The100: Glorious imperfections, dominant personalities and Rory

AI’m not crying, you are

Young & Rubicam made an ad called ‘Computers Can’t Cry’ back in 1964. 

To Eddie Shleyner’s point it’s still hugely relevant today. And weirdly comforting that even prior generations thought they were going to be usurped by machines. 

Artificial empathy

Sophie Henson has uncorked today’s daily dose of sense, in a great post on why understanding people takes more than artificial empathy.

“It can mimic emotion, adapt tone, simulate empathy – but it can’t experience any of it. And without real feeling behind the insight, we risk making decisions that look ‘right’ on paper – and fall flat in real life. […] AI can help us go faster. But it can’t sit with ambiguity. It can’t feel the weight of a question. And it definitely doesn’t care. […] If you let a sociopath run the research on what makes us human, it might sound convincing – but it won’t mean anything. Letting AI lead the work of understanding humans is like letting a sociopath write the rulebook on how we think and feel!”

Fancy chatting about AI in research? No matter your experience with it, I’d love to pick your brains. I’ve spoken to 17 clients so far and would love to get to 25 before I write everything down (which I will share here, all anonymised of course). Shout if you’re interested. 

Perfect imperfections

Tom Fishburne’s latest cartoon is, of course, utterly ace. However, it was the accompanying text which really made me pause: 

“As marketing professionals, our job isn’t to achieve perfection – it’s to create connection. And sometimes, the quickest path to that connection is through the strategic embrace of our wonderfully human imperfections. The brands that understand this paradox – that flaws can be features rather than bugs – will cut through the noise and build the authentic connections that drive lasting engagement. Because in the end, we don’t connect with perfection. We connect with humanity. And humanity, by its very nature, is gloriously imperfect.”

Talk to the face

Previous Watch Me Think event speaker, Adrianne Carter, took to the stage at TEDx Tamworth this month to share the hidden messages in facial expressions. 

Before encouraging us to observe instead of assuming and to be intentional with our facial expressions, Adrianne opened her talk with this absolute whammy:

“When you ignore facial expressions it’s like muting half a conversation and still expecting to know what is going on.”

Like listening to Norman Collier… anyone?

How we all became Clint Eastwood

Not unrelated, is the dominant personality type of our generation ‘flat, emotionless people who flare up in anger at the slightest provocation’?’

“The full degradation awaiting us didn’t become fully clear until the arrival of (1) social media, and (2) the smartphone. But the rapid ascendancy of those two interacting technologies turned many of us into desocialized and isolated characters—almost identical to those depicted by Albert Camus and Sergio Leone.”

How we’ve changed, how we’ve stayed the same

Would you rather be a man or a woman? Bobby Duffy has examined how answers have changed since the 1940s. Properly fascinating.

“37% of women said they’d rather be a man back in 1947 – compared with just 9% today. That will be related to all sorts of shifts in attitudes and realities around gender equality – but it’s worth noting that twice the proportion of women would still rather be men compared with the proportion of men who’d like to be women.”

And finally…

Do you choose wine by the label? If you buy ones with animals on, this is what you need to know. 

So Rory finally won the Masters. And Trung Phan reminded me of this great Rory vs. Tiger Nike ad. I think Ripple from 2014 has got to be up there for me as well. And, of course, this bit of film taken as Rory walked off the Green is magnificent. Think back to the first image in this newsletter. Incredible film. All emotions shown. And meme’d out of control. Love it. 

Another old ad for Tango (a soft drink) resurfaced last week. Note, there are alternative ways to deal with consumer feedback…