Ged Carroll

Month: January 2018

  • World Creative Studio + more things

    Mood Swing Rebrand – World Creative Studio – interesting take on MTV’s rebrand in terms of approach to the communications challenge. What is even more impressive is that it is coming out of MTV’s inhouse World Creative Studio

    An Ad Executive Often in the Vanguard Peers Into the Future – The New York Times  – The one thing that’s kind of disturbing about all of this to me and potentially The New York Times is: Are we moving into a world where the dominant platforms of media consumption are basically getting close to a point where they’re blacklisting the monetization of news? It seems that there is no huge demand in Google’s program commissioning to commission news. I don’t see there’s a big appetite for Facebook saying, “We would like 20 news organizations to provide news bulletin programming for Facebook Watch.” We know there are dozens and dozens of news organizations around the world, or at least a dozen or two that include The Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, the BBC and so on, who are, for the most part, the keepers of truth in news and the people who keep the public informed. And it seems odd to me that if you have aspirations to take up a very significant part of the media consumption time of the public that you do not have an overt policy for the dissemination of news – actually its not odd at all if you look at consumer research about media

    Microsoft partners Publicis Groupe to develop Marcel platform | Marketing Interactive – will build and connect Marcel to its deep technology and AI capabilities, leveraging Microsoft Azure AI and Office 365

    Can This Brooklyn Entrepreneur Reinvent Public Relations? | Forbes – I am skeptical but interesting hypothesis PR disruption through SaaS

    Investing in Indonesia | Google Blog – getting a stake on Go-Jek

    7-Eleven Grabs A Cup Of The Coffee Market – YouTube – interesting how 7-Eleven is going after McDonalds

    Citizen Considers Broadening Appeal With $18,000 Watches – Bloomberg – interesting how wearables isn’t something that they care about that much

    When A Small Leak Sinks A Great Ship: Deanonymizing Tor Hidden Service Users Through Bitcoin Transactions Analysis – by Al Jawaheri, Al Sabah, Boshmaf & Erbad (Qatar University) (PDF)

    HNA ditches vanity purchases for Silk Road commodity deals to vie for Beijing’s support  | South China Morning Post – interesting bits here. Massive change in M&A strategy to align with government – but it makes me wonder how they are going to service a lot of their debt?

    Intel Warned Chinese Companies of Chip Flaws Before U.S. Government – WSJ – so basically Intel betrayed the US, Russia and most western governments, almost all its client base in the server market. It is a pity that Oracle and its SPARC business aren’t in a position to take full advantage of it, but Qualcomm might

    Why Americans see Buddhism as a philosophy rather than a religion — Quartz  – Suzuki regarded Kerouac as a “monstrous imposter” because he sought only the freedom of Buddhist awakening without the discipline of practice

    General and Surprising – Pul Graham – The most valuable insights are both general and surprising. F = ma for example. But general and surprising is a hard combination to achieve. That territory tends to be picked clean, precisely because those insights are so valuable.

    Cheap as hips: why Malaysia is the best place for Chinese to retire | South China Morning Post – interesting article, but what about the socio political aspects of living in Malaysia? Malaysian interpretation of Islam is moving closer to that practiced in the Gulf. This is exasperating the discrimination against Chinese and South Asian ethic origin Malaysians such that the country is suffering a brain drain More China related content here.

    Shanghai wants you … but can it really be as attractive to foreigners as Hong Kong? | South China Morning Post – Shanghai isn’t comfortable or attractive, Shenzhen might have more chance if it took on Hong Kong laws and systems

    The Follower Factory – The New York Times – this isn’t news

    Hedonism 1988 – amazing read by Phil Cheesman via our Matt

  • Dark Satanic Mills

    dark satanic mills

    Dark Satanic Mills immediately looked like the kind of graphic novel that I would like. I grew up with British dystopian science fiction with a fascistic bent. From the numerous franchises within 2000AD magazine to Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta.

    The tone of these stories was set by a UK dealing with:

    • Decolonisation and trying to work out its place in the world
    • Economic chaos due to inflation, a shrinking manufacturing base and globalisation
    • A battle of elites against working people
    • The rise of right wing populist nationalism a la Britain First
    • The rise of racism 

    It sounds rather similar doesn’t it?

    The Sedgwick brothers Dark Satanic Mills fits right into this very British genre of graphic novels. The illustration style is similar to the stark black and white kinetic styles of 2000AD or Moore’s From Hell. It should be of now surprise that the jacket copy was written by Pat Mills of 2000AD. It almost felt like the baton was being passed on to the next generation.

    The book has a premise that is similar to the body of work in 2000AD. It taps into Moore, channeling not only V for Vendetta, but also his love of mysticism.

    William Blake’s Jerusalem and The Bible fit into a post-apocalyptic backdrop. Blake fits the bill perfectly: his association with the English identity often misused by ‘patriots’, his innate distrust in systems and of organised religion make his words the ideal foil.

    The heroine Charlie is a dispatch rider who ends up in possession of a manuscript that will expose the populist government and the religious zealots it uses as a paramilitary force.

    The religious zealots called the Soldiers of Truth are a chimera of Britain First and the droogs in Kubrick’s film adaption of A Clockwork Orange.

    Charley ricochets around an England where rational thought, tolerance, logical analysis and experts are enemies of the state. It echoes Michael Gove‘s

    “I think people in this country, have had enough of experts.”

    Without giving too much more away, the story finishes in an ambigious way leaving Charley and the authorities open to a future largely unwritten. Again the ambiguity of a post-Brexit future is an obvious analogy. The fact that Dark Satanic Mills was published in 2013 makes it feel curiously prescient: a parable for our times.

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  • Ralph Lauren Snow Beach + more

    Gone before you could get your hands on it. I remember this Ralph Lauren stuff from the first time around. Original pieces were so cheap just a few years ago and now go for mad money as there has been a 90s revival in fashion circles. This style of Ralph Lauren makes a pleasant change from the Supreme circle jerk that seems to have become a parody of hype beast culture. It is interesting how Nike that should have rode this trend is currently in the doldrums. Expect a Timberland style brown boot revival next and I hope that skinny jeans finally die. More streetwear related content here

    “This Is Serious”: Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral | Vanity Fair – saying nothing that the industry hasn’t been saying for years

    Publicis Groupe Press Release | Business Wire – is undergoing a destabilization attempt following the dissemination to its auditors and some financial analysts of an anonymous letter stating that Publicis Groupe overvalued its organic growth for 2016 and 2017 through an early application of IFRS 15

    Financial Times WPP shares slide as Credit Suisse downgrades ad agency – (paywall)

    Amazon is threatening Google’s ad space monopoly, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell says | CNBC – Amazon already owns many e-commerce searches

    Bose names WPP group as global agency | News | Campaign Asia – across creative, media and digital along with localisation and production

    Does Wall Street Finally Care About Sustainability? HBR – skeptical (with reason) on BlackRock’s social business spiel

    ITS Automakers and Policymakers May Be on a Path to Electric Vehicles; Consumers Aren’t – ITS – price, poor performance of vehicles versus petrol and diesel vehicles, the secondhand market in electric vehicles is borked due to battery ownership etc

    Texas Job Growth Swings More With Services Than Oil | Dallas Fed – which shows how diversified the Texas economy has got over the last 30 years

    GoPro Shutters its Developer Program | Programmable Web – that doesn’t look too good

    Report: Apple to cease iPhone X production in midyear thanks to lackluster sales – SiliconANGLE – more complex, how does it fit in the 2018/2019 product set

  • The Master Switch by Tim Wu

    Untitled

    The Master Switch author Tim Wu is an American lawyer, professor and expert  on internet matters. He is main claim to fame is coining the phrase ‘net neutrality’ back in 2003. He is well known as an advocate of the open internet.

    One needs to bear all this in mind when thinking about The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. In it Wu posits a natural lifecycle for the rise and maturation of platform and media companies; which he called the ‘long cycle’.

    Wu uses the following companies as examples:

    • Western Union’s telegraph monopoly
    • Western Union-owned Associated Press’ relationship with the nascent newspaper industry
    • AT&T in telecoms
    • The early film industry and the rise of Hollywood studios
    • Apple’s history – though this point is less nuanced because Apple has cycled a number of times between open and closed systems – a nuance that Wu doesn’t fully pick up on

    In The Master Switch, he points about how these companies have moved from open systems to closed systems in order to maximise profits and resist change. Wu then uses these cycle to argue that a repeat of history was under way with the modern internet. In 2010 when the book was written; this would have ben the rise of Google, Facebook and Amazon.

    Ed Vaizey announced that ISPs should be free to abandon net neutrality in the UK and it was abandoned in the US when FCC chairman Ajit Pai was appointed by Donald Trump. More telecoms related content here.

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  • Personal online brand

    Ketchum’s David Gallagher wanted to know whether he should have his own website as part of managing his personal online brand? He initially felt that publishing on Facebook and LinkedIn was enough. There was also discussion around platforms like Medium. None of which give you real control over your content. Wadds like me felt that owning your own platform was important.

    Why have a website as part of your personal online brand?

    • LinkedIn and Facebook don’t have the same agenda as you. Your content becomes a hostage to their business whims
    • It is hard for users to discover your content, Facebook and Google make it so
    • Even on Medium you no longer really own your content. It can’t be easily exported like content on the Blogger platform
    • Even in the world of Facebook, Google is still a reputation engine

    So show do you manage the process?

    You need to find a system that works for you. Here is what mine looks like for social syndication.

    1801 - personal publishing

    IFTTT – if then, then that. A service that allows you to trigger actions based on pre-created inputs. It allows rules to be built up based around different inputs:

    • A new post via RSS
    • A favorited tweet
    • A photograph tagged with a particular label or hashtag

    It supports numerous services including Flickr photography and pinboard.in

    Buffer – buffer is a social publishing tool. I have pre-scheduled slots. It is also compatible with publishing posts sent via IFTTT.

    Pinboard.in – pinboard is a way of storing your bookmarks with notes and tags online rather than on your computer. Your bookmarks then become accessible wherever you are. It is handy to be able to search things that you have found previously. Google seems to have moved away from organising all the world’s information to mainly focus on ‘now’ content. Pinboard helps you get around this.