Ged Carroll

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  • Toyota FJ Land Cruiser + more stuff

    Toyota FJ Land Cruiser

    Toyota announced its new Toyota FJ Land Cruiser model. The Toyota FJ Land Cruiser is a smaller five-seater vehicle. It is a direct replacement for the FJ Cruiser which was sold in many markets outside the UK and European Union. Like its predecessor the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser shares underpinnings with its larger 7-seater cousin the 250 series. It features a shorter wheelbase. Toyota has put a lot of effort into thinking about how it can make the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser more extensible in capabilities and more modular.

    fj landcruiser

    Modularity comes in compatibility with MOLLE military storage connectivity that has made its way into the civilian world. While Alpine packs are about sleek design with few snags, MOLLE allows fastenings, pouches and equipment to be suspended inside and outside bags. Toyota has now extended this to the inside of the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser’s rear door.

    The focus on extensible features within the vehicle shows how some markets (notably America) have a large after market industry providing additional features for vehicles with aspirations to do overloading. Toyota is an active participant in the SEMA show in the US. This is where fans and the vehicle modifying industry get together to be inspired, do deals and gain intelligence on vehicles so that they can design new after market parts. Toyota brings concept builds, as well as allowing after market manufacturers to measure and 3D scan new vehicles.

    The move to extensible design, shows that Toyota is interested in providing more of that capability through its own business. Third-party parts, in particular lift kits can affect handling and wheel bearings. Designing its own aftermarket parts and applying extensible thinking in the vehicle design philosophy allows Toyota to:

    • Meet consumer needs.
    • Ensure the vehicles meet the factory’s quality and reliability standards.
    • Offer incremental additional revenue.

    While a Toyota FJ Land Cruiser as ‘mum truck’ won’t need a water fording kit. An overlanding enthusiast like Chloe Kuo would put it to good use and influence more potential buyers in the process.

    Like the FJ Cruiser before it we are unlikely to see the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser in UK Toyota dealerships due to the UK government’s focus on forcing UK consumers away from internal combustion vehicles. Instead they are likely to come in small numbers as JDM (Japanese domestic market) pre-owned vehicles.

    Toyota recognises that net zero is more complex than importing Chinese electric vehicles. Considerations also need to be given to vehicle use case, the whole life carbon footprint of the car and sustainability. But that doesn’t make simple solutions for policy makers.

    Toyota will have four Land Cruiser models that it will be selling around the world:

    • J70 series – sold to the UN, various militaries, Japan, Australia and in the global south. Doesn’t pass current European vehicle laws as it’s designed for resilience, robustness, repairability and sustainment in the most hostile environments.
    • J300 series – the flagship of the line-up. Sold in the US as the Lexus LX, this combines the comfort of a top of the range Range Rover with the capability of the 70 series in an off-road environment. As a Land Cruiser it is available in Australia, Japan, the Gulf States, South Africa and various countries in South East Asia from Sri Lanka to the Philippines.
    • J250 series – the most widespread of the Land Cruiser range in terms of sales footprint. It is sold in Japan, Europe, North and South America, Australia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Brunei and the Gulf States. In Europe it’s known as the Land Cruiser. It’s sold in other markets as the Toyota Prado, the Toyota Land Cruiser 250 in Japan, the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado in Australia and in North America as the Lexus GX and Toyota Land Cruiser. It is smaller and utilitarian than the J300, but not quite as robust or spartan as the J70 series.
    • FJ Land Cruiser – the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser is likely to be sold in North America and Japan, mirroring the markets where the FJ Cruiser was originally sold.

    China

    A Proud Superpower Answers to No One – by Ryan Fedasiuk – an odd blend of policy isolation and hubris. Read with China Doubles Down – by Stephen Roach – Conflict

    Economics

    How the UK Lost Its Shipbuilding Industry – by Brian Potter – The UK ultimately proved unable to respond to competitors who entered the market with new, large shipyards which employed novel methods of shipbuilding developed by the US during WWII. British industry in general failed to invest adequately to keep ahead of competitors. The UK fell from producing 57% of world tonnage in 1947 to just 17% a decade later. By the 1970s their output was below 5% of world total, and by the 1990s it was less than 1%. In 2023, the UK produced no commercial ships at all. – Part of this was also down to policy decisions. The Thatcher administration deliberately designated yards as military-only to drive them to the wall and smash the trade unions.

    Energy

    Honeywell unveils new technology to decarbonise heavy industries | FT – no reason why it couldn’t work for aviation and vehicle fuel as well in principle aside from scale.

    US government and Westinghouse strike $80bn nuclear reactor deal | FT

    Porsche hits reverse on EV push as new CEO shifts back to petrol | FT

    Finance

    Barclays buys Best Egg in $800mn bet on US loan securitisation | FT – is this sub-prime? Read also HSBC warns on wider risks from private credit blow-ups | FT

    Hong Kong

    Memory Exiled | History Workshop – a bit tiresome, don’t get me wrong I am happy to throw brickbats at the UK Government as a citizen of a decolonised country but this is distorted. – The UK government releases papers after 20 years, but some are kept under wraps for longer for national security or other reasons. Sensitive materials (in Hong Kong’s case, perhaps to do with the handover) don’t account for more than a tiny percentage of the content and are redacted. One possible reason the Hong Kong files are still not released is simply that there are huge amounts of them, and they are mostly on microfiche, which is a pain to digitise – not because of a desire to ‘control history’.

    Breaking | Beijing vows to support Hong Kong in better integrating into national development | South China Morning Post – reads like extending Bay Area narrative and weakening Hong Kong‘s distinctiveness?

    Innovation

    The Loop: How American Profits Built Chinese Power

    Luxury

    Kim Jones joins Bosideng to lead its new high-end urban line | Vogue Business – Bosideng are a huge maker of down jackets, it will be interesting where they go with Kim Jones.

    Marketing

    What’s gone wrong at WPP? The crown slips at world’s biggest advertising group | WPP | The Guardian – “Middle-aged traditional creatives, the ones that have built a career doing traditional TV ads and posters who you’d have thought would be the most at threat of extinction, are moving very fast, teaching themselves how to master…generative AI to survive.”

    Forgive the rant, but this quote from an article about WPP’s decline–and the attitude behind it–drives me absolutely crazy. Let’s do the math.

    If you’re a 40-year-old creative, you were 19 when Facebook launched.You turned 21 when Twitter debuted.You were 22 when Apple introduced the iPhone, and 25 when Instagram came out.
    So you’ve literally spent your entire career in advertising creating work for the digital/social/smartphone media ecosystem. 
    And that means you’ve produced way more digital-first and social campaigns than TV spots, let alone posters. (Also: I would love to meet the creative who “built a career” making posters.)

    And creatives older than 40? They’ve successfully navigated the decline of broadcast and mass media, the introduction of smartphones, the broad shift to targeting, the endless parade of social channels and new technologies that Will Change Everything–arguably the greatest two decades of disruption the advertising industry has ever faced.

    And the creatives who are over 60? They’re the generation that *invented* digital advertising. – I thought that this comment from LinkedIn was the most insightful assessment of the article

    Security

    Russia at war — ebook by Royal Danish Defence College – great articles including one by Anders Puck-Nielsen.

    NATO Baltic Sea mission has ‘deterred’ undersea sabotage: commanders | Spacewar

    Dentsu warns staff of data breach after Merkle hit by cyber ‘security incident’ | Campaign

    Software

    Apple employees have ‘concerns’ over Siri performance in early iOS 26.4 builds: report – 9to5Mac

    Major NHS AI trial delivers unprecedented time and cost savings – GOV.UK – Microsoft 365 Copilot trial demonstrates monthly time savings of potentially 400,000 hours for NHS staff.

    Technology

    China calls for ‘extraordinary measures’ to achieve chip breakthroughs | FT and The Dark Horse of China’s AI Silicon: Cambricon After the Nvidia Ban | Voice of Context

    Qualcomm shares jump as it launches new AI chip to rival Nvidia | FT and Nvidia to invest $1bn into Nokia as chip giant extends deal spree | FT – I keep thinking back to Cisco circa 1999 and its never-ending stream of stock-based acquisitions based on the irrational exuberance of of an elevated share price.

    Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots – The New York Times – Amazon is working hard on automating more warehouse tasks with robots, targeting 600k jobs and 30 cents cost saving per item shipped. Versus Alibaba reality circa late 2017.

    Wireless

    Iridium develops compact chip for robust global GPS protection | Space Daily

  • October 2025 issue 27

    October 2025 introduction – (27) gateway to heaven edition

    I am now at issue 27, or as a bingo caller would put it ‘gateway to heaven’. 

    Michael Landon

    27 inspired an urban legend of the ’27 club effect’ where a ‘statistical spike’ in fatalities affected musicians, actors and other artists. However in reality there is no statistical spike though Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin all died aged 27.

    In the I Ching, the 27th hexagram is associated with sufficient physical and spiritual nourishment – good advice for anyone since we’re going into winter.

    This edition’s soundtrack is Coco – I Need A Miracle over Dreadzone – Little Britain put together by MH1. I used to love mashups and bastard pop in the early 2000s to 2010s, especially A plus D and their Bootie nights, which I got to see at the DNA Lounge back when I had to travel to San Francisco while working at Yahoo!. They built a whole genre of out of what would normally be trick recordings you might have played once in a DJ set like Evil Eddie Richards You Used to Salsa.

    MH1 carries this on the same grand tradition as A plus D and sent me down a memory hole in my iTunes collection.

    Now we have a sound track, let’s get into it. 

    New reader?

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

    SO

    Things I’ve written.

    • Golden Mile – a collection of documentaries and films that caught my eye, from the last days of the Golden Mile complex that was a centre of the Thai diaspora in Singapore to the oral history of the Google Docs development team.
    • Nvidia ban in China and more things – a selection of stuff that I found of interest online including articles on Nvidia’s fraught relationship with China as a market.
    • Tahoe and more things – from the inside steer on Nexperia and the importance of strategic writing for using LLMs to Apple’s imperfect macOS Tahoe.

    Books that I have read.

    • Clown Town by Mick Herron is the latest instalment in the Slow Horses series of books, on which the Apple+ TV series are based. Without plot spoilers, I can tell you that it’s up to the high standards of the earlier books. Herron is as critical of the current Labour government as he was of their conservative party predecessors.
    • I am just starting in on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s history of the great depression 1929. I hope to update you next month on whether it’s a book that I would recommend.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    I managed to spend some time with fellow former Yahoo Nick Fowden and we discussed AI futures and the altar of marketing efficiency and performance media over effectiveness and brand building.

    Mercedes goes back to luxury

    Mercedes-Benz put on a special event in Shanghai that looked like an attempt to reboot the brand. Star of the show was the Mercedes Vision Iconic concept car, this looked like the vehicle the relaunched Jaguar brand would want to build. The grill looked as if it came off a vintage Mercedes 600 ‘Grosser’ and was a world away from the current nadir of the car brand.

    Mercedes Benz Vision Iconic

    Understanding influencer payback is also about understanding the caveats, risks and current limitations in optimisation

    The IPA published effectiveness data on (paid) influencers, it is is great to have this data set and shows the continued role in improving the advertising industry. You can expect to see these headlines trumpeted by influencer and PR agencies. BUT, it is worthwhile going beyond the headlines and into the deck presented. My takeouts from the data presentation:

    • It’s a promising, but limited sample. However overall there seemed to some commonality in results amongst the European markets compared.
    • On sample selection, the presentation itself says: “Based on sample definition, no campaigns are included where influencer spend was present but did not produce a result at some level therefore 0-25 ROI index likely to be significantly under-reported.” This is key because reading the data at face value gives an overly-optimistic picture of likely influencer campaign success.
    • The data presented represents bad news for paid social campaigns in particular, and it highlights their relatively poor RoI from the Profit Ability 2 study. What it means: Expect some of the influencer spend to come from the experimental pot within the social platform advertising budget.
    • Long-term multipliers for Influencers are the highest of any channel in the data, but the tiny difference between television and influencers are not significantly large to be definitive. So further research could see this relationship flip.
    • The numbers are averages, but Influencer ROIs are much less likely to be ‘average’ with (high and low) extremes alongside outliers much more present (and this is with campaigns giving 0-25% RoI filtered out). There is a much higher risk in terms of spend versus reward, which a responsible agency partner should be disclosed to clients upfront. This huge variance also mirrored in the kind of results seen in Chinese social commerce campaigns as well. What it means: You can’t duplicate success and optimise in the same way as you can by using testing for TV advertising and the like. So for businesses like Unilever that are putting half their spend into influencer marketing – its a high risk endeavour with limited risk mitigation strategies.
    influencer roi predictability
    • There isn’t intra-influencer category analysis based on follower size. Getting paid reach will still be critical, so social platforms will still win.
    • The research doesn’t cover B2B sectors but subscription revenue model technology clients (Adobe, Canva, Monday.com, Grammarly etc.) may take some hope from the RoI achieved by consumer-focused telecommunications brands.

    TL;DR: At the moment influencer represents the worst attributes of both earned and paid media. The uncertainty of earned media, the higher upfront cost of paid media. What it means: be wary of over-promising influencer campaign success, set realistic expectations about the likely wide variance in results. Keep an eye out as further data expands and clarifies the picture.

    Chart of the month. 

    European attitudes to video games

    This month’s chart comes from data provided by the European Commission’s Director General CONNECT (Communications Networks, Content and Technology). The breadth and quality of research that they do is really useful to people in my line of work.

    video gaming

    The sentiment around video games is similar to what you would have seen around television in previous decades. So video games aren’t in aggregate seen as great for society, but not the complete pox on people that you would see if you ran the same survey for social media platforms.

    Things I have watched. 

    Jean Giraud aka Moebius was a graphic novel artist drawing in the bande dessinée tradition. Moebius Redux is an hour long documentary of Giraud’s career through to the mid-2000s. In it is a who’s who of comic book legends including Stan Lee and Mike Mignola – the creator of Hellboy. It even has an amazing original soundtrack by former Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos.

    I remember seeing The Satan Bug as a child and enjoying it immensely. I also read the book that it was based on as my Dad had built up a collection of Alistair McLean and I devoured them from age 11 onwards. I went back and revisited decades later to see if I would still enjoy it. I did, but for different reasons. The premise is based on the paranoia of annihilation that was a main part of the cold war zeitgeist. The wrinkle in the story is that it’s about germ warfare rather than nuclear bombs. Adult me saw the plot as ridiculous, but the cinematography, location, set design and wardrobe floored me. The high security compound of ‘Station 3’ and the various interiors were triumphs of mid-century modern design. The scenery and locations were in the California desert making it an ideal canvas for John Sturges who had previously shot Bad Day at Black Rock  and The Magnificent Seven. The Satan Bug was also the start of helicopter based cinematography thanks a newly developed steady cam mechanism.

    Following on in the same vein I watched The Andromeda Strain. Just six years separated from The Satan Bug, but stylistically so different. The Michael Crichton novel has a much more coherent story. Much of it is told through jargon and multi-media formats such as a computer driven plotter and a ticker tape running across the screen in the second scene of the film. Where The Andromeda Stream loses out is in its cinematography and style. The set design feels lazy compared to The Satan Bug, the cinematography is competent but workman-like.

    I watched the original Russian film adaptation of Solaris. It has been years since I have seen it. Its one of them films that you can watch three times and still pick up new details. Andrei Tarkovsky focused on storytelling rather than special effects which are used very sparingly. I still love that the Soviet city of the future was footage of early 1970s Tokyo. Watching it now the film feels more deconstructed.

    The last film this month is an indulgent one of mine. Searchers 2.0 is a modern-day neo western film that thumbs its nose at the Hollywood system. The story follows the revenge quest of two former child actors against their former abuser, a screen writer on the film set. Alex Cox made the film on $100,000 budget with Roger Corman as producer. UK film fans probably remember Alex Cox as the presenter of Moviedrome. he is an accomplished director, screenwriter and the author of 10,000 Ways To Die – the best guide ever written to spaghetti westerns.

    Slow Horses season five has been a must-watch TV moment for me. The show runners manage to keep the essence of the books with some creative flair.

    Useful tools.

    Optimising for macOS Tahoe

    Moving from macOS Sonoma to Tahoe meant changing up the versions of utilities I like to use. Titanium Software make OnyX, Maintenance and Deeper.

    • OnyX y use of OnyX goes all the way back to 2002 and 10.2 Jaguar, various versions of it throughout that time to now. It was very good for doing startup disk related maintenance tasks.
    • Maintenance provides a general performance tune-up including rebuilding databases and clearing obscure caches.
    • Deeper is for fine tuning hidden settings across different applications on your Mac.

    All three are donationware so be sure to give Joel what you can.

    The sales pitch.

    I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my October 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and get planning for Hallowe’en. As an additional treat here is a link to my Mam’s recipe for barm brack – an Irish Hallowe’en specialism. Let me know how you got on baking it.

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

    Get in touch and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on Substack as well as LinkedIn.

  • Compradores + more things

    Compradores and Eurasians of Hong Kong

    Hong Konger Andrew Tse explained the complex history of Eurasians in Hong Kong and the role of compradores. Eurasians were the offspring of Europeans and middle Eastern Jews with local women.

    During the 19th century, Hong Kong was segregated. Mixed race couples couldn’t marry. Eurasians didn’t easy fit in with either the Chinese community or westerners. This segregation also had its advantages. Information didn’t flow between the communities.

    Eurasian families looked more towards the Chinese community and over time built up status within it.

    The compradores were people who acted as an agent for foreign organisations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation. They even helped finance deals when there was low trust. The compradore was a valuable person for western trading houses based in Hong Kong and the families built multi-generational wealth.

    After the second world war, Chinese community understanding of English increased with education. China became closed off with the civil war and Hong Kong itself became a manufacturing hub. With the rise of Hong Kong manufacturing there would be a further decline in the need for compradores to help navigate business deals. Hong Kong also had the common law legal system for contract disputes. The compradore role faded away. Instead of becoming compradores, Eurasians worked within the major companies rising to senior positions. Mr Tse’s own career in the aviation sector is empirical evidence of their success.

    They became prominent business people and philanthropists in their own right. The Tung Wah Group of Hospitals benefited from their philanthropy. Tung Wah Group of Hospitals is the oldest and largest not-for-profit organisation in Hong Kong.

    Over time, mixed race marriage was no longer restricted and Hong Kong had its native-born entrepreneurs like Li Ka-shing to govern the old Taipan businesses like Hutchison-Whampoa.

    A century after the Eurasian community had first formed in Hong Kong and became compradores their identity was still a sensitive subject. Peter Hall’s book In The Web that outlined this history was restrained from being published until after the death of certain prominent community members who didn’t wish to be ‘outed’ as Eurasian.

    As a synopsis of the book puts it:

    Peter Hall’s book, ‘In the Web,’ brings to light the mysteries that lay behind his family and the other Hong Kong Eurasian families intertwined with it. Because it attempts to lift the stone firmly left in place for over a century, this work will not be welcomed by those who prefer conjecture to be left to outsiders.

    Hall himself came from a Eurasian background, was interned by the Japanese and worked for prominent property developer Hongkong Land.

    The prominence of the Eurasian community has dissipated, for a number of reasons:

    • Some of them moved overseas, in common with many richer Hong Kongers in the run up to the handover.
    • Some family lines have became re-assimilated in the Chinese community.
    • Many of them died defending Hong Kong during the Japanese invasion.

    Branding

    Q&A: Juanita Zhang on How Chinese Brands Can Win Globally | Branding in Asia – One critical insight is the power of unapologetic differentiation, especially as Chinese brands move beyond the ‘outbound 2.0’ era. The initial wave of success often rode on e-commerce efficiency, providing commodity-level products and leveraging vast data insights. However, we’ve observed that many brands then dwell too much in ‘end-user insight,’ optimizing for existing demand rather than proactively building aspirational gravity. The brands that truly succeed don’t try to be all things to all people; they identify a unique, compelling value proposition and own it fiercely.

    McDonald’s US sales drop by most since height of pandemic | FT – Kempczinski said his company had surveyed consumers in top global markets about their views on the US, American brands and McDonald’s. While there had been no change to public opinion on the McDonald’s brand, he said more people signalled they would be cutting back on buying American brands. The surveys also revealed an 8 to 10-point rise in “anti-American sentiment”, he said, notably in northern Europe and Canada.

    China

    ‘Hanger war’: Italy’s fast fashion hub becomes Chinese mafia battlefield | Hong Kong Free Press

    Revealed: The scale of cheap Chinese imports flown into UK without paying any tariffs | Money News | Sky News

    Ikea Shanghai becomes a hot spot for senior dating | International | EL PAÍS English – the problem for Ikea is that they can’t monetise these consumers. They bring their own food, drink the free coffee and keep their wallets tightly closed.

    Watchmaker Swatch apologises for ‘slanted eyes’ ad after China social media uproar | Hong Kong Free Press

    Consumer behaviour

    Steve Ells, Chipotle founder: ‘The public doesn’t like to see technology nearby when they’re trying to eat’ | EPS | EL PAÍS English

    We used AI to analyse three cities. It’s true: we now walk more quickly and socialise less | Carlo Ratti | The Guardian

    Economics

    Greedflation Is Back as Corporations Use the Tariff Excuse to Hike Prices | BIG by Matt Stoller

    The Death of the Amex Lounge: Why the Upper Middle Class Isn’t Special Anymore – There’s something happening to the upper middle class in the United States that no one is talking about. They are going through an existential crisis.  I first noticed it at the airport. A line 20 people deep for the American Express lounge. Then, once you get inside, more lines for food/drinks and not an open chair in sight. Then I saw it in the housing market. I have friends with $10,000+ monthly mortgage payments on modest homes. Ten grand a month and they still don’t own a mansion. Today, buying a 3-bedroom apartment in Jersey City (where I live) would cost me anywhere from $9,300-$14,000 a month (all-in). I could rent the same unit for around $6,000-$7,000 a month.

    Ethics

    The 50something man has a PR problem | Influence Online – “Ageism is the last ‘ism’ we need to tackle. Anecdotally, I’m hearing a lot about the 50+ demographic struggling to find new roles because employers perceive them as being so old that they can’t learn new skills or that their tech isn’t up to scratch. All their knowledge is being lost – and because AI is replacing entry-level jobs – there’s a lack of new people coming in to learn from them. Acknowledging ageism exists would be a great start…”

    Finance

    Buy now, pay later, in debt forever? – The Face – or how generation Z credit rating is being impacted by Klarna, Affirm et al which are the digital equivalent of the ‘tally man’ of the early to mid 20th century. Reading all this reminded me of working at MBNA as a student and hearing people’s horror stories as they tried to transfer over scorecard debit to pay it down at a more rational rate.

    FMCG

    Mister Donut’s New Home Cut doughnuts take nostalgia to extremes with barely any sweetness | Sora News 24

    Domestos: a masterclass on how legacy brands can still cut through

    Unilever Acquires Dr. Squatch: What This $1.5B Deal Reveals About Modern CPG Brand Strategy | Mintel

    The story of Nongfu water is the story of the wild, wild west of Chinese business. The health claims still shock me, despite everything I knew about the Chinese market.

    Hong Kong

    Nike sues HK star Edison Chen over alleged breach of contract | Marketing-Interactive

    HK Ghost Signs – beautifully made site documenting historic advertising and industrial signage from back when Hong Kong was a light industrial titan.

    Hong Kong’s busy bankers give its office market a lift | FT contrast this with Collers more sober take on the Hong Kong market Singapore office demand soars 12-fold while Hong Kong remains ‘subdued’, Colliers says | South China Morning Post

    Japan

    Japan’s Hardworking Yakuza — The Viagra Job (2010)

    Luxury

    Is petcare the next luxury opportunity? | Vogue Business

    Luxury blingflation creates opportunity for cheaper challengers | FT – are these premium or luxury? And have the consumers pivoted from luxury to premium?

    Media

    Why Brands Like State Farm and Argos Are Going All-In on Social-First Episodic Videos | AdWeek – storytelling

    Amazon Breaks Up Wondery Podcast Studio, CEO Jen Sargent Departs | Hollywood Reporter – issues with the business model for audio offerings, curious to know if Vox will follow suit? The shows that moved to SiriusXM are interesting, SiriusXM is a subscription-based satellite and internet radio service

    Chinese ‘vertical dramas’ are booming in America. Should Hollywood be worried? | SCMP – Hollywood has done a poor job of having compelling mobile media

    TVB Introduces AI Short Series – JayneStars.com – this follows on from TVB running an AI avatar to host Miss Hong Kong 2023

    Forget about the AI Guess model — let’s talk about Range Rover’s Vogue ad – The Media Leader

    Online

    What Is “Broke Man Propaganda?” | Cosmopolitan & Yes, it is classist to dehumanise ‘broke’ men | Dazed – “Poverty is not the fault of the poor,” she continues. “I find it very cruel to talk about John – a character who loves Lucy, a beautiful character being played beautifully by Chris – in such cruel terms as ‘broke boy’ or ‘broke man’.” She goes on: “I think that is a very troubling result of the way that wealthy people have gotten into our hearts [and convinced us] it’s your fault if you’re poor, or you’re a bad person if you’re poor. So, it doesn’t make me laugh, actually. It just makes me feel very concerned that anybody would talk about my movie and my characters [like that], and think about it in such classist terms.”

    Why Is TikTok Overflowing With AI Country Music Erotica? | Pitchfork

    Philippines

    Poblacion is the old part of Makati, the central business district of Manila in the Philippines. I have been to Makati for work in the past and to my regret missed visiting Poblacion.

    Otherwise Makati is full of anonymous office blocks, business hotels that look the same the world over and Starbucks coffee shops.

    Retailing

    Chinese Livestreaming ‘Virtual Human’ Salespeople Are Outselling Their Human Counterparts | 404 Media

    Security

    China Is Winning the Cyberwar: America Needs a New Strategy of Deterrence | Foreign Affairs

    Axios Future of Cybersecurity: 1 big thing: A tale of two generative AI futures – differing opinions from Defcon in Vegas on the impact of AI on hacking and cyber-defence

    Israel Secretly Recruited Iranian Dissidents to Attack Iran From Within — ProPublica

    Inside Beijing’s quiet campaign to sideline Nvidia’s H20 AI chips | DigiTimes – China has told domestic companies to steer clear of Nvidia’s H20 processors, particularly for government and national security projects, raising the stakes for US chipmakers

    Colt Telecommunications Struggles in Wake of Cyber Incident | Dark Reading

    New Zealand spy service warns of China interference | Spacewar

    FBI Warns of Russian Cyber Hackers Targeting Critical US Infrastructure | The Epoch Times

    Colombian Black Hawk shot down by FPV drone | Defence Blog

    EU fires warning shot at Spain over Huawei reliance | FT

    DaVita tells 2.4M people ransomware scum stole health data • The Register

    Software

    Google to provide Gemini AI tools to US government | Robo Daily

    Companies Are Pouring Billions Into A.I. It Has Yet to Pay Off. – The New York Times

    Technology

    ‘AI winter’ is coming, warns leading expert following OpenAI’s botched GPT-5 launch | Graham Lovelace

    Google and IBM believe first workable quantum computer is in sight | FT

    Nigeria deports 50 Chinese nationals in cybercrime crackdown | Reuters

    Tech war: DeepSeek hints China close to unveiling ‘next generation’ AI chips | SCMP

    Tools

    Lumo: Privacy-first AI assistant where chats stay confidential – Proton’s AI assistant

    Is the Flipper Zero the next big car theft gadget? The Verge & Inside the Underground Trade of ‘Flipper Zero’ Tech to Break into Cars | 404 Media

    Web-of-no-web

    Amazon Digital Signage Solutions for Business – interesting AWS / product hybrid

    Harvard dropouts to launch ‘always on’ AI smart glasses that listen and record every conversation | TechCrunch

    Wireless

    Electronic Weapons: Iran Exploits Western Cellphones

  • Crime – it’s a vibe

    Along with immigration, and economic measures (like inflation, interest rates and possible growth); crime is likely to decide the next general election in the UK. The issue and the supporting data around it are complex and sometimes contradictory in nature.

    It sits right on the fault line between social democrat and populist narratives to voters.

    Riot Police

    Crime is a hardy perennial of policy subjects

    Labour’s political golden age of the late 20th century harked back to the transformation of the party that claimed to be ‘Touch on crime, tough on the causes of crime‘. While the phrase was popularised by Tony Blair at the 1993 Labour Party conference – it owes its roots to the opposition team assembled under former Labour leader John Smith.

    The phrase captured Labour’s attempt to steal the Conservative position on law and order, combining it with a preventative approach to the social ills that drive the issue including homelessness and poverty.

    Two decades later and David Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ depicted a country awash in social decay and by implication criminal behaviour.

    So it’s natural, that during a time of social disruption and stubbornly stagnant economic growth that crime will be used as a political differentiator.

    It fits into a wider perception of the UK being a country in decline. This perception was found by Ipsos to be one of the key drivers of political populism.

    Ipsos also found that the perception of crime and violence being the number one issue rose from 18% of respondents to 23% from 2023 to 2024.

    Crime is falling?

    The statistical picture on crime is complicated. To summarise:

    • Overall reported crime numbers are down. However, trying to get police to log a reported crime is much harder in previous times.
    • The ‘decline’ in reported crimes across different types of offences is very uneven. Data from the UN Office of Crime and Drugs found that the UK had seen an unprecedented increase in the rate of serious assaults from 2012 – 2022.

    As the FT put it:

    “street crime” has risen rapidly. Over the past decade, reported shoplifting has risen by over 50 per cent, robberies (including phone and car theft) by over 60 per cent and knife crime by almost 90 per cent. Public order offences have almost trebled

    • The police have become less effective crime fighters. Although police have less reported crimes to solve, less than six percent of crimes in committed in the UK resulted in a charge or summons in 2023. That compares to just under 16 percent in 2015. The UK government’s focus on increasing mass surveillance powers won’t solve the crisis in crime fighting. An example of the problems that the police face and failed to solve presented itself at the time of writing. There was a spate of phone thefts at the Creamfields festival. All the phones ended up at the same address in Barking. Cheshire police told those affected that:
      • “We have undertaken an assessment of your crime and unfortunately based on the information currently available, it is unlikely we’ll be able to solve your crime”.
      • Cheshire Police said that they couldn’t recover their devices despite knowing where they are.
      • Cheshire Police do not believe the thefts are connected to organised crime. Yet dozens of phones showed up at the same address after they were stolen…
    • Trust in the public for the police to solve crime is declining. Policing by consent was no longer happening in many areas of the UK. Issues like ‘Asian grooming gangs’ in The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse indicated poliicing issues in recommendations to pay attention to vulnerable working-class children and their families when they come forward. Two-tier policing is more likely to run along class lines than political lines.
    • While crime still lags behind the economy and health as concerns for voters. The percentage of respondents who felt that stopping or preventing crime should be the number one priority for politicians went from 14% in 2023 to 23% in 2024.
    • While Britain needs foreign direct investment, crime is adversely affecting efforts to attract investors. Foreign business people are complaining to senior politicians they meet about British street crime they’ve experienced on visits. The UK now has a global reputation for violent robberies. 40 percent of all phone thefts in Europe happen in the UK. London alone accounts for 16 percent of all phone thefts across Europe.

    Crime across generations

    According to both Ipsos and the National Centre for Social Research, the current cohort of young adults stick out with regards their beliefs and attitudes towards crime:

    • An increased belief that crime is caused by a lack of education
    • An increased openness to committing crime, particularly fraud.
    • Opposition to current frameworks for punishment.

    All of which is at odds with the fact that much crime is organised, trans-national and violent in nature.

    Similar posts to this here.

    More information

    How Labour and Reform frame crime in electoral fights | FT

    Try telling Britain it ain’t broken – POLITICO

    Do broken windows mean a broken Britain? FT

    Organised Vehicle Theft in the UK | RUSI

    Jeff Asher on manipulating crime data – Marginal REVOLUTION

    Few Britons think criminals likely to face justice for minor crimes | YouGov

    How our stolen mobile phones end up in an Algerian market | The Times and The Sunday Times

    Operation Destabilise: NCA disrupts $multi-billion Russian money laundering networks with links to, drugs, ransomware and espionage, resulting in 84 arrests – National Crime Agency

    Tax haven: how jacket thefts swept the UK – The Face

    $56M in London property tied to alleged China crime ring — Radio Free Asia

    Wearing your Rolex or Patek Philippe in Europe? Why you should be worried about London and Paris’ spikes in luxury watch theft  | South China Morning Post

    Brazen watch robberies fuel shock rise in violent thefts in London ITV News

    London Watch | renaissance chambara

    India’s business elite sounds alarm over Rolex thefts in London’s Mayfair | FT

  • July 2025 newsletter

    July 2025 introduction – two-dozen (24) edition

    What a scorcher of month it turned out to be. This edition marks the second anniversary of Strategic Outcomes.

    24 or two dozen as they call it in the bingo halls, is considered be unlucky in Cantonese because it sounds like ‘easy die’. All of which made the number symbolizing a violent political thriller TV series all the more appropriate.

    24 was the name of a must-see action drama that launched in the aftermath of 9/11. The show was quite prophetic in some ways given that the pilot was shot in March 2001 and production began in earnest in July that year.

    Jack Bauer fought terrorist and drug cartel attacks over nine seasons and sold countless DVD boxsets outselling Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring. Bauer’s ‘the ends justify the means’ approach caught the zeitgeist of enhanced interrogation and the real-time plot with political intrigue kept audiences hooked.

    Much of this month for me has been dominated by generative AI in terms of the projects that I have been working on and what I have been learning on Coursera.

    AI

    This month’s summery soundtrack for the newsletter comes from French DJ Folamour playing joyful house music that would be very on-point for the early to mid-1990s sets I used to play during the mid-week at the long-gone and largely unlamented Sherlocks bar and Bonkers night club in Merseyside.

    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 have been thinking a good deal about business cards and their relevance in 2025, there maybe some reasons for optimism given wider trends happening at the moment.
    • Apple developer focus given last year’s problematic pivot to go big on AI.
    • The Hong Kong government banned a Taiwanese game Reversed Front: Bonfire. The game portrayed the Hong Kong government in a poor light alongside their Beijing counterparts. But gaming and politics aren’t as bizarre bedfellows as it would seem on the surface.
    • Optimising my video calling experience took me back through my past life as a DJ to find an appropriate headphone and mic solution for long work calls.
    • Design collaborations and other things including philosophical approaches to building machine learning systems and early smartphone demos.

    Books that I have read.

    • I read Charles Beaumont’s A Spy At War, the follow-on to A Spy Alone which I read earlier on in the year. Beaumont’s story moves from the UK to Ukraine, tracking the lines between Russian corruption and what the Russian intelligence services would call the ‘useful idiots’ of right leaning populist politics. Beaumont doesn’t disappoint with this second story related to his Oxford spy ring, the unnerving aspect of it all is how similar many of the characters seem to public figures. I will let you draw your own conclusions on that.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Cartier exhibition

    I got to go to the Cartier exhibition at the V&A museum. At first I was thinking about passing it by when I looked at the exhibition catalogue. The photography seemed flat and lacking in lustrousness. The exhibition needed to be seen in person to appreciate the art of the jeweller and gemologist respectively.

    Mid-year trends

    Dan Frommer and the team at The New Consumer & consumer goods focused investor Coefficient Capital dropped their mid year trends presentation which is free to download.

    There were a number of outtakes for me

    • Economics
      • US consumer spending held steady, even as consumer sentiment fluctuated – this might be due to inflation, but you didn’t see a corresponding dip. This was also mirrored in steadily life satisfaction statistics.
      • Consumer price elasticity for ‘Made in America’ products is low.
    • Marketing
      • 97% of US consumers surveyed knew it was Amazon Prime day before shopping – which is a phenomenal level of awareness.
      • 98% of US consumers are aware of AI. Which adds more credence that AI’s place in culture is similar to that of the web and the internet in the mid-to-late 1990s – even amongst people who aren’t actually using it. It is consistently in 0.25% of news coverage since the launch of ChatGPT.
      • Awareness of Ozempic was at 58%, Viagra was at 62% – which says a lot about the power of long-term brand building.
    • Pets
      • Pets are 40 percent of male respondents best friend, but 40% of women view pets as their child.

    Chart of the month. 

    Smart Communications released a report looking at health CX and patient attitudes. There was a considerable variation between consumers by age on trust in AI across both concerns about data privacy and the overall ethics involved. But a majority of consumers in every age group thought that AI would maintain or improve health communications channels.

    health cx

    Things I have watched. 

    Network as a 1976 film was quite prescient. It covers the tension between network television’s quest for eyeballs and the ‘just the facts’ era of Walter Cronkite and his team at CBS Evening News. We have a network executive who sees views in the breakdown of a news reader at the twilight of his career. It also feels like an allegory on modern day influencers and the tyranny of slavishly following the algorithm.

    Barry Lyndon

    Inspired by an article in the Financial Times, I rewatched Barry Lyndon for the first time in years. The first time I watched it was out of curiosity for a few reasons

    • It’s based on the 19th century novel of an Irish hero who bounces through various adventures and eventually dies in a debtors prison.
    • It was a Stanley Kubrick film. Barry Lyndon was made in 1975, after A Clockwork Orange and prior to The Shining.
    • It was similar in concept, if not in execution to the ‘cinéma du look’ movement that I have watched and written about previously in this newsletter. Conceptually ‘‘cinéma du look’ and Barry Lyndon share a common concept, both were looking to replicate an aesthetic. ‘Cinéma du look’ was inspired by the golden age of TV advertising and music videos, Barry Lyndon was inspired by 18th century art.

    Barry Lyndon like the later cinéma du look films were critiqued for putting style over plot lines. And like cinéma du look, Barry Lyndon has become more appreciated with age. The stylistic aspects of Barry Lyndon have appealed to TikTokers and gained new life. I hope the same happens for cinéma du look works that equally deserve the exposure.

     When I was a child, my time was spent split between living on my uncle’s farm in Ireland and the Mersey basin which was a thriving petrochemical hub with giant silver cathedrals to human ingenuity and process engineering. Climate change wasn’t in the public zeitgeist. You would see the stack flares as you drove past plants at night and the mercury discharge lamps dotted along inspection walkways.

    Friends Dad’s worked abroad in the petrochemical industry or in the north sea. It was adventure, it had a hint of danger. That was solidified in my mind when I saw Hellfighters, where John Wayne cosplayed as an analogue of Red Adair. The film is basically an oilfield western BUT to six year old me – giant oil fires seemed cool. Wayne’s character Chance Buckman was an undisguised portrayal of Red Adair and Red Adair Co. Inc even down to Adair’s signature red overalls.

    Yes its got misogny and it’s exactly the same as every other John Wayne film from the 1960s in terms of plot and pacing. Wayne even used many of the same co-stars over-and-over again.

    To my more practiced eye as a former plant process operator turned ad man; parts of oilfield scenarios are a bit hokey. However, the modernist design aesthetic, spectacle and the fire portrayed in the film continues to impress all these years later. The engineering and plant portrayed in the film means that it’s one of those movies my Dad and I watch together, most of the time talking about the equipment used and other minutiae of the film.

    As a film it also does a good job of documenting the oil infrastructure of the Texas panhandle in the 1960s.

    If I had any criticism it is that the film needs a good reprint with a 4K re-scan. I can also recommend Red Adair: An American Hero which was his authorised biography – we had a well-thumbed copy in control room of plant I briefly worked in prior to college.

    Useful tools.

    Image format conversion

    For long time Mac users the go to tool for image conversion is Lemke Software‘s GraphicConvertor. Thorsten Lemke is a legend in the Mac software community, supporting his application since the mid-1990s; back when being a Mac user was an endangered species. I remember first getting a copy on a Mac computer magazine disc in college and found it invaluable ever since. Even now it supports obscure image formats that you won’t have seen in decades like PICT. However if you don’t have access to your own machine and software, a couple of online web services I can recommend at a pinch are SVG to PNG and CloudConvert.

    Visualisation tool

    I have just started playing with MyLens AI and it’s conceptually interesting enough for me to recommend experimenting with it yourself.

    The sales pitch.

    I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my July 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward for the rest of the dog days of summer.

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

    Get in touch 

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