Sensible

My name is Giles Davis and by day I'm a brand planner and copywriter. This is where I store things that interest me and things that I don't want to lose. There's a lot of clever thinking out there and you'll find some of it here.

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Why Japanese companies do so many different things

The internal logic of the world’s strangest corporations

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Channels that B2B brands built their growth on are collapsing, and the companies responding by becoming publishers are the ones pulling ahead.

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Here’s What I Told the DNC Autopsy

The report may never see the light of day—so the Harris campaign’s head of digital offers his candid breakdown of what worked, what failed, and what Democrats have yet to learn.

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Gartner Says Autonomous Business and AI Layoffs May Create Budget Room, but Do Not Deliver Returns

Gartner analyst Helen Poitevin added approximately 80% of organizations report workforce reductions, however, those reductions do not appear to translate into ROI. Read more here. #AIlayoffs #AI #GartnerIT

Gartner forecasts that autonomous business will be a net-positive job creator by 2028 to 2029. The demand for people who can guide, govern, and scale AI systems is building. Companies that gutted their teams in 2025 and 2026 to hit a quarterly number will be rebuilding from scratch in a tighter talent market. The companies that invested through this period will have the teams, the knowledge, the customer relationships, and the brand equity that comes from treating people as an asset through a period of uncertainty rather than a line item to cut. The data says cutting doesn't improve the bottom line. 

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NL 40: The Language of Wine

And another Unusual Grape worth Trying - Braucol

This is fascinating.

I have been brewing a theory that nowadays it has become almost impossible to distinguish between "premium" brands and "luxury" brands. I haven't read the referenced papers (I will) but those descriptors are very much "budget" vs "premium".

What happens when you lift the lower bar up a bit towards mid-price?

I have recently been doing some copywriting for two reasonably expensive brands that aspire to luxury status, one clothing and one car brand (sorry, "marque"). This has opened my eyes to the way the language between, say, a BMW and a Bentley is becoming interchangeable.

As luxury has become commodified (see the huge portfolios and reach of LVMH brands - e.g. Louis Vuitton on Leeds' high street) and more brands aspire toward the higher margins afforded by luxury status, so the language of premium and luxury merges.

I wonder if there has also been a Google-inspired dumbing-down of the individual style of writing, to appease the internet search overlords.

(I was reminded of the stir casued by "Cat's Pee on a Gooseberry Bush" a short-lived wine brand in the 90s. Different and memorable, not premium.)

AI is defintiely not going to improve things as it hoovers up all the wine descriptions and regurgitates soundalikes for time-pressured marketeers.

We'll have to rely on the reviews of trusted human beings... which is why we're here.

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(via Every Company Now Sounds Like ChatGPT and That's the Biggest Brand Opportunity in a Decade)

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Five tips to make your memory work more effectively

From putting your phone away to getting better at ‘chunking’, a neuroscience researcher explains how to make your memory better.

Putting it here so I don't forget it.

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(via Taste Test: Encrusting the Tortoise - by Douglas Brundage) A great read about taste vs fashion. This is Joan Didion’s packing list. 

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Sometimes you just have to do it for the sake of doing it. A good read

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What "Brand" Means and What It Doesn’t

Five Misconceptions About the Word "Brand" Today

You can grow but don’t lost long term trust

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The Future Of Brand Creativity Belongs To The Small And Reckless - Branding Strategy Insider

Let’s stop pretending this AI rush is brave. It isn’t. It’s terrified. Across marketing holding companies, executives are racing to adopt AI not because

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You don’t need a bespoke luxury-style branding strategy to succeed as a luxury brand

Luxury marketing doesn't need to create its own ‘laws of growth’ for brands to succeed; there are some law-like patterns that luxury categories share with others and understanding them will make luxury brand marketing stronger.

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Cory Doctorow on why AI is not so daunting

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Why procrastination isn’t laziness – it’s rigid thinking that your brain can unlearn

Why we procrastinate has less to do with willpower than with how flexibly our brains handle stress and discomfort - and the good news is, flexibility is trainable.

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The workplace wasn’t designed for humans – and it shows

Burnout isn’t a personal failure. It’s a design flaw. But there is another way.

Drawing on ideas from the circular economy, along with management theory and organisational psychology, we propose a different way of thinking about work. We call it circular work.

Circular work flips the usual logic. Instead of treating people’s time, energy and skills as resources to be consumed, it sees work as a cycle – where effort is matched with recovery, learning and renewal. The goal isn’t just short-term output, but work that people can sustain without burning out.

At its core, circular work connects employee well-being and organisational performance and is built around four simple ideas:

all human work resources are connected – energy, skills, knowledge and relationships affect each other

it’s possible to recover and regenerate spent work resources – rest, support, and learning help employees bounce back

work can build or drain resources – how work is designed determines whether people thrive or are thwarted

sustainable work grows from protected and renewed resources – investing in well-being and development helps to sustain people and organisations.

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Find out how many survey respondents for each car and manufacturer participated in the latest Which? Car Survey.

THis may come in handy

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ReTune

Our ReTune Instrument Recycling Scheme invites Music Hubs to recycle their old, unused musical instruments. Normans will arrange a free-of-charge collection of these instruments, assess their condition and either repair, donate, auction or responsibly dispose of them.