Splitters and Lumpers: Weeknotes #35
It’s nearly the end of June. Crikey.
This week the industry has been down in Cannes. Alongside CES and Thanksgiving, it’s one of my favourite weeks of the working year. Despite the torrent of noise that seems to fill LinkedIn and Instagram related to lion-based trophies, ‘important questions’ and Rosé - It’s always so quiet. A time to be productive, often free from molestation by colleagues, clients and co-workers.
My writing this year has been primarily focussed into the project I have going with Matt. Ideas We Love is a thing I take genuine joy in doing and it’s a project which gives me energy. As a result, some of the writing I might have done here, not least Week Notes, has fallen by the wayside. This post is a semi-real attempt to resucitate my writing here. Writing for the blog is a route into thinking about things in a slightly different way, if nothing else. Spending time with some of my favourite blogs reminds me not every post has to be a polished masterpiece. Quick, informal, high frequency observations are just as effective as well. I need to find an outlet.
My note book is full. Week Notes are perhaps the best way I’ve found of translating those notes into something with slightly more logic attached. A midstage for developing thoughts from scribbles to something more coherent and well rounded. A way of making sense of lots of different bits of stimulus. You have to sort of trust your brain to connect the dots in the first place, but it might need help to organise them further. Friday is going to be the new week note day. Not Sunday.
Some things of note from this week & some of last week, too….
I took advantage of Russell Davies’ Unoffice Hours initiative. What a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating 30 minutes. Proper generosity.
In other Russell Davies related news, I’ve been enjoying his semi-regular WIP podcast. The latest episode featured a conversation with Kate Waters. I particularly liked and agreed with Water’s observation that “there are two types of of people in the world… not people, but marketers probably…. splitters and lumpers. Splitters are kind of people who like to divide you into little groups and try and accentuate the differences and then lumpers are people or agencies or disciplines where you go actually let's look for the nice big unifying thing”. We talk about media fragmentation the whole time. Down in Cannes this week Grace Kite talked about ‘lots of littles’. And in a blog post I did actually manage to publish this week, this issue is at the core of the challenge we face - do we split our spend up along the entire consumer journey? Or do we lump? Splitting seems to speak to the part of our brain that wants to seem smart. Lumping feels more pragmattic.
Adam Curtis is back on the BBC. Shifty. Having watched on episode I’m interested to see how it develops. Bruno the dog is a star. He’s PR’ing it quite heavily and his interview on The Rest is Entertainment was enlightening….
The smartphone comes up frequently in his chat with Marina and Richard. I’ve stupidly just reinstalled Tiktok. Just in time for the Ibiza season. No one looks like they’re having any fun in these clubs. Everything is being filmed. Mediated through a phone. No one is dancing. It’s very troubling.
Meanwhile, in Cannes… I’d not noticed just how little airtime we now get on content from the stages inside the main festival. It’s all fringe now. I know that there are an abundance of people there, but to the point about fragmentation: who is in the audience for all of these fireside chats? Is the industry now just a bunch of agency holding companies and media owners talking to itself all the time?
Caught up with Will. Mainly to discuss a sort of professional MOT. Excited to see what happens next.
Not surprised by news that people who exclusively use LLMs and not other forms of media or research are doing damage to their cognitive functions. How we use these things is as important as what we use them for.
Ate at OMA. Second time there and it’s great. Have booked to go back with Lisa soon.
Had the Evil Does Not Exist soundtrack on repeat.
