Outside Perspective Y25W44 - Ghosts vs Breadcrumbs.
Ghosts, breadcrumbs, algorithms - introducing Bizhan Govindji, and our usual curiosity stream and gigs. Woooooooo.
What’s worse? Ghosts or Breadcrumbs?
Halloween. Woooooooo.
Naturally, it would be a good time to talk about ghosting, the phenomena in self-employment which seems to be so hot right now… Respond to a request, write a proposal, send it over, and then nothing. No reply. You chase. Nothing. Poof. A waste of a half-day.
But there’s another frustrating experience I’m also seeing an increase in - breadcrumbing.
Not ghosting, they reply. But slowly, and without a proper yes or no.
With a response which asks for more detail, or another week, or another call, or a slight change, or … just enough to keep you interested, but not enough to commit.
I’m stealing another phrase from dating here, I know, but it’s arguably more annoying that ghosting - as the carrot continues to be dangled, but you never get the bite. And it sucks up a HUGE amount of time, energy and effort.
Of course, we all know the simple answer - stronger boundaries, stronger vetting, stronger responses. But it’s never as easy as that, especially if things are quiet.
This year’s research into self-employment is already showing a worrying figure about the number of independents who feel “disrespected” by their clients. Perhaps it’s partially a result of less face to face time. Perhaps it’s just we’re all juggling too many things (keeping potential irons in potential fires).
Or perhaps we just forgot how to make decisions.
Matthew.
ps. Don’t forget - our annual survey on mental health in self-employment is open for a just a few more days. We need as many people to take part as possible. If you’ve already participated, thankyou! Please encourage your network to do the same.
Good Morning Algorithm: Malena Roche and Michael Baggs on the death of social.
This month saw the launch of a new podcast, a “softly unhinged breakfast show for culture, business, and the internet.” - Good Morning Algorithm. I spoke to the show’s hosts, Malena Roche and Michael Baggs.
Melana and Michael, - what is Good Morning Algorithm, and why did you start the podcast?
Good Morning Algorithm is a new podcast exploring the world of social media and internet culture: the memes, movements, and moments that shape how we live online.
We felt like there was a gap in the podcast market. We found podcasts that were technical “how to spend your ad budget on social media” type things or podcasts from tools, but nothing that tapped into online culture.
Every “did you see that?” conversation between the two of us somehow always turned into a full-on discussion about the internet. So we finally decided: let’s just record it. We are both chronically online and it just felt like an extension of conversations we have anyway, only recording them now.
The first episode “The Death of Social Media” speaks to the perceived decline and “enshittification” of social platforms, “feral” spaces, the speed of shifting interest graphs, the failure of the feed to understand households sharing devices - has social over-optimised to their commercial goals over the benefits of their users?
Yes, social is currently massively over-optimised to deliver returns to the platform operators, rather than brands or general users. There’s been a sense of diminishing returns for everyone for a long time, but post-pandemic it’s notably accelerated.
With little prompt, everyone can remember a recent example for each platform of changes to their feeds or functionality that made users audibly groan and then beg for it not to roll out, but they’ve done so, for no benefit other than their own.
There’s a long running joke that the Chinese have thousands of hells, inherited from the various Sutras. The hell of upside-down sinners, the hell of boiling oil, the hell of scissors, the hell of being crushed by cattle, there’s even a hell of mortars and pestles.
Working on social media is increasingly starting to feel like an obscure Chinese hell. One where the instructions keep randomly changing every morning, your organic reach keeps declining, and someone in finance keeps suggesting you hire their teenage brother, who’s always on his phone, and they suspect could get the company a million TikTok followers in six months.
Social media has become “the baddie” which everyone is placing blame on for so many society’s ills - is that fair? Is there a redemption story?
Tough question. I always say we can’t expect social media to be anything other than a reflection of the world we live in. Is social media the “baddie” or do we live in a world that is more and more individualistic, where self-care is often code for selfishness?
I don’t have an answer to that. But same as in IRL, URL has good and bad spaces.
Yes, social media is full of online bullying, but there’s also a place to find likeminded communities and to make friends that often turn into in person friendships. I’m unsure what a queer person in a small town would do without social media for eg. probably feel even more isolated than they already do. (Malena)
What can we expect for coming episodes of the podcast?
Why is everyone starting a Substack , the manosphere, “make a million pounds in 90 days” and everything that’s in our algorithm. I’m guessing Rosalia & Lily Allen. Expect honest takes, nerdy chat, and the kind of conversations you’d normally only find in sleep deprived DMs.
» Subscribe to Good Morning Algorithm on your podcast platform of choice - mine is spotify. Malena and Michael are both on Linkedin too.
Curiosity Stream
» New community member Heloisa de Souza’s substack The Good Football - a newsletter for those who believe that, when football is good, it transcends the boundaries of the sport and creates brand value and positive change on and off the field.
» Dentsu’s annual media trends drop “human truths in an algorithmic era”
» Brand Horrors from DuBose Cole over at Sunday Strategy
» Semiotic Sisterhood have launched their new substack
» New member Camilla Petty’s substack - Show your thinking, show you’re thinking.
» Mark Pollard, Strategy Friend has opened up a treasure trove of resources, tools and frameworks for strategy folk here.
» Rob Estreitinho and friends are hosting a Scary Good Comms Strategy (A Halloween Special) today at 1pm, register quick!
» Baiba Matisone is running a Creative Strategy framework session on Nov 5
» We’re not saving lives. Gen Z on the workplace emergency.
» LookUP are hosting a free storytelling session for those who have recently lost their job through redundancy (I’ll be there, don’t let that put you off).
» Martin Weigel on Strategy and Words
» Exploring the Index Nodes - a mixed-use community center for non-conforming ideas and methods of creative exchange
» Carla Moss on the impact of GLP-1 (and interesting Kantar data too)
» Research paper on the impact of genAI on upskilling and ways of working, and parallel observations from Zoe Scaman on solo vs group AI use.
» Simon Dixon on the importance of personal positioning for freelancers.
Meet a Member: Bizhan Govindji
👋 Hi, I’m Bizhan - (say the zh like the ‘s’ in casual)... Independent Strategy Director, DJ, reader, runner, film photographer and millennial cliché-enthusiast. I look for projects and collaborations (mostly within brand planning, social strategy, or creative strategy) with nice people who want to work fast, think deep, and make something that actually gets used.
I was always that ‘maths and science’ kid who never thought he’d end up in a creative industry (especially with my educational background in Neuroscience). Turns out Strategy was the blend of logic and creativity that my young mind was craving, which I discovered a year into my first ‘proper job’ at Ogilvy London. I spent nearly 7 years there, working across brand, social, and content.
This time included a brief stint at Ogilvy New York to help build the global social offering, concepting an internal speaker series that aimed to widen the agency’s inputs and profile underrepresented voices (it was called Quench, and ended up platforming over 100 speakers over 6 years) and being given the time to fully lean into my year on The Marketing Academy Scholarship. Say what you like about big agencies (and yes, they have their issues), but my experience of Ogilvy London and most of the leadership at the time, was really quite positive, nurturing, and fulfilling.
After all that, I decided I wanted to leave London and find something less comfortable. I spent 5 years at Ogilvy Hong Kong, working with a totally unfamiliar cultural backdrop. It was awesome. I led strategy work for Asian and Global brands (Korean Air, COS, lululemon, AIA, Shangri-La) and had the chance to see how strategy work lands in new contexts.A couple of years ago, I left Ogilvy to begin my freelance career.
I now move between Asia, Africa and Europe, and work on a much wider range of projects.
Last year an agency brought me in to run a positioning workshop for a new client of theirs: a stop-smoking brand with a great product that was helping people quit, but no real brand foundation behind it. Tricky, and even tricker because the client stakeholders each had slightly (i.e.very) different takes on the direction the brand should go.
I’m proud of my work on this one, because I managed to craft a workshop that first levelled the room, and then through facilitation, brought everyone along on the same journey. I managed to remove some of the inherent friction and brought the senior clients towards a strategic foundation for the brand that they all agreed on, because it was built from something robust. Even better, this project had a bit of budget for consumer testing, so I was able to get our shortlist of brand narratives into research before landing on a final direction. Happy client, really strong strategy, and energising creative work off the back.
My Outside Perspective
An old strategy boss of mine referred to our job as separating the interesting from the useful.
I agree in part, but the distinction gnawing at me lately is how we separate the ‘proper’ from the ‘useful’.
So many years in a ‘proper’ agency, and my strategy brain is hardwired to do things ‘properly’, with time for research, complex frameworks, step by step approaches etc etc.
But what if that’s not useful, in the moment? If I’m talking to the founder of a tiny brand who just wants a creative campaign idea for a product launch, does she care that I’ve done the 4 Cs or that we have exhaustive audience personas before launching? Maybe not.
There have been moments as a freelancer where I notice a prospective client’s eyes glaze over as I mention these things, and I have to catch myself and realise that if we can’t (swiftly) show how what we do is easy and valuable, then we’ll lose out on the work to someone else.
We’re independents. We don’t have a boss telling us the ‘right’ way to do strategy, we can sometimes trust our gut and find the approach that works best for that client, even if it’s a little unconventional.
Three things I’m consuming right now
Watching: No More Jockeys. This is pure joy to me. Three mates (the British comedians Alex Horne, Mark Watson, and Tim Key) who invented a celebrity-related game, probably down the pub, years ago, and then during Covid they decided to play it on Zoom and started putting it up on YouTube.
Playing: Minute Cryptic. I’ve always quite liked crosswords, but assumed that Cryptic Crosswords were just ridiculous, annoying, and ungettable.
Listening: The audio-zine Offal is simply wild. It is somehow both an epitome of and salve for the technological fear & pessimism we live within today. It’s uncanny, twisted, and a little terrifying.
» Connect with Bizhan on Linkedin, or in the community.
Gigs
Freelance Innovation Strategist (EU)
https://outsideperspective.co/gigs/20251030-innovation.htmlFreelance Comms Strategist with China/HK exp. (UK)
https://outsideperspective.co/gigs/20251030-comms.htmlSocial Strategist with F1 exp (UK)
https://outsideperspective.co/gigs/20251028-sphere.htmlFreelance Strategist / Planner (Mandarin or Cantonese Speaking) (UK)
https://outsideperspective.co/gigs/20251028-mandarin.htmlSocial Strategy (US)
https://outsideperspective.co/gigs/20251028-koala.htmlFreelance Sr Brand Experience Strategist (NL)
https://outsideperspective.co/gigs/20251028-infinium.htmlOpen Call: Social Strategists (US)
https://outsideperspective.co/gigs/20251028-glow.html
You can keep updated on real-time posts as we share them via:
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+ and of course, our slack channel if you’re a community member.
That’s all for this week.
mk✌️
Thanks for the mention, Mathew!