Innovation in hardware + more

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Innovation in hardware

How Streetwear Is Driving Innovation in Hardware | HYPEBEAST – the innovation in hardware that Hypebeast is concerned about is fasteners clips and connectors in clothing and accessories. Some streetwear brands are using zips in a similar way to Vivienne Westwood during punk. They are borrowing from technical clothing, military gear and alpine sports for inspiration. More design related content here.

Branding

Cause Marketing Isn’t Working for Young People – Adweekaccording to DoSomething’s survey, “Nike still only secured a 60% aided awareness of an association with any cause at all and only 27% with racial justice.” – doesn’t work unless it goes beyond a single campaign. This also has implication for this work and ZBB

FMCG

P&G’s Pritchard wants to ‘reinvent’ advertising with films as streaming disrupts landscape – literally going back to soap operas

Legal

Brussels poised to probe Apple over Spotify’s fees complaint | Financial Times – Spotify trying to weaponise anti trust law against Apple in a similar way to Amazon did in the US over Apple Books a number of years earlier. Spotify | Time to Play Fair – of course, fails to discuss issue of when is Spotify going to play fair with artists?

Luxury

Ralph Lauren’s CMO on retelling its brand story to ‘reach the kid looking for Supreme’ | The Drum“We’ve marketed those in a very bespoke, very direct way to newer audiences. We can market on one hand to someone who’s been into the brand for 20, 30 years, who wore Polo Sport back in the 90s, but we can also market that product mix and that story to a younger kid who’s looking for Supreme. – hype isn’t only about media targeting yet according to this puff piece its all about digital media technology which is BS. It indicates a wider lack of focus there on craft, planning style insights, design, curation, the move to online ‘drops’ on certain collections

Media

Where North and South Korea Meet: On TV – The New York Times – I do feel a bit concerned that these people aren’t treated with more respect (paywall)

Vince McMahon’s XFL Sets TV Deals With Disney, Fox | Hollywood Reporter – second time around. The league originally ran in 2001 and then folded with a 50+ million dollar loss

Technology

Anki shutting down despite $200 million in funding – Axios – bigger question consumers must start to have about having cloud in the product, is it really that smart as a model. I personally don’t think so. Also should cloud and product be sold by different companies a la Alexia and Harmon Kardon etc

Why doesn’t Britain have a Huawei of its own? The answer speaks volumes | The Guardian – goes back further than Thatcher with the wider UK banking culture, Walker, Goldsmith, Rowland. The lack of a long term management culture and lack of equivalent to the landesbank’s of Germany. But a good deal of the blame has to be laid at the feet of BT

How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster | Bloomberg – Angela Ahrendts was a paper tiger in Apple’s retail stores. But I’ve not had as bad as an experience as the ones outlined in the article

DeepGlint: the Chinese AI firm that helped police catch a criminal who had been on the run for 20 years | South China Morning Post – is it China’s technology or its implementation that is more of a paradigm shift. I am inclined to think implementation