Category: oprah time | 書評 | 서평 : 文芸批評

Welcome! I guess the first question that you have is why oprah time? Well in my last year of college I used to sit in the house that I shared with my landlord and write my essays whilst watching cable TV.

There I would be sipping tea, writing away and referencing from text books spread around me on the couch and coffee table. One of the programmes on the in the background was Oprah Winfrey. A lot of the show was just background noise. But I was fascinated by Oprah’s book club.

She’d give her take on a book, maybe interview the author. And then it would be blasted up the New York Times bestsellers list. This list appears weekly in the New York Times Book Review. Oprah’s book club was later emulated by other talk show hosts, notably the UK’s Richard Madeley and Judy Finegan.

On the high end you had Melvyn Bragg‘s South Bank Show when they profiled an author of the moment.

When I came to writing my own review of books that I’d read, I was was brought back to that time working on a sofa. Apple laptop in hand. It made sense to go with Oprah time.

You might also notice a link called bookshelf. This is a list of non-fiction books that I have kept. And the reasons why I have kept them.

If you’ve gone through my reviews and think that you’d like to send me a book to review. Feel free to contact me. Click this link, prove that you’re human and you will have my email address.

August 2024 newsletter – unlucky 13?
August 2024 newsletter introduction

Welcome to my August 2024 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 13th issue. When I lived in Hong Kong; four was the unluckiest number. 13 featured in confucian beliefs and in tai chi. In western culture 13 has a similar reputation. The status of 13 goes all the way back to Babylonian times. A baker’s dozen contained 13 items; rather than the usual 12 items.

This time last year, I had a daft idea to put together stuff I’ve written, read, been inspired by or have watched that I thought some people might find of interest. Along the way, I shared my Ma’s recipe for a traditional Irish Hallowe’en dish, book recommendations, articles, a review of 2023 and much more.

Salem State University Archives August 18, 1987 “Boston Medical Flight helicopter using new helipad”

I spent a good deal of August outside London to recharge and take care of family business. I am now back and getting ready for September.

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.
- My cousin selling the ‘ancestral’ family farm back in Ireland, got me thinking about roots.
- I explored Rob Henderson’s concept of ‘luxury beliefs‘ and other things that I found of interest from around the web.
- I looked at some of the themes that have emerged around generative AI in the first half of this year.
Books that I have read.
- The Ribbon Queen – I am a huge fan of Garth Ennis as a graphic novel writer and the publication of The Ribbon Queen was the second best news I had received this year since Ennis announced his return to The Punisher series at the beginning of 2024. With The Ribbon Queen Ennis returns obliquely to religion with a tale that sits somewhere between a police procedural and Lovecroftian fiction. Nothing is simple with Ennis and the work touches on themes like police brutality, woke culture, sex trafficking, domestic violence and ancient beliefs.
- Part of my love reading comes from my Dad’s library of crime and espionage books. I started reading John LeCarré, Hammond Innes and Alistair Maclean in primary school. Secondary school had me reading Gerald Seymour and Robert Ludlum. Seymour’s work felt more grounded and Harry’s Game during The Troubles felt especially pertinent. Despite being 82 years old Seymour still writes. I haven’t picked up a Seymour novel in decades until I got to read In For The Kill. its the third book in a franchise of Jonas Merrick – a soon-to-retire spook with a love of caravanning and frugality. As a holiday read, I really enjoyed it.
- Richard Stark’s Parker is an anti-hero beloved of Hollywood who has appeared in film over years. Richard Stark’s Parker: The Complete Collection is a collection of graphic novel adaptions of The Score, The Outfit, The Score, and Slayground, The Man with the Getaway Face and The Seventh. Stark’s Parker is written with crisp lean copy to match the no-nonsense dark ruthless character. He is at end of America’s hard boiled noir literature like Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. But Richard Stark’s hero was an armed robber, not a detective. As a genre it was later revived by James Ellroy’s works from the late 1980s on. While Parker has been played on screen by a variety of actors including Lee Marvin and Mark Wahlberg – he is not a character for our times. Darwyn Cooke’s adaption of Parker to a graphic novel format is a 500+ page love letter to mid-century graphic design including vintage newspapers and petrol station maps. It’s a coffee table book that you actually want to read.
- Qiu Xiaolong is an American crime writer, who is famous for his character Chief Inspector Chen. In his book Becoming Inspector Chen, was recommended by my friend Ian. The book feels autobiographical in nature. Like Chen, Qiu had studies TS Elliot at university, both had lived through the opening up of China post-Cultural Revolution. Their paths divert when Qiu moved to study in the US and decided to stay there after the ‘June the 4th incident‘. Qiu describes the complex relationships in families due to the Cultural Revolution and the nature of change in China during its opening up phase. The book is an implicit critique of the current Xi administration, as yet again Chen faces the imminent impact of the party machine.
- Kara Swisher is a long-time journalist who chronicled Silicon Valley from the dot.com boom onward. In Burn Book Swisher gives us her potted history and hot takes on the people and companies that she tried to report on. I say tried because technology firms have made life difficult for journalists since blogging became a thing and they could go direct to the audience. Swisher came from an unhappy but privileged background and jumped into journalism with gusto. There isn’t anything that surprising in her reporting save how was it so late that Swisher really dialled into how toxic and nihilistic some of her subjects really were? Swisher’s book is more engaging than Fred Vogelstein’s Dogfight, but lacks the wit and panache of Michael Malone’s books or Robert X Cringely’s Accidental Empires.
A bit of aside to the books, I found this article by Dazed Digital quite interesting. Apparently, straight men are much less likely to read novels. I read a mix of fiction and non-fiction as you can probably tell if you are regular reader. If you want fiction recommendations as a start, I have some in an old post I wrote about 50 books I would recommend (scroll down to fiction).

Things I have been inspired by.

Quantum advertising.

Faris Yakob had dropped a banger of an opinion piece on WARC. In quantum advertising Yakob calls out marketing management for optimising to the wrong things and believing that creativity is predictable.

Aston Martin DB2

It also led me to Jeremy Bullmore’s ‘Aston Martin’ essay published by WPP as A 20th Century Lesson for 21st Century Brands.

Return-to-office mandates

Gartner the research house most famous for its technology reports has taken an in-depth look at return-to-office mandates beloved of large enterprises such as Apple, Amazon or Boeing and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Gartner looked at employee research and HR leaders as part of an up to date research done in May 2024. Any small gains in discretionary effort and employee engagement are wiped out by drops in intent to stay, with the implied disruption and cost cause by employee churn.

The findings are similar to what we saw with Slack Future Forum’s Inflexible return-to-office policies are hammering employee experience scores published in 2022.

New voices

Zoë Mann started an initiative that would get some of the newer strategist voices heard.

Things I have watched.

I haven’t watched A Clockwork Orange for a while and revisited it. I am still amazed by the way Kubrick used lighting, Beethoven and the Wendy Carlos soundtrack to such good effect. It also felt much more creative and transgressive than anything one would see at the cinema now. The modernist and brutalist architecture gives it an otherworldly quality now.

I wanted to watch Weathering With You since it came out. I finally got to watch it. The animation is almost as rich as Studio Ghibli and the plot has some fantastical elements of it as well. But the story is grounded in the darker side of Tokyo.

The protagonist is homeless and lives in a net café near the Kabukicho gate that marks the entry to the red light district that is part of Shinjuku ward. In this respect the anime provides a realistic portrayal of a ‘freeter’ – an under-employed young person.

Alain Delon died and I had a movie marathon with my Dad to celebrate his life: Un Flic, Le Samouraï and Le Cercle Rouge.

Useful tools.

Whatfont

Whatfont is a Google Chrome browser plugin, Safari browser extension and bookmarklet (I use the bookmarklet) that tells you what font’s are on a given web page.

Google Analytics health check

Yes I know GA4 is hateful, but Fresh Egg have put together a template to make a data health check easier to do. Give them your details and download their GA 4 Health Check for free.

Decrapifying LinkedIn

At last a compelling use case for the Arc Browser: as a LinkedIn client. Luddite LinkedIn is a ‘boost’ (think plug-in) cleans out things like AI powered elements of the LinkedIn experience.

Better Reddit and YouTube search

GigaBrain provides an alternative to the broken experience searching on Reddit and YouTube. It’s available via webpage and a Google Chrome browser plugin.

The sales pitch.

I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements, I am available for much of September. Contact me here. I am also open to discussions on permanent roles.

More on what I have done here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my August 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into September and the balmy days of an Indian summer!

Don’t forget to share, comment and subscribe!

Let me know if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
August 27, 2024
July 2024 newsletter
July 2024 newsletter introduction

Welcome to my July 2024 newsletter, this newsletter which marks my 12th issue. I hope the wettest part of the summer is behind me. This time last year, I didn’t set out to get to 12 issues. I thought I would try three and see where I got to. You’d think I would have had it nailed down by now, but it’s still evolving, finding its voice in an organic process. Getting to this point felt significant, I think it’s down to the weight of the number 12.

12 as a number is loaded with symbolism. The Chinese had a 12 year cycle that they called the ‘earthly branches’ and were matched up with an animal of the Chinese zodiac.

Odin had 12 sons, the Hittites had 12 gods of the underworld. Mount Olympus was home to 12 gods who had vanquished the 12 titans. Lictors who were civil servants assisting magistrates with duties carried a bundle of 12 rods to signify imperial power. The Greeks gave us 12 member juries and both western and Islamic zodiacs have 12 signs.

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.
- Warped media constructs – what marketers and their advisers think about media channels versus what works and what should be measured.
- I contributed to the Rambull newsletter with a selection of my favourite places in London.
- End of culture – I disagree with some of what Pip Bingemann said about culture and advertising, but he made some interesting discussion points that I went through and annotated or knocked down.
- A bit about the Zynternet phenomenon and interesting things from around the web.
- A bit about BMW’s The Ultimate Driving Machine and other things that caught my interest.
Books that I have read.
- Dogfight – Silicon Valley based journalist Fred Vogelstein was writing for publications like Wired and Fortune at the time Apple launched the iPhone and Google launched Android. He had a front-row seat to the rivalry between the two brands. The book is undemanding to read but doesn’t give insight in the way that other works like Insanely Great, Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Accidental Empires did. Part of this might be down to the highly orchestrated public relations campaigns happening at the time. (Vogelstein wrote about his experiences with Microsoft’s PR machine for Wired back in 2007). Instead Vogelstein documents developments that I had largely forgotten about like music labels launching albums as multimedia apps on the new iPhone ecosystem. It’s a workman-like if uninspiring document.
- This Time No Mistakes by Will Hutton seemed to be a must-read document in the face of an imminent Labour party victory in the general election. Hutton’s The State We’re In was the defining work of wonkish thinking around policy as Labour came into power under Tony Blair in 1997. Three decades later and Labour is poised to rule again during a time of more social issues and lower economic performance. The people are poor and the economy has been barely growing for over a decade. The State We’re In was a positive roadmap of introducing long-term investment culture into British business and upgrading vocational education. This Time No Mistakes is an angrier manifesto of wider change from media and healthcare to government involvement in business. Both books outlined a multi-term roadmap for politicians. In the end, Labour didn’t deliver on The State We’re In‘s vision; this time they are even less likely to do so.
- Dark Wire – Joseph Cox was one of the journalists whose work I followed on Vice News. He specialises in information security related journalism and turns out the kind of features that would have been a cover story on Wired magazine back in the day. With the implosion of Vice Media, he now writes for his own publication: 404 Media. Dark Wire follows the story of four encrypted messaging platforms, with the main focus being on Anon. Anon is a digital cuckoo’s egg. An encrypted messaging service designed for criminals, ran as an arms length front company for the FBI. Cox tells the complex story in a taunt in-depth account that brings it all to life. But the story isn’t all happy endings and it does question the threats posed to services like Signal and WhatsApp if law enforcement see criminals moving there.
- I went back and revisited Media Virus by Douglas Rushkoff. Once a touchstone of public intellectuals and media wonks, it’s rather different than I remember it from the first reading I had of it at the start of my agency career. More of my thoughts on subjects covered in the book from authoritarian regimes to patient-centric medicine here.
Not a book, but really enjoying Yaling Jiang’s newsletter Following the Yuan that looks at a mix of consumer marketing stories in China with a balanced and analytical approach. Social listening platform YouScan have an interesting insights newsletter, where you can subscribe to here.

Things I have been inspired by.

Lean web design.

I have been keen on lean web design, especially has web page sizes have ballooned over the past decade with little benefit in functionality. However Wholegrain Digital have taken this idea in a new direction by looking at a websites typical carbon footprint. Mine came out better than 97 percent of websites they’d tested so far.

Crushing conformity with creativity

Samira Brophy of IPSOS and Tati Lindenberg of Unilever were at Cannes and talked through some of the dirt is good campaigns and how Unilever switched plot lines in an inventive manner to make better campaigns that fit in with Unilever’s socially forward orientation.

The Arsenal example that they show is a really nice twist on girl plays soccer, kit gets cleaned trope and captures the essence of fandom.

The Future Health Index.

Philips the former consumer electronics pioneer have surveyed healthcare leaders around the world to see what their concerns are and where they may be looking to invest in the future. It’s an interesting read. When I have worked on health clients in the past, we’ve usually focused on what the relevant prescribing healthcare professional thoughts and any patient insights we could glean.

There was a big focus on automation (AI was a particular focus for respondents in countries with distinct healthcare challenges. However the respondents caveated the move to automation with this bit of wisdom:

Automation can help relieve staff shortages, if used right
The Future Health Index 2024 – Philips

Given the old heuristic of about 70 percent of IT projects not meeting the goals set for them, one can understand why there is a degrees of healthy skepticism in leaders and the staff who work with them.

Remote monitoring was one of the most popular areas for healthcare leaders wanting to use clinical decision support software (powered by AI). Curiously, preventative care ranked much lower.

Finally, there was some good news for pharmaceutical companies, negotiating lower prices for drugs was pretty low down on the list for the way leaders thought that they could make financial savings. Though this was tempered in a greater interest in ‘value-based billing’.

State of the (online) union.

From the late 1990s onwards, Mary Meeker’s snapshot of the technology sector was a must read presentation. Meeker came to mainstream fame leading the Netscape IPO while at Morgan Stanley. Early the same year she published The Internet Report – which launched a thousand agency slide decks and was a reference for the investment community during the dot com boom.

The themes of Meeker’s reports over the years followed the development of online:
- E-commerce
- Mobile internet
- Online advertising and search
- Rise of Chinese internet companies
Meeker left investment banking to join VC Kleiner Perkins and eight years later set up her own venture capital firm. During COVID-19 Meeker’s internet report wasn’t published for the first time since 1995.

Now it’s returned, you can find the latest issue here. In the meantime, while Meeker took an AI-focused approach to her latest report LUMA Partners have looked at the advertising technology ecosystem in more detail. You can find their comprehensive report here. An honorary mention to Benedict Evans’ annual presentation as well that is even more theme based in style.

Marvel x NHS blood donation

Disney’s partnership with NHS opens up access to a wider potential donor base.

Things I have watched.

Dark Hearts (Newen)

I don’t watch BBC iPlayer all that much, but occasionally I do find some ‘gold’. Dark Hearts (or Cœurs noirs literally Black Hearts) is a French series about a team looking for terrorist weapons, terrorist schemes and French ISIS members in Iraq circa 2016. It’s got the kind of gritty tense feel of SEAL Team or Zero Dark Thirty.

Chronos is a short film very much in the vein of Koyaanisqatsi. In Chronos the director tries to journey through thousands of years in history through the medium of timelapse photography. It’s a beautiful piece of film, but looks very ‘everyday’ now due to the time-lapse functions provided in our smartphones and generative AI services. Film-maker Ron Fricke had to build his own cameras to shoot the footage.

Hong Kong cinema is in a bit of a weird place at the moment. Its most bankable stars are in their 50s and early 60s – though they are holding off aging well. Cantonese culture in general is being squeezed out by mainland media, as well as the rise of Korean and Thai cinema. The current national security laws mean that previous bestsellers like Infernal Affairs or Election can no longer be made in the territory and even a retrospective showing of them could be in a legal grey area. The Goldfinger gets around this by going back to Hong Kong’s go-go era of the 1970s and 1980s and draws on the story of the Carrian Group which went belly up in the midst of a corruption and fraud scandal saw a bank auditor killed and buried in a banana tree grove. Lawyer John Wimbush was found dead in his home swimming pool. A nylon rope around his neck tethered to a concrete manhole cover at the bottom of the pool. So The Goldfinger has a rich vein of material to mine. The Goldfinger starts off during the Hong Kong police mutiny against the ICAC. it follows the rise of Tony Leung as Henry Ching Yat-yin (presumably to avoid legal trouble with George Tan founder of the Carrian Group, who only died during COVID). Ching then has a cat-and-mouse chase with Andy Lau’s Lau Kai-yuen, an inspector of the ICAC. I enjoyed The Goldfinger immensely, CGI and green screen was used to fill in for old Hong Kong which is substantially changed over the decades since. The ‘gweilo’ in the film were over-acted which was distracting, but the Hong Kong talent was top drawer. The more fantastical aspects of it reminded me a bit of Paul Schrader’s Mishima biopic.

The Great Silence is one of the greats of the spaghetti western genre. It was shot in a ski resort in the Dolomites and in a studio of fake snow. That alone would have made it highly unusual. The film was directed by Sergio Corbucci who was more famous for Django. Eureka’s Masters of Cinema have done a fantastic job of putting together a great print and commentary from experts including Alex Cox. It’s probably the best role that Klaus Kinski played in his considerable film career. Even though it’s a western, the underlying politics of the film make it surprisingly contemporary. That’s as much as I can say without giving the plot away.

Useful tools.

Better Reddit search

Google search has become much more limited in its capability for a number of reasons. Giga uses Reddit posts as its source material for search results. It can be useful in research, beyond trying to trawl Reddit using Google advanced search.

Mood board research

Historically, I have been a big fan of Flickr’s image search because of its ‘interestingness’ feature. Same Energy is a tool that matches the vibe of an image that you submit with other images.

Manifestos

A great collection of manifestos and tools to help manifesto writing for brand planners.

The sales pitch.

I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

More on what I have done here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my July 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into August!

Don’t forget to share, comment and subscribe!

Let me know if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
July 24, 2024
Media virus by Douglas Rushkoff

By the time Media Virus came out, Douglas Rushkoff was a public intellectual with the same kind of cultural impact of Simon Sinek back in the 1990s and early 2000s. I went back to read Media Virus for the first time in decades. The book design feels very dot com, with neon colour details a la early Wired magazine and discordant font use that owed a bit to Neville Brody. There was even the obligatory exclamation mark that said early web like Yahoo!.

Media Virus looked at how stories and ideas became mobile across media and reaching people. Despite its cyberpunk and counterculture styling it touched online very lightly with one chapter looking at how things spread on the Usenet as a glorified bulletin board. About the time Rushkoff was writing the Mosaic web browser had been released and Netscape Navigator was about get published. Rushkoff didn’t address the more prevalent ‘big three’ information providers at the time: CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online.

The book focused much more television and the revolution that video camcorders provided to media production. Power that would now sit in the average smartphone. Rushkoff also covered ‘zines’ self published print publications, ad jamming – defacing out of home billboards to make a statement and even protests. The protests felt very much of the now, particularly with the Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion happenings which gain little support from the general public affected.

With hindsight what comes through Media Virus was that is was less about the future of media and mass media past. Media Virus documented the last hurrah of 1960s counter-culture that probably wasn’t even a youth-led movement but driven by middle-aged intelligentsia that kept doing what it had been doing for decades. It borrowed ‘trade dress’ from cyberpunk, rave culture and gay activism.

The media viri of the book title were largely about transgression, or rejection of norms, which was the negative space of youth culture at that time and can be seen in advertising until the financial crisis of 2008.

Reading about gay community activism by ACT UP around the treatment of AIDS was as much about demanding patient-centricity from healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies, as it was about the disease. Decades later and the pharmaceutical industry is still on a journey to patient-centricity. There is still price gouging for different medications by pharmaceutical companies and commercial entities between the manufacturer and the health system.

Because of the extraordinary measures that the activists had taken, every network news show carried pictures of the event and then took the time to explain the views of these AIDS “terrorists.”

Meanwhile the opportunity to feed back through the media radically changed the “personas with AIDS” self-image. Refusing to be called AIDS “victims” or “sufferers,” PWAs experienced the discovery of their own iterative potential as a turning point in their lives.
Media Virus: hidden agendas in popular culture by Douglas Rushkoff

Rushkoff like media thinkers up to the late 2000s believed that the media was a threat to authoritarian regimes rather than open to being co-opted by them:

This is why the Ayatollah chose to react to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses with an assassination edict. A state based in fundamentalist order cannot survive in the data ocean. Ironically, if New York’s Seven Days magazine is correct, Rushdie’s whole saga turns out to be the result of an extremely successful (so to speak) media virus. Rushdie’s agent, the magazine suggests , concerned about initially poor sales, himself sent the Ayatollah a copy of the book, hoping to stir something up. Needless to say, the virus worked.
Media Virus: hidden agendas in popular culture by Douglas Rushkoff

Media Virus is an artefact of our past, convinced that it is a blueprint for our future. The present reality is much more banal and dystopian than Rushkoff could have realised back in 1994 when Media Virus was published.

July 13, 2024
Dogfight by Fred Vogelstein

The story Dogfight tells feels much more recent than it now is almost two decades on, and yet so far away as smartphones are central to our lives. Back in the mid and late 2000s Silicon Valley based journalist Fred Vogelstein was writing for publications like Wired and Fortune at the time Apple launched the iPhone and Google launched Android. He had a front-row seat to the rivalry between the two brands.

And being on the ground in Silicon Valley would have meant that he would have had access to scuttlebutt given in confidence of anonymity as well as official media access.

But he’s probably best known for being part of the story itself: Fred Vogelstein wrote about his experiences with Microsoft’s PR machine for Wired back in 2007.

The fight

The Motorola ROKR E1 I was given, but eventually threw out.

Dogfight starts some time after Apple had withdrawn support for Motorola’s ROKR phone, which was able to sync with iTunes for music downloads. This particular track of Apple’s history isn’t really documented in Dogfight.

The book goes through two separate but entangled story strands. The first is Apple’s development of the Apple iPhone and iPad. At that time Apple in the space of a decade had gone from almost going under, to having the iPod and iTunes music store, together with a resuscitated computer range thanks to the iMac and Mac OS X.

The Google of this era was at its peak, search had become a monopoly and the company was overflowing with wondrous and useful web services from Google Earth to Google Reader. What was less apparent was that inside Google was chaos due to internal politics and massive expansion. Into this walked Andy Rubin who had built and designed the Danger Hiptop, sold exclusively on T-Mobile as the Sidekick.

The Sidekick had been a text optimised mobile device. It featured email, instant messaging and SMS text messages. His new company Android had been acquired by Google to build a new type of smartphone that would continue to provide a mobile audience for Google services.

Dogfight’s style

Dogfight is undemanding to read but doesn’t give insight in the way that other works like Insanely Great, Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Accidental Empires did. Part of this might be down to the highly orchestrated public relations campaigns happening at the time.

Instead Vogelstein documents developments, from video recordings, marketing materials and court documents. Some of the things covered were items that I had largely forgotten about like music labels launching albums as multimedia apps on the new iPhone ecosystem. This was doing in software with what the Claudia Schiffer Palm Vx or the U2 autograph edition iPod had previously done in hardware.

Google’s decision to ‘acquihire’ the Android team to build their mobile operating system, wasn’t examined in depth. Yet there are clear parallels with the Boca Raton team in IBM which came up with the IBM PC a quarter of a century earlier. Vogelstein kept to the facts.

It’s a workman-like if uninspiring document. And that mattered deeply to me. Part of the reason why I went into agency life was because I was inspired about the possibility of working the technology sector. This inspiration had been fired up by the chutzpah and pioneering spirit portrayed in older technology of history books. Some of them were flawed characters, but all of them had an energy and vibrancy to make the world a better place.

Wired magazine issues had a similar effect. Yet in Dogfight Vogelstein brought neither of those influences to the table, instead he was writing an account that will probably only read by academics citing his material as a contemporary account in a future thesis.

Dogfight isn’t the Liar’s Poker of the smartphone world, it isn’t even that illuminating about the nature of Silicon Valley.

This is probably why Vogelstein hasn’t had a book published since Dogfight – he’s a reporter, not a writer. You can find more book reviews here.

June 29, 2024
June 2024 newsletter – legs 11
June 2024 newsletter introduction

Welcome to my June 2024 newsletter, it’s been a bit of a mad month with the European Union elections foreshadowing a rightward lurch in policy direction. The snap call for a French general assembly election and the bizarre spectacles happening in the campaign efforts of the UK general election. And before you say it, the UK general election is not a TikTok election. In the northern hemisphere midsummer (21 June 2024) – the longest day of daylight taps into something primal bringing us back to nature with campfires to meet the dusk, seasonal food and the beauty of summer on display.

This newsletter which marks my 11th issue. The number 11 is a mixed bag associated in medieval theology with the ’11 heads of error’. However there are more positive associations for those who believe in numerology. In Chinese its sonic similarity to the phrase ‘definitely fine’ gives it a positive association. For me it’s forever associated with the old bingo call of ‘legs 11’.

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.
- Collapsing the funnel is a term that I have heard thrown around a lot on blogs, LinkedIn posts and podcasts, but what does it really mean?
- A slower take on Apple’s iPad Pro launch
- A few things I learned judging the 2024 UK Young Lions and Adforum PHNX advertising awards, together with a few inspiring entries.
- The reasons why some people believe that #theinternetisdying.
- IT director powers up and more stuff – a collection of interesting news and analysis around the web, including how AI is upending IT sales.
Books that I have read.
- Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. Perlstein is an American historian with a progressive eye on history. His book name was passed around earlier on in the spring given perceived parallels between Biden and a likely second Trump administration, together with increased activism. It is one of a series of books that Perlstein wrote documenting post-second world war. Reaganland documents the Carter administration and America’s pivot to Reaganism. Before The Storm which looks at the rise of the modern American libertarian conservative moment and the decline in cross-party consensus – viewed through the lens of Barry Goldwater’s campaign to become the republican party candidate against Richard Nixon. I started reading Nixonland before the US college protests started, which gave the book added resonance.
- Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino. The first thing that jumps off the page when reading Cinema Speculation is the deep abiding love that Tarantino has for film. Film permeated every part of his life. His Mum took him along to films at the cinema that he probably shouldn’t have been allowed to see. In this respect he was a cinema media consumer in a time when mainstream television had already eaten Hollywood the first time around. The second thing that comes through is the way his deep knowledge allows him to build connections and linkages in non-obvious ways. Something that we lose the ability to do as we mediate knowledge seeking through Google and Perplexity instead of going through library newspaper clippings and reading magazines. I then realised that was a similar red thread in Perlstein’s Nixonland. Tarantino writes how he speaks and I was able to devour the book in two sittings despite suffering from a summer cold at the time. If you like to hear someone writing passionately about the New Hollywood movement of the early 1970s, then read Cinema Speculation.
- It was third time lucky for me with Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado. I was recommended the book by my friend Ian Wood and tried to read it a few times, but only really got into it at the third attempt. Once I got into it, I enjoyed it. There are the surface comparisons with Stig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy (The girl with the dragon tattoo and sequels). Without giving plot spoilers I found this comparison lacking. Instead I think of it as a modern-day version of the Sherlock Holmes novels of Arthur Conan-Doyle, but that view may change as I work my way through the series.
Things I have been inspired by.

Bad Times Disco.

Bad Times Disco put together eclectic parties bringing out music like Japan’s 1980s ‘city pop’ sound and art to secret venues.

Joe Haupt – Vintage Disco Sound Novelty Transistor Radio, AM Reception Only, Made In Hong Kong, Circa 1970s

For their closing event until autumn in Hong Kong they had developed an equitable pricing policy that allows an equally eclectic crowd.

Come join us for our season closing party on June 21st, in a spacious and very central location, filled with BTD regulars, our loving staff, and a great lineup of vinyl-centric DJs. More than a party, BTD is truly a community and we want to see all the regulars for this one.

* Multi-functional space layout *

* Special set design, group exhibit of multidisciplinary art, and more special touches *

* Sober friendly party *

Presales: 270HKD

Phase 1: 330HKD

Phase 2: 380HKD

Last min: 420HKD

Solidarity ticket: 500HKD. If you are a landowner, homeowner, or have generational wealth, please consider purchasing a solidarity ticket to our party and making it possible for lower-income folks to attend the party.

*Limited Low Income Ticket*: 150HKD – This is *only* if you are a service worker in Hong Kong, working class, or unemployed without a safety net in Hong Kong. We will trust you to choose this option for yourself if you need it.
Season Closing: Bad Times Disco 21/06

Design Discoveries: Towards a DESIGN MUSEUM JAPAN.

Japan House London has an exhibition of industrial design that reflects on the paradox of Japan having great design, but not a museum of design. Japan has a culture of good design; it’s a living thing and expected. By comparison, the celebration of good design could ironically indicate a norm of mediocre to bad product design. The exhibition runs until September.

Digital mortality.

David Webb is a long time activist investor in Hong Kong. I know of him by reputation since before I first went to Hong Kong and China in the mid-2000s. He has a long-running website that is invaluable for all things Hong Kong business-related – and is likely even more valuable given the recent regulatory and legal changes in the city. In a time when Hong Kong’s retail investors are disadvantaged by the large families and opaque Chinese government, Webb-Site is one of a few assets that retail investors can use for research. The site shows its late 1990s web design roots and makes extensive use of RSS to power its content.

David has been receiving treatment for cancer since 2020 and is now thinking about how his website might live on as a crowd-sourced online database. At the moment he is looking to bring on board volunteer editors. Part of the reason for this is that the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission didn’t embrace XML data output, that sites like David’s could ingest and process. More details here on how you can get involved.

Kantar’s blueprint for brand growth.

Kantar’s blueprint for brand growth uses a decades worth of its client’s data to refine their approach for success. It broadly meets what you would expect from the marketing science corpus built up by the likes of Ehrensberg-Bass and the IPA. They boiled down this blueprint for brand growth into three points
- Predispose more people – which boils down to a mix of salience and fame.
- Be more present – which equates to marketing penetration to capitalise on the increased number of people predisposed to the brand.
- Find new spaces – this is about innovating in communications and new ways of achieving market penetration.
This last point is particularly interesting. Much of Kantar’s clients would be mature well-known brands so breaking out into new spaces represents a blue ocean approach, designed to move beyond the fractional gains against entrenched competitors.

Michael Page 2024 talent insights

Michael Page have launched their annual talents insights report. It has content on a diverse set of areas including working locations (remote, hybrid and on-site), artificial intelligence and perceived job security. TL;DR – hybrid seems here to stay, AI usage is in the minority at the moment and the majority of workers feel secure in their current roles.

Quiet pride.

Probably not the right section in this newsletter, it would fit better in a section of ‘things I have been disappointed by’. Campaign Asia and Campaign US ran the following article: Brands plan for a quiet Pride Month. The iPA ran a similarly themed article. I guess ‘pride washing’ of brands will be less of a problem this year, but the lack of visibility is a concern.

Scott Beale

The articles imply a wider rollback from brand purpose, indicating a hollowness to the buy-in from large corporates.

The hesitation around Pride may also be related to executives’ increasing reluctance to speak out on social issues more broadly. Wolff pointed to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, which found that 87% of executives think taking a public stance on a social issue is riskier than staying silent. “Essentially, nine out of every 10 executives believe that the return on investment for their careers is not worth the support during this turbulent time,” said (Kate) Wolff. “This is clearly problematic for both the community and the progress we have made in recent years.”
Brands plan for a quiet Pride Month – Campaign Asia.

It offers a different angle on the broader issue that people like Nick Ashbury with his new book The Road to Hell have been driving at with regards the state of brand purpose.

Things I have watched.

I am a bit of a Federico Fellini fan and finally got to watch Roma. Roma is semi-autobiographical in nature. It is a series of vignettes all based around the city of Rome which go from the 1930s to the 1970s and cover various parts of city life with some of the aspects such as Roman frescos turning to dust on first viewing in a millennium to a religious fashion show having an especially fantastical aspect to it. The deconstructed nature of the film is also interesting from a storytelling point-of-view.

Delicatessen was part of a wave of dystopian movies that were produced during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Films like Richard Stanley’s Hardware and Dust Devil. Given that its French there is a distinct mid-century modernism sensibility to many aspects of it such as the vehicles use. In terms of the plot it is similar to a futuristic Sweeney Todd meets Brazil. The directing and writing team Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro went on to make more popular films including City of Children.

THX 1138 was George Lucas’ first professional film based on his student film. It feels modern and fresh despite being shot in the early 1970s. It captures the impersonal socially isolating aspects of modern technology. The film proper opens with Robert Duvall speaking with a system about how he is feeling echoing the nascent current use of AI for therapy. While Lucas became famous from his directing of the film, a good deal of credit is due to Walter Murch’s futurist soundscape and Lala Schiffin’s tonal soundtrack which isn’t that far away from the likes of Jóhann Jóhannsson. It’s no coincidence that later on Lucas named his audio company THX.

Murch although less well-known is a multi-Oscar award-winning film editor and sound mixer who pioneered the use of Apple’s Final Cut software in Hollywood.

I got a good deal of my license fee’s worth of the BBC going through the 1960s Royal Shakespeare Company performances of William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III which together make up the telling through an English protestant lens of the War of The Roses. Peter Hall’s direction is spot on. I only wish that I had seen this while I was studying English literature in secondary school.

Useful tools.

Basic Excel formulas guide.

Nicolas Boucher usually works with finance teams looking at adapting AI, but he put together a PDF with 21 Excel commands and examples. Some of them can be handy in digging your way through quantitative data. You can get your copy of the PDF here.

Bookfinder

The everything store Amazon, a fair few times hasn’t had what I wanted. There are also sound moral arguments to want to buy elsewhere, or you might want to buy cheaper. That’s where Bookfinder comes in. It is fast, has a front end that looked basic back when when Netscape Navigator was your tool for coasting on the information superhighway and surfing the worldwide web.

LittleSnitch 6.

If you’re a long time Mac user who can remember back when Adobe creative suite came in a box, then you might know Little Snitch. It was popular for people running bootleg copies of PhotoShop and InDesign by stopping the software from ‘phoning home’ to Adobe.

In reality Little Snitch is so much more, it’s my go-to software firewall. It allows Mac users to retain a fine control on what goes in and out of your computer stopping dodgy connections in their tracks.

Additional MagSafe 3 cables.

I have a surplus of USB-C chargers now, but the move towards the MagSafe 3 charging connection on newer Macs is a great back to the future move. They are magnetically connected, allowing the connection to be broken before your laptop is dragged to the floor like the original MagSafe connectors that Apple had in two versions from 2006 to 2017.

They got rid of it, and long time users like me moaned about it as USB-C, felt like a backwards move for mobile workers. Apple brought it back with MagSafe 3, which now works with USB-C chargers.

Third-party MagSafe 3 cables are now available so you no longer need to pay the Apple tax of premium priced cables. My favourite is the BeckenBower USB C to Mag-Safe 3 Cable, which has worked out really well for me so far.

Organiser.

I work from home and usually have Bloomberg or Yahoo! Finance on in the background at a very low volume ambient noise if I am not listening to podcasts. I had the classic living room problem of hunting down remote controls to turn devices on and off. I was inspired to build on existing behaviours of looking around the TV first for the remote control and bought an organiser to hold them and a supply of spare AAA, AA batteries and the lightning cord for my Apple TV remote. The one I eventually settled on was Blue Gingko Multipurpose Caddy Organiser. It’s well made from plastic and thoughtfully designed which is why I was prepared a bit more to get something made in Korea, rather than made in China.

If you are using it for artwork or as a go pack for a workshop you can stack several on top of each other.

The sales pitch.

I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

More on what I have done here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my June 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into the dog days of summer!

Don’t forget to like, comment, share and subscribe!

Let me know if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
June 26, 2024