Ged Carroll

Category: marketing | 營銷 | 마케팅 | マーケティング

According to the AMA – Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. This has contained a wide range of content as a section over the years including

  • Super Bowl advertising
  • Spanx
  • Content marketing
  • Fake product reviews on Amazon
  • Fear of finding out
  • Genesis the Korean luxury car brand
  • Guo chao – Chinese national pride
  • Harmony Korine’s creative work for 7-Eleven
  • Advertising legend Bill Bernbach
  • Japanese consumer insights
  • Chinese New Year adverts from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore
  • Doughnutism
  • Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
  • Influencer promotions
  • A media diary
  • Luxe streetwear
  • Consumerology by marketing behaviour expert Phil Graves
  • Payola
  • Dettol’s back to work advertising campaign
  • Eat Your Greens edited by Wiemer Snijders
  • Dove #washtocare advertising campaign
  • The fallacy of generations such as gen-z
  • Cultural marketing with Stüssy
  • How Brands Grow Part 2 by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp
  • Facebook’s misleading ad metrics
  • The role of salience in advertising
  • SAS – What is truly Scandinavian? advertising campaign
  • Brand winter
  • Treasure hunt as defined by NPD is the process of consumers bargain hunting
  • Lovemarks
  • How Louis Vuitton has re-engineered its business to handle the modern luxury consumer’s needs and tastes
  • Korean TV shopping celebrity Choi Hyun woo
  • qCPM
  • Planning and communications
  • The Jeremy Renner store
  • Cashierless stores
  • BMW NEXTGen
  • Creativity in data event that I spoke at
  • Beauty marketing trends
  • Kraft Mothers Day marketing
  • RESIST – counter disinformation tool
  • Facebook pivots to WeChat’s business model
  • Smartphone launches

  • Toyota FJ Land Cruiser + more stuff

    Toyota FJ Land Cruiser

    Toyota announced its new Toyota FJ Land Cruiser model. The Toyota FJ Land Cruiser is a smaller five-seater vehicle. It is a direct replacement for the FJ Cruiser which was sold in many markets outside the UK and European Union. Like its predecessor the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser shares underpinnings with its larger 7-seater cousin the 250 series. It features a shorter wheelbase. Toyota has put a lot of effort into thinking about how it can make the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser more extensible in capabilities and more modular.

    fj landcruiser

    Modularity comes in compatibility with MOLLE military storage connectivity that has made its way into the civilian world. While Alpine packs are about sleek design with few snags, MOLLE allows fastenings, pouches and equipment to be suspended inside and outside bags. Toyota has now extended this to the inside of the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser’s rear door.

    The focus on extensible features within the vehicle shows how some markets (notably America) have a large after market industry providing additional features for vehicles with aspirations to do overloading. Toyota is an active participant in the SEMA show in the US. This is where fans and the vehicle modifying industry get together to be inspired, do deals and gain intelligence on vehicles so that they can design new after market parts. Toyota brings concept builds, as well as allowing after market manufacturers to measure and 3D scan new vehicles.

    The move to extensible design, shows that Toyota is interested in providing more of that capability through its own business. Third-party parts, in particular lift kits can affect handling and wheel bearings. Designing its own aftermarket parts and applying extensible thinking in the vehicle design philosophy allows Toyota to:

    • Meet consumer needs.
    • Ensure the vehicles meet the factory’s quality and reliability standards.
    • Offer incremental additional revenue.

    While a Toyota FJ Land Cruiser as ‘mum truck’ won’t need a water fording kit. An overlanding enthusiast like Chloe Kuo would put it to good use and influence more potential buyers in the process.

    Like the FJ Cruiser before it we are unlikely to see the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser in UK Toyota dealerships due to the UK government’s focus on forcing UK consumers away from internal combustion vehicles. Instead they are likely to come in small numbers as JDM (Japanese domestic market) pre-owned vehicles.

    Toyota recognises that net zero is more complex than importing Chinese electric vehicles. Considerations also need to be given to vehicle use case, the whole life carbon footprint of the car and sustainability. But that doesn’t make simple solutions for policy makers.

    Toyota will have four Land Cruiser models that it will be selling around the world:

    • J70 series – sold to the UN, various militaries, Japan, Australia and in the global south. Doesn’t pass current European vehicle laws as it’s designed for resilience, robustness, repairability and sustainment in the most hostile environments.
    • J300 series – the flagship of the line-up. Sold in the US as the Lexus LX, this combines the comfort of a top of the range Range Rover with the capability of the 70 series in an off-road environment. As a Land Cruiser it is available in Australia, Japan, the Gulf States, South Africa and various countries in South East Asia from Sri Lanka to the Philippines.
    • J250 series – the most widespread of the Land Cruiser range in terms of sales footprint. It is sold in Japan, Europe, North and South America, Australia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Brunei and the Gulf States. In Europe it’s known as the Land Cruiser. It’s sold in other markets as the Toyota Prado, the Toyota Land Cruiser 250 in Japan, the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado in Australia and in North America as the Lexus GX and Toyota Land Cruiser. It is smaller and utilitarian than the J300, but not quite as robust or spartan as the J70 series.
    • FJ Land Cruiser – the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser is likely to be sold in North America and Japan, mirroring the markets where the FJ Cruiser was originally sold.

    China

    A Proud Superpower Answers to No One – by Ryan Fedasiuk – an odd blend of policy isolation and hubris. Read with China Doubles Down – by Stephen Roach – Conflict

    Economics

    How the UK Lost Its Shipbuilding Industry – by Brian Potter – The UK ultimately proved unable to respond to competitors who entered the market with new, large shipyards which employed novel methods of shipbuilding developed by the US during WWII. British industry in general failed to invest adequately to keep ahead of competitors. The UK fell from producing 57% of world tonnage in 1947 to just 17% a decade later. By the 1970s their output was below 5% of world total, and by the 1990s it was less than 1%. In 2023, the UK produced no commercial ships at all. – Part of this was also down to policy decisions. The Thatcher administration deliberately designated yards as military-only to drive them to the wall and smash the trade unions.

    Energy

    Honeywell unveils new technology to decarbonise heavy industries | FT – no reason why it couldn’t work for aviation and vehicle fuel as well in principle aside from scale.

    US government and Westinghouse strike $80bn nuclear reactor deal | FT

    Porsche hits reverse on EV push as new CEO shifts back to petrol | FT

    Finance

    Barclays buys Best Egg in $800mn bet on US loan securitisation | FT – is this sub-prime? Read also HSBC warns on wider risks from private credit blow-ups | FT

    Hong Kong

    Memory Exiled | History Workshop – a bit tiresome, don’t get me wrong I am happy to throw brickbats at the UK Government as a citizen of a decolonised country but this is distorted. – The UK government releases papers after 20 years, but some are kept under wraps for longer for national security or other reasons. Sensitive materials (in Hong Kong’s case, perhaps to do with the handover) don’t account for more than a tiny percentage of the content and are redacted. One possible reason the Hong Kong files are still not released is simply that there are huge amounts of them, and they are mostly on microfiche, which is a pain to digitise – not because of a desire to ‘control history’.

    Breaking | Beijing vows to support Hong Kong in better integrating into national development | South China Morning Post – reads like extending Bay Area narrative and weakening Hong Kong‘s distinctiveness?

    Innovation

    The Loop: How American Profits Built Chinese Power

    Luxury

    Kim Jones joins Bosideng to lead its new high-end urban line | Vogue Business – Bosideng are a huge maker of down jackets, it will be interesting where they go with Kim Jones.

    Marketing

    What’s gone wrong at WPP? The crown slips at world’s biggest advertising group | WPP | The Guardian – “Middle-aged traditional creatives, the ones that have built a career doing traditional TV ads and posters who you’d have thought would be the most at threat of extinction, are moving very fast, teaching themselves how to master…generative AI to survive.”

    Forgive the rant, but this quote from an article about WPP’s decline–and the attitude behind it–drives me absolutely crazy. Let’s do the math.

    If you’re a 40-year-old creative, you were 19 when Facebook launched.You turned 21 when Twitter debuted.You were 22 when Apple introduced the iPhone, and 25 when Instagram came out.
    So you’ve literally spent your entire career in advertising creating work for the digital/social/smartphone media ecosystem. 
    And that means you’ve produced way more digital-first and social campaigns than TV spots, let alone posters. (Also: I would love to meet the creative who “built a career” making posters.)

    And creatives older than 40? They’ve successfully navigated the decline of broadcast and mass media, the introduction of smartphones, the broad shift to targeting, the endless parade of social channels and new technologies that Will Change Everything–arguably the greatest two decades of disruption the advertising industry has ever faced.

    And the creatives who are over 60? They’re the generation that *invented* digital advertising. – I thought that this comment from LinkedIn was the most insightful assessment of the article

    Security

    Russia at war — ebook by Royal Danish Defence College – great articles including one by Anders Puck-Nielsen.

    NATO Baltic Sea mission has ‘deterred’ undersea sabotage: commanders | Spacewar

    Dentsu warns staff of data breach after Merkle hit by cyber ‘security incident’ | Campaign

    Software

    Apple employees have ‘concerns’ over Siri performance in early iOS 26.4 builds: report – 9to5Mac

    Major NHS AI trial delivers unprecedented time and cost savings – GOV.UK – Microsoft 365 Copilot trial demonstrates monthly time savings of potentially 400,000 hours for NHS staff.

    Technology

    China calls for ‘extraordinary measures’ to achieve chip breakthroughs | FT and The Dark Horse of China’s AI Silicon: Cambricon After the Nvidia Ban | Voice of Context

    Qualcomm shares jump as it launches new AI chip to rival Nvidia | FT and Nvidia to invest $1bn into Nokia as chip giant extends deal spree | FT – I keep thinking back to Cisco circa 1999 and its never-ending stream of stock-based acquisitions based on the irrational exuberance of of an elevated share price.

    Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots – The New York Times – Amazon is working hard on automating more warehouse tasks with robots, targeting 600k jobs and 30 cents cost saving per item shipped. Versus Alibaba reality circa late 2017.

    Wireless

    Iridium develops compact chip for robust global GPS protection | Space Daily

  • October 2025 issue 27

    October 2025 introduction – (27) gateway to heaven edition

    I am now at issue 27, or as a bingo caller would put it ‘gateway to heaven’. 

    Michael Landon

    27 inspired an urban legend of the ’27 club effect’ where a ‘statistical spike’ in fatalities affected musicians, actors and other artists. However in reality there is no statistical spike though Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin all died aged 27.

    In the I Ching, the 27th hexagram is associated with sufficient physical and spiritual nourishment – good advice for anyone since we’re going into winter.

    This edition’s soundtrack is Coco – I Need A Miracle over Dreadzone – Little Britain put together by MH1. I used to love mashups and bastard pop in the early 2000s to 2010s, especially A plus D and their Bootie nights, which I got to see at the DNA Lounge back when I had to travel to San Francisco while working at Yahoo!. They built a whole genre of out of what would normally be trick recordings you might have played once in a DJ set like Evil Eddie Richards You Used to Salsa.

    MH1 carries this on the same grand tradition as A plus D and sent me down a memory hole in my iTunes collection.

    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.

    • Golden Mile – a collection of documentaries and films that caught my eye, from the last days of the Golden Mile complex that was a centre of the Thai diaspora in Singapore to the oral history of the Google Docs development team.
    • Nvidia ban in China and more things – a selection of stuff that I found of interest online including articles on Nvidia’s fraught relationship with China as a market.
    • Tahoe and more things – from the inside steer on Nexperia and the importance of strategic writing for using LLMs to Apple’s imperfect macOS Tahoe.

    Books that I have read.

    • Clown Town by Mick Herron is the latest instalment in the Slow Horses series of books, on which the Apple+ TV series are based. Without plot spoilers, I can tell you that it’s up to the high standards of the earlier books. Herron is as critical of the current Labour government as he was of their conservative party predecessors.
    • I am just starting in on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s history of the great depression 1929. I hope to update you next month on whether it’s a book that I would recommend.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    I managed to spend some time with fellow former Yahoo Nick Fowden and we discussed AI futures and the altar of marketing efficiency and performance media over effectiveness and brand building.

    Mercedes goes back to luxury

    Mercedes-Benz put on a special event in Shanghai that looked like an attempt to reboot the brand. Star of the show was the Mercedes Vision Iconic concept car, this looked like the vehicle the relaunched Jaguar brand would want to build. The grill looked as if it came off a vintage Mercedes 600 ‘Grosser’ and was a world away from the current nadir of the car brand.

    Mercedes Benz Vision Iconic

    Understanding influencer payback is also about understanding the caveats, risks and current limitations in optimisation

    The IPA published effectiveness data on (paid) influencers, it is is great to have this data set and shows the continued role in improving the advertising industry. You can expect to see these headlines trumpeted by influencer and PR agencies. BUT, it is worthwhile going beyond the headlines and into the deck presented. My takeouts from the data presentation:

    • It’s a promising, but limited sample. However overall there seemed to some commonality in results amongst the European markets compared.
    • On sample selection, the presentation itself says: “Based on sample definition, no campaigns are included where influencer spend was present but did not produce a result at some level therefore 0-25 ROI index likely to be significantly under-reported.” This is key because reading the data at face value gives an overly-optimistic picture of likely influencer campaign success.
    • The data presented represents bad news for paid social campaigns in particular, and it highlights their relatively poor RoI from the Profit Ability 2 study. What it means: Expect some of the influencer spend to come from the experimental pot within the social platform advertising budget.
    • Long-term multipliers for Influencers are the highest of any channel in the data, but the tiny difference between television and influencers are not significantly large to be definitive. So further research could see this relationship flip.
    • The numbers are averages, but Influencer ROIs are much less likely to be ‘average’ with (high and low) extremes alongside outliers much more present (and this is with campaigns giving 0-25% RoI filtered out). There is a much higher risk in terms of spend versus reward, which a responsible agency partner should be disclosed to clients upfront. This huge variance also mirrored in the kind of results seen in Chinese social commerce campaigns as well. What it means: You can’t duplicate success and optimise in the same way as you can by using testing for TV advertising and the like. So for businesses like Unilever that are putting half their spend into influencer marketing – its a high risk endeavour with limited risk mitigation strategies.
    influencer roi predictability
    • There isn’t intra-influencer category analysis based on follower size. Getting paid reach will still be critical, so social platforms will still win.
    • The research doesn’t cover B2B sectors but subscription revenue model technology clients (Adobe, Canva, Monday.com, Grammarly etc.) may take some hope from the RoI achieved by consumer-focused telecommunications brands.

    TL;DR: At the moment influencer represents the worst attributes of both earned and paid media. The uncertainty of earned media, the higher upfront cost of paid media. What it means: be wary of over-promising influencer campaign success, set realistic expectations about the likely wide variance in results. Keep an eye out as further data expands and clarifies the picture.

    Chart of the month. 

    European attitudes to video games

    This month’s chart comes from data provided by the European Commission’s Director General CONNECT (Communications Networks, Content and Technology). The breadth and quality of research that they do is really useful to people in my line of work.

    video gaming

    The sentiment around video games is similar to what you would have seen around television in previous decades. So video games aren’t in aggregate seen as great for society, but not the complete pox on people that you would see if you ran the same survey for social media platforms.

    Things I have watched. 

    Jean Giraud aka Moebius was a graphic novel artist drawing in the bande dessinée tradition. Moebius Redux is an hour long documentary of Giraud’s career through to the mid-2000s. In it is a who’s who of comic book legends including Stan Lee and Mike Mignola – the creator of Hellboy. It even has an amazing original soundtrack by former Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos.

    I remember seeing The Satan Bug as a child and enjoying it immensely. I also read the book that it was based on as my Dad had built up a collection of Alistair McLean and I devoured them from age 11 onwards. I went back and revisited decades later to see if I would still enjoy it. I did, but for different reasons. The premise is based on the paranoia of annihilation that was a main part of the cold war zeitgeist. The wrinkle in the story is that it’s about germ warfare rather than nuclear bombs. Adult me saw the plot as ridiculous, but the cinematography, location, set design and wardrobe floored me. The high security compound of ‘Station 3’ and the various interiors were triumphs of mid-century modern design. The scenery and locations were in the California desert making it an ideal canvas for John Sturges who had previously shot Bad Day at Black Rock  and The Magnificent Seven. The Satan Bug was also the start of helicopter based cinematography thanks a newly developed steady cam mechanism.

    Following on in the same vein I watched The Andromeda Strain. Just six years separated from The Satan Bug, but stylistically so different. The Michael Crichton novel has a much more coherent story. Much of it is told through jargon and multi-media formats such as a computer driven plotter and a ticker tape running across the screen in the second scene of the film. Where The Andromeda Stream loses out is in its cinematography and style. The set design feels lazy compared to The Satan Bug, the cinematography is competent but workman-like.

    I watched the original Russian film adaptation of Solaris. It has been years since I have seen it. Its one of them films that you can watch three times and still pick up new details. Andrei Tarkovsky focused on storytelling rather than special effects which are used very sparingly. I still love that the Soviet city of the future was footage of early 1970s Tokyo. Watching it now the film feels more deconstructed.

    The last film this month is an indulgent one of mine. Searchers 2.0 is a modern-day neo western film that thumbs its nose at the Hollywood system. The story follows the revenge quest of two former child actors against their former abuser, a screen writer on the film set. Alex Cox made the film on $100,000 budget with Roger Corman as producer. UK film fans probably remember Alex Cox as the presenter of Moviedrome. he is an accomplished director, screenwriter and the author of 10,000 Ways To Die – the best guide ever written to spaghetti westerns.

    Slow Horses season five has been a must-watch TV moment for me. The show runners manage to keep the essence of the books with some creative flair.

    Useful tools.

    Optimising for macOS Tahoe

    Moving from macOS Sonoma to Tahoe meant changing up the versions of utilities I like to use. Titanium Software make OnyX, Maintenance and Deeper.

    • OnyX y use of OnyX goes all the way back to 2002 and 10.2 Jaguar, various versions of it throughout that time to now. It was very good for doing startup disk related maintenance tasks.
    • Maintenance provides a general performance tune-up including rebuilding databases and clearing obscure caches.
    • Deeper is for fine tuning hidden settings across different applications on your Mac.

    All three are donationware so be sure to give Joel what you can.

    The sales pitch.

    I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my October 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and get planning for Hallowe’en. As an additional treat here is a link to my Mam’s recipe for barm brack – an Irish Hallowe’en specialism. Let me know how you got on baking it.

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

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

  • Tahoe + more things

    Tahoe

    Another year, another macOS. Tahoe is sensibly unambitious but it has raised some ire amongst Mac users. You can tell how unambitious Tahoe was, when CNET had to do an article showing you how common app icons have changed because you otherwise probably didn’t notice. I know I didn’t.

    Tahoe is neither here nor there as a release for me. I haven’t found features that are ‘can’t live without”. The app interface changes feel different for the sake of being different, but I quickly got used to them.

    In terms of quality it still feels a bit ‘beta’-ish but I hope that the bugs get ironed out over time.

    • The pop-up window to select my accent over the ‘o’ in my given name gets blanked out for some reason.
    • When performing certain actions, the browser chrome all turns white.

    Otherwise things have been fine so far. My anti-virus of choice launched an update soon after Tahoe came out. As has my VPN client and numerous utilities and apps that I use for work, or just keeping my Mac tuned up.

    I have a Brother mono laser printer to connect up, (as my long-suffering HP unit finally gave up the ghost after a decade of service,) which might be a bit of a trial if Reddit is anything to judge by.

    Last Week on My Mac: Tahoe’s elephant – The Eclectic Light Company – this critique points out the kind of issues with Tahoe that implies it isn’t the Macintosh operating system of Steve Jobs with its historic focus on art principles and typography right from the beginning.

    China

    From ‘guochao’ to ‘zìxìn’: China’s new era of cultural confidence | Jing Daily

    Why anti-involution feels anti-Chinese? | Following the Yuan

    Dutch seizure of chipmaker followed US ultimatum over Chinese chief | FT – the judgement paints a bit more of a nuanced picture with two independent actions. It also explicitly states that the government order is not final yet (and at that point would still be open to appeals). The actual matter involved is a (significant) breach of fiduciary duty by Zhang Xuezheng and the holding company (Yuching). Cited issues were:

    • Placing of orders to another Wingtech subsidiary in China (that is in financial trouble) far exceeding demand (such that the expectation is that a significant share of the stock would need to be scrapped as it would not be able to be used in time)
    • Replacing 3 people with banking authority (including the CFO) with 3 other people, without financial background, one not an employee of Nexperia at all. All in the context where urgent US sanctions mean that independence from China is important for continued operations of the company. The court called this “Voor een onderneming van de orde van grootte van Nexperia grenst een dergelijke handelswijze aan roekeloosheid” (“For a company in the order of size of Nexerperia these actions border on being reckless”).
    • For the replacement no motivation was provided, prompting the chief financial officer and the chief legal officer from their own fiduciary duties as directors to object (and also to ask the court to investigate/intervene)
    • Stated intent to dismiss existing directors (without motivation) or asking for mandatory consultation from the workers council.

    As to the decisions:

    • Suspension of Xuezheng as director/CEO
    • Temporary appointment of a new non-executive director (with power to make final decisions)
    • Place all (except 1) share under management/safekeeping with a lawyer
    • This all motivated by (very) signifcant breach of the fiduciary duty, not based upon an Dutch government action. The application of the Entity list on Nexperia as subsidiary was a significant contextual driver though (as in the duty to minimize corporate risks).

    Consumer behaviour

    Piper Sandler Completes 50th Semi-Annual Teen Survey | Piper Sandler – teen spending down 6 percent compared to last year. Another point was that Dr Pepper was their favourite drink ahead of Coca-Cola, which makes this activist investor’s interest even more salient: tarboard builds stake in Keurig Dr Pepper after unpopular Peet’s deal | FT

    Economics

    UK risks higher inflation becoming entrenched, IMF warns | FT

    Health

    Mirador fundraising raises hopes of revival in US biotech market | FT

    Ideas

    Everything Is Television – Derek Thompson

    Japan

    Anime activism – Matt Alt’s Pure Invention – I didn’t realise that in 1978 the president Marcos of the Philippines had banned a whole genre of anime (giant robots or mecha) due to the influence of Voltes V on Filipino student activists.

    Marketing

    Post | LinkedIn – The Future of Brand Building Begins Where Commerce Meets Creativity. – or P&G applying the radio soap opera format to the 21st century

    Stopping agency burnout: the fight against ‘insidious’ work cultures and ‘inaccurate’ timesheets – Campaign found a long-hours culture continues to exist in adland, with pitching, client demands and poor role-modelling by managers part of the equation. 

    In the current climate of staff cuts, lingering threats of AI replacing the workforce and agencies dealing with economic constraints, late working – and the chance of burnout – continues to be a risk.

    Shrinking teams can potentially lead to more demands being placed on remaining employees. WPP and Interpublic each cut thousands of staff from their global workforces in the first half of 2025, on top of headcount reductions in 2024. Last year, the collective global headcount across the “big six” holding companies declined by 1.6%, the first fall since the post-pandemic rebuild. 

    WPP boosts AI marketing with $400mn Google deal | FT – I would be concerned if they weren’t using video generators like Veo and Google Gemini – which does make me wonder what Mark Read was up to?

    On the importance of good strategic writing in using AI: AI interfaces and the role of good writing | by Nick DiLallo | Oct, 2025 | UX Collective

    Media

    Apple sued over use of copyrighted books to train Apple Intelligence | Yahoo! News

    Google designated with “strategic market status” by UK Competition and Markets Authority – The Media Leader

    Exclusive | Advertisers Push Big Tech to Adopt Standards for Transparency in Ad Sales – WSJ

    How We Automated Content Marketing to Acquire Users at Scale | Spotify Engineering – Insightful blog post from Spotify’s ML team: they implemented their own pre-ranking algorithm to select the best ad variants to deploy to their advertising channels in their user acquisition campaigns. 

    Spotify’s marketing team developed a creative production pipeline that could generate and deploy ad creatives to marketing channels based on listening habits in a geographic region. The problem they encountered was that they were generating creatives from a high-cardinality dataset, and the number of variations they were uploading to their channels was overwhelming those channels’ ability to optimize ads effectively. 

    Spotify’s solution was to build a pre-ranking algorithm using XGBoost that would determine which creatives to upload to the channels. Their ML pre-ranking model outperformed a simple heuristic model, with 4%-14% lower CPRs and 11%-12% higher CTRs. The ML model utilized a rich set of features to predict sub_percentage (the percentage of contributed subscriptions from the artist) and relative_cps_ratio (the share of the artist’s cost per subscription in the marketing campaign) for premium subscriptions, whereas the heuristic model used three fixed features. The model is retrained daily based on a defined lookback window.

    Moreover, although this was deployed before ATT, the team found that ATT didn’t impact its performance, as training relied on aggregated data.

    This obviously remains a relevant issue as advertisers scale the volume of their creative production through generative tools. While this pre-dates Meta’s Andromeda initiative for pre-ranking, it’s still likely relevant for most other channels (and, depending on the volume of creative uploaded, Meta).

    Perplexity Pauses New Advertising Deals to Reassess Ambitions | AdWeek – brands are rethinking how to spend their budgets. Chan said many advertisers are moving away from performance-focused, traditional search and towards top-of-funnel brand awareness—an area Perplexity may pursue down the line.

    Online

    US Amazon Prime Membership Finally Hits 200 Million | CIRP – Amazon Prime finally hit the 200-million-member mark in the US, after several quarters of slow, but steady growth toward that milestone.

    Note: CIRP estimates the number of individual Amazon shoppers who use Amazon Prime. That includes multiple family members for many subscribers, so this estimate is higher than the number of US households that pay for an Amazon Prime membership.

    Amazon knows the difference between Prime shoppers and paid Prime member households, so as US Prime membership approaches its limit, there may be a growing focus on bringing those numbers closer together. Amazon does not want to reduce the number of Amazon Prime membership users, but it certainly would not mind having more paid memberships associated with them. We expect Amazon to continue its efforts to attract members by emphasizing the benefits of Prime, rather than policing shopping and limiting Prime membership sharing.

    CIRP estimates 200 million US Amazon customers had a Prime membership as of the September 2025 quarter. That is an increase of about 6% from 189 million US Amazon Prime members in the September 2024 quarter and up very slightly from our 198 million member estimate last quarter.

    Retailing

    Why Did Walmart Just Buy a Shopping Mall? – The New York Times – reminds me of the local mini-shops that used to be inside Kwik Saves in many towns

    Technology

    China’s ‘Darwin Monkey’ is the world’s largest brain-inspired supercomputer | Live Science

    I had been having lunch in the Google canteen with colleagues, and then came back to my desk, checked an email newsletter and this arrived: Smartphone-powered AI predicts avocado ripeness | Newsroom | Oregon State University

    Web of no web

    Palmer Luckey’s Anduril launches EagleEye military helmet with help from buddy Zuck | The Verge

    Amazon launches Echo devices designed for Alexa+ | Amazon

  • Nvidia ban in China + more things

    Nvidia ban in China

    China bans tech companies from buying Nvidia’s AI chips | FT – the Nvidia ban is an interesting move by the Chinese government. I don’t think it’s just about putting pressure on their semiconductor companies and foundries. I think it also steers the software industry and approach to AI as well looking for more computationally efficient models. China can do comparable computes, using more lower spec chips and more power.

    At the moment the leading edge models in the west are taking a hardware led approach rather like putting larger capacity engine in a car a la an old school hotrod. China is forcing its technology sector to take a more holistic approach.

    Having Nvidia lobbying the US for permission to sell Blackwell in China is a secondary benefit and not the hard block people think it is. Compute jobs are already done abroad to get around the ban anyway. Its easy to move SSDs from China to Malaysia to run it on local data centres.

    China has extended the Nvidia ban on purchase to a customs ban as well China launches customs crackdown on Nvidia AI chips | FT

    Business

    Billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff praises AI while cutting jobs – The Washington Post

    Pokémon And Magic Risk Losing An Entire Generation Of Players | Kotaku – are kids being priced out of hobbies?

    China

    Can China really make its consumers spend? | Jing Daily – After decades of export success, country’s bet on domestic consumption to propel growth bumps up against beliefs about money and security. – They’ve got more chance of increasing the number of children born, the beliefs are that engrained

    China assumes technology leadership in the automotive industry – Markets are increasingly decoupling | Roland Berger

    TikTok, Pop Mart and the Conditional Logic of Success | Calling The Shots (Ivy Yang)

    Consumer behaviour

    Grave new world: Why young people are grieving a life they’ve never lived | shots Magazine

    Economics

    Why Gen X is the real loser generation | The Economist

    Finance

    Graphic Language: The Curse of the CEO Bloomberg – swearing linked with financial stress

    Exclusive | How China Secretly Pays Iran for Oil and Avoids U.S. Sanctions – WSJ

    Innovation

    Why is AI struggling to discover new drugs? FT

    Japan

    Shirow Masamune and the Predictions of “Ghost in the Shell” | Nippon.com – still my favourite manga and anime franchise. It still feels fresh and forward looking four decades later.

    If you only click through on one link on this post make it this one – Animated Spirituality – by Hiroko Yoda – Japan Happiness

    I love some of the apparently random things that Toyota under Akio Toyoda do. From the GR Yaris to this documentary on a vintage Komatsu steel press that was instrumental in Toyota’s first car factory and still is doing sterling work.

    The dialogue is in Japanese but English subtitles are available.

    Luxury

    Fashion retreats from diversity: ‘We are again being openly asked for Caucasian models’

    The Art of Slowing Down: Another Moët F1 Blunder, Gaultier’s Runway Disaster & Trump’s Pasta Tariffs – A Weekend in Luxury Chaos – Intern Pierre – failure to execute

    Materials

    The “Critical Minerals” Crisis of 100 Years Ago | Chris Miller – great essay by the author of Chip War – and my review of Chip War here.

    Marketing

    Outside Perspective Y25W41 – Sisterhoods and Support – WARC future of strategy critiqued

    Media

    Meta manipulated child safety research, ex-employees tell US Senate panel | FT

    Younger people and women in the EU read more books – News articles – Eurostat

    Movember report – Young Men’s Media Landscaping

    Mastodon has a new plan to make money: Hosting and support services for the open social web | TechCrunch – it reminds me of the service and support models that the Linux economy pivoted to in the late 1990s. We’ll see if it survives

    Google expands AI Portraits globally with Scott Galloway mentor | The Tech Buzz – Galloway since took it down

    Online

    Meta manipulated child safety research, ex-employees tell US Senate panel | FT

    Security

    Hacking Cable — Technical Report – agentic script kiddies

    UK’s MI6 Agency Sets Up New Dark Web Portal to Recruit Spies – Bloomberg – this is a tough one, especially given UKG’s stance on cryptography, would you trust the Silent Courier portal?

    America First? Hegseth Announces Foreign Air Force Facility in U.S. | The New Republic – “will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability”

    Software

    Deloitte issues refund for error-ridden Australian government report that used AI | FT

    ADK Insider: ADK When It Was Born | by Bo Yang | Google Cloud – Community | Oct, 2025 | Medium

    Technology

    Apple’s executive reshuffling isn’t over | The Verge

    Should the public sector build its own AI? FT

    SAP to invest over 20 billion euros in sovereign cloud in Europe | CNBC

    why-language-models-hallucinate | OpenAI & Why Chatbots Still Hallucinate – and How OpenAI Wants to Fix It – UC Today

    101 real-world gen AI use cases with technical blueprints | Google Cloud Blog – this reminds me a lot of SAP’s industry templates back in the day. *Disclosure I am freelancing for an internal agency at Google.

    OpenAI Raids Apple for Hardware Talent, Manufacturing Partners — The Information – hoovering talent out of Apple beyond the machine learning teams to include engineering, supply chain etc and OpenAI and Ive poach Apple designers, target suppliers for hardware push – 9to5Mac

    The Mysterious “New Ideas” for AI Data Center Build Outs | Spyglass

    UK is falling behind in the use of AI, says Google chief | The Times ying and yang of the same story: Small businesses could save a day a week if they use AI, Google claims | The Independent

    Axios AI+ Government | States are making their own rules for AI

    Web of no web

    Global Drone Market to Hit $8 Billion by 2029: Precision Agriculture Takes Off | EE News

    We’re all about to be in wearable hell | The Verge

    GeoVector looks like where 2.0 type locative technology with applications for next generation ‘Mirrorworld‘-type services.

    Wireless

    The iPhone 17 Event: Less Awe, More Unsexy & That’s A Good Thing – On my Om

  • September 2025 newsletter

    September 2025 introduction – (26) pick-and-mix edition

    Where has the year gone? I am just thankful that we got a little bit of sun, given how fast and hard the autumn wind and rain came in this year. I am now at issue 26, or as a bingo caller would put it ‘pick and mix’.

    Pick'n'Mix

    When I was a child ‘pick-and-mix’ sweets were a way of getting maximum variety for the lowest amount of pocket money that I earned from chores. Woolworths were famous at the time for their pick and mix section, alongside selling vinyl records and cassettes. Woolworths disappeared from the UK high street during the 2008 financial crisis.

    For Mandarin Chinese speakers 26 is considered ‘lucky’ given that it sounds similar to ‘easy flow’ implying easy wealth.

    This month’s soundtrack has been a banging digital compilation put together by Paradisco and Disco Isn’t Dead featuring The Reflex, PBR Streetgang, Prins Thomas, J Kriv, Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66.

    Right, 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.

    Books that I have read.

    • I finished Moscow X by David McCloskey. (No plot spoilers). This is the second book my McCloskey after Damascus Station, which I read and enjoyed back in May last year. The book is like a more action-orientated American version of a LeCarré novel. The plot reminded me of LeCarré’s Single & Single and Our Kind of Traitor. McCloskey isn’t afraid to have strong female lead characters in his book.
    • Your Life is Manufactured by Tim Minshall. Minshall is a professor at Cambridge and heads up the engineering department’s manufacturing research centre. Because of his mastery of the subject area, he manages to provide an exceptionally accessible primer in terms of what manufacturing is, how it happens and what it means. More about it here.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Election-winning opacity in influencer relations 

    I have been following Taylor Lorenz‘ work since she became the beat reporter for online culture and technology at the Business Insider. Her article for Wired magazine on how the Democratic Party in the US is working with paid influencers makes for an interesting read.

    What would be the norm in the commercial world about influencer transparency where there is a paid relationship – isn’t happening in politics.

    Ok, why does this matter? The reason why I think this matters is that people who do their time in the trenches of a presidential election campaign have a clear path into a number of American agencies.

    ‘I’ve have won a victory for X candidate and can do the same for your brand’ has been a popular refrain for decades in agencies.

    I have been in the room when senior American agency people have tried to convince Chinese companies to buy their services based on their success in marketing a candidate in an election using western social media channels. There was no sense of irony when this was awkwardly delivered as a possible solution for domestic market campaigns to marketing teams in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai.

    Bad habits will be brought into agencies and sold on to clients.

    Chart of the month. 

    Kim Malcolm shared a great report done by Zappi and VaynerMedia looking at The State of Creative Effectiveness 2025. Two charts piqued my interest. The change in distinctiveness of advertising by age cohort.

    distinctiveness

    The overall emotion that an advert evokes by age cohort.

    emotion

    Causality of these effects aren’t clear. Empirically, I know that great adverts still put a smile on the faces of people of all ages and can change brand choice, even in the oldest consumers.

    I had more questions than answers. VaynerMedia thought that the answer should be cohort-specific campaigns. I am less sure, since brands tend to better within culture as a common point of truth for everyone. Also, I don’t believe in leaping to a solution until I understand the underlying ‘problem’.

    I could understand a decline in novelty as people gain decades of life experience and will have seen similar creative executions before.

    Are the adverts lacking a foundation in strong cultural insights and cues that would resonate with these older audience cohorts?

    What I did notice is a correlation with the age profile in advertising agency staff compared to the general public and the point at which the drop-off to occurs. But correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation.

    It’s concerning that advertising effectiveness declines in older audience cohorts as economic power skews older within the general population. This is likely to continue as millennials inherit wealth from their baby boomer relatives as they enter their 50s and 60s. Which makes the old marketer line about half of a consumers economic value is over by 35 seem hollow.

    Things I have watched. 

    Ghost In The Shell Arise: Border 1 and Border 2. In the GITS storyline this is a prequel to the original film. It follows how the eventual team comes together. The technology looks less fantastical and more prophetic each time I watch it. The animation is still spectacular.

    Ghost In The Shell Arise: Border 3 and Border 4. Following on from Border 1 and Border 2, this has Togusa and the Section 9 team following the same case from different ends – which eventually has Togusa joining Section 9 as its only unaugmented team member.

    I bought up as many of the films I could in Johnnie To’s filmography after he criticised Hong Kong’s national security regulation in an interview, which was likely to be the kiss of death to his film career. I finally got around to watching one of his best known films PTU and the series of Tactical Unit films that came from the same universe.

    PTU: One of the paradoxes of Hong Kong is the prevalence of triad and corruption dramas, compared to the real life which whilst not crime and corruption free is much more staid. Hong Kong is as different from its cinematic counterpart, as the UK is to Richard Curtis’ films. PTU like Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog is based around the search for a missing police pistol. PTU (police tactical unit) officers look to help out a detective from the OCTB (organised crime and triad bureau). While the film occurs over one night, it was actually shot over three years and is one of Johnnie To’s best known films. Shooting only at night, To provided the audience with a familiar, yet different, cinematic experience. The washed out colours of day time Hong Kong is replaced by vibrant signage and the sharp shadows defined by the street lighting. Officers walking with a street lamp lit Tom Lee music instrument store behind them, look like its from a John Ford scene in composition. Some of his tracking shots, due to the framing of photography and the distortions of the night give an almost Inception like feeling to the geography of Hong Kong streets, warping the horizon between buildings the night sky. PTU was successful internationally and then spawned, five further films from the same universe made in 2008 and 2009.

    Tactical Unit: The Code was a one of a series of Tactical Unit sequels to Johnnie To’s PTU. In The Code several plot lines come together. The investigation of CCTV footage of officers beating up a triad , a police officer heavily in debt due to negative equity on his mortgage and a drug deal gone wrong. All this plays out in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong. When this film was made back in 2008, it would have been considered well done, but largely unremarkable. Nowadays it couldn’t be made as it would in breach of the National Security Law. The irony is that this film is available on the iQiyi streaming service from mainland China.

    Tactical Unit: Human Nature loses some of the cinematic feel of PTU. It’s not as masterful a film , BUT, the convoluted threads of the plot and the great cast who are now completely comfortable in their characters make it work well.

    Tactical Unit: No Way Out. No Way Out starts with an impressive screne shot in Temple Street market. The film explores the Temple Street area of Kowloon and organised crime links to everything from cigarette smuggling to drugs.

    Tactical Unit: Comrade in Arms is the penultimate in the series from the PTU universe of films. You still have the main cast of Hong Kong veterans Lam Suet, Simon Yam and Maggie Shiu. Plain clothes officer Lo Sa has been demoted to wearing a uniform and both Mike Ho and Sergeant Kat’s squads are still patrolling the Kowloon side of Victoria harbour. This sees the stars leave their usual urban beat and go into the hills of the New Territories after bank robbers. Much of it occurs in daylight, which sets it apart from the night time beat of PTU. Nowadays it couldn’t be made as it would in breach of the National Security Law. The irony is that this film is available on the iQiyi streaming service from mainland China.

    Tactical Unit: Partners. Partners is unusual in that it revolves around the challenges of the ethnic minorities that make up Hong Kong from romance fraud ensnaring filipina workers to discrimination against Indians and Nepalis. While some of the show happens during late on in the day, it still captures much of the night time feeling of the universe

    2001 Nights is a 3D anime. While I admire the ambition and the technical expertise that went into the models, the characters as CGI fall down and distract from the storytelling. Also it felt weirdly like Space 1999 – and not in a good way.

    Her Vengeance is a Hong Kong category III revenge movie filmed in 1988 that 88 Films recently release on Blu Ray. It borrows from another Hong Kong film in the early 1970s and I Spit On Your Grave. Despite being an low budget exploitation film it features a number of notable Hong Kong actors, probably because it was a Golden Harvest Production.

    Casino Lisboa

    I found the film interesting because its opening was shot at Stanley Ho’s iconic Casino Lisboa in Macau. This was unusual because Hong Kong had lots of nightclubs that would have been fine for the protagonists management role without the hassle of the additional travel and government permissions. So we get a rare late 1980s snapshot of the then Portuguese colony.

    When The Last Sword Is Drawn is a classic chambara (samurai sword-play) movie. It tells the complex story of a samurai, who unable to support his family on his meagre income as a school teacher and fencing master, turns his back on his clan and leaves to find work in Kyoto. Once in Kyoto he becomes embroiled in the battle between the declining Takagawa Shogunate and the Imperial Royal Family during the 19th century. Whilst the film does contain a lot of violence, it is used as a backdrop to the humanity of the main character and battles he faces between providing for his family and doing the honourable thing.

    The plot is told through the recollections of others and finishes with the samurai’s youngest daughter getting ready to leave Japan with her husband and set up a doctor’s surgery in Manchuria (China).

    Useful tools.

    Playing Blu-Ray discs on a Mac

    I have a Blu Ray player in my home theatre that enjoy using in lieu of subscribing to Netflix, which allows to me to explore more art house content than I can stream. Macgo Mac Blu Ray Player Pro gives your Mac the software capability that Steve Jobs wouldn’t.

    One final thing, if you prefer to use Substack, you can now subscribe to this newsletter there.

    The sales pitch.

    I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my September 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and get planning for Hallowe’en.

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

    Get in touch