Category: china | 中國 | 중국 | 中華

Ni hao – this category features any blog posts that relate to the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese communist party, Chinese citizens, consumer behaviour, business, and Chinese business abroad.

It is likely the post will also in other categories too. For example a post about Tong Ren Tang might end up in the business section as well. Inevitably everything is inherently political in nature. At the moment, I don’t take suggestions for subject areas or comments on content for this category, it just isn’t worth the hassle.

Why have posts on China? I have been involved in projects there and had Chinese clients. China has some interesting things happening in art, advertising, architecture, design and manufacturing. I have managed to experience some great and not so great aspects of the country and its businesses.

Opinions have been managed by the omnipresent party and this has affected consumer behaviour. Lotte was boycotted and harassed out of the country. Toyota and Honda cars occasionally go through damage by consumer action during particularly high tensions with Japan.

I put stuff here to allow readers to make up their own minds about the PRC. The size of the place makes things complicated and the only constants are change, death, taxes and the party. Things get even more complicated on the global stage.

The unique nature of the Chinese internet and sheltered business sectors means that interesting Galapagos syndrome type things happen.

I have separate sections for Taiwan and Hong Kong, for posts that are specific to them.

February 2026 newsletter – get up & run edition
February 2026 introduction – (31) get up & run edition

I am now at issue 31, or as a bingo caller would put it ‘get up & run’. In Cantonese 31 isn’t a famous lucky number, it could considered to mean ‘life first’ implying an importance of vitality. On the plus side, it doesn’t have negative connotations of say 14 – which sounds similar to definitely die.

I was sent a mix by an old friend of mine done by Frankie Bones at Amnesia House in August 1990 – as aural history its a fascinating treasure trove and occurred a pivotal time with several genres about to fragment from the original UK scene. Now we have our soundtrack 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.

Things I’ve written.

I appeared in the What’s In My Now newsletter talking small wallets, cheaper alternatives to Apple Studio monitors and making better use of LLMs. More here.

I gave a presentation for Outside Perspective on my Dot LLM era paper. Here is my speaking notes that I prepared as I got the presentation ready, complete with the slides at the relevant points.

I spoke to the WSJ about my dot LLM era thinking and was name-checked on their Take On The Week podcast. And I compared my research with Marc Andreessen’s of A16z 2026 AI outlook here.

I wrote a letter to the FT about Sony surrendering its home entertainment business (TVs, home audio) to Chinese TV maker TCL. While Sony’s current involvement in sectors such as elder care and insurance are worthy endeavours – what does it mean when they are more core to Sony’s identity than the home entertainment equipment that the brand built its empire on?

As well as being a concerned Sony customer, I was also thinking about what it means to a brand when it gets rid of its core raison d’être? You can read my letter here.

I was talking to a friend about classic films and suddenly Matthew Frank’s newsletter dropped in my inbox and started me down a rabbit hole exploring the idea of forgettable cinema as part of the modern public zeitgeist.

I pulled together a collection of adverts and campaigns celebrating lunar new year from across Asia and a couple aimed at the wider diaspora. As brands look to benefit from the year of the fire horse.

ICYMI – Top five shares on LinkedIn
1. Publicis widening the business gap versus its rivals. A decade spent preparing their data and foundational technology for machine learning.
2. WPP’s big pivot to adapt to market conditions for the large holding companies.
3. Dentsu’s change of leadership to better control strategy and manage global capabilities.
4. What Google’s AI bet means for advertisers.
5. Michael Farmer on why reorganisation isn’t strategy, instead strategy should drive any reorganisation to meet the strategic objectives. This one proved a bit controversial, I’m not sure why.
Books that I have read.

While I have been looking forward for David McCloskey’s latest book The Persian to come out, I managed to finish The Seventh Floor. On one level The Seventh Floor is about espionage and feels very now given the new cold war. But it’s also about friendship, loyalty and personal betrayal. McCloskey doesn’t only bring expertise from a past career at the CIA, but also a deep love of the espionage novel as an art form and this novel gives a nod and a wink to the works of John Le Carré.

While the agency world is focused on the rise of AI, I decided to revisit Michael Farmer’s Madison Avenue Manslaughter: An Inside View of Fee-Cutting Clients, Profit-Hungry Owners and Declining Ad Agencies. Ten years after it has been published, the diagnosis and the lessons from Farmer’s research seem to have been ignored by clients and the c-suites of holding groups. One thing I picked up on my revisiting the book was the challenge in defining strategic contribution and effort to campaigns. With creative output, Farmer managed to break down creative tasks into fixed ScopeMetric® Units (SMUs). But Farmer admitted that he couldn’t define strategy outputs in the same way because the context changed account-by-account. This makes sense given the difficulties I have had in the past when strategists were way oversold by the project management function within agencies.

Things I have been inspired by.

Insularity was the watch word of this year’s Edelman’s Trust Barometer. It was a pretty dark vision of the future. There is a huge delta between top income quartile of the population and their trust of authority and the bottom income quartile. In the lower quartile group there is little to no trust in authority figures (business, journalists, government). They only trust people like them.

Andrew Tindall published a new book for System1 based on their research and Effie data which reinforces previous publications by Orlando Wood, Les Binet, Peter Field and Byron Sharp at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. It also reinforces the importance of context as part of creativity when media and creative functions are co-joined at the hip. It’s very readable and available for free here.

Chart of the month.

The surge of US measles infections turned into a politicised debate about vaccinations, competence, why Canada’s rates were even higher and whether things were as bad as experts would have you believe?

The chart only tells part of the story.

The US CDC cites a general hospitalisation rate of about 20% (1 in 5 cases), recent years have seen significant fluctuations depending on the specific age groups and regions affected by measles outbreaks.

The “Age Factor”: The high rates in 2022 and 2024 were largely due to the virus hitting children under five—the age group most likely to develop severe complications like pneumonia.
- 2022 – driven by an outbreak in Ohio, which had a high paediatric hospitalisation rate.
- 2024 – remained high throughout the year with nearly half of cases affecting children under 5.
Outbreak Size vs. Severity: In 2025, even though the total case count surged, the percentage of people requiring hospital care fell. This often happens when an outbreak moves beyond high-risk “pockets” into a broader, sometimes older, population.
- 2023 – outbreaks in unvaccinated high-risk clusters.
- 2025 – hospitalisation rates dropped because the virus spread to older demographics and larger, but less severe clusters
- 2026 – infections in January had few children under 5 affected. Cases were able to be managed at home.
Vaccination Impact: Across all these years, the vast majority (over 90%) of hospitalised patients were either unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status.

Canada’s rates are high because the population has a significant amount of unvaccinated immigrants and refugees from conflict zones and the developing world.

Things I have watched.

Thomas Harris’ Silence of The Lambs still has legs in culture. Which is why Amazon Prime Video has gone back to the universe with Clarice. The story takes place in the aftermath of the buffalo Bill killings which drove the plot of Silence of the Lambs. The storytelling is top notch with a fantastic plot twist in episode 1. It is well worth your time to at least give the first few episodes a chance.

It started off in an unpromising way, several years ago a friend left a DVD with me. They said something along the lines of they liked a number of Werner Herzog films, but that this was too weird for them. I finally got to sit down and watch Fata Morgana.

It doesn’t have a story, but is beautifully shot footage of the Sahara and Sahel in 1969 with a focus on near horizon mirages (from which the film gets its name) and features the human effect on it from vistas of oil processing equipment to barbed wire and crashed planes.

There is a poetic narration in German over the top with a range of music to flt the landscapes. It feels like a forerunner of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi made a decade later. It’s easy to watch.

I spent a weekend with my Dad going through old VHS cassettes and on one of them we found Four Fast Guns. It is a surprisingly good Hollywood western. While not a John Ford film, it has a grittiness due to superior character development and tight storytelling reminiscent of the very best spaghetti westerns. The film was produced by an independent studio and featured three well recognised character actors as its star performers.
- Edgar Buchanan acted alongside the likes of Clint Eastwood, James Garner, John Wayne, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott he went on to appear in several TV series that I remember watching on repeat as a child in Ireland including The Beverley Hillbillies and The Twilight Zone.
- Martha Vickers had appeared in The Big Sleep alongside Lauren Bacall.
- James Craig had acted alongside everyone from John Wayne to Boris Karloff.
This gave the director much more creative freedom to make the performances pop on-screen. The climatic plot twist is very good.

I was inspired by watching Reflection in a Dead Diamond last month to watch Danger: Diabolik. The psychadelic motifs of and dream sequences of Reflection in a Dead Diamond seemed to draw from European cinema’s brief flirtation with super spy and super villain films during the 1960s. Danger: Diabolik was Mario Bava’s and Dino DeLaurentis’ take on the French Fantômas film series.

Bava’s expertise in genre films and special effects gives Danger: Diabolik a more sophisticated look than you would give it credit. Add in the film’s 1960s modernist aesthetic, James Bond type action sequences and you have a winning film. The humour-heist plot is very of its time but still entertaining and cried out for a remake. Terry-Thomas’ character performance as a government minister in the film is one of brilliance.

Useful tools.

I was saddened to read of the demise of The World Fact Book published by the CIA. I found it invaluable as a starting point when getting up to speed on international campaigns on parts of the world that I hadn’t visited. It even helped me win some work with Telenor Myanmar back before the current military regime got back into power. According to this post on the CIA website the World Fact Book is going away.

This personal productivity playbook by CJ Casseili was interesting to read and some of you may find tips and tricks that you can apply in your own work and personal life.

Ilina Scott’s quick guide to AI tools for strategists is worth a read if you are just dipping your toe in the field.

Occasionally software comes along what doesn’t become a mainstream success, but is well loved and much missed when it disappeared. Apple’s HyperCard was one, another was Yahoo! Pipes. The idea behind Pipes has been resurrected and in its latest iteration is very useful, even in a time of AI-with-everything.

The sales pitch.

i am a strategist who thrives on the “meaty brief”—the kind where deep-tech or complexity, business goals, and human culture collide.

With over a decade of experience across the UK, EMEA, and JAPAC, I specialise in bridging the gap between high-level strategy and creative execution. I was embedded within Google Cloud’s brand creative team, where I helped navigate the “messy steps” of global pivots and the rapid rise of Gen AI. And have recently been helping out agencies and startups in various sectors.

My approach is simple: I use insight and analytics to find the “surprise” in the strategy. Whether it’s architecting an experiential event or defining a social narrative for a SaaS powerhouse, I focus on making complex brands feel human and high-velocity businesses feel accessible.

The Strategic Toolkit:
- Brand & Creative Strategy: From B2B infrastructure to luxury travel.
- AI-Enhanced Planning: Deeply literate in Google Gemini and prompt engineering to accelerate insights and creative output.
- Multi-Sector Versatility: A proven track record across Tech & SaaS (Google Cloud, Semiconductors), Consumer Goods (FMCG, Beauty, Health), and High-Interest Categories (Luxury, Sports Apparel, Pharma).
I am officially open for new adventures with immediate effect. If you have a challenge that needs a all-in, hit-the-ground-running strategic lead, let’s talk.

More on what I have done here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my February 2026 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and good luck with your new year’s resolutions. As an additional treat here is a link to a presentation I gave to the Outside Perspective crew, in Adobe Acrobat format.

Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful as this helps other people and the algorithmic gods of Google Search and the various LLMs that are blurring what web search means nowadays.

Get in touch and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on Substack as well as LinkedIn.
February 25, 2026

2026 AI outlook of Marc Andreessen

2026 AI outlook introduction

Marc Andreessen’s 2026 AI outlook was published by A16z. As one of the leading funder of Silicon Valley startups, his world view matters.

I’ve gone through and contrasted his 2026 AI outlook through the lens of the viewpoint I researched and wrote up. The core point over where we differ: Andreessen see’s the dawn of a new unbound industrial revolution. Whereas I think that the upside he sees is hard to navigate to; and also risk mirroring the echoes of financial bubbles past in many of the high profile pure play AI companies like OpenAI or C3.ai.

Andreessen has been the quintessential techno-optimist for at least the past two decades with his emblematic essay Why Software Is Eating the World. His worldview is of an industry where demand is insatiable and revenue is undeniably real.

Like Andreessen in his 2026 AI outlook, I would agree that players like Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft are making money to variable degrees from their AI offerings as part of cloud computing and productivity software bundles.

But in my view there are two aspects of concern:

Pure plays with the notable exception of Anthropic don’t seem to have a clear path to profitability in a time period that would match their implied future revenues based on loans and valuations.
Hyperscalers like Meta and Microsoft are using unusual partnerships to fund their infrastructure and have been inconsistent over how fast they would depreciate their AI computing hardware.

Both Mr Andreessen and myself agree that we are witnessing a technological shift of seismic proportions, arguably, “bigger than the internet” as he put it.

I think that change will happen slower in the short term due to an economic sand box acting as a rate limiter on infrastructure and derived labour efficiencies. In particular, the economic viability of the infrastructure being built to support it.

The Nature of the Boom: Real Revenue or Irrational Exuberance?

A key question is the the solidity of the current market.

For Andreessen, the AI boom is not a speculation fuelled exercise but a demand-driven reality. He argues that unlike the early internet, which required years of physical infrastructure build-out before finding business models, AI is generating cash immediately.

“This new wave of AI companies is growing revenue like… actual customer revenue, actual demand translated through to dollars showing up in bank accounts at like an absolutely unprecedented takeoff rate.”

Andreessen points to “revealed preferences”, observed insight from what people do is more insightful than what they say when asked by market researchers. While the US and European publics express fear of job losses, they are simultaneously adopting AI tools at a fast pace.

My “Dot LLM Era” report, however, suggests this revenue may be dwarfed by the capital expenditure required to generate it.

It posits that the sector faces a “self-defeating economic” cycle. The report highlights that the current valuations of the “Magnificent 10” tech giants (including Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet) imply a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 35 times. This is alarmingly close to the S&P 500’s P/E ratio at the peak of the dot-com boom, which approached 33.

In the report I warn that current valuations assume LLMs will drive revenue growth by $1–4 trillion in the next two years.

If this growth is achieved through massive job automation, the resulting unemployment could depress the very economy needed to sustain these companies. Like the 2008 financial crisis, this would invite various forms of regulatory intervention.

This implies a sweet spot between speed of productivity gains versus efficiencies in terms of job losses realised by clients – and acts as a break on the velocity of adoption.

The Infrastructure Trap: The Amortisation Crisis

Perhaps the most critical technical divergence between our viewpoints concerns the hardware powering this revolution.

The “Dot LLM Era” report introduces a chilling concept: Amortisation Risk. It draws a comparison to the “telecoms bubble” of the late 90s, where companies laid massive amounts of fibre optic cable.

The Telecoms Analogy: Fibre optic cable had a useful life of over a decade, meaning even after the companies went bust (like WorldCom), the infrastructure remained useful for Web 2.0.
The AI Reality: Modern AI infrastructure relies on GPUs and TPUs. These processors have a useful life of only 3 to 5 years before becoming technically obsolete.

The report argues that if an AI bust occurs, the hardware will not be waiting for a resurgence; it will be electronic waste.

Hyperscalers are currently lengthening the assumed useful lives of this hardware in their financial filings—Google to 6 years, Meta to 5 years—which the report suggests may artificially overstate profits and adversely affect competitors with debt securitised against AI data centre hardware.

The rapid obsolescence of chips represents a “financial and technological amortisation risk” that could lead to trillions in write-offs, similar to the $180 billion loss left by WorldCom.

Andreessen views this hardware cycle through a different lens: Elasticity.

He acknowledges that massive investment leads to gluts, but argues that “the number one cause of a glut is a shortage”. He believes the price of AI compute is falling “much faster than Moore’s Law”.

As prices collapse, demand will expand exponentially. If chips become cheap and plentiful, AI can be embedded into everything, moving from massive “God models” in data centres down to small models running on local devices.

Geopolitics: The US-China Race

Both Andreessen and I agree that the AI landscape is a bipolar contest between the United States and China, but their assessments of the leaderboard differ.

Andreessen frames this as a “new Cold War” where the US must maintain dominance. He is encouraged by the “DeepSeek moment”, referring to a powerful open-source model released by a Chinese hedge fund. To him, this proves that catching up is possible and that the US cannot rest on its laurels. He advocates for open source as a way to proliferate American standards globally.

I offer a more sobering assessment of American pre-eminence. I argue that unlike the 1990s “Long Boom,” where the US was the undisputed hegemon; the current era is defined by high debt and strong competition. The US maybe on the Soviet side of a Reagan era ‘Space Defence Initative (aka Star Wars)’ AI race from an economic perspective.

Alibaba’s Qwen model claims to deliver comparable performance to American models while requiring 82% fewer Nvidia processors to run.
China doesn’t have a electrical power crunch in the same way that western data centres have due to its sustained investment in coal, nuclear, gas and renewable power sources.
Even Silicon Valley investors and major companies like Airbnb are opting for Chinese open-source models because they are “way more performant and much cheaper”.

Andreessen worries about regulation stifling US innovation, I think that the real geopolitical threats are:

China’s ability to operate largely immune to US sanctions, smuggling chips and utilising data centres in neutral geographies like Malaysia.
China’s speed at propagating the use of AI within its own populace, driving utility at a lower cost per token than their US competitors with state regulation defining trial ‘sand pits’. This will drive new uses faster in China and in China’s client states across the global south.

The Outcome: Transformation or “Minsky Moment”?

Where is this all heading? Andreessen is betting on a future where AI becomes as ubiquitous and essential as electricity. He envisions a “pyramid” structure: a few massive “God models” at the top, cascading down to billions of specialised, cheap models running on edge devices. He admits these are “trillion-dollar questions,” but his firm is aggressively investing in every viable strategy.

I think that LLMs will make a sustained technological impact, but it will be limited in velocity by economic boundaries. In the “Dot LLM Era” report, I outlined seven potential scenarios, ranging from total transformation to total collapse. Currently, it assigns a ~95% likelihood to the “Moral Hazard” scenario.

The Moral Hazard: This scenario posits that major AI players will be considered “too big to fail” due to national security imperatives. Governments will step in with loan guarantees and subsidies to backstop the massive infrastructure debts, effectively nationalising the risk . Rather like the banks during the 2008 financial crisis.
The Telecoms Bust: With a ~75% likelihood, the report fears a “Minsky Moment”, a sudden market collapse driven by the realisation that cash flows cannot cover the massive debts incurred to build short-lived data centres.

Comparative Summary of Perspectives

Feature	Marc Andreessen (The techno-optimist)	My own view (The economic limiting skeptic)
Current Phase	Inning 1. “Biggest technological revolution of my life.”	Phase 1: The boom / The Inflation of a bubble.
Revenue	Real, unprecedented, showing up in bank accounts.	Potentially illusory for at least some players; reliant on untenable cost savings.
Infrastructure	Shortages lead to gluts; cheap chips drive adoption.	Amortisation risk: hardware obsolescence in 3-5 years.
Pricing	Usage-based is great for startups; prices falling fast.	Pure-play LLMs selling tokens below marginal cost (burning cash).
Geopolitics	A race the US must win; open source is key.	US dominance challenged; Chinese models are more efficient and effective enough for organisations from Singapore to Silicon Valley to adopt them.
Outcome	Long-term ubiquity; widespread prosperity.	Technological change bounded by economic limitations. Current high risk of “Minsky Moment” or government bailouts.

Conclusion: The Trillion-Dollar Questions

Marc Andreessen candidly admits that “companies… need to answer these questions and if they get the answers wrong, they’re really in trouble”. His firm’s strategy is to bet on everything: large models, small models, apps, and infrastructure. He is doing this on the assumption that the aggregate wave will lift all boats.

My ‘Dot LLM Era’ report offers a counterweight to this enthusiasm. A bubble decouples technological and financial progress. Technological utility does not always equal investor profit. As I note in ‘Dot LLM Era’, “Bubbles don’t kill technology from moving forwards”. The internet did change everything, but it also wiped out trillions in shareholder value along the way.

The defining question for the next five years is whether the demand for AI can grow fast enough to pay for the hardware before that hardware becomes obsolete.

If Andreessen is right, this elasticity of demand would save the day. If I am right, we may be heading for the most expensive recycling project in human history.

The Productivity Paradox and Society

A fascinating tension exists between Andreessen’s view of societal adoption and my own macroeconomic warnings regarding productivity and labour.

The “Wingman” Economy vs. The Phillips Curve

Andreessen describes a “symbiotic relationship” where AI acts as a productivity multiplier: a “wingman” for doctors, coders, and writers. He argues that higher pricing in SaaS can actually benefit the customer by funding better R&D, suggesting a cycle of value creation.

I argue that the wingman sweetspot is optimal but tricky to land, in the report I showed the risk through a darker macroeconomic “thought experiment.” It used the Phillips Curve and Okun’s Law to model what happens if Andreessen AI scenario succeeds too well.

The Thought Experiment: If AI automation generates $1 trillion in cost savings through job cuts, it implies approximately 10.5 million unemployed US workers.
The Consequence: Such a spike in unemployment could trigger deflation and a massive drop in GDP. This is “self-defeating economics”: the hyperscalers need a healthy economy to consume their services, yet their success might undermine the investor, enterprise customer and consumer base.

Andreessen counters this fear by citing historical context. He notes the “Committee for the Triple Revolution” in 1964, warned Lyndon B. Johnson that automation would ruin the economy—a prediction that proved false. He believes AI will follow the path of electricity or the internet: initially terrifying, eventually indispensable.

Automation did displace a massive amount of developed world jobs moving at a much slower pace than Andreessen predicted for AI. Electricity moved at an equally slow pace compared to the pace envisioned by AI’s champions.

The Open Source Debate

Both of us agree that the role of open source is pivotal in both narratives.

For Andreessen, open source is the great accelerator. He marvels at how knowledge is proliferating: “Some of the best AI people in the world are like 22, 23, 24”. He views the leak of knowledge as inevitable and beneficial for US competitiveness, provided the US stays ahead.

I analysed the “Red Hat Analogue.” It suggests that in the dot-com era, open-source (Linux) won, but the companies that built the models (or distributions) mostly failed, with Red Hat being the notable exception.

I assigned a ~70-80% likelihood to the “Red Hat Model,” where pure-play LLM creators (like OpenAI or Anthropic) might struggle to justify their capital burn as open-source models like Meta’s Llama or Alibaba’s Qwen commoditise the intelligence.

We have already seen Singapore’s national AI programme drop Llama for Alibaba’s Qwen, reinforcing the idea that the value might accrue to those who service the models, not those who create them.

Final Thoughts

The divergence between Marc Andreessen and my own analysis is not about whether AI works both of us would agree that the technology can be magical and transformative. The disagreement is about who pays for it, how that affects the velocity of AI and who profits.

Andreessen sees a future of abundance where falling prices drive infinite demand.

My own view sees a future of financial reckoning shaping the 2026 AI outlook where shorter hardware lifespans and brutal competition erode margins, setting a slower pace at which we reach Andreessen’s abundance.

Andreessen’s viewpoint reminded me a lot of mid-20th century aspirations for nuclear power. Nuclear power offered a similar vision in the mid-20th century of electricity too cheap to meter. That was never close to being achieved in the likes of France – arguably the most passionate adopter.

As with the railway mania of the 1840s or the optical fibre boom of the 1990s, society may inherit a significant infrastructure, with a shorter lifespan built on the ashes of investor capital.

Our differing views boil down to a question for the 2026 AI outlook: are we in the “boom” phase, or are we staring down the barrel of the “amortisation crisis”?

As Andreessen himself concluded, “These are trillion-dollar questions, not answers”.

February 22, 2026

CNY 2026
Chinese new year CNY 2026 also known as lunar new year, spring festival or Tết festival. 2026 marks the year of the fire horse. In the same way that the Super Bowl and Christmas are the stand out times of the year for advertising in the US and Europe, CNY 2026 will be the same for much of east Asia and Southeast Asia.

There has a large amount of tradition and rituals around celebrating the festival, which are rich seams of inspiration for strategists and marketing moments.

I featured an advert from Brunei for the first time.

As with previous years, Malaysia had a lot of campaigns running, many of which were partnerships with local musicians to collaborate on a seasonal song. One of the advantages of partnering with local musicians is their ability to cross post on their own channels broadening the videos reach.

In the Malaysian adverts that were storyteller driven, coping with aging relatives suffering with dementia came through as a common social theme.

Social video has been a great leveller. I have a featured a few videos from small businesses this year which were nicely executed despite operating with minimal budgets.

Coca-Cola in China was notable in that it showed strategic thinking closer to what we now see in the west with social-first ‘Instagrammable’ tactics.

Australia

Godiva

Anywhere up to 8 percent of Australia’s population have some connection to China, which explains why Godiva have done a Chinese new year themed range of chocolates.

Brunei

Flower Journal

Flower Journal is a florist shop based in Brunei, yet they have created a cinematic advert with great storytelling. The craft is arguably better than a number of the big brands featured this year. The work by local agency Cinekota really impressed me.

China

Adidas

Adidas made a film about a school football team and focuses on how the team is a ‘football family’. Reuniting with family is an important part of lunar new year. It’s also about looking forward to the future, hence the children’s wishes.

Apple

TBWA\ Media Arts, Shanghai teamed up with film director Bai Xue for Apple’s CNY 2026 advertisement. The film joins Apple’s series of ‘shot on an iPhone‘ mini movies.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola China took a social and experiential approach focused around togetherness. A drone show in Chongqing paired with fireworks that are considered part of China’s intangible cultural heritage was supported by social video clips of a famous father and daughter.

All of this was to address young adults dual sense of togetherness during spring festival as mainland Chinese call CNY 2026. Being together with friends a la Friends and This Life, as well as more traditional family connections.

Valentino

Valentino put relatively subtle lunar new year symbols into a Chinese take on an American diner. The galloping horse zoetrope and red accents throughout the restaurant from neon signs to red floor tiles. As for the film itself, it’s basically a video lookbook.

Hong Kong

Hang Seng Bank

Hang Seng Bank ties into the the importance of welcoming good fortune into your life at Chinese New Year. Celebrities dress as the god of good fortune giving wishes for flourishing prosperity to different neighbourhoods across Hong Kong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqYWpeDrtZ8

Malaysia

AEON

Japanese supermarket chain AEON did a Malaysian market specific film featuring a mix of well known entertainers. The giddy up line telegraphing its horse related theme and the cultural impact of K-pop is evident in the whole video.

Affin Bank

Affin Bank is consistent in their lunar new year campaigns. Each year they tell of how a famous business customer battled adversity to succeed. This time it was Malaysian book retailer BookXcess.

Affinity

Affinity is a Malaysian estate agent. The video creative is a pretty run of the mill reenactment of Chinese new year with the horse head mask hinting at the CNY 2026 theme. The song itself is a bit an ear worm.

Air Selangor

Air Selangor hits you with a gut punch of an emotional Chinese New Year story that felt like it came straight of the Thai advertising agencies rather than Malaysia. (Thai agencies are famous for wringing you through an emotional shredder leaving you drained after an insurance ad).

Alpro

Malaysia’s largest prescription pharmacy chain put together a humorous new year film based around the mechanic of three wishes.

AmBank

The film melds together traditions around fabric sharing and lion dance to tell a Chinese new year story of a community coming together.

Astro

Astro is a Malaysian holding company that has a mix of linear TV, connected TV and radio assets. Think the reach of the BBC, but a private enterprise.

Bamboo Green Florist

Bamboo Green Florist is a single shop business based in Penang. For a small business their Chinese new year advert punches above its weight.

Coca-Cola

The first of two appearances in this list by Malaysian group 3P.

GVRide

GVRide is a Malaysian ride hailing app, they sponsored a new year song music video by Namewee alongside other brands.

IJM Land

IJM Land is a Malaysian property developer (part of a larger conglomerate). They position themselves as “one of Malaysia’s property development”. The film sits at the tension between the love of heritage, accumulating wealth and the non-monetary aspects of CNY 2026 – coming together, family, building memories and legacy.

JinYeYe

JinYeYe sell seasonal hampers, so lunar new year is their peak sales time. Their advert is targeted at the global Chinese diaspora and they partnered with Tourism Malaysia alongside local musicians. A bee is considered to a symbol of blessings and represents sweetness, hope and companionship.

https://youtu.be/0YvLVF4TJAE?si=sn4nMWPwykr7WzjM

Lee Kum Kee

Hong Kong’s Lee Kum Lee were the inventors of oyster sauce and have a place in every Asian kitchen cupboard. But their advert is weak sauce (pun intended) that could have been knocked out on PowerPoint.

Listerine

Listerine just straight up sponsored the video of Malaysian producers 1119 for this new year themed music video.

Loong Kee

Loong Kee is a Malaysian food company who makes everything from processed meats to baked goods. This is at least the third year that they have partnered with local musicians who are internet-famous to collaborate on a new year themed song.

Lotus

Lotus supermarket was formerly part of Tesco’s international footprint before the UK brand divested itself of its international stores to Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group. This advert taps into family friction and a couple of nice wushu cinema referencing touches. It reminded me a lot of SingTel’s films from previous years.

It handles the diversity of Malaysia well, without the awkward approach that Malaysian Airlines went for.

Malaysian Airlines

Malaysian Airlines focuses on Malaysians coming home. Given that the airline is a government company. While ethically Chinese, and speaking Chinese at home – the woman is a devote muslim.

In reality that’s about 1-2% of the ethnic Chinese population – for ethno-political, social and cultural reasons that I don’t want to get into on this post. The video is as much about a government approved theme as it is about the airline.

Marrybrown

Marrybrown is a Malaysian quick service restaurant. It is really nice how the story moves through time with relatively small but important cues on screen.

Maxis

Malaysian broadband provider took an unusual angle bringing together two erstwhile business rivals in a spirit of shared community.

McDonalds Malaysia

Great storytelling but with a serious topic as middle-aged siblings deal with an aging parent with signs of dementia.

Nescafé Gold

Instant coffee brand Nescafé Gold goes down the sponsored music video route. But with a few noticeable differences:
- Better product placement that articulates the customer moment.
- A more diverse cast than most of the other adverts.
- The video title Gongxi Kemeriahan – is a mix of mandarin and malay – gongxi meaning best wishes or congratulations and kemeriahan means excitement.
All of which are likely to because of Nestlé being a western multinational and the marketers are looking to target all Malaysians rather than just ethnic Chinese.

PMG Healthcare

PMG Healthcare is a regional provider of pharmacies, medical and dental clinics to private health insurance customers.

Mr Potato

Mr Potato is a local potato chip brand in Malaysia. Their CNY 2026 advert is a spoof of the Jackie Chan kung fu film Drunken Master.

Public Bank

Public Bank is a Malaysian headquartered bank. This year they have done an AR-based activation. Each Chinese new year you can go into your bank and get a pack of red envelopes and crisp new bills to give out to family, friends and junior colleagues. So this execution makes sense.

RHB

Malaysian bank RHB continued its theme of inspiring stories told in previous Chinese New Year campaigns through to its CNY 2026 campaign. This year tells the story of Komuniti Tukang Jahit, a small tailors shop that empowers women through sewing skills and fair income opportunities.

Setia

Malaysian house builder Setia takes a lighter comedic approach telling the story of a family’s new year celebration through the eyes of its youngest member. Its lightness of tone is in contrast to other adverts this year which are more of an emotional rollercoaster.

Shopee

Singaporean e-commerce platform Shopee partnered with local act 3P to a Chinese New Year song for its Malaysian ad campaign. Thoughout Asia lunar new year songs and playlists are all over TV, films, Spotify and YouTube playlists. This leans right into that trend.

SPD Racing

SPD Racing is a small workshop that service motorcycles and sell after market parts. This short video is really nicely executed, replacing parts on the motorcycle with red fittings in the same way that people would wear new red outfits on Chinese new year for good luck.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1x7RpOLHcTA

Tenaga

Tenaga is a Malaysian electrical utility. There is a nice bit of storytelling about a lion dance troupe. This could be rerun in future years given its lack of specificity to CNY 2026.

U Mobile

U Mobile is a Malaysian wireless operator. Their advert focuses on on the travel use case over lunar new year as more people travel rather than staying at home.

UCSI University

USCI is part of Malaysia’s private education system that sprang out of the positive discrimination of successive Malaysian governments towards Malays in comparison to Chinese and South Asian Malaysians. This was enshrined in article 153 of the Malaysian constitution, New Economic Policy, National Development Policy, National Vision Policy and the concept of Ketuanan Melayu which continues to be a pillar of government decision-making.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILuFokNxHck

In common with several other films here this year it focuses on the treasure of memories built over the festival and also has a dementia plot line.

Vida C

Vida C is kind of like an energy drink, in a number of Asian countries high vitamin C content is used in the same way that taurine and caffeine are in western energy drinks. They did a relatively subtle product placement in this comedic music video. It’s much less PC than western multinationals would allow.

Watsons

Watson’s is the Boots of Asia. Like previous years it tells a story of family coming together with the joy and chaos that usually ensues. It features Maria Cordero – a Macau born entertainer, radio and TV personality with a famous cooking show based in Hong Kong – but known throughout the region.

Singapore

Carlsberg

Carlsberg launched a pan-Asian campaign with a mix of horse themed packaging design and having it promoted by SKAI ISYOURGOD – a popular Malaysian rapper with appeal across Asia.

FairPrice

Singapore supermarket chain FairPrice focused on the small family moments of the new year celebrations and their ability to build lasting memories. The advert was created by TBWA\ Singapore.

Grab

At first I thought that this ad was aimed at the Malaysian market, but I think it’s aimed at both Singapore and Malaysia. It would work in either, even though some of the brands are Malaysia only like JayaGrocer. It’s unusual because of the amount of brand collabs in it, count them:
- Vinda tissues
- 7Up
- GXBank
- Jasmine SunWhite Rice
- JayaGrocer
- Kyochon Chicken
- Oriental Kopi
- Subway
Secondly, there was the filming of an ad within the ad concept that Orson Welles would have enjoyed.

LVMH

LVMH’s drinks portfolio has been suffering from declining sales. Family get togethers are an ideal consumption moment, so it makes sense that Hennessy leant in with special packaging and a Singapore family reunion ‘kit’.

SIMBA

Australian owned mobile network SIMBA did a very simple sales promotion which is very much in keeping with its value proposition , but the horses are nicely done.

Singapore government

A comedic short film with relatively light social engineering aiming at harmonious relationships and community during CNY 2026. The family were framed as being salt-of-the-earth Singaporean Chinese living in old HDB flat. The universal food photography was very on point.

Taiwan

Coca-Cola

Coke did a really simple sales promotion with a giveaway competition attached to each purchase.

United States

Panda Express

Panda Express is an American fast food chain that specialises in American Chinese food. It kind of sits outside usual lunar new year traditions becoming a Roald Dahl style fantasy.

Vietnam

Coca-Cola

Really simple creative by Coca-Cola. They missed a trick by not creating something as iconic as the US Coca-Cola truck adverts. Instead they phoned in the creative with this spot.

Ensure Gold

Abbott Health’s Ensure Gold is a Complan-type drink designed to fortify health and restore strength. The film uses family union traditions to focus on the past, recover during the Tết festival and look to the future with a shared sense of resilience. The theme is even reflected when the family does traditional ancestor worship and we hear the wishes of their departed family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdSib8exz6I

Home Credit

Home Credit are an online financial services company. They provide credit cards, vehicle loans, pre-payment accounts and instalment payments for consumer products. The advert focuses on everyday people and how they prepare for Tết, including decorating the home, getting new clothes and a new karaoke machine for the family gathering.

Mirinda

Mirinda is a Vietnamese soft drinks brand similar to Tango. Their adverts were noticeable for their shortness. They were running 3 five-second spots and two 15-second spots. No real story, but there is energy, brand colours feature heavily and it gives off a joyous vibe.

MyKingdom

MyKingdom is a Vietnamese toy retailer similar to Toys R Us. Their mobile first content focuses on the challenges of parents looking to buy toys that will last longer than the spring festival.

https://youtube.com/shorts/EjSu9ybiwwo?si=NWMbimjWHizp9faY

Sunhouse

Sunhouse is a home electronics brand. Everything from kitchen appliances to to cookware.

In the advert, they focus on starting the new year healthy, there is a belief in starting the new year as you would like it to go on.

Viettel

Wireless carrier Viettel subverts the idea of a family reunion storyline during Tết. Instead when the family can’t come home, an uncle visits his family members around the country.

As I find more CNY 2026 campaigns I will add them here.

Past years

CNY 2025

CNY 2024

CNY 2023

CNY 2021

CNY 2019

CNY 2018
February 12, 2026
January 2026 newsletter
January 2026 introduction – (30) the dirty Gertie edition

I am now at issue 30, or as a bingo caller would put it ‘dirty gertie’. This phrase was the nickname given in the 1920s to a statue called by La Délivrance by French sculptor Émile Guillaume.

The statue was created to celebrate the German army having being stopped before Paris in World War 1. It was originally called La Victoire – there is a matching statue in Nantes, France.

1960s student activists claimed that you shouldn’t trust anyone over the age of 30, making a virtue of ageism. While activists were deeply suspicious, 30 in Cantonese is considered to be lucky as the number three sounds like alive or life.

It might be winter outside, but it doesn’t need to be winter in your head thanks to Graeme Park’s Best of 2025 part 1 which is two and a half hours of goodness. 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.

Things I’ve written.

Each year, I try and write an account of year as it happens. It provides a perspective on what appeared important at the time rather than in retrospect. Here’s the one I did for 2025.

The Dot LLM Era came out of my thinking about the massive expenditure in building infrastructure and the computing power needed by AI services like OpenAI and Anthropic, asking how it will be paid for and what it means for for business, consumers, investors and technologies.

There was so much happening from childhood beauty product usage alarming dermatologists to corporate and national moves in AI sovereignty. So I captured some of the most interesting of them here.

Books that I have read.

Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything. Mazzucato’s work was reflected in the Labour Party’s economic manifesto during the 2024 general election. The book does a good job of diagnosing the current challenges that the UK economy faces at the present time. More on the book here.

How to Write a Good Advertisement: a short course in copywriting by Victor O. Schwab. During the CoVID lockdown, I picked up several books on my craft. This was one of them. Schwab wrote this book in 1962, when his audience would have been predominantly writing advertising copy for campaigns run predominantly in newspapers – but all of the principles in the book remain solid. More on the book here.

Things I have been inspired by.

Every time I get a brief that defines an audience as a generation my heart sinks a bit for several reasons. Which is why I was glad to read this Ipsos View Point and share it as widely as possible. Generational Marketing: Breaking free from stereotypes provides research on the nuances missed by a generational approach, how we differ by age cohort and life stage, alongside what brings us together as common challenges.

While it won’t get as much ink as Christmas or Super Bowl adverts the CIA kicked off January with another video aimed at recruiting Chinese agents. They advised them to use a VPN and Tor browser to get in touch with them online.

Chart of the month.

After I came back to London after working on various brands including Colgate in Asia, I noticed that all the Colgate adverts followed a standard formula. It puzzled me: the ads were distinctive by their ‘undistinctiveness’. They had no emotion and a limited number of brand cues beyond name checks and a pack shot or two.

If like me, you’ve ever wondered why Colgate toothpaste adverts (in Europe at least) always seem to be based around a dentist or dental nurse (who may, or may not be a generative AI) character, then Ipsos Veracity Index 2025, may have the answer.

The Ipsos Veracity Index, is a great piece of longitudinal research launched in 1983. It does an annual poll studying change in public trust towards leading professions in Britain. Much of the headlines for this year was the low trust position scored by influencers, with just 6% of people generally trusting them to tell the truth.

I think that number has a number of problems with it, to do with the phrase general which would invite them to think about creators they don’t follow at least as much as those that they do follow. Secondly, not all influencer types are supposed to be trusted be it being videos on e-gaming play, humour and general ‘banter’ or shock jock-type content.

As Ipsos themselves noted, there was a tension between the declared trust level with the amount of news consumption that now happens on social channels from influencers.

Getting back to the Colgate question, the answer is at the top of the table. Healthcare professionals and technical experts are at the most trusted professions in the UK.

Things I have watched.

The TV schedule was terrible over the Christmas period and there were only so many reruns of Jessie Stone that even my Dad can sit through. So I entertained him with a mix of streamed films, old VHS tapes, DVDs and Blu-Rays.

Reflection in a Dead Diamond directed by Hélène Cattet and impressed the hell out of me. At its heart it’s a mystery full of illusion, delusion and deception. It oscillates between two timelines one from the late sixties on and the second as an elderly version of the protagonist in the present day. In his day, the protagonist had been a Francophone James Bond-type figure, but darker like Fleming’s novels rather than the version that we see on screen. There are also hints of modern French historical figures like Alfred Sirven and Jean-Claude Veillard. The film has a lot of French new wave motifs particularly at its beginning. I was reminded of Alain Delon’sTraitement de choc , Diabolik and the André Hunebelle directed OSS 117 series of films in the mid-1960s.

Bubblegum Crash – no that isn’t a typo. Bubblegum Crash was a follow on from the Bubblegum Crisis manga and OVA (original video animation – made for direct to video distribution without being broadcast or shown in a cinema first) anime series. I had these on VHS tape at my parent’s house and it was fantastic revisiting them decades later. Bubblegum Crash is less serious and the artwork isn’t as good as the original series, but it’s still great cyberpunk fiction.

It felt surprisingly fresh, wealth inequality, get rich schemes, large corporations behaving badly, an openly gay police officer, autonomous machines from robots to cars and normalised smartphone usage.

All this from an animated series that was produced in 1991, at this time robots were stuck in car plants, AI was image stabilisation in the latest high-end camcorders and handheld mobile phones were over 20cm long in use. Cellphones were only starting to become less than a kilogram in weight with the launch of Motorola’s MicroTAC in 1989.

Detective vs Sleuths – a Johnnie To-adjacent film that a friend in Hong Kong gifted to me. The film was directed by Wai Ka-fai who collaborated with To and co-founded production company Milkyway Image together. Detective vs Sleuths feels thematically and stylistically similar to Mad Detective which Wai co-directed with To in 2007. That similarity brought me back to happier days flying on Cathay Pacific, sipping Hong Kong-style milk tea and watching Mad Detective soon after it had came out for the first time on the airplane entertainment system.

Without spoiling the plot, old cold cases are having new light shone on them by a series of deaths. Sean Lau plays a Nietzsche-quoting former detective with his own sanity in question.

Production-wise, the film was shot in 2018, was in post-production until 2019 and finally released after the worst of CoVID was over in 2022. If you are a passionate Hong Kong film watcher, then you will notice the similarities with Mad Detective; but Detective vs Sleuths still holds up as a really enjoyable inventive film with a number of surprises for the audience.

Useful tools.

Kinopio – quick lightweight service similar to Miro and MilanNote.

Clean Links – for iPhone, iPad and Mac cleans out tracking codes from URLs when you share them, for instance in a Slack conversation.

Not a tool per se, but a technique that started on Chromium browsers and is now more widely supported, scroll to text fragments. Appending to the end of a URL:

#:~:text=startWord,endWord

When someone clicks on the link they are guided directly to a highlighted section on the page, rather than having to search or guess at what you meant. It isn’t perfect, but it’s rather good.

Capacities – an interesting knowledge management and research app similar to Notion, Mendeley, Yojimbo or DEVONThink.

The sales pitch.

i am a strategist who thrives on the “meaty brief”—the kind where deep-tech or complexity, business goals, and human culture collide.

With over a decade of experience across the UK, EMEA, and JAPAC, I specialise in bridging the gap between high-level strategy and creative execution. Most recently, I was embedded within Google Cloud’s brand creative team, where I helped navigate the “messy steps” of global pivots and the rapid rise of Gen AI.

My approach is simple: I use insight and analytics to find the “surprise” in the strategy. Whether it’s architecting an experiential event or defining a social narrative for a SaaS powerhouse, I focus on making complex brands feel human and high-velocity businesses feel accessible.

The Strategic Toolkit:
- Brand & Creative Strategy: From B2B infrastructure to luxury travel.
- AI-Enhanced Planning: Deeply literate in Google Gemini and prompt engineering to accelerate insights and creative output.
- Multi-Sector Versatility: A proven track record across Tech & SaaS (Google Cloud, Semiconductors), Consumer Goods (FMCG, Beauty, Health), and High-Interest Categories (Luxury, Sports Apparel, Pharma).
I am officially open for new adventures with immediate effect. If you have a challenge that needs a “wholehearted” strategic lead, let’s talk.

More on what I have done here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my January 2026 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and good luck with your new year’s resolutions. As an additional treat here is a link to my charts of the month for 2025, in PowerPoint format that you can freely use in your own presentations.

Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful as this helps other people and the algorithmic gods of Google Search and the various LLMs that are blurring what web search means nowadays.

Get in touch and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on Substack as well as LinkedIn.
January 28, 2026
AI sovereignty + more stuff

AI sovereignty

A post on AI sovereignty came out of one of those times when a casual conversation suddenly has you seeing the theme in your news feeds. I was having one of them conversations with a friend over a paper cup of coffee, mentioned I’d been embedded at Google and they said ‘we can’t trust the Americans with AI, the way we did with social’.

That opens opportunities. Chinese open source models are working in Singapore government data centres, Korean cloud computing company Naver is looking beyond its own country for clients who want an alternative to US big technology. France has gone it alone with its own defence AI – as the ultimate expression of AI sovereignty.

Apple to fine-tune Gemini independently, no Google branding on Siri, more – 9to5Mac – Apple white labelling Gemini is similar to the Google Search deal in that its outsourcing heavy compute. But also interesting in that it’s making the AI invisible, Apple has hold of the experience and so gains its own AI sovereignty.

The All-Star Chinese AI Conversation of 2026 | ChinaTalk – Interesting discussions on China based AI platforms on their successes and challenges. By their nature, the give China defacto AI sovereignty. Risk taking and GPUs or TPUs performance seem to be the main sources of concern. A good deal of focus on squeezing out the maximum intelligence per watt rather than scaling to infinity and beyond. Tonality wise it’s refreshing down to earth in comparison to Altman et al.

Engram: How DeepSeek Added a Second Brain to Their LLM | rewire.it | rewire.it Blog – China making major strides to move the state of the art in LLMs forward.

How AI Destroys Institutions by Woodrow Hartzog, Jessica M. Silbey :: SSRN – interesting if alarmist paper that indicates the need for organisations to have more control over their intentional use of AI through AI sovereignty.

‘South Korea’s Google’ pitches AI alternative to US and China | FT – Korea has built up positive relations in the Middle East since the 1970s when they helped on major construction and engineering projects. They would be viewed positively and as a good hedge to both the US and China from a technology dependency point-of-view. Their offer is greater AI sovereignty for Middle Eastern countries in particular, you might also winning business in Central Asia as well.

Beauty

Dermatologists criticise ‘dystopian’ skincare products aimed at children | Skincare | The Guardian – Dermatologists have criticised an actor’s new skincare brand, calling it “dystopian” for creating face masks for four-year-olds, warning that the beauty industry is now expanding its reach from teenagers to toddlers.

It comes as a growing number of brands are moving into the children’s, teenage and young adult skincare market. In October, the first skincare brand developed for under-14s, Ever-eden, launched in the US. Superdrug has just created a range for those aged between 13 and 28.

A number of brands have surged in popularity among very young social-media users, creating a phenomenon known as “Sephora kids”. These children share videos showcasing beauty products from Drunk Elephant, Bubble, Sol de Janeiro and similar brands.

China

Apple Reportedly Canceled Orders of Chinese iPhone 17 Pro Displays | MacRumors

Consumer behaviour

A Theory of Dumb: Why Are IQ Scores Suddenly Falling? | Intelligencer – a century ago, if you asked someone what dogs and rabbits have in common, they might answer “Dogs hunt rabbits,” not “They’re both mammals.”Maybe, then, all the noise and novelty wasn’t rotting our minds but upgrading them. (Studies suggest that better nutrition and reduced exposure to lead may have also helped.) In any case, the Flynn effect held steady for so long and through so many apparent threats that there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t last forever, even if, someday, somebody invented a chatbot that could do homework or Theo Von started podcasting.

Or so thought Elizabeth Dworak, now an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s medical school, when she chose the topic of her 2023 master’s thesis. She decided to analyze the results of 394,378 IQ tests taken in the U.S. between 2006 and 2018 to see if they exhibited the same climb. “I had all this cognitive data and thought, Hey, there’s probably a Flynn effect in there,” she says. But when she ran the numbers, “I felt like I was in Don’t Look Up,” the movie in which an astronomy grad student played by Jennifer Lawrence discovers a comet speeding toward Earth. “I spent weeks going back through all the code. I thought I’d messed something up and would have to delay submitting. But then I showed my adviser, and he said, ‘Nope, your math is right.’”
The math showed declines in three important testing categories, including matrix reasoning (abstract visual puzzles), letter and number series (pattern recognition), and verbal reasoning (language-based problem-solving). The first two, in which losses were deepest, measure what psychologists call fluid intelligence, or the power to adapt to new situations and think on the fly. The drops showed up across age, gender, and education level but were most dramatic among 18-to-22-year-olds and those with the least amount of schooling.

The surprising truth about who the loneliest generations are – BBC News – interesting read that matches up with research I did for a consumer brand brief that didn’t happen in the end. I wrote about it more here.

How Hustle Culture Got America Addicted to Work – Business Insider – in America, the long, steady march toward a more leisurely future came to an abrupt halt. Today, according to the international economic database Penn World Table, the German work year is an astonishing 380 hours shorter than ours — which means that Germans work almost 10 weeks less than we do every year.

Even stranger, Americans began to glamorize their lack of free time. As the boomer generation reshaped society in its own image, it brought its ’60s, countercultural ethos to the workplace — transforming the staid, conformist office into a vessel of self-expression. Work became the central means by which you undertook to live your best life, follow your passion, and change the world. As Goldman bankers and Google idealists alike began to toil through the nights and weekends that previous generations had fought so hard to secure for them, mental-health professionals bemoaned the rise of what became known as “hustle culture.” Working long hours was suddenly the ultimate status symbol, a peculiarly American form of humblebrag. In 2017, a clever marketing study found that if you told an American you worked long hours, they assumed you were rich. If you told an Italian the same thing, they assumed you were poor.

Waymo Has Come for the Kids in Los Angeles – The New York Times – “Here, it is not unusual for families to have multiple children attending different schools far from home. School buses, if you are deemed eligible, are limited to dropping off and picking up children at locations and times that are often unhelpful. The city bus, if there is somehow a direct route to school, comes with its own set of risks that can make parents uneasy.

Ms. Rivera, a psychiatric social worker, is stuck at work until 6 p.m. most days, while her husband, who installs and repairs glass, comes home even later.

The couple struggles to coordinate their jobs and their three children. They tried Uber, and Lyft, but found that those drivers tended to cancel after discovering their riders were minors. They turned to HopSkipDrive, a service geared toward students, but the drivers had to be scheduled in advance, and would leave if children were late.

Then, a few months ago, Ms. Rivera and Alexis did a test run with Waymo.

“It was the only option where I was like, ‘Oh my God, she can order a car, nobody’s in there, she can unlock it with her phone,’” Ms. Rivera, 42, said. “I know she’s going to be safe and she’s going to get home.” – interesting use case

Culture

How hip-hop is shaping the fight for Taiwan’s future | Dazed

Design

The Designer’s Playbook for AI Products | by Dára Sobaloju | Bootcamp | Dec, 2025 | Medium – the old rules still apply mostly

Economics

The Art of Slowing Down: Why the UAE’s Growth Story Is Now Impossible to Ignore – Intern Pierre

The Incidence of Tariffs: Rates and Reality Gita Gopinath and Brent Neiman (University of Chicago) – the prinicpal burden seems to be on US industry and highlights the difficulty in trying to unwind global supply chains through tariffs

Gadgets

How Oura Ring Capitalizes on Gen Z Women’s Health and Wellness | Vogue

Why are MP3 players making a comeback? | Dazed – also sound quality, in particular the iPods with the Wolfson DACs

Ideas

Nobody knows how large software products work | sean goedecke

Korea

Chinese chipmaker CXMT in crosshairs of South Korean prosecutors over Samsung tech leak | South China Morning Post

South Korea’s consumer agency to order SK Telecom to compensate 58 hacking victims – TradingView — Track All Markets

Luxury

Chinese luxury goes local | WARC – High-end Chinese brands are stealing a march on their Western rivals with homegrown labels that appeal to more discerning local consumers who are looking for luxury items that feel tailored to them. China’s $49bn luxury market is “changing fast”: ecommerce sales at jeweller Lapou Gold, for instance, have surged more than 1000% in the first three quarters of this year compared with two years ago. Songmont, a Chinese brand that claims to have ‘experiential’ designer bags, has grown its online sales 90% while Gucci online bag sales in China have fallen 50%, according to the Business Times. – This was inevitable when you had so many talented (and a number of mediocre) Chinese people being brought through the likes of Central St Martins.

Six thousand new perfumes in 2025: Why manufacturers are flooding the market

Marketing

Coca-Cola CMO Manolo Arroyo on WPP, AI and a new era for media | The Drum – Coca-Cola’s marketing ecosystem was sprawling and complex. The business was working with approximately 6,000 agency partners globally, while the majority of its multi-billion-dollar media budget was allocated to traditional channels. Arroyo wanted fewer partners, deeper integration and a shift towards digital-first execution at scale.

That ambition led to the consolidation of Coca-Cola’s global advertising account into WPP and the creation of Open X, a bespoke unit designed to manage the brand across markets and disciplines. Nine studios were established in key regions, housing a mix of Coca-Cola employees, WPP staff and specialist partners.

“It’s a marketing factory,” says Arroyo. “There are more than 2,000 employees of Coca-Cola and more than 2,000 employees of WPP […] and ultimately it’s enabled us to move from a company that in 2019 was investing close to 75% of our paid media on traditional TV, to a company that’s going to end up this year putting 70% of all our paid media on digital, particularly social and influencer led, marketing. For us, it’s our new TV.”

Materials

Drones: Decoupling Supply Chains from China | Royal United Services Institute

Media

How DVDs and CDs are becoming cool again in the age of streaming – The Washington Post – artefacts are memories and are imbued with meaning in a way that streaming can’t be.

Online

Techrights — Baidu and Yandex Have Overtaken Microsoft in Asia | Techrights

Security

Outcry after French army chief’s ‘prepared to lose children’ warning | Le Monde – “We have all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to deter the Moscow regime from trying its luck by going further,” said Mandon. “What we lack, and this is where you have a major role to play, is the strength of spirit to accept suffering in order to protect who we are.”

Paying tribute to French forces deployed worldwide, he added: “If our country falters because it is not prepared to accept – let’s be honest – to lose its children, to suffer economically because defense production will take precedence, then we are at risk.” – I don’t think that the west is ready or able to face Russia or China because of this. The war is lost before its fought

SOF, AI, and Changing Western Conceptions of War | Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University – Each generational shift in technology impacts military operations. Consequently, a shift in military training, command, and promotion structure should follow. Much of the conversation surrounding AI makes it seem like an unprecedented esoteric concept. While this is partly true, the same was said about steam engines during the Industrial Revolution. Simply put, AI is the next technological breakthrough and there will be more after it. As Clausewitz stated, the character of war changes, not the nature of war. A willingness to adapt while following strategic tenets will enable us to weather the storm and thrive in AI generation warfare. Failure to do so will only bring obsolescence while America’s adversaries gain global hegemonic status. Proper implementation of AI will result in faster decision making, more accurate intelligence, improved resource allocation, better spatial awareness, more effective messaging, and more impactful strategies. The key to reaching this level of success is SOF. SOF is uniquely equipped and trained to implement AI quickly and effectively, delivering results that can be scaled to the rest of the military. 

A New Anonymous Phone Carrier Lets You Sign Up With Nothing but a Zip Code | WIRED – Phreeli, the phone carrier startup is designed to be the most privacy-focused cellular provider available to Americans. Phreeli, as in, “speak freely,” aims to give its user a different sort of privacy from the kind that can be had with end-to-end encrypted texting and calling tools like Signal or WhatsApp. Those apps hide the content of conversations, or even, in Signal’s case, metadata like the identities of who is talking to whom. Phreeli instead wants to offer actual anonymity. It can’t help government agencies or data brokers obtain users’ identifying information because it has almost none to share. The only piece of information the company records about its users when they sign up for a Phreeli phone number is, in fact, a mere ZIP code. That’s the minimum personal data Merrill has determined his company is legally required to keep about its customers for tax purposes.

Waking the Sleeping European Giant – by Matthew C. Klein | The Overshoot – “Europe” as a geopolitical entity does not exist. Instead of a strong and independent continent capable of securing the lives and freedoms of its citizens, Europe is divided into dozens of countries, all of which are too small individually to stand up to external threats. The problem is compounded by the mismatch between where the military resources can be found and where they are most needed. There is relatively little overlap between the places with the balance sheet capacity (mostly in the north), the places with the productive capacity (mostly in the center), the places with the largest populations of otherwise unoccupied fighting-age men (more in the south), and Europe’s front lines (largely, although not exclusively, in the east).

Thailand’s tilt toward China tests treaty alliance with US | Defense News

Software

AI agents and the 90% problem – by Kyle Chan

Exclusive | Meta Buys AI Startup Manus for More Than $2 Billion – WSJ

Bending Spoons raids the digital graveyard for paranormal returns | FT – businesses in the Bending Spoons stable: AOL, the dial-up internet service that had been most recently attached to Yahoo, and Evernote, the virtual scratch pad. – alongside Vimeo and Brightcove with Eventbrite due to join them

Geek Squad Agents reflect on 20th anniversary of Y2K – Best Buy Corporate News and Information

The Politics Of Superintelligence

Wireless

China Issues First Penalty for Starlink Use in Territorial Waters | GCaptain

January 17, 2026