Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

  • Brand clichés

    Brand clichés have been in the background of my career in agencies, all the way through. I am sure that brand clichés will continue long after my career is over. I started off writing copy for technology clients. Short pithy marketing copy and longer thought leadership pieces, opinion editorials and white papers. Back when I…

  • Six hundred pairs + more stuff

    Six hundred pairs of Nikes in a custom-built house The six hundred pairs of Nikes are owned by a Japanese lady who now is head of marketing for Ugg in Japan. Previously she’d spent over 20 years in sales and marketing for Nike. Her house was designed around her shoe collection and the double height…

  • Razors for strategists

    What are razors? Razors are one of a series of tools that I use for problem solving. They sit alongside the idea of ‘chunking’ that is breaking a problem down into more manageable and solvable constituent parts. Razors aid in decision-making and analysis. Razors are rules that guide your way through a problem, or ‘cut’…

  • February 2024 newsletter – No.7

    February 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my February 2024 newsletter which marks my 7th issue. I hope that your year of the dragon is off to a great start. The number 7 is a bit of a mixed bag, depending on how you look at it. In the old testament, the 7th heaven is where God’s…

  • Pipes by Yahoo

    I discovered something at the end of last year. The belatedly missed Yahoo Pipes was, in fact, officially called “Pipes by Yahoo.” I made that mistake, despite being well-versed in the brand guidelines, having spent a year working there with a copy consistently at my side. Now, why this journey down the memory superhighway? That’s…

  • Technonationalism

    Technonationalism as a term has started to spring up in Chinese policy discussions regarding technology trade with the US and China. Technonationalism origins Technonationalism is a term used by economist Robert Reich in 1987 to describe the relationship between technology and national security. Reich used the term in an article that he wrote for The…

  • Every old idea is new again

    Inspiration for every old idea is new again The inspiration for this post on every old idea is new again came from my opening up Rakuten‘s Viber messaging app on my iPhone. Viber is a messaging platform and also does voice over IP, including out to the phone network. It is a hybrid of Skype…

  • Padel + more things

    Padel The racket sport padel seems to have got the zeitgeist, if not the player numbers yet. We haven’t really seen a surge in sports fads since the 1980s. During that time skateboarding rose from a peak in the late 1970s, to a more stable underground sport that we have today. The closure of a…

  • Loneliness

    This post on loneliness came about from an insight journey I took for a prospective project aimed at generation Z. Don’t get me started on defining an audience by generation, or I will go off-topic and not be back for a while while I rant about how life stages are a superior lens. But we…