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  • Advertising archive list

    An advertising archive can come in all shapes and sizes from a hobbyist love of a particular brand as advertising archive through to professional resources for academics, marketers and intellectual property lawyers. I am not going into an argument for what is, or is not advertising as I don’t think it would be particularly productive for this post.

    Without further ado let’s get into all things advertising archive related.

    The list

    Absolut Ad

    Absolut

    Absolut Ad – a hobbyist website that collects Absolute Vodka ephemera as a one-brand advertising archive.

    Adaily

    Adaily – Adaily has a ChatGPT-like interface that allows you to interrogate its advertising archive of award-winning campaigns for inspiration. Their database currently only goes back as far as 2018.

    Ad Branch

    Ad Branch – a blog that hasn’t been posted to since 2013 that presents advertising work from some of the best known American brands.

    Ad Forum

    Ad Forum – Ad Forum has a wide range of award-winning ad formats from a range of awards including its own PHNX awards – which covered campaigns from around the world.

    Adland

    Adland Superbowl Commercials – Adland is a great source of US advertising industry news. Their advertising archive of Super Bowl commercials represents some of the best examples of video TV advertising creativity.

    AdsMagic

    AdsMagic is a YouTube video channel as advertising archive. It hasn’t been updated in four years, BUT, is still full of creative inspiration.

    Ads of Brands

    Ads of Brands – nice searchable site, lots of yellow if that’s your thing.

    Ads of the World

    Ads of the World – part of the Clios Network of sites, created around the advertising awards. It has global reach and well respected.

    Ads Spot

    Ads Spot – subscription based advertising archive with global reach in terms of its content examples. The search function is just ok.

    Advert Ge

    Advert.Ge – minimalistic design of the advertising archive with global footprint and details on who did the creative. Good for inspiration, but can’t be embedded in a presentation.

    Agency Asia

    Agency Asia – good for discovery of inspired print and television advertising. The video is embedded from YouTube.

    Best Ads on TV

    Best Ads on TV – while the website feels as if it was designed in 2003, it surfaces some great inspirational advertising.

    Campaigns of the World

    Campaigns of the World – is based on user-submitted campaigns, lots of good stuff there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of it was student projects rather than advertising used ‘in the wild’.

    Creative Brief

    Creative Brief – a rival to the likes of Contagious in terms of ‘marketing intelligence’. Creative Brief’s content skews progressive and UK market focused. Your mileage may vary.

    Creative Criminals

    Creative Criminals – a useful site that leans more towards the need of strategists having case studies rather than creative inspiration.

    Daily Commercials

    Daily Commercials – an advertising archive built by agency submissions with a range of international markets represented in its archive. In terms of completeness, it could challenge some of the sites based on award entries.

    Deck of Brilliance

    Deck of Brilliance – the advertising archive is grouped into 52 creative provocations using the ads as examples that illustrate the theme rather than a conventional brand / category / country organisation that you might see elsewhere.

    Famous Campaigns

    Famous Campaigns – a mix of campaigns and activations with a big focus on the UK.

    History of Advertising Trust

    History of Advertising Trust – supported by some of the UK’s largest brands and agencies. It has over a century of searchable archives.

    Internet Archive

    Internet Archive – although overlooked the search function of the internet archive is a great place to go for inspiration as you have an advertising archive in different formats for many brands. Its content isn’t indexed that well in the major search engines. An honourable mention to Flickr which always pleases with its serendipity.

    Little Black Book Online

    LBB (Little Black Book) is a more accessible resource than the likes of Campaign or AdWeek. It has managed to collect some great work together in one site in their Creative Library section. They also build profiles of ad folk based on their Immortals awards programme, here’s mine.

    Lürzer’s Archive

    Lürzer’s Archive – Lürzer’s Archive is the Wallpaper* or Monocle of the advertising archive world. A strict paywall and a love of print and typographic design with usefully themed books as well as the digital archives. It’s beloved of university students who think that they are creative saviour that the advertising industry needs, client services drones who want visually appealing coffee table decoration and pretentious strategists like your humble writer. Their archive is surprisingly good but focuses on quality rather than being comprehensive in nature.

    The Advertising Archives

    The Advertising Archives – an Instagram account of a paid-for archive of print vintage advertising, marketing ephemera and stills from TV adverts.

    The Drum

    The World’s Best Ads of All Time – The Drum pulled together some of the best adverts tougher in their editorial team’s opinion.

    The Inspiration

    A mix of email newsletter and online collection. What The Inspiration loses in comprehensiveness as an advertising archive, it gains in not being attached to a pricey subscription.

    The One Club related archives

    The One Club for Creativity (One Show Awards archive) – an archive of award-winning campaigns for inspiration as advertising archive focused on the healthcare sector. Check out their archive of winning entries for the Young Ones student awards covering a range of consumer-facing brands ONE Screen focuses on advertising film entries here, the ADC award archive only covers the past decade of the awards century plus activity, so while vast in terms of area of brand related design from architecture to typography, it could be so much more.

    .Coffee

    .Coffee – the great thing about .Coffee as an advertising archive is the grouping of examples around industries like travel, tourism & transport or beauty.

    Related to advertising archive ideas

    Activation ideas

    Activation Ideas

    Creative moment

    Creative Moment – is a free to access archive of campaigns curated by creatives for creatives. It covers:

    • Advertising
    • Broadcast
    • Experiential
    • Out of home
    • Print
    • Public relations
    • Social
    • Video

    Packaging of the world

    Packaging of the World – Mark Ritson wrote a recent article about the importance of product for marketers. The gist of Ritson’s argument was that product is central to marketing, yet most brand marketers tend to focus on the communications part of the marketing mix. With that in mind, I thought it made sense to share packaging of the world.

    Two more things

    Portfolios such as mine also act as an advertising archive that you can explore. I have compiled a complete and ongoing list of advertising archive related links in the Pinboard social bookmarking tool. If you haven’t subscribed already, I would strongly recommend it for research and inspiration purposes – once you get used to it it’s life-changing.

  • 2024 Christmas advert collection

    The idea for this 2024 Christmas advert collection was two-fold. Collect and reflect on the European ad industries most creative period of work, which tends to happen at this time of the year. In advertising at this time of the year, we’re usually head-down getting things done until the middle of December, so it made sense to pull it all together.

    Aldi

    Aldi do Christmas adverts right. I don’t mean the the creative is amazing, but they get basics right. It builds on previous campaigns linked by Kevin the Carrot. It has engaging storytelling. It’s the communications strategists Christmas ad rather than the height of creative excellence. Consistency, fluent objects stacking up its brand building power to reinforce memory structures about what Aldi is at Christmas.

    Amazon

    Amazon’s Midnight Opus was designed to be used in the US as well as Europe so it has more of a ‘holidays’ than Christmas vibe to it. But the emotional storytelling is top-notch.

    ASDA

    If Aldi is the communications strategist’s Christmas ad, ASDA’s is the copy-based creative’s Christmas ad. It’s based on the kind of wordplay that fuelled the likes of the comparethemarket meerkat.

    Barbour

    Leaning into Barbour’s favoured status with the rural set in the UK, the Shaun the Sheep collaboration makes perfect sense.

    https://youtu.be/8XS_SG76kQ0?si=xzSFyCeIE9aSk4Gw

    Boots

    Boots 2024 advert was something I had only ever seen in a cut down 15 or 30 second spot centred around ‘slaying’ scene in the advert. In totality it made a lot more sense and was based on some nice insights. The advert implies that Boots is expecting to be the destination for last-minute present shopping – which puts it in an interesting cross-segment competitive space alongside the local off-licence as much as department store beauty counters.

    Christian Dior

    Christian Dior’s Ball of Dreams is as visually opulent as you’d expect from the luxury brand. Its vibe is very similar to the 2022 Christmas Christian Dior advert The Atelier of Dreams implying a certain amount of campaign consistency. While I won’t swing around on a chandelier I do like Dior’s Eau Sauvage.

    Disney

    Disney’s 2024 Christmas advert focuses on the brand’s core strength of storytelling. It manages to make the customer the hero, rather than leaning more heavily on its IP library too much.

    JD Sports

    JD Sports would find it hard to top last years Christmas ad that tapped into something deep in a working class Christmas. This year’s version is more like a fever dream of vignettes, definitely relatable but not the joyful apex of last years effort.

    They are tapping into similar ideas about family that Tesco did, but taking it in a very different direction. It also represents a vision of an ‘imperfect’ Christmas, rather than the usual ideal.

    John Lewis

    John Lewis has high expectations on their adverts. Their 2024 Christmas advert ‘The Gifting Hour’ captures the generosity and self-imposed stress of giving.

    Lidl

    Lidl’s 2024 Christmas advert A Magical Christmas has a nice twist on the Christmas ad with it leaning into Lid’s Toy Bank to help local communities. It looks like they did a pan-European ad to give it a Christmas card feel.

    M&S Christmas Food

    M&S keep consistent in their ‘this isn’t just food, it’s M&S Christmas food’ in their voice over harking back to when Nigella Lawson used to do their intros. This is more interesting in production than the vintage food porn M&S historically used.

    Morrisons

    Morrisons uses oven gloves as fluent objects, but the benefits would only be appreciated if it is repeated as a creative motif in future campaigns a la Aldi’s Kevin the Carrott. As an ad it could have been screened anytime in the past forty years and not stood out, its curiously atemporal in nature.

    Sainsburys

    Sainsbury’s draws on the intellectual property rights of Roald Dahl’s books with an appearance of The BFG. It’s a big production but could it have worked harder creatively?

    Shelter

    Homeless charity Shelter moved beyond the usual poverty porn of NGOs in their World of Their Own film and humanises their clients. The creative and storytelling are both on point. If this doesn’t win awards next year; it’s probably only because they didn’t enter.

    Tesco

    #FeedYourChristmasSpirit is a solid highly emotive Christmas ad. It challenges what many younger British people feel about family such as tightly knit house share friends like the 1990s era show This Life and its American counterpart Friends.

    Tesco pulls it back to traditional familial ties and memorable moments that home baking creates.

    Vodafone UK

    Vodafone makes an interesting play on its heritage to differentiate itself from the likes of Three, EE, and the mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). From a brand perspective, it’s the last network standing. Creatively, they’ve done a good job of incorporating emotion, which has led to strong performance in System 1 testing.

    Interesting that they didn’t have a Roman Kemp-fronted advert, which would have been more consistent with the rest of the creative that they’ve ran this year.

    The cynic in me suspects that this ad could also be a way for the marketing team to pre-position themselves ahead of political manoeuvring for roles, should Vodafone UK and Three UK merge. This would likely be a first step in enabling their owners to exit the UK’s low-growth, financially challenging market.

    Waitrose

    Waitrose put a greater focus on the product with its dramatisation of ‘Sweet Suspicion’ a minor Enid Blyton-esque mystery. Clever, but is it emotionally engaging?

    Honourable mentions

    Aldi Australia

    Aldi Australia offers a very localised perspective of the Christmas experience. Part work-of-art; part comedy.

    Deutsche Telekom

    Deutche Telekom looks at the higher calling of telecoms rather than the way its knit into our daily lives with its 2024 Christmas advert. The production is beautiful. It’s a direction that Three or Vodafone could have taken given their global footprint, but Deutsche Telekom manage to carry it off.

    McDonald’s Philippines

    This 2024 Christmas ad for the Filipino part of McDonald’s features the local chairman George Yang and Jose Mari Chan – a well-known singer-songwriter. The tonality and twist in the tale are so well done.

    If you like this, you might want to compare and contrast it with Chinese New Year advertising from across Asia.

  • Revenge on society + more stuff

    Revenge on society

    China has had a number of ‘lone wolf’ attacks on the public all of which had a common theme of ‘revenge on society’. It might be that the perpetrator had economic setbacks or a sense of being wronged by a government decision that set them on this direction.

    The profiles of the attackers are often middle-aged men. The revenge on society attacks all seem to be driven by people who feel that they have little to lose. While attacks that meet the revenge on society profile have been documented at least as far back as 2004. There seems to have been an acceleration in the occurrence of revenge on society attacks in 2024. Unlike Uighur related incidents of 2013 and 2014, there isn’t a particular group that China can suppress to reduce the incidents easily. Revenge on society attacks are more likely to be dealt with using mass-population surveillance and reporting a la Minority Report’s preventative crime approach and raised security.

    Raising security against revenge on society attacks requires a mix of infrastructure investment like bollards

    Police car

    A Suzhou school bus was attacked by a knife-wielding attacker looking to kill and maim Japanese children. He killed the school bus attendant who defended the children from his attack.

    September 18th saw a 10-year old Japanese child was stabbed to death by a 44 year-old man. Anti-Japanese sentiment is fanned by Chinese government rhetoric and a constant barrage of content on Chinese media. The attack happened in Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong.

    On September 31th, 3 were killed and 15 injured by a revenge on society attacker in a Shanghai branch of Walmart. He had been arrested by police who said that he was angry due to a personal financial dispute.

    The following day on October 1st, while most were celebrating China’s national day holiday – Chinese man conducted a revenge on society attack in Zurich, Switzerland. He attacked and injured three children near a daycare centre. He was a postgraduate student who publicly expressed extremist nationalist views.

    A 60-year old man convicted of previous attacks stabbed two students and one woman outside a primary school in Guangzhou on October 8th.

    On October 28th, a 50 year old man attacked and injured three children and two adults in Beijing in an attack that had all the hallmarks of revenge on society.

    A revenge on society attack on November 11th killed 35 people and injured 43 more because the 62-year old attacker was unhappy with his divorce settlement. The Chinese government attempted a news blackout of the incident. The incident happened in Zhuhai, a city just across the border from Macau.

    On November 16th, a Wuxi third level education college was the site of an revenge on society incident that killed eight people with a knife attack and 17 others injured. A 21 year old male was detained.

    On November 19th, the 39 year-old perpetrator drove into students arriving at a primary school in Changde. He was eventually stopped and beaten by a crowd until being taken into custody by the police.

    Words of the Week: “Revenge on Society” Attacks Lead to Government Monitoring of “Individuals With ‘Four Lacks and Five Frustrations’” (四无五失人员, sìwú wǔshī rényuán) | China Digital Times

    Consumer behaviour

    How many toys is too many? | VoxOne reader told Vox recently that her family was “absolutely drowning in toys.” And while adults have been complaining about kids’ junk for generations (please see my father’s fruitless search for my brother’s one-inch-long toy wrench in Los Angeles International Airport circa 1992), many millennial and Gen X parents have the sense that something is different now — that kids have more toys than in past decades, and that they seem to arrive in ways Randall describes as “unintentional” and Parents Are Stressed About Playtime. Their Anxiety Is a Goldmine. – WSJ – same as it ever was

    Could shifting beauty standards have predicted Trump’s win? | Dazed

    Economics

    Putin’s «Deathonomics» – Riddle Russiathe Kremlin seriously expects a positive economic outcome from the creation of a high-salaried contract army. If we assume that the number of mobilised and contract-based soldiers ranges from 400,000 to 450,000, then their minimum total allowance will amount to approx. 1 trillion roubles a year. The government will have to allocate about the same amount for compensations in case of killed or wounded soldiers, even if there are 50,000 or 100,000 such people in a year. These sums represent nearly 10% of pre-war federal spending, and some people are already predicting the emergence of a social group of «the young rich» and even making plans for how this money will contribute to long-term investment programmes. – Deathonomics is allowing the Russian government to shape its population pyramid to reduce the burden of the aging population on the economy.

    The costs of maritime supply chain disruptions: The case of the Suez Canal blockage by the ‘Ever Given’ megaship – ScienceDirect

    Endless business closures, through the eyes of a Chinese consumer | Following the Yuan

    Ideas

    If an alien could speak, could we understand it? – Leeds Trinity University Research Portal

    How These Men Left the Manosphere — and Why Some May Never | Teen Vogue – “The more you shame people for what they’re espousing, the more they’re driven underground deeper into online communities who welcome them with open arms and say, ‘this is where you belong. If those people don’t understand you, they’re just a bunch of triggered snowflakes or whatever,’” Miller-Idriss says. Another tactic, she says, is to point out the commercialization of the manosphere in which everything is for sale including courses, supplements, and crypto-currencies. Pointing out the profit motive of these influencers can be effective, Miller-Idriss says.

    That’s part of what got Tom out of the manosphere, which he says he fell into when he was 27, after leaving the Army and finding himself “stuck trying to look for work consistently, having basically no social support, having no options other than to just work, pay bills, work, pay bills, in an increasingly difficult world to do that.” He was lonely, he says, and the influencers he followed had some pretty good talking points, he thought: men were more affected by things like incarceration rates, workplace death and injury rates, and mental health and no one was taking it seriously.

    “The more you shame people for what they’re espousing, the more they’re driven underground deeper into online communities who welcome them with open arms.” Pasha Dashtgard, an assistant professor at the Polarization & Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, says this is a common entry point. “They start their conversations with, ‘men are in crisis and no one’s talking about it. It’s like, that’s true, men are in crisis and we should be talking about it… [but] that opens up, ideologically, the door for them to be like ‘and now, here are the solutions’ and it’s this horrible, toxic nonsense.” But after after a couple months in the manosphere, Tom realized that, while men’s health is a serious subject, he wouldn’t find the answers he was looking for in the manosphere, which was overrun by what he calls “grifters, frauds, or sort of religious zealots.” Now, Tom says he doesn’t actively use the label ‘feminist’ but “considers it part of my worldview.”

    Indonesia

    Indonesia rejects Apple’s $100 million investment offer | Techxplore

    Luxury

    From Edition to Ritz Carlton, how global luxury hotels are localizing their strategies amid expansion | Jing Daily – interesting comment on staff as ‘intelligence agent’

    Marketing

    Is there a future for personalisation? | WARC – Right person, right place, right time: for over a decade this idea has been an ideal in advertising. But an alternative point of view is that personalisation is self-defeating because advertisers chase a moving target when they are unable to prove return on investment. 

    Patagonia’s Restructuring Has Led to Employee Fallout – Business Insider – Patagonia’s historic worker commitment is less well known than it’s sustainability credentials which probably explains why recent moves haven’t led to the kind of brand dissonance amongst consumers that the likes of Bud Light or Nike experienced.

    Jaguar rebrand

    Jaguar’s teaser campaign for its rebrand and new vehicle model prompted immediate feedback. I am not clear on what the ask was by the marketing team, so have kept an open mind. Here offered without comment are some of the related commentary:

    Media

    Baidu Q3 2024 earnings| CNBC – the interesting bits in here are static online marketing business revenue and increasing AI / cloud services business

    AI-Powered Buzzfeed Ads Suggest You Buy Hat of Man Who Died by Suicide

    The Rise, Fall, and (Slight) Rise of DVDs. A Statistical Analysis

    Online

    How a 15-Year-Old Gamer Became the Patron Saint of the Internet | WIRED

    The Fantasy of Cozy Tech | The New Yorker – cozy gaming came from COVID and Animal Crossing – gaming and cute

    Let’s check in on MrBeast – by Taylor Lorenz – User Mag

    Retailing

    Ted Baker relaunches website in the UK – Retail Gazette

    Security

    China’s Surveillance State Is Selling Citizen Data as a Side Hustle | WIRED

    Philippines recruits civilian tech talent to fend off cyber attacks – Rest of World

    How Silicon Valley is prepping for War – by Michael Spencer

    Software

    Apple Working on ‘LLM Siri’ for 2026 Launch – MacRumors

    HarperCollins Confirms It Has a Deal to Sell Authors’ Work to AI Company

    Style

    Streetwear Has Lost Its Popularity. Is That a Good Thing? | HighSnobriety – if it kills drop queues I’ll be happy

    Technology

    Qualcomm – Falling Behind or Laying in Wait? | Digits to Dollars

    Telecoms

    I Don’t Own a Cellphone. Can This Privacy-Focused Network Change That?

    Web-of-no-web

    Meta brings certain AI features to Ray-Ban Meta glasses in Europe | TechCrunch

    Receiver enables dead reckoning when GPS/GNSS fails | EE News

  • AE86 + more things

    Toyota AE86

    The rear-wheel drive AE86 model generation of the humble Toyota Corolla has a dedicated following. The cars were light, had twin-cam engines, a very balanced weight split and a limited slip differential.

    11_01

    Back in the 1980s in Ireland they were a steady performer on the local rally scene. The AE86 because of its simplicity became very adaptable for street and motorsport tuning. The AE86 popularised car culture internationally, turning up across media formats and supported by a vibrant cottage industry of parts manufacturers who exported their parts around the world.

    The car entered popular culture across Asia and beyond through the manga and anime adaptions of Initial-D, which told the tale of Takumi – a student holding down two jobs – a petrol station attendant and delivery driver for the family’s tofu business in a Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno.

    Takumi’s adventures in the family AE86 went on to be portrayed in an 18-year long manga series, a Hong Kong film featuring Taiwanese entertainer Jay Chou as Takumi, 27 game adaptions at the time of writing and at least 12 anime series or feature length films.

    This soft culture footprint gave the AE86 an impact across Asia, hence the Malaysian meet-up that Hagerty shot in Kuala Lumpur. Will the popularity of the AE86 die off with this generation of young adults? It’s possible given that over a quarter of them in the US don’t drive.

    Toyota / Hyundai motorsport collaboration

    In advance of Rally Japan, Toyota’s Gazoo Racing and Hyundai’s N Sport held a joint event in Korea. It’s quite rare to see rival manufacturers partner in this way.

    How to read a compass

    This took me back to my 12-year old self away at scout camp (which I did only once) doing the activity for my map-making activity badge. Taking bearings from multiple locations and triangulating them allowed me to plot out my map. I need to dig out my Silva compass that my Mam and Dad probably still have somewhere in their attic.

    I found myself using the basics of reading a compass when living in urban Hong Kong and Shenzhen as the extremely tall buildings stopped GPS from working that well. Sharing here, partly out of nostalgia and the the life skills benefits.

    Hello Kitty and an adoption mindset.

    Japan popular culture commentator Matt Alt put out a video about the history of Hello Kitty and Sanrio. One of the interesting things that came out of the video was how adult women embracing the playfulness of Hello Kitty, rather than ‘adulting up’ then became on the leading edge of technology adoption. I thought the idea of a ‘playful mindset’ and adoption was very interesting – yet something that we don’t often think about. I used to think about it as curiosity, but it’s more specific and it can be fostered regardless of age.

  • November 2024 newsletter

    November 2024 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my November 2024 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 16th issue. 16 is a low power of two which saw it used in weighing light objects in several cultures. For instance in the British Imperial system of weights 16 ounces were in one pound. This lived on far longer with British drug dealers who looked to sell cannabis in ‘teenths’ (16ths) or eighths of an ounce. Prior to decimal being implemented in China 16 taels or liǎng equalled one catty or jin. Chinese Taoists counted on their finger times and joints of the fingers with a the tip of the thumb, so 16 can be counted on each hand.

    The highlight of November was meeting up for brunch with Calvin who I used to work with in Hong Kong and collaborate with on occasion for projects going in-or-out of China. He was passing through London on his way to Web Congress in Lisbon, supporting one of the burgeoning number of start-ups coming out of Shanghai.

    New reader?

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

    Strategic outcomes

    Things I’ve written.

    • Ghost Signs – how legacy signage allows us to peer back into history, camcorders having their ‘lomography’ moment and much more.
    • Layers of the future – or how innovation doesn’t exist in a fully-formed world, but instead exists within layers of progress over time.
    • Presidential election beliefs – amongst the autopsies of the campaign that have been discussed, one of the things that struck me was the role of presidential election beliefs that have wrong-footed analysis
    • Klad & more stuff – a Russian pioneered integration of dark web markets and concealed ‘Amazon locker’ type infrastructure to deliver a new approach to drug dealing. Other items include bottlenecks in gadget manufacturing, internet maturity and more.

    Books that I have read.

    • Dead Calm by Charles Williams – the early 1960s crime novel packs a lot into the story. Trauma, mental illness, murder and intrigue on the high seas. Dead Calm was later made into a film and relocated from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
    • Jipi and the paranoid chip by Neal Stephenson. A short story that fits into the Cryptonomicon universe of Stephenson’s books – shares the story of Jipi a former flight attendant who works for Mindshare Management Associates Inc. – an agency that distracts tourists to Manila from the rapid construction work taking place during a China-like economic miracle. Because of her personality, Jipi has to track down errant AI powered car alarms fitted with plastic explosives that were designed to deter thieves, but AI happened. If you’ve ever had to write prompts, you’ll likely appreciate it.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    The fame game

    Rosemary_Smith
    Irish rally driver Rosemary Smith, had the skills but never did get the fame. Smith even got behind the wheel of a Renault formula 1 car to get a test drive at 79 years of age.

    I am by no means a sports addict but even in my psyche I know the names and reputations of several famous sports stars across hurling, gaelic football, motorsports rugby league and even soccer. Sid Lee and Appino have raised the issue of how this fame gap is bridged in women’s sports drive into long term mainstream success. Where is the women’s sport equivalent of Stig Blomqvist, Arnold Palmer or Michael Jordan who are hailed in a similar way? Want to know more, reach out to Rory Natkiel.

    Yes, Christmas really is getting earlier

    He's back from vacation, there are already Christmas decorations and Christmas cookies everywhere

    My local supermarket started to sell mince pies right after the August bank holiday this year. It had Christmas decorations for sale before the Halloween ones. Christmas seems to be coming earlier this year. The Guardian researched how Christmas was arriving earlier each year, from charting music to mince pies and Christmas puddings going on sale. This year lo-fi girl had their first Christmas soundtrack up on November 4th. If you want a change from the Spotify Christmas list, try this old mix from former streetwear boutique The Hideout.

    WARC noted how companies like John Lewis with dedicated Christmas campaigns look to gain a first-mover advantage to aid the talkability around their campaign and gain the full benefit from their emotion driven campaign bedding in and building new memory structures.

    WARC predicted that Christmas advertising spend would rise 7.8% to over £10.5 billion. Big growth for search, online display and out of home compared to last year. The biggest losers including TV, direct mail, magazine and print news media.

    Things I have watched. 

    Famous Hong Kong cinema film director Johnnie To criticised Hong Kong’s national security regulation in an interview for the BBC’s Chinese language service. With that in mind, I thought it prudent to buy up as much of his back catalogue as possible because the classics amongst them may be harder to get hold of in the future.

    PTUPTU starts in a similar way to Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog with a policeman losing their duty weapon. However that’s where the parallels finish. In Stray Dog the young detective looking for his gun feel empathy at the end with the criminal who used his weapon. The moral being two-fold – crime starts with a few wrong choices, but are still human. In order to deliver law, over time the policeman needs to become less empathetic, losing a bit of their humanity. PTU on the other hand shows how police blurred the line between the law and crime with extra-legal methods to solve crime. It also highlights the complex relationships between criminal gangs and the police. To keeps the tension going with PTU throughout the film. The ambiguity between police and criminals would not be allowed in future Hong Kong films thanks to the National Security laws that have come into force.

    Election – The literal Cantonese title for this film is ‘Black Society’ – which as a term covers all kinds of organised crime groups. Two members of the Wo Lin Shing are up for election become leader (aka chairman or dragonhead) of the organised crime group. It’s a common trope in Hong Kong cinema that these elections happen on a regular basis. Wo Lin Shing is a stand-in name of the very real Wo Shing Wo – a group that have a side hustle doing wet work for the Beijing forces at work in the city.

    The film focuses on the election and immediate fallout. Lok runs a more rational campaign, whereas Big-D runs a showy campaign offering money for votes. The elders appoint Lok and Big-D tries to steal the symbol of power. To moves the tension and action on at a rate of knots. It features many of the heavyweights of Hong Kong cinema including Simon Lam, Louis Koo, ‘Big’ Tony Leung, former policeman Nick Cheung and Lam Suet.

    Not a Johnnie To production, but I have been enjoying Detective Chinatown on Amazon Prime. The show is similar to the BBC show Sherlock and CSI in the way its plot devices and how its story arcs work. It has been interesting to watch for a number of reasons. The series was produced for Chinese streaming platform iQiyi – think Chinese Netflix. The series is based in Bangkok, Thailand. The senior Thai police representative is portrayed as dramatic, volatile and religious in nature – interesting stereotyping by the Chinese production team. The plot line has a very supernatural aspect to it, which is generally considered to be a no-no with Chinese censors. I am curious to see where they take the show.

    Useful tools.

    Mac keyboard shortcuts

    Alongside David Pogue’s Missing Manual series of reference books for each version of macOS, MacMost’s videos are a great resource for the Mac user. MacMost now have a free downloadable table of Mac keyboard shortcuts.

    AI-powered diagram creation

    Ever sat in front of a blank Keynote or PowerPoint slide and wondered how to represent something? I am across the Napkin AI which takes your written text describing something and renders it into a diagram. I don’t use these diagrams as the finished product, but as an inspiration for me then to artwork together in Keynote, OmniGraffle or PowerPoint. You can output from Napkin AI as a PNG file. At the moment it’s free to use as a beta product.

    Woznim

    Woznim allows you to record the names of people and where you met them to try and aid in recall of of them if you run into them again. It reminds me of Foursquare and social bookmarking. Foursquare because of its where 2.0 location based data and social bookmarking because if you develop the Woznim habit it could be life-changing, but if it doesn’t gel with you it’ll be dropped as a service in no time. At the moment it’s an iPhone-only app.

    Bluesky

    Bluesky has been having a moment as another tranche of social media users follow The Guardian’s lead to leave Twitter and need a micro-blogging service. Bluesky has got a good deal of attention because of its starter packs and list features. Whether Bluesky will continue to grow into a vibrant post-Twitter place isn’t certain yet. But if you are going to use Bluesky then these two tools might help:

    • Bluesky tools directory. There is a surprisingly rich set of tools available rather like ‘golden age’ era Twitter.
    • Starter packs. Starter packs are a set of curated recommended accounts to follow based around interests. This site has a large directory of them covering everything from professional interests to sports passions.

    The sales pitch.

    I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from January 2025 onwards; 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 November 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into the Christmas season and the rush to complete projects before clients disappear on holiday.

    Don’t forget to share, comment and subscribe!

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