Strands of Genius: The Decline and Gamesmanship of the Music Charts, DOJ V Google, AI NFT

Guest curated by Andy Headington, CEO of Adido

Oct 03, 2024

:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATOR, ANDY HEADINGTON ::

LOCATION: Greater Bournemouth Area, UK

Hey everyone! My name is Andy and I've been helping to run a digital agency in the South of England called Adido since we started in 2003. I've had a long journey through all areas of digital from web builds, marketing, data and all sorts of new tech, often with a skeptical eye on the various hype trains (see below) I've always wanted to learn and understand more about all areas of marketing and have followed/read Faris & Rosie's work for best part of a decade. We met up in person pre covid which was a complete blast and Faris also helped me out personally recently with some very sage advice as I'm about to write a book (for my sins). I always enjoy their newsletters and reading their ideas which have taught me a huge amount as have all of the various guests that have helped this become a must read in my inbox each week :) Bravo y'all!

Editor’s Note (Genius Steals): We have known Andy for a long time online and it’s always great to turn those relationships into IRL meetings! Faris used to make a lot of his industry friends globally through blogging and twitter and now we do it with our newsletter - hi everyone! It was great to meet up pre-pando and also to catch up more recently - best wishes for the book, try to enjoy the process, and thanks so much for an excellent edition!

:: THE LINKS ::

THE DECLINE AND GAMESMANSHIP OF THE MUSIC CHARTS

I'm a MASSIVE music nerd and so growing up, the charts were everything to me. The chance to listen to the latest sounds and learn about who the cool and crap artists were was a very real education (and one I'm still a long way from finishing). The charts also played a HUGE cultural part in my teens when the whole Britpop thing was in its very fine, Adidas drenched pomp. This was an interesting read to dissect just what the charts are today (not much) and what cultural relevance they have (very little). Much like marketing, what gets measured seems more important than the actual output these days than ever. And no, I still can't believe that Shed Seven got a number one album in 2024. Next you'll be telling me Oasis will be reforming in 2025! ;) (The Guardian)

DOJ V GOOGLE

I've been speaking on stage for decades now about the world of digital but have spent the last seven or eight years taking ever bigger large pops at Google for their continued and increased hypocrisy, double standards and general shitty business practices that screw over many millions of advertisers and marketers worldwide. The DOJ case going through right now makes for fabulous reading and if you're not following Jason Kint on Twitter, then you should be as he is sharing a fascinating near real time breakdown of the happenings. Additionally, the big G is publishing all of the content of the case as it becomes public, so if you really want to read the gory detail, then follow the link. (Google Blog)

AI NFT

One of the good things about being around since the early days of the internet (we built our first websites when dial up was the main thing in people’s homes - eesh!) is that I've seen a LOT of hype come and go. And with every hype bubble that comes up, watching the marketers jump on board always make for a fun watch. The 'YOU NEED A <HYPE SERVICE> STRATEGY OR YOUR BUSINESS WILL DIE IN TWO MONTHS' messages get louder each time and as such more and more 'stuff' gets created, most of which isn't wanted by consumers (see Amazon’s $25B loss in Alexa). So I'm very pleased to see that someone took the time to ask the wo/man on the street if AI being added to a product made them more or less likely to buy or not. Thankfully, the jury seems to be out on AI being added to everything and everything and it is actually decreasing rather than increasing the likelihood of purchase. Good on ya' whoever you are out there. (WSU Insider)

Looking for more from Andy? Coming Friday, look for an interview from him in your inbox!

:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::

:: Game :: Sh!thead (or whatever you might call it) - I play nearly every night with my daughter and we're both at master level now :)

:: City :: London

:: Book ::

:: Podcast :: It's either Pivot for tech viewpoints or The Rest is Politics to get a better sense of the world happenings

:: Song :: There is no answer to this! But so far this year I'll go for Disarray by Nolan Potter (who I still can't believe plays every instrument on this album!)

:: HOME VIDEOS & AI ::

Whilst I'm still HUGELY skeptical about the benefits of AI for most businesses, I do find the capabilities in visual and audio utterly breath taking sometimes. I think the quality and story telling in low budget / home made video will be extraordinary in the next few years. Seeing something like this gives me real hope that we'll see some amazing short films and the like in the coming years.

I'm always online somewhere so best to catch up with me on LinkedIn where I'll be mostly talking about travel marketing and berating AI or big tech ;)

Strands of Genius is currently read by more than 15,000 subscribers. Support us by sponsoring an issue, encouraging friends or colleagues to subscribe.

It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.

Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.

Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)

Strands of Genius