Ged Carroll

Month: May 2019

  • Kraft mothers day marketing + more

    Kraft Mothers Day marketing

    Kraft’s marketing has left a lot to be desired in the past couple of years partly due to the way the brand has implemented ZBB, but the Kraft Mothers day campaign running in the US is genius. It is a brave campaign that could fail due to wokeness or social conservatism. And they still went ahead and did it anyway. More FMCG related content here.

    Feedi RSS search engine

    Feedi Search Engine – part of the importance of media literacy is finding quality sources and anything that encourages adoption of RSS readers has the potential to be a good thing. If you need a good RSS reader, I can recommend Newblur which I have been using for a number of years. The reason why I like it is that you can train it to surface content of interest over time. It doesn’t machine learning to guesstimate it, but you have to make active decisions, which I think is a healthier balance.

    Game of Thrones collaboration

    MGM Resorts International – Winter Is Coming – MGM and HBO did a great tie-in to celebrate the start of the final Game of Thrones season. It is well worthwhile clicking on the link and going through their case study to see what MGM Resorts did.

    ZTE’s cyberpunk Nubia Alpha smart watch

    ZTE’s Nubia Alpha smart watch looks like something out of a cyber-punk novel. I love what ZTE have tried to do with the aesthetic. The key challenge is what looks like a shockingly bad user experience based on this video unboxing and preview. Wearables are a relatively new space and fair play to ZTE for attempting something this ambitious.

    WePresent

    WePresent – lovely creative brand building work by wetransfer. It is great the way WeTransfer consistently support fantastic creative. It is also a really amazing 404 error message page.

  • Reel-to-reel technology + more

    Return of reel-to-reel as musicians reject digital for better sound of dated technology – reel-to-reel tape recorders never really went away. They provide a super saturated effect to everything that they record. The bigger issue is perishable spare parts, servicing and future manufacturing of reel-to-reel tape machines. Ballfinger have attempted to make new machines, but existing manufacturers like Studer, Denon, Revox and Otari have long stopped making machines.

    TODAYonline | Exclusive: Tesla expects global shortage of electric vehicle battery minerals -sources – what about the environment? One of the reasons why I’ve been skeptical of Tesla’s approach to power for years. Its the reason why the likes of BMW and Toyota have looked at super-capacitors and hydrogen power – both internal combustion engines and fuel cells. It is interesting that Hyundai have been looking at hydrogen fuel cells for lorries. Toyota has hydrogen fuel cell powered cars.

    Nike’s Beijing 99 basketball tournament – It is hard to explain how popular basketball in China as a sport. Interest in the game is way beyond Europe. Basketball courts suit built up cities with a smaller area required than for a football pitch. The NBA has a large following in China. The local league has an extensive following as well.

    Chinese players that make the NBA draft are celebrated in China as well, even if they aren’t Chinese citizens, like American Taiwanese star Jeremy Lin.

    Chinese players like based on an ancient military ranking system with 99 shirts individually designed to be claimed. Nike cleverly melds Chinese interest and pride in their culture with their love of basketball.

    NIKE – Beijing 99 Teaser Film from M Skibiak on Vimeo.

    More on Nike here.

    Facebook Is Finding Problems With Artificial Intelligence Too – WIRED – (paywall)

    Disintegration – Great interview of the keyboardist on The Cure’s Distintergration which covers studio boredom well

  • Belkin Audio + Charge Rockstar

    The Belkin Audio + Charge Rockstar is an accessory that allows you to charge and listen via headphones to a modern iPhone at the same time.

    Apple’s move to the Lightning connector leaves a lot to be desired. It was designed primarily for its cosmetic benefits. Apple got rid of headphone sockets just to allow them to make iPhones even slimmer. Lightning is a triumph of form over function. But as an iPhone user; you have to work with what you have. Apple often isn’t great at providing solutions. If they were Apple would have made the Belkin Audio + Charge Rockstar.

    The anonymous white dongle now has a permanent place in my computer bag. It has come in handy listening to voice memos, audio books and miscellany whilst I’ve been working at client offices. It has come in handy when I have been on conference calls, without disturbing people around me. When I moved down to London, I said in a cubicle with an open back which added a certain amount of screening to calls that I made.

    The offices I have been working in are long white featureless bench tables with seating canteen style. Which is barely adequate for working, let alone listening in on a conference call, even with a judicious use of the mute button.

    Untitled

    I started off by trying an alternative product that I bought on Amazon. It the sound was barely audible, full of noise and clicks. One of Amazon’s challenges is the lack of quality control of products featured in marketplace. This has become stuffed with Chinese vendors whose products vary considerably in quality.

    Untitled

    It was rather like listening to a numbers station shortwave transmission. Except the static was induced by poor product design. Rather than the distance, frequency jamming and atmospheric conditions between the listener and an anonymous low power shortwave station in the Middle East, Cuba, North Korea or Eastern Europe.

    By comparison, the Belkin Audio + Charge Rockstar, adds nothing. No cracks, no hisses, no white noise that wasn’t there beforehand. And it charges. More related posts here.

  • Agnotology + more things

    Agnotology and Epistemological Fragmentation – Data & Society: Points – well worth a good read. Agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. This reminded me a lot of work that was done by large corporates on tobacco health and more recently on peak oil and climate change. More recently it seems to be culture and value related; where the results don’t fit the wider progressive view in academia. That too isn’t healthy. More consumer behaviour related posts here.

    WePresent – lovely creative brand building work by wetransfer and an amazing 404 error message page. Each of the works presented here are very thoughtfully curated for a creative audience. Its all amazing.

    Gigalife by Vodafone | FaceTime families: What 5G means for those who stay in touch by screen – not a lot, wi-fi and 4G is more important and perfectly adequate

    When manipulation is the digital business model – dark patterns as we call it in the trade (paywall)

    Facebook’s off-again, on-again affair with privacy – Axios – less of a pivot and more of a zig-zag. What appears to be apparent is that Facebook’s internal values are at odds with wider society and there won’t be any meeting of minds any time soon.

    Leo Burnett, Lucky Generals and Ogilvy decline to pitch for Audi – Leo Burnett London, Lucky Generals, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi London and VMLY&R all declined to take part in Audi’s advertising review. Which is a pretty damning critique of either Audi’s pitch process, or their reputation in the UK as a client. Given how toxic Boots or Samsung are as a client, this is a pretty damning indictment of Audi as an organisation in the UK. This is a world away from when Audi’s Vorsprung Durch Technik ads went head to head with BMW in the 1980s and 1990s.

  • Peepy and Mother Lee + more things

    Peepy and Mother Lee take influence to the next level. These Thai influencers are on point with style that crosses gender boundaries and is atemporal in nature. I am surprised the Peepy and Mother Lee don’t get more publicity outside Thailand. I am also surprised that they haven’t become the muse of a prominent fashion house or two.

    They look like precisely the kind of people someone like Vivienne Westwood would embrace as a muse. More on luxury here.

    Yet another way of landing the same Burger King message: Burger King’s flame-grilled glasses are too hot to handle | Creativepool. Having worked on FMCG brand, I know how hard it is to continually land the same messages in different ways that won’t generate groans from the client base. These are brands that people have known for decades, it’s hard to say the same thing in different ways that don’t jade audiences.

    This Adobe marketing gimmick was going around a lot of the people that I know – Creative Types – the characters are nicely drawn, but I don’t know how accurate they are. I suspect something even less accurate than the MBTI. This was clever because people want to find out more about themselves, its an itch that they can’t help but scratch. In return Adobe builds their marketing email list.

    Great economic analysis on China from the DLD Conference earlier this year

    Tristan Harris is getting a lot of traction for his message in wonkish circles and I don’t see big technology firms having their ducks in a row to deal with the outcome. I suspect that some of the problem might be what I describe as a wilful autism. 20 years ago, Silicon Valley was a place with utopian outlook, the unforeseen outcomes happened when the internet reached a societal critical mass.