Have you ever wondered how tech leaders predict the next big trend? Or how creatives thrive in a data-driven world? If so, this episode of Applied Intelligence with guest David Shing is a must-listen!
In this episode, David walks us through his incredible journey, from surviving a near-fatal accident to becoming a major player at AOL Europe. He breaks down the most pressing tech trends of today and shares key strategies on how to blend creativity and data in digital strategy.
Key Takeaways:
- Trendspotting 101 – Discover why predicting technology trends isn’t as simple as it used to be. David explains how the rise of AI and platforms like ChatGPT are reshaping the landscape, while trends like the Metaverse are falling flat.
- Creative Strategy in the Age of Data – Balancing data with creativity can be a tricky act. Learn how David leverages creativity to make a real impact in a world driven by algorithms and analytics.
- The Power of Being a Polymath – Why limit yourself to one field? David encourages embracing multiple disciplines and explains how it has fueled his success.
Miss out on this episode, and you’ll miss the chance to learn how to thrive in the rapidly changing world of tech and creativity.
Hosted by: Imteaz Ahamed
Video Transcript
Imteaz (00:03.741)
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Applied Intelligence. I have a really great guest today, David Ching, who had the pleasure of meeting at Khan’s Lions earlier this year. David, welcome to the show.
Shingy (00:13.588)
Hi mate, thanks for having me.
Imteaz (00:15.611)
Lovely to have you. the way I start my podcast, is I asked my audience or I asked my guests the question of, know, if, your life had, if you were writing the article, Brian, if it’s your life and add five chapters, what would the chapter titles for each one of those periods of your life be?
Shingy (00:33.878)
wow, what a fantastic question. I’m really glad I didn’t look at the questions. I probably should have now that you said, don’t come into this interview unprepared because now I’m an audience member. I’m clearly not the one being interviewed, but if I was going to do five chapters, let me just start. My introduction would be number eight. I would start with chapter one saying number eight because that’s my birth number. So my birth order is number eight out of 10.
That would be my first intro, be welcome number eight. And I think the song of the year at the time was Bridge Over Troubled Water. So maybe I could title it Bridge Over Troubled Water. So perhaps, let me start over. My first chapter would be Bridge Over Troubled Water. My second chapter would be You Can Recover. Because I had a very bad car accident when I was 11 years old. I got hit by car and dragged for two blocks and spent a chunk of time losing the bottom of my face. So that was a very important time.
I would say the next chapter would be Crossroads. And at that point I had this interesting impasse when I was 20 -ish, where I’m a classically trained graphic designer. The industry was taking a massive hit at the time with the version of AI of my generation was DTP, Desktop Publishing. So when that thing turned up, it sort of rip snorted its way through the industry and created these crazy rip effects. And then I would say the fourth…
The fifth chapter would simply be, am at three or four? Do you know, are you counting?
Imteaz (02:02.707)
Yeah, we are on Euro4 chapter 4.
Shingy (02:05.118)
I’m up to chapter four. Okay. So chapter four would be, you don’t know what I don’t know. And that quote is my daughter’s quote. And I would say the reason why that would apply into my life is that at some point in time throughout my design and technology career, I ended up running media and marketing for AOL Europe, being responsible for millions of users, which is pretty amazing. And I didn’t understand that I had the competence to do something pretty incredible, but that was
all due to a person who actually put me in that position because I didn’t really think I had that confidence. And the last bit would be you are the polymath. And what I mean by that is reassuring myself that if you can come into this world doing something radically different, like being a designer and still truly being that designer, but you’re designing life differently, then the last chapter of that book would be really about doing things that I care about in a portfolio of ideas and can they be commercialized? Yeah.
Now if I’d actually planned that, I wouldn’t have given you such a such an answer. Are we good? Does that sound like something you can riff on?
Imteaz (03:03.058)
Wow.
Imteaz (03:08.935)
I mean…
I’ve asked this question to like, tens of guests that I’ve had, you know, think close to 20 guests on the podcast. No one’s been able to come off and riff something like that. Everyone’s prepped that prep for that question. So for you to come up with, know, a bridge over trouble, you can recover crossroads. You don’t know what I don’t know. And you are a polymath in like five seconds. That’s pretty cool, Ben.
Shingy (03:40.394)
You
Imteaz (03:43.259)
Super impressed and I know this is going to be an amazing conversation. So, your experience and background, what’s the biggest challenge do you think in terms of predicting technological trends?
Shingy (03:48.267)
I appreciate it.
Shingy (03:58.562)
yeah, okay, so as a forecaster, it’s my job. The hardest challenge is predicting where we think those trends go because there’s no longer these curves you can watch. And the reality is those curves, those curves of adoption, which everybody used to look at, they’re gone since the 60s, mate. So the advent of television, colour TV just went, whoop, hockey stick, whoop, hockey stick, whoop, hockey stick. More like rockets of trends. And the challenge with that is it’s either gonna be really hot or not. Really hot or not.
And so to sit on the fringes is quite hard today. The good news is if you observe consumers or people, consumers is not a word I really like to use, but it’s early for me. And thanks for that. But the idea of doing things. I did. I must be traveling at the time. Who would do this time of morning? This is ridiculous. Anyhow, the sun is up just. But what I think is crazy, if you actually observe people in the wild, you get a sense of where they’re headed.
Imteaz (04:37.987)
You picked the time man, not me! But it’s okay. Yeah you did.
Imteaz (04:47.559)
Just.
Shingy (04:54.25)
And you get a sense of what it’s like. And there are those that are going to push against it and create something really unique and those that just go with the flow. And I think it’s, it’s hard to always get it right. And there’s a couple of crackers that I clearly didn’t get right. And I’ll give you one right now. So back in the day, I was quoted, I think at the time, maybe it was Forbes or something. They said that I had said that apps are crap and what I meant by that.
was not that apps are necessary, it was the quote by the way, but what I meant is the whole operating system of the mobile phone is a cake. It felt like the desktop transposed to the phone. It wasn’t really native to the device. And I thought that mobile web was gonna outpace app development and boy, did I get that wrong. So yeah, they’re not always right, mate.
Imteaz (05:45.779)
But when you do spot something, what are the key signals that you look for from an adoption point of view before something explodes? Just before chat GPT, we had metaverse and that went nowhere very fast. How do you think those two technologies are fundamentally different from an adoption point of view? And they don’t have to be the examples, but
Shingy (06:04.981)
Right.
Imteaz (06:13.639)
What are the key things that you look at from an adoption point of view is the question.
Shingy (06:16.95)
Yeah, well, I love both those examples, but understand that the metaverse isn’t new. So it’s been around for quite some time in the form of gaming. There are three billion gamers, So it’s not new. And gaming is really the metaverse. It’s just that everybody wants to transpose it into a of an 8 -bit version of it, guess, or more of a lagged version of it. And I figured that was never going to be adopted because it already has.
So that hasn’t interrupted anybody in the gaming experience. So if you’re a Fortniter, you’re still in it. And that for you feels like these immersive technologies, which really is what meta is. If you flip that around and talk about chat GPT, remember way back in 96, IBM versus Casbros, is that how you pronounce his name? can’t remember. The number one chess player in the world. That was like 96. So AI was already starting to put some pieces into the puzzle and I mean, literally moving pieces.
And then we see other stunt versions of it where there was Jeopardy as an example, or if you look at Rover on Mars, it’s using AI. These things aren’t new. What’s happened is that when it’s democratized, when there’s a graphical user interface, when there’s a web version or a mobile version of the metaverse, when these things turn up to allow people to engage with it, if it has feedback that allows you to feel like this is really edifying to me as a human on planet Earth,
then we know engagement is gonna take off. ChatGPT is a very good example of it, or others, is it just allows you to have value. Because if I’m gonna give you data, the output of that data should be really impressive. And it’s not just chat, mean, it’s mid -journey, it’s runway. There’s so many different versions of how AI can actually be utilized for your life, that it feels like, this is not just adoption, this is actually part of the flow that I wanna be in. So it was the right timing for that. Metaverse, not so much, it’s additive.
And particularly metaverse with goggles on. mean, wow, I still much rather watch the content of seeing people wear the goggles than I do the content in it. And then if you look at something like Vision Pro by Apple, the adoption of that, you know, probably isn’t a runaway success, but not all of them are. Their first crack at a utility was back in sort of Apple Newton days. The user interface in that was just, it stank. But not too many years later we had
Imteaz (08:22.276)
Yeah.
Shingy (08:42.762)
the iPhone and that was the right time, right place. So in fact, the iPod was really the runaway success, the precursor for smartphones. So there’s lots of these trends that look like, does it, bottom line brother, in this whole preamble is if it adds utility to the life, and if I give you data, you give me back something even more impressive, then that exchange continues to grow, so will the interfaces. And that’s where I think it’s impressive.
Imteaz (09:10.269)
So you have a background creative strategy. How do you see creativity influencing digital strategy in an age where data often dominates the decision making?
Shingy (09:20.234)
Yeah, I quite like data being the friend to creative. We hated it back in the day because it’s like, clearly my choice is the best choice. Undisputed. But the truth is that’s kind of your CYA. That’s the cover your ass. That’s the piece that gives you the nugget of creative idea. It’s the execution that’ll make it successful because of the, the points that we put around it, the KPIs we put around it.
Imteaz (09:32.284)
Yeah.
Shingy (09:46.998)
If we just said, could this great idea be exciting if one person saw it? Nine times out of 10, the answer is yes. If you say at scale, then that decision and that conversation is different because then you have to also put an audience bias around it. So it absolutely plays into it because here’s the other hidden annoyance of this industry is that media
which is the scale to get an audience to see a piece of creative. The creative that they’re seeing is typically considered the non -working part of the media budget. So it’s this thing that sits to the side of it. And that’s very annoying to me because without it, you actually don’t have creative. Does that make sense? You don’t have the audience’s attention anyway because without creative, there is nothing for people to react to.
Imteaz (10:39.923)
So it goes back to the two cardinal sins of marketing is having beautiful creative that nobody sees and crappy creative that everyone sees, right? So how do you make that?
Shingy (10:48.246)
And that’s called the internet, man. And that is the internet. And we also, I think we copped it up. At one point in time, we invented these things called banner ads, know, for 68 by eighties or something. Mate, it is early and I’m trying to tell you about pixel sizes. This is brilliant. We’d have leaderboards and MPUs and these terms that people probably don’t care about today. We had cut these portholes across the internet and said, that is your bit. If you’re a brand, you advertise in this porthole. Good luck.
Imteaz (11:02.392)
You
Shingy (11:16.566)
And we never really adapted those experiences beyond the experience because we then had scale and then scale democratized creativity. Anyway, that was really, really, really boring. I remember about maybe 15 years ago, there was this and it was a campaign that I thought was genius. Somebody had built to scale banner ads.
and they stuffed a band in, was called Band in a Box, I think, and they put these players on the side and put a drum kit in there and somebody, and this band would play live across the internet in this leaderboard and an MPU. So you had guitarist and drummer up here and somebody stuffed down here and it was a way to say, if this is what you’re going to get me to conform in, I’m gonna create something really quite magical and look out as opposed to, know, blinking monkeys and whatever else was sending down the pipes back in the day.
Imteaz (12:06.763)
So what role do you think intuition and human creativity play in increasingly well driven by artificial intelligence and automation? In terms of like thinking about, you know, the example back at Khan’s lines that really resonates with me was the Snickers ad of you want you when you’re hungry. That failed all the testing, right? But the management team at Mars thought, you know, we should still go ahead with this. How do you think?
executives should balance the choice between going with all the data and making a call on this is what we’re going to do even though the data says no.
Shingy (12:41.184)
Yeah.
Shingy (12:46.23)
Yeah, really smart leaders understand that there’s a fine balance. So if I remember, I did this interview series with Wendy Clark back in the day, which was Coca -Cola. And I think at the time they had a 70 -20 -10. 70 % applies to creative that isn’t going to get you fired. 20 % goes to stuff that feels like it’s intuition -based, but it’s pretty safe. And then 10 % is innovation. The only thing that wins awards where you and I met are things, you you take Coca -Cola, which was the number one celebrated brand at Cannes this year.
The thing that won’t work was a crumpled up version of their can, but the logo crumpled. So you take the can away and you just had this logo that looked all bent and distorted. Whoever signed that off was brave ass. And if you roll back, you know, if you think about the things that the creativity that that that makes absolutely no sense, mate, that it makes perfect sense because what it does, it reinforces things like iconography. It reinforces things like things that people relate to your brand, which is the simplicity of it, perhaps.
but the complexity of the category. There are many things that it applies to. So creativity and the idea, I think is paramount. Otherwise, we’re just going to have this homogenized blindness, brother. I mean, if you think about, you said Snickers, go the other side, they’re a competitor. I look at Cadbury, the gorilla in the air tonight with Phil Collins drumming. If I tell you that, you know exactly what I’m talking about, right? That was pitched, I promise you, probably 50 times before it got signed off. Same with the Snickers ad.
Imteaz (13:59.357)
Yep. Yep.
Shingy (14:09.588)
I’m sure of it. But if you have a leader that says, look, what we’re looking for is absolute stuff that gives you tonnage, that will give us the ability to drive the awareness simply because we’re putting our brand in front of somebody. But the pause effect, that isn’t fair everybody because we’re interrupting their day. But if we can add value to their day by giving them a surprise, that’s the secret ingredient, brother.
Imteaz (14:34.003)
One of the favorite campaigns for me from Coke at the Shears Alliance was actually the one where they celebrated the shops and vendors that run their own ads for Coke, where they actually appropriate the Coca -Cola logo based on whether it’s the language or how good their artist is that’s doing that. To me, that’s again, a celebration of brand iconography, brand color.
Shingy (14:48.768)
Mmm.
Shingy (14:59.328)
Yeah.
Imteaz (15:03.635)
commission, et cetera. But for an executive to make the call that we’re actually going to support almost like plagiarism or support, you know, people taking our logo and doing something with that, again, is quite ballsy and goes back.
Shingy (15:15.838)
Yeah, you just don’t. Yeah, go ahead. I’m sorry.
Imteaz (15:20.048)
I’m just going to say it’s quite a risk to take a call like that.
Shingy (15:26.306)
No, it isn’t. It’s smart. And here’s why it’s smart. You don’t own your brand. If you’re super smart about this and you understand that Coca -Cola’s brand is so democratized that the person who owns that bodega, who’s selling that product, they’re so proud of their, of your brand that they’re going to actually translate it in a way that communicates to their community. That’s genius, brother. So how do you do that at scale?
Imteaz (15:28.028)
Okay.
Shingy (15:52.682)
Take Coke as another example. I think this is made, don’t know why I’m pulling out these relics, but allowing me to do that, maybe it’s because my brain hasn’t woken up yet and I have myself to blame for that. Here’s the challenge. If you look at that, they democratize it by saying, I could have a can of Coca -Cola that doesn’t say Coke, it has David written on it. How genius, you think I’m gonna buy one of those? No way, man, I’m gonna buy a case of them and I’m gonna give it to all my mates.
You know, just to piss them off. But I think it’s pretty amazing when you think about ownership over access. If you’re a top town brand, ooh, that doesn’t work anymore, man, because here’s what’s up. It’s no longer about authority. Me telling you this is my brand? No way. It’s about affinity, which is how do I stand beside you and say, what do reckon, mate? Is this gonna work or not? What do you think? You think it should be green or blue? you think it’s blue? Great. It’s no longer green. We’re now blue. Ripper.
They’re the sort of things that make them not just cultural, not just geographically cultural, it makes them part of colloquial, makes it part of the rhythm of that community. And that is the key to it because this is not about mass audiences anymore, it’s about niche audiences. And I have this quote, it’s mine, so I’m gonna continue pushing with it, which is niche is the new mass. So if you’re able to take those niche audiences and create a real community where people love or hate you, but they actually
Care about your brand enough to voice either one of those opinions? Genius. Last thing you need to be is platonic. Where you’re just like, well, it’s homogenized, man, whatever. Green, blue, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. we gotta move away from that.
Imteaz (17:35.527)
Who do you think is doing Niche very well at scale?
Shingy (17:41.14)
Well, okay, from a theory perspective, niche is happening in the platforms in self -order. So every brand has outsourced their brand to third parties that they don’t own. Okay, I don’t necessarily think that’s always great, but not a lot of people are promoting their .com anymore. They’re promoting their Facebook and their Instagram and their TikTok and their Snap.
and their Pinterest and their Reddit channel perhaps. But what I’m saying is that all of the niche is happening because the platforms are forcing it. When you go to Reddit for example, you go and hang out in the subreddits. You go and hang out on TikTok, you hang out in a channel that you care about. You don’t go to the homepages anymore. So niche is already doing it that by itself. And I would say,
on brands that are doing that incredibly well. You’ve got brands that communicate to an audience that care about them. So feels like a mass brand, but it communicates to you. I mean, look, a classic example of that is somebody who understands the ethos around needs of young audiences. And that would be Patagonia. One, would say that they need a better designer because the fintech boys need to lay off that thing, man. makes that brand very uncool for me. whatever, God bless them. But as a brand, incredible. Why? Earth, sustainable, authentic.
Imteaz (18:58.611)
Yep.
Shingy (19:05.11)
They talk about their audiences, not their brand. Awesome, awesome, awesome. They do it in 12 minute movies, they do it in 30 seconds. Incredible. Or they do it in two seconds if they get it right. So Patagonia all day, every day. They also wear their values literally on the label. Love that. On a micro, somebody like Oatly. So those guys got a hit because of the ingredients of their product. And when people start getting into your brand so much, they’re passionate about the core ingredients and start to, you know.
tear you apart, so be it, so they need to react to that. But the way that they actually humanized that brand by taking something from the Nordics, I think it’s Swedish, and then they translated it into English and human speak, and they made this beautiful characterization of this brand, it sticks out not just on the shelf, but their actual target audience was the barista. So it wasn’t mass audiences, it was tiny audiences that liked to be able to make the artwork on their latte as perfect as their curly moustaches make.
Going after those audiences, it allowed them to target their core to get to everyone else. So they’ve reversed engineered it. Pretty cool. I’m having coffee this morning too. It’s probably has Oakley in it. So I just wanted to compare it.
Imteaz (20:13.075)
Give him a plug. You’ve been involved in changing brands perception across various companies. What are the key elements to successfully transforming a brand in today’s landscape? And where do you think most transformation initiatives fail?
Shingy (20:32.043)
Yeah, okay, most transformation initiatives fail because they’re looking for just pure disruption and it hasn’t always been like that and it doesn’t have to be like that moving forward. If you think about the evolution of what happens when people are like, wow, this industry is so much change, we need to disrupt. I’m like, wow, but do you? Do you deserve to disrupt? Or should your experience just be so much better and that will help transform it because we’re all looking for transformation.
Transformation is a byproduct of audience change. So that’s kind of a reaction to that. And where I think it is the loss is the focus on the wrong things. It’s like AI, for example. When people talk about AI, they don’t talk about the problem they’re solving. They talk about the tool they’re using. I’m like, what? What’s the problem? What’s problem you’re solving? So that’s really, for me, the same thing about transformation is that do you really want to transform? Or actually, should you evolve? Because if you evolve, it could simply be democratize your brand.
Imteaz (21:16.167)
because it’s like
Shingy (21:28.842)
What does that mean, It means, don’t know, give somebody else the voice of the mic and stand beside them, as I said, with affinity. You know, how do you actually come on the creative community and not just this content that you’re producing and expecting people to enjoy it? What are you doing to sort of help that vernacular if you deserve to be like that? So part of it is until you do a proper audit of the things that you are as a brand, you can’t even start to transform and people like, well, things are happening so quickly we can’t pause. You can’t afford not to. And that’s really the biggest challenge.
Imteaz (21:59.987)
How do you approach communicating complex digital concepts to diverse audiences? I’ve watched a few of your TED Talks and presentations and I would say you’re like a master of formulating analogies and buzzwords. How do you do that?
Shingy (22:14.842)
Hey, I’m a pretty simple dude. So the idea of breaking that communication down to a bite -sized snack that I can grab, awesome. Also, I treat my audiences like they’re super smart because they are smart, man. And so if I can give them a nugget of truth that allows them to say, hmm, I’m just going to grab that for now and I’m going to use it later, God bless. I had somebody ping me recently.
He said, Chingy, I saw you speak 10 years ago and I thought you were absolutely crazy, dude. I wanted to not like you. I thought you was so polarizing. I just didn’t want to like you, dude. And I thought your theories were rubbish and I probably hacked on you and trolled you. And I apologize because 10 years up, you were right. So can I quote you in my book? Verbatim, brother. That’s how that went. Like, okay, rip up. Yeah, thanks very much for the backlash, dude. That was awesome.
Imteaz (23:05.331)
Wow. That’s nice.
You
Shingy (23:12.406)
But here’s what’s amazing for me. It’s just distilling these ideas down that allow people to feel much more invigorated about the bits that they care about on the way out. I’m not here to explain it end to end. I’m not here to tell you how you can come up with 15 different prompts to make you a better prompt engineer across AI. But I am here to tell you that AI can actually mine your data to potentially create some deep mind reading technology that allows you to feel like you’re very different.
What do do with that nugget? Go think about it before you sit there with a prompt just prompting you the whole time. There’s a quote by somebody and I don’t know who it is. Forgive me for not being able to say who this person was that quoted this. There’s this engineering quote that we used to throw around all the time, which it’s easy to make things complex. It’s complex to make things easy. And so buzzwords for me allow me to anchor on a theme.
Imteaz (23:51.313)
As someone
Shingy (24:11.552)
that I can riff on till I’m blue in the face, mind you. But typically that nugget is enough for us to say, yeah, that’s it, Nisha’s a new mouse, got it, what do I do with that?
Imteaz (24:22.813)
Super cool. Like one of the people I study in terms of breaking down a technology and making it very relatable is Steve Jobs. In terms of how he processed all the technological advancement that was being made at Apple and then simply broke that down into what it really meant for his users. It was insane. Rather than going about talking about,
processor speed and blah, adds no value to any typical user. You know, just breaking it down into a thousand songs in your pocket. Something insanely easy to understand and grasp is, you know, the best way to connect with your audience, right?
Shingy (25:13.366)
Yeah, isn’t that amazing? Because when you have a sea of computational bits and bobs, a 486 PC with a whatever hard drive with a whatever, you know, it’s like, my goodness, we start to eye roll it at the get. And you think about that concept, as you said, which is the ability to plug in your phone and suddenly all your photos are on your device as well. It’s like, great. Who cares how big the device is until you run out of space and then you get there.
Imteaz (25:37.106)
I got it.
Imteaz (25:42.867)
But then you upgrade your iTunes space to like 50 gigs or not. There you go.
Shingy (25:44.902)
Yeah. Yeah, yes, you do. I actually pulled out a couple of old iPods. I’ve got two iPods that I pulled out recently. I’m going through an audit of my old tech. And, you know, because one of the trending apps of last year was an app that turns your iPhone into an iPod and thought, wow, how ironic. So I’ve cracked open a couple of these old iPods. It’s ironic also to see the music that’s been stored on this device. It’s like a time.
It’s like a beautiful time capsule. I thought to myself, this slow movement of this device is really quite beautiful. And the sound engineering out of this tiny device is, it’s, it’s, it’s inspiring to be honest. I’d like to see that inspiration back in sort of engineering terms today in the physical devices. We live in a very homogenized time. So this analog experience was really quite powerful for me.
Anyway, that’s a byproduct of my misspent youth. think when I think about my time as a radio DJ, the ability to turn over on LP and still hear the crackle, there’s something very, not that an iPod is any way near like that, but it is. It’s something really quite amazing when we’re coming into an industry in infancy and to have that engineering feel like it’s an experiment. Remember when…
Imteaz (26:47.652)
you
Shingy (27:08.598)
Bang & Olufsen came out with an MP3 player that was round, like a round disk and silver and gorgeous, absolutely stunning piece of engineering, but a woeful interface because it had no screen on it. Or I think Microsoft came out with a round phone for like three and a half seconds. You think to yourself, wow, that was an amazing engineering. Samsung had a flip phone. One of my first flip phones, I think, was a Samsung, not just a Motorola, but it had a rubberized back.
die for rubberized back today. You know, think to myself, this bone is delicious, but it’s going to slip right out of my hands and just thinking about it’s going to slip out to everyone. know, nine out of 10 people put a case on it. I just spent a thousand dollars put a case, a rubber case on his phone. I mean, it doesn’t that tell you something? Anyway.
Imteaz (27:57.715)
One of my one of my favorite collaborations from back in the day was when Dolce and Gabbana did a collab with Motorola Razr. So they actually did a gold Razr phone Yeah, yeah that flip phone and then Motorola brought the Razr back a couple years ago as well. Yeah, it’s
Shingy (28:08.816)
I had that. Now I have that phone. Yep. That flip phone? The Razr, yeah.
Shingy (28:18.4)
which I thought is amazing. And I think the Samsung flip phone is delicious, but moving from iOS to Android is a whole nother anxiety attack that I just don’t want to deal with it right now. It’s like PC versus Mac. can’t live with both ecosystems. I have a PC, a little Surface tablet, which is pretty amazing, but I got to learn it every single time I go into it and think, wow. And if you look at the Windows OS for mobile, I thought that was super expressive. I thought that was actually headed in a really interesting direction.
Imteaz (28:25.555)
Too hot.
Imteaz (28:40.911)
It’s too hard.
Shingy (28:47.848)
as opposed to where Apple was going, which is a bunch of icons on a stage. I mean, Windows was big tiles and anyway, what are we talking about?
Imteaz (28:57.875)
So as someone who constantly engages with the future, how do you personally stay grounded in the present?
Shingy (29:08.098)
what a great question by not hanging out in the future. Because I think a lot of things that we look at, if you look at the past, if you look at the past to influence your future, I think that’s kind of where it heads, mate. So one thing I’m really scared of is nature. I try and spend time in nature because it’s something that I don’t really understand, but it’s at its core, the most radical thing we have is nature. So I tend to try and spend my life in analog so I can, you know, observe people that are
Imteaz (29:12.435)
Yep.
Shingy (29:38.834)
existing between the wanting to create or let me me paraphrase this wanting to produce but are also being looked upon so the watched is being watched if you know what i mean and that i find to be a really interesting place which is hey if i’m going to produce content that’s amazing but do know that somebody else is watching me produce that content and that for them is part of their entertainment so there’s this whole ricochet effect that’s happening that i just find to be
Fascinating. So I like to try and push against it. Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It certainly doesn’t happen in a boardroom. So go and spend time looking at the paintings I care about at MoMA, for example. There’s one particular room where I can see Sy Twombly and Jackson Pollock all in the same room and I can spend the entire day in that one room in MoMA and force my daughter to do it too, where some people just walk in, take a snap, they’re never gonna see that video again and wander off. And that’s crazy to me.
Imteaz (30:37.191)
Looking back on your career, is there a particular piece of advice you would give your younger self or to anyone looking to enter the world of digital strategy and innovation?
Shingy (30:46.836)
Yeah, what you come into this industry as is not going to be necessarily what you’ll do your entire career. And that for me would allow me to have relaxed if I was younger. However, the core dimensions of who I am are absolutely still ringing true. I’m still a designer. I still touch every single deck that I produce. I still think about narration. I still think about story. So all of those core tenets as a creative that’s absolutely embedded in what I am.
but I’m very far from how I entered it. So calm down, just understand that it’s not that intense. And if you are thinking about one particular domain, open that up. The aperture needs to widen so much wider that you can need to be super interested. So if I was actually coming out of school as a designer today, I would go and probably study urban planning, not just continue studying fontography and graphic design. I would go somewhere else and think about landscape architecture or light velocity or something completely different.
That’s still core to the tenets of Kreative -E.
Imteaz (31:48.231)
The last chapter you talked about in your five -part autobiography is, you are the polymath. So expanding on that last question, in terms of becoming a polymath and being in terms of understanding multiple things and looking at how people adapt to them, specifically with new waves of technology that are coming, how do you learn? How do you pick
Shingy (31:55.279)
Hmm.
Imteaz (32:17.671)
you know, what to study or what to learn about how people are adopting to these new technologies.
Shingy (32:24.854)
So I would turn it around the other way and say some of these technologies aren’t new, they’re technologies of the day. And some of them are old. The technology of the day was a pencil, technology of the day was a brush. So how do you adapt to those? Is if you have an instinct to curiosity around those, then can you make the economics work? You how many people have you met? I used to do this program where I would take kids just about out, just out of high school and thinking about going to college and saying, what are you interested in? Like, I just want to be a graph artist. That’s amazing. But do you know that graph arts,
is the basis behind graphic design and street art could translate to being poster design and doing, you know, so show an actual, think I used to pull up monster .com and say, you could get paid this to move font around. Pretty much. you like sound? Incredible. Could you imagine if you did that sound across gaming? Let me show you a, here’s a job that you can do. You can be a gaming engineer. How amazing with that for sound. Or if you want to be the number one, you want to be Beyonce? Awesome. Do you know what you can do? You can actually also be a backup singer, go on tour, you know, so I just.
Imteaz (33:04.541)
to do this,
Shingy (33:24.768)
There’s this ability to say you’re already interested. You don’t become a polymath brother, you are it. But can you make that portfolio of things that you’re interested in something that people care about? Look, and the reason why I think about this all the time is that people are already a creator. They’re already a critic. They’re already a curator of their experiences. So can it work? It’s not just for the few. That has been democratized. If I think about somebody
who’s working a job today and I ask them what they’re interested in. They might tell me part of the job they’re interested in, they want it. They’re much wider than just their job. And more people want to be the things that they do outside, inside and make their job also part of what they care about even more widely. So that portfolio of ideas, can it be distilled one in the one company? Maybe, but also in the multiple curiosities, I would say, yeah, it’d be incredible if they can continue doing that.
So it’s not about technology. Technology is an outcome. If a technology helps you open up the aperture, great. Change your lens. If it doesn’t, well, don’t use it at all. Just focus on sound. It all depends on the curios. Hmm. The curious? The curious. I thought that.
Imteaz (34:39.027)
How would you, I’m not sure if that’s the right word. What advice would you give in terms of finding people to help you find what you’re good at or find where you should be headed?
Shingy (34:55.656)
If you sit down and you yourself write the things that you value most, and this sounds so trite, and you determine that the thing that you value most isn’t what you’ve reflected on what you’re doing today, then that’s probably enough to think about change. It starts with you. But spending all your time discovering all these new tools to do all this other stuff, but at the core of it, you just think, wow, just…
it doesn’t spark, then you’re wasting your time. You’re spend 80 % of your waking life at work. You better make that matter. It translates to like 90 ,000 hours of your life. So making it matter works. And now look, your day to day is not always going to be a ripper. It’s not always gonna be super exciting. I respect that. But the bulk of it should be. And if it isn’t, then maybe that’s your own change. So for me,
What’s the number of one thing you value and does it translate to what you do and if it isn’t, maybe that’s enough to think about change.
Imteaz (36:00.275)
Amazing. Shifting to on a personal front. What are the habits or productivity hacks that you use to make your life easier?
Shingy (36:11.153)
Hmm. Productivity hacks. Yeah, good one. So there’s a couple of things for me. I have a newsletter that I’ve been doing for like 10 years. It’s private. And part of it is that’s just me having a voice of my ideas somewhere. I should probably open that up, by the way. But anyway, it is what it is. And I will now that I just said that was it still private, what an idiot. But my point is, for me, that’s just really making sure I’m articulating ideas quickly.
If there’s a community that wants to listen to them, great. So just like you’re doing, perfect. That’s one thing. The second thing is I would like to think that I have a really healthy relationship with not always being at work. Given I work for myself, I feel like if I don’t clock in a ton of hours, then I’m not doing enough. But the truth is time away from the things that are based around work is even better for your mind, heart and soul.
Being a father has allowed me to actually balance that in a way that makes me feel like, I’m very conscious of that now. So that’s a productivity hack is not to always feel like I’m being productive. If I’m not productive using technology, my productivity hack is presence. And that’s even more valuable than just pretending to be present, which is what technology masks.
There’s a bunch of automation tools that allow you to do some of that. But I also find that there’s, if it doesn’t have a tonality that is based on your personality, then you’re going to see through them. And then you’re part of the overwhelming amount of information that people receive. And I don’t want to be that. I want it to be hyper -personalized. It’s almost like the days of couture versus fast fashion. I would prefer for it to feel like it’s coutured as opposed to fast fashioned.
Imteaz (37:59.147)
I’m kind of the same, think the real thing that we have from productivity point of view is focus and what can you deliver when you have focus. And for me personally, you know, I only have let’s say two to three hours of focus per day. And the rest of the time is kind of like attending meetings or attending, you know, tasks, et cetera. But in that core time, how do I get the most amount of value?
Shingy (38:08.992)
Hmm.
Imteaz (38:28.857)
out of my brain as possible. And the rest of the time is just either absorbing or doing the menial things that need to get done, but really prioritizing my focus, attention in the hours that I actually have in the day to do it.
Shingy (38:47.36)
You know, there’s something really interesting about that. And for me, EG equals presence and presence is actually a trained position for a better word. It’s easy to be distracted and pretend to be present. Super easy to do that brother. Cause there’s not just one communication channel anymore. You’ll hit me up on email. You hit me up on texts. You’ll hit me up on WhatsApp. You’ll hit me up on Instagram DM. You’ll hit me up on whatever the hell you want to get LinkedIn. We can, can, we can pretend to be present.
But presence is really amazing. And when I watch, you know, young adults together, their lack of presence is bothering me. So I see the opposite of that where people, you know, a bunch of kids that I know and help mentor that don’t have any phones, don’t, know, that all they want to do is read books. They don’t care about the social medias of this world. You know, they’re there and they seem incredibly confident. But presence to me, the ability to look somebody in the eye and spend time with them, that’s, that’s got to be a priority. I found it very difficult, particularly in the middle of COVID to be present.
because I’m always on the move. And when I got grounded, it was like, I have to really relearn this. So I’d like to sit here and be more Zen -like. The truth is that all happened later when I realized that presence is the gift that I can provide. And honestly, when I’m not, happy hands, I really like to just be quiet and thoughtful and just mind my presence. And hopefully that allows others to feel it, but it’s practiced.
Imteaz (40:16.093)
for sure. What are the books that you like to gift the most to your friends and family?
Shingy (40:22.48)
great question. I hope it wasn’t one of the books you read because I’m like bloody none. But the book I like to gift is a book called Wabi Sabi. It’s for writers, poets and lovers. It’s a beautiful little quick read. It’s a little book of inspo. And what it does, it just creates calm in the chaos. Because the last thing I need to do is give somebody a book that’s all about something else.
that is just going to clog their day to day. If somebody said to me, well, what about a business book, Chingy? Not something that feels like poetry. One I’d say get stuffed. Just kidding. But if I was going to do one, it would be Designed by Motion, which is Greg Hoffman’s book. I think it’s Designed by Motion.
Let’s make sure I look that up. But it’s, I love that book by Greg. I’m not going to get the title wrong, am I? Emotion by Design. I got it the wrong way around. Emotion by Design, yeah. His book is amazing. He’s also a beautiful human.
Imteaz (41:24.179)
Motion by design. Okay.
Imteaz (41:31.635)
We will make sure we put that in the show notes. Who’s that by?
Shingy (41:36.394)
But they’re well -be -sobby one, man, for sure. Amazing.
No idea. But if I close my eyes, I can tell you the title. I can see the cover. Isn’t that amazing? But let me tell you who it’s by.
Imteaz (41:42.149)
Okay.
Shingy (42:04.86)
And the title of the book, the total title of the book is Wabi Sabi for artists, designers, poets and philosophers. And it’s by Leonard Coran. Wow, I never knew that. I even know who that is. But this, you know, little craft paper cover. Lovely. Anything. Beautiful.
Imteaz (42:25.563)
Amazing. Closing out, Xingyi, how can people reach out to you if they want to learn more about you?
Shingy (42:32.882)
I can be found on the interwebs, mate. But if you want to hang out on the LinkedIn’s of this world or the Instagram’s or the email, whatever, mate, I’m easily found. So see you on the interwebs.
Imteaz (42:42.259)
And your newsletter, I didn’t know you had a newsletter. We’ll make sure, you know, if you want me to spook that on applied intelligence, I’m more than happy to do so. I’m pretty sure the audience would be lovely to connect with you through your newsletter as well.
Shingy (42:55.094)
zero.
Shingy (42:59.434)
Yeah, I’ll open it up. I’ll promise that to myself. Yeah. I also have a… I’ll just tell you something. I told you quickly before we close out, I challenged myself to write a book as a birthday gift to self and it’s at the press. And it’s one of the things that I have been thinking about is a slash generation. So it’s just called the slash gen. And what I love about this principle is that…
Imteaz (43:03.995)
Super cool. Thank you
Imteaz (43:09.853)
Tell me.
Shingy (43:26.442)
There is this time of the Renaissance for the creative. And it is about the ability to say that people have these multi -dimensions of themselves, that they’re articulating the two dimension of digital. But it’s really the foundations of all this is that’s happening in 3D. I think it’s, yeah, it’s just a little book of inspo that I wanted to sort of throw on myself. But I love this concept of the slash gen because I…
You know, when you think about it, you’re a slash photographer, slash designer, slash father. You know, there’s many things that you have and it’s truly the polymath. So yeah, mate, it’s been, it’s been shits and giggles knocking that thing out.
Imteaz (44:03.581)
That’s amazing. Like personally, you know, I, I studied art in high school and coming into college. I was also very good at math. I’m no longer good at math because there’s Excel and data scientists do a number crunching for me. And then obviously getting exposed to business and marketing and advertising, et cetera. But I’m also at this interesting period of my life where I’m trying to figure out.
Shingy (44:15.626)
Hmm.
Imteaz (44:33.255)
had a piece, all of these things together. And rather than going down a very straight corporate career, with a very distinct end point, I’m trying to create value through one sharing the experiences that I’ve had thus far through this podcast to creating, creating products and or services that
Shingy (44:35.636)
Hmm.
Imteaz (45:02.351)
mold all of those passions and skill sets together. And then three is building a community of people that can help me along this journey as well. So, you know, it’s very inspiring to hear your story in terms of how you put all of this together. And I think it’s quite important that people like ourselves continue to share these stories so everyone can do the same, right? Because I think
Shingy (45:26.536)
Absolutely. Thanks for sharing. Let me tell you one other thing that I would suggest. If somebody’s inside an organization today and they’re like, really love the idea of this. I’ve had this constant debate, the entrepreneur versus the intrapreneur. Can you actually be somebody who helps influence inside an organization? Because the structure of an entity and enterprise is designed to be able to provide that to you. You just have to have the permission. Now that permission can only come.
from somebody in that organization identifying you as a super talent and giving you the ability to have that opportunity. And that doesn’t happen often. It’s more encouraged today, but it tends to happen with those with the happy hands. But what about the quiet achiever in the corner? Have they been identified? It happened in my career and so it can happen in others, is if you have an incredible person.
who is your champion inside an organization that can give you the wings to fly, then that’s worth staying for and working in that environment, in my opinion. And maybe that’s the right path for you than just cutting yourself loose and trying to try the entrepreneur. Entrepreneur versus intrapreneur. And so that’s just something to wrestle with, which is how do you identify? But the only way to do that…
You don’t just look for a mentor, you have to be a great mentee. It has to be a two -way relationship. That’s to say, what will I get from you? This is what can I, so what can I learn from you as opposed to what can you give me? It’s got to be a two -way street. And I’ve had a bunch of mentors who quickly taught me that that’s what I needed to be is what value am I giving them as another human existing on planet earth? Yeah, you got to do. Thanks.
Imteaz (47:01.715)
Super cool. Super cool.
Thank you for being on the show, man. Really appreciate your time. All right, take care.
Shingy (47:08.598)
Appreciate you brother, thanks.
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