Month: August 2020

  • Podcasting + more things

    Listening in – Podcasting provides a space for free thought in China | China | The Economist – I suspect that podcasting will represent a new frontier in censorship for Chinese regulators. China has an eco-system that allows paid subscription via podcasting platforms for experts in different fields such as business or investing. More China-related…

  • Things that caught my eye this week

    Indonesia is a fascinating place in and of itself and comes up with all kinds of cultural nuggets. The latest one that I came across was the Vespa Extreme moped sub-culture. Vespa scooters are plentiful in Indonesia, as is the desire to invent. Car tuning culture is big amongst the middle class. But for those…

  • Epic Games + more things

    Why Epic isn’t an innocent victim in the Fortnite battle with Apple, and why it deserves a loss today – BGR – interesting argument that goes against the popular media narrative. I wonder why Epic haven’t gone after console makers as well? Not all gamers might get the fact that Epic has created this crisis…

  • Megatrends by John Naisbitt

    John Naisbitt’s Megatrends was on the New York Times bestseller list when it was first published in 1982. Naisbitt outlined some big long term trends that he’d found as part of a decade of research. Hence the mega in Megatrends; though one could argue that macro may have been a more accurate term to use.…

  • US bankruptcies + more things

    Pandemic triggers wave of billion-dollar US bankruptcies – really interesting data points and charts on large US bankruptcies in this FT article. The bigger question are these billion dollar US bankruptcies like ripping a band-aid off as their demise was inevitable, or are good businesses going to the wall in extreme times? (paywall) The Effects…

  • Eat Your Greens edited by Wiemer Snijders

    Eat Your Greens is a selection of articles curated by Wiemer Snijders on all things that come up for discussion amongst account planners. Branding, marketing, some home truths about innovation and the value of creative. Much of it recycles the stuff that account planners know from reading Sharp or Field and Binet. In addition there…

  • Things that caught my eye this week

    Burger King King of Stream campaign conducted in conjunction with Ogilvy agency DAVID based in Madrid, Spain. The King of Stream makes sense when you look only at the data. Target young people who do gaming. Presumably there is some group cohesion data or insight that shows a propensity to eat fast food with gaming.…

  • Influencer endorsements + more stuff

    Influencer endorsements fail to influence purchase decisions | WARC – Influencer endorsements play only a small role in affecting the purchase decisions of their followers, according to research from influencer endorsements platform Influencer and GlobalWebIndex. In their survey of consumers in the UK and US who follow influencers on social media, just 15% said influencer…

  • 1999 eclipse

    The 1999 eclipse, also called millennium eclipse as it would be the last total solar eclipse of the 2oth century popped up recently on the BBC. For me it was a big online event. Eclipses don’t happen often. The last one in the UK had been some 72 years earlier. I was working in an…