The100: Artificial inquisitiveness, brand purpose and French exits

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“The road to hell is paved with good intention”

Nick Asbury spoke a metric tonne of sense in his 3 part blog on brand purpose, ticking off what it is, why it leads to worse marketing and the alternatives. From part 2:

“The purpose is a just-so story that is retrofitted to the business later, and the clue is often in the name – Airbnb didn’t start with why, it started with airbeds and breakfast. Facebook didn’t start as a way to build community, it was a creepy way to rate the hotness of fellow students. In the end, you look at all these brand statements alongside each other and get precious little sense of these being different businesses doing different things in the world.”

“AI won’t take jobs. It will take tasks.”

Also walking the fields of sense this week was one Tom Goodwin, in his excellent AI musings and reflections:

“While we have long talked about data-driven insights, I have yet to see one. As we move towards a world of AI-driven insights, I am skeptical about how much data can truly help. Personally, I still prefer observation, intuition, and hypothesis testing.”

Artificial Inquisitiveness

Rory Sutherland made a similar point on the Uncensored CMO podcast when talking about the quest for automation:

“The best chess player is not a computer or human, it’s a human aided by a computer. So the sort of hybrid model where creatives use AI in some shape or form or artificial inquisitiveness, even better, to seek inspiration.”

Here at Watch Me Think towers, we like to say TaPaS – Technology and People as a Service 🥘

Meanwhile, at Cannes

Here are all the winning campaigns from the recent Cannes awards. Which, unless you didn’t turn on LinkedIn in the last two months, you won’t have missed. 

Whilst Steve Walls, CSO at Moon Rabbit, had something to say to “every person at Cannes who mentions Culture, then quotes a trend report.”

Everything and nothing

This photo popped up recently from a book that I was reading last year. Is this what people think? Can “researcher” mean everything and nothing?

One of my colleagues said that they say they’re a researcher when someone asks them what they do and they don’t want to talk about it 😉

And finally…

For all you Ted Lasso fans out there… Someone thought the AFC Richmond team badge was a bit of an afterthought, so they redesigned it. Football is life.

The restaurant of mistaken orders was my top watch from the last few weeks (via Storythings). Just lovely. 

Instead of joining the “5am club” to boost your productivity, what about leaving parties without saying goodbye? Apparently you can save up to 2 days per year. Perfect.