Ged Carroll

Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン

The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.

Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.

Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.

Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.

Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.

  • 2026 World Cup + more stuff

    I am not a football fan, but I recognise the power that the 2026 World Cup has to move hearts and minds. This year it’s being hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States. The 2026 World Cup fan experience is shrouded in uncertainty.

    world cup mania

    I found it interesting that both adidas with the launch of its match ball and Panini with the launch of its sticker book both marked the start of the countdown to the 2026 World Cup season.

    adidas has made World Cup shirts for dogs | Famous Campaigns – its a pity that they didn’t roll this out in the UK to celebrate the 2026 World Cup as well.

    Branding

    How many brands are there? | Europanel

    Business

    Publicis has built the best house on the street. Now it needs to move neighborhood | The Drum – undervalued due to poor performance by Omnicom and WPP

    China

    Chinese countryside’s quieter strains – by Yuxuan JIA – Decades of son preference have left villages full of unmarried men, driving bride prices higher and sustaining a shadow market for “Vietnamese brides” that can slide into fraud, coercion, and trafficking. Young people, especially young women, are drifting away from rural patriarchy and the obligation-heavy world of kinship and “face”, while the influencer economy and short-video apps offer fantasies of easy money to teenagers with weak school prospects.

    China reviews $2bn Manus sale to Meta as founders barred from leaving country | FT

    Consumer behaviour

    Argos sparks consumer outrage over toddler ‘influencer kit’ – Retail Gazette

    Half of Gen Z Uses AI, but Their Feelings Are Souring, Study Shows | New York Times – this reminds me of consumer sentiment around email and information overload during the late 1990s and early 2000s. We’re going through a period of norming now

    Why Catholicism is drawing in Gen Z men | Washington Post – “I don’t want to be too disparaging about them because they’re our Christian brothers and sisters, but worshiping in a big former supermarket with dry ice machines and a pop band, it’s not really traditional Christianity,” Father Longenecker said. His new parishioners are attracted to “very traditional worship with lots of incense and altar boys and sacred music in the traditional style.”

    Design

    EAGA – East Asian Graphics Archive

    The interesting odd story behind the design behind house numbers.

    Economics

    Berkeley professor Robert Reich on the factors that he saw that brought President Donald Trump to the White House.

    This War Will Make You Poorer – by Ed Elson – Prof G Media

    FMCG

    Danone doubles down on its area of strength in functional foods: Danone to buy meal-in-bottle maker Huel in €1bn deal | FT

    Health

    Battle for weight-loss supremacy shifts from jabs to pills | FT

    How China is supplying America’s “biohacking” craze – GZERO Media

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong’s complex role in bypassing sanctions against Russia | Le Monde – this isn’t doing what little is left of Hong Kong’s reputation any good

    Hong Kong arrests hedge fund and brokerage staff in $300mn insider trading probe | FT

    More NatSec | Big Lychee, Various Sectors – From the government’s press release… Safeguarding national security is a continuous endeavour with no end point. At its core this sounds like the Stalin derived Maoist principle of struggle. National security ‘enemies’ like Jimmy Lai, Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho serve the same purpose as George Orwell’s character Emmanuel Goldstein in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The ever-tightening system is allegedly concerned with leaderless lone wolves, small cells and external actors – but the reality is just control in Orwell’s novel.

    Revising Hong Kong’s Past – Lingua Sinica – Among the changes noted was a complete erasure of references to the Tiananmen Massacre, which was recast as “political turmoil in the late spring and early summer of 1989.” Gone from the exhibit entirely, the Ming Pao reported, is a previous image that showed one million Hong Kongers taking to the streets in 1989 in support of the demonstrators in China.

    Silence Follows Harassment – Lingua Sinica

    Hong Kong’s claw machine boom is mutating into a Pachinko-style trap | Dim Sum Daily

    Hong Kong’s dying news stands tell a story of change – BBC News – I loved Hong Kong newsstands and loved the magazine racks which were brilliant. I remember religiously buying Milk magazine

    Customs criticised for pursuit of outdated CD and VCD piracy | South China Morning Post

    How to

    I am skeptical about ‘gurus’. However, I found this Tony Robbins video good for getting out of a period of ‘stuckness’ in my thinking. Robbin’s ideas about priming, in particular they way he links physical activity to mental exercises works and has a good deal of neuroscience behind it.

    Access and repair a broken disk image – The Eclectic Light Company

    Ideas

    Hawk shape shifting in flight may guide future drone control | Spacewar

    How Wong Kar-Wai Created the Future – by Patrick Kho

    Why Swedish Schools Are Bringing Back Books | Undark & Opinion | Technology Weakens Our Minds. It’s Time to Resist. – The New York Times

    Innovation

    ‘A Cheaper Javelin’: New Anti-Tank Missile Advances Through Testing | Next Gen Defense – what’s interesting in this is the horizontal integration wth an Android application layer and the cost savings

    We Need a New Science of Progress – The Atlantic

    Japan

    Japan loses its thirst for vending machines | FT – Tens of thousands of vending machines are vanishing from Japan, as machines that once symbolised the nation’s love of innovation are shunned in a climate of rising inflation and deepening labour shortages.

    The nation’s stock of 2.2mn drinks vending machines is down 23 per cent from its bubble-era peak in 1985, according to the Japan Vending System Manufacturers Association.

    The faltering economics of running a national vending machine empire were exposed when DyDo, Japan’s third biggest operator, this month said it would scrap almost 7.5 per cent of its network of 270,000 units after posting its largest ever annual loss. – what surprised me was that the vending machines weren’t digitised.

    In the studio with Nigo – Japan’s premier polymath | Ft

    Korea

    The new food fad sweeping Korea | FT – dujjonku or Dubai cookie

    Luxury

    The Brand Age | Paul Graham

    Why do men love Stone Island | FT – “Football in the late 1980s and 1990s was a heavily policed environment under surveillance, where visibility carried risk,” says Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster. “On the terraces, clothing wasn’t decoration, it was risk management. Stone Island mattered because its garments were already structured around concealment, modulation and elective visibility. The detachable badge, reversible constructions, modular hoods and certain fabric treatments enabled wearers to calibrate how legible they were, depending on context. Football casuals were not simply performing taste; they were managing recognition.”

    Materials

    Chinese Titanium – by Irene Zhang – ChinaTalk

    The Seasoning Company Behind Your Food Flavors Controls The Future Of AI Chips, And Supply Is Running Dangerously Low | WCCF Tech

    Shipbuilding feels pinch from war-driven paint and lubricant shortage | FT

    Media

    Apple TV, Siri Targeted in EU Broadcaster Complaint Citing DMA Rules – MacRumors

    Meta stole Sarah Wynn-Williams’s voice. It couldn’t stop her exposé | The Times – her publisher on the author of Careless People

    A.I. Helps Online Ad Businesses Boom – The New York Times

    UK adspend increased 6.4% in 2025 as AA/Warc updates data presentation – The Media Leader

    Online

    Every influencer eventually becomes a merch store | The Verge

    Apple rolls out UK age checks for iPhone users | FT – interesting move, I did notice that it assumed my account was adult due to the length it had been held. It reminded me of friends who registered email addresses, domain names and even social media handles for their newly born children – and did just enough to keep the accounts alive.

    The 49MB Web Page | thatshubham – Beyond the sheer weight of the programmatic auction, the frequency of behavioral surveillance was surprising. There is user monitoring running in parallel with a relentless barrage of POST beacons firing to first-party tracking endpoints (a.et.nytimes.com/track). The background invisible pixel drops and redirects to doubleclick.net and casalemedia help stitch the user’s cross-site identity together across different ad networks.

    When you open a website on your phone, it’s like participating in a high-frequency financial trading market. That heat you feel on the back of your phone? The sudden whirring of fans on your laptop? Contributing to that plus battery usage are a combination of these tiny scripts.

    Ironically, this surveillance apparatus initializes alongside requests fetching purr.nytimes.com/tcf which I can only assume is Europe’s IAB transparency and consent framework. They named the consent framework endpoint purr. A cat purring while it rifles through your pockets.

    So therein lies the paradox of modern news UX. The mandatory cookie banners you are forced to click are merely legal shields deployed to protect the publisher while they happily mine your data in the background

    Security

    Interpol – Operation Synergia III leads to 45,000 malicious IPs dismantled and 94 arrests worldwide

    The AI-driven ‘kill chain’ transforming how the US wages war | FT

    Iran war lifts K-defence company offering cheap Patriot rival | FT

    Amazon holds engineering meeting following AI-related outages | FT – a “deep dive” into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools.

    The online retail giant said there had been a “trend of incidents” in recent months, characterised by a “high blast radius” and “Gen-AI assisted changes” among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT.

    Under “contributing factors” the note included “novel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established”.

    FBI is investigating breach that may have hit its wiretapping tools | The Register

    Andrew Cockburn · Beware the mattress: Mossad’s Kill List

    The Geopolitical Chokepoints of Artificial Intelligence | AI Supremacy

    France Introduces Telecom-Based Counter-Drone Network Using 19,700 Towers to Protect Critical Assets

    China Is Cracking Down on Scams. Just Not the Ones Hitting Americans | WIRED & Scam Inc has a new weapon | The Economist – Chinese organised crime run Cambodian ‘scam’ factories that use social engineering techniques are now using malware as well.

    Anthropic says Claude Mythos model is dangerous enough that the company isn’t selling it. | TechBrew

    Russia Hacked Routers to Steal Microsoft Office Tokens – Krebs on Security

    A glimpse into cyber-security’s AI-driven future | The Economist – A few years ago a participant used the conference network to hack a water-treatment facility in America (Messrs Wyler and Stump are cagey about the details). Another hid behind the din of legitimate hacker traffic to attack government websites and payment systems. The noc team traced him, sent him a message reminding him that doing illegal things from Black Hat was still illegal, then watched him close his laptop and walk away. Hackers on the other side of the world try their luck too. When the registration server was switched on, attacks began at once, including traffic that appeared to originate in Romania….

    Mr Stump says the noc has seen a pattern across multiple Black Hat conferences in which Taiwanese participants show up with hacked devices. “Most of [the traffic] goes back to China,” he says. ai-powered attacks by nation-states or cybercriminals are likely to intensify…
    The team thinks the ai race is only beginning. For Mr Wyler, the vulnerabilities discovered by Mythos, including some that have gone undetected for decades, are to be welcomed rather than feared. “We now know they’re there.”

    All the same, cautions Mr Stump, the next two years will be turbulent, as more flaws will be uncovered; more breaches will occur as firms feed sensitive data into ai systems; and more insecure code will be written.

    Semiconductors

    Arm launches own AI chip in high-stakes strategy shift | FT

    Google taps Intel for another round of custom network chips • The Register

    TSMC’s Kumamoto Fab Upgrade: A Security-Driven Reconfiguration of Indo-Pacific Chip Competition – The Diplomat

    Software

    China’s AI Companies Are Going Closed Source | ChinaTalk

    OpenAI acquires popular tech talk show for ‘low hundreds of millions’ | FT – ChatGPT-maker moves into broadcasting with deal for TBPN after it had pledged to abandon ‘side-quests’ – I think that this is trying to balance the narrative with Anthropic which is ripping ahead. In past decades you would have dumped a lot of money into a campaign run by a PR agency, but time moves on

    Axios AI+ | AI’s compute wars – pretty much what I have been talking about on the Dot LLM Era

    Taiwan

    There’s a Whole Lot of Taiwanese AI Winners Not Called TSMC

    The PLA has stopped flying aircraft close to Taiwan – I can’t figure out why and that worries me | Drew Thompson

    PC price hikes and a test for Taiwan | Ft

    Technology

    MacBook Neo Teardown Reveals It’s the Most Repairable Apple Laptop in Ages | Cnet

    Oracle prepares for lay-offs as it hails efficiencies from AI coding tools | FT

    The Debt Beneath the Dream – On my Om – Minsky moment in the offing?

    AppleUnsold – The Apple products they won’t sell you

    Google’s TurboQuant breakthrough is rattling memory chip stocks | Quartz

    Web of no web

    New Internet of Things Plan Targets Global Infrastructure – Jamestown – A new action plan for the Internet of Things (IoT) increases the possibility that Chinese-built connected infrastructure in the United States could become a platform for data access, cyber pre-positioning, and attacks on U.S. cyber-physical systems in a prolonged crisis or confrontation. The plan, launched jointly by nine ministries, defines IoT as a total cyber-physical environment that links “people, machines, and things” across sensing, networks, platforms, applications, and security, and sets targets for 10 billion terminal connections, more than 50 standards, and deployment across production, consumption, and governance. The plan indicates Beijing is moving from connected devices to connected backbone systems. It reinforces the new Five-Year Plan, suggesting that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) wants to supply not only endpoints like sensors, appliances, and vehicles but also the next generation of AI, computing, and space-ground communications infrastructure that will underpin them.

    Wireless

    At MWC, Ericsson Details AI-Native 6G Timeline – EE Times

    The 6G clock ticking: Why silicon architecture for 2030 must start in 2026 – EDN

    Ireland’s first mobile video call via satellite is made | RTÉ

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

    April 2026 introduction – (33) dirty knee

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

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

    truman with trains, dirty knees, and boots on the bus

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

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

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

    New reader?

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

    SO

    Things I’ve written.

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

    Some thoughts how WPP might deal with its Burson dilemma.

    ICYMI – Top five shares on LinkedIn

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

    Books that I have read.

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

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Supply chained

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

    Generative AI & cooking

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

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

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

    Praykinson

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

    praykinson Vajira Hospital

    CHESS

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

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

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

    Chart of the month. 

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

    • Internet access is now at a point comparable to where broadcast television was previously.
    • The digital divide is now about the mode of access, with smartphones on mobile internet providing a poorer service.
    Internet technologies access

    Things I have watched. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Useful tools.

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

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

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

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

    The sales pitch.

    I am a strategist who thrives on the “meaty brief”—the kind where deep-tech or complexity, business goals, and human culture collide.

    With over a decade of experience across the UK, EMEA, and JAPAC, I specialise in bridging the gap between high-level strategy and creative execution. I was embedded within Google Cloud’s brand creative team, where I helped navigate the “messy steps” of global pivots and the rapid rise of Gen AI. And have recently been helping out agencies and startups in various sectors from narratives and new business pitches to sports partnerships.

    My approach is simple: I use insight and analytics to find the “surprise” in the strategy. Whether it’s architecting an experiential event or defining a social narrative for a SaaS powerhouse, I focus on making complex brands feel human and high-velocity businesses feel accessible.

    The Strategic Toolkit:

    • Brand & Creative Strategy: From B2B infrastructure to luxury travel.
    • AI-Enhanced Planning: Deeply literate in Google Gemini and prompt engineering to accelerate insights and creative output.
    • Multi-Sector Versatility: A proven track record across Tech & SaaS (Google Cloud, Semiconductors), Consumer Goods (FMCG, Beauty, Health), and High-Interest Categories (Luxury, Sports Apparel, Pharma).

    I am officially open for new adventures with immediate effect. If you have a challenge that needs a all-in, hit-the-ground-running strategic lead, let’s talk.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

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

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful as this helps other people and the algorithmic gods of Google Search and the various LLMs that are blurring what web search means nowadays.

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

  • Pilot Parker & more inspiration

    This inspiration post is a mix of things that caught my eye from Pilot Parker to HyperCard.

    Pilot Parker

    pilot parker

    Pilot Parker is Malaysia Airlines mascot. I was familiar with him from the inflight duty-free catalogue. The inspiration for the film came from a moment shared by a young passenger who had flown with Malaysia Airlines. After her trip, she sent the airline a hand-drawn illustration of Pilot Parker along with a letter describing how the mascot brought her comfort during the journey. So the brand moved Pilot Parker from souvenir to fluent object.

    Lemon – lime facetime call.

    Apple had a week of things including more affordable devices (iPhone 17e and MacBook Neo) in a green-yellow colour. The company deleted all their TikTok account contents and then posted this video.

    @apple

    hello?

    ♬ original sound – apple

    20-somethings in the ad industry lost their minds, feeling seen and considering it revolutionary that large brands have humour and can navigate culture. They then filled LinkedIn with insightful posts to let all the oldster millennials know.

    Just leaving this one here, in case anyone notices. The lesson of the story is that everything old is new, especially the heuristic about being part of culture.

    Retrospective on HyperCard

    HyperCard was a powerful idea that didn’t have its time. I used it to run lab experiments during a brief time with Corning prior to my going to college. This video goes into real depth about what we missed.

    Voice recognition is older than you think

    I found this 1958 film of Victor Scheinman, at the time a high school student. He invented a solution that provided speech to text via a typewriter. It isn’t that far away from the speech recognition that I had on mobile phones from my Ericsson T39 through to my current iPhone.

    In his adult life Scheinman worked with AI pioneer Marvin Minsky and worked in the field of robotics in academia and the private sector. Scheinman went on to work with General Motors and Yaskawa Electric Corporation. Right up to his death Scheinman was an associate professor who still consulted at Stanford University.

    Scheinman’s high school experiment shows both how far we’ve come and yet how little we’ve progressed in comparison to the hype.

    Think with Google & Sir Martin Sorrell

    Think with Google interviewed Sir Martin Sorrell who was entertaining and consistent on themes he has been talking for the past few years. I found it interesting that he suspects marketing science is ‘over’. I don’t agree with him in this respect because software changes faster than wetware, but Sorrell instead has the CFO view within clients.

    Yet the favourite campaigns that he worked on were his work at Saatchi & Saatchi before he built WPP.

    Here’s the British Airways ‘Manhattan Landing‘ campaign from 1983 that Sir Martin named as the favourite campaign that he worked on.

    More marketing related content here.

  • Anthropic + more things

    Anthropic and the US Department of Defense defined the debate about AI for the start of March. Trying to understand the truth is murky.

    FORTUNE Brainstorm Tech 2023

    The media pitches a clash of personalities between Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

    Anthropic’s Claude LLMs have a number of points of expertise from helping programmers develop software code more quickly to assisted decision making and automation.

    Anthropic had concerns about weapons with no humans in the loop, but you could consider ‘fire-and-forget’ weapons are already the same thing. This would include the FGM-148 ‘St’ Javelin anti-tank missile successfully used by the Ukrainians or the British Brimstone air-to-ground missile.

    Fire-and-forget saves lives, autonomous vehicles in areas like casualty evacuation and supply runs could save more lives. The Anthropic breakdown seems to be down to trust. Anthropic felt that its models weren’t ready for full autonomy of operation and there were also concerns about facilitating mass surveillance of Americans.

    There seems to be undertones of taking action against a ‘woke’ company. Why Anthropic seemed to have been able to double down is the limited impact they claim it will have on their business.

    And yes the term ‘seem’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting due to difficulty in discerning what is going on.

    China

    China: Quieter, more fretful than I remember – by Whipling – it’s immediately obvious there is a current vibe in China. It isn’t frantic. It isn’t charged. It appears to be a collective sigh. Pride at what’s been achieved; acknowledgement that things are going to stop improving at the speed they forever have; resignation that life will be a little bit harder hereon in; and gratitude that there are messier places around the world to live. Many terms have been thrown at interpreting elements of this current behaviour in China. “Involution”. “Lie Flat”. I’ll add another: “Eh, fine.”

    Why Everyone Is Suddenly in a ‘Very Chinese Time’ in Their Lives | WIRED – As is often the case with Western narratives about China, these memes are not really meant to paint an accurate picture of life in the country. Instead, they function as a projection of “all of the undesirable aspects of American life—or the decay of the American dream,” says Tianyu Fang, a PhD researcher at Harvard who studies science and technology in China.

    At a moment when America’s infrastructure is crumbling and once-unthinkable forms of state violence are being normalized, China is starting to look pretty good in contrast. “When people say it’s the Chinese century, part of that is this ironic defeat,” says Fang.

    As the Trump administration remade the US government in its own image and smashed long-standing democratic norms, people started yearning for an alternative role model, and they found a pretty good one in China. With its awe-inspiring skylines and abundant high-speed trains, the country serves as a symbol of the earnest and urgent desire among many Americans for something completely different from their own realities.

    ‘Hermès orange’ iPhone sparks Apple comeback in China | FT

    Alibaba’s Qwen App Commits ￥30B to Chinese New Year AI Giveaway Campaign | Pandaily – China’s tech giants are using the Lunar New Year — the world’s largest annual migration — to turn niche AI assistants into household names. They are betting billions that “Red Packet” marketing can do for AI what it did for mobile payments a decade ago.

    Former Alibaba Executives Join Robot Leasing Platform BotShare as President and CSO – Pandaily – Li Liheng, former head instructor of Alibaba’s renowned B2B sales force known as the “China Supplier Iron Army,” has joined robot leasing platform BotShare as President. He will be joined by Wang Mingfeng (Tianxiang)—another Alibaba veteran previously responsible for management training under Alibaba’s “Three Axes” leadership framework—who will serve as Chief Strategy Officer.

    BotShare officially launched in December 2025 and disclosed its seed funding round on January 15, 2026. The round was led by Hillhouse Ventures, with participation from Fosun Capital and other investors. According to Qichacha data, Agibot (Zhiyuan Robotics) holds a 55% stake in BotShare, while Feikuo Technology owns 15%. Founded in 2024, Feikuo focuses on deploying and operating robots in real-world scenarios such as cultural tourism, commercial performances, and guided exhibitions.

    As a robot leasing platform, BotShare aggregates robots from multiple brands and models, offering rentals for scenarios including corporate annual meetings, livestreaming, store openings, and promotional events.

    Available brands currently include Accelerated Evolution, Unitree, Zhiyuan, Zhongqing, Lingchu Intelligence, and Zhujie Dynamics, among others. Robot delivery, retrieval, and maintenance are handled by local leasing partners across different regions.

    Platform data shows that within three weeks of launch, BotShare surpassed 200,000 registered users, with daily rental orders stabilizing at over 200.

    Consumer behaviour

    One Third of Consumers Resist AI on Their Devices | Circana

    Culture

    AESTHETIC SYSTEM #2: TECHNO SURREALISM

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong’s Sogo mall operator seeks $1 billion loan refinancing | Jing Daily – Sogo malls, especially the flagship Causeway Bay one, have long been among Hong Kong’s prime retail destinations. However, traditional retailers like department stores have been facing even more pressure from the mainland’s growing e-commerce penetration, the rise of low-end stores and weak domestic consumer sentiment.

    Lifestyle International was taken private by its chairman, Hong Kong billionaire businessman Thomas Lau Luen-Hung, in a HK$1.9 billion deal after the company warned of an at least 80% plunge in profit in the first half of 2022.

    Still, Hong Kong’s retail landscape has shown signs of stabilizing. Government data indicates that retail sales rose 6.5% year-on-year in November 2025, citing improving local consumption amid sustained economic growth and increasing visitor numbers.

    From Rolex to Naoya Hida: East Asia’s role in the secondhand watch boom | Jing Daily – Hong Kong leads, Taiwan sustains, Southeast Asia emerges. Across the auction house’s East Asian markets, collector behavior differs sharply.

    “Hong Kong continues to drive the strongest demand in the region,” Perazzi says. As a global gateway, the city draws international bidders competing for trophy pieces — particularly Rolex and Patek Philippe — and increasingly, independents.

    Taiwan, meanwhile, reflects consistency rather than spikes. “Taiwanese collectors are renowned for their long-term approach. Compared to Hong Kong’s appetite for headline-grabbing lots, Taiwan is characterized by quieter but reliable demand,” Perazzi adds.

    A surprise force is Southeast Asia. Vietnam and the Philippines are now producing first-generation collectors with expanding wealth pools and few legacy constraints. “Southeast Asia has emerged as a dynamic growth region,” Perazzi says, citing a younger collector profile and faster adoption of new independents.

    62% of Hong Kong Zoomers fear they can’t compete with AI: Chinese YMCA survey

    Ideas

    The Singularity Is Always Near – by Kevin Kelly – KK

    Indonesia

    Indonesian woman collapses after 140 lashes for sex and alcohol | South China Morning Post – A woman in Indonesia’s Aceh province collapsed after being caned 140 times last week for extramarital sex and drinking alcohol in one of the harshest sharia punishments on record.
    The woman and her partner were struck with a rattan cane in a public park in Aceh province on Thursday as dozens watched, Agence France-Presse reported. Each received 100 lashes for extramarital sex and another 40 for consuming alcohol, according to Banda Aceh sharia police chief Muhammad Rizal.     – the move to more Gulf-orientated interpretation of Islamic rule is likely to cramp globalisation in Indonesia by western firms, despite it being the most populated Muslim country and will affect service industries such as tourism

    Innovation

    Unorthodox ‘universal vaccine’ offers broad protection in mice | Science | AAAS

    On’s Greatest Innovation Isn’t a Sneaker. It’s a Robot. | Sportsverse

    Japan

    Japan’s AI Affinity – Matt Alt’s Pure Invention

    4 Yakuza, 4 Livers, 100+ Dead Americans; No problem. The UCLA Report You’ve Never Seen | Jake Adelstein

    Luxury

    What are premium Chinese brands doing for Spring Festival 2026? 🧨 | Following the Yuan

    Luxury’s Overexposure Is Biting – Matter

    The Wait List for a Birkin or Rolex Is Getting Shorter – WSJ – Falling resale values show that even makers of the world’s most popular luxury goods are feeling a slowdown

    Marketing

    Tymbals : The Agency of the Future (Circa 2026) – Nigel Scott looks at the impact of LLMs on the creative output of agencies and Kering got it wrong using AI as a creative tool: Gucci’s AI experiment is what happens when luxury forgets it’s luxury – Intern Pierre

    Materials

    The Cell That Didn’t Catch Fire – by Howard Yu

    On’s Greatest Innovation Isn’t a Sneaker. It’s a Robot. | Sportsverse

    Media

    When Real Beauty Met Reddit | LBBOnline – Reddit is very underestimated, interesting to see Dove using it in this way. Also worthwhile noting that Reddit is a key training source for LLMs.

    WPP Media launches framework for evaluating AI advertising capabilities – The Media Leader

    Listening to “The Joe Rogan Experience” | The New Yorker – the lineage from 1960s weird fringe late night medium wave radio to the mainstream media of The Joe Rogan show

    Online

    Chinese internet reacts to Bad Bunny – by Beimeng Fu

    Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being | PNAS Nexus | Oxford Academic

    America must follow China in treating data as an asset – In 2024, China became the first country to allow enterprises to classify data as intangible assets on their balance sheets. Beijing had already declared data a “factor of production” alongside land, labour, capital and technology. The National Data Administration now oversees dozens of data exchanges. China Unicom, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, reported Rmb204mn ($29mn) in assets in its first filing under the new rules.

    Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell – CIA

    Security

    Russia targets Telegram as rift with founder Pavel Durov deepens | FT

    ‘Honeypots’ and influence operations: China’s spies turn to Europe | FT

    Pentagon is embracing Musk’s Grok AI chatbot as it draws global outcry | C4ISRnet

    Taiwan’s Tron Future unveils AI-guided anti-armor rockets | C4ISRnet

    AI-powered military neurotech: Mind enhancement or control? | C4ISRnet

    The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them | The Verge

    Economic Espionage and Innovation Restrictions by Andrew Kao & Karthik Tadepalli (University of California, Berkleley, Harvard University)

    Flickr moves to contain data exposure, warns users of phishing | Security Affairs

    PRC Targets NATO Frontline States | RealClearDefense

    iPhone and iPad are the first consumer devices cleared for NATO ’s ‘RESTRICTED’ classification | SecurityAffairs

    Technology

    Apple Does Fusion. – On my Om – the architecture move is more interesting than the products.

    iPhone and iPad are the first consumer devices cleared for NATO ’s ‘RESTRICTED’ classification | SecurityAffairs

    Most of the major AI players went to Davos, though they weren’t the main focus due to the Trump administration. Google Deepmind founder Demis Hassabis admitted that the current AI market is ‘bubble-like’.

    Beyond the Bubble: Why AI Infrastructure Will Compound Long after the Hype | KKR

    Does China care about AGI? – by Kyle Chan – High Capacity

    Yahoo Japan and LINE to build combined private cloud • The Register – Japan’s take on sovereign cloud

    TMTB: Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) at MS TMT Key Quotes & Dario’s Choice and Anthropic’s Future | Big Technology

    Web-of-no-web

    Chinese robotaxis beat U.S. rivals to the Gulf – Rest of World

    Wireless

    Orbital geopolitics: China’s dual-use space internet MERICS

  • Brand building for B2B PRs

    Brand building for B2B PRs is a write up of an interview that I did with Miles Clayton of Agility PR. We talked about the importance of brand building, client challenges and techniques.

    Participants:

    • Miles: Host (Agility PR)
    • Ged Carroll

    Miles: I’d like to welcome Ged Carroll, a guru on brand building and advertising working with major tech and consumer brands. He offers insight into the world of proper advertising: campaigns we know and love, and, where the industry is leading today.

    Welcome, Ged. Could you talk through what you’re doing at the moment and your current challenges?

    Ged Carroll: Thank you, Miles. I am currently wrapping up an engagement with Google Cloud, working with their internal creative agency as a temporary vendor contractor.

    My work focuses on brand building: out-of-home advertising, video advertising, and events. We look at how those creative experiences come to life through major trade shows and Google-hosted events. There is also sports sponsorship; for instance, the Formula E activation. Even though it’s a B2B brand, many tactics are exposed to a broader audience than just direct customers.

    Miles: That’s fascinating. Regarding brand building, something many brands under-invest in, could you explain why it is important and how it differs from brand activation or performance marketing? I’d argue performance marketing is the obsession in B2B, but why should brand building weigh higher?

    Ged Carroll: I’ll first address why brands focus on performance marketing, then explain brand building’s importance. Brands focus on performance marketing because they are measured on 90-day periods. They can simply say, “Here’s the money spent, here’s the result.” Measures include customer acquisition cost or engagement metrics along a marketing funnel. These seem like concrete measures.

    Why do brand building? Smaller B2B brands often hesitate because of what Professor Byron Sharp calls “Double Jeopardy”: smaller brands have less market penetration and less loyal customers. Consequently, small enterprise software companies have a harder time moving the needle than larger ones. The bigger you are, the better you do; it has a flywheel effect.

    What helps sell product is “mental availability.” If I think B2B PR, you want me to think “Miles.” For chocolate, you think Cadbury. For B2B software, most developers now think AWS. Fifteen years ago, that would have been Microsoft.

    Miles: I sympathise. I’ve worked with brands famous in particular markets that struggled to break into adjacent markets because they hadn’t built the brand there.

    Ged Carroll: That creates a ‘chickenand-egg’ situation: do you invest, or, try a “cargo cult” approach replicating past success? Past success was likely a confluence of luck, timing, and good practice. Many overnight successes are decades in the making.

    Huawei seemed to spring from nowhere but is four decades old. Breaking one customer, BT, made them famous. That fame cracked the market.

    Miles: Brand building is critical. You mentioned that in a typical SaaS subscription business, you should invest about 70% in brand building?

    Ged Carroll: Heuristically, for a subscription business, about 70% should go into brand building and 30% into brand activation.

    Brand building includes PR. I ask: how can we make this idea work for earned media as well? Does the campaign scale to generate “talkability”? People discussing it at the water cooler, in trade magazines, or on social media? Paid media works harder if you have talkability around it.

    Miles: Is that what is now called integrated campaigns?

    Ged Carroll: Integrated campaigns have been around for over 30 years. People used to discuss “media neutral” strategies. The core idea is that your paid media works significantly harder if the campaign generates conversation.

    Miles: That starts with great advertising principles. The book Look Out focuses on “right brain” thinking. Can we discuss the right versus left brain tussle in advertising and how to address it?

    Ged Carroll: Marketing has changed, but our thinking is hardwired by evolution. Analytical procrastination creates cognitive load. If our ancestors sat thinking, “Do I want this or this?”, a predator would have eaten them before they decided.

    Miles: By the time you selected the next iPhone, you’re dead.

    Ged Carroll: Exactly. Logical “System 2” thinking is a difficult construct, yet B2B marketers often communicate rational benefits this way. However, we evolved instantaneous “System 1” thinking, which emotions tap into. If I feel something sharp, I instantly move. That is why we don’t remember a commute unless something significant happens.

    Current advertising often treats us as rational decision-makers, but feelings have a longer-term impact. If I feel sharp stones, I build longer-term thinking to wear sandals next time. Traditionally, advertising tapped into this. Brands like Accenture or Google Cloud attach themselves to emotional events like sports, or consumer ads use storytelling to build memory structures and automatic association.

    Miles: Absolutely.

    Ged Carroll: Procurement processes try to force a rational view, but organisational load often short-circuits this. Do you care where you buy paper clips? No, you go to the fastest place. Brand building gets you onto that procurement shortlist. Furthermore, people aren’t in the mood to buy 95% of the time. Unless you build memory structures while they are inactive, you won’t be considered when they are in the market.

    Miles: Smaller companies can’t afford TV or billboards. What do you advise? I offer thought leadership and education. Tech businesses often say, “You aren’t buying now, but do you want to learn about prompts?” Is that brand building?

    Ged Carroll: It could be. But whose brand is it building? It might just build the LLM model’s brand. My mum asks me to “Ask Google” about crochet patterns. She blames the specific websites for bad patterns, not Google. She associates Google with getting what she wants.

    With thought leadership, are you building the person’s personal brand, or the company brand?

    Miles: That’s an interesting question. I often do personal brand building for the CEO or CTO to express the business vision. But below the C-suite, say a VP of Sales, is it their brand you’re building rather than the company’s? Especially given high turnover.

    Ged Carroll: Exactly. Founder-managers are different; they stay longer. Professional CEOs shipped in by VCs might only stay a few years. B2B marketers face dilemmas, not just choices. It’s about making the best choice within those dilemmas.

    Miles: There are parallels between advertising and B2B marketing, but also budget challenges. Media has changed; 15 years ago, clients bought display ads to build brand. Now, the digital tendency is toward content and performance marketing. Is business stuck in short-term goal-orientated thinking?

    Ged Carroll: It’s not strictly a B2B or B2C problem. We measure what can be coded. Ad-tech stacks are based on interactivity, not marketing science. We assume if someone does X, Y will happen—the sales funnel concept. The sales funnel is an interesting mental model, but it comes from century-old door-to-door sales and assumes rational decision-making and perfect memory through the process.

    Miles: You’re saying consistent brand building short-circuits the funnel, leading straight to the sale.

    Ged Carroll: Yes. When you want a beer, you choose Heineken because it’s in your mind. The consideration process shrinks. Brand building gets you into that consideration process much faster. Regularity is vital to reach people the 95% of the time they aren’t ready to buy.

    Miles: Look Out discusses the narrowing and fragmentation of attention. Are there ways through that?

    Ged Carroll: We have more media opportunities now, but fragmentation occurs because we have smaller gaps of consumption time to fill—like checking a smartphone on the tube. Unless you have repetition within those small gaps, you won’t build memory structures. It’s hard to make a six-second spot emotional.

    You need an integrated approach: emotion and storytelling in long-form content (like a documentary), supported by short content that directs people to it. In B2C, this is easier using brand cues: music, mascots, fonts, colors. Build those cues and stick with them. Marketers often get bored of a campaign and change it, but the audience hasn’t seen it enough. Stick with it.

    Miles: Stick with it.

    Ged Carroll: Many consumer adverts run for years. My dad’s favorite Twix advert is from 2022. Flash has used the same dog and music for five years. Great brand-building campaigns “burn in” rather than “burn out.” Performance marketing might focus on a new feature, but it relies on the brand association already built.

    Miles: It’s been a fascinating discussion crossing advertising, brand building, and B2B marketing. My big takeaway is to encourage more right-brain thinking. Thank you for your time, Ged.

    Ged Carroll: Thank you, Miles. I look forward to chatting again.

    You can watch the interview on video here.

    I gave Miles a reading list in advance of us chatting. Here it is: