Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Consultants, Egovertising, Finance, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Money, Standards, Strategy, Technology
One of the topics that is everywhere right now is the topic of AI.
What I find particularly amazing is how many people are talking with such certainty about it, given the reality is it’s still in its early days of infancy and possibility.
The reality is – like most things – it will likely have good and bad uses.
As I wrote a while back, my brilliant son – Otis – has dysgraphia.
Dysgraphia is a form of dyslexia … except it’s less about mixing letters and more about a difficulty in writing them. In essence, dysgraphia has an impact on your motor skills and while it won’t affect his ability to learn, it will affect how he does it and what he may be able to do because of it.
More than that, there’s no ‘cure’, but with things like ChatGPT … I can see how AI could enable him to express his stories and imagination that otherwise, he would struggle to convey.
I cannot tell you how much that fills me with joy and it serves as a good reminder to stop judging and evaluating new technology by the rules, standards and experience of established technology.
But we do.
We all do.
Desperate to throw our opinion in the ring with the confidence and certainty of a mediocre white man.
[That’s for you, Chelsea]
However the recent story of Twitch streamer, Atrioc, highlights how AI can definitely be used for terrible, terrible things.
Brandon ‘Atrioc’ Ewing was live-streaming when he accidentally showed a tab that showed he had been visiting a deepfake pornography site featuring popular female Twitch streamers.
Popular female Twitch streamers he had previously claimed were his friends.
As if that wasn’t despicable enough, the site he was on requires a subscription to view its content and the page he was on was centred entirely around making deepfakes of famous Twitch streamers … which means he didn’t just choose to do it, he paid for the privilege of doing it.
Paid. For. It.
Which highlights another narrative that maybe we should also be considering about AI.
Maybe we need to discuss the character of the developers behind the tech rather than simply arguing about the value or threat of the tech.
Or said another way …
Why aren’t we having conversations about why investors place greater value on speed of monetisation than focusing on educational or humanitarian benefits of tech.
Please do not me wrong.
I’m not making any excuse for Atrioc … that fucker made his choice and there’s no way he gets to blame that on anyone else but himself … however for all the talk about the good or bad of AI, I’m not seeing much conversation about the character of the people behind it – technically and financially – when ultimately, it’s their intent and influence that shapes what it is and what it can become.
As the old saying goes, follow the money and you find the truth.
The industries problem is we have too many following their ego.
Coming from me, that say’s a lot. Hahaha.
Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Consultants, Corporate Evil, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Culture, Embarrassing Moments, Marketing, Marketing Fail
Sorry Lee, but seriously … WTF?
You need to tell Mr B to ditch the management consultants and get people who actually know the soul of the brand.
Or at the very least, people who will say, “this is a terrible idea”.
I can’t even work out who this is for …
Most young people won’t know who the fuck the Pistols were.
And the people who do know are self aware enough to know how tragic this makes them look.
I know the history between the two brands but …. nooooooooooooo.
No, no, no, no, no.
And it is underpinned by Mastercard.
The ‘priceless’ people.
How can you all get it so wrong?
Well, I know how … but come on, even Stevie Wonder can see how bad an idea this is.
I appreciate you will have personally had nothing to do with it, but christ on a bike.
I bet you’re grateful comments are still turned off? Hahaha.
I’m genuinely so upset about this, but I am also willing to sort you out. For a price, hahaha.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Consultants, Culture, England, Finance, Government, Money
So I saw this job ad doing the rounds …
Now I appreciate, £66,500 is a lot of money.
Especially at a time when the world is facing economic pressures.
But this is for the Head of Digital Currency.
At the Central Bank of England.
On behalf of the Government’s Treasury Department.
Maybe I’m mad, but shouldn’t this position require someone of such economic and political standing … understanding and experience … that they can command a much, much higher salary than this?
I mean, I earn more than that and I got 2% in Mrs Kirk’s maths class.
Who is going to take this job?
Why are they going to take this job?
Who is going to decide who gets this job?
It’s just laughable.
Laughable … because this is coming from a Tory Government who claim to be the economical responsible party but have put the country into financial oblivion with delusional lies like Brexit.
Laughable … because the government is led by a PM who wants to kill the arts in favour of more maths classes, because he feels that will drive more earning potential for people.
Laughable … because an important financial position is hiring down to a price, rather than paying up to a standard.
As I said, I get almost 70 thousand pounds is a lot of money.
But for what we need, I doubt it’s anywhere near enough.
And here’s the thing … if we get someone who can actively help ensure our kids have a better chance of a better future than their parents – which currently is widely acknowledged as not being the case – then I’d be more than happy to see more of my taxes going to them. Because being fiscally responsible is not about how cheap you go, but how much value they offer.
That said, the bigger question is whether I trust whoever is responsible to hire this person … because not only did they decide what salary to offer, but they may also be as under-qualified as the person they want to hire or – more likely – another blinkered, arrogant and ignorant Tory who helped get us in this mess in the first place.
And politicians wonder why the public don’t trust them anymore …
Filed under: Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Business, Comment, Communication Strategy, Consultants, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Emotion, Imagination, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Planning, Point Of View, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Strategy
Don’t get me wrong, commercial creativity has a job to do.
It needs to create the cultural conditions for people to think/act in ways that benefit your client.
What ‘benefit’ means is both open to debate and individual contexts and needs.
But here’s where the problem lies.
Because for many companies, it’s no longer about creating the cultural conditions … it’s explaining EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT PEOPLE TO THINK, SEE AND DO.
What they think is ‘advertising’ is delusional dictator-ing. If dictatoring is a word.
And there’s 2 reasons why it’s delusional …
The first is people do what is in their best interests, not a companies. And so unless a company lets go of their fragile ego and God-complex, they’re never going to understand or resonate with their audience. Resulting in either being ignored, or forever ever having a utility style relationship.
The second is when your only focus is telling people what you want them to think, see and do … you often discover it’s exactly the same as what everybody else in your category wants people to think, see and do.
So you end up with this.
Brand gets a lot of stick these days.
Its whole role and value is being questioned.
But the irony is the problem isn’t with the value of brand, but the understanding of what some people think a brand is.
Because a brand isn’t contrived wrapping paper placed around a functional product feature … it’s an idea that is as distinctive for how it see’s the world as it appears in it.
That some people will find this shocking not only explains why we are subjected to such ugly noise day after day after day, but how little companies/venture capitalists/consultancies understand, respect and value culture.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Consultants, Corporate Evil, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Devious Strategy, Effectiveness, Fake Attitude, Grifting, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Relevance, Scam, Strategy
I’m all for people expressing their opinion.
I’m all for people being excited about things they see as having great possibilities.
I’m all for people trying to find new ways to evolve, grow and make money.
But come on …
It’s getting to the point where Linkedin should be renamed Disneyland given how much fiction and fantasy are going on.
What’s worse is among all the ‘consultants’ and ‘new business development people’ claiming expertise, are a bunch of strategists.
Now I know as a discipline we think we have the answer to everything … but we don’t.
Fuck, even the people who are developing the technology, don’t.
But what bothers me is the reason behind why so many people are claiming expertise.
OK, so I know some have a real understanding of the technology and its possible implications. And in that, I include certain strategists – we all know who those brilliant people are.
And I also appreciate some mistakenly believe that because they’ve used ChatGPT, they think they now know everything about the technology.
But others – and this is potentially the majority of them – are doing it because they see it as a chance to personally gain from it.
In essence, their perspective is that as long as a subject matter is highly topical and others – especially companies – don’t know about it, then they can profit from it because they can say anything because no one will know enough to tell them they’re wrong.
You can tell who this group are because they’re the one’s who are either the loudest to declare their knowledge or the first to say they had identified the trend … despite never doing anything with their ‘expertise’ or because of their ‘vision’.
Putting aside how this sort of behaviour can damage the reputation of real experts, disciplines and entire industries … the issue I have is how it is often justified as hustle culture.
I’ve written my issue with hustle culture in the past, but the fact is, this isn’t hustling … it’s grifting and the impact of it is not just damaging people and companies, but it killing the potential of technology before it has a chance to find it’s real possibility.
I appreciate this is quite a heavy post from what was just a piss-take image of Homer … but the best comedy is always based on a truth we often like to deny.