Small business + other news

2 minutes estimated reading time

Small business

What does small business really contribute to economic growth? | Aeon Essays – not as much as politicians etc would have you believe. Probably the most emblematic example of ‘small business’ contributing to economic growth was Margaret Thatcher. Small business and financial services were supposed to replace the manufacturing sector which had been devastated.

Business

Will.i.am’s startup raises $117 million, enters enterprise market | Reuters – don’t hold your breath

Poor PR Performance Puts Publicly-Held Agencies On Back Foot | Holmes Report – great analysis by Arun

Consumer behaviour

Majority Of White Americans Say They Believe Whites Face Discrimination : NPR – where to start with this?

Online eco-system maps | Coventry University – students self-identify their web habits looking at it you can see how the public focuses on just a few sites

Ethics

No, of that I’m innocent. – Scobleizer – I was reading this and had my fingers covering my eyes. I am just thankful not to be counselling Scoble as a PR person or a lawyer

Marketing

Trump Data Guru: I Tried to Team Up With Julian Assange  – A Republican digital strategist who worked with Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 campaign told The Daily Beast that Nix should not be viewed as a reliable narrator.
“Alexander Nix is not credible at all,” the strategist said. “He is a consummate salesman, and there are numerous instances already out in the public record where he made claims that were not just factually wrong—they were total fabrications.” – we’re still no closer to the truth

PRCA Study: ROI Concerns Slow Digital Marketing Spend For UK PR firms – I suspect that this is a problem of strategy rather than measurement. Influencer programmes are very much a random bet in comparison to paid media

Uniqlo’s Four Secrets for Building a Global Brand | Fortune – ‘truth telling’ rather than storytelling

Media

Taylor Swift is going to save the CD | Quartz – one of the few things I can agree with Taylor Swift on

Clarifying Recent Tests | Facebook Media – interesting move given the panic caused by falling page engagement rates

Retailing

Alibaba revenues up 61% to US$8.3T, annual active consumers grew to 488M in Q3 2017 | China Internet Watch – the scale of the numbers are huge

Ikea returns to Aichi after 1970s department store presence proved hard fit | The Japan Times – interesting reflections on when the flat pack giant was sold in a Japanese department store. There was an expectation that products came fully assembled

Technology

Harmony Link EOS or EOL? Logitech – looks like Logitech is going to need a crisis comms agency in March next year

China’s Technology Ambitions Could Upset the Global Trade Order – The New York Times – AMD unpatriotic

Wireless

The Unprecedented Explosion of Smartphones in Myanmar – Bloomberg – this is insane. When I was working on Myanmar programmes some 3 years ago the internet penetration was in single figures

Web of no web

iPhone supplier Catcher Tech to make augmented-reality parts- Nikkei Asian Review – but this doesn’t mean that they are for Apple