Kevin Maguire

Kevin Maguire (KM) has spent close to 20 years working in branding and advertising. He now lives in Barcelona, dividing his time between his creative consultancy Quickhatch, working part-time in the kitchen of one of the city’s best restaurants, and running The New Fatherhood, a weekly newsletter exploring the existential questions facing modern dads. (As an aside, this was written before this weekend’s news about the new European Super League - Noah)Kevin here. The Barcelona football club is famously known here as “mes que en club” — more than a club. Here, they’re a way of life. People live and breathe the team. There are over 1,200 penñas (supporters clubs) across Spain that dictate the future of Barça. Local Catalans see the club as an integral part of their character—a global representation of Catalonian excellence, the friendly face of their fierce battle for independence, and those three iconic colors that coat everything in the city that I now call home.When the club does well? Everyone is happy. ¡Fiestas en las calles! But for the last few years, one of Europe’s most successful clubs has been stuck in a rough patch. After the team was humiliatingly knocked out of the Champion’s League in 2020, being beaten 8-2 to Bayern Munich, they weren’t seen on the streets of the city for weeks. That result kicked off a run of drama that would have put the Drag Race finale to shame. Lionel Messi, the world’s current—and maybe all-time—greatest player, asked to leave the club citing dissatisfaction with Josep Maria Bartomeu, Barça’s embattled president. This drove an outpouring of support from outlets as varied as the Chicago Bulls, New Zealand All Blacks, and even Liam Gallagher. The club refused his request, saying it came too late to activate the clause enabling him to leave for free, and as the world’s most expensive player, he just had to sit and wait. Then, after the peñas came together to force a vote of no-confidence in Bartomeu, the club president quit the day before he was about to be ousted, and Messi stood down his request to leave (at least until next year.)  Why is this interesting? OK. So far, so sports. But then things got ugly (and much more appropriate to WITI.) According to recent reports in the New York Times, the club hired a local marketing agency to troll key players—Messi, Piqué, and others who criticized the leadership—vía a series of sock puppets (fake accounts) across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. An investigation by a local paper uncovered the contract, and the club was revealed to have paid I3 Ventures, a local agency, $1.2m to publicly condemn its own players. And, in an approach that anyone who has raised a PO could tell you was a red flag, the club split the payment to I3 Ventures across a series of smaller, sub $200,000 invoices. The agency was allegedly paid six times over the market rate for their services, and these smaller amounts were to ensure the project wouldn’t be spotted by the club’s CFO, who has visibility on all expenditures over that size.This scandal has resulted in three things: “Barçagate”, an obvious moniker for the scandal; an inevitable one-star review-bombing of the agency (“Corrupt collaborators”, “army of rogues” and “manipulative clowns” being a few of my favorites); and—perhaps most seriously—a series of arrests at the break of dawn last month: their ex-president Josep Maria Bartomeu, their CEO, and their Head of Legal, who was taken in for misappropriation of club funds.6 days after the arrest, the peñas celebrated as they brought Joan Laporta back to the club, for his second reign as president of the world’s richest—and most drama-fueled—football club. (KM)Idea of the Day:Also in Barcelona—an incredibly smart new business idea that you’ll probably see in a city near you soon. News & Coffee take old, beat-up kiosks and transform them, providing you one of the best coffees in the city whilst you pick up all high-end magazines you can get away with expensing.Quick links:There’s so much more happening here Barcelona. March saw a week-long riot, with police vans being set on fire in protest over the arrest of Pablo Hasél. The rapper was convicted of “insulting the Spanish crown” after a recent track criticized the disgraced former king Juan Carlos I, who currently lives as a tax exile with a €4m unpaid bill. (KM) Uber has recently returned to the city, after being forced out of the city in 2019. Once again, the city’s taxi operators conducted a “slow drive” that closed down the streets and clogged up the primary artery of the city. (KM) Barcelona has been doing a lot to make itself a greener, more sustainable city. During the harsh 9 week lockdown we went through here (our kids weren’t even allowed outside) the local council built over 40km of cycle paths, transforming the city. (KM) And wrapping up the Catalan special edition, 5,000 music fans attended a concert here last month, no social distancing required. Everyone was provided with—and was required to wear—a high-quality facemask, and get a negative result on a same-day antigen test (KM)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Kevin (KM)Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The FC Barcelona Edition

Re-running a WITI classic today. Have a great weekend. -CJNKevin Maguire (KM) has spent 20 years in brand strategy, including almost 10 years at Google. He now helps brands build better things faster at Quickhatch, as well as running The New Fatherhood, a weekly newsletter exploring the changing nature of what it means to be a dad today. Kevin previously wrote about leadership issues at FC Barcelona.  Subscribe nowKevin here. The pandemic has changed how we communicate at work. Maybe forever. We're working from anywhere. We're joining meetings in virtual reality. Some are making “mouse jigglers” to trick their managers into thinking they’re available to chat when they’re afk. And if Zuckerberg has his way we’ll be floating around in a legless dystopia before you can say “the torment nexus is here.”But, for me, the biggest changes in how I connect have been more personal. We’ve thankfully left Zoom Happy Hours and Trivia Nights in 2020—where they belong—and we’re using scientifically verified ways to deal with video call fatigue, like shutting off our cameras. The ideal “video call without a camera” has always been there: the humble phone call. And it’s been making a comeback as the best way to check in.Why is this interesting?The trouble with phone calls, of course, is that two people both have to be available at the same time. And whilst scheduling a timeslot to talk can solve this, that can be at best  impersonal and at worst impractical—especially across continents.Enter the voice message (not to be confused with the voicemail). Mashable called it"the single most underrated and misunderstood mode of digital communication that Americans are missing out on." These messages have successfully created a third place in communication: the warmth of a phone call with the convenience of a text message. Voice messages allow us to express as many as 24 different emotions, so it's no wonder dating apps have leapt onto the trend, with often hilarious results.Whilst America might not have caught on (yet), voice messages are part of the fabric of life in Spanish-speaking countries. It’s strange to go a day without seeing someone recording one: walking through the street, sitting on a bus, waiting on a terraza—all talking into the bottom of their handsets, face-to-face with the display, the top of the phone tilted away towards the horizon. Speaking to the phone, not with it.Why are voice messages so prevalent here? Well, for non-native speakers, listening to Spanish can feel like grasping for a raft in a storm—after Japanese, it's the second-fastest spoken language, with an average of 7.8 syllables per second (English moves at a relatively leisurely 6.2). When compounded with the common usage of accents and special characters (like the ñ) in the language, typing ends up significantly slower than speaking. (Caption: Image via The Economist, who made the data more legible than the original study.)Voice messages bring all the clarity and emotion of a phone call, and none of the imposition. You send them asynchronously, volleying back and forth in a low-stakes rally, a way to create an ambient sense of intimacy between close friends and family, who—due to travel restrictions—you may not have seen in almost two years. Often short, sometimes long—I was walking and talking recently and realised I'd hit the 10 minute mark, and apologised profusely to the friend I was sending it to—but it doesn't matter, because there's no timetable on a reply. Voice messages don’t interrupt, or demand to be answered. They don’t get despondent after being left on read. They just are.A snapshot of a back and forth between myself and a friend, a mish-mash of short messages, voice messages, and missed phonecalls. Yes, that is a 12 minute voice message.The rise of the voice message has been accelerated by another piece of omnipresent technology: Airpods. It's no longer necessary to pace around talking into your phone—simply press record, put your phone in your pocket, and walk and talk. They’re the polar opposite of audio-based platforms like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces and Discord. Rather than many-to-many audio, it's incredibly targeted, private, a one-to-one experience. You’re free to wander the streets with the voice of your friend in your ear, like listening to a short podcast, recorded for an audience of one. (KM)Quick Links:A few negatives about voice messages that should be noted. First is that the experience still kinda sucks: do I lift it up to my ear to listen? Do I have to click then lift it? Why did my phone screen lock halfway through and it stopped? These suggested UX fixes would make a great start. (KM)The voice memo can also be incorporated into the writing process, a quicker way to get to what Anne Lamott called “The Shitty First Draft.” Talk to a friend about something interesting, import it into Otter.ai, and when you get back to my desk it’ll be there, ready to edit. It seems like I’m not the only one hacking them in this way. (KM)What about if you don’t want to listen to the message? Well, Whatsapp have you covered—they’re working on transcriptions inside the app, for those of us stubbornly holding onto the written word (KM)This essay should in no way be considered a vote for voice mail. HBR was sounding their death knell back in 2013, and they continue to be clunky and cantankerous. (KM)—WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Using anxiety to your advantage. How can we reclaim our relationship with anxiety, so it works for us, not against us? A healthy outlook on anxiety means viewing it as a part of being human, not as a problem to solve, says Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary in a new interview about how you can make anxiety your ally. —Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Voice Message Edition

Kevin Maguire (KM) writes the New Fatherhood. Kevin here. I spent the first few weeks of 2023 in Mumbai, India’s vibrant and bustling metropolis and glorious cultural melting pot. One of the five most populated cities in the world, home to over 22 million Mumbaikars, and predicted to grow by another 50% over the next 10 years. To say the city is overcrowded is an understatement—the city has grown at an explosive rate, and the infrastructure has been unable to keep up.The city is covered in evidence of upgrades, with new metro lines forming above and below the city streets. But whilst they wait for public transport to catch up, the three-wheeled auto-rickshaw remains the quintessential transport experience of the city. They’re fast, fierce and fantastic value for money, with most rides under 2 miles costing less than 25¢.They’re the city's lifeblood, responsible for ferrying its inhabitants between work, home, and the many fantastic places to eat and drink here. Like in any major city, you can use an application to book a ride, but it’s always more convenient to stand by the side of the road and hail one down, in a matter of seconds, with the familiar shout of “AUTO!” you’ll hear almost everywhere.If you’ve spent any time in Asia you’ll be familiar with the rickshaw, but you may know it under one of its many other guises: by it’s onomatopoeic moniker “tuk-tuk” in Sri Lanka, “keke” on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria, The rickshaw has a long history—originally two wheeled, and 100% human powered, with one “driver” carrying one passenger, later upgraded with a third wheel and an engine. These gas-powered alternatives first appeared in Japan in 1931, and quickly spread across Southeast Asia, arriving in India in 1959.The OG rickshaw. Batteries sold separately. Why is this interesting?Locals point to sometime in the late 1970s as the moment when the proliferation of auto-rickshaws became predestined. Rahul Bajaj, Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Bajaj Group, convinced the Maharashtra government the auto-rickshaw was the perfect solution to their growing population problems— only 9 million residents at the time—and the lack of suitable transportation infrastructure. The government approved their expansion, and the city was transformed as a result.No one knows exactly how many rickshaws are here in the city, and the number varies wildly. A 2019 report said there were around 125,000, but a year later they said the number was closer to 200,000, or 1 rickshaw for every 5 commuters, with around 75 million auto-rickshaws in operation across India. Riding through Mumbai on a rickshaw is an experience you won’t forget in a hurry—the rules of the road are different here, with the impetus on crash avoidance everyone else’s problem. The constant sound of horns blaring will be one of the first things you notice, as drivers tend not to rely on such novel inventions as wing mirrors here. You honk to make your presence known to other drivers, to let them triangulate your location akin to how dolphins whistle, or bats use echolocation (Noah went into more depth on this in The Car Horn Edition in 2020.)Those used to driving in less chaotic cities will need time to get used to the rhythm of Mumbai’s roads. An auto-rickshaw driver will be adept at finding any gap to drive into, working his way through a busy cross section like a reenactment of Frogger (or an certain roundabout scene in an action movie currently running theatres—if you’ve seen it, you’ll know the one I’m talking about) as you spot a gap and make your way into it, assuming other cars will choose to slow down rather than plow into your side. You make your turn, or pull out into the main current, whilst trusting—no, hoping—they will slow down. At first, every turn feels like a potential T-bone collision. After a while, you get used to it.Criticisms of the vehicles have been rising in recent years. Their issues focus on two key areas—safety and pollution. Auto-rickshaws come with no seatbelts, airbags, or any of the modern safety trappings we’ve come to expect from the vehicles we ride in. In normal circumstances this might not be something to worry about—one thinks of the lack of helmets seen on cyclists in Copenhagen, who are safely protected in their dedicated lanes—but coupled with the, let’s say, “innovative driving techniques” the auto-rickshaw drivers take here creates a cause for concern. An additional issue has been around the harassment, mistreatment and assault of women riding at night—a problem so rampant that the Government of India launched a pink rickshaw scheme in 2013, containing panic buttons and GPS tracking systems, driven by women, and with local districts providing financial incentives and favorable loan conditions to enable more women to purchase them.Pink rickshaw image. Credit Indian ExpressAir pollution in Mumbai is an increasingly serious problem, causing health concerns for residents and drivers alike, with auto-rickshaws contributing a large portion of the emissions due to their reliance on compressed natural gas (CNG). The government has begun a carrot and stick approach to spur a switch to electric rickshaws, mandating the eventual switchover, and incentivizing their purchase with loan access for those who wish to buy them. So far, these schemes have had limited success, as drivers see it as an added cost and inconvenience.But despite their problems, rickshaws are undoubtedly a part of the glorious cacophony of Mumbai. It will be curious to see if, and how, they evolve to keep up with the demands of this incredible city. (KM) Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Kevin (KM) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.