Ged Carroll

Category: business | 商業 | 상업 | ビジネス

My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.

At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.

I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.

Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.

I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.

Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.

  • April 2026 newsletter – 33rd edition aka ‘dirty knee’

    April 2026 introduction – (33) dirty knee

    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.

    truman with trains, dirty knees, and boots on the bus

    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. 

    SO

    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

    1. 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.
    2. Meta is projected to pass Google in digital advertising spend thanks to Reels, Threads and WhatsApp.
    3. The implications of Tottenham Hotspur being relegated from the Premier League has implications beyond the pitch and into sponsor’s boardrooms.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.

    praykinson Vajira Hospital

    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.
    Internet technologies access

    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.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    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.

    Get in touch and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on my blog,  Substack as well as LinkedIn.

  • The Burson post

    Disclosure: a long time ago I worked for a forerunner of Burson and WPP’s dedicated agency for Colgate; Red Fuse. During that time I was based out of Hong Kong.

    Something fishy

    Later on, I won the Huawei consumer devices AOR business from my old colleagues in Hong Kong.

    I know Burson’s current CEO Corey duBrowa from even further back in my agency life, we share a love of the Wu Tang clan. 

    What’s news?

    Ok, now that’s out of the way, let’s get into what you’re really here to read. The Times ‘news‘ that Burson is a possible candidate for sale isn’t really news. It had been eluded to previously in coverage. Coming in as a new CEO to WPP, it was inevitable would take an all-up strategic review.

    Executives in the group have also discussed potential disposals as part of the new strategy, with some suggesting that Burson, its PR agency, would be the easiest to consider for sale given it sits separately from the three other divisions. – WPP to overhaul creative agency structure in strategic rethink | Financial Times (February 9, 2026)

    The real news was that WPP appointed Goldman Sachs to do the work and that Burson reported a 6% decline in revenue in 2025.

    The shape of the new WPP has been becoming clear for a number of months.

    • WPP Production was basically the same direction of travel as Hogarth with a new brand. Hogarth was a new brand in itself, and didn’t have the depth of brand equity that Young & Rubican (Y&R Brands) or J Walter Thompson (JWT) had.
    • WPP Open – AI stuff. Some of which is ‘self-service’ to tap into smaller clients and some of which seems to sit in WPP Production.
    • WPP Media – which seems to be a rebrand of GroupM, like WPP Production it makes complete sense.
    • WPP Creative – puts the creative brands under one line item where it used to be under Y&R Brands, JWT, Ogilvy etc. The past structure was as much down to WPP’s history of acquisition as it was to strategy. Much of this work had been done under Mark Read, this seemed to be as much about cleaning up the accounting processes as anything else. PR agencies would nominally fit underneath.

    Why would WPP sell Burson?

    A successful sale of Burson would provide WPP with funds to use elsewhere. This could fulfil two purposes; reducing debt or reinvesting in WPP’s business and technology transformation. Burson is a business that could be packaged up, sold to the right buyer or floated in a public offering.

    The downsides would be a loss of integrated pitch power, and a smaller global footprint for back-office resources.

    Obviously a few questions come up about who would be a buyer and would WPP want to spend the time listing Burson as a separate business?

    It also makes strategic sense

    When I worked at WPP, the PR agencies outside of Ogilvy weren’t integrated very tightly to their creative agency counterparts. You had a similar distance between the likes of Golin and McCann Erickson at IPG too. So the loss of integrated pitch power less than it would at first appear.

    PR is an umbrella term for two broad functions, marketing communications and management functions. Management functions would include:

    • Internal communications including around change management.
    • Legal and compliance, for instance around financial communications for a public company.
    • Stakeholder engagement including the investor community, local communities and government.

    That isn’t an exhaustive list but it covers the major areas. There is more synergy between these areas and management consultancies than there are with WPP’s offerings. WPP has already sold FGS last year. FGS is a financial communications specialist.

    The ‘management functions’ is more of a boutique offering and can come with risks as Bell Pottinger found out to their cost.

    It’s arguably even more risky in a volatile political environment that yo-yos between different forms of political populism.

    The other side of PR: marketing communications is earned media. That side of PR has been shaken up by several factors:

    • Decline in the mainstream media.
    • Search, generative AI and social algorithms as tastemakers.
    • The creator economy.
    • Brand media: led by the technology industry who published their news directly via blog posts.

    In the past creative agencies thought about talkability, which was earned impact from advertising creative. Now creative agencies think about campaigns even more in terms of earned impact, including earned first approaches and WPP agency Ogilvy has managed to integrate its PR function into this process.

    Specialist agencies tap into the creator economy and it’s been well documented by senior leaders in PR like Stephen Waddington how the PR industry missed the SEO opportunity.

    PR agencies have looked to redefine themselves. The world’s largest PR firm, Edelman calls themselves a ‘global communications firm’ to help it position itself against management consultancies and advertising agencies.

    The question WPP would have been asking themselves would have been: do they really need Burson when a lot of its function is now being done by media and creative agencies?

    What does Burson gain or lose from leaving WPP, one way or the other?

    Burson and its previous constituent agencies have been part of a conglomerate for the past quarter of a century that wasn’t focused on their business. WPP’s former CEO Sir Martin Sorrell used to talk about WPP primarily being a ‘media investment’ business for its clients. Helping them make the most effective, efficient investments in advertising for its clients.

    Burson could be allowed to chart its own course, with less constraints put upon the business.

    Burson would lose access to shared services over time, having to reorganise:

    • IT support
    • Offices
    • Time-tracking
    • Finance
    • Employee and at least some client contracts
    • New business prospecting
    • Client contracts where the work is shared with WPP agencies

    Over time Burson could rebuild partnerships and capabilities that it would have previously had through WPP.

    There is a bigger question about whether the natural consequence of the structural bifurcation of modern PR into ‘management’ and ‘marketing communications’ specialists leaves room for a large full service generalist agency like Burson.

    The industry itself is splitting rapidly between highly specialised management consultancy style operations handling the C-suite, and earned-first creative shops driving marketing communications. The traditional, full-service generalist model that Burson and its ancestors helped invent is finding it harder to operate in the middle ground. For example, Edelman, the PR industry’s bellwether fell below the $1 billion fee income mark in 2024, a 5% global decline. 

    If the world’s largest PR firm is struggling to make the integrated generalist model work, it may be that the model itself might be broken?

    Who may want to buy Burson?

    Private equity (including supporting a management team buyout)

    I think that Burson would be a tough sell for an informed private equity (PE) firm. PE firms tend to look for business with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over 10%.

    Here are some estimates that are why I came to this conclusion and I may be wrong.

    Global Industry CAGR (2024–2030) is projected at 6.1% to 6.4%, although some aggressively optimistic estimates suggest up to 10.5%. That is based around assumptions on digital transformation and AI-driven services being fully integrated.

    Looking at historic data from PRovoke Media’s global top 250 PR firms (2015 – 2023), CAGR was typically between 3.5% and 5%. These numbers maybe a bit optimistic due to currency fluctuations. (During CoVID, 2020 was flat and there was a sharp rebound in 2021.)

    Burson’s constituent agencies BCW and H+K were running somewhere around 3.5 – 4% CAGR.

    The outliers are AxiCom and ASDA’A who are Burson’s tech specialist brand and its Middle East agency presence – both operating in high growth sectors. They had CAGR somewhere between 12 – 14%.

    This is the reason why PE has focused on specialists in the healthcare area or financial communications like FGS Global where the growth rate and margins are higher than normal.

    Given the length of time that Burson has been within WPP, the consolidation that the business has been through merging:

    • Burson-Marsteller
    • Cohn & Wolfe
    • Hill and Knowlton (H+K)
    • JeffreyGroup

    WPP likely trimmed out any organisational ‘fat’ which leaves little if any efficiency gains to be made by an acquiring PE firm.

    When these firms were all separate it’s not like WPP were generous at the best of times. I heard allegations of bonuses either cancelled , or like pay rises constantly pushed out as aggressive cash management and cost reduction with junior and mid-level staff taking the brunt of this process.

    Another PR agency network

    Another PR agency network purchasing Burson may gain some operational efficiencies by de-duplicating the back office business processes from finance to HR departments.

    But given that Burson is the world’s number two agency by fee income according to Provoke Media and PR Week; it is unlikely to be acquired by another PR network.

    If the current number one Edelman bought them, they would run into antitrust issues and this would put them on the radar of the Trump administration in the US. Given the progressive leaning content of their Trust Barometer research, Edelman may end up creating its own business crisis.

    Omnicom are likely too wrapped up in consolidating their purchase of Interpublic to attempt it. Even if they did make an offer, WPP may not be inclined to sell to a direct rival.

    Publicis and Havas both have their focus on larger growth opportunities elsewhere and PR are much smaller parts of their business.

    Most of the rest of the largest global agencies in the PR industry are either industry specialists like Real Chemistry and Invizio Evoke (health), FGS Global, APCO and Brunswick (financial communications) or national champions like Germany’s mc Group.

    Conducting a leveraged buyout (LBO)of Burson would be unattractive due to the cost of debt servicing versus Burson’s CAGR. So this would make financing for a management buyout (MBO) challenging too.

    Spin out or spin-in

    From a PR agency perspective Burson has a good quality management team at the top. Someone like Corey duBrowa, who has previously worked at major corporates like Google and Starbucks. If the business was spun off or floated like Next15 Group, it could make sense on the London Stock Exchange.

    Retail investors would be likely to give the best return for WPP. However, an IPO would take a major effort and a good deal of time to make happen that doesn’t feel like the kind of cadence that the WPP Elevate28 plan / platform wants to move at.

    A spin-in might make some sense. Merge Burson with a publicly listed company (for instance Next15 or Stagwell) and then WPP sell down their shares over time. WPP maybe able to securitise its shares in such a way that it gets its (diminished) return upfront and a financial partner gradually sells down the shares with a view to making a profit on the money it paid WPP versus the price it gets on the stock market.

    Clients get a vote too

    Clients get a vote too. If the future of Burson affects client team morale, capacity or make-up they are likely to head for the door. The agency intellectual capital is their practitioners.

    We saw a client exodus happen during the protracted acquisition of IPG by Omnicom with 3.5 percent drops in year-on-year revenue and peaked as high as 10% on a quarterly basis in markets like Australia.

    Maintaining the client base will require a swift disposal process that doesn’t have Burson people keeping one eye on LinkedIn and the jobs section of PR Week or Ragan PR Daily.

    Omnicom is desperate to rejuvenate its business and stealing unhappy Burson clients would be an easy win. Publicis is a high-performing group of agencies already and boutique shops live for ‘giant-killing’ new business pitches. Havas had a healthy PR business that would provide an alternative for any unhappy Burson clients.

    The Human Cost of Structural Change

    The current speculation surrounding Burson reflects a broader structural shift across the industry. For the professionals within the agency, many of whom have spent years managing complex briefs for major clients, this period of uncertainty will be unsettling.

    Burson’s current position is not a reflection on the capability of its staff. It is the logical outcome of the continuing bifurcation of modern PR.

    The sector is dividing between specialist management consultancies advising the C-suite and agile creative shops leading marketing communications.

    The traditional generalist model, is finding the middle ground smaller and tougher than it used to be.

    WPP’s wider strategy is now firmly anchored in technology and integrated creative solutions.

    Operating independently or with private equity backing, Burson would have the operational freedom to determine its exact shape in this new market. Stepping away from a holding company structure is sometimes the clearest route to finding the necessary focus. The talent remain in place; the immediate requirement is a business model aligned with current market realities.

  • Pilot Parker & more inspiration

    This inspiration post is a mix of things that caught my eye from Pilot Parker to HyperCard.

    Pilot Parker

    pilot parker

    Pilot Parker is Malaysia Airlines mascot. I was familiar with him from the inflight duty-free catalogue. The inspiration for the film came from a moment shared by a young passenger who had flown with Malaysia Airlines. After her trip, she sent the airline a hand-drawn illustration of Pilot Parker along with a letter describing how the mascot brought her comfort during the journey. So the brand moved Pilot Parker from souvenir to fluent object.

    Lemon – lime facetime call.

    Apple had a week of things including more affordable devices (iPhone 17e and MacBook Neo) in a green-yellow colour. The company deleted all their TikTok account contents and then posted this video.

    @apple

    hello?

    ♬ original sound – apple

    20-somethings in the ad industry lost their minds, feeling seen and considering it revolutionary that large brands have humour and can navigate culture. They then filled LinkedIn with insightful posts to let all the oldster millennials know.

    Just leaving this one here, in case anyone notices. The lesson of the story is that everything old is new, especially the heuristic about being part of culture.

    Retrospective on HyperCard

    HyperCard was a powerful idea that didn’t have its time. I used it to run lab experiments during a brief time with Corning prior to my going to college. This video goes into real depth about what we missed.

    Voice recognition is older than you think

    I found this 1958 film of Victor Scheinman, at the time a high school student. He invented a solution that provided speech to text via a typewriter. It isn’t that far away from the speech recognition that I had on mobile phones from my Ericsson T39 through to my current iPhone.

    In his adult life Scheinman worked with AI pioneer Marvin Minsky and worked in the field of robotics in academia and the private sector. Scheinman went on to work with General Motors and Yaskawa Electric Corporation. Right up to his death Scheinman was an associate professor who still consulted at Stanford University.

    Scheinman’s high school experiment shows both how far we’ve come and yet how little we’ve progressed in comparison to the hype.

    Think with Google & Sir Martin Sorrell

    Think with Google interviewed Sir Martin Sorrell who was entertaining and consistent on themes he has been talking for the past few years. I found it interesting that he suspects marketing science is ‘over’. I don’t agree with him in this respect because software changes faster than wetware, but Sorrell instead has the CFO view within clients.

    Yet the favourite campaigns that he worked on were his work at Saatchi & Saatchi before he built WPP.

    Here’s the British Airways ‘Manhattan Landing‘ campaign from 1983 that Sir Martin named as the favourite campaign that he worked on.

    More marketing related content here.

  • March 2026 newsletter – (32) buckle my shoe

    March 2026 introduction – (32) buckle my shoe

    By some miracle, I have managed to make it to issue 32. Yes this is late, my excuse was reading The Persian, more on that below. In the jargon of the bingo hall 32 came up as ‘buckle my shoe’.

    https://flic.kr/p/w8zyP

    As I wrote this down I was reminded of a vivid memory from my early childhood. I was staying with my Granny on the family farm in rural Ireland. I would have been pre-school, maybe three years old.

    Like a magpie I was attracted to shiny things, and she had a pair of shoes with gold coloured decorative elements on them. They were horseshoe-shaped buckles, but didn’t serve any function beyond aesthetics.

    I managed to remove one unintentionally, it didn’t seem to take any effort. I realised it shouldn’t be off the shoe, so I returned it to her in my mind, by posting it under the closed door of her bedroom.

    I forgot about it. There was more important things to do like pat the friendly farm dog and feed soda bread crumbs from the breakfast table to the couple of coal tits that would show up at the back door after every meal.

    Later on, the adults got in a state when the buckle was discovered missing and one of Granny’s best pairs of shoes were now ruined. I pointed out where I had put the buckle, but it was now nowhere to be found. The second buckle was slipped off the other shoe and both shoes matched again, no one outside the household was any the wiser until you read this.

    Like the missing buckle we can often no longer return, but we can adapt and move forward by shedding extraneous items that hold us back.

    Beyond bingo, 32 in Chinese sounds similar to easy growth, which is considered lucky across business, relationships and in one’s personal life. It also corresponds to perseverance or staying the course in the I Ching.

    This month’s soundtrack to the newsletter is collated by The Found Sound Orchestra over on SoundCloud. Now that’s sorted, 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. 

    SO

    Things I’ve written.

    Reflecting on the different archetypes of people that you meet in an advertising agency new business pitch and how to deal with them.

    A roundup of everything from Chinese innovation to Anthropic’s disagreement with the US Department of Defense.

    ICYMI – Top five shares on LinkedIn

    1. Wellness as an experiential aspect of luxury. It has become a luxury currency in its own right for both genders according to a new report by Karla Otto.
    2. My friend Nigel Scott analysed the future of creative agencies. He thought that AI forced the agency break even point even higher, which impacts the rise of the independents.
    3. The paradox of Gucci using generative AI to market slow luxury aesthetic / lifestyle.
    4. International Women’s Day was marked by some sobering research on attitudes to gender equality in the UK. There was a generational aspect to it where younger cohorts men held more traditional views than other groups and optimism for their future prospects dropped.
    5. Meta was found liable in two court cases. One was about the role of social platforms facilitating human trafficking. The second was being found liable due to creating an ‘addictive’ platform. Critics now have a roadmap to seek damages and drive design changes.

    Books that I have read.

    The Persian by David McCloskey – this isn’t the first book that I have read by David McCloskey, but the one that I most anticipated. Espionage novels have had a revival as the global war on terror (GWoT) wound down, Ukraine, the South China Sea and Iran wound up. The timing of the book was precipitous. It came out at the end of January and events started down their path in the Persian Gulf soon after.

    The book is very cleverly written. The story told from multiple perspectives:

    • A Mossad department head and his staff
    • A prisoner held in an Iranian jail
    • An Iranian mother

    Yes you get the tension of a spy novel, but you also get the portrait of flawed human characters, acting and reacting to the terrible incidents around them. In this respect, it reminded me of what the Apple TV series Tehran tried to do. McCloskey manages to humanise his characters in a way that few authors in the genre beyond John le Carré and Mick Herron in his own way.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Japanese porcelain brand Hataman Touen graced the tables of the Imperial Royal Household. Their classical techniques became relevant of the modern world thanks to a collaboration with Ghost In The Shell Standalone Complex anime.

    tachikoma

    The result was a limited edition model of the Tachikoma autonomous intelligent ‘tank’ that plays a prominent role in the show.

    https://www.tiktok.com/@argos/video/7577699305818000662?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7612101813533623830

    I am not a big fan of TikTok, but Argos have been killing it with their ‘stockroom rave‘. The nod to raving in working class culture for over half a century from the speed-fuelled Wigan Casino all-nighters to the Boiler Room sessions today. Less so now that I work in offices, but before going to college banging tunes on Sony ghetto-blaster got me through shifts in a McDonald’s, a clothing factory and a plant hire repair workshop. And doing it all with a dash of humour.

    My friend Dan Ilett‘s newsletter The Executive Summary fufils the old strategist maxim of being interesting first, being right second. Dan manages to pull both off more often than not, but he is always interesting. Sign up here.

    Chart of the month. 

    This month due to the confluence of a client project that never happened and the latest report drop by Morgan Stanley in association with LuxeConsult, I looked into the Swiss luxury watch industry.

    swiss watches

    A few interesting trends emerge:

    • Independents such as Patek Philippe and Rolex have successfully held off large luxury conglomerates LVMH and Richemont.
    • Swatch Group has become a donor of market share to the other main players.
    • The K-shaped market can be seen in the relative performance of Richemont’s brands. Vacheron Constantin and Cartier outperformed while IWC, Panerai and Jaeger-LeCoultre laboured in a tightening market.
    • The sector-wide -3% CAGR (compound annual growth rate), was driven by economics as much as smart watches. Smart watches will exert less pressure moving forwards as they were kept and worn for longer by users.

    Things I have watched. 

    I rewatched the original 1995 Ghost In The Shell animated film. I went in expecting for me to be thinking about the future of AI, instead the idea of the puppet master and his agent reminded me of the impact of social media and the influence that it impacts on consumers. There is one scene where a dust bin wagon driver is being questioned and is told that all his memories are false, he had been taken in by a false life. It spoke to the way people become ‘red pilled’.

    Useful tools.

    If like me, you have found that no matter what you do with your brightness button, your Mac’s screen is lacking, fear not Vivid is here. You don’t have to splurge on an XDR display to make it pop and keep the colour balance, Vivid is an app that doubles the brightness your display can achieve.  

    I am a long time fan of RSS reader Newsblur. The apps for it have recently undergone a major redesign including new features to make it even more intelligent and useful. In particular, I am really excited about a new feature that turns any website into an RSS feed that can be followed which the call Webfeeds.

    We can have a larger debate about how web developers, designers and site owners have taken a backward step by not using RSS or Atom. WordPress comes with RSS built in, so you have to actively shut it down. Instead, Instead I’d like to celebrate the major level engineering that Samuel Clay and the team at Newsblur managed to achieve in developing Webfeeds as a highly usable feature within Newblur.

    YouTube Search Fixer is a browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox that allows you to customise search results on YouTube. Doing research and don’t want to get music videos, or avoid related searches clutter – then you don’t have to.

    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.

    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.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my March 2026 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and enjoy the joys of spring along with chocolate eggs.

    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.

    Get in touch and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on Substack as well as LinkedIn.

  • The nine people you meet in a pitch

    The nine people you meet in a pitch came out of talking with a couple of former colleagues about recent pitches that they’d been involved in. I was thinking about how I had experienced what it was like to pitch and to be pitched to as a client.

    The tour guide's sales pitch

    Based on all that, I thought I would share some experience and expertise that might be of help.

    The nine people you are likely pitching to.

    You can think of the panelists receiving your pitch as fitting into nine behaviour archetypes.

    • The advocate
    • The complainer
    • The detail lover
    • The late comer
    • The multi-tasker
    • The narcissist
    • The skeptic
    • The spectator
    • The surpriser

    Right let’s get into this and meet the nine people.

    The advocate

    The advocate may be apparent before you are in the room for the pitch. They may have worked with the agency before and have likely advocated for the agency to be on the list. A good pitch lead with enough time will have primed the advocate with the thinking and themes that they would be sharing in the pitch.

    Or not, some people are just very agreeable in nature.

    How you’ll recognise them

    They will seem receptive and positive to everything. Pitch teams and process tends to overlook the advocate in the pitch. But they can be used to the pitch team’s advantage.

    The complainer

    The complainer may be an advocate of the existing agency, may be having their budget cut to pay for the activity that the new agency will do, or may have been left out of the early process that started the agency search.

    How you’ll recognise them

    Negative towards everything, can be mistaken for the skeptic or the surpriser.

    The detail lover

    These people usually fit into one of three categories:

    • They are currently really in the trenches and want to ensure that you can really make their lives easier
    • They are product people who are domain experts on their area: use cases, technical details and probably less likely users
    • In a highly regulated sector they could have a legal or regulatory responsibility, in pharma companies they may be called MLR (medical, legal and regulatory)

    How you’ll recognise them

    Prior the pitch these people are most likely to push an agency to put much more detail in their decks so they become lengthy and take a lot of time to create. All the while the storytelling red thread goes missing.

    In the pitch, given the volume of questioning you may mistake them for the surpriser or the narcissist. The key differences being that the narcissist won’t usually give you an opportunity to answer and the surpriser will bring completely new areas of questioning in.

    The late comer

    They turn up the meetings late. This could be personal factors such as workload and time management, or it could be an attention diverting tactic.

    How you’ll recognise them

    They turn up late, its more important to identify why they turn up late as you could actually be dealing with the narcissist, the skeptic or the surpriser.

    The multi-tasker

    This usually comes down to company culture usually rather than a character trait.

    How to recognise them

    If it’s company culture you will be likely dealing with a sea of laptop lids, or smartphone being used on the desk. Assume that they are listening, although they might be commenting and norming in real time on your presentation in a conversation thread on Google Workspace, Teams, WhatsApp etc.

    If it’s one person then it might be the sign of distraction (child minder gets in touch saying their child is running a temperature or similar). Or it could be a sign of dissonance, keep an eye out for the complainer or the skeptic

    The skeptic

    They may have similar world view to the complainer in that they would prefer the status quo. Though they may view the status quo as the least worst option rather than be an advocate for it.

    They may be:

    • Risk averse by nature
    • This may be completely new to them
    • They may have been part of a project that has gone wrong in the past

    How you’ll recognise them

    This could be tricky as they may look similar to the spectator or the surpriser. Generally statements and related questions made will seek proofs as part of the response.

    The surpriser

    The surpriser usually is a symptom of a client that doesn’t have internal alignment on their brief.

    How you’ll recognise them

    They will come in with new information, ideas and questions that may disrupt the meeting agenda and possibly the whole pitch process.

    How to deal with them as you encounter the nine people?

    General rules to work with

    Which ever of the nine people you are engaging with it’s good to remember for your own sanity that it’s generally not personal so don’t take it that way. All of the nine people archetypes are under some sort of pressure / stress. At most, you’re a non-player character in the video game that they call life.

    Given what I said about their likely personal stressors, try and empathise with what might be the root causes of their behaviour. You’ve experienced agency life and the way it can clobber you – you get similarly interesting times in most corporate environments.

    Hanlon’s razor says something to the effect of “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” You can swap out stupidity for ignorance, thoughtlessness etc. but the message remains equally valid. I know it’s tough to be empathetic in the stressful environment of a pitch but try. Engage in a positive way.

    If you are pitching an international team or a large company there is likely to be cultural differences. In my experiences large companies like Alphabet and Microsoft have their own language and world view just in the same way as the agency world has its own jargon.

    If you are pitching in another country there is another layer of cultural differences. Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map is a great primer for different country cultures. Be mindful of cultural differences and sensitivities.

    When you are making claims, assumptions or answering a question provide relevant proof where appropriate.

    However tempting it is, never get into confrontation with any of the nine people archetypes. You won’t win and you may cause friction with your colleagues that would outlive the pitch. There’s a fine line between being clever and a ̶d̶i̶c̶k̶h̶e̶a̶d̶ misanthrope.

    Specific tactics for each of the nine people portrayed.

    The advocate

    • Get them to share their feedback.
    • If you can arrange it prior to the pitch, give them a role in the meeting.
    • As a watch out they are easy to ignore because you often focused on solving for other behaviours.

    The complainer

    • Make them feel heard, for instance ask them about what is important in an agency partner.
    • Be prepared to move on, don’t get hung up on their questions.
    • Share evidence that would reassure the complainer such as case studies demonstrating competence, experience and expertise.

    The detail lover

    • Emphasise the limited time to present and ask how the additional information will aid the decision-making process.
    • Co-opt other attendees in the room by asking them who would also find the additional information valuable to included.

    The late comer

    Prior to going into the pitch, have a plan on how you will handle a delay on the pitch. Having this pre-planned will make you feel far more settled if you need to use it.

    In the pitch:

    • For the beginning of the presentation, see if you can cover the less important details first, so that late comers don’t miss out on the important items.
    • Offer to bring the late comer up to speed.

    The multi-tasker

    Dealing with the multi-tasker is down to going into the pitch with a high degree of engagement designed in that makes multi-tasking behaviour difficult to do. You need to outcompete other calls on their attention.

    The narcissist

    • Acknowledge their input, but ask for input from others. This shifts the focus away from them and puts their input in a broader context.
    • Once you know who they are, reduce their impact on the meeting by looking for other people’s input first.
    • Make them feel that their input is valued by ensuring they know that you have captured their input.

    The skeptic

    • Enquire about what causes them the greatest challenge.
    • Ask them about what good looks like from their perspective. What would help address their greatest challenge?
    • Reassure by sharing case studies, expertise and experience where similar challenges have been successfully addressed.

    The spectator

    • You need to strike a balance between engaging them to ensure that they are heard, but not putting them on the spot. Everyone’s input is crucial. Acknowledge the value of their contribution.

    The surpriser

    • Acknowledge their input, not doing so would quickly turn them to a complainer.
    • You need to make a judgement based on the situation in the room, if it makes sense to include their new input based on agreed goals. This will likely require one-or-more follow-up meeting.