Category: howto | 怎麼做 | 방법 | 実行する方法

Howto as a category morphed out of a few things. I learned about the power of helpful content from Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. A second aspect of it was my natural inclination to share useful hacks.

I started writing this blog to explore the media so that I could advise clients so its roots were in the howto mentality. Over time, I built up a certain amount of authority based on the content that I shared here. This resulted in work for Econsultancy, teaching MBA students at a private Spanish university and a number of agency jobs.

Howto content tends to come when I am sharing skills and I have been developing AND that these skills can be easily codified into an article or two. I have also shared my personal workflow that I use to try and make sense of the world through online resources.

Many of the skills that I developed doing that came from a pre-social platform dominated world. Before Instagram told us how to look and TikTok told us what to think. And back when Google was actually useful, well more useful than it seems to be now.

I even wrote a couple of guides on how to get the most out of Google, but most of the advice won’t work any more as the platform did away with many shortcuts in favour of telling you which is the nearest coffee shop with free wifi.

The reason why howto ended up being one word rather than how to was down to the early version of Wordpress that I started to blog on and my lack of expertise more than anything else.

January 2024 newsletter – this makes a half dozen
January 2024 newsletter introduction

Welcome to my January 2024 newsletter which marks my 6th issue – bringing us to a half dozen issues in total. Here’s a quick video introduction that I recorded with HeyGen.

Dozen as a word in the English language comes from the french douzaine – meaning an assembly of 12 things of the same nature. This in turn was derived from roots in Latin. Weirdly enough the use of dozen plunged to a nadir in 1983 and then enjoyed steady growth to reach its most recent peak in 2018.

The sun rises reluctantly over the horizon every morning, disappearing each afternoon, but that doesn’t mean that inspiration stops. But each day is getting slightly more daylight here in London and in a few months we could be complaining about the heat.

If you would like a soundtrack for this edition of the newsletter, I can heartily recommend Kizunguzungu (Mr. Turner Extended Version Edit) by Disc-o-lypso.

New reader?

If is your first time reading, welcome to my January 2024 newsletter! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.

Things I’ve written.
- A very personal (or iconoclastic) review of last year 2023 – that was twenty twenty three
- Watch Registry – how a confluence of EU regulations and surging crime has driven a new category of online service.
- Pebble – micro-blogging service Pebble went under in November last year. Here’s what we lost.
- Loneliness – its impact and some of the solutions that are evolving to address it.
- Backroom – how one of my photos went around the web and ended up in an online game.
- Every old idea is new again – a mix of collective amnesia and the less than perfect memory of the web means that old ideas have their time as new creative.
Books that I have read.
- Over the new year, I curled up on the sofa with 2034 by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis. Ackerman and Stavridis plot out a political pot boiler about what a future war with China might look like. The realpolitik of the book feels real, the main issue would be the complete passivity of smaller powers like the United Kingdom and France. The rise of India and the fall of China as a global power at the end is an interesting commentary on the current Xi-led government. The book seems to set out to do a few jobs. First and foremost it’s a call to arms about American preparedness (it isn’t prepared). Secondly, it’s a warning about over-relying on technology, over base skills like astral navigation – something that the advertising industry could learn from as we fumble forward across AI, martech and adtech in a time of declining effectiveness. But the book also irritated me and pulled me out of of the story with magical thinking in Chinese technology and having every part of a plane including an ejector seat open to being hacked and disabled. I could imagine car manufacturers leaving their safety systems open, but would have thought that the military would have been more sensible about their safety equipment.
- How Did Britain Come to This?: A century of systemic failures of governance by Gwen Bevan. How Clement Attlee’s administration solved issues of minimal government in the post-war period and these solutions held up until the early 1970s. How Margaret Thatcher’s solution of markets for everything suffered from market failures over the years. All of which resulted in geography as destiny in terms of social outcomes.
- Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy by Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin – an interesting portrayal of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement from the perspective of foreign journalists in the region. McLaughlin writes for The Atlantic and is based out of Singapore, Mahtani does a similar role for the Washington Post. The whole society movement of the protests is something that comes out in the books and makes me think that the authorities will have a longer term job to keep their illiberal agenda going. But on the flipside the American foreign policy looks weak and ineffective in the face of China. What most surprised me was how the authors uncovered details inside the government and the police force. Probably the most explosive allegation is that the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau of the Hong Kong Police were monitoring the WhatsApp group chat used by multiple rival gangs to organise the attack on Yuen Long train station. There is a large overlap between rural political committees in the Yuen Long area and triads. We know that the police did not prevent it, did nothing about it when it happened and conducted minimal prosecutions. Chief executive Carrie Lam was getting her news from the television rather than intelligence gathered using open source, human intelligence sources and ‘exquisite‘ means. Some members of the government related to mainland affairs seem to have had an indication of what was coming, but there is no evidence that Lam knew.
Things I have been inspired by.

Swiss International Airlines, the city of Geneva and the Grand Prix D’Horologerie de Genève did a classic PR stunt in October 2023. A flight crew member supervised by a watchmaker assembled a mechanical watch mid-flight between Geneva and New York at an altitude at 30,000 feet. In the idea you have precision, innovation, expertise, professionalism, quality and skill. A solid fusion of complementary brands, brand planning and creative ideation.

Unfortunately, the story seems to have been eclipsed by the Israel – HAMAS conflict in the Gaza region. The uncertainty of the news agenda illustrates the weakest point of a campaign relying purely on earned media.

© Genève Tourisme

Etsy and agency The Orchard nailed gift buying with their spot ‘Dad’. The insight that family members often don’t want gifts and are concerned about clutter or the ‘wrong type’ of gifts is on-point. There is the additional layer of thriftiness that comes from being part of an immigrant family – be they Irish or Asian.

The idea also had me reflect on the time I spent helping to sort through my late Uncle’s belongings on the family farm back home in Ireland. There were ‘new old stock’ ties still in their packaging and an Insignia aftershave / shower gel gift set from sometime in the early 1990s in his drawers. Stashed there after being gifted, but unneeded.

Thoughtful gifts are priceless.

While the ad is aimed at Christmas, I saw it as I thought about my Dad’s birthday. My own parents exhibit the traits of not wanting gifts and thriftiness. But in my case, no Etsy-sleuthing was required however, with a bit of cajoling he knew precisely what he wanted from the Toolstation catalogue. The collector gene runs deep in the Carroll family.

https://youtu.be/4VI6rgps_Bc?si=pHQpElVLc_KlDecI
The Orchard for Etsy

While a lot of London had their out of office on until January 15th, New Balance had their skates on previewing Scorpius, Rose Water and Medusa Azúl variants of the 1906R in association with Action Bronson. The clever thing that they have done is that each of the colour ways have a variation in brightness, appealing to sneaker heads of different temperaments. For me this was more exciting than Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Timberland also announced this month.

7-Eleven Hong Kong did one of the first campaigns that merged generative AI techniques with traditional advertising production values including extensive use of green screens and wire work that would have been more at home in the fantasy martial arts films Hong Kong made famous.

4.5 billion years in an hour. A great way to bring data to life in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to fathom. It also works well as a background for writing late at night as well. It did remind me of Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy for some reason, and that’s no bad thing.

I was looking at the underlying code on one of my flickr photo pages and came across this recruitment advert embedded in the code. I thought it was quite cleverly done in terms of targeting a technical audience.

A bit of a late find for me, the Computer History Museum held a 2-hour event interviewing key people in the development of the Apple Mac, in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its launch. There is so much that can be still learned today from their experience. You can watch it her e.

Finally, Tom Coates shed more light on what we are likely to see platform-wise from a post-Twitter future.

Things I have watched.

It’s cold and dark and I make no apology for my films being unapologetically escapist and and entertaining to try and counterweight the drab conditions.

Something Wicked This Way Comes – Something Wicked This Way Comes was made in the UK during that many Disney fans describe as the studios ‘dark period’. From 1967 – 1984, the Disney family connection to the business was severed through deaths and a resignation. Film quality declined while shows and theme parks supported the business until Michael Eisner . Something Wicked This Way Comes has a fantastic cast including blaxploitation starlet Pam Grier, Broadway and Hollywood veteran Jason Robards and a young Jonathan Pryce, now better known as David Cartwright, former spook and River Cartwright’s grandfather in Slow Horses. The film is based on a book by Ray Bradbury. The film has a similarly surreal nature to Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.

I sat and watched Wild Palms. I hadn’t watched it all the way through previously and I found it much more rewarding to watch than similar shows like Twin Peaks. There is that slight dissonance and discomfort you have watching it that reminded me of reading JG Ballard’s works.

The Criterion Collection released a sympathetic digital remastering of Frederico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. With a lot of similar projects the work adds little, but The Criterion Collection are no ordinary publisher and the film needed a lot of work. So much so, that it took donations from Gucci and government bodies to ensure that the work was done to a high standards. The results are right there on screen, the sound has had excessive background noise cleaned up as well. It isn’t excessively loud like the audio on the remaster of Sergio Leone’s crowning achievement Once Upon A Time in the West, but it does benefit from the clarity provided. The films commentary on the hollowness of the media industry is timeless as is its tour of Rome: ancient and modern.

Michael Fassbender’s Road to Le Mans – Porsche sponsored online film series that goes through Michael Fassbender’s journey to drive the Le Mans 24 hour race.

I am a huge fan of French police dramas from the 1960s to the present day and was really impressed by Netflix show Blood Coast. It features Olivier Marchal on some of the writing and directing duties. Marchal created Braquo, which ran for three seasons until 2016.

Not exactly something to watch, but the Hot Money: The New Narcos is an amazing high adrenalin podcast with the Kinahan family and the Dubai Super-cartel at the centre of it all.

Useful tools.

ABBYY Business Card Reader.

ABBYY Business Card Reader allows you to convert business cards into contacts.app entries on your iPhone or iPad – this then syncs with my Mac as part of iCloud services. While I don’t receive as many business cards as I used to, this is still a really useful time-saver.

WolframAlpha.

WolframAlpha is a handy shortcut for data points that Statista, WARC etc. doesn’t or won’t have.

Beeper.

Beeper is a multi-protocol messaging client. You can have Slack, LinkedIn, iMessage, WhatsApp and Discord all in one client. It works on both Macs and iPhones.

WaveAI Note taker.

Wave AI is an app that provides call note taking functionality using speech to text conversation. It is based on a freemium business model. Give it a try to see if it works with your style of working. An alternative to consider is Vienna Scribe, both seem to give better results than otter.ai

Portable second monitor.

When working away from the office or home, I have found a second monitor to come in handy. The one I use is from ASUS and comes with a protective cover that doubles as a stand.

Using generative AI tools

Principled Instructions Are All You Need for Questioning LLaMA-1/2, GPT-3.5/4 – is an academic paper with tips on how to get the most out of your prompts.

The sales pitch.

Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

More on what I have done to date here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my January 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Gong hei fat choy for the forthcoming Chinese new year. It will be the year of the dragon on February 10th.

Be excellent to each other. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
January 26, 2024
December 2023 newsletter
December 2023 newsletter introduction

I put the December 2023 newsletter together early because I know how December goes.

It used to be that Christmas parties and a gradual disappearance of clients and colleagues meant that the month effectively ended on December 15.

Christmas card from the old Adidas Originals boutique on Newburgh Street (as I write this the store is now occupied by Ralph Lauren’s RRL brand

In recent years all that went out the window. Clients called pitches for early January, which meant working up to and over the Christmas period. New projects came in that absolutely, positively had to have a first round of creative for the first week in January.

Whatever the holiday season throws at you, and whatever your favourite festival of choice to celebrate it is called. Have a great one! (Here’s a soundtrack for the vibes.)

Being thankful.

A good deal of December is about being thankful. The people and things that I am being thankful for (a by no means complete list).Things and people that I am being thankful for (a by no means complete list).
- My strategy brethren: Parrus Doshi, Lee Menzies-Pearson, Sarath Koka, Colleen Merwick, Maureen Garo, Conall Jackson, Alice Yessouroun, Makeila Saka, Zoe Healey and Calvin Wong
- Client services and creative partners who were in the thick of it: Greg Barter, Francisco Javier Galindo Aragoncillo, Anthony Welch, Ian Crocombe, Leanne Ainsworth, Stephen Holmes and Noel Wong
- Other smart people in the industry: Stephen Potts, Jeremy Brown, Darren Cairns, Robin Dhara, Martin Shellaker and Lisa Gills
- Things: WARC, the IPA
With that done, let’s get into the December 2023 newsletter!

Things I’ve written.
- Thinking about listening pleasure and the amount of factors that affect how we listen to music.
- Omakase – how a personalised experience migrated from high end Japanese sushi restaurant to reinvent food and beverage practice in Korea. What is it likely to mean for the rest of us?
- Beep – time, time signals and changing consumer behaviour.
- Soft girls and slackers – why generational dropout is likely to be a fiction and the true picture of how engaged we all are at work.
Books that I have read.

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis posits that Europe has already moved to a post-capitalist (and post-political) technofeudalist state where technology platforms are the defacto rulers. Varoufakis is more important in the way his book will likely influence future regulation and digital policy than as an analysis of the current zeitgeist per se. His viewpoint on the rentier economics of technology platform businesses is shared by other thinkers and academics including Lina M. Khan of the US. Federal Trade Commission.

Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements by Mary Buffett and David Clark. What I would have given for this book when I was studying my finance module in the first year of college. Buffett and Clark break down a bit of the history of Warren Buffett and what to look for on financial statements of publicly listed companies in a very homespun style. I don’t know if it’s a deliberate effect but even the cutting of the thicker than normal pages and inconsistent printing adds to its homespun feel.

Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Harry Farrell and Abraham Newman and Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror by Robert Young Pelton. Both of these books were recommended by friends directly involved at one time or another in GWoT – the global war on terror.

Licensed to Kill reminded me of Kipling’s portrayal of ordinary British soldiers in India. Their stories were never told by the historians. It is a similar state today with the contractors that serve in the conflict. There is at least one example where they are whitewashed out of a story in real-time by the US military, who instead gave credit elsewhere in their press statements. It’s fascinating and hugely dispiriting all at the same time.

The surprise for me was that the US reliance on contractors didn’t go back to the first Gulf War, but all the way to Vietnam where oilfield services and engineering contractor Brown and Root were responsible for 85% of the infrastructure deployed. Something I’d never seen mentioned before.

Underground Empire focuses on how financial and trade measures were used by the United States during the conflict and since. My main criticism of the book would be its singular focus on the US, whereas we have also seen these tools used by the European Union, China and Russia in more recent times – with varying degrees of success.

Things I have been inspired by.

The power of nostalgia is constantly underestimated in brand marketing. It’s why you remember ads and jingles decades later – the ‘long’ of The Long and The Short of It. Nothing is more wrapped into nostalgia than what marketers call ‘moments. Christmas is a classic example of a ‘moment’. Christmas in the Carroll household means working with my Dad to get his electro-mechanical control unit and Christmas tree lights down from the attic and carefully assembled in the front room. These lights are old, filament bulbs. Amazon’s plethora of LED lights for the tree mean that you no longer have the opportunity for training in zen-like patience on a December afternoon; checking and replacing each bulb that was blown in order to get the lights to work. Each year my Dad’s tobacco tin of spare bulbs gets precipitously closer to empty.

The tree itself was proudly made in Hong Kong sometime in the late 1960s or very early 1970s with authentic looking plastic pine needles held on branches of tightly wound wire about as thick as a coat hanger, held upright by an ancient plastic-legged tripod. The mechanism to run it is something my Dad cobbled together soon after buying the tree. The lights are wired into a giant disc of metal contact and a former radar motor swings around an armature to activate each contact in turn. All of this is held on a stout board that also has a circuit with a dully glowing bulb to provide resistance. The heat given off by the board and the dull light in a darkened room when it’s going is a reasonable substitute for an open fire in the smokeless zone where my parents live.

The smell of carbon bushes burning and old electrical products warming up is as much Christmas to me as cinnamon or an Old Spice gift set.

Once everything is running optimally it is covered in fibreboard boxes that are still wrapped in unblemished vibrant kitsch 1970s Christmas paper.

Another element of Christmas in the Carroll household is Jim Reeves’ 12 Songs of Christmas album that my parents have on repeat from December 1st onwards.

I took a trip down to the Young V&A museum in Bethnal Green to see their Japan: Myths to Manga exhibition. It’s designed for little people but delightfully curated.

Sailor Moon drawings from the animation cells

This month, I have been mostly listening to Patten’s second album alongside all the Christmas music. Patten uses AI created samples as his instruments on his tracks. His first album using this technique Mirage.FM reminded me of early 1980s techno in terms of its avant garde, at times discordant sound and tempo. The latest album Deep Blue feels much more organic, closer to hard bop jazz.

I was inspired by an end of year wrap-up by the folks at Superheroic AI on the leading edge of creative tools, which will feed into something I will drop in the new year.

McSweeney’s reimagined Spotify (and last.fm‘s) end of year recaps as if WebMD had done it…

But Ged, why no Christmas adverts?

By this time of the month, I am over Christmas adverts already, instead here’s a vintage clip from the Republic of Telly that explores some of the tropes of Christmas ads. I suspect that this was strongly influenced by campaigns mobile phone network Three Ireland had run over a number of years, but neatly skewers the cliches in much of Ireland’s adverts that come to focus on family members who can’t come home.

RTÉ television

Ok, ok, I will give you a Christmas ad, just not one of the ones that you’re expecting. In Japan, Christmas is when people eat KFC (this is down to KFC’s first Japanese franchisee marketing to expats looking for a turkey substitute on Christmas in the 1970s, which then became a wider thing in Japanese society). It is also a kind of mid-winter version of Valentine’s Day since it’s not bound by its western context. Which is why Sky condoms dropped this advert below. Thankfully there is no awkward fumbling with a drunk colleague in the stationery cupboard in the advert.

Going beyond Christmas and into 2024, Trendwatching have created an interactive web page outlining 15 industry-specific trends and 45 innovations related to the trends. Worthwhile going through for thought-starters, more here.

Things I have watched.

It’s cold and dark and I make no apology for my films being unapologetically escapist and and entertaining to try and counterweight the drab conditions.

Bosch Legacy season 2 – Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch is a great bit of casting and I have yet to tire of the Bosch series on Amazon Prime.. Part of this is down to Michael Connelly’s involvement, who has done a good job keeping the show in tune with his books. Season 2 is based on The Wrong Side of Goodbye and The Crossing. If you haven’t watched any of them start at the beginning with Bosch season 1 and work your way through to the Bosch Legacy series.

Reacher season two – I always found Tom Cruise’s adaption of the Jack Reacher books a bit odd. I liked watching him play opposite Werner Herzog, but Cruise wasn’t Reacher. In the Lee Childs books Jack Reacher’s a blond blue-eyed man mountain. He’s not a weirdly intense Napoleon-sized fragile soul – the very things that made Cruise fantastic in Magnolia. In the Amazon Prime series, that is not an issue because former teenage mutant ninja turtle Alan Ritchson fits Childs’ character to a tee and the character development is really well done. Season one was amazing and season two is off to a great start. This season is based on the book Bad Luck and Trouble.

The Lord of The Rings – I was in primary school when I first got to see this film. We’d just read The Hobbit and aped around hall acting out part of The Lord of the Rings that we were reading in class. Ralph Bakshi’s animation of the first book and a half of LOTR amazed me with its mix of animated characters and rotoscoped backdrops.

Ralph Bakshi in his own way has been just as much a visionary as Walt Disney, he brought a ‘realism’ to his animation. Due to a dispute with the studio Bakshi refused to make the second part of this film which is a shame. When you get to see Peter Jackson’s trilogy, the first film in particular, draws on Bakshi’s work shot for shot in parts (as well as the famous BBC radio drama from 1981). I have enjoyed watching this regularly since, along with Bakshi’s other works: Wizards and Fire & Ice.

Useful tools.

TeuxDeux.

It’s hard to get a to do list that works for you. Trust me I have tried a number of them. What works for me may have variable mileage for you. I have been finding TeuxDeux working for me at the moment and it’s $36/year. Secondly, I like small software companies that are more invested in their software or service and won’t ‘sunset’ (that’s Silicon Valley-speak for shutting down a service) it at the drop of a hat like Google, Yahoo!, Meta etc.

EmbedResponsively.

An oldie but goodie, EmbedResponsively provides a simple service that allows you to put video on a page that will adapt to the viewing device.

FREEKey system

I needed keyrings for my parents that were easy to put keys on or off. My Mum isn’t particularly patient and a broken nail spurred my search for them. The Swedish designed FREEKey system of keyrings solved that problem.

Infogram

Infogram is a service that makes it easier to create data visualisations of different types that I have found useful over the past couple of weeks.

Control Panel for Twitter

Twitter is style annoyingly useful at times. I have got around the worst aspects of it through the use of lists of trusted accounts in certain areas. Control Panel for Twitter is a plug-in that rolls back some of the amendments that Twitter has undergone by Elon Musk.

In terms of my own post-Twitter active social channels, you can find on Mastodon and Bluesky. I am still recovering from the trauma of Pebble closing down as it had the best community of all the post-Twitter platforms.

Cyberduck

When I first started using Cyberduck, it was to access FTP servers for images and videos being transferred. Now it’s more about accessing cloud storage facilities such as Google Drive and Dropbox, without having to synch all the files on to my computer. It can even work with Egnyte within reason.

The sales pitch.

Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or open to discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

More on what I have done to date here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my December 2023 newsletter. Be excellent to each other, have a great Christmas and New Year, I look forward to seeing you back here in 2024. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. See you next month!
December 19, 2023
November 2023 newsletter – fourth time unlucky?
November 2023 newsletter introduction

You’re still reading? Great! Welcome to my November 2023 newsletter which marks my 4th issue.

I am not excessively superstitious – but living in Hong Kong rubbed off a bit on me.

I developed a love of milk tea, found the ‘hit women’ cathartic and am still leery of the number 4.

The number 4 is considered unlucky. In Hong Kong buildings, there is no fourth floor – in a similar way to their being no 13th floor in the UK high rise and office blocks. So I hope that this fourth issue doesn’t bring misfortune.

The clocks have gone back and the sun rises reluctantly over the horizon every morning, disappearing earlier each afternoon, but that doesn’t mean that inspiration stops. And it will be Christmas before you know it.

New reader?

If is your first time reading, welcome to my November 2023 newsletter! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.

Things I’ve written.
- Dimensions of Luxury based on a mix of stuff that I have read from Sense Worldwide, Horizon Catalyst and books on luxury trends.
- Every wondered why its dot com rather than full-stop com? So did I.
- Analysis on IPSOS research on the value to brands of reputation.
- MCN – multi-channel networks. A business type popular in China and Japan is taking a record label approach to a stable of influencers.
- A little bit about the Whole Earth Catalogue and more things.
- The Brand Vandals conversation – reflecting back on a conversation I had in 2012 with Wadds that became part his book Brand Vandals.
Books that I have read.
- Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway. Prior to working in advertising, I had a background in manufacturing and consider myself reasonably well read, but some of the material in Conway’s book was completely new to me. Its narrative approach reminds me of the vintage TV documentary series Connections presented by James Burke, that can be found on YouTube.
- Beyond Disruption by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. This book looked at non-disruptive innovation. This is diametrically opposed to the way innovation is discussed in Silicon Valley and the mainstream media. More on my view of it here.
- The New Working Class by Claire Ainsley. In the advertising industry, we have an acute perception that we might not understand life outside the M25 as we think we do. I thankfully have friends and family in the North to keep me somewhat grounded from the metropolitan elite lifestyle that I lead. Until I read this book, I didn’t realise how grounded the advertising industry was compared to our counterparts in national politics. That this book had to be written is a damning indictment of how out of touch politicos actually are.
Things I have been inspired by.

Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook project – Microsoft, and MIT have worked together to create thousands of free and open audiobooks using text-to-speech technology and Project Gutenberg’s open-access collection of e-books. Via Matt’s Webcurios newsletter.

IPSOS research video seminar on Unlocking The Value of Reputation. This is the closest I have seen to making the case for earned media activities. The full whitepaper is available here. Thanks to Stuart Bruce for the link!

My friend Ian recommended the Honest Broker newsletter to me and I have found it to be a great read alongside my long time subscription to Bill Bishop’s Sinocism.

DDB Remedy’s meta analysis of marketing science work and academic scientific research on how emotion work for effective campaigns. How The Unexpected and Emotion Work to Influence Behaviour Change – focuses on how surprise when paired with emotion led creative had an increased impact. It all makes sense when you think about the power of salience and distinctiveness in communications; but it’s great to see that someone has drawn the multi-disciplinary research together in a cogent argument.

SEMRush have published a report for 2024 trends in social media platforms: The Vision in a Social Era that is worth downloading and pillaging for ideas that can be sold into clients.

I don’t know if inspired was the right term to use but I noticed 2023 Girlguiding Girl’s Attitudes survey thanks to a former colleague of mine from the start of my agency career. This is a survey that the Girlguiding movement has run over 15 years. Having freelanced on Dove’s ‘Real Beauty‘ campaign back in the day, this one statistic stood out to me.

If I were the Dove UK brand director at Unilever, this chart would be pinned to my wall or have it as my laptop wallpaper. You can read the full survey here.

It isn’t just a UK problem as this article on American teens gives more food for thought: What It’s Like to Be a 13-Year-Old Girl Today – The New York Times. It will be interesting to see if the Nike x Dove Body Confidence initiative makes a difference.

DeBeers is returning to its ‘A Diamond Is Forever’ campaign. The print campaign image is beautiful with a great use of negative space. DeBeers is spending 20 million dollars on media in the US in China. In the US, I think this makes total sense.

DeBeers

I don’t know how well it will work in China? There isn’t the mental model built up in west over decades around the campaign theme. While the wealthy in China realise that diamonds are recognised as a store of wealth – the guo chao mindset may see gold (and possibly jade) jewellery favoured by at least some younger consumers.

This has been exacerbated by a decline in the number of marriages by just under 11% and a trend to prefer gold has an 18% reduction in diamonds sold in China over the past 12 months. In the meantime the sale of gold has risen by 12%.

I look forward to seeing how the campaign goes.

According to Numerator, online retail platforms will be the big winners from Christmas shopping. The news for the food and beverage services sector isn’t so great.

Finally ‘Knowledge is Power with Kidney Disease took me back to 1988. Rob Base has remade It Takes Two for Bohringer Ingelheim in the US to highlight the linkage between kidney disease and type two diabetes. The message is poignant as Base’s creative partner DJ EZ Rock died in 2014 and suffered from diabetes.

Producer DJ EZ Rock was responsible for the hype backing track based around Lynn Collins ‘Think (about it)’ and backing vocals from Rhonda Parris. (Parris has a short-lived recording career, releasing just one solo single No, No Love – a bit of a proto-House banger heavily influenced by freestyle if you like that kind of thing). Those that knew also had the Derek B remix of It Takes Two, with a heavy kick drum underpinning from a Roland TR-808 drum machine.

Things I have watched.

It’s cold and dark and I make no apology for my films being unapologetically escapist and and entertaining to try and counterweight the drab conditions. I do have some standards through and got material for this November 2023 newsletter.
- Zerozer ozero – follows a single drug deal between the Mexican cartel and the ’Ndrangheta. However things don’t go according to plan, so as the conspiracy unfolds we get a walk through the international drug trafficking trade across Latin America, Africa and Europe. This was done as a limited series, but I watched it as a boxset. It is directed by Stefano Sollima who did the Sicario films and Subarra.
- Novembre – A French fictional dramatisation of the government response to coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris at Stade de France and the Bataclan concert venue through to the Saint Dennis raid that resulted in the death of police dog Diesel, which trended on social media with the #jesuisdiesel hashtag. Jean Dujardin shows the range of his ability as an actor from the comedy of his OSS117 film series, to the deadly seriousness of this film.
- Diva – I originally watched Diva as part of the Moviedrome series of curated films introduced by Alex Cox. At the time Cox personally disliked the film due to it being ‘a film of style’ rather than narrative. I loved it and revisited it on Blu-Ray. It was sharper and I got to appreciate the Vladimir Cosma soundtrack with its mix of opera, classical music and avant-garde compositions.
Alex Cox’s introduction to Diva for the much missed Moviedrome film seasons that used to run on BBC 2.
- The Continental – Amazon Prime Video has some great tentpole content and The Continental adds to this. It’s a prequel of sorts to the John Wick universe and starts with a beautifully made feature length pilot. The action would find it hard to live up to the John Wick films, but the impeccable soundtrack manages to surpass them. The alternative past New York of the film has similar vibes to shows like Pennyworth and Gotham.
Useful tools

Better Miro, Mural or Figjam alternative

I have started using Milanote as an alternative to Miro for personal projects. Like Miro it has a mix of templates to get you started. There is an iPhone app and a native Mac app, so you don’t have to rely on running resource hungry pages in your internet browser of choice. It might even replace Omnigraffle in my personal software stack for some of the tasks that I do.

The sales pitch.

It was great to collaborate this month with my Hong Kong and Shanghai-based friends at Craft Associates on a prospective exciting new project. Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my November 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
November 29, 2023
CX research + more things
CX research

IPSOS conducts CX research on an annual basis. They surveyed 1,000 CX (customer experience) specialists around the world about the current state of CX in their businesses. The IPSOS CX research painted a complex picture of organisations. Key take outs of the CX research:
- 82% of respondents believed that CX investment will provide a competitive edge, but only 52% were expecting an increase investment over the next 12 months.
- 28% of respondents admitted that their organisation’s CX was worse than promised and only 15% of respondents consider their organisations ‘CX leaders’.
- Only 52% have CX governance policies in place.
At the present time the majority of CX leaders have data integration issues and 46% now have to integrate AI as well, adding to their business challenge.

Beauty

Hailey Bieber Fulfills Glazed Donut Promise, Announces Rhode x Krispy Kreme Collaboration – Fashionista – via BBH Singapore’s Culture Bleats newsletter

Business

Games Workshop: model maker represents the best of Britain | Financial Times

China

Foxconn offers higher hourly rates for workers in Shenzhen at its Huawei production unit than its iPhone operation | South China Morning Post – Foxconn’s FIH unit manufactures handsets and electronics devices for Huawei and other smartphone firms. Although China remains its most important production centre, Apple has been diversifying its supply chain amid rising geopolitical tensions.

China denies claims of iPhone ban, but leaves vague hints | DigiTimes

China’s coming lawfare offensive | Financial Times

Consumer behaviour

By far the biggest risk factor for suicide is being male | Of Boys And Men

Culture

The news report that drove mainstream interest in the new romantics or blitz kids as they are sometimes known.

Economics

Omdia: Semiconductor Industry Reverses Downtrend, Achieves 3.8% Revenue Growth in 2Q23

CALM highlights the financial worries of the nation and its affect on mental health | Creative Moment

The rise of surge pricing: ‘It will eventually be everywhere’ | Financial Times – this will drive inflation as it maximises revenue more efficiently

Ethics

Environmentally friendly clothing brand Patagonia gets called out about the ‘greenwashing’ design of its buffalo work boots by the Rose Anvil YouTube channel who specialise in analysing boot and shoe design.

Finance

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

Health

Juul got young people hooked on nicotine—Blip wants to help them quit | Fast Company

How to

Project Gutenberg Audio books – thanks to our Matt

Ideas

John Lanchester · Get a rabbit: Don’t trust the numbers · LRB 21 September 2023

Innovation

MEMS builds tiny space thruster that runs on water | EE News Europe – Researchers at Purdue University showed a water-based thruster for nano satellites in 2017.

No-hands driving | Axios – on ADAS

Thermoelectric Cooling: Paving the Path to AV Safety – EE Times

Luxury

Timed out! Rugby World Cup 2023 referees not wearing watches due to sponsor dispute | Stuff.co.nz – in some ways Tudor are very much like their big cousin Rolex. This move came across as petty, the problem is that Tudor seems to have made mistakes in its sponsorship and doesn’t have the gravitas of Rolex.

Daring Fireball: Hermès Still Sells Leather Apple Watch Straps, But Only Through Their Own Store – which is very different to the impression that Apple gave during their autumn keynote ‘Wanderlust’ event.

Standard Model: The Chanel J12 Eclipse Set – LUXUO – interesting, particularly given the manufacturing problems that Rolex has had with dual colour ceramic bezels. Chanel has managed to master this and master it across the whole watch. Matching bezel and case divisions.

Interesting analysis on supercar prices.

Profile of Lacoste.

Marketing

A few days of lunch time viewing from the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) media planning and strategy summit. Interesting mix of presentations and case studies.

Really interesting case study on McDonalds and how the brand has evolved over two decades in the UK.

KFC’s Colonel Sanders in Street Fighter 6 is finger breakin’ good | Yahoo! News – has also transformed wardrobe with a Loro Piana look.

The Unspoken Truth About CMO Churn | AdWeek

Online

Labs | Last.fm – I have used last.fm for 20 years and still love their experimental data visualisations.

China Sows Disinformation About Hawaii Fires Using New Techniques – The New York Times – using LLMs to generate misinformation materials.

How social media killed the protest | Financial Times

New emoji launch in association with Unicode which goes into how emojis became mainstream.

Security

Inside The Ransomware Attack That Shut Down MGM Resorts and more here: MGM, Caesars File SEC Disclosures on Cybersecurity Incidents | Dark Reading.

China’s de-risking strategy predates US, EU efforts | Quartz – it goes back to the 1980s efforts of China.

Saab buys into unicorn AI startup | EE News Europe – the focus includes use of autonomous vehicles (land, sea and air), electronic warfare and surveillance capabilities.

How I got to know Westminster’s ‘Chinese agent’ | The Spectator and China trying to headhunt British nationals in key positions, UK says | Reuters. Sunak admits UK needs more investment to combat China’s security challenge | Financial Times – it’s going to have to get smart soon.

Lithuania gets called out: Revealed: The Country that Secretly Wiretapped the World for the FBI | 404 Media.

Software

Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier | One Useful Thing – on AI futures

Style

The evolution of sneakers from functional kicks to high-value commodities – ABC News

Taiwan

Taiwanese civilian drone suppliers are tapping into the defense sector | DigiTimes

Technology

Huawei’s Kirin 9000S chip made by SMIC is only a breakout, not a breakthrough

What This Year May Well Bring for the eFPGA – EE Times – embedded FPGAs allow for in-life product upgrades

Telecoms

How two SATCOM companies are responding to Starlink’s dominance
October 26, 2023
October 2023 newsletter – 3rd time’s the charm
October 2023 newsletter introduction

As I write the October 2023 newsletter. it’s getting noticeably darker outside earlier, but the sunrises reward us with a wider variation of colours. And we all have Halloween to look forward to. This is the third issue and I am still finding my way writing these things. I hope that the third time’s a charm, but I will let you be the judge of that. You can read the earlier ones here.

I looked into where the phrase ‘third time’s a charm’ came from. Apparently it comes from Old English Law, if a prisoner survived three attempts at hanging and survived, they would be set free.

You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. Let’s get it started!

Things I’ve written.
- Climate despair – how NGOs and companies are failing young people in the way they talk about climate change and what they can do to change their communications to increase active participation in reducing the degree of climate change.
- Technopolarity – how technology is subverting the power structures of elected governments and instead empowering the likes of Elon Musk.
- Clustomers – how Intuit MailChimp’s ad campaign, whilst clever, might reinforce C-suite misconceptions around marketing and advertising
Books that I have read.
- These 38 Reading Rules Changed My Life – RyanHoliday.net – whilst its not a book, it does contain great advice for readers
- Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Fogg’s simple model for understanding individual behaviours has helped drive everything from health campaigns to online services. Tiny Habits how consumers and businesses can help foster behavioural change, one tiny habit at a time. More on my review of the book here.
- The long awaited Mick Herron book The Secret Hours did not disappoint. It’s from the Slow Horses universe, but not a Slough House story per se. More than a nod to Boris Johnson’s stint as foreign secretary and prime minister. I will leave it at that rather than give you plot spoilers.
- China A History by John Keay. Keay’s book was recommended to me by a number of people. In 535 pages he attempts the impossible in terms of covering China’s history as a civilisation through the start of Xi Jinping’s first administration. It’s a dense read – it’s well written, covering the complexity of history well. The current communist government is barely a footnote (ok exaggerating a bit here), but it puts things in perspective.
- Spain A History edited by Raymond Carr. The book highlights the notable trends, intellectual and social, of each particular era in its history. Roman rule created the notion of ‘Spain’ as a distinct entity. The chapters on the Visigoth monarchy, Moorish Spain, the establishment, an empire, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, all chart the cultural, political and economic arc of Spain. It then goes on to explore 19th century liberalism and the pivot during much of the 20th century towards authoritarian rule, followed by a return to democracy and onwards up to the 21st century. My favourite chapter was about the Visigoths, which was a period I didn’t know much about prior to reading this book – the author did a particularly good job of bringing the Visigoths to life on page.
Things I have been inspired by.

Halloween. I have been looking forward to the holiday for at least a month. Growing up in an Irish household with rural origins, I had an appreciation of the changing seasons and loved the traditions around Halloween, especially tales of the fairy forts and the banshee. It’s also a big money earner, in the advertising world allowing for interesting tactical executions that couldn’t otherwise be attempted. Outside advertising, ignoring increased food sales, a third of consumers will spend 51 – 100 USD on putting together their own costume, or buying one off the rack. The most hardcore 10% of those surveyed admitted to spending 250+ USD.

I was not into costumes, instead I look forward to the most is my Mum’s barmbrack. For the first time in a few years my Mum baked a few barmbracks and sent one of them to me. It’s a Halloween tradition. The barmbrack itself is a spicy fruited bread with a texture somewhere between brioche and and a pan loaf. Traditionally, the brack would contain a ring or trinket, which would turn up in a random slice.

When I was small, commercial bakeries still used to have a an aluminium ring that looked like it was from a cheap Christmas cracker contained wrapped in greaseproof paper baked into the brack.

Downloadable recipe PDF here (Dropbox) or here (Google Drive) if you fancy baking your own over the weekend.

While we’re on the subject of food, Hope & Glory’s collaboration between Lick paint and Heinz ketchup for a ketchup shade of wall paint creates talkability, though I wouldn’t be buying it for my own home.

Buoyant Bob – I am stil not sure if Buoyant Bob is a social object, a brand, both or something else. Buoyant Bob was a successful entry into the US cannabis marketplace. The brief in the campaign was to work around restrictions in cannabis advertising and show it as the most fun brand in the space.

Buoyant Bob was released as a single: retail takeovers, vinyl records at dispensaries, and fans sharing Instagram Stories using “The Man Who Got So High” all followed.

OnlyWatch – an auction in Geneva in aid of research Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy features one-off luxury watches from all of the major Swiss timepiece houses. Some of the entries are unique colour ways but Bulgari went the extra mile with their Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Marble. Their watches are already well known for being some of the thinnest timepieces available. A tourbillion is a demonstration of the watchmakers art. The one in this watch is just under 2mm thick – that’s just over double the thickness of a credit card for a moving mechanical assembly. And then they managed to cover the entire titanium case and strap of the watch in marble and make a marble dial – without making the watch any bulkier than its usual ridiculously slim case. It’s not something I would wear even if I could afford it, but I am in awe of the ingenuity.

Bulgari for OnlyWatch – Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Marble

Finally Dentsu Health published a great must-read byline on how media and entertainment can aid health equality. More here.

Things I have watched.

I got to see The Boy and The Heron early at the BFI London Film Festival. You won’t get any plot spoilers from me here. Official release is December 26 in the UK, December 8 in Hong Kong. It’s Studio Ghibli, what else do you need to know?

General Magic – a great documentary about a Silicon Valley start-up of the same name.. Back in the early 1990s General Magic was as visionary as Apple and as hyped as WeWork. If you’ve ever worked with a start-up or care about technology give it a watch. More on my thoughts here.

The Pentagon Papers – Despite this being a made-for-TV film, James Spader does a great job of playing Daniel Ellsberg; the RAND researcher to gave the materials to the media. In terms of pacing acting and storytelling, I would put this on a par with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman’s film adaptation of All The President’s Men.

Tampopo is a beautifully shot Japanese film with comedic moments that tells the story of a widow, her son and their ramen shop. More on what I thought of here.

A relatively modern Halloween tradition in the Carroll family has been watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown – recommended for young and old alike. While my Dad and I usually end up watching The Crow later on. If you want more classic horror, then you could do worse than watching the livestream by the Creature Features show.

Useful tools

ITV Adlabs and Magic Numbers recovery budget planner

Pretty much essential to look at if you have responsibility for UK media spend at a brand. This allows you to examine various scenarios and see likely outcomes based on media spend. More here.

Google bundles generative AI and LLM with search

I downloaded Chrome especially to try this out, it looks a bit more mature than Bing’s initial integration of ChatGPT. Go here to give it a try if you’re a Chrome browser user.

Post-It Z-Notes

You’re workshopping something with clients or thinking something through on your own – Post-It notes are key. The own brand ones can vary from really good to useless, so spend a bit more and get proper Post-It notes. In fact, I’d advise that you go one step further and get Post-It Z-Notes. The notes alternate sides in terms of where the ‘sticky end’ is and if you lift them from the pad you get a ‘Z’ before they peel away. They come away effortlessly and work brilliantly if you have them in a desk holder.

Foldable wireless keyboard

At the start of my career, I used to have a Palm PDA ( personal digital assistant – think a smartphone, without the phone and communications bit). I also had a long commute to Luton on a daily basis. I got a lot of reading and writing done thanks to a ‘Stowaway’ foldable keyboard made by a company called Think Outside. The company no longer exists, but the desire to be able to turn my iPhone into a simple writing tool lives on. Recently, I have been using this foldable Bluetooth keyboard. It folds up, can be used on a train seat table or even an economy class aircraft seat and recharges easily. The keyboard isn’t the usual rubbery mess that you tend to get in a lot of these devices. It’s one fault so far is that it feels flimsy, but I have already got my money’s worth out of it in just a few months. I fire up the iPhone’s notes app and get to work. I can then edit and refine once I have a bit more time on my Mac at a more convenient time.

The sales pitch.

Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my October 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. DON’T FORGET TO PUT YOUR CLOCKS BACK BEFORE YOU GO TO BED ON SATURDAY. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
October 25, 2023