APG Sideways
About our guest: Jason Last
I’m Jason Last, Partner and Strategy Director at Conflict. I’ve been working as a brand strategist for the past 17 years, learning the ropes and figuring out my approach at places like john st. and Leo Burnett before co-founding Conflict a little over 8 years ago. Prior to learning that I could be a brand strategist, I studied English Literature and figured I’d try to be a professor or a novelist. I like weaving together a good story and I also enjoy healthy competition, so I’ve always found advertising pretty fun, and still do.
Brilliant Weird Best
Planners are curious folks, so we asked Jason to tell us the most brilliant, weirdest and best things he’s come across recently.
BRILLIANT: WING – Dopamine
Pretty sure YouTube served this up to me a little while back and I took the bait. I’m glad I did. I had never heard of WING but was totally blown away by his talent and creativity. You don’t have to be into any particular genre of music to get serious enjoyment out of this 2:48 video. If nothing else, it’ll make whatever tough thing you’re working on feel a lot more doable.
WEIRD: A Brief History of the End of the F*cking World by Tom Phillips
This book explores the enduring nature of apocalyptic thinking and storytelling, which is pretty strange since literally every apocalyptic prophecy ever made has been wrong. I’ve always enjoyed post-apocalyptic fiction and picked this up thinking I might learn something about myself. Mostly I learned about historical figures who used the idea of a coming apocalypse to gain power over very unhappy, gullible people; but there’s also a lot in here about what the appeal of apocalyptic thinking reveals about humans. Good read.
BEST: Apple Watch – Rick’s Rescue
I’d be remiss not to include an actual ad in this list. Apple has always done a great job with product demos. This ad recounts the true story of an Australian named Rick Shearman who used the SOS Emergency feature on his Apple Watch to avoid drowning off the coast of Byron Bay. Apparently the audio in the ad is the actual recording from his emergency call. The biggest rule in creative writing is “show, don’t tell” and Apple once again does a great job of following that rule here.
Top Guilty Pleasures
Not all of our consumption habits can be academic. That's why we asked Jason to give us the sources to his creativity.
Those who know me well know I’m intrigued by the history and current events surrounding UFOs (now officially called “UAP” or “unidentified aerial phenomena”). Most people seem to have little knowledge of the current state of the topic, despite a dramatic rise in attention in recent years from senior bipartisan politicians, high-profile academics, military leaders, venture capitalists, and mainstream media. I haven’t seen this documentary by Dan Farah (of Ready Player One fame) yet – it premiered at SXSW in March – but it looks like a solid crash course on where things stand. For your consideration.
I’m a fan of most of the Netflix sports docuseries and I love golf in particular, so Full Swing is an easy watch for me. I like seeing what elite athletes go through behind the scenes and getting a sense of the relationships between the players on tour. Watching golf is a serious time investment that I can rarely make, but this show give me a little hit.
This month on Slack
Been MIA on the APG's Slack Channel? No worries! Catch up on all the buzz with our latest and greatest links right here!
New Slack Channel: #11-coffee-house
Contributors – Spencer MacEachern & Michelle Lee
Inspired by Tiana Lee’s thread on third places and Sasha Zaprudska’s comment about literary bars, Spencer and Michelle introduce a new Slack channel dedicated to the art, music, and literature that fuel our creative work. No advertising talk here–just culture. As Spencer puts it, “Strategy is a creative act that's fed as much by beauty, imagination, and play as by data.” The poems and music recommendations have been flooding in ever since!
Contributor – PK Lawton
To mark Women in Translation Month, PK Lawton recommends four standout books: The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector, a mystical crisis sparked by a cockroach; Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki, a queer matriarchal utopia is fractured when a boy escapes isolation; Plasmas by Céline Minard, a post-human future in a more-than-human world; and The Employees by Olga Ravn, a 22nd-century spaceship workplace investigation story told through a series of witness statements, exploring existential dread, labour, and worker identity.
Contributor – Cameron Fleming
In an effort to steer conversation away from AI doom-and-gloom, Cameron Fleming asks: what are your brushes with advertising fame? He kicks things off with two stories: first, discovering that the creative director he worked with at Ogilvy was the writer behind the iconic “Give Me a Break” for Kit Kat. Second, a serendipitous moment at McCann New York, the day after the Mad Men finale aired, when a traffic person revealed they had worked with the original team behind “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.”
Goodbye Gen Z, Hello Gen Alpha
Contributors - Spencer MacEachern, Trevon Daley, Jacky Li, Shannon Hunter, Jasjiv Singh
Our Gen Z Slack users were met with a rude awakening this month when they learnt they had already aged out of the game! According to the headline shared in our Slack group, a new generation is sparking advertisers’ interest: Gen Alpha. Unfortunately we can’t start Dial a Gen Alpha since its oldest members are 14, so Dial a Gen Z will have to do for now. Speaking of, go give them a ring! 😉