Collections

q3 musings24
Agalia Tan

The show was built around a deceptively simple premise: the experience of walking through a park an activity so habitual as to be nearly invisible as

cannes 202629

from wrapups, reports, posts, commentary, chats

Agalia Tan

The urgency to preserve these human markers is connected to a global deficit in trust that Richard Edelman, CEO, Edelman, explained has been perpetuat

“Every day we use these tools without truly owning anything ourselves. We make them stronger and make ourselves easier to do without.”

“It’s easier than ever to make work that is polished, optimised, efficient, super familiar... You need the courage to stand out in the crowd.” Rob van

“Your own individuality and your own sense of purpose and will, that’s the thing that cannot be replicated and that’s the thing that, if you cultivate

things you should remember158
Agalia Tan

You reach out to the world, trusting it, andthen you end up in situations and meet people who surprise you and expand your sense of possibility, which

the thing is, as an adult, you get to make your own cool. you get to choose your own friends, live your own life. and let me tell you, in my life, whe

“Your own individuality and your own sense of purpose and will, that’s the thing that cannot be replicated and that’s the thing that, if you cultivate

a strategist’s convictions65

what I believe to be true as read and experienced during my journey as a strategist in advertising ✌🏻

Agalia Tan

Out came the market research and strategy types with their hot takes, speaking on behalf of "walkers", speaking on behalf of the "inclusive running co

“Your own individuality and your own sense of purpose and will, that’s the thing that cannot be replicated and that’s the thing that, if you cultivate

AI in 202655
Agalia Tan

As Nik Kleverov, Chief Creative Officer at Native Foreign, said: “AI has a little bit of a PR problem.” His view was that heralding AI for being fast

“Every day we use these tools without truly owning anything ourselves. We make them stronger and make ourselves easier to do without.”

“It’s easier than ever to make work that is polished, optimised, efficient, super familiar... You need the courage to stand out in the crowd.” Rob van

“Your own individuality and your own sense of purpose and will, that’s the thing that cannot be replicated and that’s the thing that, if you cultivate

the flywheel for brand building28
Agalia Tan

Protecting Brand EquityThis is the most important.Saturation without discipline erodes authority, and publishing without restraint produces noise. Par

effectiveness now means producing work that “survives ranking, retrieval and recommendation by machines” as well as moving people – and brands with ge

What travels across all of it is distinctiveness, and a brand coherent enough to show up recognisably across a fandom it doesn’t own, a creator it doe

new metrics7

New rulers for measuring new units of culture

Agalia Tan

Said differently, we try to measure what we value.But we inevitably end up valuing what we measure.And what can be measured tends to be...the mechanic

Perhaps being pointedly low-key on Instagram speaks to a different kind of hustle: the effort to escape the allure of the screen and build clout in ph

institutions — held shared context, conferred legitimacy. gatekeepers — decided what was credible, what mattered. shared context — the stuff everyone

Meanwhile, Takeshi Sano, President and Global CEO of dentsu, focused on how the company’s culture was intentionally created to translate innovation in

hyperreality15
Agalia Tan

When you can pay someone else to deal with the grocery store rush, when you can buy access to a highway lane without traffic, when you can skip urgent

What disappeared along the way was not just trust, but also the micro-doses of potency that came from navigating everyday risk. Choosing a restaurant

We need to replace irony, sarcasm, and cynicism—which have contributed to our self-debasement—with softer, gentler attitudes. Cynicism is useful in cr

let them eat cake / eat the rich2
Agalia Tan

This idea—that proximity to power is inherently meaningful—is one of fashion’s most persistent delusions. It is what keeps people orbiting systems tha

social becomes a spectacle7
Agalia Tan

We see curiosity theater all around.Audience members asking questions at panels that are actually mini-speeches. People at dinner name-dropping obscur

from media trained to social trained1

faking what’s real because we don’t want polish

Agalia Tan
doxa and habitus1
Agalia Tan
q2 musings244
Agalia Tan

Movie-audience researcher Kevin Goetz said his surveys find Gen Z sees two fewer films a year on average than past generations did in their teens and

Suddenly, spending a fortune to make a fortune no longer seems like a winning formula.

Judging by the discourse on social media, teenage and twentysomething viewers want a film they can discuss and dissect. Take, for example, The Drama,

hmm23
Agalia Tan

A delay builds up the perception of it

when mental activity has become synonymous with intelligence, even maturity, it’s nearly impossible to see that thinking itself might be operating as

At what point does reflection stop producing insight?

Should we be judged for the people we almost became?

charisma3
Agalia Tan

Weirdness, through this lens, isn’t a flaw creative endurance survives despite. It’s closer to what Sontag calls “a tender feeling”: the thing you ext

what "living life to the fullest" looks like74

the eulogy values i aspire towards, instructions on how to live life, and more

Agalia Tan

Your life moves in the direction of your dominant thoughts

When you prioritize what you yourself value, everything around you shifts, and asserting that value creates a kind of gravitational pull on the world

the sense of an “eventive” conversation that brought the two of you into a different plane and then forthly, a conversation that continued to sing aft

you never become your older wiser self, you create your older wiser self.

the new milestones for the new age24
Agalia Tan

I grew up with the idea that you were fundamentally unattractive as soon as you hit 35. After that, not only should you not have sex because nobody’s

Now, if the adults don’t exist, you no longer have to wait to be ready to do things because there’s no moment of transcendence, no moment of permissio

stolen focus15

plonking everything related to our debilitating attention spans here, why it is, and what that's doing to us

Agalia Tan

Nelson Cowan, a leading researcher on working memory, tells us the Magic Number is 4±1. Meaning, we can only focus our attention on three to five mean

We must strategically protect and take aim with our attention, not just because it’s the lens through which we see, but because it’s the architecture

this is not about anti-technology or anti-ambition. It is pro-focus, pro-intention, and pro-discernment in how we understand broader historical contex

making conversation19

to be fed into dinner clubs, radar events, and more community things i love

Agalia Tan

The question gave it a precise shape I could not have found alone, so I could finally see it more clearly.

Someone asks the right question and waits. The silence has enough room in it, so something in you loosens, as a thought finds a door. You hear yoursel

the sense of an “eventive” conversation that brought the two of you into a different plane and then forthly, a conversation that continued to sing aft

half past18

supper club vibes

Agalia Tan

The joys of yes, this. Boundaries not as keeping things out, but as holding our dreams a bit more softly. Step in to this moment that I’ve made for

Someone asks the right question and waits. The silence has enough room in it, so something in you loosens, as a thought finds a door. You hear yoursel