The Loadstars' Diary: Swag, satnav, and Superbowl ads

Having just returned from Manifest in Las Vegas with a suitcase weighing 14.5kg (up from 13.3kg on the outbound trip) here is my official tier list of exhibition hall swag: 

1. Anything edible. Chocolate is an excellent source of sugar to keep you energised throughout a conference; I’m never saying no to a mini bag of M&Ms.
2. Socks. Always useful and you can never have enough.  
3. Assuming it’s past 3 or4pm, anything drinkable. Beer, wine, spirits… I don’t care.   
4. Pens. Again, always useful and bonus points if one doubles up as something else (torch, fidget spinner, back scratcher, etc)  
5. Other wearable items. Hats, t-shirts, gloves. I may or may not take these items; it depends on the design.  
6. Wire-less chargers. They are pretty big, so take up vital chocolate real-estate in my bag and never seem to work past two weeks.  
7. Travel mugs. As above – very clunky and never seem to work as well as one you already own. 
8. Random plastic crap. Classic examples include key rings, pop sockets, company logos, and stress balls – aka landfill fodder. 

One event The Loadstar can categorically predict WILL NOT be used as an advert for AI-determined routing decisions was an Amazon Prime van in the UK last week whose SatNav directed its driver to, literally, drive into the sea. 

Facebook: All about Great Britain

The driver was apparently attempting to deliver a parcel to Foulness Island, off the east coast, connected to the mainland by a causeway that disappears under the water at high tide. Now, we’ve all heard about dynamic routing systems, but perhaps they could do with being updated with the latest tide tables? 

Ryan Petersen of Flexport certainly knows how to make waves. On LinkedIn, just before the Super Bowl, he posted: “Super Bowl ads are high ROI they say. Let’s find out!” And he posted an AI-generated ad about how the jerseys got to the game. As ever with Ryan Petersen, the nay-sayers were quick to point out that Superbowl ads are expensive – and questioned the value for a loss-making company. 

Well, The Loadstar team reckons the value was high, not least via its success in winding people up. Because Flexport appears nowhere in the long list of advertisers for the game. The ad, on YouTube, is called “Big Game ad” – pointedly avoiding the trademarked ‘Super Bowl’ tag. And with an AI-created ad, the production cost was likely to be minimal, and with no spend on broadcasting, it was a nice little marketing coup. 

Flexport seems to have achieved Super Bowl adjacency without technically touching the Super Bowl. Which, for a logistics company, is oddly on-brand. 

They say never meet your heroes, but meeting Ryan Petersen in the flesh at Manifest 2026, I couldn’t resist telling him that my six-year-old niece won’t stop asking about the Suez Canal since becoming obsessed with his book, The Big Ship and the Little Digger (true story). Well, it turns out the old adage is correct. Maybe it was something to do with my badge proudly displaying ‘The Loadstar’, but Ryan didn’t seem equally thrilled about our encounter… 

Meanwhile, some 17 journalists were left waiting for 30+ minutes on Monday, after enthusiastically joining a hastily arranged Hapag-Lloyd press conference to announce its (pending) acquisition of Zim. Alongside scuttling the ambitions of the Israeli liner’s CEO, Eli Glickman, to take full control of the carrier, the call hammered Hapag-Lloyd’s press conference punctuality average for the year.