Ged Carroll

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  • IT director powers up + more stuff

    The IT director is seeing a return to power and its thanks to the power of hackers and AI. The smartphone, the resurgence of Apple and SaaS saw IT decisions become more organic thanks to increased access to online services that provided better features than traditional enterprise software companies and the rise of knowledge working. IT teams found management of mobile devices onerous and faced hostile users.

    TSB - 8th Chief Technology Officers (CTO) Meeting
    Michiko Fukahori of the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology at ITU TSB – 8th Chief Technology Officers (CTO) Meeting

    This meant that the IT director became less important in software marketing. A decade ago marketing had pivoted to a bottom up approach of ‘land and expand’. This drove the sales of Slack, Monday.com and MongoDB.

    Two things impacted this bottom up approach to enterprise innovation:

    • Cybercrime: ransomware and supply chain attacks. Both are not new, ransomware can be traced back to 1989, with malware known as the AIDS trojan (this had much cultural resonance back then as a name). Supply chain attacks started happening in the 2010s with the Target data breach and by 2011, US politicians were considering it a security issue. Over COVID with the rise of remote working, the attacks increased. The risk put the IT director back in the firing line.
    • AI governance: generative AI systems learn from their training models and from user inputs, this led to a wide range of concerns from company intellectual property leaving via the AI system, or AI outputs based on intellectual property theft.

    The most immediate impact of this is that the IT director is becoming a prized target on more technology marketers agendas again. This takes IT director focused marketing from back in the 1980s and the early 2000s with a top-down c-suite focus including the IT director. This implies that established brands like Microsoft and IBM will do better than buzzier startups. It also means I am less likely to see adverts for Monday.com in my YouTube feed over time.

    This doesn’t mean that the IT director won’t be disrupted in other parts of his role as machine learning facilitates process automation in ways that are continuing to evolve.

    Target data breach: Why UK business needs to pay attention | Computer Weekly

    Supply chain security – DHS finds imported software and hardware contain attack tools | Inquisitr

    Software is not dead | Kevin Xu

    The bizarre story of the inventor of ransomware | CNN Business

    Silicon Valley steps up staff screening over Chinese espionage threat

    Business

    The whole supply chain is subsidised’: inside the EU’s blockbuster Chinese EV probe | South China Morning Post

    Brands plan for a quiet Pride Month | News | Campaign Asia – The hesitation around Pride may also be related to executives’ increasing reluctance to speak out on social issues more broadly. Wolff pointed to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, which found that 87% of executives think taking a public stance on a social issue is riskier than staying silent. “Essentially, nine out of every 10 executives believe that the return on investment for their careers is not worth the support during this turbulent time,” said (Kate) Wolff. “This is clearly problematic for both the community and the progress we have made in recent years.”

    Apple, Microsoft, SpaceX talent jumped ship after return-to-office mandates, study reveals | Fortune

    China

    The whole supply chain is subsidised’: inside the EU’s blockbuster Chinese EV probe | South China Morning Post

    Resignation Bordering on Despair – by Stephen Roach – economics of China and Hong Kong – more here: An Audacious Wake-Up Call – by Stephen Roach. Roache was the head of Morgan Stanley Asia.

    China’s Global Ambitions – Part 1: A Violent Thrust Into Modernity – Preston Stewart – quite a nice China primer.

    Consumer behaviour

    Brands have misjudged the politics of youth | WARC – STRAT7 Research on how woke has become a negative terms for some as the term takes on ambiguity and polarity in societal discussions.

    Why Companies Should Add Class to Their Diversity Discussions | HBR

    What triggers brand boycotts? | WARC | The Feed – interesting research, but I would like to have seen China and South Korea in this due to the interest boycott behaviours that happen.

    People Like Harrison Butker Are Taking Over Catholicism | The New Republic – looks like the evangelical catholics

    An uneven commute | Mastercard Services

    The death (again) of the internet as we know it | Noah Smith

    THE SILVER CULTURE PROJECT – interesting project by BBH London though the age bias in marketing and adland is strong

    Culture

    Rebecca F Kuang: ‘I like to write to my friends in the style of Joan Didion’ | The Guardian

    Design

    Pedestrians Aren’t Hearing EVs on the Road | Extremetech – engine sounds in EVs would be a solution. Imagine if your EV could sound like the dignified rumble of a 1980s vintage Mercedes 560 SEL?

    Nokia’s Classic 3210 Returns With Modern 25th-Anniversary Upgrades – DesignTAXI.com

    IKEA hosts flea markets at European stores to ‘keep good things going’ | Trendwatching – its a pity that most Ikea products are now built for margin rather than quality.

    Emoji history: the missing years  ⌘I  Get Info

    Making the Band: An Oral History of the Livestrong Bracelet | Texas Monthly – history of the early 2000s social object

    Economics

    The Foundation of American Folly – by N.S. Lyons

    Finance

    StanChart’s Iran transactions subject of fresh whistleblower claims | FT

    Chinese underground banks shaking up money laundering.

    FMCG

    CosMc’s: Brand Launch — Macaihah Broussard • Art director

    Nestlé Introduces Vital Pursuit Brand to Support GLP-1 Users, Consumers Focused on Weight Management

    Gadgets

    Oral-B Hopes You Didn’t Use Your $230 Alexa-Enabled Toothbrush | Hackaday

    Germany

    German parliament will stop using fax machines : NPR – I knew fax machines were still important in Austria and Japan. Interesting to see that they were still important in Germany as well

    Health

    Benchmarks for digital marketing in the pharmaceutical industry – phamax Digital

    Hong Kong

    This city never slept. But with China tightening its grip, is the party over? | CNN Business

    HEY YU, DREAMER: Vanity car plates in Hong Kong prove an endearing, enduring trend | The Straits Times

    China’s Economic Worries Spur a Different Kind of Shopping Spree – WSJ – sales of Hong Kong based insurance policies surge again representing middle class capital flight.

    Ideas

    Is human creativity fading away? – by Joel Stein and The age of average — Alex Murrell

    Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly – by Adam Mastroianni

    Tony Robbins on How to Make Tough Decisions – Real Leaders

    IPA | Top Ten Practical Stress Busters | IPA

    Is modern life bad for creativity? | LinkedIn – Contagious on Sir John Hegarty’s opinion on how modern life is making great advertising campaigns harder:

    • A lack of shared cultural references
    • Pivot towards sales due to wealth of customer data
    • Remote working preventing collaboration

    IP

    Harley-Davidson sues Next over alleged trademark infringement | FT

    Luxury

    Chinese Firms Are Investing Heavily in Whisky Market | Yicai Global – Although international liquor giants have developed the local whisky consumption market for many years, the market penetration rate of overseas spirits in China, including whisky, is only about 3 percent. This means domestic whisky producers will need to develop new consumption scenarios, Yang said. Whisky consumption in China centers mainly around nightclubs, gift-giving and tasting events held by affluent consumers, Yang noted, but in these scenarios, imported whisky brands with a long history tend to be more popularly accepted,, so it will be difficult for domestic rivals to compete. According to the latest report from alcohol market analysts IWSR, China’s whisky market was worth CNY5.5 billion (USD758 million) last year, having grown more than fourfold over the past 10 years. It is expected to reach CNY50 billion (USD6.9 billion) in the next five to 10 years.

    Yoox Net-a-Porter exits China to focus on more profitable markets – Multi-brand luxury clothing sales platform Yoox Net-a-Porter is closing its China operations, this against a backdrop of other brands also pulling out of Chinese e-commerce including Marc Jacobs fragrances. The corporate line from Richemont was “in the context of a global Yoox Net-a-Porter plan aimed at focusing investments and resources on its core and more profitable geographies”.

    LVMH’s unit put under court administration in Italy over labour exploitation | Reuters – shines a light on the eco-system of Chinese manufacturers inside Italy that use Chinese and immigrant staff to cut costs

    Step Into The Next Chapter Of Oakley’s Future

    Fashion Matters on the big trends from FT Business of Luxury conference and Watch live: Kering deputy CEO Francesca Bellettini in conversation with Jo Ellison

    Ignite the Scent: The Effectiveness of Implied Explosion in Perfume Ads | the Journal of Advertising Research – Scent is an important product attribute and an integral component of the consumption experience as consumers often want to perceive a product’s smell to make a well-informed purchase decision. It is difficult, however, to communicate the properties of a scent without the physical presence of odorants. Through five experiments conducted in a perfume-advertising context, our research shows that implied explosion, whether visually (e.g., a spritz blast) or semantically created, can increase perceived scent intensity, subsequently enhancing perceived scent persistence. It also found a positive effect of perceived scent persistence on purchase intention. In conclusion, the research suggests that implied explosion can be a powerful tool for advertisers to enhance scent perception, consequently boosting purchase intention.

    The great fashion Brexit? Why UK designers are decamping to Milan | Milan fashion week | The Guardian

    Marketing

    How SEO moves forward with the Google Content Warehouse API leak | Searchengineland, original leak here: An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them – SparkToro and How independent websites are dealing with the end of Google traffic – The Verge

    CHARLOTTE TILBURY CELEBRATES A YEAR IN GAMING • Women in Games

    The Problem With Behavioral Nudges | WSJ

    Touchpoints and the Omnichannel Revolution | BCG

    Marketers’ Meta habit is reshaping the ad industry | WARC

    Bank on it: Financial media networks are the next big opportunity – The Media Leader

    Fan Bingbing tasked by Malaysia’s Melaka to lure in 1 million Chinese tourists | South China Morning Post

    Mat Baxter’s Huge turnaround job | Contagious – interesting perspective on his time at Huge. What I can’t square it all with is what we know about marketing science and declining effectiveness across digital media

    Celebrate the Unique Ways You Listen With ‘My Spotify’ — Spotify – a judo move on the sinister nature of algorithms in consumers lives

    On my LinkedIn, I couldn’t escape from the Cannes festival of advertising. Partly because one of the projects I had been involved in was a shortlisted entry. One of the most prominent films was Dramamine’s ‘The Last Barf Bag: A Tribute to a Cultural Icon’. It was notable because of its humour, which was part of this years theme across categories.

    Materials

    Renewcell secures a future | Vogue Business – manufacture a fibre that uses recycled cotton instead of wood pulp in viscose

    震災復興から生まれた刺し子プロジェクトをブランドに！ 15人のお母さんの挑戦！　 – CAMPFIRE (キャンプファイヤー) – ancient Japanese craft – KUON and Sashiko Gals are part of a new generation of designers keeping the traditional Japanese technique of sashiko alive. And together, they are bringing the decorative style of stitching to our favorite sneakers (including techy Salomons!). Sashiko is a type of simple running stitch used in Japan for over a thousand years to reinforce fabrics. It’s typically done with a thick white thread on indigo fabric and made into intricate patterns.

    Media

    The new dot com bubble is here: it’s called online advertising – The Correspondent – old article but useful in the way it calls BS on much of the cheerleading for online advertising.

    The Epoch Times faces a federal money laundering indictment : NPR

    Canon made a special lens for the Apple Vision Pro’s spatial videos – The Verge

    Pinterest ads set for 17.1% growth to reach $4.2bn next year | WARC | The Feed

    Streamers like Netflix, Max, and Peacock are raising prices — here’s why | Yahoo! Finance and The Dream of Streaming Is Dead – The Atlantic

    The Rot-Com Bubble | Ed Zitron

    CEOs Go to War Against Creatives – by Ted Gioia

    Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

    DVD special features draw fans back to physical media. | Slate – a digital roadmap for streaming services and also shows the power of physical artefacts

    Adtech vendors join forces for European Programmatic TV Initiative – The Media Leader

    The New York Times And Instacart Integrate For Shoppable Recipes | AdExchanger

    Online

    Apple set to be first Big Tech group to face charges under EU digital law | FT – interesting that they are going after Apple first. Japan moves the same way: Japan law forces third party App Stores on Apple & Google | Apple Insider

    Labour raced to outspend Tories online before spending caps kicked in | FT

    Nationalism in Online Games During War by Eren Bilen, Nino Doghonadze, Robizon Khubulashvili, David Smerdon :: SSRN – We investigate how international conflicts impact the behavior of hostile nationals in online games. Utilizing data from the largest online chess platform, where players can see their opponents’ country flags, we observed behavioral responses based on the opponents’ nationality. Specifically, there is a notable decrease in the share of games played against hostile nationals, indicating a reluctance to engage. Additionally, players show different strategic adjustments: they opt for safer opening moves and exhibit higher persistence in games, evidenced by longer game durations and fewer resignations. This study provides unique insights into the impact of geopolitical conflicts on strategic interactions in an online setting, offering contributions to further understanding human behavior during international conflicts.

    The Internet: Now you see it, now you don’t

    Bumble buys community building app Geneva to expand further into friendships | TechCrunch

    TikTok ‘law violations’ complaint referred to US justice department | FT

    Gambling addiction’s growing grip on the frontlines – ripping through Ukrainian armed forces and causing havoc at home

    Retailing

    Sellers Call Amazon’s Buy Box ‘Abusive.’ Now They’re Suing | WIRED

    eBay will no longer accept American Express cards over ‘unacceptably high’ fees – The Verge

    McDonalds removes AI drive-throughs after order errors – BBC News

    Security

    Huawei exec concerned over China’s inability to obtain 3.5nm chips, bemoans lack of advanced chipmaking tools | Tom’s Hardware – this is rather different to the picture that The Economist portrays of an all-conquering Huawei: America’s assassination attempt on Huawei is backfiring | The Economist

    The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled | Platformer

    The West Coast’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico | WIRED – “Not so long ago, bike theft was a crime of opportunity—a snatch-and-grab, or someone applying a screwdriver to a flimsy lock. Those quaint days are over. Thieves now are more talented and brazen and prolific. They wield portable angle grinders and high-powered cordless screwdrivers. They scope neighborhoods in trucks equipped with ladders, to pluck fine bikes from second-story balconies. They’ll use your Strava feed to shadow you and your nice bike back to your home.” – not terribly surprising, you’ve seen the professionalisation and industrialisation in theft across sectors from shoplifting, car theft and watch thefts so this is continuing the trend.

    Fortinet Acquires Lacework | Forrester Research – looks like its a move to prevent supply chain hacks.

    China’s Nvidia Loophole: How ByteDance Got the Best AI Chips Despite U.S. Restrictions — The Information – interesting that Oracle have been caught sanction busting and Chinese firms building US data centres that Nvidia can shop to.

    West grapples with response to Russian sabotage attempts | FT

    “Everyone is absolutely terrified”: Inside a US ally‘s secret war on its American critics – Vox – Indian black ops in the US and Canada

    NVIDIA technology found in Russian military drones | Defence Blog

    Armed gangs stage bank heists in Gaza | FT

    Software

    What’s going on with AI in Sequoia? – The Eclectic Light Company

    Google AI Gemini parrots China’s propaganda – by Wenhao Ma

    Apple Intelligence for iOS 18 is here. But can Apple beat AI rivals? | Quartz

    Anthropic course on Claude generative AI · GitHub

    Consumer Trends unveils the AI-Powered Future – Ericsson – god this is dark.

    Aptoide’s iOS game store launches on Thursday – The Verge

    The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps | Andreessen Horowitz

    Which media companies have made deals with OpenAI? and Media Companies Are Making a Huge Mistake With AI – The Atlantic – sold themselves cheap.

    Microsoft can remember it for you wholesale – net.wars and Windows 11 Recall AI feature will record everything you do on your PC | BleepingComputer

    Apple plots creating AI ‘black box’ for iCloud | AppleInsider

    Future of Software development/SDLC with AI and Gen AI | Forrester Research

    OpenAI Just Gave Away the Entire Game – The Atlantic – The Scarlett Johansson debacle is a microcosm of AI’s raw deal: It’s happening, and you can’t stop it. This is important not from a technology point of view, but from the mindset of systemic sociopathy that now pervades Silicon Valley.

    Goldilocks Agents | Sequoia Capital – the quickening evolution of more capable and reliable AI agents.

    Apple Intelligence is Right On Time – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – Apple’s orientation towards prioritizing users over developers aligns nicely with its brand promise of privacy and security: Apple would prefer to deliver new features in an integrated fashion as a matter of course; making AI not just compelling but societally acceptable may require exactly that, which means that Apple is arriving on the AI scene just in time.

    Style

    Can the runaway Hoka boom last? FT

    ‘Rare, vintage, Y2K’: Online thrifters are flipping fast fashion. How long can it last? | Vogue Business – as secondhand shopping becomes increasingly commonplace, this latest outburst brings to light the subjectivity of resale. What determines an item’s worth, especially in an age of viral micro-trends and heavy nostalgia? Is it ethically moral to set an item that’s the product of fast fashion — long criticised for not paying workers fairly — at such a steep upcharge, and making profit from it? If someone is willing to pay, does any of it matter?

    Tools

    YouTube Channel Statistics – ViewStats

    Web of no web

    HyperCinema | Hyper-personalized AI experiences for global attractions – although this is aimed at shopping mall events and theme parks, I could also see it being used in B2B contexts at trade shows and conferences.

    Congress unconvinced by Space Force GPS resiliency plan • The Register

  • #theinternetisdying

    Perhaps due to the febrile nature of the times we live in, the tech-savvy community seems to have become aware of various trends, leading them to conclude that #theinternetisdying. This term itself is imprecise. The internet is a series of abstractions, ranging from physical infrastructure to software and functions upon which communication, messaging, video streaming, app data, transactions, and web pages operate.

    Bovine metaverse

    So technically, #theinternetisdying is actually #thewebisdying.

    So why now?

    I believe the most intriguing question regarding #theinternetisdying is this: why now? What has occurred is more about internet users awakening from their ‘comfort zone’ and abruptly realising how rapidly things have evolved? I believe that a number of inciting incidents are the cause of this sudden wakefulness:

    • Google as regressive ‘tax’ rather than marketing channel exposed.
    • Continued deterioration of Google web search.
    • Link rot.
    • Online media businesses look to make money by selling proprietary and user-generated content to LLMs as a revenue stream.
    • Realisation that a lot of web content is adapted or created using LLMs. The non-English web has been expanded by machine translation of English language content. Secondly, LLMs have been used to create a lot of good enough content in English for publications like Sports Illustrated.

    The reality

    In reality, what’s happened to the web as netizens knew it has happened over time. To use a vintage web phenomenon as an analogy. It’s like the vintage Joe Cartoon interactive Adobe Flash animation Frog in a Blender from the late 1990s.

    A cartoon frog sits in a blender and admonishes the viewer, claiming that they wouldn’t dare to to blend him. The blender has settings from 1 to 10. 1 is mildly agitated water, 10 is instant blended frog. Silicon Valley has slowly upped the power of the blender and netizens realise that things have got weird.

    Google tax bias

    Google search has been on the shit list of websites as engineering documents from inside Google were leaked. They revealed some aspects about how search actually worked that Google had been denying for decades. A few of the key findings were:

    • Google search learns from ‘external devices’, so things like Chromecast dongles. Data from the Chrome browser is used in a similar manner, despite Google repeatedly claiming that it wasn’t in the past.
    • Google values quality, relevant sites, BUT, that value is caveated by restrictions it puts on small quality sites and the benefits it provides to large platforms detailed below.
    • Popular sites receive higher search levels through the ‘Navboost’ system. This reinforces platforms and established sites. Smaller sites would need to spend proportionately more on Google advertising to match their larger competitors traffic funnel. This designed imbalance is the digital equivalent of John Pierpoint Morgan’s nefarious involvement in railroad transportation, or the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller agreement on oil transport in the 19th century, which drove much of the subsequent anti-trust regulation in the US – this is the Google tax. It’s a regressive tax that is levied on smaller businesses and the ‘free web’.
    • It is deliberately set up to hold back small sites, many of whom have seen their traffic drop by up to 91 percent. This adversely affects sights that might have deep domain knowledge, specialist retailers and netizens who host personal sites and blogs like this one.

    Google has even lied in court and in parliaments to hide these facts. Disclosure of these details have rippled through the search engine marketing industry and strongly discouraged numerous web businesses once the truth came out – for a lot of businesses #theinternetisdying.

    For Google the timing couldn’t be worse:

    • It is seen to have dropped the ball on LLMs, despite having developed most of the key technology powering the likes of OpenAI and Anthrophic.
    • Google’s local business advertising for the likes of coffee shops or nail clinics have suffered due to the cost-of-living crisis post-COVID and consumer behaviour changes in various countries.
    • Traditional Google search advertisements for e-commerce are being rapidly eroded by retail media. That is ‘search style’ adverts on the likes of Amazon, Tesco and eBay.

    Google is perceived as having set itself up as the ‘start page’ to the open web, while all the time sticking the proverbial knife in all of which adds an inevitability of the feeling of #theinternetisdying.

    Decline of Google search

    Back in June 2022, The Atlantic complained about the declining utility of Google. This echoed similar themes on discussions that had happened earlier in the year on Hacker News and Reddit. The consensus was that they searched Reddit, StackOverflow, Hacker News or StackExchange as it provided a richer, more relevant base of search results.

    I have been using social bookmarking service Pinboard and photo service flickr for search for similar reasons for the past few decades.

    Pinboard allows me to search 65,000+ web pages that I have found over that time for something that might be useful. My act of saving the page link in pinboard allowed me to categorise the page saved and implied a certain ‘good enough’ quality to it. I also get to search the public links of other netizens that do a similar thing. Pinboard is insufficiently popular to reward spammers, so the quality quotient is relatively high. Reddit offers a more expansive corpus of links and information, without the same level of quality control.

    The reason why Google’s web search has degraded has its roots in Google’s pivot to mobile two decades ago. Google abandoned key areas of interest to web users:

    • Boolean search terms, which would have been harder to do on early mobile devices.
    • Blog search because it was non-mobile content.
    • Google News and RSS, in favour of nascent mobile social platforms that it lost out to.

    And the list goes on, I am less sure why it has suddenly surfaced into the public consciousness now?

    Link rot

    A month or so go my friend Matt in his newsletter recommended a website that allowed you to search Google to find out the oldest mention of a term. So I put my own name in, and nothing came up prior to 2004.

    DECAY

    That meant all records of my early agency work had been expunged from the web. Work that included big brands:

    • BHP-Billiton
    • Ericsson
    • MTV Networks
    • Palm
    • Sony
    • Verizon

    Alongside startup brands that fizzled out almost as quickly as they had started. Maybe there is still some traces locked somewhere in behind LexisNexis or Haymarket Media paywalled databases.

    Author and veteran member of the digerati Cory Doctorow wrote about link rot this year, partly prompted by research from the Pew Research Center. Pew found that 38 percent of content surveyed disappeared over a ten-year period.

    Link Rot google trends

    But link rot isn’t a new concern. Interest in link rot seems to have peaked 20 years ago.

    google books ngram

    Link rot is a subset of a wider concern called bit rot, where digital media degrades over time, or can no longer be read due to issues with software file compatibility. Bit rot as an issue was explored in a series of short stories by Canadian author Douglas Coupland in a book of the same name back in 2016.

    Web of data to walled gardens

    Of all #internetisdying factors, this one surprised me as much as link rot. Closing of Twitter API access was considered to be a defining moment for #theinternetisdying. However it fails to acknowledge that the high point of the web of data was web 2.0 and the comparatively free access to APIs. Facebook with its closed wall by design set the standard for subsequent services like TikTok and Instagram. Like link rot, the awareness timeline feels a decade too late. The closure of Google Reader is an equally big impact back in 2013, stopping mainstream adoption of RSS in its tracks.

    LLMs

    Journalist Steven Levy has been chronicling Silicon Valley for decades. He wrote a few of my favourite non-fiction books including Insanely Great, Crypto and Hackers. In the summer of 2023, he wrote an article for Wired magazine: What OpenAI wants. This became a cover story for the September 2023 issue of the magazine under the header ‘Dear AI Overlords, Don’t Fuck This Up’. Less than a year later, the consensus from netizens seems to be that they already have.

    Dear AI overlords don’t mess it up

    Several things have happened, here are three of them:

    • Imitation became mainstreamed. OpenAI used a female voice that was apparently a copy of Scarlett Johansson’s voice due to Sam Altman’s infatuation with the premise of the Spike Jonze film Her. A Ukrainian YouTuber found her likeness being used as an avatar to sell Russian goods to Chinese consumers.
    • Misinformation had everything from the Pope wearing a designer down jacket and fake black supporters for presidential candidate Donald Trump.
    • Scott Galloway talked about ‘corporate ozempic’ where AI being good enough to reduce human tasks allowing for corporate headcounts to disappear. The CEO of Klarna freely admitted that they used AI to replace 700 employees in customer service roles. AdVon was used to write articles for SportsIllustrated driving anger and anxiety in readers and journalists.

    Automation has eaten blue collar roles for decades, but it has taken the automation of white collar roles to create the panic and sense that #theinternetisdying and AI is killing it.

    The Sky Is Falling In

    Chief Vitalstatistix

    As a child I fell in love the Asterix The Gaul books. In them was the Gaulish village chief Vitalstatistix – who is portrayed as mostly reasonable, well-informed, fearless, (comparatively) even-tempered and unambitious. Vitalstatistix was known for his irrational fear that the sky may fall on his head tomorrow. I was thinking about Vitalstatistix as I wrote this post on #theinternetisdying.

    Back in the late 2000s, Dr Ira Wolfe wrote a book that discussed how online behaviour and Google services were creating irreparable damage in the workplace and beyond. His book was merely the latest in a series of panics about societal destruction:

    Back in March 1997, Wired magazine had their own version of the #theinternetisdying, they believed that web browsing (or web surfing as it was termed back then) was about to be killed off by ‘push technology‘. This episode of The Computer Chronicles gives a good overview of push technology at the time.

    You may already be using push technology without realising it, such as receiving mobile notifications for breaking news or localised weather alerts.

    In conclusion, #theinternetisdying? really?

    Previous technological shifts introduced new challenges, but we adapted and progressed. There’s no reason to think the current ‘#theinternetisdying’ phase is any different from those before. Perhaps in 15 years, I’ll be writing about how people feel the ‘metaverse’ has become closed or some other futuristic concern.

    Posts on related content can be found here.

    More information

    The Internet as You Know It Is Dying | Fabricated Knowledge

    Rot-Com bubble | Ed Zitron

    Pluralistic: Linkrot (21 May 2024)

    5 Reveals From Google’s Leaked Search Docs | AdWeek

    When Online Content Disappears | Pew Research Center

    The Internet: Now you see it, now you don’t | Daniel Tynan

    The Open Secret of Google Search | The Atlantic

    Is Google Dying? | Hacker News

    Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization: How to Manage the Unprecedented Convergence of the Wired, the Tired, and Technology in the Workplace by Dr Ira S Wolfe

    The Trick To Understanding New Media: Nobody’s In Charge | Yahoo! Finance

    Dead tools | renaissance chambara

    Media Companies Are Making a Huge Mistake With AI – The Atlantic

    Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

    The Japanese knotweed of generative AI is strangling Facebook | Social Warming

    Google messed up Gemini launch, Sergey Brin says | CNBC

    Klarna AI assistant handles two-thirds of customer service chats in its first month | Klarna

    AI makes photos of fake Black Donald Trump supporters | Quartz

    Ukrainian YouTuber found her AI clone selling Russian goods on Chinese internet | Wenhao’s News Blog

    Google Mired in Controversy Over Gemini AI Chatbot Push – WSJ

    Corporate Ozempic | No mercy / no malice

  • Advertising awards

    I got a chance to judge the UK Young Lions advertising awards and Adforum’s PHNX awards. The Young Lions responded to a common brief with the solution viewed through their specialism:

    • A communications activation plan.
    • A creative concept.

    The standard of thinking was high, but I could also see the benefit of more agencies and brand teams tasking younger members of staff to enter the campaign. I was expected to having to wade through dozens and dozens of entries; there wasn’t that many.

    Adforum’s PHNX advertising awards attracted global entries and took a long time to go through the entries that I saw. I got to see a lot of good work and wanted to showcase some examples later.

    PHNX were more complex in nature compared to the UK Young Lions, with many more categories.

    Advertising awards mistakes.

    I saw a few unforced errors:

    • Category -spamming – award entries were submitted for categories that they weren’t appropriate for. You would see the same work turning up category-after-category with no relevance. You could see other judges becoming frustrated in the electronic chat function that ran alongside the entries.
    • Link the work tightly to the challenge that the client faces. You would be surprised how many entries failed to do this.
    • Have your entry in a language that the judges are likely to understand. You can only get so far with Google Lens when trying to tease out winning nuance of advertising awards.

    Advertising awards entries that caught my eye.

    There were a number of Adforum PHNX advertising awards entries that caught my eye and some entries that inspired me.

    Advertising for advertising

    A few years ago, LONDON Advertising (who I have freelanced for previously) ran an advertising campaign to demonstrate the power of advertising.

    LONDON Advertising campaign

    This was possible due to the cheaper media rates available early on during COVID-19 as brands paused spending.

    It’s a very unusual tactic outside of advertising festivals and trade publications. So it was interesting to see a Spanish agency submit a couple of films into the Adforum awards that purely showcased their craft capabilities for use on different aspects of advertising.

    It’s not Studio Ghibli, but still really well done by La Caseta. It was still surprising for me to see it entered for advertising awards.

    Inspiring content

    Grab Thailand

    Uber analogue Grab ran this advert in Thailand to promote its version of Uber Eats, showing how the app is on the side of the consumer in terms of pricing, choice and speed of delivery. It uses thai boxing as a metaphor and features Bella as the main protagonist. Bella is a much loved soap actress beloved in Thailand. Her coach in the corner is a highly regarded former thai boxer.

    Lux

    For me Lux beauty soap was a brand that I associated with my Granny in Ireland, who used to alternate using it alongside Oil of Olay soap.

    I was pleasantly surprised to find that Lux is still alive and well as a brand half-way around the world in Asia and Africa. Lux’s ‘change the angle’ campaign was a collaboration with female athletes to try and change the way they are portrayed in live sports coverage.

    Mistine

    Mistine is a Thai beauty brand founded in 1988. It became the go-to beauty brand in Thailand. The company sold its products via direct sales, wholesale, online, retail, and the export market. In recent years it had focused on expansion into China, but had lost touch with younger generations of Thai women. It was seen as a low-class, outdated brand. The brand team started with a campaign with a film of young generation focus group discussing on societal judgmental issues while having a make-up session. None of them chose Mistine as they were all judgmental to the brand name.The film signed off with an apologetic message to Mistine users and have been insulted by negative associations with the brand name “Sorry that my name is Mistine.”

    It’s a brave move to take that raw insight and build a campaign around it.

    That then drove a six-fold uptake in search volume and media impressions.

    Similar posts can be found here.

  • 2024 iPad Pro

    In my take on the 2024 iPad Pro I am going to look at things through three lenses and after the initial hot takes have cooled down. These three lenses are:

    • Hardware
    • Semiconductors
    • Advertisement

    Apple and Microsoft both push their most powerful tablets like the 2024 iPad Proas creator tools. However, at the time of writing I have been working alongside creative teams in a prominent ad agency and both the creative and strategic elements of the work we were doing were pulled together using different software, but the same hardware. Apple MacBook Pro computers and large secondary monitors. An illustrator attached a ‘graphics tablet‘ alongside their laptop to provide additional tactile control, just in the same way I am known to use an outboard Kensington trackball for additional fine control in creating presentation charts.

    Where I have seen iPads used:

    • Senior (older executives) replying to emails – I suspect its because the screen is bigger than a smartphone.
    • As a media player device. The iPad is the travel and bedside equivalent of the book and the portable DVD player.
    • As a presentation device. Friends that give a lot of public presentations at conferences and one who works as a university lecturer both use the iPad as device to present from in place of lugging around a laptop.

    In all of these use cases, there isn’t that much to differentiate iPad models and the main limitations are user intent or software-related.

    My parents use an iPad I’ve bought them to keep in touch with me. We started using an iPad as a Skype client over a decade ago. Then iMessage and FaceTime started to make more sense, particularly has they started getting Skype spam. It’s the computing equivalent of a kitchen appliance: largely intuitive and very little can go really wrong – that’s both the iPad’s strength and its weakness.

    Secondly, there is the confusion of the Apple iPad product line-up, which is at odds with the way Apple got its second wind. In Walter Isaacson’s flawed autobiography of Steve Jobs, one of the standout things that the returning CEO did was ruthlessly prune the product line-up.

    He made it into a 2 x 2 grid: professional and consumer, portable and desktop. For most of past number of years, the iPhone has gone down this ‘pro and consumer’ split.

    The iPad line-up is less clear cut to the casual observer:

    • iPad Mini
    • iPad
    • iPad Air
    • iPad Pro

    In addition, there are Apple pencils – a smarter version of the stylus that used to be used prior to capacitive touchscreens became commonplace. Some of these pencils work with some devices, but not others. It’s a similar case, with other Apple accessories like keyboards that double as device covers. All of which means that your hardware accessories need an upgrade too. This is more than just getting a new phone case. It’s more analogous to having to buy a new second monitor or mouse every time you change your computer.

    With all of that out of the way, let’s get into hardware.

    Hardware

    The 2024 iPad Pro launched before the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, so we had no idea how the device will work together in conjunction with iPadOS 18. Addressing long term criticism of using the iPad is as much about software as it is about hardware.

    The 2024 iPad Pro still doesn’t have a definitive user case, but Apple decided to focus on creativity in their marketing.

    Presumably this is because the main thing to celebrate about the 2024 iPad Pro is increased computing power and creative apps are the most likely to make use of that power. For many ‘non-creative’ use cases, the previous generation of iPad Pro is very over-powered for what it does.

    Some of the choices Apple made with the hardware are interesting. The existing iPad Pro is a thin, lightweight computing device. The 2024 iPad Pro is Apple’s thinnest device ever. This thinness is a clever feat of engineering, but so would be an iPad of the same size, but with more battery capacity. Instead Apple made the device made things a bit thinner device with exactly the same battery life as previous models.

    The iPad Pro uses two screens one behind the other to provide deeper and brighter colours at a resolution that’s extremely high. This provides additional benefits such as avoiding screen burn-in which OLED screens were considered to be vulnerable to.

    The camera has moved from the side to the top of the 2024 iPad Pro in landscape mode. This has necessitated a new arrangement of magnets for attachments, which then drove the need for new accessories including the new Apple pencil pro.

    Semiconductors

    The M4 processor is Apple’s latest silicon design and represents a move on from the current processors in Apple’s Mac range.

    It is made by TSMC on a leading edge 3 nanometre process. This is TSMC’s second-generation process. Having it as the processor in the 2024 iPad Pro, allows Apple and partners to slowly ramp up production and usage of the new processor to match gains in semiconductor chip yields. This will give them the time to iron out any production challenges and resolve any quality issues. Relatively low production volumes would be a good thing, prior to the processor being rolled out more widely.

    Apple seems to be designing the M-series processors in parallel to the A-series processors used in iPhones and iPads in the past. They seem to have them in mind for a wider range of devices.

    Advertisement

    Apple previewed an advertisement to promote the 2024 iPad Pro.

    Crush has been executed with a high degree of craft in the production. It had a lot of negative reactions from celebrities and current Apple customers who saw it in terms of:

    • It being a wider metaphor of what technology was perceived to be doing to creativity. For instance, Hollywood actors and screen-writers are concerned about streaming and the effects of large language models.
    • Destroying real-life artefacts that consumers have attached meaning to. For instance, I use digital music, but also have a physical music collection that not only reflects my taste, but much more. Real-world experiences now provide respite from the digital world.

    With product launches like the iPhone 3, Apple created adverts which were less of a literal metaphor for everything that could be crammed into the device by using show-and-tell.

    Reversing the Crush! ad makes a similar point, but in a less oppressive way.

    And as with everything else in life, there is seldom a time when an idea is truly new. There was an ad done by BBH London which used a crush metaphor to demonstrate all the features in LG’s Renoir phone circa 2008. As this circulated around Apple was perceived as being a copycat.

    Presentation

    Given that Apple events are now largely virtual post-COVID we didn’t have a positive live audience reaction amongst those who ‘got it’ to guide public opinion. Instead it was left on social media ‘contextless’.

    The Apple exhibition centre at the new ‘space ship’ campus, doesn’t seem to be used in the same way that Apple did live events prior to 2020. Apple held small event screenings for journalists in New York and London.

    But was Crush! bad?

    When I first saw it, I thought that it was good from a craft point of view. I was a bit surprised at how dark the lighting was, it felt a little off-key.

    My personal opinion about the concept was that it felt a bit heavy-handed because it was so literal. The creative brief done by a strategist is usually the jumping off point, not the literal creative concept.

    But that doesn’t make it bad advert, it just felt not particularly clever for someone who is probably more media-literate than the average person. I would go as far as to say, it would have been unlikely to win creative advertising awards.

    But I was also aware that my opinion didn’t mean that the ad wouldn’t be effective. Given the 2024 iPad Pro’s role as M4 guinea pig, Apple probably weren’t hoping for barn-storming sales figures and in the grand scheme of things the advert just wasn’t extremely important.

    I was probably as blindsided as Apple was by the depth of feeling expressed in the online reaction.

    TL;DR I don’t know if Crush! really is ‘bad’. Let’s ask some specific questions about different aspects of the ad.

    Am I, or the negative responders the target market?

    Maybe, or maybe not. I don’t have a place in it in my current workflow. I still find that a Mac works as my primary creative technology device. What about if Apple were aiming at college kids and first jobbers? These people wouldn’t come to buying the 2024 iPad Pro with the same brand ‘baggage’ that me and many of the commentators have.

    Working in marketing, the 1984 ad and the Think Different ads were campaigns were classics. Hell, I can remember being a bit of an oddball at college as a Mac user. I helped friends get their secondhand Mac purchases up and running.

    Going to coffee shops or working in the library and seeing a see of laptop lids emblazoned with the Dell, Gateway, Toshiba and H-P logos. If people were a bit quirky they may have a Sony Vaio instead.

    I remember the booes and the hisses in the audience at MacWorld Boston in 1997, when Apple announced its partnership with Microsoft.

    Even when I worked at Yahoo! during the web 2.0 renaissance, Mac users were second-class citizens internally and externally in terms of our product offering.

    In the eyes of young people today Apple was always there, front and centre. The early iPad or iPhone experience as pacifier. The iPhone has must-have teenage smartphone. The Mac at home and maybe an Apple TV box.

    Finally many high performing adverts of the past aimed at young adults have left the mainstream media and tastemakers non-plussed.

    How did the ad test?

    According to anecdotal evidence I have heard from people at IPSOS; in a survey they found that about half the respondents surveyed said they would be interested in finding out more about the 2024 iPad Pro. The younger the respondent, the more likely they were to be interested in the device.

    System 1, tested the ad and found that it performed 1.9 out of a possible maximum score of 5. In System 1 parlance this indicates somewhere between low and modest long term brand growth derived from the advertisement. The average score for US advertisements is 2.3. But over half of ads that were run in the Super Bowl this year scored between 1 and 2. Which would imply that the ad could be improved; but the devil might be in the details as implied by the IPSOS research.

    Is Crush! just a copy cat?

    You can have the best creative director in the world who has seen a lot of advertising, but they might not know all advertising. Secondly, the advertising industry is getting rid of long term professionals. According to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising no one retired from the industry in 2023, as staff were ‘phased out‘ of the industry way before retirement age. All of which means that there isn’t the historical memory to know if a campaign is sailing close to plagiarism.

    And it isn’t just advertising. Earlier in my career, I got to see former business journalist and newspaper editor Damian McCrystal speak at a breakfast event. One thing stayed with me about his presentation, in which he talked about the financial industry:

    The reasons why we make the same mistakes over-and-over again is because ‘the city’ has a collective institutional memory of about eight years.

    Damien McCrystal

    So we had Northern Rock, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, despite the fact that pretty much every financier I have ever met had read Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis. This was based on his experiences as a banker navigating the Savings and Loans scandal of the 1980s and 1990s.

    So no, despite the similarity of the LG Renoir advertisement, I don’t think that Crush! was an intentional copy.

    More related content can be found here.

    More information

    Some thoughts about Apple’s new iPads | Ian Betteridge

    The M4 iPad Pros | Daring Fireball

    Brief Thoughts and Observations on Yesterday’s ‘Let Loose’ iPad Keynote | Daring Fireball

    How Apple’s ‘tone deaf’ iPad ad signals a turning point | FT

    Apple’s New iPad Ad Leaves Its Creative Audience Feeling … Flat – The New York Times

    Apple’s new iPad ad has struck a nerve online. Here’s why | AP News

    Commentary: Apple’s tone-deaf iPad ad triggers our darkest AI fears – CNA

    The Fat iPhone, 11 years on: The iPad’s over a decade old and we’re still not sure what it’s for • The Register

    12 things I learned by switching from the 13-inch MacBook Pro to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro | Macworld

  • Collapsing the funnel

    I was prompted to write about collapsing the funnel as a trope that marketers and adtech salespeople tell each other after listening to Jon Evans Uncensored CMO podcast. Jon was interviewing Josh Feldman.

    NBC Universal TV set (3D)

    Josh Feldman

    Feldman is CMO at NBCUniversal’s advertising and partnerships business. He has been a long-time NBCUniversal marketer. Prior NBCUniversal, Feldman started at Turner Broadcasting, where he took on various roles including national and regional advertising sales roles. He managed client relationships for a range of TV channels including Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT and TruTV. Feldman’s sales orientation partly explains his collapsing the funnel perspective.

    NBCUniversal

    Mr Feldman is no longer just selling 30 second TV spots at NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal is a plethora of media properties:

    • Live events such as BravoCon
    • Five theme parks
    • 1 billion reach across more than 150 countries
    • 200 networks
    • 350 digital properties

    Here’s the way the podcast broke down:

    1. 00:35 – Josh’s Career Story
    2. 02:50 – How does being creative help with sales
    3. 04:17 – B2B strategies that make NBCU successful
    4. 09:41 – NBCU’s iconic programming
    5. 11:05 – The secret to building strong client relationships
    6. 14:21 – Funnel marketing and the importance of end of funnel <—–
    7. 16:34 – The popularity of Bravo
    8. 17:46 – BravoCon
    9. 21:00 – The best brand activations at BravoCon
    10. 22:51 – How brands can work with talent
    11. 24:49 – Being a media partner for the Olympics
    12. 27:59 – Josh’s advice on creativity and landing your message
    13. 31:39 – Helping smaller brands

    Two aspects to collapsing the funnel

    Josh’s comment about collapsing the funnel was emblematic of two separate trends going on that he encapsulated in this one segment of the show.

    • The first is that performance marketers are waking up to the fact that brand matters.
    • The second trend is the fusion of sales and marketing functions in the business-to-business through account-based marketing or what used to be a sales support function now being lionised as a ‘strategic approach’.

    Brand matters

    A classic example of what happens if one focuses exclusively on performance marketing is the plateauing of growth that occurred in ASOS. The ASOS story is now often cited by marketing media mix experts as an example of what happens when brand building isn’t used to support performance marketing.

    In the noughties and 2010s ASOS was a purveyor of trendy clothing for young people. It started as a copycat brand over time became a competitor to Urban Outfitters and an Etsy-type platform for small vintage clothing and design boutiques.

    ASOS review

    ASOS took a performance marketing approach to growing its business. Over time it expanded to eventually ship to 197 countries, but 40 percent of its customer base was still in the UK.

    ASOS customers and orders over time

    Performance marketing drove the customer base, but didn’t drive a significant increase in the number of orders per customer over time.

    ASOS basket size

    When we look at the inflation adjusted average basket value, we see a steady decline each year, with a sharper drop from 2021 onwards.

    Performance marketing failed to increase basket size, and each customer added was less valuable than the last. Especially when one factors in the complexity of global logistics required for customer deliveries.

    This next bit is speculative, but the geographic expansion drove growth as performance marketing based growth in its established markets plateaued.

    The business went into reverse after 2020. The reasons for this reversal are likely to be multi-variant including:

    • Performance marketing plateau.
    • The bifurcation of the market. At the bottom end, Shein, Temu and TikTok commerce. At the top end luxury brand websites and secondary market platforms like StockX.
    • Culture. Like other online properties including Buzzfeed and Vice News, ASOS had a millennial user base that has been somewhat aged out.
    • The cost of living crisis due to post-COVID inflation.

    Let’s next think about advertising, in particular Les Binet’s explanation of how advertising really works. In this explanation summarises the conclusions of decades of Ehrensberg-Bass Institute research, alongside marketing science work by the likes of the IPA into a six line explanation.

    Advertising increases / maintains sales and / or margins

    By

    Slightly increasing the chance that people will choose your brand

    By

    Making the brand easy to think of and easy-to-buy

    And

    Creating positive feelings and associations

    Via

    Broad reaching ads that people find interesting and enjoyable

    And

    Targeted activations that they find relevant and useful

    Les Binet – How advertising REALLY works | YouTube

    ASOS failed to maintain sales and margins because they focused on targeted activations – that consumers found useful. But the utility seems to have changed over time.

    This happened despite ASOS using data science to optimise their marketing with a particular focus on geo-experimentation in performance marketing rather like trialing TV ads in different TV company regions, which marketers have done for the past 70+ years.

    This isn’t because Lilia and Clara are bad data scientists, indeed I think they are good marketers using data to inform their decisions. The problem was that the focus was nearly exclusively on performance marketing.

    ASOS are an example that has started to persuade performance marketers that brand advertising helps performance too.

    ABM

    Account based marketing is a strategic approach to business sales. It depends on account intelligence and analysis. This insight is used when an organisation considers and communicates with each prospect or customer account as markets of one.

    Target selection becomes important and the criteria is usually focused on the most profitable business.

    In existing accounts it is focused on upselling or cross-selling products and services to the customer. The main focus is alignment of marketing tactics with sales management. This moves the focus from individuals as targets to groups of people within an organisation.

    ABM isn’t about collapsing the funnel per se but about melding it and reshaping it in the service of the salesforce rather than short term and long term brand with sales.

    More marketing-related content here.

    More information

    The Josh Feldman podcast episode.

    ASOS Revenue and Usage Statistics (2024)

    ASOS-related coverage on Financial Times