Aggregate #002: generalists, public affairs, and the end of supersized food
This week's weekly wrap: 1 key stat, 5 stories impacting consumer, and 8 links for the weekend.
I write this off the back of a pretty intense AI-focused fortnight.
I first got a computer when I was eight years old in 1996. I spent hours on that thing, playing around with every nook and cranny of that Windows 95 shell. Briefcase, Publisher, the Registry. There was no stone unturned.
Four years later, I got the internet and built my first PC. An old friend from primary school emailed me to tell me he’d coded a website in HTML. I was jealous and felt stupid. And so I went and bought a book on HTML and spent every spare hour after school and on the weekends learning to build my own. A month later, I discovered View sourcecode and learnt that he’d built it in a website generator. I’d been hoodwinked, but I was hooked on the internet.
12 years after that and I’m in my first job and amazed that I get to do stuff with the internet for a living. Facebook, Foursquare, Livejournal. We’re now connected properly and more widely. It’s not just me and the other internet weirdos in IRC rooms.
And now it’s today. After spending three hours a day on Claude Code for a fortnight, I’ve never been as excited to use a computer, nor as anxious and uncertain as to what that means for all of us.
The mad thing is that the stuff that eight year old me was excited about on that first PC, I could probably vibe code in half an afternoon. Can’t help but wonder where we’ll be in another two decades.
Key stat
Signals
Key signals for builders, growers, and operators.
It’s time to become generalists [Careers] – Marc Andreesen said there’s a Mexican standoff now that PMs, designers, and engineers could all do each other’s jobs. Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code said what we all need to do now is to “try to be a generalist.” I wrote about this last year when I said ’it’s time we all became growth artisans’.
Why marketing calendars are for the brand that have already made it [Consumer / Meta] – with Meta you have a set number of shots on goal you can take each month. If you’re doing less than £2.5m of revenue, then whatever you do don’t start filling those marketing calendar events.
Meta’s ‘test-inside-an-adset’ tool is being pushed hard [Meta Ads] – since last October, you’ve been able to test creative inside a scaling campaign. But it’s being heavily pushed this year. We’re running a dozen tests on this as we speak, and we’ll be reporting back in a few weeks with the findings.
eBay is buying Depop from Etsy for $1.2bn [Consumer] – eBay is worried about younger consumers and so has bought the fashion marketplace from Etsy.
The end of ‘super-sized’ in the US may be upon us [Consumer] – with everyone from KFC and Olive Garden to high-end restaurants slimming down their portion sizes. The reason is two-fold: GLP-1s and cost of living. Though we must remember the affordability crisis is misunderstood.
The stack
A shortlist of stuff I recommend you read and listen to this weekend.
🎧 ‘Fame is not a business model’. Operators
📝 ‘Dr. Peter Attia steps down from David Protein after Epstein links’ Reuters
🎧 ‘Neuroscience of why we crack under pressure.’ NPR
📝 ’How to solve any problem.’ George Mack / High Agency
📝 ’Don’t ban teenagers from social media.’ Economist (£)
📝 ’Why Nudge Policies Failed’ Rob Wolfe, The Atlantic
📝 ’What Olympic branding teaches us about emotional design’ Creative Review (£)
📺 ’Google DeepMind chief warns AI investment looks ‘bubble-like’ FT Interview
Forward to a friend
If you like this, I’d love for you to forward it to a friend.