Ged Carroll

Category: gadget | 小工具 | 가제트 | ガジェット

What constitutes a gadget? The dictionary definition would be a small mechanical or electronic device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one.

When I started writing this blog the gadget section focused on personal digital assistants such as the Palm PDA and Sony’s Clie devices. Or the Anoto digital pen that allowed you to record digitally what had been written on a specially marked out paper page, giving the best of both experiences.

Some of the ideas I shared weren’t so small like a Panasonic sleeping room for sleep starved, but well heeled Japanese.

When cutting edge technology failed me, I periodically went back to older technology such as the Nokia 8850 cellphone or my love of the Nokia E90 Communicator.

I also started looking back to discontinued products like the Sony Walkman WM-D6C Pro, one of the best cassette decks ever made of any size. I knew people who used it in their hi-fi systems as well as for portable audio.

Some of the technology that I looked at were products that marked a particular point in my life such as my college days with the Apple StyleWriter II. While my college peers were worried about getting on laser printers to submit assignments, I had a stack of cartridges cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol to deal with any non catastrophic printer issues and so could print during the evening in the comfort of my lodgings.

Alongside the demise in prominence of the gadget, there has been a rise in the trend of everyday carry or EDC.

  • August 2026 – the more than eleven edition

    August 2026 introduction – (37) 

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

    37

    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. 

    SO

    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.

    late buyer market

    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:

    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.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    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.

  • William Gibson + more things

    William Gibson

    I have been thinking a lot about William Gibson recently. Judging by my social feeds, the Neo Tokyo aesthetic has saturated mainstream culture (from 90s anime clips, tech wear, creator built cyber decks and Hong Kong at night) and our Silicon Valley elites sound more like Wintermute at every turn.

    William Gibson in Berlin, 3.2008

    The K-shaped economy described by Gary Stevenson in his thesis, feels very much like the have-nots of the sprawl trilogy.

    Finally, Apple is on the cusp of releasing a TV adaptation of Gibson’s first novel Neuromancer next year. So I had to post these vintage videos of Gibson as they feel so ‘now’ despite being decades old.

    William Gibson talking about cyberpunk as a genre in 1990. He calls a distinctively post-modern fiction genre. In a prophetic turn they talk about the unique way in which cyberpunk has been manifested into the real world; just not in the countercultural way that Gibson envisaged. Although the relationship now between Gibson’s work and the real world are probably too close for comfort. And there is a great interview with Timothy Leary.

    Related to that was the cypherpunk movement who realised that cryptography was essential to online worlds.

    Cypherpunks were concerned about the government a quarter century before the Edward Snowden leaks and the algorithmic web with a web of data for sale to advertisers and bad actors.

    And in this clip, William Gibson contextualises the early web in this interview

    Business

    The Technology Industry Is Stumbling Down The Path To Becoming A Proper Supply Chain | Forrester – I think is a polite way of saying that the industry has moved from growth to value investment. Whether the industry has a maturity in thinking that reflects this new position is something else.

    China

    Spain’s largest Chinese investment to rely on workers from China | Investment Monitor – very similar to the belt-and-road model elsewhere. Interesting the lack of pushback that came from Spain, given the size of the country’s construction industry.

    Design

    30 Years of Micro Motors to Robot Dexterous Hands: MINDSYNC TECH and Jiangsu Leili Solve the Mechanical Stiffness Problem in Humanoid Gripping – interesting article in Pandaily. It’s basically smaller sizes of strain wave gears. Back when I went to the launch of Automata’s EVA robotic arm launch, strain wave gears came up as a topic of conversation. Robotic precision focused on software because only standardised strain wave gears were available from a limited amount of suppliers like Harmonic Drive. The Chinese seem to have sidestepped this innovation pinch point with powered strain wave gears small enough to operate a robotic hand with a high degree of dexterity.

    Gadgets

    Open Source Vacuum Avoids Cloud | Hackaday – thanks to open source software, a Raspberry Pi board, off the shelf parts and accessible additive manufacturing there is now an open source Roomba style vacuum cleaner.

    ŌURA and LillyDirect to Expand Support for People Using GLP-1 Therapies with New Tools and Savings Options – The Pulse Blog – I was there when wearables were proposed as a digital kit to another obesity management product years before this deal was announced. I am surprised that it took so long. The partner selection implies a heavy female bias to the expected customer base.

    ChinAI #366: Most Companion Robots Die by Day 30 – model capabilities will become increasingly cheap, while scenario-specific evaluation datasets will become increasingly expensive. Most companion products will not die because their AI models lack power, but because users stop opening the app by Day 30.

    Germany

    Watching China in Europe – August 2026 – by Noah Barkin – Volkswagen is now pursuing a strategy that consists of:

    • Doubling down on manufacturing at its EV hub in Hefei, China as part of what Blume describes as an “in China for China” approach.
    • Exporting the cars it produces in China, in Blume’s own words, to Southeast Asia, Australia, India, South America, Africa and Europe, in what looks more like an “in China for the world” strategy (minus the US market).
    • Pursuing mass layoffs in Germany, while luring Chinese carmakers into the German factories that Volkswagen is struggling to sustain.
    • Urging the EU to accelerate and broaden its trade defense measures against Chinese competitors that are seizing market share for plug-in hybrids at an astonishing rate.

    If your head is spinning, you are not alone …

    Ideas

    FCC approves orbital space mirrors, first test satellites will launch this year — large spacecraft reflects sunlight to Earth’s surface for construction sites, search-and-rescue lighting, and more | Tom’s Hardware

    Indonesia

    Indonesia’s 9 Dragons. Who Are They? Are They Too Rich For Indonesia’s Good? | Dr Wealth

    Innovation

    Why the US is losing Chinese AI stars | FT – comparable opportunities at home.

    Russia’s Newest Kh-101 Cruise Missile Upgrade Points to Chinese Help | Wes O’Donnell – the recent upgrade to Russia’s Kh-101 missile capabilities owes far less to stolen Western secrets than it does to Chinese industrial hardware. Whilst espionage may have ironed out a few technical creases, Russia is quietly acquiring the machine tools and microelectronics from Chinese suppliers. These are needed to turn a dormant Soviet-era innovation into a mass-produced reality.

    The rationale for putting such high-spec, durable components like single-crystal engine blades into a single-use weapon comes down to a recent design trade-off. Having substantially increased the missile’s warhead size at the expense of its fuel capacity, Russian engineers required a hotter, vastly more efficient engine to recoup the lost flight range. Manufacturing equipment sourced from Chinese vendors provided the industrial “kitchen” necessary to make this crucial engineering workaround a reality.

    Porous material could pull 1.8 liters of drinking water daily from dry air | TechXplore

    IP

    The 6 wildest claims in Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI | The Verge – OpenAI allegedly “coached” Apple employees on how to bypass security measures. Apple alleged Tan kept an internal document that outlines employee off-boarding procedures. OpenAI allegedly used this information to warn employees coming from Apple about the company’s security checks and “coached” them on how to avoid it.

    OpenAI advised departing Apple workers not to disclose their new employer and also offered tips on how to avoid a “dreaded walk out,” which would result in their immediate removal from the company, preventing them from accessing Apple’s systems for a standard two weeks, the lawsuit alleges. OpenAI is accused of telling Apple employees not to “sign anything at the exit interview,” and if they’re asked to sign a document, to tell OpenAI “asap.”

    In the lawsuit, Apple says that OpenAI’s alleged tactics “appear to be having their desired effect.” Apple claims it has noticed “a recent trend of employees who are leaving Apple for OpenAI and taking steps to evade security measures,” including workers “ignoring outreach by security personnel to schedule exit processes and security reviews.”

    Luxury

    Why luxury brands are falling for Asia’s queer romance shows | FT

    Rolex accused of hiring ‘crowds’ for Shanghai centenary exhibition | Reddit r/Watches – the use of gig workers to bulk up footfall numbers is unfortunate but understandable. It’s not a great look. They may have not have been hitting footfall numbers.

    Secondly there is a need in Chinese culture for events to be bustling with people. I remember going to the China South City wholesale mall in the Shenzhen region. Some of the car park was converted into basketball courts so that there would be the sound of people there, even if they were having fun rather than purchasing supplies for their business.

    The problem for Rolex got much worse when this story breached beyond the Chinese internet into the feeds of western watch enthusiasts.

    Security

    OpenAI admits AI ‘agent’ caused major cyber breach by itself | FT – I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a certain amount of PR behind this story.

    Royal Navy Drops a Drone Boat Out of a Plane | Maritime Executive – this feels like an important step towards more autonomous warfare, particularly in rapid expeditionary deployment.

    German firm files for insolvency, blames cybercrims who shut down production for 6 weeks | The Register

    UK, EU officially pin Poland energy cyberattack on Russia | The Register

    Space Force officially has its own weapon for taking out satellites | Task & Purpose

    Five Takeaways From the Times Investigation Into Larry Ellison’s A.I. Gamble – The New York Times – The United States had one major advantage in the A.I. race: China lagged behind in computer chip technology. The Biden administration cut off Chinese access to American-made chips, but China could still obtain computing power remotely through other countries.

    In 2024, Oracle made a $6.5 billion deal to build an data centre complex in Malaysia from which it could supply computing power to ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, and other foreign companies. Oracle’s facility in Malaysia was soon on track to become the second-biggest in the world, providing by one estimate more than one-fifth of China’s total A.I. computing power. Ellison is now powering the A.I. ambitions of China aka America’s biggest geopolitical rival.

    Cybersecurity expert Steve Sims discusses how hackers are now using AI.

    Software

    3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber | News from Google – but no Gemini 3.6 Pro yet.

    Exclusive-Beijing is looking at curbing overseas access to China’s top AI models, sources say | Yahoo! Finance

    Microsoft to axe 4,800 jobs as it resets Xbox | FT

    Palantir CEO Alex Karp says ‘something has gone completely wrong’ with how AI is sold | CNBC – Palantir CEO Alex Karp caused a stir by discussing what he says is growing unhappiness among U.S. businesses about the costs to access models from the biggest AI companies, like OpenAI and Anthropic. And he asserted that those customers are getting “no value” from the technology.

    Taiwan

    China-friendly KMT stunts Taiwan’s attempt to grow into a fully formed hedgehog | The Strategist

    Technology

    Hyundai buys SoftBank’s Boston Dynamics stake for $325 million | Quartz – Hyundai is using the robots in its own operations from factories to construction sites. They are even being used in Posco’s steel foundries too.

    RISC-V Is Inevitable, State of the Union Keynote Argues – EE Times

    Axios AI+ |⛽ Trading compute – 1 big thing: Wall Street wants to trade AI compute like oil. This reminded me a lot of Enron’s doomed attempt to trade bandwidth in a similar way, which was the core offering of Enron Broadband Services.

    Wireless

    OnePlus, the ‘Flagship-Killer’ Smartphone Brand, Is All but Dead | WIRED – this surprised me given that Samsung has been on the ropes and OnePlus had such a good relationship with Qualcomm.

  • April 2026 newsletter – 33rd edition aka ‘dirty knee’

    April 2026 introduction – (33) dirty knee

    This is the 33rd edition of Strategic Outcomes, I had briefly toyed with calling it 33 1/3rd edition – but parked that foolishness as only Jed Hallam and Alec Samways would have half-heartedly smirked at a rather naff DJ dad joke.

    In bingo halls ’33’ was announced as dirty knee. For generations past, this would brought up memories of organised sports like winter football games ad the more real-life social activities of playing outside with friends. According to research conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Save the Children back in 2022, only 27% of UK children now play outside.

    https://flic.kr/p/392Xqw

    However, other data, like the UK government’s own The Children’s People and Nature Survey for England: 2025 update implies that number may be higher than the OnePoll research suggests. The University of Exeter published research which seems to be more in line with the UK government’s research. They found that 34 per cent of children don’t play outdoors on school days, while 20 per cent don’t play outdoors on weekends.

    In Chinese culture 33 is considered to be a good number. 3 sounds similar to birth or life. Two 3s is considered to intensify or double this idea. Which seems an appropriate sentiment for spring and the beginning of the financial year. Bring it on!

    This month’s soundtrack to the newsletter is a sublime 1980s disco mix by Toronto-based Japanese DJ Sakiko Nagai.

    New reader?

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

    SO

    Things I’ve written.

    A collection of inspiration from Malaysia Airlines mascot Pilot Parker to Sir Martin Sorrell.

    Some thoughts how WPP might deal with its Burson dilemma.

    ICYMI – Top five shares on LinkedIn

    1. Aston Martin issued its third profit warning in a year and sold its Formula 1 naming rights for £50 million to raise cash thanks to internal delays and international tariffs.
    2. Meta is projected to pass Google in digital advertising spend thanks to Reels, Threads and WhatsApp.
    3. The implications of Tottenham Hotspur being relegated from the Premier League has implications beyond the pitch and into sponsor’s boardrooms.
    4. Nike made a bold leap for the UEFA Champions League match ball contract with a bid that doubled the value of the previous Adidas contract.
    5. Tom Roach outlined frameworks that help navigate the transition to more sustained growth once initial performance marketing channels hit saturation.

    Books that I have read.

    My friend Ian lent to me Ikenami Shōtarō‘s book The Killer on The Streets which is part of his Samurai Detectives series. The book follows the adventures of a 60-something retired swordsman and his son as they become embroiled in the hunt for what we’d now call a serial killer.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Supply chained

    Even before the current debacle in the Persian Gulf, globalisation brought logics and supply chains into high focus. Supply Chained is a new podcast with great presenters that provides top quality analysis on different aspects of global supply chains. The first episode looks at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

    Generative AI & cooking

    I first met Rowan Kisby a decade ago this year at 100 Victoria Embankment, back when I was contracting for Unilever on their Family Brands global range of margarines. Rowan worked for what was then MullenLowe Profero. Recently we reconnected on a shared Slack group. Rowan put together a report on the intersection of generative AI use and cooking.

    I found it unsurprising that one of the behaviours consumers are doing is telling the generative AI service what they have in their fridge and asking it for dish / recipe recommendations. Back when I worked for Yahoo! we saw similar behaviours in the search box, particularly amongst US users. Reddit now gave Rowan better qualitative insights on how these results play out.

    More interesting from the point of view of retailers was its ability to create and manage a shopping list for weekly groceries. The idea of a retailer or an FMCG building an AI skill (or Gem on Google Gemini) is just begging to be sold in by agencies to their clients.

    Praykinson

    I got to judge the amazing entries from around the world at Adforum’s PHNX awards. One campaign really stuck with me. A health campaign by Dentsu Creative Thailand and Vajira Hospital in Thailand to help people with Parkinson’s disease was smart, solution-based and had a great insight behind it. More on the project here.

    https://flic.kr/p/2s6adiF

    CHESS

    I was listening to the MM+M podcast interview with Chris Brandow, head of account management at VCCP Health US and came across the acronym / nemonic CHESS. It comes out of thought leadership research ‘Checking the Memory Code‘ that VCCP did in conjunction with Cowry Consulting.

    CHESS looks to encapsulate some of the key attributes that makes marketing creative effective. It codifies marketing science findings that you would be familiar with fromthe likes of, the IPA, System1 and Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and provides it in a list that pharma clients and their agency partners can use as a RAG (red-amber-green) guide to evaluating everything from initial creative concepts through to output.

    • Character – what be called a fluent object elsewhere. It is a mascot or memorable element like Alexandr the meerkat from Compare The Market. It could also be a spokesperson like Tommy Lee Jones’ appearances in Boss Coffee adverts as ‘Alien Jones‘.
    • Humour – the power of humour used to be well known as an advertising device and in recent years has come back on trend at Cannes. It helps create talkability and memorability
    • Emotion – Binet and Fields established the power of emotion over rational advertising. Daniel Kahneman conveyed the power of emotional ‘system 1 thinking’ in Thinking Fast and Slow.
    • Surprise – the unexpected. Our enjoyment of storytelling is the process understanding which story archetype a tale belongs to. If we guess it easily it falls flat like a Dad joke, on the other hand a twist in the tale makes it memorable.
    • Sonic branding – jingles fell out of fashion, yet made ads memorable.

    Chart of the month. 

    Ofcom released their 2026 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes  report, more here. I went back through past reports to look at smartphone only internet access, households with no access to internet and claimed usage of generative AI services.

    • Internet access is now at a point comparable to where broadcast television was previously.
    • The digital divide is now about the mode of access, with smartphones on mobile internet providing a poorer service.
    https://flic.kr/p/2s69P1v

    Things I have watched. 

    My internet went down on April Fool’s Day, so I revisited Wong Ka wai’s back catalogue. I watched the films the first time after I got a portable DVD player and there was a massive surge in video labels including Artificial Eye and Tartan publishing arthouse titles. This provided a great way to explore and experience world cinema and I gravitated towards Japanese and Hong Kong cinema.

    I was familiar with traditional martial arts films and the ‘gun fu’ of John Woo. Wong Ka wai was Hong Kong’s answer to French new wave auteurs. Around the same time, I ended up going out with someone who lived in Hong Kong when we bonded over Faye Wong’s performance in Chungking Express. In a moment of delicious irony, I got to watch Wong Ka wai’s ‘western’ film My Blueberry Nights while staying in Hong Kong.

    This time around I was working my way through Curzon’s Wong Kar wai boxset which was bought for my birthday during COVID time. It contained

    • As Tears Go By
    • Days of Being Wild
    • Chungking Express
    • Fallen Angels
    • Happy Together
    • In The Mood For Love
    • 2046

    More on my time watching The World of Wong Kar wai boxset here. You can enjoy most of the films listed at the Prince Charles cinema ‘The Films of Wong Kar wai season‘.

    After all that I needed something a bit lighter, so I watched the Japanese film Supermarket Woman. It is a light hearted comedy caper about a middle aged woman, a poorly performing supermarket, business rivalry and a bit of skullduggery. Nobuko Miyamoto plays Hanako Inouse who brings her customer eye view to revitalising the Honest Goro supermarket. The film was written and directed by Jûzô Itami, better known for Tampopo. Supermarket Woman was made a decade after Tampopo, but both feel of the same time. Itami-san was often compared to the French new wave directors of the 1960s and I can see why.

    OSS117 is a series of books and films written from the late 1950s onwards. The films were made in 1963 onwards, with a reinvention and reboot in the 2010s.

    • OSS 117 is Unleashed – is a French film about an American agent with French heritage who works for the CIA. Compared to the Bond franchise, its French new wave. No gadgets but a dollop of guile. It’s notable for its underwater scenes, scuba diving was new thing opening up a new world under the waves thanks to Jacques Cousteau.
    • OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok – is the first colour film in the series. Our hero goes to Bangkok to investigate a dead colleague who looked into ineffective vaccines.

    Useful tools.

    PopChar – PopChar is an old but good utility app that has been supporting Mac users since the late 1980s. You are trying to find the right emoji or symbol to type, in each font.

    Beats Studio Buds + – while I usually use Shure wired earphones for most applications there are some times that wireless is handier (like reducing wired clutter on a busy desk, or listening to podcasts while cooking or folding laundry).

    I was leery of the Beats brand because of their reputation of having a muddy bass sound with a poor sound stage. I was pleasantly surprised by these. They are as balanced sound as a pair of AirPods. They have reasonable noise cancellation, comparable to my old Bose earbuds. They charge on the USB-C cable as my iPhone and MacBook Pro. They are less noticeable than a pair of AirPods and still integrate into Apple’s ‘Find My’ service seamlessly.

    Google Gemini app for Mac – I hope that this will help with my current tab and window juggling in Safari. I will let you know how I am getting on in a few months once I have given it a full shakedown.

    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 from narratives and new business pitches to sports partnerships.

    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.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my April 2026 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and enjoy the May 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.

  • 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.

    https://flic.kr/p/7fTrty

    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. 

    SO

    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.

    https://flic.kr/p/2rQ353G

    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.

    https://flic.kr/p/2rMXHXK

    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.

    https://flic.kr/p/2rNKjdW

    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.

    https://flic.kr/p/2qK3o4T

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    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.

  • 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’.

    https://flic.kr/p/New7y

    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