December 2025 introduction – (29) rise and shine edition
I am now at issue 29, in Chinese numerology the number 29 is viewed positively, as it symbolises a long-lasting harmonious relationship. In bingo slang 29 is referred to as ‘rise-and-shine’ – ironic given that we’re currently enjoying the least daylight in any part of the year.
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
A quick look at the implications of the US government’s new National Security Strategy.
Rob Belk featured me in the Rambull newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed to his newsletter yet, I recommend doing so. It’s akin to a modern-day version of The Whole Earth Catalog, filled with carefully curated tools and useful resources, but without the tie-dye elephant pants. You can check it out here.
Books that I have read.
Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen. I bought several books on the recommendation of friends during the COVD lockdown and am slowly whittling my way through the pile, Counterinsurgency was one of them. It’s a collection of writings by Australian academic David Kilcullen, who advised the US government from 2005 – 2006 about Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is a collection of his writings from articles in military journals repeating many of the lessons learned in the past about fighting against guerrillas to Indonesian history. I had done some campaigns in Indonesia in the past for Qualcomm and Indofoods, so was interested in the post-independence history within it at the time. More about the book here.
Things I have been inspired by.
Due to the timing on writing the last newsletter, I missed writing about how I got to spend an evening with senior in-house marketers thanks to The Ortus Club. The evening was held at a restaurant in Mayfair sharing experience of AI in terms of its benefits, future opportunities and challenges.
Discussion themes that resonated:
There isn’t a lack of enthusiasm for generative AI in the corporate world.
Generative AI work often isn’t checked, to the detriment of it. It’s a powerful assist but you need to trust but verify.
IP concerns are holding back adoption and impacting tool choice by enterprises. Legal / regulatory departments are important AI gatekeepers.
Picking the right AI tool for the right job, too many organisations are trying to use one AI tool for everything.
Toyota officially unveiled their GR GT and it’s gorgeous looking. It is also a strikingly different direction to the likes of Mercedes Benz and the Volkswagen Group of companies with only useful technology allowed. its rather different to the usual automotive approach of a computer that happens to have four wheels.
Ipsos have been doing research in conjunction with Joe.co.uk looking at all things masculinity. One of the charts that stood out for me asked about the use of dating apps.
There was a clear gender gap between app usage numbers which represented an interesting challenge for product managers. It would merit further investigation as to the why. I have a couple of hypotheses:
Your product didn’t engage with women as much as men.
Your product is a poor medium to build up a rapport.
Some sort of difference in on-app behaviour usage that divides genders.
Your product carries social baggage that means women are less likely to admit that they have used your service.
You can see how dating app brands have tried to address this through in real life events and women move first in-app mechanisms.
Things I have watched.
I managed to get hold of Bullet In The Head on Blu Ray. While John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow. The Killer and Hard Boiled are respected by western directors, Bullet In The Head doesn’t get enough appreciation. The story of the film is almost as good as the film itself. Woo split with production partner Tsui Hark to direct his own script. Woo even self-financed the film. The film is Woo’s singular vision with influences including the Tiananmen Square student protests, Vietnam news reel footage and The Deer Hunter. Over time it had become hard to find and is under-appreciated. It’s not a perfect film because it was so ambitious in terms of its scale and there is a softness to the cinematography that you also see The Killer. Despite all that, it’s a fantastic film that I would thoroughly recommend. As a bonus, here’s a list of John Woo’s favourite films, as you can see he has impeccable taste.
Prison on Fire is part of my on-again, off-again tour through Ringo Lam’s filmography. Made in 1987, it has ‘Big Tony’ Leung Ka-fai who plays a graphic designer working in an ad agency who is sent to prison for manslaughter. He and his prison friend played by Chow Yun-fat navigate sadistic guards and violent triad convicts.
Prison on Fire 2 was Ringo Lam’s sequel to the first successful instalment of Prison on Fire. Chow Yun-fat returned to play his central role in the sequel, this time dealing with mainland prisoners, in addition to the usual triads and sadistic guards. In addition to the action, the film focuses much more on the relationship between Chow and his on-screen son. Given the various hot button issues in the film from a modern-day Hong Kong context:
Triad – prison guard collusion
Conflict between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese
Blackening the name of the disciplined services* of the Hong Kong government (coastguard, police, corrections department, anti-corruption agency etc.)
You are unlikely to see the like of the Prison on Fire films again, they would be in contravention of NatSec aka Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Thief was Michael Mann’s film debut. A hard-bitten heist film with film noir vibes. James Caan plays the protagonist Frank, a professional safe cracker adept at drilling locks out or cutting the door open with a thermic lance. He partners with James Belushi who plays an alarm expert. Mann contrasts the professionalism of Frank executing heists with his awkwardness claiming the heart of his girlfriend. A lot of the tension and craft he later brought to Heat and Collateral are already on display in this first firm, for instance the way Mann shoots nighttime scenes and paces the film’s plot. Tangerine Dream give Thief an amazing soundtrack.
Useful tools.
I have been working on a number of video projects and we’ve been using Trint to allow a perfect transcript to be made from digital video rushes that would aid in the editing and post-production process.
Whether you prospecting for adtech or job-hunting; Mediasense’s agency family tree makes life easier.
If you are moving into a leadership position, Zoe Arden‘s Story-Centred Leadership: Crafting Cultures of Change is probably worth a look. The book looks at how leaders can use stories to drive change through an iterative process of ‘listening, building, shaping, sharing and living’ their stories, rather than treating the story as a one-and-done activation. That might sound a bit new-age and your mileage may vary in terms of how it works as a tool for your leadership style. But Zoe might be on to something. Nick Chater‘s The Mind is Flat looked at neuroscience and what we know about thinking arrived at the conclusion that stories are software for the brain and Story-Centred Leadership seems to come from a similar direction. (Disclosure: Zoe worked at my first agency, back then I worked at on B2B & consumer technology and telecoms clients.)
The sales pitch.
I have been working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
Ok this is the end of my December 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and have a great Christmas and new year. Keep an eye out for my retrospective rundown of 2025.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.
Get in touch if you have any recommendations, and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on Substack as well as LinkedIn.
Counterinsurgency was one of several books that seemed interesting and that I bought during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 which I am slowly working my way through.
David Kilcullen
David Kilcullen is a former Australian military officer, who is an academic working at University of New South Wales, Canberra. Back in 2005 he advised the US government for a year while it dealt with insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has since been advising various companies about aspects of international studies.
Counterinsurgency
Counterinsurgency is a collection of his writings for military and academic journals. It covers everything from a tactical guide to officers dealing with local communities to the history of Indonesia post-independence and its efforts to combat East Timorese looking to become independent.
Kilcullen’s Counterinsurgency interesting to read for several reasons:
Accessible writing: he writes really well making his subject areas very accessible to enquiring minds. For an academic, it was refreshingly jargon-free and articulated complex situations simply.
His how-to guides for US military officers serving in Afghanistan gave me an insight that I previously didn’t have from the media coverage.
As someone who had worked on Indonesian market campaigns for Indofoods and Qualcomm, knowing more about this complex country was rewarding. Kilcullen provides an accessible window into two points in the post-independence history of Indonesia.
One of the key things that I took away from Counterinsurgency was the fragility of knowledge in organisations. Much of the work that Kilcullen is doing in the first part of the book was instilling hard-won knowledge that the world’s militaries had learned from TE Lawrence tormenting the Great Arab Revolt onwards including Vietnam, various American cold war campaigns, the British in Malaya and Northern Ireland.
Militaries put a lot of effort into capturing the history of conflicts and spend a lot of time on lessons learned. This is far more effort than organisations generally put into place to learn from the likes of marketing campaigns, yet Kilcullen’s writing was valuable because that knowledge seemed to be slipping through the cracks of militaries.
If you have an enquiring mind about world affairs and history, I can recommend Counterinsurgency as a good read. Other book reviews can be found here.
Toyota announced its new Toyota FJ Land Cruiser model. The Toyota FJ Land Cruiser is a smaller five-seater vehicle. It is a direct replacement for the FJ Cruiser which was sold in many markets outside the UK and European Union. Like its predecessor the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser shares underpinnings with its larger 7-seater cousin the 250 series. It features a shorter wheelbase. Toyota has put a lot of effort into thinking about how it can make the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser more extensible in capabilities and more modular.
Modularity comes in compatibility with MOLLE military storage connectivity that has made its way into the civilian world. While Alpine packs are about sleek design with few snags, MOLLE allows fastenings, pouches and equipment to be suspended inside and outside bags. Toyota has now extended this to the inside of the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser’s rear door.
The focus on extensible features within the vehicle shows how some markets (notably America) have a large after market industry providing additional features for vehicles with aspirations to do overloading. Toyota is an active participant in the SEMA show in the US. This is where fans and the vehicle modifying industry get together to be inspired, do deals and gain intelligence on vehicles so that they can design new after market parts. Toyota brings concept builds, as well as allowing after market manufacturers to measure and 3D scan new vehicles.
The move to extensible design, shows that Toyota is interested in providing more of that capability through its own business. Third-party parts, in particular lift kits can affect handling and wheel bearings. Designing its own aftermarket parts and applying extensible thinking in the vehicle design philosophy allows Toyota to:
Meet consumer needs.
Ensure the vehicles meet the factory’s quality and reliability standards.
Offer incremental additional revenue.
While a Toyota FJ Land Cruiser as ‘mum truck’ won’t need a water fording kit. An overlanding enthusiast like Chloe Kuo would put it to good use and influence more potential buyers in the process.
Like the FJ Cruiser before it we are unlikely to see the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser in UK Toyota dealerships due to the UK government’s focus on forcing UK consumers away from internal combustion vehicles. Instead they are likely to come in small numbers as JDM (Japanese domestic market) pre-owned vehicles.
Toyota recognises that net zero is more complex than importing Chinese electric vehicles. Considerations also need to be given to vehicle use case, the whole life carbon footprint of the car and sustainability. But that doesn’t make simple solutions for policy makers.
Toyota will have four Land Cruiser models that it will be selling around the world:
J70 series – sold to the UN, various militaries, Japan, Australia and in the global south. Doesn’t pass current European vehicle laws as it’s designed for resilience, robustness, repairability and sustainment in the most hostile environments.
J300 series – the flagship of the line-up. Sold in the US as the Lexus LX, this combines the comfort of a top of the range Range Rover with the capability of the 70 series in an off-road environment. As a Land Cruiser it is available in Australia, Japan, the Gulf States, South Africa and various countries in South East Asia from Sri Lanka to the Philippines.
J250 series – the most widespread of the Land Cruiser range in terms of sales footprint. It is sold in Japan, Europe, North and South America, Australia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Brunei and the Gulf States. In Europe it’s known as the Land Cruiser. It’s sold in other markets as the Toyota Prado, the Toyota Land Cruiser 250 in Japan, the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado in Australia and in North America as the Lexus GX and Toyota Land Cruiser. It is smaller and utilitarian than the J300, but not quite as robust or spartan as the J70 series.
FJ Land Cruiser – the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser is likely to be sold in North America and Japan, mirroring the markets where the FJ Cruiser was originally sold.
How the UK Lost Its Shipbuilding Industry – by Brian Potter – The UK ultimately proved unable to respond to competitors who entered the market with new, large shipyards which employed novel methods of shipbuilding developed by the US during WWII. British industry in general failed to invest adequately to keep ahead of competitors. The UK fell from producing 57% of world tonnage in 1947 to just 17% a decade later. By the 1970s their output was below 5% of world total, and by the 1990s it was less than 1%. In 2023, the UK produced no commercial ships at all. – Part of this was also down to policy decisions. The Thatcher administration deliberately designated yards as military-only to drive them to the wall and smash the trade unions.
Memory Exiled | History Workshop – a bit tiresome, don’t get me wrong I am happy to throw brickbats at the UK Government as a citizen of a decolonised country but this is distorted. – The UK government releases papers after 20 years, but some are kept under wraps for longer for national security or other reasons. Sensitive materials (in Hong Kong’s case, perhaps to do with the handover) don’t account for more than a tiny percentage of the content and are redacted. One possible reason the Hong Kong files are still not released is simply that there are huge amounts of them, and they are mostly on microfiche, which is a pain to digitise – not because of a desire to ‘control history’.
Forgive the rant, but this quote from an article about WPP’s decline–and the attitude behind it–drives me absolutely crazy. Let’s do the math.
If you’re a 40-year-old creative, you were 19 when Facebook launched.You turned 21 when Twitter debuted.You were 22 when Apple introduced the iPhone, and 25 when Instagram came out. So you’ve literally spent your entire career in advertising creating work for the digital/social/smartphone media ecosystem. And that means you’ve produced way more digital-first and social campaigns than TV spots, let alone posters. (Also: I would love to meet the creative who “built a career” making posters.)
And creatives older than 40? They’ve successfully navigated the decline of broadcast and mass media, the introduction of smartphones, the broad shift to targeting, the endless parade of social channels and new technologies that Will Change Everything–arguably the greatest two decades of disruption the advertising industry has ever faced.
And the creatives who are over 60? They’re the generation that *invented* digital advertising. – I thought that this comment from LinkedIn was the most insightful assessment of the article
August 2025 introduction – duck and dive (25) edition
This is the 25th edition of Strategic Outcomes. The first edition was quickly bashed out in a hotel room. And people signed up, and kept coming back. As I write this August 2025 has been a weird month with the weather throwing all the seasons at once at us from storms to heatwaves.
The bingo call for 25 – ‘duck and dive’ would have been equally appropriate descriptor for 2025 to date – with massive changes across current affairs, the economy and culture. It seemed to make more sense than calling this a ‘silver edition’.
25 evokes memories a of childhood Irish card game played with my Uncle and Granny on the formica top of the farmhouse kitchen table. Something I frequently did during August nights after a day’s work cleaning up after animals, feeding livestock and other tasks.
For this month’s musical accompaniment I can recommend St Etienne Take Me To The Pilot produced by Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll, which hits different to previous St Etienne records.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
From the changing nature of motorsport fandom to do clients actually care about WPP’s organisational changes and new CEO?
Hacks for moving city, from my time uprooting my life from London to Hong Kong and back again. These were and edited version of notes from an email I wrote years ago for a acquaintance who was moving to Shenzhen, soon after I had made the jump to Hong Kong. He is no longer with us, you may get some value out of them.
Books that I have read.
I am currently reading David McCloskey’s Moscow X. The slow reading pace is more down to me rather than the accessibility of the book which is up to McCloskey’s usual high standards.
Things I have been inspired by.
Escalating trade tensions
GLG shared a discussion on escalating global trade tensions. I had a number of takeaways from it.
US trade war with China has devolved into a dangerous stalemate where neither side can back down without losing face.
The core conflict stems from China’s state-led industrial policy clashing with the rules-based system. The Trump administration’s rhetoric triggered China’s historical “century of humiliation,” making compromise politically difficult.
Key takeaways from the discussion:
China’s top demands aren’t about tariffs.
Respect is paramount: China’s first demand for restarting talks is that the Trump administration speaks to them with respect and stops insults.
Sovereignty is key: China insists on discussing Taiwan, which it views as its “most important and most sensitive issue”.
The U.S. is overstretched.
Not enough negotiators: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has only about 250 total employees.
Outsourcing is unworkable: Using pro bono law firms to assist raises problems with security clearances and conflicts of interest.
The non-China strategy is different.
A softer tone: The administration’s approach to allies like Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam is more ‘measured’.
Quick deals: preliminary agreements with these nations that focus on tariff reductions, while punting more complex issues negotiations down the road.
Sector-specific US risks loom large.
Technology: export controls on advanced chips and dumping of Chinese-made legacy chips used in cars and white goods.
Autos: Highly integrated supply chains that cross borders, are very vulnerable to tariffs.
Pharmaceuticals: Tariffs on generic drugs could become unprofitable and cause them to disappear from the U.S. market.
But there was more interesting takeaways in the report that paint a more nuanced picture:
The “Learning Gap” is the real barrier.
The primary reason AI pilots stall is that most systems don’t retain feedback, adapt to context, or improve over time.
While 70% of employees prefer AI for simple tasks like emails and summaries, 90% choose a human colleague for complex projects because of the learning gap.
Buy, don’t build.
Internally developed tools fail twice as often as COTS ones.
The data shows a clear winning strategy: pilots built through strategic partnerships with external vendors are twice as likely to reach full deployment as those built internally (a 66% success rate versus 33%).
Companies are making misplaced bets.
An estimated 70% of AI investment is directed at high-visibility sales and marketing functions.
The highest and clearest ROI in underfunded “back-office” areas. Some firms are saving $2-10 million annually in customer service and document processing.
These three points are good news for consultants, productivity suite vendors and enterprise software companies that really understand their clients workflow pain-points.
Chart of the month.
Actually two charts. The first one is a decline in conscientiousness. Depending who you believe this could be down to our always-on lives thanks to social media and smartphones, OR, a victim of the broken social contract that young adults (aka generation z) feel has happened.
A corresponding decline in US consumers reading for pleasure tends to imply a smartphone-related effect rather than broken social contract as cause. Also broken social contracts are depressingly common generation-by-generation.
Things I have watched.
The Iron Prefect was a film that I watched purely on the basis of a talk Alex Cox gave as part of the special features on the Blu Ray. The film is an account of a Fascist-era official sent to combat the Sicilian mafia who ends up finding how endemic and self-defeating his mission is. It is based on the story of Cesare Mori and some of his most famous acts such as the siege of Gangi. Cox talked about its similarity to The Mattei Affair – which I can see to a certain extent, in terms of the themes explored. The film features Claudia Cardinale and Giuliano Gemma – two greats of Italian cinema. But the real star is the scenery.
Hong Kong Hong Kong is a tragic romantic triangle about mainland migrants with a social realism bent. It was shot in 1983, but didn’t have the escapism of more popular films in the Hong Kong box office at the time.
The film is similar in feel to the likes of the kitchen sink dramas of 1960s kitchen sink dramas like This Sporting Life, and John Huston’s boxing drama Fat City. It shows a different side to Hong Kong cinema than western audiences were used to. It came out the same time as Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Jackie Chan’s Project A. Hong Kong Hong Kong benefited from the free flow of rostered actors attached to TVB – the dominant broadcaster being able to work for Shaw Brothers film productions. Protagonist Alex Man, like other stars of his era including Chow Yun-fat and Simon Yam Tat-wah came through TVB’s acting school that nurtured talent from all walks of life from first-jobbers, to former models and policemen.
Man brought experience from television and stage roles to his film performances which makes Hong Kong Hong Kong more powerful.
Finally 1980s the city of Hong Kong itself plays a fantastic role to the drama. From the opening tracking shot taken somewhere above Kennedy Town to the composite buildings and Shangri-La Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui – to migrant slums that were being dismantled as public housing improved. Hong Kong has continually changed from an architectural point of view, though the pace has slowed recently. Some of the shots pulled at me deep inside as only a home you deeply cared about can.
An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty featured Alex Man as a classic wuxi swordsman. The star is Pat Ha Man-jing who would have been 18 or 19 at the time. The film feels more ‘Japanese’ chambara romance than your usual Hong Kong film. Ha’s cleavage is on display – which is unusual as the Hong Kong film industry is more socially conservative. Violence is ok, but risqué films like Sex and Zen with a category III rating often had Japanese actresses in them like Mari Ayukawa and Rena Murakami. The Japanese actresses appeared because of the stigma in Hong Kong society affected actresses careers more than their male counterparts AND the ongoing popularity of Japanese adult films in Hong Kong.
An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty shows the two sides of Shaw Brothers productions: great actors and inventive cinematography on one side, together with cheap skating on set design like giant marine plywood panels.
Shaw Brothers had been wounded by the founding of Golden Harvest, he power of the studio system was waning, the Hong Kong new wave movement was taking off and soon ‘mainland collaborations’ would dismantle much of the ecosystem that made Hong Kong cinema great.
I really wanted to like Butterfly on Amazon Prime Video. It had a great cast including Daniel Dae Kim, Piper Perabo and Charles Parnell. It was shot on location in South Korea. It had an interesting take on the privatisation of intelligence operations. But it felt empty and definitely less than the sum of its parts, which is a shame given how well Amazon did on its Tom Clancy adaptions. Butterfly was let down by poor storytelling.
Useful tools.
Yet another LLM. Anara was something I have trialled a little and found useful due to its heavier weighting towards citing research papers compared to the other main LLMs out there. Useful for account planners as another tool in our arsenal to be used in parallel with the more mainstream tools out there, rather than as a substitute.
The sales pitch.
I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
Ok this is the end of my August 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward for an indian summer, despite some of August already feeling autumnal.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.
Welcome to my February 2025 newsletter, I hope that your year of the snake has gotten off to a great start. This newsletter marks my 19th issue – which feels a really short time and strangely long as well, thank you for those of you who have been on the journey so far as subscribers to this humble publication. Prior to writing this newsletter, I found that the number 19 has some interesting connections.
In mandarin Chinese, 19 sounds similar to ‘forever’ and is considered to be lucky by some people, but the belief isn’t as common as 8, 88 or 888.
Anyone who listened to pop radio in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s would be familiar with Paul Hardcastle’s documentary sampling ’19’. The song mixed narration by Clark Kent and sampled news archive footage of the Vietnam war including news reports by read by Walter Cronkite. 19 came from what was cited as the average age of the soldier serving in Vietnam, however this is disputed by Vietnam veteran organisation who claim that the correct number was 22. The veteran’s group did a lot of research to provide accurate information about the conflict, overturning common mistakes repeated as truth in the media. It’s a handy reminder that fallacies and trust in media began way before the commercial internet.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
Zing + more things – HSBC’s Zing payments system was shut down and was emblematic of a wider challenge in legacy financial institutions trying to compete against ‘fintech startups. I covered several other things as well including new sensor technology
The 1000 Yen ramen wall is closing down family restaurants across Japan. A confluence of no consumer tolerance for price elasticity due to inflation driven ingredients costs is driving them to the wall. Innovation and product differentiation have not made a difference.
Luxury wellness – why luxury is looking at wellness, what are the thematic opportunities and what would be the competitors for the main luxury marketing conglomerates be successful.
Technical capability notice – having read thoroughly about the allegations that Apple had been served with an order by the British government to provide access to its customer iCloud drive data globally – I still don’t know what to think, but didn’t manage to assuage any of my concerns.
Books that I have read.
World Without End: The million-copy selling graphic novel about climate change by Jean-Marc Jancovici and Christophe Blain. In Japan, graphic novels regularly non-fiction topics like text books or biographies. A French climate scientist and illustrator collaborated to take a similar approach for climate change and the energy crisis. Their work cuts through false pre-conceptions and trite solutions with science.
Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski. Yablonski breaks down a number of heuristics or razors based on psychological research and how it applies to user experience. These included: Jakob’s Law, Fitt’s Law, Hick’s Law, Miller’s Law, Peak-End Rule and Tesler’s Law (on complexity). While the book focuses on UX, I thought of ways that the thinking could be applied to various aspects of advertising strategy.
I re-read Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal. Eyal’s model did a good job at synthesising B.J. Fogg’s work on persuasive computing, simplifying it into a model that the most casual reader can take and run with it.
Kapferer on Luxury by Jean-Noël Kapferer covers the modern rise of luxury brands as we now know them. Like Dana Thomas’ Deluxe – how luxury lost its lustre Kapferer addresses the mistake of globalised manufacturing and massification of luxury. However Kapferer points out the ‘secret sauce’ that makes luxury products luxurious: the hybridisation of luxury with art and the concept of ‘incomparability’. The absence of both factors explain why British heritage brands from Burberry to Mulberry have failed in their current incarnations as luxury brands.
Black Magic by Masamune Shirow is a manga work from 1983. Masamune is now best known for the creation of Ghost In The Shell which has been turned into a number of anime films, TV series and even a whitewashed Hollywood remake. Despite the title, Black Magic has more in common with space operas like Valerian & Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières than the occult. In the book Masamune explores some of the ideas which he then more fully developed in Ghost In The Shell including autonomous weapons, robots and machine intelligence.
Doll by Ed McBain. Doll was a police procedural novel written in 1965 that focused on the model agency industry at the time. The novel is unusual in that it features various artistic flourishes including a model portfolio and hand written letters with different styles of penmanship. The author under the McBain pen name managed to produce over 50 novels. They all have taunt dialogue that’s ready for TV and some of them were adapted for broadcast, notably as an episode of Columbo. You can see the influence of McBain’s work in the likes of Dick Wolf’s productions like the Law & Order, FBI and On Call TV series franchises.
Things I have been inspired by.
Can money make you happy?
Past research indicated that happiness from wealth plateaued out with a middle class salary. The latest research via the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania indicates that might not be the case instead, earning more makes you happier and there might not be a point at which one has enough. The upper limit on the research seems to have been restricted by finding sufficiently rich research respondents rather than natural inclination. As a consumer insight that has profound implications in marketing across a range of sectors from gaming to pensions and savings products.
AgeTech
I came across the concept of ‘agetech’ while looking for research launched in time for CES in Las Vegas (7 – 11, January 2025). In the US, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and American Association of Retired People (AARP) have put together a set of deep qualitative and quantitative research looking at the needs of the ‘aged consumer’ for ‘AgeTech’. AgeTech isn’t your Grandma iPad or your boomer CEO’s laptop. Instead it is products that sit at the intersection of health, accessibility and taking care of oneself in the home. The top five perceived age technologies are connected medical alert devices,digital blood pressure monitors, electric or powered wheelchairs/scooters, indoor security cameras, and electronic medication pill dispenser/reminders. Their report 2023 Tech and the 50-Plus, noted that technology spending among those 50-plus in America is forecast to be more than $120 billion by 2030. Admittedly, that ’50-plus’ label could encompass people at the height of their career and family households – but it’s a big number.
It even has a negative impact on the supply side of the housing market for younger generations:
The overwhelming majority (95%) of Americans aged 55 and older agree that aging in place – “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level” – is an important goal for them. This is up from 93% in 2023.
The Mayfair Set v 2.0
During the summer of 1999, a set of documentaries by Adam Curtis covered the reinvention of business during the latter half of the 20th century was broadcast. I got to discover The Mayfair Set much later on. In the documentaries it covered how the social contract between corporates and their communities was broken down and buccaneering entrepreneurs disrupted societal and legal norms for profit. There is a sense of de ja vu from watching the series in Meta’s business pivots to the UK government’s approach to intellectual property rights for the benefit of generative AI model building.
It probably won’t end well, with the UK population being all the poorer for it.
The Californian Ideology
As to why The Mayfair Set 2.0 is happening, we can actually go back to a 1995 essay by two UK based media theorists who were at the University of Westminster at the time. It was originally published in Mute magazine.
This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley. Promoted in magazines, books, TV programmes, websites, newsgroups and Net conferences, the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies. In the digital utopia, everybody will be both hip and rich. Not surprisingly, this optimistic vision of the future has been enthusiastically embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, innovative capitalists, social activists, trendy academics, futurist bureaucrats and opportunistic politicians across the USA.
It reads like all these things at once:
A prescient foreshadowing from the past.
Any Stewart Brand op-ed piece from 1993 onwards.
The introduction from an as-yet ghost written book on behalf of Sam Altman, a la Bill Gates The Road Ahead.
A mid-1990s fever dream from the minds of speculative fiction authors like Neal Stephenson, William Gibson or Bruce Sterling.
What the essay makes clear is that Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison and Elon Musk are part of a decades long continuum of Californian Ideology, all be it greatly accelerated; rather than a new thing. One of the main differences is that the digital artisans no longer have a chance to get rich with their company through generous stock options.
Even Steve Jobs fitted in with the pattern. For a hippy he drove a 5 litre Mercedes sports car, parked in the handicapped spaces in the Apple car park and had a part in firing Apple’s first gay CEO: Michael Scott because of homophobia and Scott’s David Brent-like handling of Black Wednesday. It may be a coincidence that Tim Cook didn’t come out publicly as gay until over three years after Steve Jobs died.
… a European strategy for developing the new information technologies must openly acknowledge the inevitability of some form of mixed economy – the creative and antagonistic mix of state, corporate and DIY initiatives. The indeterminacy of the digital future is a result of the ubiquity of this mixed economy within the modern world. No one knows exactly what the relative strengths of each component will be, but collective action can ensure that no social group is deliberately excluded from cyberspace.
A European strategy for the information age must also celebrate the creative powers of the digital artisans. Because their labour cannot be deskilled or mechanised, members of the ‘virtual class’ exercise great control over their own work. Rather than succumbing to the fatalism of the Californian Ideology, we should embrace the Promethean possibilities of hypermedia. Within the limitations of the mixed economy, digital artisans are able to invent something completely new – something which has not beenpredicted in any sci-fi novel. These innovative forms of knowledge and communications will sample the achievements of others, including some aspects of the Californian Ideology. It is now impossible for any serious movement for social emancipation not to incorporate feminism, drug culture, gay liberation, ethnic identity and other issues pioneered by West Coast radicals. Similarly, any attempt to develop hypermedia within Europe will need some of the entrepreneurial zeal and can-do attitude championed by the Californian New Right. Yet, at the same time, the development of hypermedia means innovation, creativity and invention. There are no precedents for all aspects of the digital future. As pioneers of the new, the digital artisans need to reconnect themselves with the theory and practice ofproductive art. They are not just employees of others – or even would-be cybernetic entrepreneurs.
They are also artist-engineers – designers of the next stage of modernity.
Barbrook and Cameron rejected the idea of a straight replication of the Californian Ideology in a European context. Doing so, despite what is written in the media, is more like the rituals of a cargo cult. Instead they recommended fostering a new European culture to address the strengths, failings and contradictions implicit in the Californian Ideology.
Chart of the month: consumer price increases vs. wage increases
This one chart based on consumer price increases and wage increases from 2020 – 2024 tells you everything you need to know about UK consumer sentiment and the everyday struggle to make ends meet.
Things I have watched.
The Organization – Sydney Poitier’s last outing as Virgil Tibbs. The Organization as a title harks back to the 1950s, to back when the FBI were denying that the Mafia even existed. Organised crime in popular culture was thought to be a parallel corporation similar to corporate America, but crooked. It featured in the books of Richard Stark. This was despite law enforcement stumbling on the American mafia’s governing body in 1957. Part of this was down to the fact that the authorities believed that the American arm of the mafia were a bulwark against communism. Back to the film, it starts with an ingenious heist set piece and then develops through a series twists and turns through San Francisco. It was a surprisingly awarding film to watch.
Nakita – Nakita is an early Luc Besson movie made after Subway and The Big Blue. It’s an action film that prioritises style and attitude over fidelity to tactical considerations. The junkies at the start of the film feel like refugees from a Mad Max film who have happened to invade a large French town at night. It is now considered part of the ‘cinéma du look’ film movement of the 1980s through to the early 1990s which also features films like Diva and Subway. Jean Reno’s character of Victor the Cleaner foreshadows his later breakout role as Leon. It was a style of its time drawing on similar vibes of more artistic TV ads, music videos, Michael Mann’s Miami Vice TV series and films Thief and Manhunter.
Stephen Norrington’s original Blade film owes a lot to rave culture and cinéma du look as it does to the comic canon on which it’s based. It’s high energy and packed with personality rather like a darker version of the first Guardians of The Galaxy film. Blade as a character was influenced by blaxploitation characters like Shaft in a Marvel series about a team of vampire hunters. Watching the film almost three decades after it came out, it felt atemporal – from another dimension rather than from the past per se. Norrington’s career came off the rails after his adaption of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen did badly at the box office and star Wesley Snipes went to jail for tax-related offences.
The Magnificent Seven– I watched the film a couple of times during my childhood. John Sturges had already directed a number of iconic films: Bad Day at Black Rock and Gunfight at The OK Corral. With The Magnificent Seven, he borrowed from The Seven Samurai. It was a ‘Zappata western’ covering the period of the Mexican revolution and was shot in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The film did two things to childhood me: made me curious about Japanese cinema and storytelling. There are some connections to subsequent Spaghetti Westerns:
Eli Wallach played a complex Mexican villain in bothThe Magnificent Seven and Leone’s The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.
The visual styling of the film is similar to spaghetti westerns, though the clothes were still too clean, Yul Brynner’s role as the tragic hero in black is a world-away from the traditional Hollywood coding of the good guys wearing white hats (or US cavalry uniforms).
The tight, sparse dialogue set the standard for the Dollars Trilogy and action films moving forward
Zappata westerns were the fuel for more pro-leftist films in the spaghetti western genre. While The Magnificent Seven still has a decidedly western gaze, it took on racism surprisingly on the nose for a Hollywood film of this era.
Watching it now as a more seasoned film watcher only sharpened my appreciation of The Magnificent Seven.
Breaking News by Johnnie To feels as much about now as it when the film was shot 20 years ago. First time I watched it was on the back of a head rest on a Cathay Pacific flight at the time. Back then I was tired and just let the film wash over me. This time I took a more deliberate approach to appreciating the film. In the film the Hong Kong Police try and control and master the Hong Kong public opinion as a robbery goes wrong. However the Hong Kong Police don’t have it all their own way as the criminals wage their own information campaign. This film also has the usual tropes you expect from Hong Kong genre of heroic bloodshed films with amazing plot twists and choreographed action scenes along with the spectacular locations within Hong Kong itself. Watching it this time, I got to appreciate the details such as the cowardly dead-beat Dad Yip played by veteran character actor Suet Lam.
Useful tools.
Current and future uncertainties.
This could be used as thought starters for thinking about business problems for horizon scanning and scenario planning. It’s ideal as fuel for you to then develop a client workshop from. But I wouldn’t use something this information dense in a client-facing document. You can download it as a high resolution PDF here.
Guide to iPhone security
Given the propensity of phone snatching to take over bank accounts and the need to secure work phones, the EFF guide to securing your iPhone has a useful set of reminders and how-to instructions for privacy and security settings here.
Novel recommendations
I got this from Neil Perkin, an LLM-driven fictional book recommendation engine. It has been trained on Goodreads (which reminds me I need to update my Goodreads profile). When I asked it for ‘modern spy novels with the class of John Le Carre’ it gave me Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, Chris Pavone’s The Expats and Chris Cumming’s The Trinity Six. All of which were solid recommendations.
Smartphone tripod
Whether it’s taking a picture of a workshop’s forest of post-it notes or an Instagrammable sunset a steady stand can be really useful. Peak Design (who were falsely accused of being a ‘snitch‘) have come up with a really elegant mobile tripod design that utilises the MagSafe section on the back of an iPhone.
Apple Notes alternative
I am a big fan of Apple Notes as an app. I draft in it, sync ideas and thoughts across devices using it. But for some people that might not work – different folks for different strokes. I was impressed bu the quality of Bear which is a multi-platform alternative to the default Notes app.
The sales pitch.
I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
