Edition #519 The vernacular switch to machines, Instagram authenticity and agentic ads. I saw a tweet this week about how you can ask an AI agent to make a media recommendation and it won’t include TV. Because none of the training data included tv in a meaningful way. “The television industry faces an invisible crisis. The AI systems that will soon make billions in media-planning decisions don’t seem to favour TV. Not because the data says so, but because… Continue reading
Edition #518 Welcome 2026, CES and Nike’s new mind lab. Welcome to 2026. I kicked off the year with a couple of days in Vegas (just the right amount of time) for CES. We forget it is first and foremost a consume electronics show. TechCrunch had a summary of the gadgets launched this week, including some of the bizarre. My fav being the smart Lego brick. Looking forward to playing with those. Robotics is a big trend… Continue reading
Edition #517 Final recap of the year. One of the things about newsletters is, it is a one way medium (generally speaking). I’ll have someone come to a breakfast, who has read for years, but you don’t know! But it also means there’s a quiet community of like minded people who are and have subscribed (for years). Sometimes an email just hits on a week where people are more engaged, sometimes the subject matter pops in the inbox. And sometimes… Continue reading
Edition #516 The rise of TBPN, Taika’s Christmas Ad and Agentic AI everything. I haven’t mentioned TBPN this year, but does feel like they’re worth a shout. They’ve exploded into the Twitter timeline, with their clips of tech folks. And then set up shop around events, getting scoops from guests like Nadella, Marc Andreessen, Larry Ellison, Benioff.. the list goes on. If you’re not familiar, BI has ‘Aura Farming with TBPN‘. What is nice is… Continue reading
Edition #515 On how chat shifted from BTC to AI at thanksgiving, all the AI developments and a POV on next year for brands. A week of OpenAI calling code red, us seeing maybe ads coming to their android app but oh no they’re being delayed to combat Gemini. But really last week was the AI Thanksgiving, because the amount of traffic from AI to retailers websites went up 805%. And, next year we’ll see another leap up. It’s like… Continue reading
Edition #514 To GEO or not to GEO, Adobe wades in, John Lewis & programmatic kill switches. For those that missed, last week I opened up a NotebookLM of the newsletter. If you had a play, what did you do? Was it useful? Maybe some ideas of prompts to copy/paste/modify: Based off topics discussed this year, what should I prepare for next year? Can you give me three talking points for the holiday party I’m doing strategic planning, and… Continue reading
Edition #513 Nativo is acquired by Life360, no ads for Apple TV (as yet) and new AI agents. We’re three, maybe four more editions left in the year! That is creeping around quickly. And as it’s that time of year, please do pass along any holiday campaigns you’ve liked/enjoyed. I liked the Apple TV riff on being ‘hand made’ with their new intro logo. It just feels on point, for the whole vibe at Apple TV. They’ve just continued to… Continue reading
Edition #513 Coca Cola hits repeat on its AI generated holiday ads, Obey your thirst Puck <> Air Mail merge. Coca Cola dropped their latest Christmas ad this week. Again AI generated. The same day of the launch, their head of Generative AI Pratik Thaker spoke at Brandweek. I’ll try find a link of the full chat, but it was super good. He spoke on how they produced the ad, from sketches/concepts, that were then brought to life… Continue reading
Edition #512 BYO but it’s not a restaurant, Google cracks $100b and we enter Run City by Bandit. BYO, bring your own wine, beer. What a delight. There’s an Indian restaurant in the East Village which does this, I don’t go often but it is nice and everyone brings their own bottle. Fun. What about BYOLLM though? That’s what Oreo decided to do, they invested $40m in their own image generation model. WHAT. “Mondelez expects that… Continue reading
Edition #511 Was TV the ultimate destination for social anyway? Agentic developments and a post-naive internet. BrandWeek is coming up in Atlanta, the week after next, are any readers going or in Atlanta? Love to connect in person. If you want to go – they offered me a discount, ping me back and I can share. It looks like an excellent line up. Netflix CMO, American Eagle CMO, Hasbro, AG1, Twitch, Vacation, Hawks, Reebok, Build-a-bear, IHG. On events, did… Continue reading
