10 More Things// Data, Moleskine Notebooks & Stagnation

In this edition: How McDonald's US used qual to appeal to fans, how the Moleskine notebook was created & why Britain is stagnating

Thanks to everyone that subscribed, particularly those that I’ve never met before - appreciate it. As a courtesy to you, I’ll keep this bit short.

Thoughtful Pieces

You Need More Than Data To Understand Your Customers. Really this is just saying you need qual research not just quant but it gives a nice illustration of how McDonald’s US pivoted from trying to appease their detractors to shining the spotlight on tens of millions of fans who love McDonald’s. Through qualitative research they built a A Book of Fan Truths which captured all the idiosyncrasies and cultural truths of ordering at McDonald’s.

Are We Now Living in a Parasite Culture? Just 10% of known species are parasites which used to be true in business too. No longer, argues Ted Gioia, big tech is becoming parasitic, producing nothing but leeching off human creative efforts. No wonder they’re investing in AI, “they must do this because even they understand that they are killing their hosts”. This article has clearly struck a nerve with people online but it’s a little unfair, they do provide value in boosting popularity, connecting creators to billions of potential fans and a modest monetary incentive. Thanks to James Turner for sharing.

A double-billing feature this week: Don’t Tell Stories, Put On A Show and Marketing is about Entertainment. Long-suffering readers of this newsletter know I post Joe Burns’ articles a lot. Expect that to continue. The funniest thing about the article is reading all the responses who are so defensive about the prevailing narrative that they’re ‘storytellers’. I think the comments are missing that shows still have stories but the main point is the spectacle. Both articles are somewhat validated in signalling research and Profitability 2, which show channels more associated with spectacle (but also story-telling) rather than selling perform better.

The Business Section

The History Of The Moleskine. How the Moleskine notebook came to be is an oddly compelling story. Modo & Modo wanted a product that was easy to produce, with wide commercial potential and would appeal to a new class of “contemporary nomads”. Mulling over this, Maria Sebregondi - a literary translator - was inspired by The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, which featured a character with a “black, oilcloth-covered notebook, its pages held in place with an elastic band” called a “moleskine”. The idea AND NAME for the notebook literally came from a book.

Shopify Comes To Roblox. A big step for Roblox who want to become a dominant player in ecommerce. (Roblox is an open-world game where you can create your own games, you might have heard of it when everyone talked about the Metaverse, it has 20m daily active users across Europe).

Jude Bellingham’s YouTube Documentary Is The Future Of Player Content. The streaming platforms revolutionsed sport documentaries, the next revolution will be hosted by the sports star’s owned channels. Jude Bellingham’s YouTube channel is already bigger than Aston Villa’s despite only having been created 2 weeks ago.

How Adidas Engineered Its Big Comeback. New CEO priortised: producing shoes people actually wanted to buy (Sambas), giving the shoe designers more freedom to experiment, leaning more into football, put their amazing roster of talent (Jude Bellingham, again) into their ads, (re)built relationships with suppliers that were damaged in the previous strategy to sell online and de-centralised the decision-making to give local markets more autonomy. Sounds like a CEO that knows what they’re doing.

Pick N Mix

Why Britain Has Stagnated. This is a proudly non-political newsletter but this essay is a must-read that effects everything in Britain. For example, poor choices in how we get energy means that British households pay 75% more for energy vs our American friends and large British businesses pay 118% more for energy vs our French friends. I’m breaking my own rule by having not read the whole thing yet so this is just a summary of the summary. Essentially, the author boils our productivity crisis down to 3 separate problems: transport, housing and energy. All of those problems are problems of investment: “we have banned most of the best investments or drive their costs to unviable levels”.

For example, in transport: “The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world”.

For example, in energy: “Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants”.

My main takeout is I’m going to stop saying we have productivity problem and start saying we have a building problem.

Unpacking Vinyl's Remarkable Revival: A Statistical Analysis. All hail vinyl! Despite Spotify eating the music industry’s lunch, the UK now has 461 indie record shops, up 36% in the last 10 years. Included in this article is the bizarre fact that 50% of people that own vinyl’s don’t own a record player (which admittedly… includes me).

The Work of Lito Leaf. Everything communicates, even… leaves.

Peace out ✌️

Alex