10 More Things// Holiday Special: Bonus Double-Issue
In this edition: Denmark's AI copyright ruling, GoDaddy's Grand Prix winning work & rubber hose mascots
I have returned from Sardinia armed with lots of interesting fodder. I know I said I would pause the newsletter for 6 weeks, which is still my intent, but I have no idea what to do with all these links other than put them into a neatly organised newsletter. So normal service resumes temporarily.
Before I crack on with the usual marketing guff, a brief note on Sardinia: it’s a staggering island with the most consistently beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen. It’s not just that there’s a nice beach, it's that every beach is a little alcove with golden sands and vibrant green mountains jutting out along the sides. The water is so clear that even at 15 metres out you can see the bottom of the ocean floor. Perfect for snorkelling.
The food was more inconsistent than mainland Italy and far behind the arancini & pasta all norma of Sicily. Sardinian highlights included: culurgiones (stuffed pasta with potato, cheese & mint in a tomato sauce), seadas (deep-fried citrus & cheese pastry with honey) & mirto (liqueur made from the Myrtle plant). Kremet, a gelateria in Cagliari, are geniuses. I highly recommend their Lemon & Mint flavour.
Other than this long list of marketing material you’re about to quickly skim-read, I spent most my time reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy as my poorly chosen ‘beach read’. It’s a work of genius and I don’t use that word often (other than in the previous paragraph when praising an ice cream shop). It’s a devastating and desolate look at a period of history I knew little about: the mid 1800s where regional Mexican governments paid gangs handsomely to wipe out the native Apaches. McCarthy’s use of language is almost impossible to comprehend. He uses strange and antiquated words put into an unusual order with little grammar. I write this newsletter because I like writing and even writing these little intros helps me practice but this book makes me want to clamp my fingers shut in shame.
McCarthy was a little known novelist before he wrote Blood Meridian and for a long time after too. He won the MacArther Fellowship (Genius) grant four years before the book was published which gave him enough income to dedicate himself fully to a book for the first time. He moved to Texas, learned Spanish and traced the steps of the gangs he fictionalised, taking meticulous notes of the surrounding geology. And it’s £11.99 in your local book shop, cheaper than two pints.
Finally I’m going to say something so outrageous, so vehemently disagreeable, so disgustingly contrarian that I must apologise to the famously food-obsessed nation of Italy in advance. We ate multiple tiramisus in Sardinia and none were as good as the M&S tiramisu. Sorry, I know. Sometimes the job is telling the truth when no one else will admit it. As hard as it is to comprehend, at least the better tiramisu is closer to your home.
Strategy and all that stuff
Denmark’s Proposal To Tackle Deepfakes. They are proposing that everyone has automatic copyright of their own body, facial features and voice. A while back, I uploaded a photo of The Smiths singer Morrissey to ChatGPT and asked it to put him behind the meat counter at Morrison’s (rebranded as Morrissey’s) with the caption ‘meat is murder’. To my astonishment it did exactly that. Not only did it use Morrison’s branding but it happily used Morrissey’s image too. As fun as this is, GenAI needs proper copyright regulation and Denmark’s proposal is a good start.
The History of PPC. I know there’s a few things I always post, the Acquired podcast being one of them, but how often do you get a history of the most consequential media channel of the last 20 years? This is the story of Google (up until their 2004 IPO) which is the story of PPC which is the story of the decline of traditional advertising power. Google initially made money by white-labelling their search tech to other websites which brought in a little bit of cash but nothing to ease the nerves of early investors. So they were forced to sell search ads… on a CPM basis! Not CPC. CPM. This essentially meant buying search like you would print, booking slots via ad agencies. They borrowed the concept we know today (AdWords: self-organised auction) from another search company which transformed their business overnight from floundering tech company to THE GREATEST BUSINESS MODEL OF ALL TIME. Google’s stocks may not be worth as much as Apple or Microsoft but they consistently rake in more revenue and make more profit.
Don’t Copy Style, Copy Process. On the myth of originality and Apple’s strategy to put design central to the business. Ive’s designs may seem copies of previous designers (notably Dieter Rams) but they are not. He channelled their approach to solve new problems and didn’t simply replicate their designs in different environments. Building on this: I remember John Mulaney saying when he started stand up he would write in Mike Birbiglia’s voice - knowing that when he performed it wouldn’t sound anything like Mike Birbiglia. I used the same technique (for the brief time) when I did stand up. It works.
How ChatGPT Is Changing Language. We’re using boring words, e.g. '“delve”, that ChatGPT favours more often. Those that use smart replies (i.e. rewritten by AI) in chats are viewed as more co-operative but this reverses if people become suspicious AI has been involved. Makes sense. AI is like having 1,000 graduate planners accessible at any time. It’s not the omnipotent super-being that some people treat it as. Interestingly, AI is flattening language in other ways: it struggles to converse in English dialects other than “standard English” which I assume is “standard American English.”
Sincerity Wins The War. “The last 15+ years of the media has led to a flattening of journalism, constantly swerving toward whatever the next big trend is — the pivot to video, contorting content to “go viral” on social media, SEO, or whatever big coverage area (AI, for example) everybody is chasing instead of focusing on making good shit people love.”
The Weakness Of ROI. It’s simple, everyone understands it but it shifts you into thinking short-term and fails to account for risk. There’s got to be a better way of measuring campaign success.
Chinese EV Factory Tours. Are now so popular that tickets are distributed by lottery. Xiaomi initially had capacity for 20 site visitors a month despite 27,000 people showing interest. These factories are a technical magic show but it does make you wonder if other businesses could make money by conducting tours too…
Creativity & campaigns
It’s Like We Knew What We Were Doing. A behind-the-scenes look at the Grand Prix winning GoDaddy work from Quality Meats. Strategy course corrected a mediocre client brief to find some tension which the creative team turned into a lovely bit of work. Makes it all sound so simple.
Zohran’s Graphic Design. Mamdani romped home in the Democratic primary for New York mayor but little talked about is what his advertising looked like. Forgoing the overdone red, white & blue he switched to a vibrant yellow colour palette that signalled a different way of doing things.
Lidl By Lidl. It’s pretty clever, d’you know what I mean?
Superman Cape Mural. To promote the new superman movie murals have been created for passers-by to pose as the Man of Steel.
The History Gossip. Katie Kennedy is a student at Oxford making history accessible through inter-personal stories told like it’s gossip. She found almost instant success with the novel teaching concept. Even though the account is about 18 months old she has already published a book under the same name.
Names Will Be Made. BBC’s trailer for the Women’s Euros is epic. Names will be made.
Pick N Mix
Rubber Hose-ification Of Corporate Artwork. I’ve seen this style of animation crop up recently but didn’t realise it had a name. It’s called ‘rubber hose’ animation as it harps back to early American animation from the 1930s where the loose physics of the characters resembled a rubber hose. While the TikTok poster rails against the cutesy animation style ("a pizza delivering a pizza!"), I quite like it. It’s nice seeing a splash of personality in otherwise dull supermarket shelves.
Mestiz. Mexican design studio with uniquely vibrant yet refined designs. If I had the money…
The Bad Boy Of Bar Charts: William Playfair. What you’re looking at (above) is the first ever bar chart created by William Playfair who lived a Forrest Gump sort of life. He may have created the pie chart too.
Pathfinder. Explore the lateral connection between words.
Using AI Right Now. Handy guide how to use GenAI tools. “The free versions are demos, not tools.” The top comment is worth reading too. “Don’t use LLMs only as search bars. Start using them like strategic thought partners. Pick its brain so that it shares information that can sharpen your thoughts and help YOU make more informed decisions.” Update: I used GenAI to make suggestions on how to improve the writing in this newsletter and every one of the suggestions was terrible. Although, it liked my genius joke in the opening so that feels… good?
The Grand Encyclopaedia of Eponymous Laws. Some favourites:
“Thanks for Nothing” Effect: “If the original post in a thread ends with the sentence ‘Thanks in advance!’ it is exponentially less likely that it will be replied to.”
Dawkins’ Law of the Conservation of Difficulty: “The easier an academic field, the more it will try to preserve its difficulty by using complex jargon.”
Gall’s Law: “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”
AI Music Is Now Good. Gulp.
The Perfect Man. Profile of Billy Mitchell, the man who got the perfect Pac-Man score. It’s a lot more interesting than you first think and well worth the 10 minutes to read the whole article.
Peace out ✌️
Alex
Expect a 4-6 week pause before the next newsletter. For real this time.