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Welcome to How We Make Things Now, the show where we explore the changing ways in which
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we are building brands and products in the new world shaped by changing tech and changing
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social change. This week we are talking through news that should be relevant for the last
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week for all of us trying to make new brands and new products in different ways. We're
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talking about all kinds of things from the new Apple announcements through to mouse jiggling
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later on, which we will explain more about. And I'm joined this week. So I'm Nick Sherrod
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from Label Sessions and joined this week from Cape Town by Fuzzler and Nassau.
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Hello.
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From Edinburgh, co-founder of Label Sessions Maxine Mackie. Welcome.
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Yo, hello.
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And also in Edinburgh, Josh Nixon, content producer.
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Hello.
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Kicking us off. Last week was the launch of the new Apple announcement, which used to
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be a very big thing, has gradually become slightly less of a big thing, but it's still
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actually quite important. And this week, it did feel like there were some interesting
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things. So they launched tap to pay was probably the most dramatic demo, but actually the whole
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Apple intelligence AI product suite. And they also crept out a few other announcements or
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things like the end of by now pay later through Apple, which was their big announcement last
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year. They kind of kind of snuck that out. What did people think? Like was the exciting
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stuff in the Apple announcement or was it another one that was more or less dramatic?
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So I thought it was really interesting. And for me, okay, I think the Gen Moji, the next
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generation of Gen Moji actually kind of tells us a lot of where we're going and what we're
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doing differently. It's a small thing. But if you think about how often we use emojis
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and we use visuals in our kind of communication in daily life, I actually think it's really
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telling around how we're going to be texting each other and messaging each other in the
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kind of a, I guess in the next six months and then next year. And I think it's that connection
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of the two things brings the Gen AI into real life. And it's really small, but I think it's
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because we do it in our, that's how we'll talk to our kind of our friends, our loved ones
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in our group chats. I think that's quite interesting. And then the, and then if I could connect
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the Gen Moji kind of a story together in the working life is you can now say if you're
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drawing in notes, you've drawn a picture of a building, you can actually just select that
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to be a Gen AI image. So it's a way in which in kind of a small kind of a comms, but regular
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ones that we're doing all the time, Gen AI is all in one place. We're not going to another
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service to use something and then kind of copy and paste it over. So for me, I know
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it's really, it's a bit, it's a bit silly, but I think the Gen Moji one's quite interesting
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for me.
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It's kind of weird, isn't it? Because it's kind of, they also, one of the others kind
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of startups they try to kill was superhuman. So superhumans have this service for a while,
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which is like an intelligent email inbox and Apple did the thing of replicating that,
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like they've done it various different times. But I guess it is kind of interesting, which
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is, you know, how, you know, some of this shows the potential for us actually to communicate
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in a different way rather than just make the inbox a bit smarter.
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It's very Apple to make it so they're taking other features that other people have done
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and turn sort of translated to their ecosystem because they've done it so many times before.
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And then I find it quite refreshing that this has had like quite a positive sort of reception
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from what I've gathered because obviously there was Google with this sort of AI mishap
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of incorporating that into their search engine by taking, you know, Reddit posts and making
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them the highlight of like, you know, should you eat rocks and people like, and then the
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post is coming back, you should eat two to three rocks a day as if it's fact rather than
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Yeah.
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Although one thing that is interesting is that the AI news, you know, the AI, they sort
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of Apple intelligence got a really good response, but their demos were very controlled. One
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of the maybe mistakes that Google made was they opened up pretty quickly and then people
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were finding you find your flaws pretty down quickly as well.
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For someone like me who's done in the global south, it's also always interesting when they
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have these announcements and these sort of big reveals. Because we often don't get them
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until way down the line. So things like buying our pay later and Apple pay and those specific
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things never actually got here. So we don't have Apple as a fintech. We don't have that
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capability. So a lot of these things that are announced often don't really have much
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of an impact. And we kind of get it, you know, a few years later in a different version.
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So that's kind of the biggest takeaway from my side is just that these briefings often
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are just like, Oh, hey, this is happening, not anywhere near you, but keep an eye out,
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it'll happen maybe sometime. But apparently now not because we may never see Apple as a
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fintech here. Although it's one of like, you know, it's up there with one of the biggest
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fintechs and is largely becoming a bank. And but we have none of that here.
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There is a lot of signs in the market, people getting fed up with smartphones wanting to
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disconnect all that kind of stuff. But also this week, we saw these crazy stats on AI adoption
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among students and teachers and further education of different topics. So we'll put this in
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the show notes. But some interesting research is showing that about half of teachers and
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students, this is in America, are using AI chatbots at least once a week. And actually
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there's only 20% of students in the same survey that say that they never use gen AI. So essentially
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80% are adopting it in some way, volunteering that in surveys. So it's a kind of interesting
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thing where there's lots of pushback to lots of what's going on in the tech world just
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now, but actually at least in this segment of the market, so people in education, students
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and teachers, it's not that we're on the adoption curve, it's like it's become completely mainstream
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within within the space of about 18 months.
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That's incredible. And I think there's like two things going on. There seems to be a bit
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of a panic about people cheating at school when they should be learning. So that's kind
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of an interesting culture attitude shift. But the other side of it, that maybe like
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I'll keep it to hear what you guys think. Actually sometimes think how you're using
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AI is to give them answers to things and test their understanding in a very kind of a personalized
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type of education, a bit like if you were having a one on one tutorial, you'd ask probably
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the same questions to a teacher. And so it's interesting, this moral panic in the media
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about AI and cheating and the quality of education, but actually is it not just a really personalized
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tool and how different is this from say cliff notes?
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And sort of also what happens when AI, if AI assisted becomes the norm, what happens to
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people who you know, just are original thinkers and completely outside of that like the photographer
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who won the AI competition AI photography competition, but he was had an actual real
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photograph so he was disqualified and I didn't see that so they disqualified him because it
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wasn't a qualified him because it was a real photograph that just looked very AI generated.
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And he won that was the one they were like that was the one they picked. And then they
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sort of went well no we can't accept this. So that's an interesting sort of thing because
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now like creativity when it is squished into AI assisted as the baseline. How do we how
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do we move away from it if eventually we get to the stage where it's just too many, it
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just becomes too generic and we want to go back to that. How is that then accepted back
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into regular doing business work, school.
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So let's move on. So we are one of the key things in all of this kind of world of new
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tech is trust. And last week we also saw research be published from Morning Consult but
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they do a very deep study on the most trusted brands in America. And it's interesting if
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you run through the list of Google does make it in there. There's not many other tech brands
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in the top 20. The most trusted brand in America is Band-Aid. UPS is number two. So if you
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use it a postal services and things like that, but overall, a really strong case for food,
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household kind of personal products and things like that, not a great showing for actually
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more of the newer tech brands or brands from the last sort of 15 or 20 years. But so, you
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know, every brand right now is talking about trying to be trusted, trying to be trustworthy,
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trying to generate trust. This is the research in America. What do we think we can learn
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from from this or what are your reflections when you see that list doesn't include visa
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as well for one of our clients. So visa are one of the most trusted in the world of those
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companies. Well, strangely not Mastercard, I saw, which will be upsetting for them. But
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visa is in the top 20.
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It just seems very tangible and very sort of the things you use every day, toothpaste,
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cleaning products, you know, it's Home Depot Lowe. So it's things to build things, make
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things with your hands. It's very interesting to see that like it's all of these things
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that actually you engage with physically in a very physical and intimate way. Dove, you
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know, it's all of the things that you use. And I think that that does show that there
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is this need to have a physical tangible interaction with something for it to be a little bit trusted
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or to be the most trusted bandaid. I mean, that's sort of fixing a wound, you know, that's
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that's
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Tangibility does seem to be really important, actually. Yeah.
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Yeah, mine was just more of an observation than a sort of like real sort of point, but
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it was just like it seems like a lot of the things that add to the tangibility are trusted
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because it's it's second nature, like, you know, things like call getting clean, except
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just like everyday products that you don't have time to think about to really have a have
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a distrust of, you know, everyone brushes and see if everyone needs a tissue, everyone
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needs to like, you know, use soap at home.
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You'd hope so.
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I wonder if there's anything on the back of COVID and being really aware of the
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a lot of them are like cleaning products. So I think consumer products, as we said,
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you there's a high amount of trust with them, because you're buying them all the time, they're
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connected bit with this with kind of in the kind of first shops that you're going to,
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whether that's kind of online or in person.
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The brand, if I was in this list, obviously, I'd feel very positive about things with the
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one where I'd have a bit of a worry is actually visa, because it's interesting with that, that
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learning of actually what seems to drive trust is that kind of tangible interaction with
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their brands.
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And in the case of the card companies are about to lose that, at least in America, in
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terms of its power to become virtual cards in different instances. And actually, there's
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a real challenge there of actually, how do you keep that relationship to visa and master
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card and American Express, once you're no longer taking a physical thing out of your
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wallet or handing it over, once it all becomes virtual, you know, they can sound like a basic
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thing, but there's a real shift and an opportunity, therefore, for some of the other players in
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this space to start to rise to the fore, because actually, you realize touch is important around
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brands, we just hardly ever talk about it.
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I think, you know, with visa, master card, those sort of things, I don't carry my cards
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with me anymore. They are physically on, like, for me, they're physically on my phone or
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on my wrist. I don't, I go out without my wallet all the time. So there is a sort of
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safety in holding, you have something to hold, even with a virtual card. So it makes sense
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to kind of be attached to it in that way, although I don't know them. It does make me
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spend more because it's sort of like, you know, you're not handing anything over.
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Let's pick up on this one. So B Real. So in terms of the issues, I guess, the being a
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B Real, because B Real was one of these apps that grew at an absolutely crazy rate in 2022,
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which got up to, was a high point on that 50 million active users in October, having
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this launch to start of the year. But that was down to 6 million active users by March
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2023. And they've just sold for a bit over $500 million, which is a lot of money, but
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nothing like the valuation that they were quoted with before. And, you know, given the
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amount of money that's been spent on building up B Real, a bit of a disappointment to some
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of the team. But, you know, B Real was a totally new take on social media when it was kind
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of started to grow based on these very authentic pictures at a daily time without some of the
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feeds and some of the features that we used to with social media sites. So what do we
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think we learn from the rise and fall of B Real? Josh, you were quite a big user of
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B Real for a while as well, right? I don't know if you use it anymore yourself.
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I still haven't to be fair because a lot of the people that I know use it. The thing
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that's sort of really, I still can't get my finger on is like how it's managed to
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sell for the choice of like, like I understand it comes with a big user base, but it has
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literally zero direct way of monetizing. There's no adverts. There's literally just the one
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interaction and the app itself is very sort of janky because it's kind of inherently flawed
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by the fact that everyone has to log on at the same time. So there's always a choke point
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and it always sort of like, it's a 50-50 chance of whether or not it'll actually take a photo
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or not. So like, well, the concept's quite normal. They're probably just looking to harvest
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the user base more so they'll actually keep the app alive in the future.
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Yeah, it was interesting though because there's so many negative behaviors around social media
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and Instagram in particular was the sort of poster child for some of this. It did seem
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like initially like they had a different take, but I guess also once you lose some of the
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more viral elements of those kind of platforms, it becomes harder to scale.
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Did B-real make it in South Africa, Fasalina? Was it more of a kind of European and American
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thing? No, it did. It did. A lot of, I think my sister was using it. I think a lot of sort
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of like, yeah, Gen Z users. But then, yeah, like, you know, the novelty wears off. And
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I also think it started to do too much. It wanted to do too much. I like things that
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just do one thing and do one thing really well. And that's all you do. But in sort of
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adding on different things and it just sort of kind of lost its main thing was just like
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this very simple way to take this one picture at, you know, the same time, which is simple,
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keep it that way. A lot of people wanting to do that. And that would have been great
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for, you know, kids growing up, all of those sort of things. But it didn't start adding
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in a whole bunch of stuff. And I think by the time I kind of tried to like tried it,
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it was just not just too many things going on. Yeah. Yeah. It does really rely on having
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a kind of established French degree using it already when he first joined as well, I
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guess, which also means it was almost got a slightly reverse viral effect, which is
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you kind of need to get to a critical mass before it becomes fun, before it becomes real.
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And I definitely don't have enough friends who care. You know, there's not I don't have
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enough people who are like, what are you doing at 12pm? Good. Let's move. We've got a couple
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more things to cover off this week. So this Euro's football tournament, a soccer for those
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in America, which is a massive sporting event, although one of the interesting things underneath
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all of the, you know, the kind of buzz that there is around a big tournament like this,
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which is absolutely massive for the TV sports gambling industries across across Europe is
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actually underneath all of this, there's an audience decline going on. So sports viewing
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among under 35s has dropped by almost a quarter since 2015. So in many ways, this Euro's becomes
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a bit of a test of how big is sport really can football reach out to a younger audience
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as it has been doing for the past 30 years. So it's an interesting point. What is so
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about the other there's not many European soccer fans, I guess, on this call, but is
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there anything I guess into this group that you think is an interesting test over the
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coming weeks?
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I just I just think that, you know, the fact that now you're seeing live streaming events
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and TikTok and those sort of things, it just feels like the reason some people still have
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satellite TV or cable TV, however, is is because of sport. I know that certainly the case here
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in South Africa, it's people really only have it because of sports. If there's a decline
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in sport, they goes your terrestrial TV, you then just are streaming. I haven't had access
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to sport in 15 years.
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There is a real risk, I think is funny. So in terms of right now, the sports and its
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pump, but there are signs that things are breaking, especially in some of the bigger
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sports because, you know, so much of football culture is about it's kind of intergenerational
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thing that it has in large parts of the world. If it loses that, which is some risk that
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it does just for costs going up, then actually you create quite an interesting space for
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other sports coming through.
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There was a huge at the weekend, there was a huge issue with rugby, rugby tournament
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of some sort, which is being played down here in South Africa and apparently Scottish aren't
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quite happy about that because they have to do a nine. As far as the Warriors were fans,
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we're having a bit of an issue about traveling 9,000 kilometers in a week and having only
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a week to prep. So it sort of, you know, those sort of things also make it a little bit more
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difficult to have huge investment in kind of sport live, live things that you can't
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kind of get your logistics in order.
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So there's two final things for us to talk through this week, one of them quite serious,
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one of them perhaps slightly less serious. Let's jump into the serious one, which is
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the carbon impact of big tech, which I've been trying to publicize a bit more about
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my social channels a little bit through the label sessions thing, because it's a really
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key issue. So right now we have companies like Metta, who have been talking about Google
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and Alphabet to have the carbon impacts that's larger than many small European countries
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have made massive commitments to reduce that over time. But the advent of AI means that
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they are increasingly hungry for big data centers that are that use a lot of water.
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So a couple of stories we want to cover this week. So one of which is the protests that
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have been in Chile around the water usage of data centers from big tech companies. And
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then also some of the responses that there have been so for instance, pre for concepts
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from Microsoft around trying to put data centers under water and such like but it just strikes
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me that you know, this is a story that we'll need to cover over the coming weeks on the
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basis of just two scenarios here. So either big tech really moves to try and reduce its
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carbon impact whilst exploring AI and the possibilities of it. Or on the flip side,
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it just tries to shed its ESG commitments as it faces into the opportunities of AI and
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the other new areas of new tech right now, both of which will be important I think for
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you know, for the climate change story, but also for the whole viability of ESG it strikes
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me this is a really core challenge that the business press just isn't really covering.
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The digital operations and the question in terms of energy is huge. There's like a few
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different sides of it, probably just going up worse as you can about outlining it with
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rise kind of AI is more processing powers kind of a more data centers that needed.
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So this probably isn't going away. I definitely feel that there's going to be a lot of focus
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on sustainability and actually tech for good type of scenarios. I think we're seeing what's
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happening with the cobalt mining with all of the new green tech and things like that
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and then the impact that's having in the Congo. So I think there's just a lot more attention
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on the impact on the environment on people on what it means to have access to this tech
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and just actually how big of a footprint and impact it has had.
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And I think it's only in recent years that we've started to actually understand this
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and see where resources are going and how much resources, you know, things like crypto
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mining and those are things that again use a lot of water, all of those sort of things
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when there are countries you are under quite severe drought or countries who don't have
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access to fresh green water and that's all being used for tech that's sort of just not
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entirely, you know, where do you draw the line ethically in terms of what's necessary
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and what's not.
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Let's move on to the final one and it's a bit of a fun one, although not a fun one
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if you're involved in the story itself. So Wells Fargo have been tracking people who
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they think are mouse jigglers by which it means that they're logging on, they're moving
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things on their laptop to make it appear that they're working but they're actually not doing
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very much to be finding those people and then sacking them essentially. So do we feel sorry
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for the mouse jigglers or do we feel like this has been a kind of comeuppance that's
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been coming since remote working came to the fore?
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I know particularly feel sorry for the mouse jiggler. I think they just give remote work
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as a bad name. Yeah, it just sort of like, do you not have enough to do and you should
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have enough to do that you don't have to buy a mouse jiggler and have it sort of, I was
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reading on how they do it, it's sort of like this very complex algorithm on natural mouse
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movement and unnatural mouse movement. So if you get, sometimes it's like, what if my
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mouse movement is just unnatural? Because it's just sort of like, you know, zooming around
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in the corner. But it's like over a long period of time they take a, they compare what human
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mouse movement looks like, which is kind of interesting to note that people are kind of
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watching your mouse movement all the time. And then compare that to these mouse jigglers
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who kind of just are, you start to see patterns emerge, which are unnatural.
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That's interesting. So the genuinely are mouse jigglers is not there's any mistaken identity
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here. No, it's an actual, you can tell the difference between natural and unnatural mouse
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movement. The one thing I was going to add there is actually this concept of how long
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it takes us to do our job. So I think not all work is done in solid blocks. We need thinking
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time, making time or doing time. And not for one minute. I think this is probably the case
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for Wells Fargo, but I can see in other situations, people using services like that, if they are
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kind of a making note to they're doing something like that's not on their computer, not everybody
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wants to be tied to a computer all day. And for some roles, they don't have to be. So
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for those people, I think it is a bit different. And instead of necessarily being kind of a,
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you know, dismissive of people that are kind of lazy or not working, it's maybe actually
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we need to embrace kind of a different styles of work.
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Yeah, they definitely are bad workers or like pure mouse jigglers, but there's also bad
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bosses that are going on.
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I feel like that should be a new term, up your mouse jigglers.
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Sounds like we can make a tea shed, mate. That could be a thing by next week.
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So let's like tie things together. So first of all, this episode goes out alongside a
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special episode on money 2020 where Maxine was speaking, but we also talked to a range
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of different startups and even one trade body on the future of how we make things now in
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FinTech and financial services. There will be another like and subscribe for this podcast.
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There will be another edition next week together with some interviews that come over the following
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weeks. Lots of opportunities as well to get involved with different label sessions, projects
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and open calls just now. So I think things will be live over the next week. There's the
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TSP lab that Maxine is working on together with also any ESG call from the financial
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regulation innovation lab and also various other bits of news that will be going out
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through the week. So like all of our channels on pretty much every channel, every social
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media channel everywhere, except be real, Josh. I was realizing that we're talking about
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it. So maybe maybe that was over. We should launch one. Just like some weird hipster.
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And this is Clapper 2.0. We are still on Clapper as well. So if anyone is on Clapper as well,
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leave a comment there as well, because that would be that would be nice. We've prepared
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for TikTok to get banned in America and we joined the Texan Texan one. So we're there.
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We know what comes.
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Welcome to How We Make Things Now, the show where we explore the changing ways in which
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we are building brands and products in the new world shaped by changing tech and changing
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social change. This week we are talking through news that should be relevant for the last
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week for all of us trying to make new brands and new products in different ways. We're
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talking about all kinds of things from the new Apple announcements through to mouse jiggling
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later on, which we will explain more about. And I'm joined this week. So I'm Nick Sherrod
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from Label Sessions and joined this week from Cape Town by Fuzzler and Nassau.
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Hello.
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From Edinburgh, co-founder of Label Sessions Maxine Mackie. Welcome.
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Yo, hello.
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And also in Edinburgh, Josh Nixon, content producer.
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Hello.
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Kicking us off. Last week was the launch of the new Apple announcement, which used to
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be a very big thing, has gradually become slightly less of a big thing, but it's still
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actually quite important. And this week, it did feel like there were some interesting
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things. So they launched tap to pay was probably the most dramatic demo, but actually the whole
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Apple intelligence AI product suite. And they also crept out a few other announcements or
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things like the end of by now pay later through Apple, which was their big announcement last
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year. They kind of kind of snuck that out. What did people think? Like was the exciting
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stuff in the Apple announcement or was it another one that was more or less dramatic?
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So I thought it was really interesting. And for me, okay, I think the Gen Moji, the next
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generation of Gen Moji actually kind of tells us a lot of where we're going and what we're
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doing differently. It's a small thing. But if you think about how often we use emojis
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and we use visuals in our kind of communication in daily life, I actually think it's really
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telling around how we're going to be texting each other and messaging each other in the
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kind of a, I guess in the next six months and then next year. And I think it's that connection
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of the two things brings the Gen AI into real life. And it's really small, but I think it's
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because we do it in our, that's how we'll talk to our kind of our friends, our loved ones
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in our group chats. I think that's quite interesting. And then the, and then if I could connect
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the Gen Moji kind of a story together in the working life is you can now say if you're
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drawing in notes, you've drawn a picture of a building, you can actually just select that
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to be a Gen AI image. So it's a way in which in kind of a small kind of a comms, but regular
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ones that we're doing all the time, Gen AI is all in one place. We're not going to another
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service to use something and then kind of copy and paste it over. So for me, I know
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it's really, it's a bit, it's a bit silly, but I think the Gen Moji one's quite interesting
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for me.
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It's kind of weird, isn't it? Because it's kind of, they also, one of the others kind
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of startups they try to kill was superhuman. So superhumans have this service for a while,
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which is like an intelligent email inbox and Apple did the thing of replicating that,
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like they've done it various different times. But I guess it is kind of interesting, which
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is, you know, how, you know, some of this shows the potential for us actually to communicate
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in a different way rather than just make the inbox a bit smarter.
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It's very Apple to make it so they're taking other features that other people have done
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and turn sort of translated to their ecosystem because they've done it so many times before.
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And then I find it quite refreshing that this has had like quite a positive sort of reception
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from what I've gathered because obviously there was Google with this sort of AI mishap
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of incorporating that into their search engine by taking, you know, Reddit posts and making
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them the highlight of like, you know, should you eat rocks and people like, and then the
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post is coming back, you should eat two to three rocks a day as if it's fact rather than
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Yeah.
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Although one thing that is interesting is that the AI news, you know, the AI, they sort
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of Apple intelligence got a really good response, but their demos were very controlled. One
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of the maybe mistakes that Google made was they opened up pretty quickly and then people
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were finding you find your flaws pretty down quickly as well.
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For someone like me who's done in the global south, it's also always interesting when they
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have these announcements and these sort of big reveals. Because we often don't get them
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until way down the line. So things like buying our pay later and Apple pay and those specific
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things never actually got here. So we don't have Apple as a fintech. We don't have that
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capability. So a lot of these things that are announced often don't really have much
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of an impact. And we kind of get it, you know, a few years later in a different version.
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So that's kind of the biggest takeaway from my side is just that these briefings often
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are just like, Oh, hey, this is happening, not anywhere near you, but keep an eye out,
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it'll happen maybe sometime. But apparently now not because we may never see Apple as a
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fintech here. Although it's one of like, you know, it's up there with one of the biggest
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fintechs and is largely becoming a bank. And but we have none of that here.
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There is a lot of signs in the market, people getting fed up with smartphones wanting to
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disconnect all that kind of stuff. But also this week, we saw these crazy stats on AI adoption
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among students and teachers and further education of different topics. So we'll put this in
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the show notes. But some interesting research is showing that about half of teachers and
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students, this is in America, are using AI chatbots at least once a week. And actually
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there's only 20% of students in the same survey that say that they never use gen AI. So essentially
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80% are adopting it in some way, volunteering that in surveys. So it's a kind of interesting
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thing where there's lots of pushback to lots of what's going on in the tech world just
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now, but actually at least in this segment of the market, so people in education, students
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and teachers, it's not that we're on the adoption curve, it's like it's become completely mainstream
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within within the space of about 18 months.
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That's incredible. And I think there's like two things going on. There seems to be a bit
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of a panic about people cheating at school when they should be learning. So that's kind
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of an interesting culture attitude shift. But the other side of it, that maybe like
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I'll keep it to hear what you guys think. Actually sometimes think how you're using
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AI is to give them answers to things and test their understanding in a very kind of a personalized
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type of education, a bit like if you were having a one on one tutorial, you'd ask probably
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the same questions to a teacher. And so it's interesting, this moral panic in the media
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about AI and cheating and the quality of education, but actually is it not just a really personalized
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tool and how different is this from say cliff notes?
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And sort of also what happens when AI, if AI assisted becomes the norm, what happens to
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people who you know, just are original thinkers and completely outside of that like the photographer
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who won the AI competition AI photography competition, but he was had an actual real
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photograph so he was disqualified and I didn't see that so they disqualified him because it
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wasn't a qualified him because it was a real photograph that just looked very AI generated.
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And he won that was the one they were like that was the one they picked. And then they
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sort of went well no we can't accept this. So that's an interesting sort of thing because
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now like creativity when it is squished into AI assisted as the baseline. How do we how
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do we move away from it if eventually we get to the stage where it's just too many, it
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just becomes too generic and we want to go back to that. How is that then accepted back
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into regular doing business work, school.
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So let's move on. So we are one of the key things in all of this kind of world of new
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tech is trust. And last week we also saw research be published from Morning Consult but
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they do a very deep study on the most trusted brands in America. And it's interesting if
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you run through the list of Google does make it in there. There's not many other tech brands
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in the top 20. The most trusted brand in America is Band-Aid. UPS is number two. So if you
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use it a postal services and things like that, but overall, a really strong case for food,
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household kind of personal products and things like that, not a great showing for actually
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more of the newer tech brands or brands from the last sort of 15 or 20 years. But so, you
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know, every brand right now is talking about trying to be trusted, trying to be trustworthy,
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trying to generate trust. This is the research in America. What do we think we can learn
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from from this or what are your reflections when you see that list doesn't include visa
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as well for one of our clients. So visa are one of the most trusted in the world of those
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companies. Well, strangely not Mastercard, I saw, which will be upsetting for them. But
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visa is in the top 20.
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It just seems very tangible and very sort of the things you use every day, toothpaste,
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cleaning products, you know, it's Home Depot Lowe. So it's things to build things, make
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things with your hands. It's very interesting to see that like it's all of these things
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that actually you engage with physically in a very physical and intimate way. Dove, you
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know, it's all of the things that you use. And I think that that does show that there
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is this need to have a physical tangible interaction with something for it to be a little bit trusted
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or to be the most trusted bandaid. I mean, that's sort of fixing a wound, you know, that's
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that's
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Tangibility does seem to be really important, actually. Yeah.
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Yeah, mine was just more of an observation than a sort of like real sort of point, but
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it was just like it seems like a lot of the things that add to the tangibility are trusted
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because it's it's second nature, like, you know, things like call getting clean, except
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just like everyday products that you don't have time to think about to really have a have
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a distrust of, you know, everyone brushes and see if everyone needs a tissue, everyone
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needs to like, you know, use soap at home.
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You'd hope so.
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I wonder if there's anything on the back of COVID and being really aware of the
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a lot of them are like cleaning products. So I think consumer products, as we said,
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you there's a high amount of trust with them, because you're buying them all the time, they're
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connected bit with this with kind of in the kind of first shops that you're going to,
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whether that's kind of online or in person.
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The brand, if I was in this list, obviously, I'd feel very positive about things with the
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one where I'd have a bit of a worry is actually visa, because it's interesting with that, that
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learning of actually what seems to drive trust is that kind of tangible interaction with
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their brands.
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And in the case of the card companies are about to lose that, at least in America, in
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terms of its power to become virtual cards in different instances. And actually, there's
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a real challenge there of actually, how do you keep that relationship to visa and master
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card and American Express, once you're no longer taking a physical thing out of your
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wallet or handing it over, once it all becomes virtual, you know, they can sound like a basic
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thing, but there's a real shift and an opportunity, therefore, for some of the other players in
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this space to start to rise to the fore, because actually, you realize touch is important around
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brands, we just hardly ever talk about it.
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I think, you know, with visa, master card, those sort of things, I don't carry my cards
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with me anymore. They are physically on, like, for me, they're physically on my phone or
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on my wrist. I don't, I go out without my wallet all the time. So there is a sort of
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safety in holding, you have something to hold, even with a virtual card. So it makes sense
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to kind of be attached to it in that way, although I don't know them. It does make me
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spend more because it's sort of like, you know, you're not handing anything over.
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Let's pick up on this one. So B Real. So in terms of the issues, I guess, the being a
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B Real, because B Real was one of these apps that grew at an absolutely crazy rate in 2022,
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which got up to, was a high point on that 50 million active users in October, having
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this launch to start of the year. But that was down to 6 million active users by March
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2023. And they've just sold for a bit over $500 million, which is a lot of money, but
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nothing like the valuation that they were quoted with before. And, you know, given the
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amount of money that's been spent on building up B Real, a bit of a disappointment to some
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of the team. But, you know, B Real was a totally new take on social media when it was kind
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of started to grow based on these very authentic pictures at a daily time without some of the
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feeds and some of the features that we used to with social media sites. So what do we
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think we learn from the rise and fall of B Real? Josh, you were quite a big user of
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B Real for a while as well, right? I don't know if you use it anymore yourself.
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I still haven't to be fair because a lot of the people that I know use it. The thing
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that's sort of really, I still can't get my finger on is like how it's managed to
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sell for the choice of like, like I understand it comes with a big user base, but it has
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literally zero direct way of monetizing. There's no adverts. There's literally just the one
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interaction and the app itself is very sort of janky because it's kind of inherently flawed
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by the fact that everyone has to log on at the same time. So there's always a choke point
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and it always sort of like, it's a 50-50 chance of whether or not it'll actually take a photo
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or not. So like, well, the concept's quite normal. They're probably just looking to harvest
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the user base more so they'll actually keep the app alive in the future.
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Yeah, it was interesting though because there's so many negative behaviors around social media
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and Instagram in particular was the sort of poster child for some of this. It did seem
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like initially like they had a different take, but I guess also once you lose some of the
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more viral elements of those kind of platforms, it becomes harder to scale.
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Did B-real make it in South Africa, Fasalina? Was it more of a kind of European and American
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thing? No, it did. It did. A lot of, I think my sister was using it. I think a lot of sort
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of like, yeah, Gen Z users. But then, yeah, like, you know, the novelty wears off. And
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I also think it started to do too much. It wanted to do too much. I like things that
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just do one thing and do one thing really well. And that's all you do. But in sort of
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adding on different things and it just sort of kind of lost its main thing was just like
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this very simple way to take this one picture at, you know, the same time, which is simple,
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keep it that way. A lot of people wanting to do that. And that would have been great
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for, you know, kids growing up, all of those sort of things. But it didn't start adding
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in a whole bunch of stuff. And I think by the time I kind of tried to like tried it,
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it was just not just too many things going on. Yeah. Yeah. It does really rely on having
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a kind of established French degree using it already when he first joined as well, I
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guess, which also means it was almost got a slightly reverse viral effect, which is
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you kind of need to get to a critical mass before it becomes fun, before it becomes real.
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And I definitely don't have enough friends who care. You know, there's not I don't have
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enough people who are like, what are you doing at 12pm? Good. Let's move. We've got a couple
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more things to cover off this week. So this Euro's football tournament, a soccer for those
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in America, which is a massive sporting event, although one of the interesting things underneath
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all of the, you know, the kind of buzz that there is around a big tournament like this,
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which is absolutely massive for the TV sports gambling industries across across Europe is
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actually underneath all of this, there's an audience decline going on. So sports viewing
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among under 35s has dropped by almost a quarter since 2015. So in many ways, this Euro's becomes
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a bit of a test of how big is sport really can football reach out to a younger audience
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as it has been doing for the past 30 years. So it's an interesting point. What is so
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about the other there's not many European soccer fans, I guess, on this call, but is
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there anything I guess into this group that you think is an interesting test over the
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coming weeks?
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I just I just think that, you know, the fact that now you're seeing live streaming events
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and TikTok and those sort of things, it just feels like the reason some people still have
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satellite TV or cable TV, however, is is because of sport. I know that certainly the case here
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in South Africa, it's people really only have it because of sports. If there's a decline
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in sport, they goes your terrestrial TV, you then just are streaming. I haven't had access
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to sport in 15 years.
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There is a real risk, I think is funny. So in terms of right now, the sports and its
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pump, but there are signs that things are breaking, especially in some of the bigger
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sports because, you know, so much of football culture is about it's kind of intergenerational
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thing that it has in large parts of the world. If it loses that, which is some risk that
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it does just for costs going up, then actually you create quite an interesting space for
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other sports coming through.
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There was a huge at the weekend, there was a huge issue with rugby, rugby tournament
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of some sort, which is being played down here in South Africa and apparently Scottish aren't
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quite happy about that because they have to do a nine. As far as the Warriors were fans,
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we're having a bit of an issue about traveling 9,000 kilometers in a week and having only
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a week to prep. So it sort of, you know, those sort of things also make it a little bit more
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difficult to have huge investment in kind of sport live, live things that you can't
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kind of get your logistics in order.
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So there's two final things for us to talk through this week, one of them quite serious,
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one of them perhaps slightly less serious. Let's jump into the serious one, which is
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the carbon impact of big tech, which I've been trying to publicize a bit more about
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my social channels a little bit through the label sessions thing, because it's a really
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key issue. So right now we have companies like Metta, who have been talking about Google
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and Alphabet to have the carbon impacts that's larger than many small European countries
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have made massive commitments to reduce that over time. But the advent of AI means that
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they are increasingly hungry for big data centers that are that use a lot of water.
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So a couple of stories we want to cover this week. So one of which is the protests that
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have been in Chile around the water usage of data centers from big tech companies. And
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then also some of the responses that there have been so for instance, pre for concepts
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from Microsoft around trying to put data centers under water and such like but it just strikes
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me that you know, this is a story that we'll need to cover over the coming weeks on the
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basis of just two scenarios here. So either big tech really moves to try and reduce its
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carbon impact whilst exploring AI and the possibilities of it. Or on the flip side,
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it just tries to shed its ESG commitments as it faces into the opportunities of AI and
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the other new areas of new tech right now, both of which will be important I think for
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you know, for the climate change story, but also for the whole viability of ESG it strikes
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me this is a really core challenge that the business press just isn't really covering.
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The digital operations and the question in terms of energy is huge. There's like a few
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different sides of it, probably just going up worse as you can about outlining it with
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rise kind of AI is more processing powers kind of a more data centers that needed.
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So this probably isn't going away. I definitely feel that there's going to be a lot of focus
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on sustainability and actually tech for good type of scenarios. I think we're seeing what's
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happening with the cobalt mining with all of the new green tech and things like that
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and then the impact that's having in the Congo. So I think there's just a lot more attention
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on the impact on the environment on people on what it means to have access to this tech
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and just actually how big of a footprint and impact it has had.
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And I think it's only in recent years that we've started to actually understand this
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and see where resources are going and how much resources, you know, things like crypto
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mining and those are things that again use a lot of water, all of those sort of things
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when there are countries you are under quite severe drought or countries who don't have
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access to fresh green water and that's all being used for tech that's sort of just not
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entirely, you know, where do you draw the line ethically in terms of what's necessary
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and what's not.
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Let's move on to the final one and it's a bit of a fun one, although not a fun one
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if you're involved in the story itself. So Wells Fargo have been tracking people who
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they think are mouse jigglers by which it means that they're logging on, they're moving
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things on their laptop to make it appear that they're working but they're actually not doing
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very much to be finding those people and then sacking them essentially. So do we feel sorry
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for the mouse jigglers or do we feel like this has been a kind of comeuppance that's
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been coming since remote working came to the fore?
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I know particularly feel sorry for the mouse jiggler. I think they just give remote work
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as a bad name. Yeah, it just sort of like, do you not have enough to do and you should
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have enough to do that you don't have to buy a mouse jiggler and have it sort of, I was
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reading on how they do it, it's sort of like this very complex algorithm on natural mouse
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movement and unnatural mouse movement. So if you get, sometimes it's like, what if my
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mouse movement is just unnatural? Because it's just sort of like, you know, zooming around
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in the corner. But it's like over a long period of time they take a, they compare what human
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mouse movement looks like, which is kind of interesting to note that people are kind of
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watching your mouse movement all the time. And then compare that to these mouse jigglers
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who kind of just are, you start to see patterns emerge, which are unnatural.
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That's interesting. So the genuinely are mouse jigglers is not there's any mistaken identity
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here. No, it's an actual, you can tell the difference between natural and unnatural mouse
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movement. The one thing I was going to add there is actually this concept of how long
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it takes us to do our job. So I think not all work is done in solid blocks. We need thinking
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time, making time or doing time. And not for one minute. I think this is probably the case
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for Wells Fargo, but I can see in other situations, people using services like that, if they are
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kind of a making note to they're doing something like that's not on their computer, not everybody
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wants to be tied to a computer all day. And for some roles, they don't have to be. So
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for those people, I think it is a bit different. And instead of necessarily being kind of a,
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you know, dismissive of people that are kind of lazy or not working, it's maybe actually
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we need to embrace kind of a different styles of work.
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Yeah, they definitely are bad workers or like pure mouse jigglers, but there's also bad
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bosses that are going on.
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I feel like that should be a new term, up your mouse jigglers.
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Sounds like we can make a tea shed, mate. That could be a thing by next week.
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So let's like tie things together. So first of all, this episode goes out alongside a
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special episode on money 2020 where Maxine was speaking, but we also talked to a range
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of different startups and even one trade body on the future of how we make things now in
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FinTech and financial services. There will be another like and subscribe for this podcast.
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There will be another edition next week together with some interviews that come over the following
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weeks. Lots of opportunities as well to get involved with different label sessions, projects
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and open calls just now. So I think things will be live over the next week. There's the
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TSP lab that Maxine is working on together with also any ESG call from the financial
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regulation innovation lab and also various other bits of news that will be going out
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through the week. So like all of our channels on pretty much every channel, every social
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media channel everywhere, except be real, Josh. I was realizing that we're talking about
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it. So maybe maybe that was over. We should launch one. Just like some weird hipster.
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And this is Clapper 2.0. We are still on Clapper as well. So if anyone is on Clapper as well,
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leave a comment there as well, because that would be that would be nice. We've prepared
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for TikTok to get banned in America and we joined the Texan Texan one. So we're there.
303
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:30,880
We know what comes.
