Things of note for the week ending Friday August 11th, 2023

INTRO

What is UP Five things on Friday-ers?

…

Sorry. No.

That’s horrendous.

Let’s try again.

Hello friends, how have you been? 🙂

I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you but contrary to recent weather reports, yes indeed it is August (edit: this is no longer funny- the Sun literally came out TODAY).

We find ourselves in that time of year when FTOF gets a thousand bounce-backs from the US saying ‘I’m on leave for three days, I’ll reply to by the end of the day’ and from Europe ‘The office is closed for eight weeks, perhaps we’ll speak in September’.

Funsies.

For me, well, we took a holiday in May for us (Italy – was lovely) and then travel wise I’m catching the train to Germany in a couple of weeks for Gamescom – and after that? I think a few BBQs in the garden (see above) with friends and family.

Yes. A summer well spent.

It’s been a while since we last spoke and to quite honest I thought I might take a bit more time off from the newsletter this summer but it’s 21:13 on a Wednesday evening starting this draft to you and, well, as I often say – if the words are there, let them flow.

So let’s get into it; I’m going to open up the inbox of THINGS and see what falls out.

Two small pieces of admin before we proceed:

Admin 1:

Saturday August 12th (this weekend) is TOUGH MUDDER day. Me and 14 other Divas (pictured) are taking on 15k of 30 obstacles and so far we’ve raised over £3500 for War Child.

Thank you so much to all of you who have already donated. If you haven’t and still would like to, you can sponsor me £10, $10, €10 directly right here or you can sponsor (or choose someone from) the entire team via our group page here.

All donations are welcome and if you’re reading this on a Saturday around 1pm UK time, think about how much pain I’ll be in and SPONSOR – thanks x

Admin 2:

Tuesday August 22nd – Friday August 25th me and four other Divas will be attending GAMESCOM in Cologne/Köln, Germany (here’s what we’re doing differently this year). We have a packed schedule but strangely, no one seems to be biting on the breakfast meetings. I can’t think why.

If you’re attending and you fancy a coffee and a croissant on or near to the Ukie stand, do get in touch (you can hit reply to this email or send me a note to james dot whatley at diva dot agency) and we’ll get something sorted 🙂

Right then, that’s that sorted.

Shall we move onto the THINGS?

LET’S GOOOOOO.

1. WHY WOULD YOU FAKE A CASE STUDY FILM?

Let’s talk about Pringles.

Specifically, let’s talk about Grey’s award-winning Pringles NPC campaign.

‘Win a job as an NPC in Train Sim World 3’. Great stuff.

Here’s the case film. Please watch it.

EDIT: a few days after this post went live, GREY seemingly pulled every record of the ad from the internet (the YouTube link is now private and the Vimeo page, the same). I wonder if the two things are related? PS. You can still see the ad here.

A few weeks ago, after the madness of Cannes subsided, my lot at Diva – along with many others I’m sure – gathered in our cinema room over some pizza and beer to have a collective look at this year’s winners. The best of the best. The cream of the crop.

Our ambition? To watch, examine, and discuss those winning cases and see what we could learn from the ones that managed to bring home some coloured metal (here’s the full list of cases we got through that night).

The evening was great. Lots of chatter about purpose and percentages (one is a trend the other is obfuscation). But then we got to Pringles.

About 45s in to the film, the voiceover tells you ‘there was a recruitment campaign in games’ –

– and it shows you, along with some actual ads that did appear in Train Sim World 3, the above in-game billboard ad in a racing game.

There you are, racing along a dusty highway, with a HUGE Pringles QR code for people to pause and scan so they can apply for the job.

But this is completely fake.

The first clue was the fact that no one in the room recognised the racing game in question. And the thing is, at Diva, we pride ourselves on being ‘gaming native’ – which means we are in games and we are of games.

Everyone in the office has played, seen, or heard of an unbelievable breadth and depth of releases and we thought one of us would recognise it. Especially as it seemed like a AAA racer that offered this level of brand integration.

So when we dug deeper (and fair play to our motion lead, Ben – hi Ben! – for spotting this), the same ‘game’ turned up in a Panasonic ad.

Same car. Same road. Same game? Well, as it turns out – yes. It is the same game. You know how I know? Because this week I learned you can actually buy fake video game footage on Shutterstock.

For real!

As a reminder, here’s the image from Grey’s case film:

Aaaaaand here’s the video clip on Shutterstock.

Fake video game mate? Overlaid with your client brand assets? For a case film to hoodwink judges you say? Easy. To you mate, £59. Lovely jubbly.

Let’s get one thing super clear:

I DO NOT KNOW WHY YOU WOULD DO THIS.

Some of you might be sitting back and thinking ‘Oh whoop-di-do, ad agency fakes case film – tell me another one’ – well, I’m not that much of a cynic I’m afraid (quiet at the back).

I’ve judged awards and I’ve chaired judging for awards. This year I’ve judged the 2023 WPI Impact awards, and last month I finished up my judging for the Lovies as well.

My point is: Judges really take this stuff bloody seriously.

We all work hard enough as it is and putting in the effort to ensure the best work gets awarded on merit is fundamental to improving the overall output of the industry.

Faking stuff like this is proper bottom tier. It makes a mockery of the people that worked on it, it makes a mockery of the (excellent!) campaign, and it makes a mockery of the judges that awarded this work on the basis of this case study film.

Grey might have a perfectly good reason for doing this. But what I don’t understand is this: the case study is good enough. The activation itself wasn’t just good enough, it was actually super fun – and got a ton of coverage.

Why put a fake asset into a case film and risk getting disqualified for falsifying an award entry?

I just don’t get it.

Disclosure: I used to work on Pringles, years ago – and they are super hot on their gaming knowledge and genuinely have an interest in the category. I doubt very much this got signed off client-side. Eesh.

2. THE TRUTH ABOUT GOING BACK

One of my favourite writers, Justin Myers – aka The Guyliner – writes a Substack called .

A week or so ago, this beauty dropped into my inbox:

“It’s the curse of the bored and the unfulfilled to imagine that their lost loves hold the key to happiness. Exes perhaps hold an allure they lacked entirely when the relationship was current. It’s a similar feeling when you visit again a city you once loved and called home. Like exes, we sometimes expect the places we’ve loved to remain frozen in time during our absence. But they have moved on without you, the timbre of their laughter has changed, they glow from the inside. Being a tourist in a city you could once navigate blindfolded is somehow worse than being lost somewhere completely new.”

It’s a gorgeous read. Do find the time.

And for what it’s worth, it reminded me of my home town, Canvey Island.

So different now to how it was then.

I remember going home one Christmas and seeing Nigel Farage’s face on the side of a bus – I knew then there was no going back. I never felt like I truly belonged there if I’m completely honest.

But I did grow up there – and that much, no matter how ugly or changed it might be since – I’ll always be nostalgic for.

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING

Sup Gamers! (this actually works here). We’ve already had quite a gamer-y opener this week so I’ll try and keep this brief? Maybe?

This week in game news.

1. Roblox’s numbers hit I guess it is an unstoppable machine now?

The numbers [PDF] in question:

• Revenue: Up 15% to $681 million

• Bookings: Up 22% to $781 million

• Net losses: $285 million, compared to $179 million in the same quarter last year

And if you think that’s nuts, check out this quote in the shareholder letter:

“Given the geographic and age diversity of our user base, along with investments in our product, we are confident that we are building a platform that could, over time, grow to support one billion DAUs,”

One billion DAUs – 50% of Facebook – on Roblox. There’s a power shift coming y’all (it’s already here) and with these kinds of numbers? Legislation will soon follow.

I guarantee it.

2. Roblox x Meta Quest

While we’re on Roblox, I mentioned a couple of editions ago that Roblox was coming to Meta Quest headsets in beta. Well, it arrived – and downloads shot over a million pretty quickly. Whether those downloads convert to regular users is another thing (my money is yes but we’ll see).

3. Ralph Lauren did a thing in Fortnite.

I liked this because it takes a different approach. As in, instead of just building another branded world to explore, RL actually made a game – a racing game at that – that people can play.

Of course you can buy the boots on show (limited IRL, unlimited in the Item Shop – with about a $235 difference between them).

What this does for the business I have no idea. But hey, Vogue Business got to put the vomit-inducing portmanteau ‘phygital’ in a headline, so y’know, there’s that.

Like Nike/Airphoria before it, I’ve taken a bunch of screenshots and dumped them in a free to use folder, feel free to cut and paste into your decks – credit ‘@whatleydude’ x

—

Quick links / news bites:

• Animal Crossing Lego you say? GOODNESS.

• Someone found this amazing Tron arcade machine ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.

• Feminist Frequency is shutting down. This was/still is important work. We’re losing a powerful voice with its demise. Rubbish.

• We lose one amazing female voice in gaming but we gain another, AOC being interviewed for the Washington Post about Twitch and the politics of gaming is great (also, Yay Gene).

• The best video games to help you/your kids survive the summer holidays.

• Meta is finally admitting its metaverse ambitions are probably best served via gaming (if only someone had said something).

• In laugh out loud hilarious news, Decentraland is now so dead that it is looking into using ‘AI’ to help make the worthless wonderland ‘feel more alive’ – truly, unwritable satire.

• Armored Core VI is out soon. Of course we did a bus wrap.

• A wonderful read from Adrian Hon about why the end of the Star Wars hotel doesn’t mean its the end of immersive gaming experiences.

• Most publishers announce their delays with text-heavy images in social media posts. But Devolver is not most publishers. Check this out. It’s outrageous.

• After losing Lance Reddick earlier this year, the future of Commander Zavala in Destiny 2 was left hanging in the balance. Yesterday, Bungie announced that the character would carry on – and the new voice actor is a perfect choice.

What is James playing this week?

I finally got around to booting up JEDI: SURVIVOR and I am really really loving it. Look at it!

Action packed, great in-canon story and most brilliantly of all – it doesn’t do that thing that most sequel games do which is ‘welcome to the sequel, we’re taking away all your weapons so you start over’ – which is a huge breath of fresh air. If you enjoyed Jedi: Fallen Order you will enjoy Jedi: Survivor. Give it a shot.

While I’m at it, may I also recommend to you the utterly perfect train game, TREN (gym bunnies will find this funny, I have discovered).

It’s SO gorgeous and SO PERFECT I really can’t recommend it enough.

Tren is available in DREAMS, and DREAMS is available for free on PlayStation Plus this month.

You can read an interview with the game’s creative director right here.

What are you playing?

4. THING 4

Quite.

via Gary Whitta, on Threads.

5. IS THE OPPOSITE OF YOUR CHOICE STUPID ON ITS FACE?

I love this question.

So I found this article a few weeks ago while researching a Strategy is Sacrifice talk I was giving for a client.

And I just keep coming back to it.

As Roger Martin so eloquently states:

“We have all seen countless strategic plans asserting that the organization’s strategy is to be ‘customer-centric’ or to be ‘operationally effective’ or to ‘invest in its talent.’ But these don’t meet my test for strategic choices — even though they may actually be the most frequently proffered choices in the world of strategic plans. My test for whether a stated choice is actually a strategic choice is whether or not the opposite of the choice is stupid on its face.”

We’ve been doing a fair bit of brand work of late at Diva towers (more on this another time) and really digging into the specifics of what strategic choices are and what actual real words mean when you get into them is fundamental to getting things right.

‘We want to be authentic.’ – oh, so the opposite would be to inauthentic right? Roger would call that ‘stupid on its face’ – it’s not a choice if there’s only one choice.

Distinctive choices matter.

Read it. Learn from it. Apply it.

WELCOME TO THE BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY.

ENJOY.

• ‘The five meetings every CEO should lead’ – I liked this. I like rhythms in the workplace generally. Planning for deep work becomes easier when you know the rhythm of the week – and the work. But the linked meeting cadence feels good, CEO or otherwise.

• Swiftogeddon sounds wholesome af (and reminds me of Hot Dub Time Machine – ever been to that?) – related: I miss Planet Angel.

• I’ve been enjoying ‘Poolside Chillin’ on Spotify. You might too.

• Japanese euphemisms for periods are completely fine and normal and… oh wait.

• ‘Brand imitation is flattery’ smart cookie Ella Munn talking up the trend of brands playing into and making a virtue of their myriad copycats. Well researched, well written, and well worth a read.

• ‘I burned out at McKinsey’. Ugh.

• Secret Invasion director ‘won’t read bad reviews’ – I mean, good? It might take a while. Did you watch it?

• Won a Clio. Can’t remember if I mentioned.

• If you missed Mark Ritson on ‘Defending Differentiation’, you can catch it here.

• ‘I’m pretty sure I broke Linkedin’ is a fun read.

• Meta is just outright refusing to use the ‘m’ word now, it’s amazing. 12mths ago, they would’ve spaffed ‘metaverse’ all over this BMW/AR/VR announcement – but a cmd+f tells you its nowhere to be seen. Can’t think why.

• Disney’s metaverse head has left the house of mouse.

• Another proper hands on with Vision Pro.

• Carousel videos on Threads are a yet to be fully realised creative canvas. Pete Halvorsen shows the way. Again. Again.

• I didn’t know Suki Thompson, I think maybe we met a few times in the early years but not recently. This moving tribute makes me wish that was different.

BONUS BONUS SECTION FOR ALL THE TWITTER/X BS I’M TRYING TO IGNORE

Basically a place I can dump all the interesting/better links and articles I’ve read about the whole Twitter/X debacle. You can skip this section if you want, I don’t mind. It won’t be back.

Reminder: I am no longer on Twitter. It is now quite literally no longer what I signed up for. The news about it burning hard to the ground is hard to avoid (seriously, if you’re a journalist reading this – why are you falling for it every time?), so here’s everything related to that.

• ‘Twitter/X is no longer the place to start news careers’ – this Bloomberg article from a young up and coming Gen Z journalist about how Twitter is for the oldies is frankly wonderful. You should read it.

• Yaccarino did an interview. Lol, what?

• Related: Australia’s national broadcaster is closing almost all accounts there.

• Related related: an Australian parliamentary hearing dragged the company for reinstating accounts that shared images of child abuse. (Seriously, why the hell are you still using it?)

• Esther Crawford (the sleeping bag woman from Twitter) did a video and Twitter thread about her experiences working there. Featuring some of the most quietly savage burns I’ve ever witnessed – it’s actually worth signing in for.

• While looking for something else, I found this excellent (I am a Dad) Knock Knock joke.

• On Bluesky? Use this Chrome plug in to find your old Twitter pals. It’s a bit on the manual side but it works well enough.

• The bird is dead. Here’s how it was born.

• Is social media dead? from the brand new to Substack,

• hitting us with ‘A better internet for readers’ stirs memories of Google Reader. I wonder…

• The Drum asked some people if brands should drop Twitter/X as a customer service channel now that it’s been rebranded. 1. It’s not the rebrand, stupid. 2. Brands stopped using it as a serious CS channel years ago. It’s a redirect, at best.

• ‘Preparing my X-it’ by John Scalzi captured a lot of how I’m feeling.

• Andy Piper with ‘Goodbye to my life on Twitter’ equally so.

As stated – this section will not return. Avoid it while it lasts x

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

Last weekend we saw Barbie (Cried. Twice.) and TMNT: Mutant Mayhem (standing on the shoulders of Spider-Verse). Not quite Barbenheimer but still, all family members were happy. Both are excellent and well worth seeing.

On the TV we’re working our way through S3 of both The Witcher and Succession (behind on both), then ideally Foundation S2 and The Bear.

What are you enjoying at the moment?

As I sign this week’s edition off to you, it’s 20:55 on Thursday night. I’m downstairs in the living room. The mrs is at dinner with friends, the kids are in bed sound asleep and the lithest urban fox I ever did see just sauntered past the window.

I’m off to Bristol in the morning. Working from the Diva offices for the day before Tough Mudder (sponsor me, please). So I’m going to schedule this for mid morning UK time tomorrow – 10ish, shall we say?

Yeah, sounds about right.

Wish us luck for Saturday.

Until next time,

Whatley out x

Things of note for the week ending Friday July 21st, 2023

INTRO

It’s Thursday as I start this newsletter. 21:45. Kids break up from school tomorrow and I’ve got a few days off to hang – and we have no plans.

There is no way this newsletter is going out tonight.

Reviewing the links this evening I mean, they’re good (they’re ALWAYS good, right?) but there’s a particular lengthy noodle I’m still tugging on that I don’t think is ready yet. I might change my mind. We’ll see.

Sorry. Rambling.

Actually, no (it’s now Friday. I’ve slept and) I’ve changed my mind. Let’s do this now.

Here’s the thing:

I keep coming back to the same question:

‘What do we want from social media?’

I’ve asked it a few times here and I’ve asked it across multiple platforms since. I’m still sorting through – and looking for more – answers.

You can reply on:

• Bluesky

• Facebook

• Twitter (you can still reply there, I will see it)

• Threads

• Mastodon

• and on Substack Notes.

If you read FTOF via email then hit reply and tell me your answer. If you read this in the Substack app, then leave a comment.

The point is: I’m still looking for answers. Gia Milinovich comes close to one of the best answers I’ve read in a while (see Thing 5) but I’m about 500 or so words into another noodle that I might finish this weekend – with your input please – that I’ll post or publish here when it’s done.

Your input is wanted. Your input is welcome.

What else can I tell you?

Yes. That’s right – you can still find me on Threads. It’s my main platform of choice – Linkedin is for work stuff, Bluesky is intermittent for now and so I’m going all in on being a Thread-head.

Twitter is [still] done for me. The owner is an edge-lord. He uses money from your advertising to pay accused sex traffickers to continue using the site. So I’m out.

And when it comes to the game of which billionaire I like the least, Threads is where I’d prefer to be.

Shall we check back in three months?

I’ll see you when you get there.

PS. Threads Pro Tip of the week?

If you’re looking for people to follow, head to the search function and scroll aaaaaall the way down. The recommendations get better the further you go. Try it!

—

Right, where were we? Ah yes, THE THINGS!

1. LET’S START WITH SOME GORGEOUS ADS FROM MAYNARDS

Look at these!

The simplicity!

The anticipation!

The implied ‘these are for kids but we’re using old toys because they’re for big kids too – probably/mainly’ use of the little figurines!

I think they’re gorgeous.

Well done Maynard’s and VCCP.

Bonus points for breathing life into an old tagline too.

2. DO NOT EVER MISS YOUR CHILDREN’S SPORTS DAY FOR A PITCH

I mean I can’t believe I’m saying this but just don’t do this.

Are we really doing this?

Looks like we are!

Come with me on a journey of imagination.

Imagine you sit in a company that helps brands choose their advertising agency.

Imagine you have an ability to speak to brands and help them understand what it means for these advertising agencies to pitch in the ways that they do.

Imagine that because of this position you hold, your main selling point is that there should no concerns from any agencies of being mistreated or dealt with unfairly.

You know adland likes to pull out all the stops for the big pitches. But you’ve also heard the stories about burnout. You’ve read about the recent high turnover of junior staff. And you’ve probably seen some stuff about ‘the cost of living crisis’ too.

Agency wellbeing should be important to you.

Now imagine you’re being asked for a comment about the toll pitching can take on an ad agency (and let’s be clear: when we say ‘an ad agency’ – we aren’t talking about the business, we’re talking about actual people. Real people with real lives).

Imagine this is your moment to talk about how brands can help agencies. With healthy timelines, reasonable asks, and even pitch fees.

What do you think you might say?

Well, when Campaign Magazine asked the question, the AAR Group thought it might be a good idea to say this:

“Pitch fees were never intended to cover an agency’s cost of pitching – the time, materials and resource costs,” Phillips says. “What pitch fees are, and how we describe them at the AAR, is ‘beer and pizza money’. 

“It’s a thank you to the agency team for having to miss their children’s school sports day, a thank you for coming back from holiday a day early to attend the final pitch presentation, it’s a thank you for staying late and working weekends.”

Right.

Before we get into it, let’s talk about some realities.

I have worked late hours and weekends on pitches. If you’re reading this and you work in advertising then you almost certainly have done the same too.

Doing extra hours or days from the office (I even took my kids with me once – I have a superb photo couplet of the Ogilvy great and good gathered in a boardroom at Sea Containers discussing some finer pitch details and behind us is my son, dressed like a pirate, who I couldn’t get childcare for when I needed it – we made a day of it), working from home, or even in hotel rooms overseas (running a London pitch while you’re in Sydney has its benefits) – you name it.

If the time was needed, we were there.

The working late bit is part of the job. Good agencies offer time off in lieu (aka TOIL) for that time spent. Others might just take the team out for a massive post-pitch lunch/dinner/piss-up to celebrate a job well done (win or lose). The best ones do both.

The nature of the job – or at least the jobs I’ve had – mean that the best work is done when the whole team can be brought together and left alone from other work to get on with the job in hand. On rare occasions, that happens during normal working hours.

The point is:

Is it right? Probably not.
Can it be done better? Absolutely.
Are agencies trying to fix it? In most cases, I would like to think so.

I have never had to cancel holiday a day early (although McCann once did that to a mate – ‘thanks pricks!’) and I have never missed sports day for a pitch. The agencies I’ve worked at haven’t asked that of me – and wouldn’t expect it either.

And even if I did, to think for one second that I personally would see any of that ‘pitch fee’ as a way of a thank you is so obscenely detached from any version of the truth of what working in advertising looks like, I am stunned the AAR haven’t rushed out a statement to correct the record.

It’s a thank you to the agency team for having to miss their children’s school sports day.

A THANK YOU! Horrendous.

Honestly it makes me want to throw up.

If you’re recommending agencies that do this, you’re doing it wrong.
If you’re normalising this for brands, you’re doing it wrong.
If you think it’s an OK thing to put in the ad industry’s trade magazine then my goodness, you are doing it wrong.

You only need to look at the replies and quote tweets of the first tweet to clock this statement to see the whiplash from the industry.

Outrageous.
Outdated.
Out of touch.

A good time as any to re-read Linds Redding’s ‘A short lesson in perspective’.

My only question now is this: why would an agency trust the AAR now?

Update: it turns out the AAR did respond (but only to one of the more popular Linkedin posts about this). You can make of that (and the subsequent replies) what you will. Funny how it’s only been liked by people from the AAR.

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING

This week’s section starting with the author’s realisation that Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition (Mega Drive / Genesis edition) is now available on on Switch. Yes!

What is up, gamers.

Got a fair bit to cover off this week.

First up!

August 22nd through August 25th, a small number of us from Diva (myself included) will be in Köln, Germany for Europe’s largest games event, Gamescom.

Are you going? Want to grab coffee and a chat? Let me knoooooooow.

NEXT.

There’s a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie coming out…

(side: anyone remember the TMNT being called the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the UK? They thought if UK kids heard of turtles being ninjas, they might actually start high-kicking each other and throwing ninja stars at school – absolutely mental)

…TMNT: Mutant Mayhem.

And while the film looks amazing (watch the trailer!) the Roblox ‘immersive trailer’ experience is… er… a novel way of watching a trailer I guess?

I mean, there’s some behind the scenes stuff and actor interviews in there and it says there’s more to come too (‘battle tycoon’ mode launches next month) but currently this doesn’t make much that much sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, building it in Roblox means you automatically get more daily uniques than say Decentraland or Sandbox get in a month (combined).

But still. This feels lazy. I like it but I don’t love it – and I hope the game bit (launching August 2nd) is good. Or else it’s a wasted opp.

Check out the TMNT ‘immersive trailer experience’ on Roblox.

Game News Bites

• Ukie has published updated ‘guiding principles’ on lootboxes. Don’t know how I feel about this. I have a strong bias towards lootboxes being gambling. Are principles useful if they’re unenforceable? Don’t know don’t know. What I do know is that a lot of work into this and a bunch of well-meaning games people want to get this right so government doesn’t have to legislate but still. I gotta ask: why are we protecting lootboxes?
  Note: at the time of publishing Ukie’s website seems to be down. Hopefully up again by the time you read this.

• Related: funny how this scaremongering headline dropped around the same time huh? The numbers (when you did into them) are tiny. See here.

• I’ve been talking about Netflix in games for a while now (if you didn’t know, your Netflix mobile app has a games section – go look) and Netflix has quietly been building the offering (both licensing titles and buying up indie studios) while it holds fire on any kind of marketing efforts. I enjoyed this primer from The Ringer on the status of this project. You might too. Plus, there are some proper bangers on Netflix Games.

• Almost 90 percent of classic games are ‘critically endangered,’ say archivists – so how do you save them?

• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 got a story trailer at SDCC last night (can’t do film panels if there are no actors eh) and it looks great. I also really liked the reveal trailer for the special edition hardware. Nice job.

What am I playing?

Well, it’s been quite a mental week at work. A Bristol trip by way of Leamington Spa, an RFI delivery and a day off thrown in for good measure (that’s today – hi), the only time I’ve had to game has been on FFXVI.

Having not played an FF since the GameCube, I don’t have much of an idea of what to expect so when I told a pal about a particularly epic battle (escalation after escalation after escalation) they were like ‘Yeah, that’s FF’ – the story is ace and if you’re playing it, I’ve just got to the bit that says ‘Press L3 and R3 to accept the truth’

IYKYK.

What are you playing?

4. GOODBYE META QUEST PRO, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

The Meta Quest Pro.

Announced in …checks notes… October 2022 and seen on TV screens as recently as April this year –

– seems like it might not be long for this world.

I wrote about the launch of this thing back in FTOF #339. At the time I said something like:

Let’s take a moment and pour one out for the agency reps at FB/Meta who have undoubtedly already been tasked with trying to sell this thing to literally any mug brand that will listen.

It’s not their fault, they have bills to pay, and virtual mouths to feed. Maybe ask them to blink twice if they need help? Which they’ll be able to do with the shiny new headset!

Keep an eye on the trades now as well. Who will stare back and do nothing and who will be first to wade into the dead-eyed swamp of the brands-in-the-metaverse bandwagon?

And hey. Here we are and ZDNet is reporting Meta’s flagship headset (along with plans for any second generation version) is dead.

Now this is not to say Meta is out of the headset market. Not by any stretch. The Quest 2 is also reportedly being discontinued. It just means that all bets are on the Quest 3 (and everything that comes thereafter).

Just do one thing really well, right?

We’ll see.

5. FAME AS PSYCHOLOGICAL MUKBANG

What is fame?

I’m paraphrasing a bit but I’m sure I heard someone – a celeb I think – say something like this recently:

‘Fame is a tasty poison. You can take a swig and swirl it around in your mouth but be sure to spit it out and move on. If you swallow it, it’s game over.’

One of my favourite writers and thinkers, and author of the substack, has been exploring the topic (for a good while but has revisited it again) and arrives at a grotesque if not worrying conclusion (see also: why I gave up Instagram – I didn’t like the reflection it made me seek).

From Hollywood to Twitter and every follower and fan-based platform inbetween, Gia’s writing is on point.

Reflective of our online culture of sycophancy or incendiary rage, ‘FAME’ is provocative af and my recommendation of the week.

Be sure to spit on your way out.

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY.

ENJOY.

• The excellent this week is worth your time. The latest edition’s theme is psychological safety and features some corkers. The Roblox story is particularly awful.

• I’m going to go right ahead and recommend another substack, this time it’s . Their latest edition is about Regrets. Hearing the audio excerpts to go along with these insights really bring it home. Go read/listen.

• I nearly managed to get to the end of the newsletter without mentioning Barbie but stay with me, this isn’t about the marketing! It’s about the music. I really liked this culture piece from the Beeb about how the Barbie soundtrack was put together. You might too.

• ‘Threads is filled with dark patterns’ – no, it isn’t.

• ‘I tried to buy a post on TechCrunch.com’ – this is great.

• The Ghost Barge of Ironbridge.

• The pinnacle of Batman animation: the Mask of the Phantasm is getting a 4k rerelease. Relevant to some you, definitely.

• Kids built Croydon in Minecraft. Amaze.

• Advertisers want ads on Threads. Threads users want features. FIGHT!

• 20 years of podcasts – here are some of the best (any list that starts with ‘The Worst Idea of All Time’ – one of my personal faves – has to get a mention).

• Any excuse to spend more time with the brilliant Ms Marvel.

• Tracy Chapman and ‘complicated conversations’ in Nashville (they mean racist).

• What if the next big social media app is… nothing?

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

The OREO x Xbox campaign keeps winning. It picked up a bunch of awards at the New York Festivals awards this week – including its first Grand Prix of the year.

Massive.

I’m going to sign off and hit send on this thing. It’s 13:50 on Friday July 21st 2023 and Five things on Friday is going out on time.

I should take Fridays off more often.

Have a great weekend gang,

Whatley out x

Things of note for the week ending Friday July 14th, 2023.

INTRO

Hello and welcome to Five things on Friday.

‘A regular kaleidoscope of clever ideas and great links. An obvious labour of love. Highly recommended.’

Cheers for that, Darragh. I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about this thing in ages. And I properly love ‘An obvious labour of love’.

Might update the description.

How are you?

Good week?

I took a few days off at the start of the week to celebrate the Mrs’ birthday. Went down to Southampton and stayed at the Harbour Hotel. It’s blimmin’ lovely down there. Decent food, lovely staff, and overall just a decent mini break (sans kids, obvs). Then we came back and attempted five days work in two which… well… never works out well for anyone. I am tired.

What else can I tell you?

As I write this to you now, it’s 21:14 on Friday July 14th. The Things have been collated quite quickly this week. Mainly from Threads, which is a good sign but more on that in a bit. But I haven’t been able to find the time to write them up until now.

Shall we get on with it then?

LET’S.

1. ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER NEWSLETTER KICKING OFF WITH MORE UPDATES ABOUT THREADS

A week or so later, how we all feeling?

Let’s start with a breath freshener from Charlie Warzel over at The Atlantic:

Cool. Still feeling good?

OK! Let’s crack on.

As loathe as I am to admit it, my words from last week still ring true: in the game of ‘which billionaire’s platform I dislike the least’, I’m definitely landing more on the one where literal nazis don’t get to buy their way to the top your newsfeed (and then get paid for the pleasure).

But hey, that’s just me.

And while I’ve never made a secret of my distaste of Zuck’s big blue misery machine, with Threads I am actually having fun again.

It might be the fact that it’s pretty much stopped me using Twitter*.
It might be the fact that the friend/socialgraph actually works.
It MIGHT be the fact that it feels like a decent community (again).

Will it last forever?

Almost certainly not.

They’ll mess with the algorithm, stick Stories or Reels across the top and then, when the users hit critical mass, pump it full of ads – I’m sure.

All before the end of the next FY.

(side: if this FY for Meta is all about ‘Operational Efficiencies’, you can bet your hen’s teeth that next FY will be about maximising new ad revenue opportunities).

Until then though? Let’s have fun.

With that in mind, here are some…

THREADS PRO TIPS.

You want to make panoramic photos like a pro?

Here are three ways to do that.

#1. On iOS?
You want to download the SERIES PHOTO APP, as demonstrated below by the generously creative (and major Threads inspo driver) Pete Halvorsen (give him a follow, tell him I said hi).

#2 On Android?
I can recommend an app called PhotoSplit that does the same as the above (but currently limited to three windows – I have paid for the Pro version and sent a feature request to the devs). That’s what most of mine are made in.

#3 On desktop?
Get yourself into Google slides, hit File > Page Setup > Custom > 4:5 and then make yourself some snappy panoramic stuff.

Like this.

Or like Rob. Or like Joe. Or Izzy (OK, maybe you can’t do it like Izzy in Google Slides but still – isn’t it great?!)

The only other thing I would add to my bumper book of Threads Pro Tips™️ is that you get in what you get out. So if you’re still on Twitter, use this search string to help find people you might like. Follow people. Interact. Mute crap brands/influencers… And why not use this as an opportunity to clean house and start over. That’s what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll see you there?

—

Oh and PS. Our studio team is already cooking up some fun client-based Threads stuff (coming soon) but if you’re looking for some creative fun on how to make your trailers, key art, or game announcements sing, come talk to Diva.

*At the time of writing, this was mostly true. Then Twitter announced it was paying a whole bunch of Far Right hate mongers for being monstrous hate machines and now that has confirmed it: I won’t be back on Twitter.

2. PACK YER BAGS

Welcome to the UK, where a ‘Let’s speak to young people about taking teabags on their summer holiday to Ibiza’ is a completely normal brief.

Yes, let’s how much we love tea.

And Yorkshire Tea (EDIT: and its agency, Lucky Generals – well done gang) have absolutely smash it out of the park.

You gotta watch this.

I love love love it.

Great job.

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING

Gameboy mailboxes. Amazing.

I found the above photo on Threads. Well, a version of it (without the watermark). A bit of googling and I found the source. Isn’t it lovely? I want one.

OK, where were we?

Ah yes.

Here we are.

In arguably the biggest news announcement to happen to the Quest VR platform since it launched, Roblox is arriving in beta on Meta Quest ‘in the coming weeks’.

For the those of you that don’t know, Roblox has around 66m daily active users (DAUs) – that’s 66 million uniques signing into their Roblox account EVERY DAY.

Meanwhile, Meta can barely get its own staff to login to Horizon Worlds – like, at all – let alone drive stickiness with its install base. The last DAU reported, back in October, was 200,000 and I would wager even that has dwindled since then (I mean, it’s gotta be a sick burn when the users for an app and hardware you’ve poured tens of billions of dollars into gets overtaken by a Twitter clone in like an hour).

So this is a huge deal.

Meta Quest has needed a killer app for its VR hardware ‘solution’ forever. And with Roblox – being played by tens millions of young people every day (albeit 70% of them accessing via mobile) – and Quests in living rooms and drawers gathering dust for months – then this hugely popular platform might be the unlock they’ve been looking for.

You can read the announcement on Meta’s newsroom pages however I would draw you attention to this section:

“Roblox on Quest will be available for people ages 13 and up. And parents can use existing Meta Quest parental supervision tools to help create a level of safety and supervision that’s right for their family.”

This announcement is dated July 12th. Less than a month before, Meta was also announcing another new ‘feature’ for its platform, ‘Parent managed families’”

“Today we’re announcing changes to give families even more ways to use and enjoy Meta Quest. Starting later this year, parents will be able to set up parent-managed Meta accounts for Meta Quest 2 and 3 for their children ages 10 – 12.”

So Roblox is coming out for Meta Quest.
You have to be 13 to play it but we’ll let the parents decide.
BY THE WAY, YOU CAN SIGN THEM UP WHEN THEY’RE TEN NOW!

Also note: ‘people’ vs ‘children’.

Really.

There’s a teeny tiny whiff of ‘Well, we did tell the parents that they had to be 13, it’s not really up to us how they monitor their kids’ behaviour once they’ve signed up them up after they turn 10. We gave them the tools senator…’

You tell me.

Entirely unrelated: ‘Mark Zuckerberg hides his kids’ faces on social media, and tech experts say you should do the same’

Given all of the above, and the glacial speed at which any kind of regulation moves through the US/EU: IF the Roblox beta goes well and kids people come running in their droves I wonder how long Horizon Worlds will survive…

OH YEAH, I did think of one good thing about this news.

At least when Roblox rolls out on Quest then this call to action FROM SEPTEMBER LAST YEAR (as covered in FTOF #337) for Walmart’s godawful Roblox world will actually make sense now 😂

‘Grab your headsets’, honestly.

I would’ve linked to the Tweet but for some reason Walmart has deleted it.

Muppets.

—

Quick Gaming News

• PepsiCo announced a multiyear partnership with EA, anchored around the incoming EA Sports FC (aka ‘FC’, aka ‘FC24’ aka ‘Not-FIFA’). You know the grown ups are in the room when this kind of stuff is announced. Talk about learning from your competitor’s mistakes.

• In a landmark case in the US, the makers of Destiny 2 (and soon, Marathon), Bungie, has managed to successfully hold a sociopathic troll liable for damages against Bungie and its staff. The culprit – one Jesse James Comer – is liable for nearly $500k worth of costs. This. Is. Amazing. Not only setting a new precedent for studios defending themselves against idiotic gAmEr but also HUGE KUDOS to Bungie for coming out to bat so hard for its team. I follow a bunch of Bungo folk across various social media and if you’re reading this @LegalMinimum, I salute you man. 🫡 Here’s IGN with the full story.

• Remember the amazing 100ft tall Lilith / Diablo IV graffiti project? This is how we did it.

• Gameplay trailers should include gameplay, right?

• New Hellboy (the game) trailer! RIP Lance x

• ARE YOU GOING TO GAMESCOM? Let me know. Reply to this, send me a Linkedin message, email me or whatsapp or whatever. I will be there. Coffee?

What is James playing this week?

I finished the Diablo IV campaign AT LAST (and what a story – I swear to God, that game has some of the best – if not the best – cut scenes I have ever seen in a game, ever (you can watch a supercut here spoiler alert etc – if you’re never going to play the game, watch this – if you’re on the fence about the game, just watch the first one) so that was fun to do. And the voice acting really is superb – special shout to Ralph Ineson. Anyway, go play it.

With Diablo out of the way, it was time to crack on with FFXVI but before I did that, a brief interaction on Threads on Wednesday reminded me that I’d downloaded Planet of Lana on Game Pass and hadn’t given it a go.

And wow. What a gorgeous game it is.

Take a dose of Limbo, add a healthy amount of gorgeous colours and paintwork (look at those trees – look at them!), toss in a phenomenally cute animal friend (it’s basically a cat called ‘mui’ but my youngest insisted on calling it ‘grey rabbit’) and you’ve got the best Diablo IV palate cleaner you could ever ask for.

I finished it in a day – and I’m so pleased I spent time with it.

PLAY PLANET OF LANA.

x

Next up: Final Fantasy XVI. Then Jedi: Survivor.

What are you playing?

4. IT’S JULY AND WE HAVEN’T TALKED ABOUT THE ORCAS YET

I mean, can you believe it took this long?

Yes, Killer Whales are attacking yachts in the med.

Yes, it is hilarious.

Yes, this article ‘The orca uprising: whales are ramming boats – but are they inspired by revenge, grief or memory?’ has got some banging paragraphs.

Such as:

“They’re very interested in us,” [says Philip Hoare, the author of Leviathan and Albert and the Whale,]. “Every whale I’ve met, and I’ve met thousands, they’re all interested in us. Because they know there’s nothing out there in their ocean – other than other whales – that is like us. We’re talking about all this now; there’s an equivalent conversation going on in orca society. Orca are podcasting. Literally podcasting. I’ll copyright that joke!” He sends me a 10-second recording of sound captured during his own interaction with the orca pod in Sri Lanka – a complex soundscape of clicks, rasps and squeaks that gives me goosebumps. “If you could only translate that, everything that has been written about this would be rendered defunct. We’ll all be proved wrong.”

Lovely. I implore you to read the whole thing.

5. LET THE MUSIC PLAY

OREO announced a new partnership with Mario and (it was nothing to do with me and whisper it the Xbox partnership was better – shh but) the announcement film is great!

What’s really great about it is that System1 group tested it and gave it a the prestigious title of ‘the best ad we’ve reviewed this year’. Gotta use those distinctive brand assets, y’all – and this is a lesson in how to do that well.

Can you imagine though, seeing the western internet go nuts for this partnership just as you are literally days away from dropping this amazingly similar piece for Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning?

Absolutely Brutal.

BUUUUT did you know the M:I xylophone ball thing was done completely in digital?

IT IS NOT REAL.

KAPOW 🤯

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY.

ENJOY.

• When you build agencies on the crunched up bones of the youth, they will leave.

• Wake up calendar nerds, Google Calendar now lets users know where people will be working throughout the day.

• I think I’ve shared this before but the Wayback Machine has a way to archive your tweets (should you choose to delete your account). I did this last week, it took 10mins or so once I had the download of my tweets from Twitter. Once you set the upload, the process happens in the background. Me, with 200k+ tweets? It about 100 or so hours. Worth considering.

• Now’s the time to export your stuff out of Evernote.

• What do you know, losers – turns out the Barbie stuff works.

• Look at the absolute state of this MeTaVeRsE mess from L’Occitane. I saw it described on Linkedin as ‘visually beautiful & powerful #userexperiencedesign to bring in branded content in a new, engaging relatable way’ – shoot me into the actual sun.

• A Funeral for Chris Messina. I need Twitter for work (for the time being). But I am closer to the end of my Twitter account that I am to the beginning. By some margin.

• Can you imagine being in a position whereby you could charter The Chairman’s Train? Lush.

• If you worked for the lawyers that helped ensure Musk bought Twitter, then maybe you could charter The Chairman’s Train. Here’s the FT on ‘The Anatomy of a Twitter Payout’ – genuinely fascinating.

• Ahsoka!

• 26 signs that creative strategy is still alive, from the excellent Tom Roach.

• Did you know that ‘Over and Over’ by Hot Chip features a low key burn to Jo Whiley? No, me neither.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE STEP.

Thanks for making it this far.

If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, please consider passing it onto a friend. And remember the pitch: Five things on Friday, it doesn’t always come on Friday but you always get more than five.

I hope wherever you are life is being good to you. I’ve got a birthday party for a pal tomorrow afternoon and an afternoon of doing sweet FA on Sunday. I might play some video games with the kids.

Be kind to yourself. Show yourself some love.

And above all else enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.

Whatley out x

..

Last last last thing: this made me chuckle.

Things of note for the week ending Sunday July 9th, 2023.

Three hundred and fifty editions eh?

Not bad for what started out as a weekly exercise in writing discipline way back in 2011 is now a regular an occasional newsletter with over 4000 subscribers.

Absolutely nuts.

I know I always tend to start these things off with a thank you but I am truly so grateful that literally anyone takes the time out to read this thing.

Cheers to you.

Also, these stats are pretty insane y’all.

So yeah, THANKS. You’re all very beautiful and actually quite lovely.

x

What else can I tell you?

Ah yes, in last week’s edition I ‘swapped things’ with of . One of us had to go first and that was me. So a few hours after FTOF #349 went out, Rob published his edition featuring yours truly.

So if you want to read what I said in response to the brief ‘What quote or idea consistently helps you either slow down, or keep going’, then you just need skip over to this edition of Salmon Theory to find out.

More broadly, Rob’s newsletter is great. He is really good at articulating what it means to be a planner/strategist. And if you ever need to feel like you’re not alone in this job, go read Salmon Theory.

x

Right. With all that out the way, shall we get to this week’s things?

LET’S.

1. THE INEVITABLE POST THAT EVERY SINGLE NEWSLETTER HAS OPENED WITH THIS WEEK

Yes, I am on Threads.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when your preferred choice of social media* ultimately comes down to which billionaire you despise the least but alas, that seems to be where we are. Better the devil you know (Zuck) vs the devil you don’t also know but is probably actually an all out sociopath (Musk), right? 😬

Rumoured to be dropping for a while now, all hell broke loose earlier this week when the US + UK (and some VPN’d Europeans) had Threads teasers drop in their respective Instagram accounts. So heavy was the draw that I actually put the IG app back on my phone for the first time since 2019.

At the time of writing, Threads user #1 confirmed that the platform had already secured 70 million sign ups. Sign ups are one thing, retaining those sign ups into DAUs and MAUS, therein lies the challenge.

(want to know your user number? Head to your Instagram profile and look for the number under your profile photo. I’m user #56821. Not bad).

So far though, I’m liking it.

The onboarding was simple, the friend-finding algorithm is working well for me (YMMV), and as soon as it launches a few more things such as a decent search, trending topics, and a web interface well, that’s me done with Twitter for good I guess. Oh, I also like the carousel default for photos – (you can/brands will have fun with this). Guess all we need is a embed integration now eh?

For what it’s worth, I thought John Gruber’s take over on Daring Fireball – ‘Threads’, – was v good.

For me personally, I’ve been looking for reasons to give up Twitter for a while now. Not having a ‘home’ was one of the reasons I stuck around.

With the app/service closing in on 100m sign ups in its first week (!!!), I think this might be where I find my people again.

FWIW, given the meta-ownership, I’m also going to remain semi-active on Bluesky (it’s so chaotic, I love it) but for now, me and Threads are tight.

Give me a web interface to Threads and I doubt I’ll ever go back to Twitter again. I’m so done with everything it’s become. Advertisers are leaving/have left in their droves and the biggest man-baby in the world has destroyed everything about it that I loved.

Threads it is then.

See you there?

*where my friends and community are. Bluesky/T2/Mastodon et al, are all great – but the user numbers, and frankly the people I know and have followed for years just aren’t there. FWIW, I’m probably going to keep my Bluesky profile active. The community there is mega chaotic and seemingly just KIND. Again, YMMV.

2. THE BEAUTY OF HUMANITY WHEN WE THINK NOBODY IS LOOKING

It’s Nice That, writes:

Rachael Wright views the image as one that demonstrates the pull of the sea. “The sea is such a mysterious, powerful draw and the more I wonder why people stand and stare at it, the more possibilities I come up with.” Other moments that stand out for Rachael are moments of joy – like the image of Buddhists monks jumping into the waves; “a reminder that we all have an inner child who longs to come out to play.”

I love these.

They remind me of home.

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING

Not much to report this week. Honestly. Really. Truly.

Tell you what though, this piece ‘Opening a Cannes of Worms’, from my friend and pal, Jonathan Stringfield, on whether or not the 70th edition of the Cannes Festival of Creativity finally signalled the arrival of gaming in the marketing world is very good.

And I absolutely recommend you read it x

What else?

Oh yeah, I noted that Wimbledon launched a new version of its ‘Wimbleworld’ in Fortnite this year (vs Roblox last year) What with Nike doing the same (opting for Fortnite v Roblox for Airphoria) just last month well… 🎵 Times they are a-changin’… 🎵

UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) is THE game-changer.

You just don’t know it yet.

(it’d be lovely for UEFN to be on Mac but well, they had quite the falling out)

Speaking of Fortnite, you’re a player of Fortnite – or Fall Guys (or another Epic Game that features an in-game currency) – and you’re in the UK, Canada or Mexico then you may have received an email like this:

That’s right, thanks to our good friend, inflation, the cost of in-game currency is going up. For Fortniters, that looks like this:

Like pretty much everything else right now, even the price of virtual currency is going up. If you’re smart (and have the dollar to spend), stock up on v-bucks now.

—

The last thing I think that’s worth a mention is, according to this redditor, Valve – makers (among many other things) of the Steam games platform – is not willing to publish games with AI generated content anymore.

reddit.com/r/aigamedev/comments/142j3yt/valve_is_not_willing_to_publish_games_with_ai/

I am pleased about this

PS. Headed to Gamescom this year? Me too! Catch up?

4. WHO KILLED GOOGLE READER?

My heart still weeps.

Can you believe it’s been TEN YEARS since we lost the world’s favourite web app?

It was so perfect. So so so so so perfect. Ach. I miss it.

The Verge has a fantastic if ultimately truly saddening reflection of a service that started off life as a happy accident but was ultimately killed by Google’s relentless obsession on apps that serve billions (vs millions).

If you’ve never even heard of Google Reader before, then I cannot ask you enough to please read this article. It’s a great glimpse into something that was so ahead of its time… us ex-GReaders still mourn for it.

5. THE ENCOURAGEMENT MANIFESTO

Substack is lovely. Last week, after sharing the growth successes of FToF with the Notes community over there, I got into a nice back and forth with . After some friendly exchanges, I inquired after which of their newsletters I should look into and they recommended this:

The manifesto newsletter.

And now I’m recommending it to you 🙂

PS. Why not read how it all started as well?

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO SUBJECTIVE REASONS ENTIRELY OF MY OWN MAKING ARE REDUCED TO LINKS AND PITH ONLY.

• Another Cannes thing, ‘If Cannes wasn’t about the work, it’s your own fault’ – I like this. Cannes gets a lot of flack but if you’re there, and you look past the crap, you can find gold in dem hills. But its on you to find it (or just shut up about it if you can’t be bothered to put the effort in)

• ‘I miss the internet’ – timely.

• Related: ‘So where are we all supposed to go now?’ from The Verge hit me right in the feels.

• Roblox wants to shed its ‘metaverse’ label.
  (IF ROBLOX IS SAYING IT THEN WILL YOU STOP SMASHING IT ALL OVER YOUR DECKS PLEASE MEDIA AGENCIES THANKS X)

• Related: the Metaverse Study for the European Parliament [PDF link] is some thoroughly mental reading. Mainly because under the page marked ‘Definition of Metaverse’ – it first just lists a bunch of them without committing to any but then, later, takes a full 145 pages to actually say ‘well, it’s everything really’ (!) – plus it quotes that ridiculous McKinsey ‘$5 trillion’ figure (you know the one), rendering the entire report utterly useless. What a waste of time.

• Related, again – everyone seems to be waking up to the metaverse being over. Reminder: I wrote this in MAY 2022. ‘The metaverse doesn’t exist, you’re talking about gaming’

• A great interview with the co-founder of Popbitch, Camilla Wright (made their first mobile app, y’know – years ago. On Symbian. That’s how long ago). Side: did you read THE EMAIL? Incredible.

• Claire Hollands and I did the Marketing Academy together (many moons ago). She’s now CEO over at Mullen Lowe and this is a great interview.

• The art of portraying power, wealth, and entitlement. From the FT. Excellent.

• Meta’s ‘System Cards’ are interesting.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

There is still time to sponsor me for August’s Tough Mudder. If you’ve ever found literally any value from this entirely free newsletter. Then please do express that value with real world money to help a real world cause – War Child.

Additionally, if you liked this 350th edition of Five things on Friday, then please do recommend it to a friend, colleague, or department. This thing has grown by word of mouth ALONE so the more people you tell about it, the happier I get.

That’s nice isn’t it? Go on then. Off you pop.

In the meantime, thanks for reading (thanks for donating).

And thanks for being awesome.

Whatley out x

PS. Last thing, promise. If you’re having a bad day, don’t worry. It could be worse. You could be that person on Linkedin that told me Google Maps was the metaverse.

I wish I was making it up.

Things of note for the week ending Friday June 23rd, 2023

No things this week just Lions.

12 shortlists.

Seven Lions.

Four Gold. Two Silver. One Bronze.

Seven Lions awarded at the peer reviewed and judged Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity.

All seven for the OREO x Xbox partnership (aka ‘Cheat Cookies’ or ‘Unlock Playfulness’ – market depending), that launched at the turn of the year.

I led and sold in the strategy for this project when I was at Digitas, working with the amazing team at Saatch Saatchi Dusseldorf, in my role as European Strategy Lead for Mondelez bakery .

I cried.

Clients have been amazing.

And my old team have sent a million selfies.

I know it sounds mad but for me, this shit is important.

When it comes to the advertising industry, winning a Lion is IT.

Like that is IT.

People care about all the other awards, sure. But the big one, the one that really chuffing matters – it’s the Cannes Lion.

Winning a Lion at Cannes MATTERS.

I know this because the only other Lion that I have on my CV is the Bronze I’m credited on for the 2014 Expedia activation: Travel Your Tweet Interesting.

And I have always been proud of that.

But y’know what, I don’t talk about my upbringing that much (Dad was a carpenter, left when I was six or seven, Mum worked two jobs – in a pub and a supermarket) – I was recently sent a book called ‘Making it in the creative industry: A practical guide’ and it reminded me that actually, I’ve been really effing lucky to get where I am.

I grew up in Essex. I didn’t come into the ad industry knowing someone. I didn’t go to private school (I got my GSCEs at Castle View, Canvey Island, Essex). I had free school dinners (had to queue up at reception every lunchtime and get the little bus ticket voucher). I didn’t go to university and I don’t have a degree. No one paid for me to get anywhere. No one opened doors. I’m a white cis-het male and so the system is easier for me to navigate – there’s privilege there. I acknowledge that.

Today though, I acknowledge my background. My working class roots. I’m a member of Jed Hallam’s common people and proud.

And today I’ve got four gold lions.

You may not care about Cannes. And y’know what, if you’d asked me before this week, I probably would’ve said I don’t care as well.

But then we won. And I sobbed. Sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Uncontrollably! Sobbed for the validation of my peers. Sobbed for achieving the heights on a campaign strategy and idea we believed in so much. Sobbed for all those bastards that never really knew what to do with me when they found me working in their team.

And yet here I am. With FOUR GOLD Lions.

Speechless. Utterly speechless.

…

Normal service will resume next edition.

I’m done now.

Whatley out x

PS. Watch the case film.

PPS. Those Lions in full:

GOLD: DIRECT, FOOD & DRINK
GOLD: CULTURE & CONTEXT
GOLD: AUDIENCE, SOCIAL INSIGHT & ENGAGEMENT
GOLD: BRANDED CONTENT, INSIGHT & STRATEGY
SILVER: ENTERTAINMENT FOR GAMING, PARTNERSHIPS
SILVER: GAMING, DATA & TECHNOLOGY
BRONZE: BRAND EXPERIENCE & ACTIVATION

Things of note for the week ending Sunday June 18th 2023.

I snapped this Crown Plaza ad at Heathrow Airport last month. It’s in the corridors as you pass through security. If you made this, I only have one question: what the actual ever loving f*** were you thinking? Thanks x

INTRO

It’s been a minute. How have you been?

I’ve been: busy with work (more on that later) on holiday (ten year anniversary with the Mrs – Sorrento, was lovely), and then down and out with covid (do not recommend).

As I write to you it’s 942am on Sunday 18th June. It’s Father’s Day. The kids have delivered gifts, coffee, and cake (cake!) and so I’ve been left to relax in bed.

And here I am, writing to you.

I hope wherever you are in the world reading this you are well and happy. Life is hard at times. Sometimes it feels like it all of the time. The most important thing is that you stay. You are loved and appreciated more than you will ever know by people close to you and people who you’ve met only once but left a lifelong impression on.

So… if you take one thing from this week’s edition it’s this: stay.

What else can I tell you?

Oh yes! Thank you so much to the FToF readers that have kindly donated to the my Tough Mudder attempt (less than two months away!) – we’re still a little way off our target so if you enjoy this entirely free newsletter, and can spare a fiver or two FOR WAR CHILD on payday (stick a reminder in) then please donate here.

There’s been a lot going on across my broad spectrum of interestingness since we last spoke so I’ll try and keep this edition of THINGS tight and brief – we both know that won’t happen. But there’s no harm in trying, right?

Shall we?

TO THE THINGS!

1. 100 BARRINGTON

A dear friend of mine happens to be in charge of a ridiculous event space in South London called, 100 Barrington.

A few weeks months ago, and in the name updating their marketing material for ‘23 and beyond, 100 Barrington hosted one hell of a party – this one in fact.

Yours truly- along with some other VERY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE -bagged an invite and, as it was such an amazing evening, I made a promise to the hosts that I would gladly let you all know about it.

So in case you are looking for an events space in Brixton – for a summer party, a wedding, or planning ahead for Christmas – Give 100 Barrington a call.

Ask for Dan. And tell him James Whatley says hi x

2. OK LET’S TALK ABOUT THE METAVERSE VISION PRO

(I wasn’t going to write about this – it’s been done to death already and so many others have done a better job; I liked Ben Evans’ take. But a few people have asked and so OK fine).

On June 5th, Apple announced Vision Pro. A beta programme first generation mixed reality headset that will be made available from early 2024.

The price for this beta headset starts at $3499.

A few things.

Let’s talk about what the Vision Pro is:

• IT IS the start of a new category: consumer facing mixed reality device.

• IT IS a phenomenal amount of tech squeezed into what is basically curved glass.

• IT IS (in textbook Apple behaviour) a smart application and combination of existing technologies + some Apple magic. eg: eye-tracking and foveated rendering (the technology that only keeps high fidelity focus on the areas of the screen your eyes are looking at, delivering energy and memory efficiencies) has already been in PS VR2.

• IT IS v. exciting purely from a future-gazing entertainment perspective. The Disney+ integration (easily the best part of the entire presentation – casual Bob Iger) is great but I highly doubt it’ll stay VP-exclusive – so I look forward to that rolling out on other VR platforms eventually.

• IT IS (again, textbook Apple) a great communications exercise in how to root technology advancement in human-centric situations.

Let’s talk about what the Vision Pro isn’t:

• IT ISN’T anything to do with the sodding metaverse. And you can take Apple’s word for that. In fact, the M word wasn’t said, presented or inferred once throughout the entire 2hr WWDC event. Telling. More on this shortly…

• IT ISN’T – with its reported battery life of 2hrs – going to let you watch Everything Everywhere All At Once (2hrs 19mins) on a flight anytime soon.

• IT ISN’T going to change anything for at least 18-24mths. The US release date is scheduled for ‘early 2024’ with more countries to follow later in the year. Volume targets are low (and lowering) so don’t expect the THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR device to do iPhone numbers ay. That said, this early announcement specifically at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC – the clue’s in the name) gives devs a decent run up to get familiar with the tech and get some banging apps ready. So that’s exciting.

• IT ISN’T going to get families wearing these goggles during family events (that whole section was proper Black Mirror / divorced dad y’all).

So yeah, that’s the Vision Pro. A glimpse of an exciting/immersive future.

It’s mega premium, classic Apple, and dick all to do with the metaverse.

Related: the AFP asked me for some commentary – you can read that here – and Jamie East invited me onto The Sunday 7 to chat about it too, you can listen to that right here (from about 4mins 40).

IN OTHER NOT-THE-METAVERSE NEWS

• I spoke to Alex Hern at The Observer about bad consultants selling terrible experiences for his piece, ‘Is Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse over?’

• If you think your life is bad, it could be worse – you could’ve been the one that signed off ‘the Skodaverse’. Or worse: PWC in Decentraland.

• The Voice announced a ‘Roblox-Style’ metaverse called The Voice Studios. The only catch? They built it in Decentraland. How crap must the experience be in DCL if your own press release has to use Roblox to get press coverage? 😂

• Shed a tear for early retirement of the Chief Metaverse Officer role. According to AdAge, even the godmother herself has broadened out the title (print friendly link).

• Meta announced the Quest 3 (who for?) and didn’t use the M word (are they shying away now? Finally?)

• Everyone (well, everyone pictured in the middle of the image at the top of this section) says gaming is the ‘entry point’ to the metaverse, so why did the entire summer of gaming / Not-E3 / #SummerGameFest pass without a single developer or publisher mentioning it?

• And of course, throughout Apple’s entire WWDC they didn’t say ‘metaverse’ once.

Hilariously these last two points were noted and raised to me by a client (I have the best clients).

To quote Ben Evans: it is impossible to know what someone means when they use the word ‘metaverse’. It is a meaningless joke. A waste of time, breath, and usually, money.

With the entire gaming industry, Apple, and now seemingly Meta itself finally moving away from the word, will 2023 mean we’re finally binning the metaverse word off for good? It’s nearly been a year since I stood on stage and told you all it was waffle.

Glad everyone has caught up.

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING

It’s been quite busy in the world of gaming. A whole host of announcements in/at Summer Game Fest meant that players will FEAST over the next 12-18mths.

Xbox by far and away had the best presentation of the show (you can watch the showcase, along with the Starfield direct deep dive right here).

I’m not going to go into the details of everything but overall highlights for me were:

• Fable (amazing trailer, no announcement date)

• Star Wars Outlaws (the gameplay trailer at Ubi Forward was great)

• New Prince of Persia (2.5d refresh, I’m in)

• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (rescue choppers, DUNE DLC!)

• Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga (I cannot wait for this)

• Starfield (seriously, looks nuts – No Man’s Sky and so much more)

• Jusant (‘climb, fall 23’ – is a great line)

• Assassin’s Creed Mirage (new AC based on old AC? Sign me up)

• Still Wakes the Deep (creepy af)

• Dungeons of Hinterberg (love the style and setting)

• Cyberpunk 2077: Phanom Liberty (I hope this is good)

• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (I am unashamedly a fan of all things Avatar so will absolutely be all over this)

AND THAT’S JUST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD AND THERE ARE STILL ANNOUNCEMENTS TO COME.

There has never been a better time to get into gaming.

Lovely.

Next question.

What am I playing?

• I finished Jedi Fallen Order (excellent – this is a good article on the game’s main mode of transport) and downloaded Jedi: Survivor to play but didn’t get around to playing it because…

• …I went on holiday and finally finished The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the way and then immediately picked up Tears of the Kingdom upon arrival (I’m three regional phenomena down, one to go) along with Advance Wars. Its inarguable that TotK is not a great graphical experience but the physics and the story are incredible. On this point specifically, Jonathan is excellent.

• Then Street Fighter 6 came out and I’ve struggled to put that down (global ranking of Bronze + 2 stars and 3517 – wanna fight?)

• AND THEN Diablo IV came out and I’ve been playing a ton of that too.

And while I’m still doing regular raids with the gang, I’m really behind on my Destiny 2 story beats. I’ve got a pitch next week so hopefully some time will free up after that…? MAYBE?!

What are you playing?

…

AND FINALLY IN THIS GAMING SECTION

A big thanks to the people and PR team at PLATFORM BAR. A few weeks ago they invited (and paid for) me and a pal to their brand new venue in Canary Wharf (right by Crossrail) for an evening of pizza, beers, and gaming.

With a boozy gamer-themed cocktail bar and pizzas (along with vegan options for the dairy intolerant massive), each booth has a PS5 and Nintendo Switch on hand to play a whole ton of different games while you booze.

Like I said, Platform paid for our whole evening – I have to declare that – but the way it’s set up and ran (by clearly a bunch of awesome nerds – and it’s ace), we had such a great evening (I don’t have to say that).

Want to know more? Here’s the website (there’s one in Shoreditch too, natch).

4. HERE, HAVE SOME AWESOME WORK STUFF

I know this is all tangential/adjacent to the above thing but we’ve got so much in this edition I felt like it needed to be broken out on its own.

Sorry, I can’t get enough of this.

Briefed by Activision, designed and rendered by Diva (in Unreal Engine 5, no less), painted by Global Street Art on media bought my Rapport WW – this is some of my favourite work we’ve every produced (not just London either).

It’s just stunning. More here.

We also did this sick bus for Square Enix and their incoming launch of Final Fantasy XVI (free demo available right now).

I think flames might be a thing.

MORE STUFF COMING SOON.

Other stuff of note from Diva towers:

• Paul Weedon on Minecraft and mental health is worth your time.

• I spoke to Business Insider about Twitter’s plans for doubling down on video (tl;dr: it doesn’t matter what it does, if Twitter doesn’t fix brand safety, the platform is dead). Print friendly version here.

• The Drum on EA FC’s (nee FIFA) rebrand (feat. me).

5. SPIDERVERSE LEGO AWESOMES

Took the eldest to see Spider-Verse last week and in the minorest of minor spoilers, there is a moment in the movie where it spins a web out to a Lego-variant Spider-Verse. This alone is awesome. The story behind it is even better.

‘How a 14-Year-Old Came to Animate a Scene in ‘Across the Spider-Verse’

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS (AND ALMOST CERTAINLY THE EMAIL LIMIT) BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY.

ENJOY.

• The new Babylon 5 animated movie looks fun.

• Twitter is dying. David Wilding managed to capture what’s keeping me there. For now at least (playing a lot in Blue Sky these days). Read ‘Small Twitter’.

• LOST Illusions: the untold story of the hit show’s poisonous culture is essential reading.

• Catastrophe is now available on Netflix. Not watched it? Watch it!

• Gaming. It’s a thing. (Related: thanks but no thanks).

• Rami Ismail on ‘surviving the indie apocalypse’ (smart stuff)

• Also from Ismail, ‘the publisher’s lie’ – also excellent.

• What strategists want from work.

• The OREO x Xbox Cheat Cookies work picked up 14 awards at the Art Director’s Club in Germany last Friday. It’s the most awards piece of work in the home country of the creatives that developed it. Well done, gang. Proud. Oh, and at the time of writing, it turns out its been shortlisted at Cannes too. Incred.

• Where are all the unempowered women?

• The FTC has told Facebook/Meta it really shouldn’t be monetising kids – but Facebook/Meta has allegedly been doing it anyway.

• Ikea – ‘second best’ – is great.

• The best printer review perhaps ever.

• The Notre-Dame fire has revealed some amazing innovations.

• Any excuse to watch Chris Morris.

• Daft Punk foreveeeeeer.

• What’s the opposite of Triggers? Glimmers.

• All praise our new orca overlords (orcalords?)

• The Bandwagon. A great read to end this with.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

There’s no way I’ve covered everything off I wanted to cover but I woke up this morning and wanted to write. Thanks for indulging me. It’s 15:58 and I’m writing this final section to you.

I won’t be sending it til later though – it’s Father’s Day and the kids wanna play Fortnite. I’ll see you again soon gang.

Big love,

Whatley out x

Things of note for the week ending Sunday April 23rd 2023

INTRO

Good morning from 11:28am on a gentle starting Saturday morning. The kids are playing Fortnite and Cult of the Lamb and I am booting up Substack to see if I can get a newsletter out at some point this weekend – shall we see how we go?

How are you?

It’s been a good social week. Caught up with some of the old Digitas lot (bye Lauren!), managed an extremely rare pint with my brother, and then ended the week cooking a steak dinner for (and opening a significant amount of wine with) some dear friends who hadn’t all been together since before the Covid times.

A heart-filling few days.

As an aside and perhaps as your first bonus thing for this week’s edition, I came across this smoky Brussels sprouts recipe as an interesting side dish to go with the steak and it turned out to be deeeeeelish. So if you can find a reason to give that a go, do so 🙂

While I’m here, here’s a huge thank you to everyone that pledged their support for the Diva Agency/Warchild Tough Mudder attempt in August. Times are tough and with the London Marathon this weekend I am reminded of just how much people are giving already.

At the time of writing there are 3623 subscribers to this newsletter with a 48% open rate. If you all gave one pound then that’d get us well over halfway to our target in an instant. Donate now.

PS. There are a bunch of us doing it from Diva so if you do donate, please yell something like ‘Go Whatley!’ in the comments of the page so I know that one was for me 😉

Where were we?

Ah yes, the newsletter. I hope this edition of Five things on Friday finds you well and healthy. Spring is springing – AT LAST – and the sunshine is warming the soul. I’ve no idea what we’ve got in the link bank this week but let’s open up the ol’ inbox and see what’s what.

Shall we?

TO THE THE THINGS!

1. WHAT, IF ANYTHING, DO WE WANT FROM SOCIAL MEDIA?

With Twitter going through the motions of its dying days, there are new potential platforms and old beckoning beacons popping up all over the place – all trawling behind the slow motion death of the blue bird to see how and where they might attract departing users.

Artifact, Hive, Post, Mastodon, Notes, Blue Sky… (and these are just the ones from memory) – there are a lot. FWIW, judging by feeds this weekend, Blue Sky is the current attempt du jour that everyone is talking about. It was Notes last week, it could be something else in May. It’s not going well, is it?

The reality is, there won’t ever be a single and complete replacement for Twitter. Its growth over time – from piss poor presidents to newspaper celebrity sourcing – will never be repeated. Its original journey from micro-blogging platform to ‘town square’ to news platform, took well over a decade to happen. And while I don’t doubt that new platforms could experience overnight success (hello TikTok), what Twitter was is gone.

Which leads me to the question headlining Thing One this week:

What, if anything, do we want from social media?’

An indirect quote from Bob Merberg, author of the Substack , it’s a question that I have kept coming back to all week.

What do we want want from social media?

Twitter has been such a huge part of my life (and frankly: my career) for so long, I am finding it hard to let it go.

Instagram I gave up on in 2019 (here’s why). But truth be told, with so many of my friends active over there I have been considering a return. Then I think ‘Hang on, what is it for?’ Do I need to go all in on what Rabbi Jeremy Wieder calls ‘Conspicuous Consumption’. Nah. That’s not for me.

One of the reasons I’m enjoying dipping in and out of Substack Notes so much is that the content and the community is completely different. It feels small – and that’s OK – but the conversation is good, engaging and – for me at least – it feels wholesome. But it’s not (old) Twitter.

But then what do I need / use Twitter for? News updates. Friends being funny. Writing. Photos. The sense of connection. I follow a well pruned list of people that talk about such a wild varied bunch of topics – with a handful of opposing opinions thrown in for good measure – that I nearly always enjoy reading it (as a result the new ‘For You’ tab has been broadly very good IMO but that’s literally it).

Last year, in an article I wrote for The Drum about gaming, I recalled social object theory as a way to put all the garbage about the metaverse (vs video games) into perspective.

In 2005, tech founder and investor Jyri Engeström coined the term ‘social object theory’. Building on the work of sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina, Engeström came up with – and subsequently implemented – this theory as part of his explanation as to why some social media networks succeed and some fail.

Social media networks need objects. Or, as Jyri put it: ”Social network theory fails to recognize such real-world dynamics because its notion of sociality is limited to just people.”

Simply ‘connecting people’ is not enough. For example, Engeström argued at the time that much of the success of Flickr (remember Flickr?) was because user-generated photography served as social objects around which conversations of social networks could form. And he was right.

This perhaps goes a long way to explain the success of Instagram (and, if we had more time, would no doubt provide a decent foundational argument for the vacant pornography of trauma that you see displayed on LinkedIn every day). However, we’re not here to talk about that.

The point is: when online, people need something to talk about. They need ’object centered sociality’. If you’re gathering, then the reason you gather needs to have purpose. On Instagram, it’s that amazing photo you took at Coachella. On Facebook, it’s your nan’s birthday. In Whatsapp, it’s the memed version of your best mate’s most recent terrible opinion. Posting images, videos, links, news stories, the latest misinformation from your Next Door community… it’s all what brings us together.

I’m reminded of that every time someone says ‘What about Linkedin?’ which, while I do think it has improved of late, is nowhere near as valuable for me personally (as I guess it is professionally – but then, that’s the point, right?) – so I’m not hauling ass that way anytime soon.

(as an aside, if you are, then Mat Morrison is very good on what does and doesn’t work over there – algorithmically speaking)

All this and I still don’t have an answer to the question.

The Mrs and I work hard to keep our kids off social platforms (like, I think I can count on one hand the number of photos I’ve personally shared). Instagram babies, they ain’t. And why should they be? Imagine realising your face was already been scraped for AI tools before you turned 13? Or finally being allowed on Facebook and realising the platform already knows everything about you before you’ve even hit publish on your first update. Big yikes.

I wrote about this in 2008 (!)

However, one does wonder, in the years to come when the newborns of the late noughties find their way into school, will a new elite group be the rage in the playground? The Facebook Kids — whose parents embraced this new digital wave completely, and used it to track the entirety of their youngling’s lives to date…

And when the time comes, will these ‘Blog-Babies’ be given the logins to their blog like some twisted digital version of the keys to their first car? Or the first $100 from their lifelong trust fund? Of course, but only when they come of age, so to speak.

Could the parents become precious over this personal history?

‘My child ruined/deleted his blog’ is a Jerry Springer/Jeremy Kyle show waiting to happen…

Swap out ‘blog’ for ‘Facebook’ or even ‘TikTok’ and we’re not far off where we are today.

And I still don’t have an answer to the question.

But you know what, maybe we don’t need a definitive answer.

Maybe it’s just a good question to hold in your head whenever you’re hovering over that share/post/publish/toot/tweet button?

Try it for a week and let me know. I’m interested to hear what happens.

What do you want from social media?

2. PODCASTS FOR YOUR EARS

Confession: I don’t listen to that many podcasts. I don’t. Being able to sit and listen to something for 35-40mins is a luxury that I rarely get*. Occasional solo long drives or train travels tend to be where and when I get to indulge, and even then that’s when I remember (and not seat dancing to whatever’s on the radio).

To that point, I’ve had to go in and out of London a bit of late so I’ve been catching up. So here are a few decent things I’ve heard recently:

1. First up, Dr Menaal Munshey on the excellent One Question podcast addressing a response to the question ‘Can we rewrite the rules of leadership’ through the lens of female leadership (aka: the best leadership) and what leadership means working as an immigrant living between countries while at the same time battling on the frontlines of the climate crisis. This is really bloody good.

2. Jo Arden on Uncensored CMO is quite great and worth a listen. Sad we never got to work together when we were both at Publicis, she sounds brilliant and I’m pleased as punch Ogilvy has a decent CSO again. They’re lucky to have her.

3. And finally, for something a bit left-field, I can’t remember how but I happened upon an episode of Conan O’Brien’s podcast ‘Conan needs a friend’ and of the small handful that I’ve listened to, it’s really well put together and the guests are great.

These are all Spotify links, obvs. But they’re all available on Apple and almost certainly literally anywhere else where you get your podcasts.

Enjoy!

*It’s probably why I’m still only on the October edition of Season 10’s (aka 2022’s) excellent Midlife Gamer ‘Year of Shame’ podcast. Sorry lads.

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING

I mean, I can’t kick off this week’s gaming section without SCREAMING about the drop dead gorgeous EDGE COVER that the amazing PR team at Diva managed to secure for HYPER LIGHT BREAKER.

You can check out the gameplay trailer right here – and I believe Early Access is coming to Steam later this year….

Way back when video games magazines did front cover freebies the amazing and much read/missed Nintendo Magazine System gave away an actual Street Fighter II VHS on the cover. I was in school when this happened and I’m fairly sure I even had the video as well – and back then I was such a Nintendo boy through and through, I remember when this was on the shelves. Retro news experts Time Extension has a great piece on of how all that happened.

Side: there’s a FREE Street Fighter 6 demo inbound. It’s available right now for PlayStation owners and Xbox and Steam follows next week. GET IT. Game is out in June so this is a good way/time to get on top of the new systems…

What else can I tell you?

Quick Game News + Updates

• Cult of the Lamb DLC has finally been dated. It comes out ON MONDAY (April 24th) and is a FREE UPDATE! Yes!

• This is a great interview with the CEO of Black Girl Gamers.

• There were a couple of 20+ minute long publisher broadcasts that are worth catching up on if you missed them: Indie World Showcase from Nintendo and a Final Fantasy XVI focused State of Play from PlayStation. The former is great for just a ton of new indies coming soon to Switch and the latter is, of course, a deep dive on the all new all different FFXVI. I haven’t properly played a Final Fantasy game since Crystal Chronicles on GameCube so I’m looking forward to this. (I should say: Square is a client but I think y’all know me well enough by now to know I’m not being paid to write this 😁). Check out both broadcasts – anything interesting there for you?

• Diablo IV is getting another open beta next month.

• If you have an older Nintendo Switch you might have a joy-con that suffers from stick drift. I do – well – I did. It’s past-tense because Nintendo just announced (in the UK at least, I think they’re doing it elsewhere too) that it will repair any joy-con, for free, no matter when or where it was bought. Details are here. I sent mine off this week and it was EASY. UPS turned up less than 24hrs later and it’s currently being repaired at Ninty. Lovely.

• Must watch: occupational burnout in video games.

• Pokemon Sleep – a game which you play BY SLEEPING – is coming this year!

What am I playing?

I finished DREDGE (details on that in last week’s edition). It’s a great game and you should play it. I found it to be reminiscent of the Fighting Fantasy Adventure books from my school days and that can only be a good thing. Well written, relatively short, and quite chill at times. It’s the sleeper hit of the year – don’t miss it.

Next up, I’ve decided to take one final swing at getting into Jedi: Fallen Order. If you don’t know, JFO is an in-canon story that takes place shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith (Order 66 etc – IYKYK). With the sequel, Jedi: Survivor, due any day now, I thought ‘Why not give it a shot?’ (I’d already tried it 2-3 times and just didn’t get on with it – turns out, as quite a few people told me, the first hour is tricky to get through but you’re off planet and exploring, it really picks up).

Well. I smashed through the first hour and…

I am in love.

More photos at this thread.

If you haven’t played JFO, this is me recommending you should.

If you have played JFO, were you a fan? Are you getting Survivor?

Hit that comment/reply/notes button and tell me.

4. A COUPLE OF METAVERSE BITS BECAUSE WHAT IS LIFE IF YOU CAN’T HAVE A LAUGH FROM TIME TO TIME?

I’ll keep this brief.

Word is: Facebook/Meta’s has reportedly stopped pitching metaverse rubbish to advertisers. Instead it is said to be focusing on selling in AI as well as buffing its Instagram-based TikTok clone, Reels (with deep discounts up to 25% off).

I am shooketh.

Look, I’m not saying you shouldn’t believe a single thing that they say but y’all remember the pivot to video, right? You remember the ol’ ‘over-inflating view counts by about 900%’ routine, right?

Facebook’s er… ‘loose’ …relationship with the truth (and the above just one example, there are many many more) has never been something I’ve been comfortable with and so when the metaverse thing came along I was like ‘Wait, what?’

It only took five years for the pivot to video to be pulled apart as a pack of lies. The wheels coming off its metaverse announcement has only taken 18mths. Things are improving!

It’s almost like spunking a load of money and time on a thing that nobody wants or has asked for with no proof or measurement of any real or meaningful ROI whatsoever has been a complete and utter waste of time. Almost.

‘OK James, but when you say ‘a load of money’, how much are we talking?’ – that’s a great question. Well, it’s a LOT. And to put it into perspective, let me borrow a slide from Ben Evans’ excellent February 2023 presentation ‘The New Gatekeepers’.

Ell. Oh. Ell.

Related: Facebook has a new ‘opt-out’ form. Here’s how well designed that is. I think they might’ve done it purpose? I can’t be sure.

5. WHAT IF WE WROTE ABOUT DADS IN THE WAY WE WROTE ABOUT MUMS?

The Grudge Report

What Kind of Dad Are You?

Hey, beautiful, badass Dadas! Whether you’re a Workin’ Dad or a S.A.H.D., there are so many different kinds of new fathering styles to read about, it can be downright overwhelming! And we get it: Bumping into other judgy, “perfect dads” (with perfect bodies) at preschool dropoff or at the grocery store can definitely get you doubting yourself and your li…

Read more

8 months ago · 58 likes · 4 comments · Bess Kalb

No further questions, your honour.

BONUS SECTION

THERE BE GOLD IN DEM HILLS.

• Hannah Waddingham getting a Christmas Special is honestly the best news ever and if you don’t know why this is, I’m about to change your life.

• This week I learned about the RMS Carpathia – and now you will too.

• I’ve been relatively careful about not doing too much stuff on Elon’s Twitter. So many others do it better (Casey Newton, for example) and frankly, the less time I spend on it the better off I will be. That said, a net uptick of 28 new Twitter Blue subscriptions is just embarrassing, right? Oy.

• The Mandalorian made ‘The Volume’ famous. I’ll never tire of seeing it explained.

• Hedda Gabler is my favourite Ibsen. Did it once. Seen it a few times (best one was Sheridan Smith at the Old Vic ten years ago) and reading about Tessa Thompson doing a new version of it has made my week. Bring it the hell on.

• Actually, here’s Casey again but this time looking at Snap’s most recent Partner Summit. Good analysis.

• The power of being an outsider.

• This crisps are horrendous.

• Some [more] good notes on Substack Notes.

• Tom Watson has a level / different take on Dominic Raab. Hasn’t changed my mind about the man but it’s good to be challenged.

• A Substack about digital memorials. Fascinating AF.

• Dishwasher fish?

• My old head of strategy at Digitas, Charlene Charity, did a Strategy Diet interview for Contagious Mag and not only is it brilliant (I LOVE HER) but she also – and entirely unexpectedly – recommended this newsletter. So if you found it because of Charlene’s lovely words, thanks! Hope you like it! Also, nice one boss x

• Taylor Swift did more due diligence on FTX than most thought leaders, celebrities and ‘experts’ lol. Amazing.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

As I start to wrap things up on this week’s edition of Five things on Friday, it’s coming up 915am on Sunday April 23rd.

The Mrs is away this weekend so it’s been Dad Club this weekend. The youngest wants to make a bolognese this afternoon so I think we’ll have to get up and head to Tesco shortly. Might watch Superman II as well.

Let’s see how we go.

Thank you for reading this week’s edition. If you enjoyed reading it, please forward it on to your team or your friends and maybe I’ll see you next time.

Whatley out x

Things of note for the week ending Friday April 14th 2023

INTRO

Sup gang.

Welcome to #345 of Five Things on Friday.

This week’s edition is brought to you by the letters ‘W’ for winner winner winner winner winner winner and ‘P’ for ‘physio’ and ‘pints’.

An especially lovely welcome to all the new subscribers that found FToF via Substack’s new Notes feature (more on that in a bit). I hope you like what you see and, for the record, just because THIS edition has arrived on a Friday, please do not let that set any expectation that future editions will do the same. Fair warning.

Wherever you are in the world, I hope this finds you relaxed and well. If you’re neither of those, then take a big deep breath – and start over.

All will be OK.

This is Five Things on Friday. I am James Whatley.

Why not stick around for a while?

TO THE THINGS!

1. A BIT ABOUT SUBSTACK NOTES

Like 99% of every other Substack user/reader/author this week, I’m opening with a bit about Substack Notes.

If you missed the announcement (it’s here), Substack Notes is Substack’s new (but definitely not an attempt to replace Twitter but almost certainly is that because oh my god have you even seen it) ‘social’ platform.

Billed as a way for Substack ‘writers to be able to post short-form content and share ideas with each other and their readers’, so far it feels like a strong start.

Here’s some early thinking on why

1. Notes feels like the early days of a few of the original truly social platforms (Friendfeed, Jaiku, Twitter 1.0, etc). Familiar faces, early adopters – yes – but also the novelty of a new platform that is still figuring out what it is and allowing its users to help define that. This is a good thing.
   

2. Notes also feels like a lighter lift than other services but with potential for deeper connection. Substack has said itself that it doesn’t want Notes to be like ‘legacy social networks [where] people get rewarded for creating content that goes viral’ and as a result the content there has a completely different vibe. The dopamine driven commitment to the constant. checking. of. notifications. is non-existent. And we all need less of that in our lives.

   
   It also means: no ads. The business model is subscriber driven. Not ads/views etc. So y’know – no crypto bros trying to scam you every 3rd or 4th tweet.
   

3. Writers reading, reading, recommending and subscribing give Notes an air of Google Reader (RIP) and I have missed that ever since Google dispatched GReader the ol’ Google Graveyard in the sky. On the that similarity alone Notes is worth checking out.
   

4. ‘Yes James, but what what we really want to know is: what does this mean for brands?’

   
   I’m telling you now, this is almost certainly the wrong question to ask.
   
   At a personal level, I think Notes could be a great discovery engine. I do! For those that use it at least. From established writers and authors through to industry or category leading thought leaders, Notes is already working for me in either finding new content from people I already knew (but didn’t know they published) or finding great new people/content, recommended by people whose content and opinions I already enjoy and trust. And that, again, can only be a good thing.
   
   From a professional standpoint, I am sure there will be a bRaNd AcTiVaTiOn on there by the end of the month (‘Consumer? what consumer? I want trade press!’) but that would be missing the point of the platform. This is about great content written and published by talented people. I’m hoping that continues.
   

5. Finally, Notes is the new kid on the block. With platforms suffering from their own issues (whether thats egomaniacal ownership, crap like-driven content, or simply a terrible onboarding experience – there are more and I could list them but I’ll run out of room before we get to Thing 2), having options is both welcome and healthy.

Substack is not without its own problems (Casey Newton is good on this) and it will need to get a lot sharper on its content moderation policies if it intends to get ahead of the game. In the short term, having a 35m install base is a pretty good head start I’d say – and if they make enough noise, the policies will follow.

Notes is a thing.

And I’m giving it a go in earnest.

As I have Noted below:

If you’re in, you’re in.

If you’re not, then maybe it’s worth a go? I think so.

Depends how you feel.

My profile is here (vanity URLs, when?) and I’m checking the notifications tab on the reg. So… Let me know, yeah?

2. ALL. OF. THE. TRAILERS.

I have no idea what happened between now and the last time we spoke but honestly suddenly everyone just went: ‘Oh, summer blockbuster season is it? You all better have some trailers then’

BARBIE.

Before we move onto the next trailer, we need to give out some points. First, ten points to The Mary Sue who shortly after the trailer dropped put out this perfectly executed MCU-esque ‘How to watch the Barbie movies in order’. Outstanding.

Second, whomever is in charge of the Barbie marketing has got themselves some wicked talent on their team. The make-your-own Barbie post was a stone cold slice of fried social media gold genius.

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

I really hope they smash this one.

One day I’ll tell you a story about this film. Not today (maybe after the third one drops – movie, not trailer).

BLUE BEETLE!

SECRET INVASION!

AHSOKA!!

SEASON 2 OF VISIONS!!!

Points to Aardman for just Aardmanning the hell out of their effort.

There’s probably more that I’ve missed. What’s are you most looking forward to out of the above? Hit reply! Leave a comment! Sent a Note!

3. THIS WEEK IN GAMING

Some great stuff this week. Let’s get into it.

EA Sports FC has released its new branding and I LOVE IT. Regular readers will know how closely I’ve been following the EA/Fifa (Fifa who?) fallout and I’ve been keeping keen eyes on every single development as it happens.

So when the new brand logo and lockup dropped earlier this month, well – I was excited.

Based on the ever-present triangle that has floated above FIFA EA Sports Football games for decades, and in a world of balls and boxes, this feels fresh and different yet already familiar. I really really like it. Great job, gang.

As David Jackson, VP of Brand at EA SPORTS FC put it:

“Triangles are the shape through which the modern game is most fluently expressed, from intricate passages of passing play, to the tactical genius of Cruyff. ‘Cause, effect, response’ are the three sides of how the game is played best. Triangles are also essential to EA SPORTS most famous football experiences, from the isometric viewing angles of our very first 8-bit experiences, to the player indicator symbol above every athlete in every game – even the smallest atomic unit of our games, the polygons that construct everything you seen on screen – are triangular.’“

Join the club at the official website or if, like me, you want to go deep on the branding side of how this came to be, this is an excellent post on all that.

It’s gorgeous.

Game news bites

• A playable pop up book!

• Xbox made a partly recycled controller ‘Remix special edition’ – this is a good precedent! More please!

• Memories of E3 (RIP).

• Netflix’s gaming ambitions continue to grow, this latest development hints at games moving from the mobile app (yes, you have games in your Netflix mobile app), putting them on your TV, then using your phone as the controller. Swish!

• Cyberpunk’s Ray Tracing Overdrive Mode is SIIIIIIIIICK.

• Go and see the Mario movie! It’s supposed to be great IF YOU REMEMBER IT’S A KIDS FILM FOR KIDS, apparently (I’m seeing it tomorrow – will report back). In the short-term, Jonathan is good on this.

• There’s a new Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom trailer out y’all.

• The global game audience has reached 3.7bn. Important note in this about the difference between the ‘core’ audience and the more mainstream ‘people that play’ audience. Something we’ve been using a lot internally at Diva and pleased to see it’s being picked up elsewhere.

• Related, Ukie released its UK Consumer games market valuation report earlier in the month (I did a mini-thread on it at the time). Main headline: 5.6% down overall but still 17% up on pre-pandemic levels.

The interesting thing about the Ukie thing is that it is REAL data. Instead of the Linkedin HYPE about ZOMG GAMING IS LIKE THE TOTALLY AMAZING (AND CLIO AWARD WINNING) THING YOU SHOULD ALL BE INVOLVED IN RIGHT NOW and the post-web3 nerds suddenly yelling about how they’re the most important people to talk to right now… the Ukie data actually paints a realistic picture of of the broader opportunity at large.

And that’s something real marketers should genuinely be trying to get their heads around. You can call me AT ANY TIME btw. You know who you are.

Video Games x Tipping

I think I mentioned this last edition but the Razer Kishi I picked up in the Amazon Spring sale really turned out to be a fantastic purchase.

Some people prefer the ‘Backbone’ but same same and, as throw it in your bag and forget about it until you need it portability goes, the general concept and execution is a lot lighter than a Switch or a Steamdeck (and considerably cheaper to boot).

It got me so into Dead Cells (picked up ‘free’ as part of Google Play’s ‘Play Pass’ subscription), that I ended up double dipping on console – getting the base game as part of PS Plus and then shelling out £20 for the complete DLC collection.

It reminded me a topic of conversation that came up recently in March when I appeared on a panel for JP Morgan (I haven’t written about this here yet, maybe I am now). We were talking about payments and how the concept and culture of tipping (while inherently US-centric in the level of expectation placed around it) does not exist in video games.

I made the point at the time that the player equivalent of tipping devs for their game is arguably what is known as in gaming nomenclature as the ‘double dip’ – buying a game again (oftentimes but not always) for another platform.

Dead Cells was that for me. I got the base game and DLC as part of a sub but I wanted to show the dev my true enjoyment so I ponied up another £20 to let them know. Spiritfarer, one of my all time favourite games, I’ve bought on ever single platform I own (a not uncommon among the hardcore ‘triple dip’). That game had such a profound emotional impact on me, I felt I had to let the developer know somehow. Double/triple-dipping was the way I did that.

Now what if you didn’t do that? What if on a digital store front, on Xbox or PlayStation for example, after you’d completed a game, you got an option to thank the devs further. I don’t know. There are other options, right? Of course there are. Buy more games. Buy merch. Buy the season pass. Whatever. I get it. But for the smaller fry, ‘buy the devs a cup of coffee’ – that’s something else, right?

It’s different way of viewing the developer/player relationship. One that I’ll gladly return to another day (more so if you’re reading this and think – yeah, actually, let’s make that happen).

What am I playing?

• Still bashing through Dead Cells (the Castlevania DLC – wheeeeee!)

• Picked up Terra Nil on mobile via Netflix Games. An excellent little game. And the concept art is terrific.

• I finally pulled the trigger on DREDGE (leader image of this week’s edition) and I am loving it.

• The kids are nuts into Cult of the Lamb (ahead of the DLC dropping, thanks for that, WASD (see FToF #344).

What are you playing?

4. DIVA DOES TOUGH MUDDER

Way back in 2013, this happened:

Me and my old Expedia UK team from Ogilvy London completed Tough Mudder and raised over £1000 for charity.

You can read: Team Ogilvy takes on Tough Mudder on Whatleydude.com – a blog post! What year is this?!

Rooting around in the cupboards this past Christmas, I found my old 2013 Tough Mudder t-shirt and thought ‘It’s 2023 this year, a ten year bookend to the last time I did this would be something wouldn’t it?’

And, well, one thing led to another and here we are.

At the last count FOURTEEN (!!!) muddy funsters from Diva have signed up to walk/run/climb/complete the 15k Gloucestershire Tough Mudder in August (only four months away – yikes) and the tension is building.

Earlier in the year, once we had our team locked – we each discussed what charity we would want to support as a team and, after a very quick/virtual show of hands we landed on War Child.

Diva has a history of supporting War Child (raising money through streams and charity events in the past) and, the combination of this year being the 30th year of War Child’s charity efforts alongside the ongoing situation senseless war in Ukraine, we felt this would be the right place to put our efforts.

So with that in mind, we finally got around to setting up our Justgiving page this week and while I absolutely acknowledge times are tight, if you’re able to sponsor us even just a little bit, it would be very welcome.

And hey, if you’re up for running with us – you can sign up here.

Please sponsor: Diva does Tough Mudder (will you be the first one?) 🙂

5. OREO + XBOX FTW X 6

Late on Wednesday night my phone started going slightly nuts as the OREO EU team picked up SIX Clio Awards for the Xbox ‘Cheat Cookies’ campaign and partnership.

You can see the case film over on the Clios website but for those wanting the detail, the strategy work for this campaign was literally the last thing I finished and handed over before I left to start my job at Diva.

At the time I was EU brand lead for Mondelez bakery for Publicis, part of a blended team of Digitas UK (strategy) and Saatchis Dusseldorf (client and creative), and we all worked so so so so hard to get this over the line.

Giving a 45min presentation on the cultural significance of the XYBA buttons to convince the bigwigs to make the not-insignificant investment on SIX different cookie embossments is not something I’ll forget in a hurry 😁 – and actually, thinking on it now, makes winning SIX Clios taste that little bit sweeter. 🙂

Well done to the whole team (from the dedicated blended international agency team to the bold multi-market clients across MEU) that played a part in this one. Well. Earned.

It takes a village, right?

BONUS SECTION

THIS IS THE BONUS SECTION. BONUS LINKS THAT BUMP US OVER FIVE THINGS BUT DUE TO TIMING AND SELF-IMPOSED WRITING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIMITED TO PITHY COMMENTARY ONLY.

ENJOY.

• Ben Affleck’s latest, AIR, is getting rave reviews. This interview with the writer behind it has a lovely story in it about Affleck made sure credit was given where credit was due.

• Liquid trees are fine, actually.

• People putting ‘Look at the future of tech and AR!’ crap on Linkedin is hella boring. Except for this one.

• Remember when, oh I don’t know, way back in FToF #337, when I said Wal-Mart’s idea of launching TWO branded Roblox experiences at the same time was A TERRIBLE IDEA because, quote, doing so was ‘a great way of diluting your audience and your message and ensuring one or both completely fail.’ Guess what? They closed one down.

• Dungeons and Dragons is getting RIDICULOUS reviews. Here’s one of them.

• The placement of ‘metaverse’ on this chart is as pleasing.

• This, with Marcus, is lovely and excellent (good reading).

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

Well here we are.

Congratulations!

You made it to the end.

…

But our princess is in another castle.

See you next time,

Whatley out x