Ged Carroll | renaissance chambara

German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says | Reuters – why do the USB chargers on airplane cockpits have any intelligence at all that would store a virus and allow it propagate. I would be very paranoid about using any USB chargers in coffee shops or an aircraft seat moving forwards. It’s one of the reasons why I love having a power bank

Ogilvy’s rebrand reveals an ad industry in confusion | Thomas Barta – an inhouse marketers perspective on things. If you substituted the word advertising for PR in this as a discipline it could be an analysis of all agencies.

iPhone maker Foxconn is churning out “Foxbots” to replace its human workers — Quartz – this is partly down to some of the manual dexterity required being similar to a watchmaker in some parts of the assembly. The process is repeatable, but hard to deliver

[Publish] Facebook Profiles can no longer be connected to Buffer Publish – Buffer FAQ – well that’s a bit of a bummer

Things that made my day this week:

E3 largely past me by, except for this trailer for a forthcoming game. Loving the William Gibson’s sprawl meets synth-wave vibe to it

This is a few years old, but Blu e-cigarettes put together a good documentary seven-episode series on dance music and DJ culture that is well worth watching

Think influencers can be filled with entitlement, who inflate their follower numbers and leech off marketing budgets and want an alternative? You wouldn’t be alone. Virtual personalities have been a thing for a few years in Japan thanks to  Yamaha’s Vocaloid software; you have a purely artificial ‘idol’ (popstar) who appears as a hologram. Virtual YouTube personalities have followed and it was only a matter of time for one of them to start speaking in English to increase their reach.

I’ll let Sakura Fujima introduce herself. And here’s the kind of content we can look forward to expecting from her

I’m a big fan of Carhartt and love this advert

MTV are looking to get hold of some sweet streaming production money by bring back golden oldies including Daria. Expect more dry witticisms and the same monotone delivery that was very gen-X zeitgeist. This time Daria is becoming more woke, by blowing off her bestie Jane and focusing on her black friend Jodie instead.

While its not likely to affect your post club kebab shop any time soon big food has been showing some interest in automation (like McDonald’s self-service ordering and apps). There will obviously be a trade-off between the likely returns on capital expenditure versus the ready availablility of cheap flexible labour. The number of available products for sale and their relative complexity is another consideration. This Bay Area installation is taking things to their logical conclusion.

creator burger robot serves this gourmet diner classic for 6 dollars from designboom on Vimeo.

How Batteries Went From Primitive Power to Global Domination – Bloomberg – but has the technology moved on at a pace to really justify this upsurge?

Beans – pretty sure that this isn’t an ad, but nicely played

Fifa threatens action against BeoutQ for infringement of broadcast rights | The Drum – this is interesting given that BeoutQ seemed to be a way of attacking Qatar-owned sports TV stations that come under the gulf states stand off with Qatar

Opinion | Hey Boss, You Don’t Want Your Employees to Meditate – The New York Times – nails it (paywall)

I took a little bit of time to reflect on the content that I have been writing. Specifically what are people finding of interest? This couldn’t happen without people actually reading the content, so thank you for reading; feel free to come back on a regular basis. Over the past six months readers like you have found the following articles of most interest. In reverse order

Re-use, Re-edit, Remix and Recycle – if you read the industry publications we here about personalised ad creative driven by ad targeting. But often the core creative and is created unnecessarily. Instead, what’s the minimum viable creative tweak that can be used?

This Wasn’t The Internet We Envisaged – in the word’s of Terry Pratchet:

“If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.”

So it was time for reflection in order to get a perspective as the regulators and media discovered Facebook, Google and Amazon where not models of virtuous conduct.

The Biggest Public Relations Agencies Stuckness and Market Dynamics – The Holmes Report came out with their top 250 (biggest) PR agencies around the world in terms of billings. I decided to delve into the numbers for financial years 2014 – 2017.

This supports a hypothesis of slowing market growth and solidifying market dynamics at a macro level. Strategic acquisitions start to make less sense compared to improving efficiences and effectiveness.

Throwback Gadget: Bose Wave System – usually my gadget reviews tend to be some of the better performing content. The Bose Wave review was the only one that appears this time around.

Social Networks 10 Years Ago – a reflection on what a more diverse social media eco-system looked like.

The Advertising Industry Post – the macro effects buffeting the world’s largest marketing services conglomerates.

Mercedes China Syndrome – Chinese netizens are jumping the Great Firewall to vilify western brands who reflect views that ‘offend the Chinese people’ – even when this content is aimed at non-Chinese audiences. Mercedes’ offence was an Instagram image with one of their cars and a quote from the exiled Dalai Lama

Personal online brand – at a time when we’re seeing social media turning into walled gardens. David Gallagher asked the Twitterverse if he should have his own site?

Twitterverse: @wadds says I need a proper blog. I say I can do it on LinkedIn or Facebook. What say you? Build my own?

I weighed in on why he should and how I manage the process.

Chinese smartphone eco-system for beginners – Winston Sterzel did a good video for the average bystander on the Chinese smartphone eco-system. I thought it was a good film to share with marketers  – with a bit more background information answering some of the ‘why’ in terms of market dynamics.

App constellations 2018  research – I built on work that I had done in 2014 and 2016, comparing the rate of growth across different companies apps based on Fred Wilson’s definition of app constellations. This was also the post that took me the longest to research!

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