#weeknotes www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/nature-...

I’ve voted for yourself

my efforts to continue with the #weeknotes survive, barely...on 'doing the boring thing', writing for the IPA and details of various forms of content consumption www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/do-the-...

Slowly trying to get back into the weeknote habit... This week a request to do a presentation results in the conclusion that no one - least of all people in marketing - really knows anything..... www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/no-one-...

Been thinking a lot about one of @willsh.bsky.social ‘s greatest hits - fracking the social web. At some point all services stop being about the plumbing of getting information from A-B and start becoming a platform with features and formats and a more advanced logic for content discovery

Taking Oliver Burkeman's idea of Aliveness as a navigation tool and applying it to brands and communication.... www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/optimis...

Rolex’s new golf ads are really really really bad. Why on earth they got rid of #perpetual I have no idea

Why do media agencies need a chief media officer?

Maybe a good analogy for a lot of the sludge we see online from various generative AI tools is Muzak. It looks and feels a bit like the real thing. It works in certain contexts. But if you stare too long you realise what’s happening in real terms

News preferring to focus on the losses incurred by tech billionaires rather than the pension schemes of your average person , I see

Review and rebuild sounds like the worst kind of agency pitch theme I’ve ever encountered

Column. On pathetic European freeloaders. www.thetimes.com/article/7652...

Why have people given up on headphones on public transport?

A thing about dimensionlising brand experience across 'scale', speed and strata.... riffing off Stewart Brand, Thomas Heatherwick and some of my own thinking (god forbid) www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/scale-s...

Someone voluntarily offered me and my co-writer £95 a year to receive our newsletter. Feels like a minor achievement

Have spent a significant amount of time correcting Claude’s mistakes today. The answers it gives me in one of my projects look and feel fluent. But comparing source material with output, it’s easy to spot big errors

The adjectives used by trade press to describe people moving jobs could really benefit from an overhaul. Raids, Re-surfacing and 'reemergences' don't really feel very positive....

A thing about Stone Island and their latest campaign. Never owned anything by the brand, but the more I read about them the more interesting they become ideaswelove.substack.com/p/ideas-we-l...

If only Open AI had stolen some irony along with all the copyright material it ‘borrowed’.

In the end, everyone becomes a traitor

I’ve voted for yourself

The challenges in traitors are so convoluted as to be almost indecipherable

www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/executi... #weeknotes #communications #planning #marketing

Looking for alternatives to substack …. Any firm recommendations would be gratefully received

“The difference between Tarantino and Lynch is that Tarantino is interested in the ear being cut off, Lynch would be interested in the ear”

Want a creative brief rabbit hole? I'll give you a creative brief rabbit hole. medium.com/@leegrunnell... medium.com/@leegrunnell... www.ian-leslie.com/p/what-makes... www.linkedin.com/posts/lbasth... (The comment thread on that last one.)

A love letter to brilliant briefs.... ideaswelove.substack.com/p/ideas-we-l...

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is really quite remarkable. And probably an apposite choice of book given some of the stuff going on *out there*

New Week Notes: Traitors and the terrible decisions people seem to make when they do so by committee.... www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/the-ign... #committee #advertising #weeknotes #communicationsplanning #media

Traitors might be the best argument against decision by committee that I’ve ever come across

Starting to wonder if Skeleton Crew is really about quantitative easing

I realise people need ANOTHER newsletter in their lives like they need a hole in their head…. But I promise this one is pretty good. Though I might be biased. Ideas We Love - a weekly look at creativity in communications planning ideaswelove.substack.com/p/ideas-we-l...

Starting the year as I mean to go on with a return to #weeknotes. www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/always-...

I wonder if it’s too early to propose Grift as my word of the year

YouTube now offering me pass agg threats as well as advertising…. “Watch this advert to receive fewer interruptions later”. I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t all hair supplements and diesel class actions, but there you go

This is one of the best articles I’ve read on the state of streaming, the state of media and the rather depressing implications for its future www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/ess...

This deep dive on Netflix purposely turning movies into barely distinguishable forgettable slop is so insightful, researched & brutally hilarious. A must read if you want to really know what’s happening to the business AND culture of movies.

Tori Amos’ Cornflake Girl really is quite the record isn’t it?

“ I don’t feel like making a pie has changed the amount of food we have to eat, it’s just changed state” My wife on the challenge of leftovers

The single service spam bots have arrived

I find myself craving authentic brand experiences more and more these days

This week we've handed the reins over to friend of the newsletter @gardengnomeai.bsky.social who writes a love letter to 'moderation'in the digital age. If creativity in comms planning (free from negative, armcchair criticism) is your thing, please subscribe ideaswelove.substack.com/p/ideas-we-l...

Interesting to see how people are approaching handle strategy. Same as the old place? Opportunity for a refresh. Descriptive, yet whacky?

Few things make me as happy as seeing a berghaus clad couple dragging their dedicated goth teenager round a national trust property on a Sunday afternoon

Less a blog post, more a loose collection of notes all coalesce around the same topic - driven by the obvious challenges Gen AI poses to the trust we place in media, the 'enshitification' of the internet & the way that planning might shift as a result www.tomdarlington.co.uk/blog/do-plan...

Me and my friend Matt write a newsletter about the brand and communications ideas we love. This week it's the christmas special. Have a look, if you like that sort of thing ideaswelove.substack.com/p/ideas-we-l... #media #communications #ideas #creativity

I’ll tell you what’s up