What I’m calling augmented retailing is a step change in technology in retailing from efficiency to effectiveness.
Retailing efficiency
Before we talk about augmented retailing, let’s go through efficiency which has been the focus for a long time. Depending on the way you want to look at this, you could look back centuries to the foundation of a technology multiplier: children.
Family retail businesses had family members working in their business from once they could understand and act on instructions. I have friends that started working in the family restaurant from 6-years old. I started working on the family farm (ineffectively) from a similar age.
Weighing scales were starting to become standardised by the middle-ages and giving short measures could see you punished.
The next innovation were payment related, such as currency and credit.
At the end of the 19th century thanks to industrialisation you started to see the origins of supermarkets as we now think about them. Sears Roebuck was the exemplar for mail order business, from which we now have Amazon and the countless e-tailers out there. Around about the same time the cash register was invented, which allowed cashiers to deal with more customers in a given amount of time. Cash registers then improved over the next century.
At the end of the 20th century we start to see e-tailing emerge. Accelerating mail order from being a niche to becoming a mainstream form of retail. Around the same time, you also saw cashier-less tills come in and other techniques to make shopping even more self-service.
Augmented retailing
Augmented retailing isn’t for the primary benefit of the retailer; but the customer. That’s more radical than it sounds as I write this down.
Look at other trends that marked change in retail and its about inconvenience to ‘create’ demand:
Apple retail product launches.
Abercrombe and Fitch / Hollister’s ‘club style’ door queues.
I have started to see innovations that are focused on the effectiveness of the consumer experience, rather than being orientated around retailing efficiency.
Mylowe virtual advisor
Lowe’s is a DIY superstore, rather similar to B&Q, Homebase or Toolstation in the UK. Like B&Q, Lowe’s has on-site experts to advise customers and help them select parts for projects.
Mylowe helps the experts by augmenting their expertise, providing a faster, better experience for Lowe’s customers.
A-eye
Indian snack manufacturer Britanniaworked with their agency VML India to aid blind consumers to shop independently. The app christened A-eye uses Google’s Vertex AI to recognise products on shelves and provide information about the product (quantity, ingredients, instructions etc.). Think about the personal confidence that this would bring to the user in their everyday life.
Albert Heijn provides cooking tips
Dutch supermarket brand Albert Heijn uses generative AI to help consumers by answering cooking questions. `Mijn AH assistent’ helps customers in their food shopping for food ingredients.
May 2025 introduction – two little ducks (22) edition
Welcome to my May 2025 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 22nd issue. 22 is known in bingo halls and the Spanish national lottery as two little ducks.
In France, 22 is the equivalent of 5-0 in the English speaking world as slang for the police. 22 is an important number for people who believe in numerology. In Hong Kong, 22 is associated with good fortune. This is down to the number sounding similar to ‘easy’ or ‘bright’ in Cantonese.
I hope that you are tricked into thinking I am bright based this newsletter, so let’s jump in. Inspired by catching up with my old DJing partner Griff, this month I enjoyed the unashamedly joyous pumped-up sounds of Blackpool’s AZYR at the Boiler Room x TeleTech Festival in 2023. In particular the transition at the end of the set between Frankyeffe – Save me and Infectious! – I need your lovin’. (Extra trainspotter points if you knew that Infectious! is a homage / remake of N.R.G’s The Real Hardcore from a year earlier). Wear your headphones, it might be divisive playing the set out loud in the office. More bangers from AZYR here.
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.
Predicting market share through share of search volume and what the rise of AI likely means.
Reaching a precipice in hydrogen power and trends in Chinese skincare amongst other things.
Books that I have read.
Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams. Williams account of her time in Facebook had become the most discussed book of the spring in my social circle. I wrote a long review of it here.
The Road to Conscious Machines by Michael Wooldridge examines the profound cultural impact of generative AI, which is currently experiencing a surge in both its cultural influence and practical applications. Drawing parallels to the internet’s transformative impact in the mid-to-late 1990s, where it permeated various aspects of society and fostered rapid adoption, Wooldridge traces the evolution of generative AI as a phenomenon that emerged gradually over the past half-century. Throughout the book, Wooldridge provides a comprehensive historical overview of AI, including the periods of research stagnation known as AI winters. This historical perspective equips readers with a nuanced understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of AI, enabling them to approach AI adoption with a well-informed perspective.
As I finish this newsletter during the bank holiday weekend, my light reading is Rogue Asset by Andy McDermott. McDermott comes from a long line of British authors like Jack Higgins, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth and Mick Herron who provide novels aimed at a shrinking pool of readers – men. At least, if oneis tobelieve what’s said in the media. Rogue Asset hinges on the premise that the UK has a unit which assassinates the countries enemies on a regular basis. Think somewhere between The Troubles era Det and the modern deep state trope. Our hero is snared into the plot by being discovered on the run thanks to his online behaviour – which is attributed to GCHQ; (but isn’t as mysterious as it sounds because of the programmatic advertising technology stack). So far so good for what it is. I will let know if it goes downhill as a read next month.
Things I have been inspired by.
Mmrytok
Limitations are often the mother of invention. That seems to be the theory behind mmrytok. Mmrytok allows you to do one post a day. It doesn’t support HTML formatting, it doesn’t allow you to link out and doesn’t have a newsfeed. So it’s easy-to-use because it’s less sophisticated than Geocities was. In this respect it is to social media and blogs what Punkt is to smartphones. In an always-on social time, I have found it liberating to use. You can see my page here. I heard of Mmrytok thanks to Matt Muir’s great newsletter Web Curios.
No, AI isn’t making you dumber
Australian documentary maker ColdFusion put together an interesting video essay on How AI is making you dumber.
Yes, you could argue that under certain attributes the population isn’t as smart as they have been in the past. Just last month I shared an article by John Burn-Murdoch. In the article he shared data of a longitudinal trend across countries and age-groups struggling with concentration, declining verbal and numerical reasoning. The problem with Burn-Murdoch’s article vis-a-vis the ColdFusion video is the timeline.
His article charts a decline further back than the rise of generative AI services. Mia Levitin in an essay for the FT attributed the decline in reading to the quick dopamine hits of social media content.
A college professor interviewed by The Atlantic put the decline in reading amongst his undergraduate students put it down to a practice in secondary education of atomising content. Pupils in high schools were assigned excerpts, poetry and news articles to read, but not complete books. This has impacted the size of vocabulary and grasp of language that students starting university now have.
This isn’t new territory, James Gleick in his book Fasterdocumented the massive acceleration of information through the late 20th century and its effects on the general public. The underlying accelerant was described by Kevin Kelly in What Technology Wants as the technium – a continuous forward progress due to a massively interconnected system of technology.
There were concerns in research as far back as the late 1980s that television could be adversely affecting children’s reading comprehension and attention spans.
TL;DR – with generative AI you could become dumber, if you use it unwisely – but the problem lies with all of us and what we chose to do with our personal agency.
CIA advertise for Chinese spies
The CIA commissioned a couple of high production value adverts that they’ve been running on social media channels. The adverts are designed to encourage Chinese government employees to come forward as an agent. The sales pitch is about taking control.
A translation of the Chinese tagline: ‘The reason for choosing cooperation: to become the master of (one’s own) destiny‘. More details from the FT about the campaign here, and here’s the twoexecutions currently running on YouTube.
It remains to be seen if the campaign will be effective. The Chinese Ministry of State Security managed to roll-up the CIA’s spy network back in 2010-2012. Up to 30 informants in China were executed.
Montirex
Merseyside sports-inspired lifestyle brand Montirex have published a film telling the brand story from its origins to the present day. The brand is expanding beyond its Merseyside roots to get national and international sales.
Trust, attitudes and use of artificial intelligence
A 2025 global study covering some 48 countries was conducted by KPMG in association with the University of Melbourne. Some key insights from the report. Consumer generative AI is being used instead of enterprise options by workers. Generative AI adopters still have self-perceived low AI skills but that doesn’t slow their adoption. There is higher adoption and trust rates in emerging markets than in developed markets.
Year-on-year we are seeing an increase in both distrust and trust for specific AI use cases, indicating that it is becoming a polarising subject. The lowest trust levels is in tech-savvy Finland. More here.
Chart of the month.
McDonald’s Restaurants saw a decline in sales. This was down to low income consumers spending less, while middle class earners still weren’t going into McDonalds. Normally when there is a recession, McDonalds should benefit from the more well-off trading down to McDonalds. Instead, fortunes have diverged into a ‘k-shaped’ recession. Lower income earners are hit, while middle classes aren’t. What Axios called the ‘McRecession‘.
Things I have watched.
Tony Arzenta (also known as Big Guns). The film is an early 1970s gallo film. French star Alain Delon appears in this classic retribution story based in Milan. As Tony Arzenta, Delon exacts revenge on the former bosses who killed his family by accident in a botched assassination attempt to prevent him from retiring.The film uses a wintry Milan as a good atmospheric backdrop for the action that plays out in a series of shoot-outs and car chases. It’s John Wick before it was even conceived. Delon brings a tension that other stars of the era like Charles Bronson failed to do in similar roles. As Arzenta’s targets flee across Europe, he goes through Germany and Denmark to catch up with them.
Sansho the Bailiff– as a film Sansho the Bailiff comes encumbered with a weight of praise. It is highly rated by film critics and Martin Scorsese had it as one of his must-watch films for young film makers. Director Kenji Mizoguchi assembled an ensemble cast of Japanese actors to tell a story of family hardship and poverty. Kazuo Miyagawa is key to the the production, providing a signature look to the cinematography. There is a tension between the emotional rollercoaster of the story and the reflective nature of the scenes portrayed – I don’t want to say too more, except that even the character actors like Kikue Môri (who plays a pivotal role in the plot as a priestess) are amazing in the film.
Warfare – I was a bit leery of watching Alex Garland’s Warfare after watching Civil War which was strong on aesthetics and emotion, but weak in terms of the creative conceits involved in making the story work. Warfare is the collective accounts of a US military unit during a two-hour fire fight. The story is told from multiple perspectives in real-time. The film captures the stress and boredom of inaction as well as what you would normally expect from this kind of film.
Useful tools.
Reddit Answers
Reddit Answers – alternative to Gigabrain that I recommended back in March. Like Gigabrain, Reddit Answers looks like the kind of knowledge search product that we failed to build at Yahoo! twenty years ago (or NORA as Microsoft has been calling the concept for the past few years). Reddit Answers is powered by Google Vertex AI.
Process online data like its peak web 2.0 all over again
While WordPress installations come with RSS enabled as standard and is something that can then be disabled, many types of sites aren’t RSS enabled. And where they are the web devs will often disable it just because. RSS app will create an RSS feed for websites that don’t have it. This allows you to pull it into data processing using something like Pipes. RSS app starts at $9.99 per month and goes up to $99.99 a month. Pipes starts at free and goes up to $79 per month.
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 in Q4 (October) – keep me in mind; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
Ok this is the end of my May 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into spring, and I hope you enjoyed the last bank holiday until August.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.
Get in touch if there is anything that you’d like to recommend for the newsletter.
Walsh’s is the kind of business I grew up with in Ireland. In my part of the world it wasn’t the Walsh’s it was Kelly’s and Salmon’s who both ran general stores on the edge of my parish. It was a mix of groceries, cigarettes, a top-loading cabinet of ice creams. In the local market town there was O’Meara’s who still run a supermarket, Lynch’s who run a hardware store, builders yard and farm supplies and Hayes – a chemist and veterinary pharmacy. Like Walsh’s they are all multi-generational businesses with customers from the same families over successive generations.
Maintaining a multi-generational business was (and still is for many) a matter of pride. It can be a great business, you know your customers needs and personalities far better than I ever did working for the likes of Unilever. The Walsh’s will have been with their generations of customers at key times in their lives: engagements, marriage, anniversaries and retirements.
When my Uncle died and we had a wake for him, I met the the pharmacist who looked after his personal and farm needs and her Dad who had filled my prescription for cough medicine as a child. There were people from the hardware store, farm supplies, the newsagent who my family always got their copies of the Irish Farmer’s Journal and the Connacht Tribune.
The Walsh’s are wrapping up because their business can no longer compete with the scale of online jewellers.
It’s interesting that COVID was the inciting incident that broke the generations of consumer behaviour, brand loyalty and relationships. The second factor that the Walsh’s named was the hollowing out of people living within the market town of Mullingar. That’s especially interesting given that Ireland currently has a chronic housing shortage makes me wonder what is going on.
Chris Spargo runs one of the most interesting British YouTube channels looking at the minutae of the UK from supermarket clock towers to book barcodes and milk packaging. This film looks at how The Glass Committee funded by Pilkington Glass created outlandish concepts that promoted discussion. Weirdly enough some of the ideas found themselves from the most outrageous concepts into Britain’s new towns developments.
A history of hacking
Frederico Mazzini goes through a history of hacking with a focus on culture. Even though it was presented for Tokyo College, it had a very western centric slant to it. Interesting points about hacking is an explicit political activity in some non-US cultures – notably France, Italy and Germany.
What became apparent was that Mazzini lacked was any kind of understanding of hacking in Japan, which runs with a much lower profile than their counterpart western communities according to Trend Micro.
Hydrogen power and hydrogen fuel cells have been around for decades. Hydrogen power fuel cells as an invention were invented in the 19th century. The modern hydrogen fuel cell was refined before the second world war and have been used in NASA’s space programme since Project Apollo. The space programme’s use of hydrogen power inspired General Motors to create a hydrogen fuel cell powered van in 1966. By the late 1980s, BMW had developed a hydrogen-powered engine which it trialled in its 7-series vehicles a decade later.
By the mid-2010s there were four hydrogen power passenger cars using fuel cells: Honda Clarity, Toyota Mirai, Hyundai ix35 FCEV, and the Hyundai Nexo. BMW is collaborating with Toyota to launch another four models next year.
In addition in commercial vehicles and heavy plant Hyundai, Cummins and JCB have hydrogen power offerings. JCB and Cummins have focused on internal combustion engines, while Hyundai went with hydrogen fuel cells. The aviation industry has been looking to hydrogen power via jet turbines.
Hydrogen power offers greater energy density and lower weight than batteries. Unlike batteries or power lines, hydrogen can be transported over longer distances via tanker. So someplace like Ireland with wind and tidal power potential could become an energy exporter.
The key hydrogen power problem has been investment in infrastructure and an over-reliance on batteries. Batteries bring their own set of problems and a global strategic dependency on China.
Toyota is now warning that if there isn’t imminent international investment, that China will also dominate the supply chain, exports and energy generation in the hydrogen economy as well. It feels like me reaching a historic point of no return.
Skincare you can wear: China’s sunwear boom | Jing Daily – A jacket with a wide-brim hood and built-in face shield. Leggings infused with hyaluronic acid to hydrate while shielding skin from the sun. Face masks with chin-to-temple coverage. Ice-cooling gloves designed to drop skin temperature. In China, UV protection apparel isn’t just functional — it’s fashionable, dermatological, and high-tech. Once a niche category for hikers or extreme sports enthusiasts, China’s sunwear market has exploded into a $13 billion category blending climate adaptation, anti-aging culture, and the outdoor lifestyle wave. While other apparel segments slow, the sunwear sector is projected to reach nearly 95.8 billion RMB ($13.5 billion) by 2026 expanding at a CAGR of 9%, according to iResearch.
MACAU DAILY TIMES 澳門每日時報Beware of Li Kashing’s supersized value trap – But as the initial excitement starts to fade, investors are growing nervous, wary of a billionaire family that has a poor track record on shareholders’ returns. The Li clan takes pride in the myriad of businesses and markets it operates in. But what kind of value-add can a diversified conglomerate offer when globalization is out of favor and geopolitical risks are on the rise? CK’s de-rating has accelerated since Trump’s first term, with the stock trading at just 35% of its book value even after the recent share bump. The complex business dealings have made enterprise valuation an impossible task. In a sign of deep capital market skepticism, CK seems to have trouble monetizing its assets. Its health and beauty subsidiary A.S. Watson is still privately-held, a decade after postponing an ambitious $6 billion dual listing in Hong Kong and London. Softer consumer sentiment in China, once a growth market, has become a drag. Last summer, CK Infrastructure did a secondary listing in the UK, hoping to widen its investor base. – Rare direct criticism of CK Hutchison’s conglomerate discount.
Ghost in the Shell’s Creator Wants to Revisit the Anime, But There’s One Problem – Production I.G’s CEO Mitsuhisa Ishikawa—who produced both Ghost in the Shell films—spoke at the event. Ishikawa revealed a key obstacle preventing a third film: finances. He explained that Innocence had an enormous budget, estimated at around 2 billion yen (approximately $13 million), with profits reaching a similar figure. However, the film was planned with a ten-year financial recovery period, and even after 20 years, it has yet to break even.
‘Gucci’s 25% sales collapse should shock no one’ | Jing Daily – “Gucci is so boring now.” “They’ve lost all their confidence.” “It feels desperate — just influencers and celebrities.” Comparing Gucci’s bold, visionary eras under Tom Ford and Alessandro Michele and today’s safe, uninspired iteration reveals a stark contrast. That classroom moment reflected a broader truth: Gucci’s Q1 2025 is not a temporary dip. It’s the result of a deeper structural identity crisis — arguably one of the worst brand resets in recent luxury history.
Careless People has been a much-discussed book in the circles that I am involved in. In the book, Wynn Williams outlines her career at Facebook / Meta in what was at the time a nascent public policy team. The term careless people is a highly appropriate reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
While I was reading Careless People, The Great Gatsby was having a moment. It was the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby’s publication, and the ‘careless people’ quote was considered apropos for the times we are living in, in particular the Trump administration’s actions.
“They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Anyway, back to Careless People, Wynn Williams outlines her experience from pitching to Facebook for a role that didn’t exist but was needed, through to navigating the global growth Facebook was undertaking at the time. The challenges that Wynn Williams faces can be broadly broken down into four areas (with specific allegations):
Poor management judgement (lying to Congress and providing assistance to authoritarian regimes)
What’s interesting about the book depends on the reader. Much of the experience was relatable to my own earlier experience at Yahoo! The long days, changing priorities, travel (which was much more of a thing pre-COVID), office politics and fiefdoms, the constant unintended consequences of inventing the future. Secondly, the Facebook management have bought into what Barbrook and Cameron termed The Californian Ideology in their 1995 essay of the same name.
“…the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies.”
However, I feel fortunate to have worked with a mature leadership who knew what they didn’t know and realised that they lived in a global village. But that might be down to the fact that Yahoo! by the time I had got there had a fair share of ups and downs.
Careless People reminded me a lot of Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, written by Jennifer Edstrom and Martin Eller. Although they are separated by some 25 years between each being written. Both books tell the story of an imperfect organisation scaling to an opportunity— I have written about Barbarians here. Wynn Williams is the better storyteller, providing a coherent and engaging path through the narrative.
I can recommend Careless People as a good book to read, I finished it off over a bank holiday weekend whilst nursing a sprained ankle. For people in advertising and marketing it won’t be that surprising, it confirms many things that were ‘common knowledge’ in the industry. For the general public, it will be shocking given the facts that the author marshals together.
Would I have thought reading Accidental Empires or Barbarians Led by Bill Gates in the late 1990s that Bill Gates would have transformed from the soulless ‘borg leader’ portrayed to the voice of relative reason he is today? Probably not, there might be hope for Zuckerberg at least out of the cast of characters in the book.
Wynn Williams is now exploring the edges of policy and artificial intelligence and is likely someone worth keeping an eye on.
