October 2025 introduction – (27) gateway to heaven edition
I am now at issue 27, or as a bingo caller would put it ‘gateway to heaven’.
27 inspired an urban legend of the ’27 club effect’ where a ‘statistical spike’ in fatalities affected musicians, actors and other artists. However in reality there is no statistical spike though Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin all died aged 27.
In the I Ching, the 27th hexagram is associated with sufficient physical and spiritual nourishment – good advice for anyone since we’re going into winter.
This edition’s soundtrack is Coco – I Need A Miracle over Dreadzone – Little Britain put together by MH1. I used to love mashups and bastard pop in the early 2000s to 2010s, especially A plus D and their Bootie nights, which I got to see at the DNA Lounge back when I had to travel to San Francisco while working at Yahoo!. They built a whole genre of out of what would normally be trick recordings you might have played once in a DJ set like Evil Eddie Richards You Used to Salsa.
MH1 carries this on the same grand tradition as A plus D and sent me down a memory hole in my iTunes collection.
Now we have a sound track, let’s get into it.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
- Golden Mile – a collection of documentaries and films that caught my eye, from the last days of the Golden Mile complex that was a centre of the Thai diaspora in Singapore to the oral history of the Google Docs development team.
- Nvidia ban in China and more things – a selection of stuff that I found of interest online including articles on Nvidia’s fraught relationship with China as a market.
- Tahoe and more things – from the inside steer on Nexperia and the importance of strategic writing for using LLMs to Apple’s imperfect macOS Tahoe.
Books that I have read.
- Clown Town by Mick Herron is the latest instalment in the Slow Horses series of books, on which the Apple+ TV series are based. Without plot spoilers, I can tell you that it’s up to the high standards of the earlier books. Herron is as critical of the current Labour government as he was of their conservative party predecessors.
- I am just starting in on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s history of the great depression 1929. I hope to update you next month on whether it’s a book that I would recommend.
Things I have been inspired by.
I managed to spend some time with fellow former Yahoo Nick Fowden and we discussed AI futures and the altar of marketing efficiency and performance media over effectiveness and brand building.
Mercedes goes back to luxury
Mercedes-Benz put on a special event in Shanghai that looked like an attempt to reboot the brand. Star of the show was the Mercedes Vision Iconic concept car, this looked like the vehicle the relaunched Jaguar brand would want to build. The grill looked as if it came off a vintage Mercedes 600 ‘Grosser’ and was a world away from the current nadir of the car brand.
Understanding influencer payback is also about understanding the caveats, risks and current limitations in optimisation
The IPA published effectiveness data on (paid) influencers, it is is great to have this data set and shows the continued role in improving the advertising industry. You can expect to see these headlines trumpeted by influencer and PR agencies. BUT, it is worthwhile going beyond the headlines and into the deck presented. My takeouts from the data presentation:
- It’s a promising, but limited sample. However overall there seemed to some commonality in results amongst the European markets compared.
- On sample selection, the presentation itself says: “Based on sample definition, no campaigns are included where influencer spend was present but did not produce a result at some level therefore 0-25 ROI index likely to be significantly under-reported.” This is key because reading the data at face value gives an overly-optimistic picture of likely influencer campaign success.
- The data presented represents bad news for paid social campaigns in particular, and it highlights their relatively poor RoI from the Profit Ability 2 study. What it means: Expect some of the influencer spend to come from the experimental pot within the social platform advertising budget.
- Long-term multipliers for Influencers are the highest of any channel in the data, but the tiny difference between television and influencers are not significantly large to be definitive. So further research could see this relationship flip.
- The numbers are averages, but Influencer ROIs are much less likely to be ‘average’ with (high and low) extremes alongside outliers much more present (and this is with campaigns giving 0-25% RoI filtered out). There is a much higher risk in terms of spend versus reward, which a responsible agency partner should be disclosed to clients upfront. This huge variance also mirrored in the kind of results seen in Chinese social commerce campaigns as well. What it means: You can’t duplicate success and optimise in the same way as you can by using testing for TV advertising and the like. So for businesses like Unilever that are putting half their spend into influencer marketing – its a high risk endeavour with limited risk mitigation strategies.
- There isn’t intra-influencer category analysis based on follower size. Getting paid reach will still be critical, so social platforms will still win.
- The research doesn’t cover B2B sectors but subscription revenue model technology clients (Adobe, Canva, Monday.com, Grammarly etc.) may take some hope from the RoI achieved by consumer-focused telecommunications brands.
TL;DR: At the moment influencer represents the worst attributes of both earned and paid media. The uncertainty of earned media, the higher upfront cost of paid media. What it means: be wary of over-promising influencer campaign success, set realistic expectations about the likely wide variance in results. Keep an eye out as further data expands and clarifies the picture.
Chart of the month.
European attitudes to video games
This month’s chart comes from data provided by the European Commission’s Director General CONNECT (Communications Networks, Content and Technology). The breadth and quality of research that they do is really useful to people in my line of work.
The sentiment around video games is similar to what you would have seen around television in previous decades. So video games aren’t in aggregate seen as great for society, but not the complete pox on people that you would see if you ran the same survey for social media platforms.
Things I have watched.
Jean Giraud aka Moebius was a graphic novel artist drawing in the bande dessinée tradition. Moebius Redux is an hour long documentary of Giraud’s career through to the mid-2000s. In it is a who’s who of comic book legends including Stan Lee and Mike Mignola – the creator of Hellboy. It even has an amazing original soundtrack by former Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos.
I remember seeing The Satan Bug as a child and enjoying it immensely. I also read the book that it was based on as my Dad had built up a collection of Alistair McLean and I devoured them from age 11 onwards. I went back and revisited decades later to see if I would still enjoy it. I did, but for different reasons. The premise is based on the paranoia of annihilation that was a main part of the cold war zeitgeist. The wrinkle in the story is that it’s about germ warfare rather than nuclear bombs. Adult me saw the plot as ridiculous, but the cinematography, location, set design and wardrobe floored me. The high security compound of ‘Station 3’ and the various interiors were triumphs of mid-century modern design. The scenery and locations were in the California desert making it an ideal canvas for John Sturges who had previously shot Bad Day at Black Rock and The Magnificent Seven. The Satan Bug was also the start of helicopter based cinematography thanks a newly developed steady cam mechanism.
Following on in the same vein I watched The Andromeda Strain. Just six years separated from The Satan Bug, but stylistically so different. The Michael Crichton novel has a much more coherent story. Much of it is told through jargon and multi-media formats such as a computer driven plotter and a ticker tape running across the screen in the second scene of the film. Where The Andromeda Stream loses out is in its cinematography and style. The set design feels lazy compared to The Satan Bug, the cinematography is competent but workman-like.
I watched the original Russian film adaptation of Solaris. It has been years since I have seen it. Its one of them films that you can watch three times and still pick up new details. Andrei Tarkovsky focused on storytelling rather than special effects which are used very sparingly. I still love that the Soviet city of the future was footage of early 1970s Tokyo. Watching it now the film feels more deconstructed.
The last film this month is an indulgent one of mine. Searchers 2.0 is a modern-day neo western film that thumbs its nose at the Hollywood system. The story follows the revenge quest of two former child actors against their former abuser, a screen writer on the film set. Alex Cox made the film on $100,000 budget with Roger Corman as producer. UK film fans probably remember Alex Cox as the presenter of Moviedrome. he is an accomplished director, screenwriter and the author of 10,000 Ways To Die – the best guide ever written to spaghetti westerns.
Slow Horses season five has been a must-watch TV moment for me. The show runners manage to keep the essence of the books with some creative flair.
Useful tools.
Optimising for macOS Tahoe
Moving from macOS Sonoma to Tahoe meant changing up the versions of utilities I like to use. Titanium Software make OnyX, Maintenance and Deeper.
- OnyX y use of OnyX goes all the way back to 2002 and 10.2 Jaguar, various versions of it throughout that time to now. It was very good for doing startup disk related maintenance tasks.
- Maintenance provides a general performance tune-up including rebuilding databases and clearing obscure caches.
- Deeper is for fine tuning hidden settings across different applications on your Mac.
All three are donationware so be sure to give Joel what you can.
The sales pitch.
I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
More on what I have done here.
The End.
Ok this is the end of my October 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and get planning for Hallowe’en. As an additional treat here is a link to my Mam’s recipe for barm brack – an Irish Hallowe’en specialism. Let me know how you got on baking it.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.
Get in touch and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on Substack as well as LinkedIn.