Is Meta giving us a choice?
If you read our last article, you’ll know we urged businesses not to build everything on someone else’s platform. Especially one that changes the rules without warning. Well – here we are again. Case in point: Instagram’s (aka Meta’s) new “consent or pay” model. The premise? Simple on the surface: Agree to being tracked and […]
Is social media dying? Or are we just waking up?
There’s a growing narrative that 2025 could be the year social media enters its terminal decline. Time spent on platforms in developed countries actually peaked back in 2022 and has been on the decline ever since. The sharpest drop, perhaps surprisingly, is amongst Gen Z. Older generations are the only ones that are increasing their […]
Search is dead, long live search
SEO has always been an unrelenting pursuit of success. Since the public launches of large language models such as ChatGPT, a lot has been said about AI search and the importance of appearing within AI-generated answers, with much of the early SEO commentary being speculative and often serving more as click-bait than practical guidance. Many […]
Blind trust in AI
Something odd has happened in the last two years. When we pitch to a new client, we have to earn trust. It’s a slow, layered process: showing up consistently, creating familiarity long before the first conversation, then backing it up with our website, our work, our track record and the way we speak about our […]
Is social media entering its final act?
The Financial Times recently suggested that 2025 could be remembered as the year social media’s long decline became irreversible. They made this point on TikTok – the very platform now flooded with the kind of AI-generated noise they warn could spell the end. It’s a striking observation, especially when you consider how many of us […]
Rebrand time? Hmm…
Time for a rebrand? It’s not about how you look. It’s about who you are. “We think it might be time for a rebrand.” It’s something we hear regularly and often, it comes from well-established teams who feel things just aren’t sitting right. Something’s off or out of sync. A little tired, maybe, or […]
Why good marketing alone isn’t enough
It was our eldest son’s 15th birthday last week. And in a rare and very welcome moment, our youngest – twelve years old and normally glued to his mates and his screen – offered to help bake the cake. Naturally, I jumped at the chance. Just the two of us, chatting about our favourite cakes, […]
The business of creativity
Just finished reading “The Business of Creativity” white paper – and here’s what stuck: I don’t always finish reports like this. If I’m honest, they’re often too long to stick with and sometimes a bit too pleased with themselves. Maybe it was the contributors that caught my eye (Sir John Hegarty) or because I’ve just […]
What everyone thinks an app is – and what it really can be
When most people hear the word app, they think of something they can download from the Apple Store or Google Play. A shiny icon that lives on their phone. A place to scroll, tap, or stream. And that’s not wrong… but it’s only part of the story. At Ashby, we build apps in the broader […]
Do you check the plumber’s taps before you hire them?
Do you check the plumber’s taps before you hire them? There is a saying in the trade: “The plumber always has a leaky tap.” Not because they don’t know how to fix it, but because they’re too busy fixing everyone else’s. It’s a phrase we’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Last week, while in talks with […]
