Ged Carroll

Category: software | 軟件 | 소프트웨어 | ソフトウェア

Soon after I started writing this blog, web services came up as a serious challenger to software. The thing that swung the tide in software’s favour was the rise of the mobile app ecosystems.

Originally mobile apps solved a gnarly problem for smartphone companies. Web services took time to download and were awkward compared to native software.

Now we tend to have a hybrid model where the web holds authentication functionality and the underlying database for many applications to work. If you pick up a Nokia N900 today, while you can appreciate its beautiful design, the device is little more than a glowing brick. Such is the current symbiosis between between software apps and the web services that support them.

That symbiosis is very important, while on the one hand it makes my Yahoo! Finance and Accuweather apps very useful, it also presents security risks. Some of the trouble that dating app Grindr had with regards security was down to the programmers building on third party APIs and not understanding every part of the functionality.

This means that sometimes things that I have categorised as online services might fall into software and vice versa. In that respect what I put in this category takes on a largely arbitrary view of what is software.

The second thing about software is the individual choices as a decision making user, say a lot about us. I love to use Newsblur as an RSS reader as it fits my personal workflow. I know a lot of other people who prefer other readers that do largely the same job in a different way.

  • #theinternetisdying

    Perhaps due to the febrile nature of the times we live in, the tech-savvy community seems to have become aware of various trends, leading them to conclude that #theinternetisdying. This term itself is imprecise. The internet is a series of abstractions, ranging from physical infrastructure to software and functions upon which communication, messaging, video streaming, app data, transactions, and web pages operate.

    Bovine metaverse

    So technically, #theinternetisdying is actually #thewebisdying.

    So why now?

    I believe the most intriguing question regarding #theinternetisdying is this: why now? What has occurred is more about internet users awakening from their ‘comfort zone’ and abruptly realising how rapidly things have evolved? I believe that a number of inciting incidents are the cause of this sudden wakefulness:

    • Google as regressive ‘tax’ rather than marketing channel exposed.
    • Continued deterioration of Google web search.
    • Link rot.
    • Online media businesses look to make money by selling proprietary and user-generated content to LLMs as a revenue stream.
    • Realisation that a lot of web content is adapted or created using LLMs. The non-English web has been expanded by machine translation of English language content. Secondly, LLMs have been used to create a lot of good enough content in English for publications like Sports Illustrated.

    The reality

    In reality, what’s happened to the web as netizens knew it has happened over time. To use a vintage web phenomenon as an analogy. It’s like the vintage Joe Cartoon interactive Adobe Flash animation Frog in a Blender from the late 1990s.

    A cartoon frog sits in a blender and admonishes the viewer, claiming that they wouldn’t dare to to blend him. The blender has settings from 1 to 10. 1 is mildly agitated water, 10 is instant blended frog. Silicon Valley has slowly upped the power of the blender and netizens realise that things have got weird.

    Google tax bias

    Google search has been on the shit list of websites as engineering documents from inside Google were leaked. They revealed some aspects about how search actually worked that Google had been denying for decades. A few of the key findings were:

    • Google search learns from ‘external devices’, so things like Chromecast dongles. Data from the Chrome browser is used in a similar manner, despite Google repeatedly claiming that it wasn’t in the past.
    • Google values quality, relevant sites, BUT, that value is caveated by restrictions it puts on small quality sites and the benefits it provides to large platforms detailed below.
    • Popular sites receive higher search levels through the ‘Navboost’ system. This reinforces platforms and established sites. Smaller sites would need to spend proportionately more on Google advertising to match their larger competitors traffic funnel. This designed imbalance is the digital equivalent of John Pierpoint Morgan’s nefarious involvement in railroad transportation, or the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller agreement on oil transport in the 19th century, which drove much of the subsequent anti-trust regulation in the US – this is the Google tax. It’s a regressive tax that is levied on smaller businesses and the ‘free web’.
    • It is deliberately set up to hold back small sites, many of whom have seen their traffic drop by up to 91 percent. This adversely affects sights that might have deep domain knowledge, specialist retailers and netizens who host personal sites and blogs like this one.

    Google has even lied in court and in parliaments to hide these facts. Disclosure of these details have rippled through the search engine marketing industry and strongly discouraged numerous web businesses once the truth came out – for a lot of businesses #theinternetisdying.

    For Google the timing couldn’t be worse:

    • It is seen to have dropped the ball on LLMs, despite having developed most of the key technology powering the likes of OpenAI and Anthrophic.
    • Google’s local business advertising for the likes of coffee shops or nail clinics have suffered due to the cost-of-living crisis post-COVID and consumer behaviour changes in various countries.
    • Traditional Google search advertisements for e-commerce are being rapidly eroded by retail media. That is ‘search style’ adverts on the likes of Amazon, Tesco and eBay.

    Google is perceived as having set itself up as the ‘start page’ to the open web, while all the time sticking the proverbial knife in all of which adds an inevitability of the feeling of #theinternetisdying.

    Decline of Google search

    Back in June 2022, The Atlantic complained about the declining utility of Google. This echoed similar themes on discussions that had happened earlier in the year on Hacker News and Reddit. The consensus was that they searched Reddit, StackOverflow, Hacker News or StackExchange as it provided a richer, more relevant base of search results.

    I have been using social bookmarking service Pinboard and photo service flickr for search for similar reasons for the past few decades.

    Pinboard allows me to search 65,000+ web pages that I have found over that time for something that might be useful. My act of saving the page link in pinboard allowed me to categorise the page saved and implied a certain ‘good enough’ quality to it. I also get to search the public links of other netizens that do a similar thing. Pinboard is insufficiently popular to reward spammers, so the quality quotient is relatively high. Reddit offers a more expansive corpus of links and information, without the same level of quality control.

    The reason why Google’s web search has degraded has its roots in Google’s pivot to mobile two decades ago. Google abandoned key areas of interest to web users:

    • Boolean search terms, which would have been harder to do on early mobile devices.
    • Blog search because it was non-mobile content.
    • Google News and RSS, in favour of nascent mobile social platforms that it lost out to.

    And the list goes on, I am less sure why it has suddenly surfaced into the public consciousness now?

    Link rot

    A month or so go my friend Matt in his newsletter recommended a website that allowed you to search Google to find out the oldest mention of a term. So I put my own name in, and nothing came up prior to 2004.

    DECAY

    That meant all records of my early agency work had been expunged from the web. Work that included big brands:

    • BHP-Billiton
    • Ericsson
    • MTV Networks
    • Palm
    • Sony
    • Verizon

    Alongside startup brands that fizzled out almost as quickly as they had started. Maybe there is still some traces locked somewhere in behind LexisNexis or Haymarket Media paywalled databases.

    Author and veteran member of the digerati Cory Doctorow wrote about link rot this year, partly prompted by research from the Pew Research Center. Pew found that 38 percent of content surveyed disappeared over a ten-year period.

    Link Rot google trends

    But link rot isn’t a new concern. Interest in link rot seems to have peaked 20 years ago.

    google books ngram

    Link rot is a subset of a wider concern called bit rot, where digital media degrades over time, or can no longer be read due to issues with software file compatibility. Bit rot as an issue was explored in a series of short stories by Canadian author Douglas Coupland in a book of the same name back in 2016.

    Web of data to walled gardens

    Of all #internetisdying factors, this one surprised me as much as link rot. Closing of Twitter API access was considered to be a defining moment for #theinternetisdying. However it fails to acknowledge that the high point of the web of data was web 2.0 and the comparatively free access to APIs. Facebook with its closed wall by design set the standard for subsequent services like TikTok and Instagram. Like link rot, the awareness timeline feels a decade too late. The closure of Google Reader is an equally big impact back in 2013, stopping mainstream adoption of RSS in its tracks.

    LLMs

    Journalist Steven Levy has been chronicling Silicon Valley for decades. He wrote a few of my favourite non-fiction books including Insanely Great, Crypto and Hackers. In the summer of 2023, he wrote an article for Wired magazine: What OpenAI wants. This became a cover story for the September 2023 issue of the magazine under the header ‘Dear AI Overlords, Don’t Fuck This Up’. Less than a year later, the consensus from netizens seems to be that they already have.

    Dear AI overlords don’t mess it up

    Several things have happened, here are three of them:

    • Imitation became mainstreamed. OpenAI used a female voice that was apparently a copy of Scarlett Johansson’s voice due to Sam Altman’s infatuation with the premise of the Spike Jonze film Her. A Ukrainian YouTuber found her likeness being used as an avatar to sell Russian goods to Chinese consumers.
    • Misinformation had everything from the Pope wearing a designer down jacket and fake black supporters for presidential candidate Donald Trump.
    • Scott Galloway talked about ‘corporate ozempic’ where AI being good enough to reduce human tasks allowing for corporate headcounts to disappear. The CEO of Klarna freely admitted that they used AI to replace 700 employees in customer service roles. AdVon was used to write articles for SportsIllustrated driving anger and anxiety in readers and journalists.

    Automation has eaten blue collar roles for decades, but it has taken the automation of white collar roles to create the panic and sense that #theinternetisdying and AI is killing it.

    The Sky Is Falling In

    Chief Vitalstatistix

    As a child I fell in love the Asterix The Gaul books. In them was the Gaulish village chief Vitalstatistix – who is portrayed as mostly reasonable, well-informed, fearless, (comparatively) even-tempered and unambitious. Vitalstatistix was known for his irrational fear that the sky may fall on his head tomorrow. I was thinking about Vitalstatistix as I wrote this post on #theinternetisdying.

    Back in the late 2000s, Dr Ira Wolfe wrote a book that discussed how online behaviour and Google services were creating irreparable damage in the workplace and beyond. His book was merely the latest in a series of panics about societal destruction:

    Back in March 1997, Wired magazine had their own version of the #theinternetisdying, they believed that web browsing (or web surfing as it was termed back then) was about to be killed off by ‘push technology‘. This episode of The Computer Chronicles gives a good overview of push technology at the time.

    You may already be using push technology without realising it, such as receiving mobile notifications for breaking news or localised weather alerts.

    In conclusion, #theinternetisdying? really?

    Previous technological shifts introduced new challenges, but we adapted and progressed. There’s no reason to think the current ‘#theinternetisdying’ phase is any different from those before. Perhaps in 15 years, I’ll be writing about how people feel the ‘metaverse’ has become closed or some other futuristic concern.

    Posts on related content can be found here.

    More information

    The Internet as You Know It Is Dying | Fabricated Knowledge

    Rot-Com bubble | Ed Zitron

    Pluralistic: Linkrot (21 May 2024)

    5 Reveals From Google’s Leaked Search Docs | AdWeek

    When Online Content Disappears | Pew Research Center

    The Internet: Now you see it, now you don’t | Daniel Tynan

    The Open Secret of Google Search | The Atlantic

    Is Google Dying? | Hacker News

    Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization: How to Manage the Unprecedented Convergence of the Wired, the Tired, and Technology in the Workplace by Dr Ira S Wolfe

    The Trick To Understanding New Media: Nobody’s In Charge | Yahoo! Finance

    Dead tools | renaissance chambara

    Media Companies Are Making a Huge Mistake With AI – The Atlantic

    Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

    The Japanese knotweed of generative AI is strangling Facebook | Social Warming

    Google messed up Gemini launch, Sergey Brin says | CNBC

    Klarna AI assistant handles two-thirds of customer service chats in its first month | Klarna

    AI makes photos of fake Black Donald Trump supporters | Quartz

    Ukrainian YouTuber found her AI clone selling Russian goods on Chinese internet | Wenhao’s News Blog

    Google Mired in Controversy Over Gemini AI Chatbot Push – WSJ

    Corporate Ozempic | No mercy / no malice

  • Car screens and synthesisers

    The current debate over car screens / car as computer design reminded me a lot of the journey that synthesisers have gone through.

    Charging screen

    I went down this train of thought on car screens thanks to a LinkedIn post by Nic Roope, reacting to an article published in Car Design News in praise of push buttons.

    There is a view in car circles that the reliance on screens to mediate so many of the functions of a car can be a bad thing. I can understand it. For enthusiasts driving a car is still a very analogue experience including the haptics of direct steering connectivity and a manual gearbox.

    I would be remiss if I didn’t share the opinion of Doug DeMuro who argued the case for screens in terms of two reasons:

    • Costs. Buttons cost more money and there would be the associated connectors. Modern vehicles offer such a range of controls, that doing them in buttons rather than soft buttons and car screens would be cost and space prohibitive.
    • Technological momentum. DeMuro essentially articulates a position similar to Kevin Kelly’s concept of the technium in his book What Technology Wants. Kelly uses a biological metaphor of progress as an organism or Gaia type metaphor that keeps growing and moving at its own pace. While Kelly has been accused to techno-mysticism, we do know that the development of key technologies like television or the light bulb were happening at the same time in different parts of the world in isolation from each other – there had become a time when they were inevitable.

    the greater, global, massively interconnected system of technology vibrating around us

    Kevin Kelly on the technetium in What Technology Wants

    Colin Chapman versus software engineers.

    DeMuro’s first point is based on the proposition that all this extra control in car screens is a good thing. Do we really need to have car interior mood lighting? And if we do, do we need to have colours that result in night blindness and make the car interior looks like a booth at a bottle service bar in Dubai?

    For some drivers, the answer will be no.

    Different car manufacturers have had different models that do very different things. One of the philosophies articulated most by car enthusiasts is that of Lotus cars founder Colin Chapman “simplify, and add lightness”.

    Chapman’s design ethos was very in-tune with the likes of mid-century thinkers like polymath Buckminster Fuller and those he influenced notably architect Sir Norman Foster.

    Chapman’s world view wasn’t perfect his vehicles were fragile and had quality issues, partly due to his daring use of new materials and techniques influenced by aerospace. It’s also a world away from the Tesla approach, where the vehicle can’t be started up without the screen even as a ‘limp mode’ function.

    Instead the Tesla pickup and car screens are infested with boondoggles including:

    • A video of a fireplace filled with burning logs
    • A game that allows you to break the windows of a virtual CyberTruck
    • Customisable horn sounds including celebrity voices
    • A pre-programmed light show

    Modern car economics.

    Car screens have advanced in tock-step with the move towards an electric car future. A technology transition at the best of times is difficult, but the car industry has other problems that will impact consumer views of vehicles.

    Consumer choice.

    In the 1970s cars cars seldom lasted over a decade, but due to improvements in corrosion treatment and car design that removed water traps the potential life of a car was extended. Given that classic cars are much less damaging to the environment. The average classic emits 563kg of CO2 per year, yet an average passenger car has a 6.8-tonne carbon footprint immediately after production. This means that a new car would need to be run for several years to achieve a similar climate ‘payback’ and older cars can be attractive for consumers, if they meet their needs reliably.

    Vehicle affordability.

    Over the time I have held a driving licence, the secondhand car market went from being the dumping ground for fleet sales to the Alice In Wonderland after effects of the lease agreements that drove new and nearly-new car sales. The financialisation of the car market isn’t without risk and has been considered a possible future risk in the way that consumer finance and home mortgages have been in the past.

    Yamaha DX7II-D

    So what do car touchscreens have to do with synthesisers?

    In order to answer that question, we need to go back in time. Massive steps forward in electronics had inspired research into different ways of creating sounds based on modulation techniques used in radio broadcast signals for decades. In the 1960s digital technology was also moving forward and provided a more stable base for FM synthesis. Stanford University scholars worked with Yamaha technologists to turn FM synthesis into a product.

    The first instrument that it appeared in was the New England Digital Synclavier, who had licensed the technology from Yamaha. The Synclavier, was a couple of racks full of computer storage, a processing unit, cooling and audio interfaces. This was all connected up to a monitor and a keyboard. Over time the Synclavier would evolve into the ancestor of the modern digital audio workstation (DAW) like Apple’s Logic Pro app.

    1983, comes around and Yamaha is finally ready to launch a mainstream product featuring FM synthesis. it also features MIDI, a standard that is still used to control musical instruments (and other studio equipment) remotely. Roland had released a couple of devices that supported the standard.

    But Yamaha’s DX7 proved to be the blockbuster product. At that time electronic music was a niche interest and instrument manufacturers would be very lucky to sell 50,000 units. Yamaha sold over 300,000 units in the first three years of sales over its 7 year life and 10,000s of more devices of the DX and TX families.

    Digital changes the interface

    Analogue synthesisers wer full of switches and dials. This Oberheim synthesiser above, isn’t that different from its analogue predecessors from five decades prior.

    The DX7 was a very different beast, it couldn’t have a dial or button for every parameter, rather like modern car screens with endless settings. So it had a few buttons which changed their function depending on what the synthesiser. A few earlier models had limited sales with a similarly spartan approach, but the DX7 mainstreamed the idea.

    A few things happened that might be instructive for how we now think about car screens:

    • Other synthesiser manufacturers like Roland and Korg copied Yamaha’s approach to interface design. Some of them tried using devices like jog wheels to provide additional intuitive control, in a similar way conceptually to BMW’s iDrive interface for its car screens.
    • Software companies looked to fill the gap to provide a better interface, which eventually begat modern software digital audio workstation applications like Logic Pro. We might see similar developments sold for cars, and this is likely the opportunity that the likes of Apple CarPlay sees. There is consumer demand to support it.
    • Despite the obvious benefit of soft button driven instruments, there still remained a strong demand for analogue controls. Now there is a strong demand for tactile interface controls and old style synthesis. In the car world that would equate to providing car enthusiasts with analogue experiences, while the mainstream goes to Tesla minimalism of the car screen. We can see this in the design of Hyundai’s analogue feeling performance electric cars that try and emulate a manual gear box and Ineos’ switch gear that owes more to aviation than automotive manufacturing.

    You can find similar posts to this here.

    More information

    Average Age of Cars in Great Britain | NimbleFins

    In praise of pushbuttons (and other physical controls) | Car Design News

    Car pollution facts: from production to disposal, what impact do our cars have on the planet? | Auto Express

    MIDI Quest Pro Yamaha DX7 software editor

    Patchbase Yamaha DX7 software editor

  • Mobilizing for monuments & more

    Mobilizing for monuments

    Mobilizing for Monuments is an interesting brand collaboration. Flickr was a natural partner for the the environmental charities due to it being the destination community for serious photographers. Rivian also makes sense, given that they make electric all-wheel drive vehicles – which presumably have a lower carbon footprint.

    The Mobilizing for Monuments road trip film that highlights the benefits of the brands involved as well as the conservation messaging. Rivian gets to showcase its vehicles at a time when Tesla’s Cybertruck has a reputation that’s gone from a must-have vehicle to a dog’s dinner. The thing that I am most curious about Mobilizing for Monuments is where Flickr takes it next? Test

    Ray Kurzweil expands on his idea of The Singularity

    Ray talks about his ideas articulated in The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence and popularised in The Singularity. He speculates that The Singularity will be in 2045 in terms of what’s technically possible, but not the market forces that are likely to be green light it. I presume that this talk is to coincide with the launch of his book featuring his updated thinking: The Singularity is Nearer.

    Writing with large language models

    This MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy talk is very pertinent given the current debates that copywriters seem to be having around automation and LLMs. Mina Lee takes a social science approach to her investigation to LLMs including an evaluation model.

    Reinvent the model

    Swedish fashion retailer Lindex has looked at diversifying its models across its advertising and marketing materials. It is also re-examining beauty standards and the related pressures that its customers face. This a long term process that they have described as ‘Reinvent the Model‘.

    More related posts can be found here.

    Spotify showcases inspirational ads

    Spotify (at least in the UK) have done a great job supporting strategists and planners with case studies and research reports over the years. This time they have collected a selection of UK-specific campaigns on their platform demonstrating its strengths.

    • Channel 4 Streamland—an in-app experience, which personalised show recommendations for Spotify users based on their listening habits.
    • Hyundai did a video takeover for their campaign to get consumers to pronounce their name authentically.

  • April 2024 newsletter – no. 9

    April 2024 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my April 2024 newsletter which marks my 9th issue. We managed to make it through the winter and the clocks moved forward allowing for lighter evenings in the northern hemisphere.

    Strategic outcomes

    The number nine is full of symbolism in a good way. In Chinese culture it sounds similar to long-lasting. It was strongly associated with the mystical and powerful nature of the Chinese dragon. From the number of dragon types and children to the number of scales on the dragon – which were multiples of 9. You have nine channels in traditional Chinese medicine. In Norse mythology there are nine worlds and Odin the all-father hangs on the tree of life for 9 days to gain knowledge of the runes.

    Social media-related cognitive dissonance

    A couple of conversations with people, spurred me to write this next piece.

    I know it’s obvious and common sense, but it needs to be said occasionally. This time last year, I was on a Zurich work trip, providing support to a teammate running a workshop for a client who viewed the agency as the least worst option. We did good work and built temporary rapport, we got insight about the wider client-side politics at play. It was the classic example of the complexities involved in agency life and Lord knows we already have enough internal politics in our own shops to deal with.

    The photo I shared on Instagram at the time gave no clue to what was happening, serving as a reminder to consider the curated nature of social feeds when scrolling through.

    April work trip to Zürich

    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.

    • Fads versus real trends
    • A quick guide to jargon used in pharma marketing.
    • What my answers to Campaign’s a-list questions would look like.
    • Boutique e-tailers and why the multi-brand luxury retail sector has gone from boom to bust.
    • Very Ralph and other things – Ralph Lauren’s world building abilities and how others from a cancer patient or overseas migrant workers have bent the world to their needs, or made a new one.

    Books that I have read.

    • There are a few books that I revisit and the March 1974 JWT London planning guide is one of them. In many respects it feels fresh and more articulate than more modern tomes.
    • Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism by Angela Zhang sounds exceptionally dry to the uninitiated. But if like me, you’ve worked on brands like Qualcomm, Huawei or GSK you realise how much of an impact China’s regulatory environment can have on your client’s success. Zhang breaks down the history of China’s antitrust regulatory environment, how it works within China’s power structures and how it differs from the US model. What becomes apparent is that Chinese power isn’t monolithic and that China is weaponising antitrust legislation for strategic and policy goals rather than consumer benefit. It is important for everything from technology to the millions of COVID deaths that happened in China due to a lack of effective vaccines. Zhang’s book won awards when it first came out in 2021, and is still valuable now given the relatively static US-China policy views. Given the recent changes in Hong Kong where she lives, we may not see as frank a book of its quality come out of Hong Kong academia again on this subject matter.
    • Van Horne and Riley’s Left of Bang was recommended by a friend who recently left military service. It codified and gave me a lexicon for describing observations of focus group dynamics and observation-based shopper marketing. Probably of bigger value to people more interested in the analytical side of behavioural science is the bibliography – which is extensive.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Sustaining a sustainable brand

    Kantar do a good webinar series called On Brand with Kantar. I got to watch one of them: Why consumers ignore brands’ sustainability efforts. Consumers are reticent to trust in brand’s sustainable efforts. Kantar’s recommendation is to stay the course and continue to demonstrate real sustainability. Kantar’s work complemented System 1’s Greenprint US-orientated sustainable advertising report. There is a UK-specific version as well with half a dozen ideas for marketers published in partnership with ITV.

    Media platform trends

    GWI released their 2024 Global Media trends report. GWI takes a survey based approach to understand consumer media behaviour.

    • Broadcast TV still commands the greatest share of total TV time, despite Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and a plethora of other streaming platforms from Criterion to Disney+.
    • Survival/horror players are most excited about gaming luxury collabs, whether or not luxury brands are equally excited about survival or horror gamers is a bigger question.
    • Games console ownership has halved in the past ten years. This surprised me given how many of my friends have a Switch or PlayStation 5. It probably explains why Microsoft is focusing on being a publisher rather than on platforms as well.

    Japanese online media spend

    Dentsu published a report looking into 2023 Advertising Expenditures in Japan. A couple of interesting outtakes.

    • They focused exclusivity on internet advertising, which gives you a good idea on where they want the balance of media spend to go, rather than necessarily the right tool for the right job. Yes digital is very important, BUT, we live in a world were we are wrapped by and consume layers of digital and analogue media.

    We can see from GWI data that this viewpoint is likely to be still excessively myopic in terms of media due to offline – online media linkages. This is likely to be even more so in Japan that still has a more robust traditional media industry.

    There_s_so_much_crossover_across_media_channels
    • Internet advertising reached a new high, despite being a couple of years after the Olympic games were hosted in Tokyo. (Media spend when a country hosts the olympics tends to be skewed that year upwards).

    One thing I would flag is that this report is based on surveying people across the Japanese advertising industry and built on their responses. So there maybe some biases built into that process. Overall it’s a fascinating read.

    Social media engagement benchmarks

    RivalIQ published their 2024 Social Media Industry Engagement bench report, download it to get the full details. Three things that struck me straight away:

    • Macro-level decline across platforms on engagement rate, which matches the trends that Manson and Whatley outlined ten years ago in their Facebook Zero paper for Ogilvy Social.
    • If brands didn’t need enough reason already to reduce exposure to Twitter, the falling engagement rates on the platform add additional reasons. Overall video seemed to underperform on engagement compared to photos.
    • One thing leaped out to me in the industry verticals data, if you are looking to reach student age adults, why not consider collaborating with higher education institution social media accounts rather than influencers?

    Shocking health outcomes

    The Hidden Cost of Ageism | A Barrier to Innovation & Growth | Future Work – sparked a lot of discussion with its implications on workplace practices, particularly within the advertising sector. What was less discussed but more important was the implications of ageism related biases on healthcare treatment.

    Under-treatment or Over-treatment: Older adults may receive less aggressive treatment options or are overtreated because of age-related biases, rather than based on individual health needs and preferences.

    Dismissal of Concerns: Healthcare providers might dismiss older patients’ health issues as inevitable parts of ageing, potentially overlooking treatable conditions.

    Age-Based Prioritisation: In some cases, age influences the allocation of healthcare resources, with younger individuals being prioritised over older ones, assuming they have more “life worth living.”

    The Hidden Cost of Ageism | Future Work

    MSNBC News in the US did a report on what it called a ‘Post-Roe underground’ echoing the underground railroads to free slaves in the Southern states and the Vietnam war era draft dodgers who escaped north to Canada. This time it is to help women access abortion pills or procedures in other states or Mexico.

    MSNBC

    My friend Parrus hosted a talk on World Health Day, more on that here, the key takeaway for me was not trying to replicate developed market solutions in developing markets. Instead think about how it could be reinvented. Thinking that could be extended beyond health care to consumer goods, telecoms and technology sectors as well.

    Luxury market shake-up

    Business of Fashion covered a US court case where two women brought a lawsuit against Hermès, alleging purchase of its sought-after Birkin bag is dependent on purchase of other products and is an “illegal tying arrangement” that violated US antitrust law.

    5D3_1690

    Hermès is more vulnerable than other brands because it owns its retail stores. The case, if successful could have implications far beyond the luxury bag-maker. For instance, how Ford selected prospective owners for its GT-40 sports cars, or most Ferrari limited edition for that matter.

    While we’re on the subject of luxury, LVMH are rerunning their INSIDE LVMH certificate which is invaluable for anyone who might work on a luxury brand now or in the future. More here.

    Morizo

    Toyota are on a tear at the moment. They correctly guessed that electric cars were too expensive at the moment and focused hybrids as a stepping stone to electric and hydrogen fuel cell production. They have also successfully use the passion for driving in their products and their marketing. The Toyota GR Yaris was a result of Chairman Akio Toyoda instructing engineers to make something sporty enough to win the World Rally Championship and affordable.

    He also outed himself as a speed demon who went under the nom de plume of Morizo.

    Quebec

    For many English speakers one of the most dissonant experiences is being confronted by a language you can’t speak. It’s part of the reason why ireland managed to become the European base of companies like Alphabet and and Intel. So I was very impressed by this campaign by the Quebec government to attract visitors and inbound investment.

    Things I have watched. 

    I watched Mr Inbetween series one in March and managed to work through series two and three this month. I couldn’t recommend them highly enough as a series. They just keep building on each other.

    Over Easter, I revisited some old VHS tapes my parents still had and rediscovered the Christopher Walken science fiction horror film “Communion.” It epitomizes its era, with alien abduction narratives emerging during the Cold War and permeating popular culture from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to “The X-Files,” tapering off after 9/11. “Communion” demonstrates how effective editing and minimal special effects can heighten tension and emotion. Despite the film’s incredulous premise, Walken delivers a fantastic performance.

    “Modesty Blaise” is from a time when comic book adaptations were uncommon in cinemas. This 1966 adaptation of the 1960s comic strip shares stylistic similarities with “Barbarella” and stars a young Terence Stamp. I received a tape copy from a friend who was attending art college at the time. The depiction of the computer as a character with emotional reactions in the film feels contemporary, echoing the rise of virtual assistants like Siri and ChatGPT, despite being portrayed as a mainframe. It is interesting to contrast it with Spike Jonze’s movie Her made 50 years later.

    Useful tools.

    A lot of the tools this month have been inspired by my trusty Mac slowly dying and needing to get my new machine up and running before my old machine gave out.

    Time Machine

    Apple’s native backup software, Time Machine, serves as a personal sysadmin for home users. Regular backups are essential. If a crucial document disappears while you’re working on it, Time Machine, coupled with a Time Machine-enabled hard drive, allows you to retrieve earlier versions of the document, potentially saving your sanity in critical moments.

    Microsoft Office

    I prefer the one-off payment model over Office 365 services. I use Apple’s Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps instead of Outlook. While Office is available for just £100, which is reasonable considering its features, I still prefer Keynote over PowerPoint for creating presentations.

    Superlist

    Many of you may recall Wunderlist, which Microsoft acquired, but much of its original charm was lost in the transition to Microsoft To Do. Superlist is a reboot of Wunderlist by the original team, this time without Microsoft’s involvement. It’s available on iOS, macOS, and the web, catering to both individual and team task management needs.

    https://youtu.be/2MzzbRhYlSA?si=04eBXH-MqKLpX2bN

    ESET Home Security Essential

    I used to rely on Kaspersky, and while I generally like their products, I have concerns about the potential influence of the Russian government. Therefore, I switched providers. ESET has a strong reputation and offers better Mac support than F-Secure. I can recommend their ESET HOME Security Essential package.

    Amazon Basics laptop sleeve

    I use a various bags depending on my destination and activities. Over the years, I’ve found that Amazon Basics brand laptop sleeves work well for my machines. They’re often among the cheapest options available and tend to outlast the computers they protect. 

    Laptop camera cover

    Cover on Mark Zuckerberg laptop camera! You must have to follow this:-

    The photo of Mark Zuckerberg’s laptop with tape covering the camera raised awareness about privacy. Webcam privacy covers, such as a sliver of plastic that slides across, are ideal as they allow your laptop to close fully. A pro tip is to use a red LED torch to clearly locate your camera when applying the stick-on cover.

    Protective case and keyboard cover

    I’m a big fan of clip-on polycarbonate shells to protect my laptop, as they provide a better surface for the stickers that personalize my machine over time. You don’t necessarily need a big-name case. The one I have came with a keyboard cover that works well. Anything that prevented Red Bull, coffee, or croissant flakes from getting under my keys is worth doing.

    Screen protector film

    The screen protector film provides great protection and is easy to apply and clean, even for beginners like me. I’ll update you if my opinion changes.

    The sales pitch.

    I have enjoyed working on projects for PRECISIONeffect and am now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my April 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and enjoy the bank holiday.

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

    Let me know if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. 

  • March 2024 newsletter – no. 8

    March 2024 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my March 2024 newsletter which marks my 8th issue.

    Strategic outcomes

    I am glad that I have moved to the eighth issue. In between St Patrick’s day happening in March, and the number 8 being lucky according to the Chinese in a good place – I figure its a good omen for this issue. 8 symbolises prosperity, joy and infinity. In Chinese pricing strategy 8 holds a similar role to 9 in western markets, so $58, $88 and $688 are frequent pricing points.

    Love on St. Patricks

    St Patrick’s day is particularly lucky for one Chinese city above all others: Yiwu in Zhejiang province is often called Christmas town. In reality it’s a city selling ‘small commodities’ better known to you and I as tat. The Christmas town epitaph came from it being the centre for the global Christmas decorations trade. It’s also where most of the St Patricks Day decorations are made including the leprechaun hats popularised around the world by Irish pubs.

    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.

    • Razors for strategists – how we can apply the principle of philosophical razors to aid faster solutions for client work, while also bearing in mind their limitations.
    • Vicki Dutton – Singapore’s forgotten fashion icon.
    • Brand clichés – a bit of honesty from the trenches.
    • CMOs – their demise and evolution considered.
    • AI two-step – corporate leaders reluctant to admit AI-related job losses.

    Books that I have read.

    • A Hacker’s Mind by by veteran technologist Bruce Schneier provides a guide to the different way people have found loopholes to ‘hack’ systems. Schneier is trying to write a social movement book,, but while it’s interesting enough to read on a plan, it will be harder for it to get people moving as he intends.
    • I picked up this book from Scheltema book store just off Dam Square in Amsterdam during a work trip, with a bit of time-off bolted on the end. Browsing the English language book section of foreign book stores often gives recommendations that you wouldn’t otherwise look at. Tales from the Cafe: Before the Coffee Gets Cold is book two of a four-book series by Japanese author Toshikazu Kawaguchi is difficult to characterise in terms of genre. It’s a time travel novel with distinct rules that keep its universe coherent. It’s a book that is suitable for children, but not aimed at children- in this respect its more like the childhood books that I read growing up than are popular now as the ‘young adult’ genre. It’s about love lost, but not a romance novel – the love covered is a mix of loneliness of a widower, an orphaned child and a past romance. There is something delightful about the book, especially as it captures the minutae of everyday Japanese life.
    • Historian Dan Jones portrayal of medieval wars in his Essex Dogs series is very well written and accessible. It’s an ideal holiday read, if you can handle the grim subject matter. The Wolves of Winter is a richer story with greater intrigue in the plot line.
    • Back in the early 1990s chaos theory was very much in the public zeitgeist in a rather similar way to the internet from the late 1990s to early 2000s and artificial intelligence now. I have noticed mentions of chaos theory has started to pop up again as an idea in email newsletters. Fluke Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters resurrects chaos theory as an analogy and hypothesis for everything from global politics to emotion-driven behaviours. The author Dr Brian Klaas is a social scentist by training and has taken a few leaves out of the Malcolm Gladwell school of writing with stories to pull in the audience. I would liked to see a bit more evidence-based findings in the book. But it is a good read.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    TheOrangeblowfish, a Shanghai design-led agency did an amazing retail / out of home activation for Arc’teryx museum on what looks like a 3D OOH execution a la Ocean Outdoor’s Deepscreen sites in the UK.

    Oliver’s white paper on How Brands Can Build Customer Trust looks at how brands can communicate about sustainability in their marketing. It’s a nice first step as a discussion document. There are a few areas I would like them to explore further:

    The gains earned by behavioural science are argued about, with practitioners relying on models that are often seen as overly complex and stacking of marginal gains. It has footholds in trying to drive meaningful changes in health, where small gains on paper mean a big change in lives saved, or made better. This LSE discussion on how it can be used to make democracy work better was interesting, especially given how many elections will be taking place in 2024.

    Finally this paper on the polarisation of popular culture is likely to affect the way marketers think about product choice, media and culture over time. Media buying itself becomes a political act, beyond advertising on overtly political media channels and indicates a widening of the lived experience gap in society. We could see this already in the UK with Brexiter favoured brands.

    Things I have watched. 

    The Knockdown – A Chinese drama where a Chinese Communist Party team goes to investigate a business and runs into widespread corruption. The corruption is centred around a fishmonger who gets tired of thugs and the grind of graft – he then reinvents himself as a gangster within the system. While it’s not Breaking Bad or The Sopranos, it is a good insight into how the Chinese government wants to see itself.

    Flic Story – Alain Delon plays a detective pursuing a dangerous criminal in post-war France. This is based on the true story of criminal Emile Buisson who terrorised France. I did wonder whether the roof top chase scenes influenced Jackie Chan’s classic Hong Kong film Police Story in terms of plot and tension rather than his acrobatic skills?

    Season 1 of Mr Inbetween had been recommended to me for years, people would rave on about it in the same way you hear about Breaking Bad or The Wire. A friend eventually sent me there copy on Blu-Ray. It has elements of Man Bites Dog about it – which makes sense when you find out it was originally adapted from Scott Ryan’s The Magician – a short fly-on-the-wall rockumentary film about a Melbourne underworld enforcer and occasional killer. Unlike Man Bites Dog – the violence is used sparingly in between the tedium of everyday life and office politics. Helen Mirren had apparently recommended it widely at the time. I am looking forward to season 2 which reputedly takes a darker turn.

    Useful tools.

    Sensia AI

    Sensia AI is an interesting set of tools for consumer brands to easily monitor satisfaction and potential problems with their products and that of their competitors quickly, with ease and efficiently. Sensia analyses diverse data, from online reviews to e-commerce; offering useful insights. I was looking at it for consideration with regards an FMCG project that didn’t come off in the end. If you are interested. Check out some sample reports here, and if it looks of interest – contact Iris Chung.

    Passport Online

    Travel this year? Passport ready

    I am an Irish citizen. The Irish government’s process to renew my passport and passport card via an online service was really easy. The service is called Passport Online and I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

    Untranslatable

    Not necessarily something that you would use day-to-day; but definitely of interest during digging into market research transcripts or transliteration of campaigns across different markets and languages. Untranslatable is a dictionary of idioms and expressions. The creators are native speakers, so you get the different cultural nuances.

    New ways of using Miro

    If you work in brand or connections planning or have thought customer experiences you’ve probably heard of Milanote, Miro or Mural. They also came to the fore with COVID-19 as virtual workshops became much more of a thing. Recently, I have been experiencing new user cases for these platforms. To present:

    • Creative briefs.
    • Sharing creative with clients.
    • A quick folder that holds key documents and shows the links between them.

    Zettelkasten

    Trying to build that vast mental model to then wrap into a narrative for clients. Vicky Zhao revisits the analogue technique of Zettelkasten. Your mileage may vary. It does remind me of the way I use social bookmarking as a data bank and mind maps as a creative process in writing. I can also recommend Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis for similar organisation ideas.

    The sales pitch.

    Now taking bookings for strategic engagements from April, or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my March 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and watch out for any April fools tricks being attempted on you.

    Don’t forget to get in touch, share and subscribe!

    Let me know if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.