Reflections

  There is a lot of talk around the rise, nay - the rapid lightening rise of AI LLMs, Gen AI and more. The rhetoric around its being innovation-driven is to be heard a lot nowadays; there is no denying their innovative and inventive background reality. To deny that would be abject foolishness - but that does not mean it is the innovation that won the market. Innovation never wins markets - and that, in a world where absolutes cannot stated, is an absolute. The Prerequisites for Winning Markets A market victory requires purchasing customers, the right ecosystem, available finance and regulations, and a demonstrable value proposition - not one of these is negotiable. Therefore, let me take a quick look at the growth of the LLM phenomenon from the eye of a marketer   First of all - there is nothing like a product-led innovation - innovation is always market-led. Unless there was some history of innovations winning in the market, there would be fewer risk takers i...

  AI Will Be Decided in the Real World, Not in the Lab There is something increasingly odd about the way the AI industry talks about Artificial General Intelligence, Superintelligence, the Singularity and the risks associated with them. The language is becoming increasingly grandiose: AI will transform the world, AI may surpass human intelligence, AI may become uncontrollable, AI may eventually pose an existential threat to humanity.   Yet when I look at these conversations from the perspective of someone who works with businesses and is actually trying to use AI to improve productivity, I find a fundamental disconnect. The AI industry, particularly the technologists within it, seems to have very little understanding of how the real world works — not just of the risks of AI, but even of its benefits. And that disconnect matters because businesses are ultimately the ones that have to adopt, pay for, manage and live with this technology.       Redefini...

Confidence vs. Arrogance: The Tone Problem in Modern Advertising - How many people in marketing actually stop and ask: what is the tone of my advertising? This seemingly small question is in reality lying at the core of advertising. Your advertising doesn't just communicate what your brand sells; it communicates what kind of brand you are. Furthermore, the consumer doesn't separate your brand from the behaviour of the people representing it in your advertising. And that is where the tone comes in – what you say, how you state it and in what context – all three are vital elements to brand communication       Take a step back from the job for a second. Put yourself in the audience's seat. You come across an ad whose central characters — through their expressions, their hand gestures, the whole setting — carry a feeling of being superior to anyone not using the product. Or the ad looks down on the competition, openly or through implication. Now ask: how does that reflect...