI were denying that the Mafia even existed. Organised crime in popular culture was thought to be a parallel corporation similar to corporate America, but crooked. It featured in the books of Richard Stark. This was despite law enforcement stumbling on the American mafia’s governing body in 1957. Part of this was down to the fact that the authorities believed that the American arm of the mafia were a bulwark against communism. Back to the film, it starts with an ingenious heist set piece and then develops through a series twists and turns through San Francisco. It was a surprisingly awarding film to watch.

    NakitaNakita is an early Luc Besson movie made after Subway and The Big Blue. It’s an action film that prioritises style and attitude over fidelity to tactical considerations. The junkies at the start of the film feel like refugees from a Mad Max film who have happened to invade a large French town at night. It is now considered part of the ‘cinéma du look’ film movement of the 1980s through to the early 1990s which also features films like Diva and Subway. Jean Reno’s character of Victor the Cleaner foreshadows his later breakout role as Leon. It was a style of its time drawing on similar vibes of more artistic TV ads, music videos, Michael Mann’s Miami Vice TV series and films Thief and Manhunter.

    Stephen Norrington’s original Blade film owes a lot to rave culture and cinéma du look as it does to the comic canon on which it’s based. It’s high energy and packed with personality rather like a darker version of the first Guardians of The Galaxy film. Blade as a character was influenced by blaxploitation characters like Shaft in a Marvel series about a team of vampire hunters. Watching the film almost three decades after it came out, it felt atemporal – from another dimension rather than from the past per se. Norrington’s career came off the rails after his adaption of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen did badly at the box office and star Wesley Snipes went to jail for tax-related offences.

    The Magnificent Seven – I watched the film a couple of times during my childhood. John Sturges had already directed a number of iconic films: Bad Day at Black Rock and Gunfight at The OK Corral. With The Magnificent Seven, he borrowed from The Seven Samurai. It was a ‘Zappata western’ covering the period of the Mexican revolution and was shot in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The film did two things to childhood me: made me curious about Japanese cinema and storytelling. There are some connections to subsequent Spaghetti Westerns:

    • Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (shot in 1964 would borrow from another Akira Kurosawa film Roshomon)
    • Eli Wallach played a complex Mexican villain in both The Magnificent Seven and Leone’s The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.
    • The visual styling of the film is similar to spaghetti westerns, though the clothes were still too clean, Yul Brynner’s role as the tragic hero in black is a world-away from the traditional Hollywood coding of the good guys wearing white hats (or US cavalry uniforms).
    • The tight, sparse dialogue set the standard for the Dollars Trilogy and action films moving forward
    • Zappata westerns were the fuel for more pro-leftist films in the spaghetti western genre. While The Magnificent Seven still has a decidedly western gaze, it took on racism surprisingly on the nose for a Hollywood film of this era.

    Watching it now as a more seasoned film watcher only sharpened my appreciation of The Magnificent Seven.

    Breaking News by Johnnie To feels as much about now as it when the film was shot 20 years ago. First time I watched it was on the back of a head rest on a Cathay Pacific flight at the time. Back then I was tired and just let the film wash over me. This time I took a more deliberate approach to appreciating the film. In the film the Hong Kong Police try and control and master the Hong Kong public opinion as a robbery goes wrong. However the Hong Kong Police don’t have it all their own way as the criminals wage their own information campaign. This film also has the usual tropes you expect from Hong Kong genre of heroic bloodshed films with amazing plot twists and choreographed action scenes along with the spectacular locations within Hong Kong itself. Watching it this time, I got to appreciate the details such as the cowardly dead-beat Dad Yip played by veteran character actor Suet Lam.

    Useful tools.

    Current and future uncertainties.

    current and future uncertainties

    This could be used as thought starters for thinking about business problems for horizon scanning and scenario planning. It’s ideal as fuel for you to then develop a client workshop from. But I wouldn’t use something this information dense in a client-facing document. You can download it as a high resolution PDF here.

    Guide to iPhone security

    Given the propensity of phone snatching to take over bank accounts and the need to secure work phones, the EFF guide to securing your iPhone has a useful set of reminders and how-to instructions for privacy and security settings here.

    Novel recommendations

    I got this from Neil Perkin, an LLM-driven fictional book recommendation engine. It has been trained on Goodreads (which reminds me I need to update my Goodreads profile). When I asked it for ‘modern spy novels with the class of John Le Carre’ it gave me Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, Chris Pavone’s The Expats and Chris Cumming’s The Trinity Six. All of which were solid recommendations.

    Smartphone tripod

    Whether it’s taking a picture of a workshop’s forest of post-it notes or an Instagrammable sunset a steady stand can be really useful. Peak Design (who were falsely accused of being a ‘snitch‘) have come up with a really elegant mobile tripod design that utilises the MagSafe section on the back of an iPhone.

    Apple Notes alternative

    I am a big fan of Apple Notes as an app. I draft in it, sync ideas and thoughts across devices using it. But for some people that might not work – different folks for different strokes. I was impressed bu the quality of Bear which is a multi-platform alternative to the default Notes app.

    The sales pitch.

    I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my February 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into March.

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

    Get in touch if there is anything that you’d like to recommend for the newsletter.

  • November 2024 newsletter

    November 2024 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my November 2024 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 16th issue. 16 is a low power of two which saw it used in weighing light objects in several cultures. For instance in the British Imperial system of weights 16 ounces were in one pound. This lived on far longer with British drug dealers who looked to sell cannabis in ‘teenths’ (16ths) or eighths of an ounce. Prior to decimal being implemented in China 16 taels or liǎng equalled one catty or jin. Chinese Taoists counted on their finger times and joints of the fingers with a the tip of the thumb, so 16 can be counted on each hand.

    The highlight of November was meeting up for brunch with Calvin who I used to work with in Hong Kong and collaborate with on occasion for projects going in-or-out of China. He was passing through London on his way to Web Congress in Lisbon, supporting one of the burgeoning number of start-ups coming out of Shanghai.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here

    Strategic outcomes

    Things I’ve written.

    • Ghost Signs – how legacy signage allows us to peer back into history, camcorders having their ‘lomography’ moment and much more.
    • Layers of the future – or how innovation doesn’t exist in a fully-formed world, but instead exists within layers of progress over time.
    • Presidential election beliefs – amongst the autopsies of the campaign that have been discussed, one of the things that struck me was the role of presidential election beliefs that have wrong-footed analysis
    • Klad & more stuff – a Russian pioneered integration of dark web markets and concealed ‘Amazon locker’ type infrastructure to deliver a new approach to drug dealing. Other items include bottlenecks in gadget manufacturing, internet maturity and more.

    Books that I have read.

    • Dead Calm by Charles Williams – the early 1960s crime novel packs a lot into the story. Trauma, mental illness, murder and intrigue on the high seas. Dead Calm was later made into a film and relocated from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
    • Jipi and the paranoid chip by Neal Stephenson. A short story that fits into the Cryptonomicon universe of Stephenson’s books – shares the story of Jipi a former flight attendant who works for Mindshare Management Associates Inc. – an agency that distracts tourists to Manila from the rapid construction work taking place during a China-like economic miracle. Because of her personality, Jipi has to track down errant AI powered car alarms fitted with plastic explosives that were designed to deter thieves, but AI happened. If you’ve ever had to write prompts, you’ll likely appreciate it.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    The fame game

    Rosemary_Smith
    Irish rally driver Rosemary Smith, had the skills but never did get the fame. Smith even got behind the wheel of a Renault formula 1 car to get a test drive at 79 years of age.

    I am by no means a sports addict but even in my psyche I know the names and reputations of several famous sports stars across hurling, gaelic football, motorsports rugby league and even soccer. Sid Lee and Appino have raised the issue of how this fame gap is bridged in women’s sports drive into long term mainstream success. Where is the women’s sport equivalent of Stig Blomqvist, Arnold Palmer or Michael Jordan who are hailed in a similar way? Want to know more, reach out to Rory Natkiel.

    Yes, Christmas really is getting earlier

    He's back from vacation, there are already Christmas decorations and Christmas cookies everywhere

    My local supermarket started to sell mince pies right after the August bank holiday this year. It had Christmas decorations for sale before the Halloween ones. Christmas seems to be coming earlier this year. The Guardian researched how Christmas was arriving earlier each year, from charting music to mince pies and Christmas puddings going on sale. This year lo-fi girl had their first Christmas soundtrack up on November 4th. If you want a change from the Spotify Christmas list, try this old mix from former streetwear boutique The Hideout.

    WARC noted how companies like John Lewis with dedicated Christmas campaigns look to gain a first-mover advantage to aid the talkability around their campaign and gain the full benefit from their emotion driven campaign bedding in and building new memory structures.

    WARC predicted that Christmas advertising spend would rise 7.8% to over £10.5 billion. Big growth for search, online display and out of home compared to last year. The biggest losers including TV, direct mail, magazine and print news media.

    Things I have watched. 

    Famous Hong Kong cinema film director Johnnie To criticised Hong Kong’s national security regulation in an interview for the BBC’s Chinese language service. With that in mind, I thought it prudent to buy up as much of his back catalogue as possible because the classics amongst them may be harder to get hold of in the future.

    PTUPTU starts in a similar way to Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog with a policeman losing their duty weapon. However that’s where the parallels finish. In Stray Dog the young detective looking for his gun feel empathy at the end with the criminal who used his weapon. The moral being two-fold – crime starts with a few wrong choices, but are still human. In order to deliver law, over time the policeman needs to become less empathetic, losing a bit of their humanity. PTU on the other hand shows how police blurred the line between the law and crime with extra-legal methods to solve crime. It also highlights the complex relationships between criminal gangs and the police. To keeps the tension going with PTU throughout the film. The ambiguity between police and criminals would not be allowed in future Hong Kong films thanks to the National Security laws that have come into force.

    Election – The literal Cantonese title for this film is ‘Black Society’ – which as a term covers all kinds of organised crime groups. Two members of the Wo Lin Shing are up for election become leader (aka chairman or dragonhead) of the organised crime group. It’s a common trope in Hong Kong cinema that these elections happen on a regular basis. Wo Lin Shing is a stand-in name of the very real Wo Shing Wo – a group that have a side hustle doing wet work for the Beijing forces at work in the city.

    The film focuses on the election and immediate fallout. Lok runs a more rational campaign, whereas Big-D runs a showy campaign offering money for votes. The elders appoint Lok and Big-D tries to steal the symbol of power. To moves the tension and action on at a rate of knots. It features many of the heavyweights of Hong Kong cinema including Simon Lam, Louis Koo, ‘Big’ Tony Leung, former policeman Nick Cheung and Lam Suet.

    Not a Johnnie To production, but I have been enjoying Detective Chinatown on Amazon Prime. The show is similar to the BBC show Sherlock and CSI in the way its plot devices and how its story arcs work. It has been interesting to watch for a number of reasons. The series was produced for Chinese streaming platform iQiyi – think Chinese Netflix. The series is based in Bangkok, Thailand. The senior Thai police representative is portrayed as dramatic, volatile and religious in nature – interesting stereotyping by the Chinese production team. The plot line has a very supernatural aspect to it, which is generally considered to be a no-no with Chinese censors. I am curious to see where they take the show.

    Useful tools.

    Mac keyboard shortcuts

    Alongside David Pogue’s Missing Manual series of reference books for each version of macOS, MacMost’s videos are a great resource for the Mac user. MacMost now have a free downloadable table of Mac keyboard shortcuts.

    AI-powered diagram creation

    Ever sat in front of a blank Keynote or PowerPoint slide and wondered how to represent something? I am across the Napkin AI which takes your written text describing something and renders it into a diagram. I don’t use these diagrams as the finished product, but as an inspiration for me then to artwork together in Keynote, OmniGraffle or PowerPoint. You can output from Napkin AI as a PNG file. At the moment it’s free to use as a beta product.

    Woznim

    Woznim allows you to record the names of people and where you met them to try and aid in recall of of them if you run into them again. It reminds me of Foursquare and social bookmarking. Foursquare because of its where 2.0 location based data and social bookmarking because if you develop the Woznim habit it could be life-changing, but if it doesn’t gel with you it’ll be dropped as a service in no time. At the moment it’s an iPhone-only app.

    Bluesky

    Bluesky has been having a moment as another tranche of social media users follow The Guardian’s lead to leave Twitter and need a micro-blogging service. Bluesky has got a good deal of attention because of its starter packs and list features. Whether Bluesky will continue to grow into a vibrant post-Twitter place isn’t certain yet. But if you are going to use Bluesky then these two tools might help:

    • Bluesky tools directory. There is a surprisingly rich set of tools available rather like ‘golden age’ era Twitter.
    • Starter packs. Starter packs are a set of curated recommended accounts to follow based around interests. This site has a large directory of them covering everything from professional interests to sports passions.

    The sales pitch.

    I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from January 2025 onwards; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my November 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into the Christmas season and the rush to complete projects before clients disappear on holiday.

    Don’t forget to share, comment and subscribe!

    Let me know if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.

  • February 2024 newsletter – No.7

    February 2024 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my February 2024 newsletter which marks my 7th issue. I hope that your year of the dragon is off to a great start.

    Strategic outcomes

    The number 7 is a bit of a mixed bag, depending on how you look at it. In the old testament, the 7th heaven is where God’s throne is, alongside the angels. It had been considered a place of happiness, hence Gwen Guthrie’s Seventh Heaven. In Mandarin, the number is considered generally a positive thing, the number is a homophone for ‘arise’ and ‘life essence’. But that’s only half the story.

    Chinese Ghost Story

    Indications of 7’s unlucky nature include the seventh month in the lunar calendar being a ‘ghost month’. In Cantonese, it is a homophone for a vulgar way of saying penis. I hope your February wasn’t a dick of a month. 

    For film buffs it’s almost 28 1/2 years since the transgressive crime thriller Seven was released. It was a break out hit and became the seventh highest grossing film of 1995, behind Die Hard with a Vengeance, Toy Story and Apollo 13. It beat out other films like Braveheart in box office earnings, but Braveheart ran away with the Oscars. 

    Let’s hope that feng shui master Michael Chiang is correct in terms of the positive energies from the year of the dragon.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here

    Things I’ve written.

    • FOOH – and the ethical and marketing challenges it presents with a thought experiment harking back to the golden age of pornography.
    • Technonationalism – how current technological developments mirror the cold war and the 20th century Asian economic miracle.  
    • Innovation signalling – how innovation is used by brands for show, rather than for genuine progress.
    • Pipes by Yahoo – a remarkable web service that also causes us to reflect on the post modern web of today.
    • Hong Kong measurements – how something as simple as measurement units are a melding of culture, history, modernity and politics in a time of change.
    • Y2K was always more than a fashion phase, but it seems to have faded from the zeitgeist which means the fashion takes have no context. Here’s a bit of context for you.

    Books that I have read.

    • What the Taliban Told Me by Ian Fritz. Fritz writes really, really well, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to complete his personal memoir about his upbringing, service in Afghanistan onboard an AC-130 gunship and depression. In some ways it reminded me of Jarhead – Anthony Swofford’s memoirs of his life up to the time of being in the US Marines during the first Gulf War. Swofford’s book came out a decade and a half after his service. Fritz’ book feels much more immediate and without the flashes of humour and beauty that was in Swofford’s book.
    • Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China by Leta Hong Fincher. This was originally written in 2016, but has been updated to incorporate changes over subsequent years. It shows how government policy, ethnographic-nationalism, law enforcement, the legal system, collective punishment and community pressure is applied on modern women. I still find the content covering domestic violence shocking. This isn’t the China of Mao where in theory women hold up half the sky, instead it seems to be on a trajectory that would eventually see it closer to Mao’s view of China’s population, or Ceaușescu’s Decree 770 and other associated pro-natalist laws. This is a world away from the equally oppressive one-child policy, which had been brought in to deal with population related problems from the Mao-era.
    • The Big Book of Cyberpunk edited by Jared Shurin. I am huge fan of cyberpunks better known authors: William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling. This collection of 100+ stories written by authors from 25 countries is a mixed bag, but that’s no bad thing.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    J Walter Thompson Wunderman Thompson VML Intelligence launched their annual Future 100 report. It’s a great read and its continuity over the years makes it stand apart from the plethora of trends reports that get published every year. Their trends which intersect luxury and health are particularly interesting:

    • Althluxe
    • Bioharmonizing spas
    • Longevity resorts
    • Idyllic idleness

    Author Cory Doctorow’s essay for Locus magazine plays devil’s advocate in considering the future of the crypto-based ecosystem and artificial intelligence is well worth a read. Doctorow speculates on what kind of bubble artificial intelligence is likely to become and the effect that its deflation may have. He draws on the outcomes of tech bubbles in the past including the dot com bubble and the telecoms bubble that accompanied it.

    Just Conecting published a report on what seems to work on LinkedIn. It’s an interesting snapshot of what works at the moment, I am sure things will change over time as the algorithm evolves. Much of the focus seems to be orientated towards personal branding over business brands.

    Over at Japan House, I marvelled at the exhibition Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Sara River. The Ainu are native to Japan’s northern islands and have survived for millenia in the extreme cold. Historically they were discriminated against, but now there is an appreciation of their culture. The art pieces on display are unique in their design, but share the attention to detail one sees in other Japanese work.

    The Science Museum has an amazing exhibition on: Zimingzhong 凝时聚珍: Clockwork Treasures from China’s Forbidden City. Prior to the opium wars, UK craftsmen created fantastic clockwork-powered creations that were given as gifts to the emperor of China. The exhibition finishes on June 2, 2024. I went during Chinese new year. I came away with a refreshed appreciation of modern watchmaking complications, in particular devices like ‘minute repeaters’.

    NS Lyons magnus opus The China Convergence is read by Regina Doman. Lyons’ premise is that western systems have converged with China’s approach to governance due to the rise of the technocrat. In this respect his perspective is similar to that shared by documentary maker Adam Curtis. Like Curtis, Lyons’ The China Convergence asks uncomfortable questions of us. Are we basically a less extreme version of the same system to the presses of mass and scale?

    While we’re talking China, I can recommend the China Update YouTube account that provides a concise summary of Chinese business news and economic analysis garnered from a wide range of Chinese and western business publications.

    Finally, IPSOS ongoing collection of reports this time reflects on the power of nostalgia. This time focusing on youth culture from cottage-core, Barbie mania, vinyl to vintage technical clothing and streetwear and the underlying drivers behind it. Why Nostalgia Is So ‘Fetch’ Right Now by Samira Brophy is well worth a read.

    2023 Global Trends Report by ACROSS Health is a great census of healthcare professional media preferences and insight into omnichannel communications trends for pharmaceutical marketing. It is good reading and indicates that pharma clients who have an excessive efficiency bias and want to go to digital-only customer journeys will be left behind by peers taking a mixed approach.

    Things I have watched. 

    Agent Hamilton – Carl Gustaf Hamilton is a Swedish answer to James Bond or Jack Ryan. Hamilton was the main character in a series of books written by a former investigative journalist, Jan Guillou, who served time in Sweden for exposing illegal intelligence operations. Guillou wrote the first Hamilton book in 1986 and the last one in 2012.

    Blake and Mortimer – if you’re a fan of TinTin, you’ll like Blake and Mortimer as both come from the French -Belgian comic tradition. This cartoon series is based on the adventures of an eminent Scottish scientist and a British military intelligence officer in mid-century Europe. It’s nice light entertainment and I can recommend the graphic novels as well of which there are now 30+ stories including the Before Blake and Mortimer off-shoots. The authors have also wrote other excellent series like XIII.

    Useful tools.

    Audio Hijack 4.3

    Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack has been a mainstay on my Mac for far more years than I care to mention. It was great for everything from recording conference talks to putting together quick and dirty talk tracks that concepting films can be cut too. Version 4.3 features OpenAI’s Whisper transcription software that can cater to transcribing dozens of languages. I have found it better than tools like Otter.ai for me.

    Krisp

    Krisp.ai is a freemium service providing intelligent noise cancellation, call transcripts and meeting notes all in one. It works with Teams, Google Meetup, Slack and Zoom.

    Obsidian

    Just like Evernote back in the day, Obsidian has become a bit of a cult app for those that find it really useful. At its heart, it is a note taking and writing application. It will sync between desktop and mobile devices, but that costs $8/month – which is expensive. I haven’t been using it beyond a quick trial, as I have a well-defined set of tools that I use and Obsidian didn’t really slot in well. But I can appreciate the value of it to others. One thing I would be leery of, if you are moving to Obsidian is the cottage industry in snake oils salespeople hawking the ‘ultimate’ online course for Obsidian. Instead check out Obsidian’s own community pages of courses.

    Todoist

    Todoist is a shareable to do list that places it somewhere between quick and dirty project management and personal productivity. I am giving it a try following a recommendation from a friend. It’s not about whether products like this are good or not, but usually if it fits into your style of working, so your mileage may vary.

    Personal Update.

    the adforum phnx 2024 jury badge

    More details on the awards here.

    The sales pitch.

    Now taking bookings for strategic engagements (from the end of April onwards) or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done to date here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my February 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other.

    Don’t forget to share and subscribe!

    Let me know if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. 

  • Technopolarity

    Ian Bremmer at the Eurasia Group has been talking about Technopolarity throughout 2022 and has amped up the discussion in recent months.

    Bremmer’s hypothesis is that big technology companies and their leaders will create power structures that will challenge the powers of governments. I was reminded of the different ‘country franchises’ that populated the future America of Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. Snow Crash envisaged a Randesque libertarian hellscape with no power centre.

    The biggest technology firms are designing, building, and managing an entirely new dimension of geopolitics. In this new digital space, their influence runs deep, down to the level of individual lines of code. They’re writing the algorithms that decide what people see and hear, determine their economic and social opportunities, and ultimately influence what they think. Individuals will spend more time in digital space in 2022, at work and at home. Much of this time will be spent in the “metaverse”—an emerging, more immersive version of the web where all the problems of digital governance will be magnified. The metaverse (or more accurately, multiple metaverses) in turn will increasingly rely on economic systems based on decentralized blockchain platforms that governments are already struggling to control.

    Bremmer, I., Kupchan, C. (January 3, 2022) Risk 2: Technopolar World. United States: Eurasia Group.

    Aside from the power of the metaverse, Bremmer & Kupchan largely got things right. The Eurasia Group positioned technology giants along three axes. The degree to which the companies matched the following archetypes:

    • National champions.
    • Globalists.
    • Techno-utopians.

    In general, Chinese companies were national champions, while their American counterparts were predominantly globalists. The European Union has attempted and largely failed to bring a degree of control, curbing the excesses of technology companies.

    China has cracked down on companies that it felt was too big. The digital space itself has a Randian view of global leadership, ignoring the consequences and the responsibility of their power.

    Algorithms as destiny

    Bremmer’s initial thinking on technopolarity was focused on the role of algorithms underpinning online services. More recently, he has focused beyond platforms to look at the nature of ‘artificial intelligence’ and its ability to upend geopolitics.

    Emotional contagion

    As far back as 2012, Facebook had conducted a study in ’emotional contagion’ by altering the news feeds for 700,000 users and it was all completely legal. The feeds were changed to reflect more positive, or negative content – to see if seeing more sad messages makes a person sadder. The experimental subjects were not given any warning and their emotional state was by analysing changes in their language on the platform.

    And I am not even pointing out the effect that social media can have on its audiences in general without experimentation.

    Elon Musk’s Technopolarity

    Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk; brought the concept of Technopolarity to life. In the book Isaacson discusses decisions and actions that Musk made over the Ukraine war. Musk because of his personal concern about Russian escalation, disabled the Starlink service covering occupied Ukrainian territory to disrupt Ukraine’s military efforts including marine drones. So Elon Musk essentially made a decision that directly affected US defence efforts to support Ukraine. It could have even resulted in the destruction of American military equipment donated to the defence of Ukraine.

    Musk has had conversations with Vladimir Putin like he was a head of state and even the US government has been careful about how they deal with him.

    “Even though Musk is not technically a diplomat or statesman, I felt it was important to treat him as such, given the influence he had on this issue”

    Colin Kahl, former under-secretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon
    Starlink

    Kahl’s attitude to Musk is at odds to the fate of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio who went to jail after he was found to be a barrier to the NSA’s domestic surveillance plans, in particular the MAINWAY database. Nacchio was convicted of insider trading. Nacho’s successor also held outing after 4 years, discussions with the NSA went nowhere. A quick trawl of Twitter history would be enough to find evidence to put Musk on trial should the US government wish to do so. What’s happened to government power in the decades since Nacchio went to jail?

    The New Yorker went on to describe Elon Musk’s power as ‘shadow rule‘. Musk isn’t elected. He isn’t even responsive to his shareholders. His Twitter account is a testament to his mercurial nature.

    What’s more concerning for US government wonks is that Musk’s Tesla mega factory in Shanghai leaves him exposed to manipulation by the Chinese government. For instance, they could pressure him to turn off Starlink across the Pacific adversely affecting Taiwan, Japan, Australia and US forces in the region. The Ukrainian experience suggests that Musk would not hesitate to put American lives on the line, or see Taiwan handed over the horrific barbarity of Chinese invasion.

    More related content here.