This isn’t an article disparaging TikTok per se. Rather, it’s a honest conversation about what happens when short-term tactics replace long-term brand building. I was having a chat over coffee with a friend recently about sales versus brand. He sells paper tissues online—specifically on TikTok. By every traditional metric, his business is flying. He has built a network of 50 women entrepreneurs, trained them on TikTok Live, and each is pulling in 5-figure monthly sales. In hi

Having been cynical, even critical of the Gucci Alpine F1 deal, when I first read about Crystal Palace’s new front of shirt sponsor, Temporal, I rolled my eyes and thought WTF... When I learnt about CPFC’s stadium redevelopment and the IT infrastructure Temporal may provide to Palace, I was intrigued. Is this a tech contract in sponsorship clothing? Are Palace being really smart about leveraging one of their most valuable assets to reduce the OPEX of their IT infrastructure?

Marking your AI Replacement Moving into 2026, Cannes Lions made an interesting decision regarding AI. After the AI scandals at Cannes Lions in 2025, as it set the rules for 2026, it could have capped the percentage of synthetic contribution to any work, or required a minimum of human authorship. It didn't. Instead, it made disclosure of AI use mandatory, with provable claims, requiring a named CEO or CMO to sign off, and the penalties for non-disclosure draconian. It put no l

Last week, I sat as a jury member for the MSA Awards. Thirty-plus teams, back to back, each one walking us through their brief, their insight, their execution, their results. By mid-afternoon, something had started nagging at me. It stayed with me the whole drive home. It wasn't disappointment though, it was closer to hope, mixed with a question I couldn't quite let go of. The talent in that room was the real story I'll say this plainly: the calibre of media thinking on show

Gucci's business challenges are well documented: revenue freefall, eroding margin, over-expansion in Asia-Pacific, and creative instability that has steadily undermined its brand positioning. Will the much-heralded brand partnership with Alpine help address any of these? Should brand partnerships, or sports sponsorships address business challenges? Emphatically yes, but that's for another post. Conceptually, jumping on F1's cultural momentum makes some strategic sense. Drive

Most marketing plans I've reviewed in the past year share the same quiet flaw. They describe a Malaysian consumer who no longer exists — a homogenous, income-growing, aspirational middle-market buyer, neatly segmented by age and spending power. A familiar fiction that feels safe to plan against. The ground has shifted. And the brands that don't feel it yet will feel it soon, in margin pressure, in promotions that underperform, in products designed for a market that has quietl

You've built something real. Revenue is coming in, the team is running. But somewhere along the way, defending your margins got harder. Competitors undercut you. Customers negotiate more. Every promotion works — until it stops, and you need another one. That's not just a sales problem. That's a brand problem. What's the difference between a business that sells and a brand that gets chosen? A business that sells is transactional. It competes on price and availability. The mome