Now that the awards have been announced I can share my PHNX 2025 favourites from the categories that I had a the good fortune to judge. It took me a little time to sit down and collect my thoughts. You can find the details of the Grand Prix winners here.
My PHNX 2025 favourites come from around the world. The categories are truly global in nature and you get work from a wide range of agency sizes. Partly because of my time in Hong Kong campaigns from Cathay Pacific and HSBC stood out for me when looking at PHNX 2025. This wasn’t out of a sense of mawkish nostalgia, but because I understand the cultural context and legislative issues lurking beneath the surface looking to sink a campaign for fear of ‘soft resistance’.
Cathay Pacific paraolympics
While Hong Kong has historically had a strong showing at the paraolympics , its para-olympians achievements hadn’t been seen in the past. Cathay Pacific used the new opportunities that generative AI tools allowed these moments to be recreated.
Cathay Pacific had the permission to do this advert because of its position in Hong Kong life. Cathay Pacific aka ‘CX’ is the nervous system that connects Hong Kong and Hong Kongers to the wider world. As importantly, CX also connects the Hong Kong diaspora to the home city. The airline’s loyalty card is the second most common card for Hong Kongers after the Hong Kong ID card.
HSBC – Hong Kong move forward
Hong Kong as a city has been through a lot:
The protests
The National Security Law and the social changes that came after it
COVID-19 lockdown
A battered economy
All of this piled on top of the co-opetition between the city and nearby cities from Guangzhou and Shenzhen to Macau and Singapore.
Move Forward tries to capture the Hong Kong commercial spirit, even as ‘Underneath the Lion Rock’ common identity dimmed and spread around the world.
HSBC took this concept further by using Tony Leung Chiu-wai ‘aka Little Tony’ as a brand spokesperson. Leung as a star is universally liked by Hong Kongers, from Marvel fans to Wong Kar-wai devotees like me. Leung embodies the ‘Lion Rock spirit’. He left school at 15 due to family hardship. Worked in everyman jobs like a salesman in an electrical goods store and built his career thanks the apprenticeship / talent development system that local TV station TVB ran at the time.
Midea white goods
In the 1980s and early 1990s this ad wouldn’t have been notable. It would have been considered a good advert, but not great. But it’s now 2025, Gym Shark clothing and Suri dental health adverts are soul-rotting. So the joy of seeing any craft and conceptual creativity in an advert makes this Midea spot notable.
If Diageo made white goods, this is what their campaigns would look like.
Limin’ with Gram
Of my PHNX 2025 favourites, Limin with Gram was my sole pick from the UK based on the categories that I was a jury member for. It warmed the strategist in me for the way cultural insights were applied to a health-related public service announcement style campaign.
I am fortunate to be an awards juror for the second time. This is for the Adforum PHNX advertising awards which attracts entries from around the world.
As part of the process I responded to some interview questions. I hope that my old gaffer Tony Gresty appreciated my quoting of him decades later and was surprised that there wasn’t pushback about my assertion of a ‘post-social’ marketing era.
What motivates you to be part of the PHNX Jury, and what do you hope to bring to the judging process?
Before I worked in advertising, I served an apprenticeship in plant process engineering. My old gaffer who was responsible for me had a few sayings. One of which was practice sharpens skill. By being a judge, I hope that I am helping people within the industry around the world to sharpen their skill. Seeing great challenging work and asking myself how it fits the customer and client needs in turn, helps further sharpen my skill as a strategist. TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) altruist generosity?
PHNX has always been about celebrating creativity in all its forms. What new perspectives or disciplines do you think deserve more recognition in award shows today?
Strategy has the Effies, BUT its focus is larger than creativity with a major focus on efficiency and effectiveness rather the creative process. Strategy always provides the ‘assist’ with single-minded insight and creative JOTBD (job to be done), but is never the ‘goal scorer’ to use an American sports stats metaphor. I think that creativity is not only about the creative, but also the context where the creative is placed – which brings in the disciplines of project management’s orchestration, production’s craft and media planning. I think this is going to become far more important as we go towards a post-social era.
Which countries or regions do you think are leading the creative field right now? And which emerging markets should we look out for?
A really interesting question. Leading is probably the wrong phrase to use, but there are markets that are under-estimated. Thailand and the Philippines have well-deserved reputations for emotional storytelling. Year-after-year when I look at lunar new year adverts Malaysia hits well above its weight given the size of the market.
Japan has been consistently delighting advertising folk for the past five decades.
Probably a better question to ask me after I have been through this year’s award entries.
What trends or cultural shifts do you think will define the most impactful creative work this year?
With everything that’s going on, I think we’ll need more humour. Trends within the advertising industry are also leaning towards a better mix of formats. As an industry we over-index on social vs. attention, efficiency and effectiveness for large brands. So we’ve seen a renaissance in OOH amongst other formats.
There is also a return to basics: creative consistency, fluent objects, the power of storytelling and humour. Finally consumers are more interested in consuming more longer form audio and video content, so what a creative execution might look like I hope is very different.
If you could give one piece of advice to agencies and creatives submitting their work, what would it be?
Be single-minded in terms of category consideration. My biggest criticism of last year’s PHNX award entries was not about the quality of the work per se. Many of the entries had a given creative was put in for consideration for the wrong category. And it was the same entries doing it over-and-over again. If it isn’t relevant it’s just going to get ignored or get under the skin of the judges. In the same way that a poorly-placed ad that is slapped all over the place without consideration would have a similar effect in the real world.
Rant over: I wish everyone the best of luck, finally don’t be disheartened. All of the work was of a high standard, choosing winners is hard.
Which creative minds are inspiring you the most right now?
In the widest creative sense I am working my way through veteran Hong Kong film director Johnnie To‘s back catalogue; some of his works like Breaking News feel like exceptionally contemporary given our media environment. A couple of creatives using AI in a really smart way are Omar Karim aka @arthur_chance on instagram and the Dor Brothers. Agency work-wise VCCP’s immersive installation for Transport for London and a small Malaysian shop called Days Studios (whose bread-and-butter work is usually weddings!), yet, did a fantastic job producing a Chinese New Year ad for a cosmetic treatment clinic Aglow Studio – not what you’d call a big client yet it felt like a bigger production than many large brands. Go Google the ad ‘hiss of prosperity’ and watch it on YouTube.
This is the 33rd edition of Strategic Outcomes, I had briefly toyed with calling it 33 1/3rd edition – but parked that foolishness as only Jed Hallam and Alec Samways would have half-heartedly smirked at a rather naff DJ dad joke.
In bingo halls ’33’ was announced as dirty knee. For generations past, this would brought up memories of organised sports like winter football games ad the more real-life social activities of playing outside with friends. According to research conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Save the Children back in 2022, only 27% of UK children now play outside.
https://flic.kr/p/392Xqw
However, other data, like the UK government’s own The Children’s People and Nature Survey for England: 2025 update implies that number may be higher than the OnePoll research suggests. The University of Exeter published research which seems to be more in line with the UK government’s research. They found that 34 per cent of children don’t play outdoors on school days, while 20 per cent don’t play outdoors on weekends.
In Chinese culture 33 is considered to be a good number. 3 sounds similar to birth or life. Two 3s is considered to intensify or double this idea. Which seems an appropriate sentiment for spring and the beginning of the financial year. Bring it on!
This month’s soundtrack to the newsletter is a sublime 1980s disco mix by Toronto-based Japanese DJ Sakiko Nagai.
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.
A collection of inspiration from Malaysia Airlines mascot Pilot Parker to Sir Martin Sorrell.
Some thoughts how WPP might deal with its Burson dilemma.
ICYMI – Top five shares on LinkedIn
Aston Martin issued its third profit warning in a year and sold its Formula 1 naming rights for £50 million to raise cash thanks to internal delays and international tariffs.
Meta is projected to pass Google in digital advertising spend thanks to Reels, Threads and WhatsApp.
The implications of Tottenham Hotspur being relegated from the Premier League has implications beyond the pitch and into sponsor’s boardrooms.
Nike made a bold leap for the UEFA Champions League match ball contract with a bid that doubled the value of the previous Adidas contract.
Tom Roach outlined frameworks that help navigate the transition to more sustained growth once initial performance marketing channels hit saturation.
Books that I have read.
My friend Ian lent to me Ikenami Shōtarō‘s book The Killer on The Streets which is part of his Samurai Detectives series. The book follows the adventures of a 60-something retired swordsman and his son as they become embroiled in the hunt for what we’d now call a serial killer.
Things I have been inspired by.
Supply chained
Even before the current debacle in the Persian Gulf, globalisation brought logics and supply chains into high focus. Supply Chained is a new podcast with great presenters that provides top quality analysis on different aspects of global supply chains. The first episode looks at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
Generative AI & cooking
I first met Rowan Kisby a decade ago this year at 100 Victoria Embankment, back when I was contracting for Unilever on their Family Brands global range of margarines. Rowan worked for what was then MullenLowe Profero. Recently we reconnected on a shared Slack group. Rowan put together a report on the intersection of generative AI use and cooking.
I found it unsurprising that one of the behaviours consumers are doing is telling the generative AI service what they have in their fridge and asking it for dish / recipe recommendations. Back when I worked for Yahoo! we saw similar behaviours in the search box, particularly amongst US users. Reddit now gave Rowan better qualitative insights on how these results play out.
More interesting from the point of view of retailers was its ability to create and manage a shopping list for weekly groceries. The idea of a retailer or an FMCG building an AI skill (or Gem on Google Gemini) is just begging to be sold in by agencies to their clients.
Praykinson
I got to judge the amazing entries from around the world at Adforum’s PHNX awards. One campaign really stuck with me. A health campaign by Dentsu Creative Thailand and Vajira Hospital in Thailand to help people with Parkinson’s disease was smart, solution-based and had a great insight behind it. More on the project here.
https://flic.kr/p/2s6adiF
CHESS
I was listening to the MM+M podcast interview with Chris Brandow, head of account management at VCCP Health US and came across the acronym / nemonic CHESS. It comes out of thought leadership research ‘Checking the Memory Code‘ that VCCP did in conjunction with Cowry Consulting.
CHESS looks to encapsulate some of the key attributes that makes marketing creative effective. It codifies marketing science findings that you would be familiar with fromthe likes of, the IPA, System1 and Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and provides it in a list that pharma clients and their agency partners can use as a RAG (red-amber-green) guide to evaluating everything from initial creative concepts through to output.
Character – what be called a fluent object elsewhere. It is a mascot or memorable element like Alexandr the meerkat from Compare The Market. It could also be a spokesperson like Tommy Lee Jones’ appearances in Boss Coffee adverts as ‘Alien Jones‘.
Humour – the power of humour used to be well known as an advertising device and in recent years has come back on trend at Cannes. It helps create talkability and memorability
Emotion – Binet and Fields established the power of emotion over rational advertising. Daniel Kahneman conveyed the power of emotional ‘system 1 thinking’ in Thinking Fast and Slow.
Surprise – the unexpected. Our enjoyment of storytelling is the process understanding which story archetype a tale belongs to. If we guess it easily it falls flat like a Dad joke, on the other hand a twist in the tale makes it memorable.
Sonic branding – jingles fell out of fashion, yet made ads memorable.
Chart of the month.
Ofcom released their 2026 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes report, more here. I went back through past reports to look at smartphone only internet access, households with no access to internet and claimed usage of generative AI services.
Internet access is now at a point comparable to where broadcast television was previously.
The digital divide is now about the mode of access, with smartphones on mobile internet providing a poorer service.
https://flic.kr/p/2s69P1v
Things I have watched.
My internet went down on April Fool’s Day, so I revisited Wong Ka wai’s back catalogue. I watched the films the first time after I got a portable DVD player and there was a massive surge in video labels including Artificial Eye and Tartan publishing arthouse titles. This provided a great way to explore and experience world cinema and I gravitated towards Japanese and Hong Kong cinema.
I was familiar with traditional martial arts films and the ‘gun fu’ of John Woo. Wong Ka wai was Hong Kong’s answer to French new wave auteurs. Around the same time, I ended up going out with someone who lived in Hong Kong when we bonded over Faye Wong’s performance in Chungking Express. In a moment of delicious irony, I got to watch Wong Ka wai’s ‘western’ film My Blueberry Nights while staying in Hong Kong.
This time around I was working my way through Curzon’s Wong Kar wai boxset which was bought for my birthday during COVID time. It contained
As Tears Go By
Days of Being Wild
Chungking Express
Fallen Angels
Happy Together
In The Mood For Love
2046
More on my time watching The World of Wong Kar wai boxset here. You can enjoy most of the films listed at the Prince Charles cinema ‘The Films of Wong Kar wai season‘.
After all that I needed something a bit lighter, so I watched the Japanese film Supermarket Woman. It is a light hearted comedy caper about a middle aged woman, a poorly performing supermarket, business rivalry and a bit of skullduggery. Nobuko Miyamoto plays Hanako Inouse who brings her customer eye view to revitalising the Honest Goro supermarket. The film was written and directed by Jûzô Itami, better known for Tampopo. Supermarket Woman was made a decade after Tampopo, but both feel of the same time. Itami-san was often compared to the French new wave directors of the 1960s and I can see why.
OSS117 is a series of books and films written from the late 1950s onwards. The films were made in 1963 onwards, with a reinvention and reboot in the 2010s.
OSS 117 is Unleashed – is a French film about an American agent with French heritage who works for the CIA. Compared to the Bond franchise, its French new wave. No gadgets but a dollop of guile. It’s notable for its underwater scenes, scuba diving was new thing opening up a new world under the waves thanks to Jacques Cousteau.
OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok – is the first colour film in the series. Our hero goes to Bangkok to investigate a dead colleague who looked into ineffective vaccines.
Useful tools.
PopChar – PopChar is an old but good utility app that has been supporting Mac users since the late 1980s. You are trying to find the right emoji or symbol to type, in each font.
Beats Studio Buds + – while I usually use Shure wired earphones for most applications there are some times that wireless is handier (like reducing wired clutter on a busy desk, or listening to podcasts while cooking or folding laundry).
I was leery of the Beats brand because of their reputation of having a muddy bass sound with a poor sound stage. I was pleasantly surprised by these. They are as balanced sound as a pair of AirPods. They have reasonable noise cancellation, comparable to my old Bose earbuds. They charge on the USB-C cable as my iPhone and MacBook Pro. They are less noticeable than a pair of AirPods and still integrate into Apple’s ‘Find My’ service seamlessly.
Google Gemini app for Mac – I hope that this will help with my current tab and window juggling in Safari. I will let you know how I am getting on in a few months once I have given it a full shakedown.
The sales pitch.
I am a strategist who thrives on the “meaty brief”—the kind where deep-tech or complexity, business goals, and human culture collide.
With over a decade of experience across the UK, EMEA, and JAPAC, I specialise in bridging the gap between high-level strategy and creative execution. I was embedded within Google Cloud’s brand creative team, where I helped navigate the “messy steps” of global pivots and the rapid rise of Gen AI. And have recently been helping out agencies and startups in various sectors from narratives and new business pitches to sports partnerships.
My approach is simple: I use insight and analytics to find the “surprise” in the strategy. Whether it’s architecting an experiential event or defining a social narrative for a SaaS powerhouse, I focus on making complex brands feel human and high-velocity businesses feel accessible.
The Strategic Toolkit:
Brand & Creative Strategy: From B2B infrastructure to luxury travel.
AI-Enhanced Planning: Deeply literate in Google Gemini and prompt engineering to accelerate insights and creative output.
Multi-Sector Versatility: A proven track record across Tech & SaaS (Google Cloud, Semiconductors), Consumer Goods (FMCG, Beauty, Health), and High-Interest Categories (Luxury, Sports Apparel, Pharma).
I am officially open for new adventures with immediate effect. If you have a challenge that needs a all-in, hit-the-ground-running strategic lead, let’s talk.
Ok this is the end of my April 2026 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and enjoy the May bank holiday.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful as this helps other people and the algorithmic gods of Google Search and the various LLMs that are blurring what web search means nowadays.
September 2025 introduction – (26) pick-and-mix edition
Where has the year gone? I am just thankful that we got a little bit of sun, given how fast and hard the autumn wind and rain came in this year. I am now at issue 26, or as a bingo caller would put it ‘pick and mix’.
https://flic.kr/p/2m3xdDT
When I was a child ‘pick-and-mix’ sweets were a way of getting maximum variety for the lowest amount of pocket money that I earned from chores. Woolworths were famous at the time for their pick and mix section, alongside selling vinyl records and cassettes. Woolworths disappeared from the UK high street during the 2008 financial crisis.
For Mandarin Chinese speakers 26 is considered ‘lucky’ given that it sounds similar to ‘easy flow’ implying easy wealth.
This month’s soundtrack has been a banging digital compilation put together by Paradisco and Disco Isn’t Dead featuring The Reflex, PBR Streetgang, Prins Thomas, J Kriv, Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66.
Right, 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.
A post that took me too long to write about the favourite campaigns I had when on the jury of the PHNX awards.
I missed sharing a post I wrote last month that built on the work of Rob Estreitinho on ideas for being a good strategist.
Books that I have read.
I finished Moscow X by David McCloskey. (No plot spoilers). This is the second book my McCloskey after Damascus Station, which I read and enjoyed back in May last year. The book is like a more action-orientated American version of a LeCarré novel. The plot reminded me of LeCarré’s Single & Single and Our Kind of Traitor. McCloskey isn’t afraid to have strong female lead characters in his book.
Your Life is Manufactured by Tim Minshall. Minshall is a professor at Cambridge and heads up the engineering department’s manufacturing research centre. Because of his mastery of the subject area, he manages to provide an exceptionally accessible primer in terms of what manufacturing is, how it happens and what it means. More about it here.
Things I have been inspired by.
Election-winning opacity in influencer relations
I have been following Taylor Lorenz‘ work since she became the beat reporter for online culture and technology at the Business Insider. Her article for Wired magazine on how the Democratic Party in the US is working with paid influencers makes for an interesting read.
What would be the norm in the commercial world about influencer transparency where there is a paid relationship – isn’t happening in politics.
Ok, why does this matter? The reason why I think this matters is that people who do their time in the trenches of a presidential election campaign have a clear path into a number of American agencies.
‘I’ve have won a victory for X candidate and can do the same for your brand’ has been a popular refrain for decades in agencies.
I have been in the room when senior American agency people have tried to convince Chinese companies to buy their services based on their success in marketing a candidate in an election using western social media channels. There was no sense of irony when this was awkwardly delivered as a possible solution for domestic market campaigns to marketing teams in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai.
Bad habits will be brought into agencies and sold on to clients.
Chart of the month.
Kim Malcolm shared a great report done by Zappi and VaynerMedia looking at The State of Creative Effectiveness 2025. Two charts piqued my interest. The change in distinctiveness of advertising by age cohort.
https://flic.kr/p/2rqkjdG
The overall emotion that an advert evokes by age cohort.
https://flic.kr/p/2rqeQfW
Causality of these effects aren’t clear. Empirically, I know that great adverts still put a smile on the faces of people of all ages and can change brand choice, even in the oldest consumers.
I had more questions than answers. VaynerMedia thought that the answer should be cohort-specific campaigns. I am less sure, since brands tend to better within culture as a common point of truth for everyone. Also, I don’t believe in leaping to a solution until I understand the underlying ‘problem’.
I could understand a decline in novelty as people gain decades of life experience and will have seen similar creative executions before.
Are the adverts lacking a foundation in strong cultural insights and cues that would resonate with these older audience cohorts?
What I did notice is a correlation with the age profile in advertising agency staff compared to the general public and the point at which the drop-off to occurs. But correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation.
It’s concerning that advertising effectiveness declines in older audience cohorts as economic power skews older within the general population. This is likely to continue as millennials inherit wealth from their baby boomer relatives as they enter their 50s and 60s. Which makes the old marketer line about half of a consumers economic value is over by 35 seem hollow.
Things I have watched.
Ghost In The Shell Arise: Border 1 and Border 2. In the GITS storyline this is a prequel to the original film. It follows how the eventual team comes together. The technology looks less fantastical and more prophetic each time I watch it. The animation is still spectacular.
Ghost In The Shell Arise: Border 3 and Border 4. Following on from Border 1 and Border 2, this has Togusa and the Section 9 team following the same case from different ends – which eventually has Togusa joining Section 9 as its only unaugmented team member.
I bought up as many of the films I could in Johnnie To’s filmography after he criticised Hong Kong’s national security regulation in an interview, which was likely to be the kiss of death to his film career. I finally got around to watching one of his best known films PTU and the series of Tactical Unit films that came from the same universe.
PTU: One of the paradoxes of Hong Kong is the prevalence of triad and corruption dramas, compared to the real life which whilst not crime and corruption free is much more staid. Hong Kong is as different from its cinematic counterpart, as the UK is to Richard Curtis’ films. PTU like Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog is based around the search for a missing police pistol. PTU (police tactical unit) officers look to help out a detective from the OCTB (organised crime and triad bureau). While the film occurs over one night, it was actually shot over three years and is one of Johnnie To’s best known films. Shooting only at night, To provided the audience with a familiar, yet different, cinematic experience. The washed out colours of day time Hong Kong is replaced by vibrant signage and the sharp shadows defined by the street lighting. Officers walking with a street lamp lit Tom Lee music instrument store behind them, look like its from a John Ford scene in composition. Some of his tracking shots, due to the framing of photography and the distortions of the night give an almost Inception like feeling to the geography of Hong Kong streets, warping the horizon between buildings the night sky. PTU was successful internationally and then spawned, five further films from the same universe made in 2008 and 2009.
Tactical Unit: The Code was a one of a series of Tactical Unit sequels to Johnnie To’s PTU. In The Code several plot lines come together. The investigation of CCTV footage of officers beating up a triad , a police officer heavily in debt due to negative equity on his mortgage and a drug deal gone wrong. All this plays out in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong. When this film was made back in 2008, it would have been considered well done, but largely unremarkable. Nowadays it couldn’t be made as it would in breach of the National Security Law. The irony is that this film is available on the iQiyi streaming service from mainland China.
Tactical Unit: Human Nature loses some of the cinematic feel of PTU. It’s not as masterful a film , BUT, the convoluted threads of the plot and the great cast who are now completely comfortable in their characters make it work well.
Tactical Unit: No Way Out. No Way Out starts with an impressive screne shot in Temple Street market. The film explores the Temple Street area of Kowloon and organised crime links to everything from cigarette smuggling to drugs.
Tactical Unit: Comrade in Arms is the penultimate in the series from the PTU universe of films. You still have the main cast of Hong Kong veterans Lam Suet, Simon Yam and Maggie Shiu. Plain clothes officer Lo Sa has been demoted to wearing a uniform and both Mike Ho and Sergeant Kat’s squads are still patrolling the Kowloon side of Victoria harbour. This sees the stars leave their usual urban beat and go into the hills of the New Territories after bank robbers. Much of it occurs in daylight, which sets it apart from the night time beat of PTU. Nowadays it couldn’t be made as it would in breach of the National Security Law. The irony is that this film is available on the iQiyi streaming service from mainland China.
Tactical Unit: Partners. Partners is unusual in that it revolves around the challenges of the ethnic minorities that make up Hong Kong from romance fraud ensnaring filipina workers to discrimination against Indians and Nepalis. While some of the show happens during late on in the day, it still captures much of the night time feeling of the universe
2001 Nightsis a 3D anime. While I admire the ambition and the technical expertise that went into the models, the characters as CGI fall down and distract from the storytelling. Also it felt weirdly like Space 1999 – and not in a good way.
Her Vengeance is a Hong Kong category III revenge movie filmed in 1988 that 88 Films recently release on Blu Ray. It borrows from another Hong Kong film in the early 1970s and I Spit On Your Grave. Despite being an low budget exploitation film it features a number of notable Hong Kong actors, probably because it was a Golden Harvest Production.
https://flic.kr/p/qcJyrs
I found the film interesting because its opening was shot at Stanley Ho’s iconic Casino Lisboa in Macau. This was unusual because Hong Kong had lots of nightclubs that would have been fine for the protagonists management role without the hassle of the additional travel and government permissions. So we get a rare late 1980s snapshot of the then Portuguese colony.
When The Last Sword Is Drawnis a classic chambara (samurai sword-play) movie. It tells the complex story of a samurai, who unable to support his family on his meagre income as a school teacher and fencing master, turns his back on his clan and leaves to find work in Kyoto. Once in Kyoto he becomes embroiled in the battle between the declining Takagawa Shogunate and the Imperial Royal Family during the 19th century. Whilst the film does contain a lot of violence, it is used as a backdrop to the humanity of the main character and battles he faces between providing for his family and doing the honourable thing.
The plot is told through the recollections of others and finishes with the samurai’s youngest daughter getting ready to leave Japan with her husband and set up a doctor’s surgery in Manchuria (China).
Useful tools.
Playing Blu-Ray discs on a Mac
I have a Blu Ray player in my home theatre that enjoy using in lieu of subscribing to Netflix, which allows to me to explore more art house content than I can stream. Macgo Mac Blu Ray Player Pro gives your Mac the software capability that Steve Jobs wouldn’t.
One final thing, if you prefer to use Substack, you can now subscribe to this newsletter there.
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.
Ok this is the end of my September 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.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.
Welcome to my April 2025 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 21st issue.
21 marks a transition to full adulthood in various countries, hence ‘keys to the door’ in bingo slang. In Chinese numbers, symbolism is often down to phrases that numbers sound like. 21 sounds like “easily definitely fine” – indicating an auspicious association with the number.
For some reason this month I have had Bill McClintock’sMotor City Woman on repeat. It’s a mash-up of The Spinners – I’ll be Around, Queensrÿche – Jet City Woman and Steely Dan – Do it Again. It’s a bit of an ear worm – you’re welcome.
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.
Cleaned up copy of an interview I did as a juror for the PHNX Awards. More here.
From the challenges faced by Apple Intelligence to drone deliveries and designing in lightness.
I thought about how computing tends towards efficiency along the story arc of its history and its likely impact on our use of AI models.
Books that I have read.
The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok. The book is a complex thriller. The story is straight forward, but the books covers complex, fraught issues with aplomb from misogyny, the male gaze to the white saviour complex.
The Tiger That Isn’t by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot focused on the use of numbers in the media. But it’s also invaluable for strategists reading and interrogating pre-existing research. As a book is very easy-going and readable. I read it travelling back-and-forth to see the parents.
A Spy Alone was written by former MI6 officer Charles Beaumont. I was reminded of the dreary early 1970s of George Smiley’s Britain in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by the tone of the book. However A Spy Alone is alarmingly contemporary, with oblique references to UK infrastructure investments in the UK attached to a hostile foreign power, private sector intelligence, open source intelligence a la Bellingcat, nihilistic entrepreneurs and a thoroughly corrupted body politic. Beaumont’s story features a post cold-war spy ring in Oxford University echoing the cold war Cambridge spy ring. Beaumont touches on real contemporary issues through the classic thriller, in the same way that Mick Herron uses satire.
Things I have been inspired by.
Big brand advertising isn’t as digital as we think.
Trends in TV 2025 by Thinkbox threw up some interesting data points and hypotheses.
Advertising is eating retail property. A good deal of search and social advertising gains is not from traditional advertising, but traditional retailing, in place of a real-world shop front. This is primarily carried out by small and medium-sized enterprises. I imagine a lot of this is Chinese direct-to-consumer businesses. 80% of Meta’s revenue is not from the six largest advertising holding companies.
Viewership across video platforms both online and offline have stabilised in the UK. (Separately I heard that ITV were getting the same viewership per programme, but it’s been attenuated with the rise of time-shifted content via the online viewership.
World views
WARC highlighted research done by Craft Human Intelligence for Channel 4 where they outlined six world views for young adults. While it was couched in terms of ‘gen-z’, I would love to see an ongoing inter-cohort longitudinal study to see how these world views change over time in young people. This would also provide an understanding of it it reflects wider population world views. BBH Labspast work looking at Group Cohesion Score of gen-Z – implies that this is unlikely to be just a generational change but might have a more longitudinal effect across generations to varying extents.
Anyway back to he six world views outlined:
‘Girl power’ feminists. 99% identified as female. About 21% of their cohort. “While they’re overwhelmingly progressive, their focus tends to be on personal goals rather than macro-level politics. They underindex heavily on engagement with UK politics and society.”
‘Fight for your rights’. 12% of cohort, 60% female, educated and engaged with current affairs. “Although they consider themselves broadly happy, they believe the UK is deeply unfair – but believe that progress is both necessary and achievable.”
‘Dice are loaded’ are 15% of their cohort. 68% female. “Feeling left behind, they perceive themselves to lack control over their future, and are worried about finances, employment, housing, mental health, or physical appearance.”
‘Zero-sum’ thinkers comprise 18% of their cohort. Over-index at higher end of social-economic scale, gender balanced. “…they lean toward authoritarian and radical views on both sides of the political spectrum.”
‘Boys can’t be boys’ are 14% of the cohort and 82% male. Supporters of traditional masculinity.
‘Blank slates’. 20% of their cohort, all of them male. “They aren’t unintelligent or unambitious, but they pay little attention to matters beyond their own, immediate world. While some follow the news, their main focus is on just getting on with life”.
At the beginning of March, Unilever abruptly replaced its CEO. Hein Schumacher was out, and in the space of a week CFO Fernando Fernandez became CEO. That showed a deep internal dissatisfaction with Unilever’s performance that surprised shareholders AND the business media. Over the past decade Unilever has leaned hard into premium products and influencer marketing.
“There are 19,000 zip codes in India. There are 5,764 municipalities in Brazil. I want one influencer in each of them,” Fernandez said. “That’s a significant change. It requires a machine of content creation, very different to the one we had in the past . . . ”
Fernandez wants to lean even harder into influencer marketing. But I thought that there was a delta on this approach given his goal to have higher margin premium brands that are highly desirable.
“Desirability at scale and marketing activity systems at scale will be the fundamental principles of our marketing strategy”
Meanwhile Michael Farmer’s newsletter had some datapoints that were very apropos to the Unilever situation.
“…for the fifty years from 1960 to 2010, the combined FMCG sales of P&G, Unilever, Nestle and Colgate-Palmolive grew at about an 8% compounded annual growth rate per year. The numbers associated with this long-term growth rate are staggering. P&G alone grew from about $1 billion (1960) to $79 billion in 2010. Throughout this period, P&G was the industry’s advocate for the power of advertising, becoming the largest advertiser in the US, with a focus on traditional advertising — digital / social advertising had hardly begun until 2010. Since 2010, with the advent of digital / social advertising, and massive increases in digital / social spend, P&G, Unilever, Nestle and Colgate-Palmolive have grown, collectively, at less than 1% per year, about half the growth rate of the US economy (2.1% per year). They are not the only major advertisers who have grown below GDP rates. At least 20 of the 50 largest advertisers in the US have grown below 2% per year for the past 15 years. Digital and social advertising, of course, have come to dominate the advertising scene since 2010, and it represents, today, about 2/3rds of all advertising spend.”
Mr Fernandez has quite the Gordian knot to try and solve, one-way or another.
Automated communications and AI influencers
Thanks to Stephen Waddington‘s newsletter highlighted a meta-analysis of research papers on the role of automation and generative AI in communications. What’s interesting is the amount of questions that the paper flags, which are key to consideration of these technologies in marketing and advertising. More here.
LinkedIn performance
Social Insider has pulled together some benchmarking data on LinkedIn content performance. It helps guide what good looks like and the content types to optimise for on LinkedIn. Register and download here.
Chart of the month.
The FT had some really interesting data points that hinted at a possible longitudinal crisis in various aspects of reasoning and problem solving. There has been few ongoing studies in this area, and it deserves more scrutiny.
https://flic.kr/p/2qS6noX
In his article Have humans past peak brain power, FT data journalist John Burn-Murdoch makes the case about traits which would support intelligence and innovation from reading, to mathematical reasoning and problem solving have been on a downward trends. The timing of this decline seems to correlate with the rise of the social web.
If true, over time this may work its way into marketing effectiveness. My best guess would be that rational messages are likely to be less effective in comparison to simple emotional messages with a single-minded intent over time. This should show up in both short term and long term performance. A more cynical view might be that the opportunity for bundling and other pricing complexities could facilitate greater profit margins over time.
Things I have watched.
Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog is a film that I can watch several times over despite the film being over 75 years old now. Detective Murakami’s trek through the neighbourhoods of occupation-era Tokyo and all the actors performances are stunning. The storytelling is amazing and there are set pieces in here that are high points in cinema history. I don’t want to say too much more and spoil it for you, if you haven’t already seen it.
Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex – Solid State Society – this is a follow on to the original GiTS manga and anime films touches directly on the challenges faced looking after Japan’s aging society. Central to the story is the apparent kidnapping over time of 20,000 children who can’t remember who their parents are. The plot is up to the usual high standard with government intrigue, technical and societal challenges.
The Wire series one – I stopped and started watching The Wire. Films better suited my focus at the time. I finally started into series one this month. The ensemble cast are brilliant. The show is now 22 years old, yet it has aged surprisingly well. While technology works miracles, the slow methodical approach to building a case is always the same.
How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster – is a fantastic documentary covering the career of architect Sir Norman Foster. I remember watching it at the ICA when it originally came out and enjoyed watching it again on DVD. Foster brings a similar approach to architecture that Colin Chapman brought to his Lotus cars. When we are now thinking about efficiency and sustainability, their viewpoints feel very forward-thinking in nature.
Useful tools.
Fixing the iOS Mail app
You know something is up when media outlets are writing to you with instructions on how they can remain visible in your inbox. The problem is due to Apple’s revamp of the iPhone’s Mail.app as part of its update to iOS 18.2.
So how do you do this?
Open Mail.app and you can see the categorised folders at the top of your screen, under the search bar.
Find each tab where an a given email has been put. Open the latest edition. Tap the upper right hand corner. Select ‘Categorise Sender’. Choose ‘Primary’ to make sure future emails from this sender are in your main inbox view.
That’s going to get old pretty soon. My alternative is to toggle between views as it makes sense. Apple’s inbox groupings are handy when you want to quickly find items you can delete quickly. Otherwise the single view makes sense.
Inspiration for strategists
Questions are probably the most important tool for strategists. 100 questions offers inspiration so you can focus on the right ones to ask for a given time.
The sales pitch.
I have been worked on the interrogation process and building responses to a couple of client new business briefs for friends (Red Robin Ventures and Craft Associates) and am now working a new brand and creative strategy engagement as part of an internal creative agency at Google.
If you’re thinking about strategy needs in Q4 (October onwards) – keep me in mind; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me on YunoJuno and LinkedIn; get my email from Spamty to drop me a line.
Ok this is the end of my April 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into spring, and enjoy the May bank holidays.
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.
