Category: ai

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Fruit flies like a banana

So the punchline to the joke goes.

There is no setup here, though.

I realise that a whole month has gone past where I’ve not posted anything. Not a single word. And there is no excuse for this, although if anyone does read this blog they might be happy that I didn’t just throw out some words into the LLM machines of this world for no reason other than I could.

Instead, I have news of a project that stalled and then got sidelined. A big project that was exciting and led by brilliant people. It may come back to life, but for now ai is disrupting things and there’s no way to ignore this any longer for this organisation. Shame, as I feel like there’s a brief there I could help with.

However, I’ve wrapped up three projects. A simple piece of branding that was as painful as being constipated for a year. I’m sort of glad to be shot of it, although the work is solid. And the client is already getting a lot of hot leads based on it. Then there was a piece of work around employee benefits that’s half done. Another interesting area to consider and an attempt by me to make something less complex for its audience and also flexible enough that it can grow and change as the organisation does. Lots of good stuff in there, they just need to make some decisions.

Tomorrow I’m with clients for the day to help them with strategic planning for some comms around a huge organisational milestone, as well as interview senior leaders in the business about the previous 25 years and what that means for the next 25 years.

After that, I don’t know. A social housing brief has shown a little ‘leg’ and caught my attention. Nothing doing as yet, but I think trying to find a way to do some interesting comms around their new proposition would be exciting. There’s a decent strategic thought sitting there but just blandly saying it over and over again will not only make it meaningless, it’ll also weaken the kernel that sits at its core. My fear is it’ll be a strapline that’s repeated ad(vert) infinitum and nothing more. Such a shame when that happens, but it’s also seen as the inevitable end of a piece of brand work. I want to make it more of a systemic proposition for the organisation, because that’s what it, and the organisation, deserves.

So, that’s been the last month.

Oh, no, of course, I did some work on a vinyl release for the Dan Arborise album, Of Tide & Trail. It came out on 9 October and so far has received some fantastic feedback from customers. Long may that continue.

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Let down

Total aside before I start: every time I open up this page to write a post it tells me there is a error and I am not allowed to access this endpoint. No idea what it is or how to stop it, and now that Google makes shit up for its search results – sorry, I mean provides an ai summary – it’s of no help whatsoever. I still appear to be able to post, so this aside is pointless. Like the error.

Another week is at mid-point and I’ve been thinking about comms plans and messaging frameworks, as well as looking deeply into the void that is employee benefits and rewards (or perks, as they’re referred to thanks to wanting to sound ‘human’ and ‘approachable’ in that HR way that is totally bullshit – they work for the company).

My phone keeps crashing and my computer did an update and then wouldn’t allow me to close several apps or open several others and despite an hour of constant restarts and opening in safe mode it didn’t resolve. Overnight, I left it off and today it’s playing ball.

Oh, the use of the word ‘revert’ when you mean getting back to someone is weird. I’m informed it’s used in the US a lot. Revert does mean to return to a topic, but it sounds odd. I always think of the definition that says revert means returning to a previous, often worse, state. Then again, when someone in business says it perhaps they do mean that?

I have a new Unspun Heroes release coming out for preorders this Friday. I’m terrible about writing press releases or informing people it’s happening. Not sure writing this sentence changes that. For the ‘lulz’ (as the boomers say) I posted the private link on LinkedIn and it goes to an error 404, which I knew. It really fucks with the marketing community doing these things. So, that’s a plus.

Over on social media the music community is doing its hashtag humblebrag by telling followers a list of ten bands they’ve seen live. Really it just dates people, like carbon rings – “oh, you saw The Beatles, do you have a funeral plan?”

How’s your week going? Has the bank holiday messed you up? (If you’re not in the UK, imagine starting the working week a day later than usual, that’s the extent of it.) My work got canned because someone was able to collate some info and send it to me. This is productivity in the business world of 2026.

Is it Friday yet? Christmas?

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More Mundane Than Monday

I never really got the Sunday scaries, and I still don’t. I’ve got quite adept at switching off these days, or rather better at compartmentalising work and home. Some of this is because I’m less invested in the politics of a situation. I do the work to a high level and work with others to ensure their own work is the best it can be. Or rather, that *our* work can be the best it can be.

Today I’m doing the work that no one sees. The research and thinking that enables the best work to happen. It’s not boring but it is mundane in that the inputs are not something that people appear to care about, they only see the output and put all the value on that. The use of ai is only making that worse – the inputs are ‘ask an ai bot’ and the outputs are just a copy&paste transaction.

Tomorrow I will sit down with some humans and chat through what I’ve learned, what I think it means, and gather their inputs. I’ll use these to shift my own thinking. I’ll write it out in words and share that with everyone again and have them feedback. Finally, I’ll create some slides to show the client so that we have an agreed and shared starting point for the actual work.

That’s the process.

Now, I say that the thinking bit is mundane. It’s obviously not. What I mean is that telling people where you looked, how you put it together with a bunch of other inputs (some decades old) and how reading a blog post about sheep farmers helped you think about how to frame a question for a large, global financial institution… well, they’re not interested in that at all. Which is their loss.

To me, this part is the most interesting thing about thinking. Gathering a set of data and information and turning it into knowledge and insight. That data and information is there for everyone and anyone to gather up. The bit that cannot be replicated is the transformation of that into something novel or an angle that swiftly turns everyone’s perspective on its head and allows new paths to be opened up and explored. Or an answer that seems obvious when you see it but was hidden from view becomes crystal clear.

That’s the process.

I love the process. No way I’m outsourcing that to a prediction machine.

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Week End

It’s been more than a week since I posted. Work things keep me busy.

I’ve been in London a few times this week, in an office. The temperature was still quite warm but not heat dome temperatures. Which was better. I’m more of a 21ºC kind of person.

I facilitated a workshop this week. I’m getting better at recovering from eight hours of being the focus of the room. It’s still tiring but I am able to cope with it.

I caught up with an old friend. We talked about everything from ai to 2014 conferences and some confidential things I’d love to share but I’m not allowed to. Suffice to say that some people that are considered the ‘good guys’ are actually complete and utter c*nts. Perhaps it’s no surprise?

I managed to send some invoices. Highlight of my week.

I thought a little bit about the announcement that the NHS will ‘reward’ people for walking 30 minutes a day. It’s not hard to do, but for some people it’ll be impossible. Also, what about disabled people? Do they just not get rewarded? And as with all targets, there will be those who look for easy ways to reach it without actually putting in the effort. It might be better to make it safer to walk places without fear of being run over by a car or Lime bike user, or people who are glued to their f*cking screens and crash into you when you’re simply standing waiting to cross a road (while Lime bikes stream past a red light).

I’m really not a fan of Lime bikes, or anyone who isn’t obeying the rules of the road and therefore endangering pedestrians. Yes, I get that it’s an inconvenience to stop, but at least slow down!

Other than that I’ve been going back and forth on design changes for the next Unspun Heroes release, and being gobsmacked at the stupidity of people who have, somehow, managed to make a lot of money doing a business.

It’s been exhausting but also, on occasion, a lot of fun.

Oh, and finding people on LinkedIn who completely miss the point you’re making continues.

See you next week.

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Rushed Or Right?

Speed. Apparently it’s driving the world in an unprecedented way. We’re going faster than ever, and therefore we need to come up with answers faster than ever. It’s the only way to be visible, to feel seen. Slow is for losers, those who will be left behind or crushed beneath the wheels of ai and its capitalist masters.

What rot, I say.

Yes, there are times when speed should be the primary driver for action, but those are mostly life-saving (or corporation saving). Rushing causes disruption. Sometimes due to unforeseen consequences; sometimes because we don’t understand what it is we are actually dealing with; sometimes because disruption is being necessitated by those who benefit most from uncertainty.

Being right, or at the very least taking small steps rather than big leaps, leads to better outcomes. Almost always. Even innovation, the one thing we’re constantly told requires massive leaps and the breaking down of barriers, is often glacially slow. It’s tiny baby steps by many that are then pulled together by one or two. Even ai isn’t new in that sense, it’s just that we now have the infrastructure to enable its rollout. And it’s being done at speed. Those unintended consequences are lining up, though.

I have some deadlines which are so spicy I shouldn’t be spending time writing a blog post about being fast or being right. Except I should. Because I want to be right much more than I want to be done. Being right means confidence in what I’m doing – my own confidence that I’m saying the right things and asking the client to take the right path; confidence in the agency paying me and their client in my strategic choices and the agency they’ve entrusted to help them. Right beats rushed. We’re not saving lives, as the saying goes.

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You Can’t Handle The Truth

The famous line uttered by Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men. A film about finding the truth. A film about the law, surely the upholder and arbiter of truth? Not in 2026.

Mainstream media (MSM) is frequently seen as having an agenda that is turning us all into sheep. Or something. Nonsense by dint of the fact that all media, fringe, mainstream or otherwise, has an agenda. A perspective. It’s how well it pressing the ‘cognitive bias’ button in your brain. Best to take as many viewpoints as you can and then orientate.

Which is what research does.

Why is this of interest to me? The reason I’ve not been writing is that I’ve been reading, researching and understanding how the gap between the gatekeepers of (alleged) truth – academia – and those who peddle (alleged) lies – the media – has closed in recent times.

The Times newspaper, once the mouthpiece for the Murdoch-loving elite – and perhaps still is – has recently arrived with a new campaign. It’s got a snappy line that will resonate, and it positions them as the arbiter of truth. Or at least trust.

And then there’s the Financial Times, or the FT as it’s known. They are also positioning themselves as the arbiters of truth with their brand campaign that suggests they are the journalism to trust. Source: FT (see what I did there?)

They’re certainly more trusted than, say, Washington Post and many, many other media outlets in certain Western ‘democracies’.

Truth is a difficult word because it involves bias and perspective, and at least a smidgen of critical thinking. Three things in short supply in the age of the internet. Add in LLM hallucinations and it’s getting harder to know what’s what and who’s who. Google is most definitely not your friend.

The work I’m doing butts up against this idea of truth and trust. Not so much the what but the how. How do we demonstrate we speak or write the truth and can be trusted when no one trusts the truth anyway?

I don’t have the answers, yet. Perhaps I won’t. However, it’s a really lovely brief to think about and despite the lunatic deadlines given to me to think about it in-depth, I’m really rather enjoying the intellectual challenge.

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Workshops, & Territories, & Ideas

Did some strategy things. Worked with a client group to get them to really think about what they do and why. Pushed some buttons that made them uncomfortable (in a nice way) and that really got them woken up to the idea that they can’t sleepwalk their way to growth. Went well.

Part of the work was looking at broad territories that we could explore together. I always do three. One is safe. It’s now. One is a little bit scary, a nudge towards an (I think) obvious future. And one is there to make them super concerned that they don’t have the aspiration or the actual chops to do. Except they do. And they could easily do it with the right tools, the right coaching and the right foundations. They went with that! Rarely happens, but they were visibly excited to just embrace the change. They know it won’t be easy but they don’t want to stand still while the rest of their sector moves on. They don’t want to be the losers. Yes, there is ai involved. Not the usual nonsense grift but good ideas around ML and pattern matching and insight sifting. Nothing new but presented in a way that sounds new.

Today I have given things a real focus. I’m working on giving it clarity. Tomorrow will refine my thinking. Wednesday will be about building out the tools they need to execute this strategy, and set out the pathways they can take. Next week it’ll be brought to life properly. I’ll even do some marketing work for them so they can take the ideas to their customers. The ones they have. The ones they want to have. Test and learn. Some (hopefully) minor refinements and then done. Invoice and move on.

Looking forward to what’s next.

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Is there an assumption?

Do people immediately assume that ai is being used to create something, now that it is so unibquitous (allegedly)?

I personally don’t use ai to create. I use it to capture and transcribe, because it saves time. This is one instance of my usage. In fact, I would probably never use ai to create, but I would use it to do administrative tasks that take time to do and are best suited to being done (mediocre as the output is) by machine.

And yet, I see people jump to the conclusion that ai has been used in creation. I wonder if they are right with that assumption, and I’m also interested in why that’s their first thought when they see something creative.

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Catching up

I’ve been unwell. And also busy. Mostly unwell, recently; mostly busy previously. I think the two things are connected.

Anyway, as such I’ve not posted for a week. And this post is just an update on why I’ve not posted.

That said, I did read a piece about taste and ai that I found interesting. Essentially, they put forward the idea that the reason there is so much ai slop about is that people have no idea of what taste is and consequently believe that curation is the same as taste. It is not. This lack of a clear point of view on what is good vs. what is not good (subjective, but a starting point of all art) is the sole reason that ai will always produce huge amounts of slop.

You can read about encrusted tortoises and that lack of a point of view that’s behind this avalanche of awful ‘ai content’ here.

While I’m mostly behind the ideas it sets out around taste and slop production, I do think that ai lowers the bar for most people’s taste levels and therefore it’s a vicious circle that creates more slop upon more slop. And yes, the idea of ‘curating’ things that are not an act of curation at all might well be the beginning of this slippery slope, this is also what happens when tools are democratised – you get a turgid cultural response.

Anyway, read it. Plenty of agree with, plenty to disagree with. Ultimately, have a point of view, even if others think it stinks, because without it you’re just part of the slop.

Aside: A long time ago, I wrote about this using the River Thames as an analogy for the crap created on a daily basis, mostly by brands or commercial entities. I also recognise the irony that I’m very likely adding to it here.

What else?
I’ve also been listening to a lot of music. Every week I try to pick an artist and listen to their entire back catalogue. Often it’s bands or artists whom I don’t know or perhaps even like. I have an idea that listening to so much of their music, in chronological order, provides an insight into their creative process. This week was The Doors. I was struck by how much of a blues band they were, how Morrison’s lyrics were often overrated and dreary – with some notable exceptions – and that the extended wig-out jams were where they truly excelled.

I also listened to Twine’s 2024 album, New Old Horse. And about 1000+ other tracks I’m not listing out for what should be obvious reasons.

Oh, I’m still not feeling that well. I’m still busy. I’ll try to be better at posting.

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Devon knows how they make it so creamy…

This isn’t a post about a line in an advert for tinned custard. Instead it’s about Talk Talk. Yes, the band from the 1980s who stopped recording in the early 1990s after five albums. One of my favourite bands.

Yesterday I was in Totnes, Devon, to meet Dan Arborise and have a chat with him about his second album, Of Tide And Trail, which I’m putting out this year for its vinyl debut. There wasn’t a huge amount to discuss, just a few details about vinyl colour and which photos we could use, etc. Oh, and the split of the tracks across two discs. That took about half an hour.

The rest of the three hours we spent together we talked about music. How it’s made, what it’s like to tour and so on. Quickly Talk Talk came up and Dan asked me what my favourite album was and I said it’s their final one, Laughing Stock. Ask most people who know the band’s output and they’ll be Spirit of Eden, or Colour of Spring. Both excellent choices.

And yet, to me, Laughing Stock is the pinnacle of their releases simply because it pushes to the absolute limit what musicians can do with a simple request: to experiment and improvise, using your emotion and ‘gut’ to lead your playing. It’s not really about technical ability, although that clearly exists. It’s what makes jazz so exciting, once you get past the idea it’s navel-gazing noodling. It’s Dan’s favourite album, too. A strong bond was formed.

Music has got me many places, opened a lot of doors and gives me, still to this day, immense joy to play and listen and discover. It’s clear that ai is coming for it, although it’s been a long time since anyone got into the music business as an artist to make money.

As I’m listening to Talk Talk’s final album, Laughing Stock, I get to following the obvious thread. The idea of providing freedom to over 50 people to improvise from the seed of an idea only to select a mere 18 of them and using their music as the starting point for what became the thing you hear. I mean, it’s ridiculous.

If Mark Hollis had ai to play with, would he have used it? After all, he was ‘prompting’ musicians and then taking their output to build up his final version while adding 100s of overdubs and tweaks. It came out rather well, too. He was using the chops and ideas that these musicians had learned and refined and built their own ideas from and creating a set of bits and pieces from which he then went on to create Laughing Stock.

Is it any different to using ai? Perhaps, given that Hollis himself was an excellent musician with a keen ear. And yet, if he was using it, is it a tool to allow him to recreate what’s in his head?

So, would he have used it? I think not. Why? I don’t think he’d have the happy accidents, the unexpected, the mistakes and misshits, the madness of doing those sessions. Then again, he conjured something from the initial sessions. It was a lot of his own work once he had the outputs to his ‘prompts’.

Whatever the answer it matters not a bit. Laughing Stock is faultless. I’m forever amazed it was created by humans whenever I listen.

Oh, okay, here’s the Ambrosia advert with that memorable line.