The Mexican spirit that everyone's loving
Plus a thoroughly disappointing experience.
Dear Reader,
The gap between vision and execution (and indeed expectation and reality) can be a disheartening thing. You set out to make something beautiful and it’s never quite as good as you imagined. Closing the gap requires manipulating the messy stuff of reality which is a hard thing to do. It’s why lots of people don’t try their good ideas, because they know that there’s a good chance of failure.
No one experienced this more this week than Billy Coull, organiser of Willy’s Chocolate Experience, a devastatingly underwhelming event in Glasgow Punters were faced with a slightly barren hall and a sort of meth lab that produced one jelly bean per child. He described his “vision of the artistic rendition of a well-known book that didn’t come to fruition.”
Now, based on the facts - Willy’s contract was spelt wrong and his script was AI-generated, I’m not sure Mr Coull was some sort of visionary who failed to execute. I think he might have just been trying to make a quick buck. But the point still stands, it’s really hard to make good stuff, so er, keep trying.
The snozzberries taste like snozzberries,
Hugo
Chief Snozzberry
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
25% of clothes sales in China take place via live streams 👗 - with the help of TikTok, agencies are selling a lot of clothes through influencers doing an impression of QVC. They are trying to take this approach to the US but quite clearly are going to have to navigate some fairly major cultural differences. I for one will not be told what to buy. I need to be subtly influenced by relentless marketing disguised as content.
Esports aren’t doing as well as Activision hoped 🎮 - their vision was to have an NFL-style league but they are having to revisit deals with team owners who are demanding a greater share of revenue and the ability to pursue more sponsorship deals.
Brazil leads the way in Portuguese social media 🇧🇷 - there are 20 million people making money from the creator economy in Brazil which is twice the population of Portugal itself. It’s only the 5th biggest social media market in the world but is the dominant Portuguese-speaking country. This is leading to an interesting one-way flow of culture from Brazil to Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola and Guinea-Bissau.
The bulk of meetings are held between 2 and 6pm 🕰️ - data from the Calendar software Calendly shows that 43% of meetings are held during this period with just 3% (eh!?) between 8 and 9am. I do think afternoon meetings are the best, focussed work is much better in the morning so a summit over a cup of tea at 2pm goes down a treat.
Production of Mezcal is booming 🥃 - Tequila’s sophisticated older sibling is having its moment. In just over a decade global production has grown from 1 to 14 million litres per year. The major liquor companies have been scrabbling to catch up with what has been a cottage, low-volume industry for decades with thousands of family producers. As ever it’s a muddled picture as this is fundamentally good news for the Oaxaca region as vast sums flow in but not great for Mezcal as it will ultimately move to a model of mass production.
Sainsbury’s cuts 1500 jobs to save £1bn 🛒 - Britain’s second-largest supermarket is laying off staff at its contact centre, in-store bakeries and at some fulfilment centres as it looks to improve its bottom line. They’ve recently made improvements to how they undertake all the aforementioned activities meaning their current level of staffing is no longer required.
Apple sacks of electric car project 🚗 - in an uncharacteristic public announcement the technology company has announced its project to build an electric car is shutting down. The project has been ten years in the works but the EV market has evolved to a point that it's just not worth them trying to compete. They’ve decided to focus instead on generative AI which they are much more well-placed to deploy across the endless Apple devices we all have.
HMRC aren’t making use of AI ☎️ - wait times are getting longer with 63% of callers waiting more than ten minutes. Except for the MPs, civil servants and VIPs with access to the ‘fast-track helpline’. They receive millions of calls to do things like reset passwords which to be fair feels like a problem that is better solved online.
Stock pickers vs passive investors 📈 - many people have realised you are generally better off investing your money with a fund that tracks the stock market rather than one that is actively managed. There’s an argument that this is bad for the market overall as fewer people are weeding out bad stocks but for now it’s just theory.
Elon Musk sues OpenAI 👩⚖️ - he was an early investor in the organisation which was set up as a non-profit to ‘benefit humanity’. Musk’s issue is that they formed a for-profit subsidiary that now does huge deals with the likes of Microsoft and is generating huge commercial gains for them. He is also concerned that GPT-4 passes the threshold of Artificial General Intelligence and the board of OpenAI is not equipped to deal with this so wants a court to decide.
Quote of the week
“Invention is 93% perspiration 6% inspiration 3% perspiration and 2% butter scotch ripple.” - Willy Wonka