Category: business | 商業 | 상업 | ビジネス

My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.

At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.

I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.

Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.

I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.

Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.

  • Walsh’s + more stuff

    Walsh’s of Mullingar

    Walsh’s is the kind of business I grew up with in Ireland. In my part of the world it wasn’t the Walsh’s it was Kelly’s and Salmon’s who both ran general stores on the edge of my parish. It was a mix of groceries, cigarettes, a top-loading cabinet of ice creams. In the local market town there was O’Meara’s who still run a supermarket, Lynch’s who run a hardware store, builders yard and farm supplies and Hayes – a chemist and veterinary pharmacy. Like Walsh’s they are all multi-generational businesses with customers from the same families over successive generations.

    Maintaining a multi-generational business was (and still is for many) a matter of pride. It can be a great business, you know your customers needs and personalities far better than I ever did working for the likes of Unilever. The Walsh’s will have been with their generations of customers at key times in their lives: engagements, marriage, anniversaries and retirements.

    When my Uncle died and we had a wake for him, I met the the pharmacist who looked after his personal and farm needs and her Dad who had filled my prescription for cough medicine as a child. There were people from the hardware store, farm supplies, the newsagent who my family always got their copies of the Irish Farmer’s Journal and the Connacht Tribune.

    The Walsh’s are wrapping up because their business can no longer compete with the scale of online jewellers.

    It’s interesting that COVID was the inciting incident that broke the generations of consumer behaviour, brand loyalty and relationships. The second factor that the Walsh’s named was the hollowing out of people living within the market town of Mullingar. That’s especially interesting given that Ireland currently has a chronic housing shortage makes me wonder what is going on.

    More related posts:

    Concepts as viral marketing

    Chris Spargo runs one of the most interesting British YouTube channels looking at the minutae of the UK from supermarket clock towers to book barcodes and milk packaging. This film looks at how The Glass Committee funded by Pilkington Glass created outlandish concepts that promoted discussion. Weirdly enough some of the ideas found themselves from the most outrageous concepts into Britain’s new towns developments.

    A history of hacking

    Frederico Mazzini goes through a history of hacking with a focus on culture. Even though it was presented for Tokyo College, it had a very western centric slant to it. Interesting points about hacking is an explicit political activity in some non-US cultures – notably France, Italy and Germany.

    What became apparent was that Mazzini lacked was any kind of understanding of hacking in Japan, which runs with a much lower profile than their counterpart western communities according to Trend Micro.

  • Hydrogen power + more things

    Hydrogen power

    Hydrogen power and hydrogen fuel cells have been around for decades. Hydrogen power fuel cells as an invention were invented in the 19th century. The modern hydrogen fuel cell was refined before the second world war and have been used in NASA’s space programme since Project Apollo. The space programme’s use of hydrogen power inspired General Motors to create a hydrogen fuel cell powered van in 1966. By the late 1980s, BMW had developed a hydrogen-powered engine which it trialled in its 7-series vehicles a decade later.

    2016_Toyota_Fuel_Cell_Vehicle (11)

    By the mid-2010s there were four hydrogen power passenger cars using fuel cells: Honda Clarity, Toyota Mirai, Hyundai ix35 FCEV, and the Hyundai Nexo. BMW is collaborating with Toyota to launch another four models next year.

    2021 Toyota Mirai

    In addition in commercial vehicles and heavy plant Hyundai, Cummins and JCB have hydrogen power offerings. JCB and Cummins have focused on internal combustion engines, while Hyundai went with hydrogen fuel cells. The aviation industry has been looking to hydrogen power via jet turbines.

    Hydrogen power offers greater energy density and lower weight than batteries. Unlike batteries or power lines, hydrogen can be transported over longer distances via tanker. So someplace like Ireland with wind and tidal power potential could become an energy exporter.

    The key hydrogen power problem has been investment in infrastructure and an over-reliance on batteries. Batteries bring their own set of problems and a global strategic dependency on China.

    Toyota is now warning that if there isn’t imminent international investment, that China will also dominate the supply chain, exports and energy generation in the hydrogen economy as well. It feels like me reaching a historic point of no return.

    Swiss Researchers May Have Solved Hydrogen Storage | Hackaday

    Aviation industry calls for UK investment in hydrogen fuel | FT

    Hydrogen, take two | Axios What’s Next

    Hydrogen-powered drones could fly longer, farther | Axios

    The Japanese Companies Pursuing a Hydrogen Economy – The Diplomat

    Japan Recommits to the Hydrogen Society – Akihabara News

    A Chicken and Egg Problem: How Germany’s Hydrogen Boom Stalled – DER SPIEGEL

    Lex in depth: the staggering cost of a green hydrogen economy | Financial Times

    UK at risk of falling behind in race to become green hydrogen global leader, Johnson Matthey says | Business News | Sky News

    Alexander Brown on how industrial policy adds momentum to China’s push into hydrogen | Merics

    Hyundai Rolls out Big Hydrogen Truck – The Chosun Ilbo

    Japan Announces Roadmap for Hydrogen Introduction | Nikkei TechOn

    Beauty

    Skincare you can wear: China’s sunwear boom | Jing DailyA jacket with a wide-brim hood and built-in face shield. Leggings infused with hyaluronic acid to hydrate while shielding skin from the sun. Face masks with chin-to-temple coverage. Ice-cooling gloves designed to drop skin temperature. In China, UV protection apparel isn’t just functional — it’s fashionable, dermatological, and high-tech. Once a niche category for hikers or extreme sports enthusiasts, China’s sunwear market has exploded into a $13 billion category blending climate adaptation, anti-aging culture, and the outdoor lifestyle wave. While other apparel segments slow, the sunwear sector is projected to reach nearly 95.8 billion RMB ($13.5 billion) by 2026 expanding at a CAGR of 9%, according to iResearch.

    Business

    Online disrupters challenge traditional MBA providers | FT

    What’s the winning strategy in China’s “low-trust” society? – low trust driving a lack of M&A and vertical integration

    China

    China is trying to kneecap Indian manufacturing – Asia Times – China trying to starve India and the Philippines of inbound investment through coercion on Chinese and multinational companies

    Collapse of Chinese-built high rise spurs wave of anger in Thailand

    Consumer behaviour

    Have humans passed peak brain power? | FT

    Buy European: a new shopping movement takes hold | Trendwatching

    Hot girl economy | Substack

    Bachelors Without Bachelor’s: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates – interesting US-focused paper, but I expect that the findings would be mirrored far more widely

    AI and the New Impostor Syndrome | Psychology Today & Overreliance on AI tools at work risks harming mental health | FT

    Culture

    An unexpected link between Hong Kong’s Louis Cha ‘Jin Yong’ and Labubu doll | South China Morning Post

    Design

    Volkswagen reintroducing physical controls for vital functions | Autocar – VW’s design chief commits to “never” repeating the “mistake” of relegating essential controls to touchscreens

    Economics

    U.S. Tariffs: China shows the Rare Earth Nuke, the Detailed Rules; EU keeps Worst Projects out; Carester’s numbers don’t tally; Victory’s Self-Defeat; and more.

    Why does Britain feel so poor? – by M. F. Robbins

    The Three Tariff Problem – by Doug O’Laughlin & American Disruption – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

    White House slams Amazon tariff price display “hostile and political” | Axios

    FMCG

    TVB News| 29 Apr 2025 | Soft meal of classic HK dishes launched for people with chewing difficulties – YouTube – Hong Kong’s aging population is promoting innovation in FMCG categories including food

    Finance

    Y Combinator founders raising less money signals a ‘vibe shift,’ VC says | TechCrunch & A quarter of YC’s latest startups are letting AI write 95% of their code | This Week In Start-ups (TWIST)

    Daring Fireball: Costco Only Accepts Visa Credit Cards

    Portrait of the Trader as a Young Rebel | Jacobin

    Gadgets

    iRobot made Roomba into an icon. Now, it’s in a huge mess – Fast Company

    Health

    China’s obesity crisis is big business | FT

    Zyn and the New Nicotine Gold Rush | The New Yorker

    Hong Kong

    MACAU DAILY TIMES 澳門每日時報Beware of Li Kashing’s supersized value trapBut as the initial excitement starts to fade, investors are growing nervous, wary of a billionaire family that has a poor track record on shareholders’ returns. The Li clan takes pride in the myriad of businesses and markets it operates in. But what kind of value-add can a diversified conglomerate offer when globalization is out of favor and geopolitical risks are on the rise? CK’s de-rating has accelerated since Trump’s first term, with the stock trading at just 35% of its book value even after the recent share bump. The complex business dealings have made enterprise valuation an impossible task. In a sign of deep capital market skepticism, CK seems to have trouble monetizing its assets. Its health and beauty subsidiary A.S. Watson is still privately-held, a decade after postponing an ambitious $6 billion dual listing in Hong Kong and London. Softer consumer sentiment in China, once a growth market, has become a drag. Last summer, CK Infrastructure did a secondary listing in the UK, hoping to widen its investor base. – Rare direct criticism of CK Hutchison’s conglomerate discount.

    Why some mainland Chinese turn their back on HK after getting top talent visas | Hong Kong Free Press

    McDonald’s Admiralty Station location just got a vibey redesign – Fast Company

    Innovation

    DeepSeek founder says China AI will stop following U.S. – Nikkei Asia

    US Weather Agency Websites Set to Vanish With Contract Cuts – Bloomberg – NOAA Research related content. Sites were housed on Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and WordPress

    Japan

    Ghost in the Shell’s Creator Wants to Revisit the Anime, But There’s One ProblemProduction I.G’s CEO Mitsuhisa Ishikawa—who produced both Ghost in the Shell films—spoke at the event. Ishikawa revealed a key obstacle preventing a third film: finances. He explained that Innocence had an enormous budget, estimated at around 2 billion yen (approximately $13 million), with profits reaching a similar figure. However, the film was planned with a ten-year financial recovery period, and even after 20 years, it has yet to break even.

    Jargon watch

    Typing loudly, wearing AirPods: ‘taskmasking’ is how gen Z pretends to work at the office | US work & careers | The Guardian – One example of taskmasking: moving quickly though the office while carrying a laptop or clipboard – straight out of a West Wing walk-and-talk. Another example: typing loudly, like a DMV employee having a bad day, even if what you’re typing has no relevance to your job.

    The Mainframe Vocabulary Problem (And Why It Matters) | Mainframe Society

    Is DEI a Racial Slur? Rise in Term Outrages Black Americans | Newsweek

    Luxury

    Rolex, A Love-Hate Relationship – Watches of Espionage

    ‘Gucci’s 25% sales collapse should shock no one’ | Jing Daily“Gucci is so boring now.” “They’ve lost all their confidence.” “It feels desperate — just influencers and celebrities.” Comparing Gucci’s bold, visionary eras under Tom Ford and Alessandro Michele and today’s safe, uninspired iteration reveals a stark contrast. That classroom moment reflected a broader truth: Gucci’s Q1 2025 is not a temporary dip. It’s the result of a deeper structural identity crisis — arguably one of the worst brand resets in recent luxury history.

    Online

    Common Crawl – Open Repository of Web Crawl Data

    AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5% | Ahrefs

    ‘We Were Wrong’: An Oral History of WIRED’s Original Website | WIRED

    Security

    EU: These are scary times – let’s backdoor encryption! • The Register

    Rafts of Security Bugs Could Rain Out Solar Grids

    Suspected Chinese snoops hijacking buggy Ivanti gear — again • The Register – cracked VPN appliances

    An Open Letter to Third-Party Suppliers | JP Morgan Chase

    Software

    Amazon can now buy products from other websites for you | The Verge

    Technology

    China-developed EUV lithography could trial in 2025 | EE News Europe and China’s EUV breakthrough: Huawei, SMIC reportedly advancing LDP lithography, eye 3Q25 trial, 2026 rollout | DigiTimes

    IBM plans US$150 billion spend to catch quantum computing wave EE News Europe

    Thailand

    Travel and T-pop fuel Thai beauty boom in China | Jing Daily – one of the brands doing well is Mistine.

    Wireless

    How our stolen mobile phones end up in an Algerian market | The Times and The Sunday Times – interesting that they are going to Algeria rather than China

  • Careless People – A story of where I used to work by Sarah Wynn Williams

    Careless People has been a much-discussed book in the circles that I am involved in. In the book, Wynn Williams outlines her career at Facebook / Meta in what was at the time a nascent public policy team. The term careless people is a highly appropriate reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

    Careless People

    While I was reading Careless People, The Great Gatsby was having a moment. It was the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby’s publication, and the ‘careless people’ quote was considered apropos for the times we are living in, in particular the Trump administration’s actions.

    “They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

    Anyway, back to Careless People, Wynn Williams outlines her experience from pitching to Facebook for a role that didn’t exist but was needed, through to navigating the global growth Facebook was undertaking at the time. The challenges that Wynn Williams faces can be broadly broken down into four areas (with specific allegations):

    • Sexism and in/out group prejudice
    • Sexual harassment (Joel Kaplan)
    • Toxic managers (Sheryl Sandberg, Elliot Schrage)
    • Poor management judgement (lying to Congress and providing assistance to authoritarian regimes)
    The money quote

    What’s interesting about the book depends on the reader. Much of the experience was relatable to my own earlier experience at Yahoo! The long days, changing priorities, travel (which was much more of a thing pre-COVID), office politics and fiefdoms, the constant unintended consequences of inventing the future. Secondly, the Facebook management have bought into what Barbrook and Cameron termed The Californian Ideology in their 1995 essay of the same name.

     “…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.”

    However, I feel fortunate to have worked with a mature leadership who knew what they didn’t know and realised that they lived in a global village. But that might be down to the fact that Yahoo! by the time I had got there had a fair share of ups and downs.

    Careless People reminded me a lot of Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, written by Jennifer Edstrom and Martin Eller. Although they are separated by some 25 years between each being written. Both books tell the story of an imperfect organisation scaling to an opportunity— I have written about Barbarians here. Wynn Williams is the better storyteller, providing a coherent and engaging path through the narrative.

    I can recommend Careless People as a good book to read, I finished it off over a bank holiday weekend whilst nursing a sprained ankle. For people in advertising and marketing it won’t be that surprising, it confirms many things that were ‘common knowledge’ in the industry. For the general public, it will be shocking given the facts that the author marshals together.

    Would I have thought reading Accidental Empires or Barbarians Led by Bill Gates in the late 1990s that Bill Gates would have transformed from the soulless ‘borg leader’ portrayed to the voice of relative reason he is today? Probably not, there might be hope for Zuckerberg at least out of the cast of characters in the book.

    Wynn Williams is now exploring the edges of policy and artificial intelligence and is likely someone worth keeping an eye on.

  • Share of search volume

    Les Binet did some sterling work thinking about share of search volume as part of his ongoing work looking at marketing effectiveness.  

    Les Binet

    In order to understand share of search volume, we have to go back to 1990 when former advertising veteran and professor John Philip Jones[i] published a paper in the Harvard Business Review[ii] and a subsequent book[iii].

    Jones’ research around the linkage between advertising and sales by looking at advertising including tools of his invention STAS (short term advertising strength)[iv] and AIC (advertising intensiveness curve). One of Jones’ key findings was the linkage between a brand’s share of voice and its market share. One of the biggest predictors of brand growth was ESoV (excess share of voice). ESoV is when a brand has a share of voice in excess of the proportion needed to maintain its market share. 

    During economic good times this might be down to an increase in brand building marketing spend, not only advertising and public relations, but also influencer and sports sponsorships with variable[v] results. 

    During recessionary times[vi], it might be maintaining brand building marketing spend when the competitors are cutting back. 

    Part of this brand building work overlaps with increasing marketing penetration through increasing the number of places where the brand is available. During the 95 percent of time that you are not in a buying mindset when you pass a product display in a supermarket it’s a billboard – doing the brand building work. 

    Jones’ findings were later validated by Peter Field and Les Binet’s work on marketing efficiency[vii], and in the summation of research[viii] from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science by Byron Sharp. 

    Share of search volume

    The clever thing that Les Binet[ix] did with share of search volume[x] was find it as a predictor on the likely time when ESoV was likely to impact with a growth in market share AND, he found that the share of search volume change mapped neatly on to market share change.  

    The challenge is that different sectors have different times between a change in share of search volume and the corresponding change in market share[xi].   

    “For mobile phone handsets, Binet further ventured, share of search leads market share “by about six months” as a performance indicator – offering marketers a chance to adapt their strategies if needed if a decline is expected.

    “If the brand … had access to the share of search data at the time, it would have had a six-month warning that share of market was about to turn around,” Binet said. “That’s an incredibly useful metric.”

    Share of search’s predictive quality for energy brands, Binet explained, was noticeably shorter, at just “nought to three months.”

    For automakers, by contrast, share of search anticipates market share by “nine to 12 months,” he said – a significant timeframe for marketers to potentially refine strategies.

    Breaking out data for Volkswagen, the auto marque, provided corroboration that sales forecasts based on share of search “are incredibly close to what actually happened,” Binet said.”

    Search considerations

    Much earlier in my career I worked on the Yahoo! Search business, back when the company had its own search technology and sold its own search advertising. One of the things that we found was that while overall search volume could be modelled accurately for the year based just on January’s search data – unexplained search volume peaks still needed to be ironed out by looking at rolling three-month values instead. 

    I found it interesting that Binet’s findings didn’t seem the same degree of ‘peakiness’ and was a much more valuable predictor once the time lag factor between share of search volume and market effects were known. 

    Share of search makes sense from a logical perspective. Many below-the-line activities have been focused on search in terms of aiding SEO to increase share of market opportunity, rather than an explicit appreciation of the impact on the share of search volume and consequently change in market share. My friend James Warren used to talk about public relations and related earned media activities such as organic social media as ‘offline SEO’. This thinking was incorporated into Interpublic’s ‘inline’ concept[xii].

    Future search

    Share of search volume is complicated by a number of factors that are down to changing consumer behaviour. 

    Google’s focus on mobile upended the precision that we could search with and what we could search for, out went Boolean operators that could track down a highly relevant web page from 12 years ago. But we could now find the nearest coffee shop with wi-fi. YouTube[xiii] due to its explanatory content became the second largest search engine globally (excluding China). 

    A good deal of product search has migrated to sites like eBay, Walmart[xiv] and Amazon[xv]. Part of the reason being is that their site search is good enough, they have a wide range of stock and speedy delivery. Amazon also benefits from Amazon Prime which drives customer purchase, but isn’t without controversy[xvi].

    Social and generative AI have unlocked new challengers to Google. Search on social platforms has become the go-to approach for many young people. Google acknowledged this when asked by Business Insider[xvii].

    “we face robust competition from an array of sources, including general and specialized search engines, as well as dedicated apps.”

    The move to social is about tapping what we called back in my Yahoo! days ‘knowledge search’[xviii]. Search startups like Gigabrain have tried to tap into this market by providing a better search function of Reddit forums. 

    Finally, the move towards consumer usage of generative AI tools based on large language models has created new competitors to Google including Perplexity and ChatGPT Search. Google itself has adopted LLMs in its own search offering and seen an increase in both revenue and profit from search advertising[xix].

    Share of model vs. share of search volume

    In order to try and understand new LLM-driven search, innovator agencies like Jellyfish and Deft[xx] have looked towards understanding share of model. Share of model tries to understand how LLMs perceive a given brand, in a similar way to the way SEO rankings held a similar place in search engine marketing. Like SEO, they look to understand whether the brand has sufficient optimisation of their digital properties to feature in recommendations by the models. 

    What share of model doesn’t give us is the consumer insight provided by share of search volume. Share of search volume is consumer behaviour driven and advertising influenced; share of model is algorithmic behaviour driven and training influenced. 


    [i] John Philip Jones profile (United Kingdom) WARC

    [ii] Jones, J.P., (1990) Ad Spending: Maintaining Market Share (United States) Harvard Business Review

    [iii] Jones, J.P. (1995) When Ads Work: New Proof That Advertising Triggers Sales (United States) Jossey Brass

    [iv] Hansen, F., Olsen, J.K. STAS and Other Short Term Advertising Effect Measures (United Kingdom) WARC

    [v] Siu, A. (February 2025) The Honey scandal is a ‘wake-up call’ for the creator industry’s affiliate partnerships

    [vi] (2023) The power of excess share of voice (United Kingdom) Thinkbox

    [vii] Binet, L., Field, P. (2013) The Long and the Short of it: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies (United Kingdom) Institute of Practitioners in Advertising

    [viii] Sharp, B. (2010) How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know (United Kingdom) Oxford University Press

    [ix] (2020) Share of search can predict market share (United Kingdom) WARC

    [x] Binet, L. (2021) Share of Search (United Kingdom) Les Binet channel on YouTube

    [xi] (2020) Share of search can predict market share (United Kingdom) WARC

    [xii] Warren, J. (2008) Back to school (United Kingdom) PR Week (republished on PR 2.0)

    [xiii] (2010) YouTube Revenue Approaching $1 Billion Per Year [REPORT] (United States) Mashable

    [xiv] Levin, M.R., Lowitz, J.N. (November 2020) Grocery Drives Walmart Online Orders (United States) Consumer Intelligence Research Partners LLC (CIRP)

    [xv] Evans, B. (2023) Retail, search and Amazon’s $40bn ‘advertising’ business (United Kingdom) Benedict Evans

    [xvi] Stoller, M. (2021) Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie (United States) BIG by Matt Stoller

    [xvii] Delouya, S. (2022) Nearly Half of Gen Z Prefers TikTok and Instagram Over Google Search (United States) Business Insider

    [xviii] Carroll, G.M.S. (2021) Yahoo Answers (United Kingdom) renaissance chambara

    [xix] Morris, S. (2025) Alphabet shares gain as Google search boots profits (United Kingdom) Financial Times

    [xx] Crocombe, I. (2025) Share of Model (United Kingdom) Deft

  • April 2025 newsletter

    April 2025 introduction – key to the door (21)

    Welcome to my April 2025 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 21st issue.

    21 marks a transition to full adulthood in various countries, hence ‘keys to the door’ in bingo slang. In Chinese numbers, symbolism is often down to phrases that numbers sound like. 21 sounds like “easily definitely fine” – indicating an auspicious association with the number.

    For some reason this month I have had Bill McClintock’s Motor City Woman on repeat. It’s a mash-up of The Spinners – I’ll be Around, Queensrÿche – Jet City Woman and Steely Dan – Do it Again. It’s a bit of an ear worm – you’re welcome.

    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.

    • Cleaned up copy of an interview I did as a juror for the PHNX Awards. More here.
    • From the challenges faced by Apple Intelligence to drone deliveries and designing in lightness.
    • I thought about how computing tends towards efficiency along the story arc of its history and its likely impact on our use of AI models.

    Books that I have read.

    Currently reading
    • The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok. The book is a complex thriller. The story is straight forward, but the books covers complex, fraught issues with aplomb from misogyny, the male gaze to the white saviour complex.
    • The Tiger That Isn’t by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot focused on the use of numbers in the media. But it’s also invaluable for strategists reading and interrogating pre-existing research. As a book is very easy-going and readable. I read it travelling back-and-forth to see the parents.
    • A Spy Alone was written by former MI6 officer Charles Beaumont. I was reminded of the dreary early 1970s of George Smiley’s Britain in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by the tone of the book. However A Spy Alone is alarmingly contemporary, with oblique references to UK infrastructure investments in the UK attached to a hostile foreign power, private sector intelligence, open source intelligence a la Bellingcat, nihilistic entrepreneurs and a thoroughly corrupted body politic. Beaumont’s story features a post cold-war spy ring in Oxford University echoing the cold war Cambridge spy ring. Beaumont touches on real contemporary issues through the classic thriller, in the same way that Mick Herron uses satire.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Big brand advertising isn’t as digital as we think.

    Trends in TV 2025 by Thinkbox threw up some interesting data points and hypotheses.

    • Advertising is eating retail property. A good deal of search and social advertising gains is not from traditional advertising, but traditional retailing, in place of a real-world shop front. This is primarily carried out by small and medium-sized enterprises. I imagine a lot of this is Chinese direct-to-consumer businesses. 80% of Meta’s revenue is not from the six largest advertising holding companies.
    • Viewership across video platforms both online and offline have stabilised in the UK. (Separately I heard that ITV were getting the same viewership per programme, but it’s been attenuated with the rise of time-shifted content via the online viewership.

    World views

    WARC highlighted research done by Craft Human Intelligence for Channel 4 where they outlined six world views for young adults. While it was couched in terms of ‘gen-z’, I would love to see an ongoing inter-cohort longitudinal study to see how these world views change over time in young people. This would also provide an understanding of it it reflects wider population world views. BBH Labs past work looking at Group Cohesion Score of gen-Z – implies that this is unlikely to be just a generational change but might have a more longitudinal effect across generations to varying extents.

    Anyway back to he six world views outlined:

    • ‘Girl power’ feminists. 99% identified as female. About 21% of their cohort. “While they’re overwhelmingly progressive, their focus tends to be on personal goals rather than macro-level politics. They underindex heavily on engagement with UK politics and society.”
    • ‘Fight for your rights’. 12% of cohort, 60% female, educated and engaged with current affairs. “Although they consider themselves broadly happy, they believe the UK is deeply unfair – but believe that progress is both necessary and achievable.”
    • ‘Dice are loaded’ are 15% of their cohort. 68% female. “Feeling left behind, they perceive themselves to lack control over their future, and are worried about finances, employment, housing, mental health, or physical appearance.”
    • ‘Zero-sum’ thinkers comprise 18% of their cohort. Over-index at higher end of social-economic scale, gender balanced. “…they lean toward authoritarian and radical views on both sides of the political spectrum.”
    • ‘Boys can’t be boys’ are 14% of the cohort and 82% male. Supporters of traditional masculinity.
    • ‘Blank slates’. 20% of their cohort, all of them male. “They aren’t unintelligent or unambitious, but they pay little attention to matters beyond their own, immediate world. While some follow the news, their main focus is on just getting on with life”.

    More here and here.

    FMCG performance

    At the beginning of March, Unilever abruptly replaced its CEO. Hein Schumacher was out, and in the space of a week CFO Fernando Fernandez became CEO. That showed a deep internal dissatisfaction with Unilever’s performance that surprised shareholders AND the business media. Over the past decade Unilever has leaned hard into premium products and influencer marketing.

    “There are 19,000 zip codes in India. There are 5,764 municipalities in Brazil. I want one influencer in each of them,” Fernandez said. “That’s a significant change. It requires a machine of content creation, very different to the one we had in the past . . . ”

    Fernandez wants to lean even harder into influencer marketing. But I thought that there was a delta on this approach given his goal to have higher margin premium brands that are highly desirable.

    “Desirability at scale and marketing activity systems at scale will be the fundamental principles of our marketing strategy”

    Meanwhile Michael Farmer’s newsletter had some datapoints that were very apropos to the Unilever situation.

    “…for the fifty years from 1960 to 2010, the combined FMCG sales of P&G, Unilever, Nestle and Colgate-Palmolive grew at about an 8% compounded annual growth rate per year. The numbers associated with this long-term growth rate are staggering. P&G alone grew from about $1 billion (1960) to $79 billion in 2010. Throughout this period, P&G was the industry’s advocate for the power of advertising, becoming the largest advertiser in the US, with a focus on traditional advertising — digital / social advertising had hardly begun until 2010. Since 2010, with the advent of digital / social advertising, and massive increases in digital / social spend, P&G, Unilever, Nestle and Colgate-Palmolive have grown, collectively, at less than 1% per year, about half the growth rate of the US economy (2.1% per year). They are not the only major advertisers who have grown below GDP rates. At least 20 of the 50 largest advertisers in the US have grown below 2% per year for the past 15 years. Digital and social advertising, of course, have come to dominate the advertising scene since 2010, and it represents, today, about 2/3rds of all advertising spend.”

    Mr Fernandez has quite the Gordian knot to try and solve, one-way or another.

    Automated communications and AI influencers

    Thanks to Stephen Waddington‘s newsletter highlighted a meta-analysis of research papers on the role of automation and generative AI in communications. What’s interesting is the amount of questions that the paper flags, which are key to consideration of these technologies in marketing and advertising. More here.

    LinkedIn performance

    Social Insider has pulled together some benchmarking data on LinkedIn content performance. It helps guide what good looks like and the content types to optimise for on LinkedIn. Register and download here.

    Chart of the month. 

    The FT had some really interesting data points that hinted at a possible longitudinal crisis in various aspects of reasoning and problem solving. There has been few ongoing studies in this area, and it deserves more scrutiny.

    reasoning and problem solving

    In his article Have humans past peak brain power, FT data journalist John Burn-Murdoch makes the case about traits which would support intelligence and innovation from reading, to mathematical reasoning and problem solving have been on a downward trends. The timing of this decline seems to correlate with the rise of the social web.

    If true, over time this may work its way into marketing effectiveness. My best guess would be that rational messages are likely to be less effective in comparison to simple emotional messages with a single-minded intent over time. This should show up in both short term and long term performance. A more cynical view might be that the opportunity for bundling and other pricing complexities could facilitate greater profit margins over time.

    Things I have watched. 

    Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog is a film that I can watch several times over despite the film being over 75 years old now. Detective Murakami’s trek through the neighbourhoods of occupation-era Tokyo and all the actors performances are stunning. The storytelling is amazing and there are set pieces in here that are high points in cinema history. I don’t want to say too much more and spoil it for you, if you haven’t already seen it.

    Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex – Solid State Society – this is a follow on to the original GiTS manga and anime films touches directly on the challenges faced looking after Japan’s aging society. Central to the story is the apparent kidnapping over time of 20,000 children who can’t remember who their parents are. The plot is up to the usual high standard with government intrigue, technical and societal challenges.

    The Wire series one – I stopped and started watching The Wire. Films better suited my focus at the time. I finally started into series one this month. The ensemble cast are brilliant. The show is now 22 years old, yet it has aged surprisingly well. While technology works miracles, the slow methodical approach to building a case is always the same.

    How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster – is a fantastic documentary covering the career of architect Sir Norman Foster. I remember watching it at the ICA when it originally came out and enjoyed watching it again on DVD. Foster brings a similar approach to architecture that Colin Chapman brought to his Lotus cars. When we are now thinking about efficiency and sustainability, their viewpoints feel very forward-thinking in nature.

    Useful tools.

    Fixing the iOS Mail app

    You know something is up when media outlets are writing to you with instructions on how they can remain visible in your inbox. The problem is due to Apple’s revamp of the iPhone’s Mail.app as part of its update to iOS 18.2.

    So how do you do this?

    Open Mail.app and you can see the categorised folders at the top of your screen, under the search bar.

    Find each tab where an a given email has been put. Open the latest edition. Tap the upper right hand corner. Select ‘Categorise Sender’. Choose ‘Primary’ to make sure future emails from this sender are in your main inbox view.

    That’s going to get old pretty soon. My alternative is to toggle between views as it makes sense. Apple’s inbox groupings are handy when you want to quickly find items you can delete quickly. Otherwise the single view makes sense.

    Fixing mail app

    Inspiration for strategists

    Questions are probably the most important tool for strategists. 100 questions offers inspiration so you can focus on the right ones to ask for a given time.

    The sales pitch.

    I have been worked on the interrogation process and building responses to a couple of client new business briefs for friends (Red Robin Ventures and Craft Associates) and am now working a new brand and creative strategy engagement as part of an internal creative agency at Google.

    now taking bookings

    If you’re thinking about strategy needs in Q4 (October onwards) – keep me in mind; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me on YunoJuno and LinkedIn; get my email from Spamty to drop me a line.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my April 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 May bank holidays.

    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.