It makes sense to start this category with warning. Marshall McLuhan was most famous for his insight – The medium is the message: it isn’t just the content of a media which matters, but the medium itself which most meaningfully changes the ways humans operate.
But McLuhan wasn’t an advocate of it, he saw dangers beneath the surface as this quote from his participation in the 1976 Canadian Forum shows.
“The violence that all electric media inflict in their users is that they are instantly invaded and deprived of their physical bodies and are merged in a network of extensions of their own nervous systems. As if this were not sufficient violence or invasion of individual rights, the elimination of the physical bodies of the electric media users also deprives them of the means of relating the program experience of their private, individual selves, even as instant involvement suppresses private identity. The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.”
McLuhan was concerned with the mass media, in particular the effect of television on society. Yet the content is atemporal. I am sure the warning would have fitted in with rock and roll singles during the 1950s or social media platforms today.
I am concerned not only changes in platforms and consumer behaviour but the interaction of those platforms with societal structures.
I was judging global creative advertising awards, and I came across an Irish Libraries campaign to encourage readers to Get Lost In A Book.
Literature and reading is as Irish as the GAA or a glass of Club Orange. Over the years I have found it easy to get lost in a book. My parents may not have bought me every toy that I wanted from the Argos catalogue, but we had a house with books and I got a library card early on. When I would stay on the family farm, I would read a book on rare coins, old editions of The Reader’s Digest, Old Moore’s almanac, paperbacks of Irish folk tales and Irish history books. Facts About Ireland captured my imagination with its pictures of Newgrange and the Tara brooch.
Decades later and after I have written this paragraph I am heading to bed to get lost in a book before falling to sleep.
Reading as a pass-time for a good number of Irish people is something that we do. During COVID-19 in 2021, the Government of Ireland launched Ireland Reads month which encouraged people to read as it was considered to help with mental health and wellbeing. Its from this campaign that Get Lost In A Book sprang out of.
Reading seems to be on the decline in both adults and children. Of those that do read younger male cohorts seem to read more for ‘life maxing’ than for pleasure with reading material focusing solely on the works of self-improvement ‘experts’ who have varying degrees of expertise.
Reading for pleasure has life long benefits.
The Irish government highlighted mental health and its link to wellbeing.
In 2006, The National Literacy Trust found that choice was a key factor in fostering life-long reading as a habit, allowing the reader to continue to get lost in a book. The problem now seems to be a surplus of choice via our smartphones and social platforms. Book recommendations here and here, more related posts here.
August 2025 introduction – duck and dive (25) edition
This is the 25th edition of Strategic Outcomes. The first edition was quickly bashed out in a hotel room. And people signed up, and kept coming back. As I write this August 2025 has been a weird month with the weather throwing all the seasons at once at us from storms to heatwaves.
The bingo call for 25 – ‘duck and dive’ would have been equally appropriate descriptor for 2025 to date – with massive changes across current affairs, the economy and culture. It seemed to make more sense than calling this a ‘silver edition’.
25 evokes memories a of childhood Irish card game played with my Uncle and Granny on the formica top of the farmhouse kitchen table. Something I frequently did during August nights after a day’s work cleaning up after animals, feeding livestock and other tasks.
For this month’s musical accompaniment I can recommend St Etienne Take Me To The Pilot produced by Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll, which hits different to previous St Etienne records.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
From the changing nature of motorsport fandom to do clients actually care about WPP’s organisational changes and new CEO?
Hacks for moving city, from my time uprooting my life from London to Hong Kong and back again. These were and edited version of notes from an email I wrote years ago for a acquaintance who was moving to Shenzhen, soon after I had made the jump to Hong Kong. He is no longer with us, you may get some value out of them.
Books that I have read.
I am currently reading David McCloskey’s Moscow X. The slow reading pace is more down to me rather than the accessibility of the book which is up to McCloskey’s usual high standards.
Things I have been inspired by.
Escalating trade tensions
GLG shared a discussion on escalating global trade tensions. I had a number of takeaways from it.
US trade war with China has devolved into a dangerous stalemate where neither side can back down without losing face.
The core conflict stems from China’s state-led industrial policy clashing with the rules-based system. The Trump administration’s rhetoric triggered China’s historical “century of humiliation,” making compromise politically difficult.
Key takeaways from the discussion:
China’s top demands aren’t about tariffs.
Respect is paramount: China’s first demand for restarting talks is that the Trump administration speaks to them with respect and stops insults.
Sovereignty is key: China insists on discussing Taiwan, which it views as its “most important and most sensitive issue”.
The U.S. is overstretched.
Not enough negotiators: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has only about 250 total employees.
Outsourcing is unworkable: Using pro bono law firms to assist raises problems with security clearances and conflicts of interest.
The non-China strategy is different.
A softer tone: The administration’s approach to allies like Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam is more ‘measured’.
Quick deals: preliminary agreements with these nations that focus on tariff reductions, while punting more complex issues negotiations down the road.
Sector-specific US risks loom large.
Technology: export controls on advanced chips and dumping of Chinese-made legacy chips used in cars and white goods.
Autos: Highly integrated supply chains that cross borders, are very vulnerable to tariffs.
Pharmaceuticals: Tariffs on generic drugs could become unprofitable and cause them to disappear from the U.S. market.
But there was more interesting takeaways in the report that paint a more nuanced picture:
The “Learning Gap” is the real barrier.
The primary reason AI pilots stall is that most systems don’t retain feedback, adapt to context, or improve over time.
While 70% of employees prefer AI for simple tasks like emails and summaries, 90% choose a human colleague for complex projects because of the learning gap.
Buy, don’t build.
Internally developed tools fail twice as often as COTS ones.
The data shows a clear winning strategy: pilots built through strategic partnerships with external vendors are twice as likely to reach full deployment as those built internally (a 66% success rate versus 33%).
Companies are making misplaced bets.
An estimated 70% of AI investment is directed at high-visibility sales and marketing functions.
The highest and clearest ROI in underfunded “back-office” areas. Some firms are saving $2-10 million annually in customer service and document processing.
These three points are good news for consultants, productivity suite vendors and enterprise software companies that really understand their clients workflow pain-points.
Chart of the month.
Actually two charts. The first one is a decline in conscientiousness. Depending who you believe this could be down to our always-on lives thanks to social media and smartphones, OR, a victim of the broken social contract that young adults (aka generation z) feel has happened.
A corresponding decline in US consumers reading for pleasure tends to imply a smartphone-related effect rather than broken social contract as cause. Also broken social contracts are depressingly common generation-by-generation.
Things I have watched.
The Iron Prefect was a film that I watched purely on the basis of a talk Alex Cox gave as part of the special features on the Blu Ray. The film is an account of a Fascist-era official sent to combat the Sicilian mafia who ends up finding how endemic and self-defeating his mission is. It is based on the story of Cesare Mori and some of his most famous acts such as the siege of Gangi. Cox talked about its similarity to The Mattei Affair – which I can see to a certain extent, in terms of the themes explored. The film features Claudia Cardinale and Giuliano Gemma – two greats of Italian cinema. But the real star is the scenery.
Hong Kong Hong Kong is a tragic romantic triangle about mainland migrants with a social realism bent. It was shot in 1983, but didn’t have the escapism of more popular films in the Hong Kong box office at the time.
The film is similar in feel to the likes of the kitchen sink dramas of 1960s kitchen sink dramas like This Sporting Life, and John Huston’s boxing drama Fat City. It shows a different side to Hong Kong cinema than western audiences were used to. It came out the same time as Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Jackie Chan’s Project A. Hong Kong Hong Kong benefited from the free flow of rostered actors attached to TVB – the dominant broadcaster being able to work for Shaw Brothers film productions. Protagonist Alex Man, like other stars of his era including Chow Yun-fat and Simon Yam Tat-wah came through TVB’s acting school that nurtured talent from all walks of life from first-jobbers, to former models and policemen.
Man brought experience from television and stage roles to his film performances which makes Hong Kong Hong Kong more powerful.
Finally 1980s the city of Hong Kong itself plays a fantastic role to the drama. From the opening tracking shot taken somewhere above Kennedy Town to the composite buildings and Shangri-La Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui – to migrant slums that were being dismantled as public housing improved. Hong Kong has continually changed from an architectural point of view, though the pace has slowed recently. Some of the shots pulled at me deep inside as only a home you deeply cared about can.
An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty featured Alex Man as a classic wuxi swordsman. The star is Pat Ha Man-jing who would have been 18 or 19 at the time. The film feels more ‘Japanese’ chambara romance than your usual Hong Kong film. Ha’s cleavage is on display – which is unusual as the Hong Kong film industry is more socially conservative. Violence is ok, but risqué films like Sex and Zen with a category III rating often had Japanese actresses in them like Mari Ayukawa and Rena Murakami. The Japanese actresses appeared because of the stigma in Hong Kong society affected actresses careers more than their male counterparts AND the ongoing popularity of Japanese adult films in Hong Kong.
An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty shows the two sides of Shaw Brothers productions: great actors and inventive cinematography on one side, together with cheap skating on set design like giant marine plywood panels.
Shaw Brothers had been wounded by the founding of Golden Harvest, he power of the studio system was waning, the Hong Kong new wave movement was taking off and soon ‘mainland collaborations’ would dismantle much of the ecosystem that made Hong Kong cinema great.
I really wanted to like Butterfly on Amazon Prime Video. It had a great cast including Daniel Dae Kim, Piper Perabo and Charles Parnell. It was shot on location in South Korea. It had an interesting take on the privatisation of intelligence operations. But it felt empty and definitely less than the sum of its parts, which is a shame given how well Amazon did on its Tom Clancy adaptions. Butterfly was let down by poor storytelling.
Useful tools.
Yet another LLM. Anara was something I have trialled a little and found useful due to its heavier weighting towards citing research papers compared to the other main LLMs out there. Useful for account planners as another tool in our arsenal to be used in parallel with the more mainstream tools out there, rather than as a substitute.
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.
Ok this is the end of my August 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward for an indian summer, despite some of August already feeling autumnal.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.
Motorsport fandom is strange. Back when I was a child motorsport fandom was a bunch of anoraks – literally. There was a category of clothing that you could buy from mail order catalogues and retailers like Demon Tweeks called a rally jacket. This was a coat good enough to deal with some cold wet weather branded by a car company or a tobacco brand.
Motorsport fandom, in particular single-seater race series are starting to see very different types of fans who learned their supporting ideas from the K-pop armies which are a symbiot of the artist promotion machine. While both promotion machine and fans are separate with very different tactics, they were united by a common goal to a point.
This isn’t the first time that media has brought in new fans, gaming created fans in the past. But the current motorsport fandom is interesting because of the cultural friction that it brings for drivers and legacy fans. From hate campaigns and death threats against drivers to ‘idol’ style objectification – women are demonstrating traits that would define toxic masculinity. All wrapped up in pastel tinted social media posts and Etsy products – so that makes it all fine, doesn’t it?
WPP has its next CEO – but what do clients make of heir apparent? – It’s not indifference. It’s pragmatism. Marketers like this don’t want to buy into the idea that a leadership change signals sweeping transformation. After all, Rose doesn’t start until September. Until then, they’d rather stay focused on the present, not the promise.
Ryan Kangisser, a bellwether for client perspective thanks to his proximity to them as the chief strategy officer at MediaSense, expanded on the point: “I do think that often the industry cares more about these sorts of appointments than clients do. Especially if clients have got a really solid client lead, or business lead, then they’re the people who they feel are the ones driving their business.”
This post on gaming as politics was inspired by a Taiwanese adventure game played on mobile phones. The game in question is considered a national security risk by the Hong Kong government. (In China, it wouldn’t be able to be downloaded anyway).
Reversed Front: Bonfire – banned in Hong Kong
Chris Tang, the current secretary of security for the Hong Kong government said that having the game on your phone or playing it was a national security law offence. The game was an act of ‘soft resistance’ designed to corrupt Hong Kong’s youth.
According to a statement by the National Security Department (NSD) of the Hong Kong Police Force, Reversed Front: Bonfire is
…a game with the aim of promoting secessionist agendas such as “Taiwan independence” and “Hong Kong independence”, advocating armed revolution and the overthrow of the fundamental system of the People’s Republic of China established by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. It also has an intention to provoke hatred towards the Central Authorities and the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Imagine an anti-communist version of Myst that’s more text driven, built by diesel punk anime and waifu fans and you have a good idea of what Reversed Front: Bonfire is.
The developers at ESC Taiwan do not hide their views. It is a great example of ‘gaming as politics’ with gameplay referencing key slogans of the 2019 Hong Kong protests.
The Hong Kong government is probably sensitive about dissent through gaming when protests went virtual on Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons – when COVID restrictions made real-world protests impractical.
Gaming as politics beyond Hong Kong
Gaming as politics in Hong Kong is only the latest place where the medium as been used to press a political ideology.
As video game graphics have improved video game footage or machinima have been used to create footage that has been passed off as war footage. As it has got better, it has been easier to convince the casual observer on social media. Examples include HAMAS and Israel, Israel and Iran, Russia and Ukraine and Russia in Syria.
A Ukrainian research paper Video Games As Deep Media: challenges during the Russian-Ukraine war outlines how both sides have used video games as a propaganda channel. Ukrainians have skilfully used tools like customised gaming maps and conversations on online games to directly address Russians about the truth of the war. Gaming provided a space largely unmediated by the Russian government, at least at the beginning of the war.
On the flip side, Russia has pumped propaganda efforts into platforms like Minecraft and Roblox.
Political satire in games
Gaming as politics lent itself well to political satire. These are usually developed by independent software companies. For instance Bundesfighter II Turbo was based on caricatures of candidates in the 2017 German federal election. Hong Kong 1997 was a Japanese developed game based in a fantastical version of Hong Kong SAR – it also has the distinction of being considered one of the worst games ever.
Gaming as politics and as a political culture
Online radicalisation of gamers has become prevalent and the International Centre for Counter Terrorism provides advice for games design teams.
One issue that I have with the ICCT is that there is a lack of proportionality in what they talk about. I can understand that this is partly because even a small percentage of people can cause a lot of carnage. And like other emotive issues being absolutist tells a great story, which will help with everything from grants to getting meetings with politicians. One assertion they make is quite interesting:
…the relative opaqueness of video game spaces provides an attractive opportunity to meet online and outside the watchful eye of law enforcement. Moreover, the presence of many young people who may be vulnerable to extremist messaging efforts creates ideal circumstances for exposure to extremist viewpoints. However, we argue that particular aspects of gaming culture may also have a hand in the proliferation of extremist beliefs. In the study by Kowert, Martel, and Swann, “[identity] fusion with gaming culture is uniquely predictive of a host of socially pernicious outcomes, including racism, sexism, and endorsement of extreme behaviors.” Examples of how such tendencies surface from time to time are numerous.
Their view is supported by academics, Political Psychology published a research paper on how far right organisations use online gaming as a pipeline to grow their numbers.
The example provided by ICCT is the Gamergate scandal. I would argue that Gamergate is part of a longitudinal trend amongst a proportion of young men towards social conservatism including ongoing misognystic expressions of their beliefs. Do I approve of Gamergate – no, do I believe that the blame is purely around the medium of gaming – also no.
KZ manager
Gaming as politics is a concept that predates the internet. KZ manager was a series of games with an anti-semitic theme. It was first published in 1988 for the Commodore 64 alongside other home computer platforms at the time. it was distributed from player to player by disc or dial-up bulletin boards. By 1989 it was banned in Germany, but kept being maintained and republished up until 2000.
Nihilism and gaming as politics
Nihilistic terrorism has now become enmeshed in gaming as politics. Nihilism implies the act for its own sake, without any ideology challenges the political nature of terrorism as a concept. Alex in A Clockwork Orange fits this nihilistic definition to a tee. The medium for living out the nihilistic fantasies has changed over time. From books, to exploitation films, shockumentaries such as Faces of Death. Connecting with other ‘like-minded’ individuals was transformed in online spaces. Gaming was just another media form adopted by the nihilists. It is still only a very small number of them that put their fantasies into any form of action.
More related Hong Kong stories here, and more on gaming here.
Apple development changes was at the forefront of Apple’s WWDC keynote for 2025. I think that the focus on Apple development changes were happening for a few reasons:
Apple got burned announcing sub-standard AI offerings last year.
The new translucent interface is divisive.
The multi-tasking iPad was interesting for power users, but most usage is as a communal device to consume content.
Apple has a number of small on-device models that do particular things well. Which is why Apple needs to get developers on-board to come up with compelling uses.
The Mac still has great hardware, passionate developers and a community passionate about great life-changing software. Apple development focus was coming home.
