Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

August 2026 introduction – (37) 

Welcome to the 37th edition of my newsletter or as a bingo caller would say ‘more than eleven’.

37 in Chinese is largely considered positive as a number, based on its component numbers of 3 and 7. On the Chinese internet 37 is used to say thank you because of its similarity in sound to the English phrase.

37 seemed appropriate given the searing heat we’ve experienced across Europe during July and August.

It was roughly this time three years ago when I started writing Strategic Outcomes. I was burnt out working far too many hours at an ad agency due to being massively oversold (150 – 200% utilisation rate during a typical week with new business pitches on top) to clients.

So took myself to Paris for a short break to recharge, truth be told it took until the end of the year for me to recharge fully.

I watched programmes, finally finished a great book I had been trudging through for months, while enjoying coffee and cake in the lobby of the George V Hotel.

The first issue was written in 20 minutes and I didn’t think I would still be writing some three years later. Since then over 600 people have subscribed, I had no expectations – so it was definitely more than I had expected and I am deeply appreciative that it gets a glance, let alone a read; from so many people in such attention-poor times 🙏.

Over time Strategic Outcomes has developed a format and a voice, but now takes longer to write despite me being more practiced in writing each episode. Secondly, the length of the episode doesn’t equate to the amount of time that it takes to write.

Onwards.

The soundtrack this month isn’t the usual track selection or mix, but a podcast from the European Space Agency highlighting sounds that are literally out of this world. If that isn’t your cup of tea then I also offer this live concert recorded in the US by Cabaret Voltaire for radio station KEXP. Think of it as a modern-day version of the BBC’s Peel Sessions.

New reader?

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

Things that I’ve written

Back in 2015, Stephen Waddington invited people to submit a media diary based on a common set of questions. I revisited during the middle of the CoVID lockdown when we were in peak-Zoom usages. And I decided to revisit again this month to compare and contrast with my past installments.

Apple is launching a TV adaptation of Neuromancer, William Gibson’s seminal novel and you can see the trailers online. I had been been thinking a lot about Gibson recently from the saturation of the Neo Tokyo aesthetic in mainstream culture to the surreal nature of Silicon Valley which sounds more like Wintermute at every turn. So I curated some video interviews that Gibson had done down through the years; as well as miscellaneous things from around the web.

ICYMI – Top five shares on LinkedIn

1. I wrote about Aston Martin putting up for sale the majority of its non-automotive naming rights. It’s an important issue for marketers, but the attraction of the Aston Martin brand for people interested in cars had my post seen much more widely than I expected.
2. I posted a video where Les Binet discussed brand loyalty from a marketing science perspective and the trap marketers face by focusing on the loyalty of generation-Z customers.
3. A breakdown of the BBC Research & Development’s research report on the state of the social Internet.
4. Michael Farmer triangulated advertising agency problems: big workloads, plummeting fees, clients trapped in low growth or de-growth.
5. Temporal mismatches can affect corporate innovation as much as it can affect hedge fund strategies like Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness LP.

Books that I have read

Like many people I read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at school. At the time I was uneasy at the class interpretation of the book as a portrait of a tragedy set in 1920s excess. Re-reading it years later, I thought of it more as a clash of antiheroes dripping of prejudice and latent racism. The book is full of grifters and cads. What makes the narrator a more likeable at a surface level is that he’s a more inexperienced grifter who hasn’t managed to exorcise his own conscience at the time of the incident. Now, more than ever, it feels very of our times.

It was unintentional that I read Regime Change: Inside The Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump in tandem with The Great Gatsby. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan craft a book that is a blow-by-blow account of the second Trump administration over its first 18 months in office. It’s gossipy without the analysis one got from Bob Woodward’s books on previous administrations. What struck me was the illusion of coherence.

A lot was made in the media about the publication of Mandate for Leadership The Conservative Promise Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project published by The Heritage Foundation as a plan for government. But Haberman and Swan’s book paint a picture of a government improvising it up as they went along with appointees who were often drowning in their roles. One thing stuck with me more than anything else was how partners like GCC nations and Jeff Bezos who courted the administration were bilked. This didn’t seem to be out of malice but incompetence and ineptitude.

Finally in a time of a thin skinned administration taking action against its critics, it’s a wonder Haberman and Swan haven’t been embroiled in legal disputes.

Things I have been inspired by.

I was thinking a lot about the rise of betting culture, from the rise of Robinhood and crypto wallets or prediction markets to ‘trading courses’ promoted extensively across social media. IPSOS encapsulates the why elegantly with its trend of Nouveau Nihilism. It becomes a rational response to constrained circumstances.

Luxury brand CHANEL has been doing some interesting fireside chats in their CHANEL Connects project. I was particularly interested in their interview with Thomas Bangalter. He framed Daft Punk in terms of an experiment in anonymity. They were initially inspired by Detroit’s Underground Resistance but that evolved into cinematic science fiction.

Bangalter’s critiqued streaming media as eroding the ritualistic and symbolic power of listening space. Bangalter avoided generative AI because it reduces art to verbal prompting and pre-calculated outputs. He considered creation as an intuitive, non-verbal journey; bypassing the process misses the entire point of art. More from Bangalter here.  

Chart of the month. 

Growing up we were a family who read. My Mum was the first person to sit the Irish leaving certificate and civil service examinations in her family. My Dad, left school at 13 to serve an apprenticeship, but had a love of books. One of the books we had was an account of The Kennedy Family by Joseph Dinneen.

In the book there is one section where Joseph Kennedy Sr talks about the inciting incident that encouraged him to sell all his shares. Kennedy goes to get his shoes shined near his office. The boy shining his shoes immediately took him for an investor and began offering specific stock picks and market tips.

Kennedy then realised if a shoeshine boy knows as much about the market as he did, then it was time for him to sell up. Kennedy goes back to his office, closes out his portfolio and starts to short the market in advance of Black Thursday. How true the story was is a whole other story, but the ‘late’ buyer market theory underpinning it is sound enough. When those with the least disposable income are highly leveraged in the market, it means that the pool of ‘new buyers’ no longer exists to push prices higher.

Thinking about Joseph Kennedy’s story I dived into how Americans hold wealth. On the face of it Kennedy’s rule doesn’t seem to be coming through at the moment. However there might be several other factors:

• The massive appreciation in house prices.
• The hollowing out of the middle class wealth.
• Wealthy people make dumb money mistakes too (Bernie Madoff, Situational Awareness LP, Bear Stearns and Neil Woodford’s funds).

Things I have watched. 

Many people of heard of Akira, which was originally a manga and then an anime film written and directed by Katsushiro Otomo. Later on Otomo wrote and designed Roujin Z that was directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo. Roujin Z on the surface of it is social satire that addresses concerns about caring for the elderly population in the early 21st century, there are concerns about technology and the possibility of a resurgent military being authoritarianism.

The film taps into the phenomenon of social hospitalisation for the elderly where their families would sign them away to hospitals once they were admitted and refused to take them back. This happened because care homes carried a stigma that hospitals didn’t. This stigma came from the post-war collapse of the le system, where the eldest son and his wife lived with his elderly parents taking care of them to the end.

Stylistically, Roujin Z is interesting for its use of mixed media techniques including live film and photo-reference photogrammetry layout. This was part of a stylistic movement in anime called 90s realism. It includes Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Patlabor 2: The Movie and Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade.

Watching it 35 years after the film was produced was interesting in terms of the foreshadowing within the film.

• At the time Sony was secretly designing the Apple PowerBook 100 for Apple. Its design appears in the film with a Sony logo. The film launched in cinemas at least a month before Apple launched the laptop.
• Sony appears all over the film and throughout the hospital equipment. It foreshadows Sony’s pivot into elderly care and its abandonment of its iconic consumer electronics business.
• The film shows a ubiquitous, always-on network with messaging and what we’d now call artificial intelligence. This was way before the web was commonplace.

The film matches all these heavy themes with great physical comedy.

Useful tools.

Copynpaste is a single purpose website that acts as an intermediary moving copy between applications. It’s more of a lifesaver than you realise and works just as well on mobile devices as it does on desktop.

Googler is a cleaner way of experiencing search. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and people came into work hungover, Google was separated from search rivals like Infoseek, Excite and AltaVista by its clean interface. Now you have lots of things on a search engine results page fighting for your attention. If you install Homebrew on your computer, you can then install Googler which gives you the Google search experience without distractions in your terminal window.

The sales pitch.

I am a strategist who thrives on the “meaty brief”. The kind where complexity, business goals, and human culture collide, requiring synthesis into actionable insights.

I have a decade-plus of expertise across the UK, EMEA, and JAPAC, I specialise in bridging the gap between high-level strategy and creative execution. I have been embedded within Google Cloud’s brand creative team, where I helped navigate the “messy steps” of global pivots with the rapid rise of Gen AI. Following the completion of this engagement, I have continued to partner with agencies and founders on high-impact projects. My recent freelance work includes architecting the brand narrative for a fast-moving startup, driving strategic creative for new business pitches, and developing a dynamic sports partnership activation.

I focus on what works: balancing long-term brand growth with short-term sales. I don’t just write presentation decks; I build campaigns that actually ship. I’m hired to develop, or strategy QA their ideas before they go live, helping leadership teams avoid expensive mistakes. I prioritise commercial reality, smart budgets, and measurable results over cosmetic solutions.

How I help leadership teams:

• Strategy QA: I put clarity into complex roadmaps before you commit capital.
• Cultural Translation: I bridge the gap between technical infrastructure and human adoption, across EMEA/JAPAC.
• Commercial Grounding: I build strategy for campaigns that ship, prioritising measurable ROI over “hype” metrics.

The Strategic Toolkit:

• Brand & Creative Strategy: From B2B infrastructure to luxury travel.
• AI-Enhanced Planning: Literate in Google Gemini and prompt engineering to accelerate insights and creative output.
• Modular Strategic Leadership: 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 an operator who reads—using a deep archive of industry expertise to ensure your next pivot isn’t just “new,” but actually sustainable. If you have a challenge that requires an 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 August 2026 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other, stay cool and enjoy the well deserved bank holiday.

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 my blog,  Substack as well as LinkedIn.