Month: September 2019

  • Things that made my day this week

    Mastertape volume six by The Reflex was on heavy rotation for me over the past few weeks. Mastertape volume six is up to The Reflex’s usual high quality.

    Valerie Plume’s ‘Undercover’ ad makes use of her CIA heritage in a political ad that breaks new ground. It feels like a high quality television trailer. Plume’s identity as a CIA officer was blown by the Bush regime in the run up to the Iraq war. Her husband who was a former diplomat expressed doubts over Saddam Hussein’s nuclear programme. State department official Richard Armitage, leaked her details to the New York Times. So Plume developed a career as an author and aspiring politician. There had been some controversy over anti-Semitic comments that have been attributed to her.

    https://youtu.be/ICW-dGD1M18

    Retail and food services at an architectural level often lack theatre and experience. Once you’ve looked past faux Edison bulbs and raw brick walls, there isn’t much difference between a WeWork office, a clothing boutique and a burger joint. So its nice to see innovation like this – a giant circular juice machine that turns discarded peels of squeezed oranges into 3D printed juice cups. The mix of form, function and theatre and kinetic sculpture is a winning one.

    The baked goods market in china by Daxue consulting – baked goods sales in China are interesting because of their direct link with middle class consumer style consumption. Trying to get good bread in China isn’t easy, even in top tier cities, particularly if you are looking for . More on FMCG related content here

    Keanu Reeves speaks Japanese to Cyberpunk 2077 fans at Tokyo Game Show【Video】 | SoraNews24 -Japan News- – can Keanu Reeves become even more legendary? Yes, because he’s Keanu Reeves. On a more serious note, it will be very hard for Cyberpunk 2077 to live up to the hype around the game. Even if it fails Cyberpunk 2077 has breathed new life into cyberpunk culture and sparked new interest into its canon of literature and film.

  • Influencer marketing – what does the future hold

    What does the future hold for influencer marketing was an event organised by PR Week that I got to attend last week.  Below are some of the thoughts and key points that came out of the event.

    The Competition and Markets Authority

    They are responsible for enforcing The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Act (2008) (paywall) which governs transparency and claims across all marketing including social media influence campaigns.

    In terms of jurisdiction they have a reciprocal relationship with the FTC to enforce the law on campaigns that are being run out of the US that would affect the UK and vice versa. Geography can no longer be considered a defence.

    In terms of compliance, there is an emphasis on brands needing to monitor influencer campaigns and enforce disclosure. The legal responsibility falls equally across brands, agencies and influencers. All three are obliged to go through content and retroactively apply the act if the content is likely to be resurfaced in the future. So you are less like to have to alter tweets and Facebook posts than say YouTube videos and blog posts.

    In general they felt that brands (and their agencies) were too naive and trusting with regards influencers.

    False and misleading claims at the corporate brand level (a hypothetical example would be gold mine claiming its a green sustainable company) aren’t something that they would deal with, but they acknowledged that this kind of incident would likely breach the law.

    At the moment the Competition and Markets Authority is considering the role of platforms as agents of influence, but isn’t looking at items like Amazon’s recent algorithmic change.

    Unsurprisingly the Competitions and Markets Authority have no desire to get involved in regulating political campaigns on social. The whole area is radioactive. Whilst there would be societal benefit, it would call into question the independence of the civil service and a host legal / constitutional issues.

    Judging by the reaction of the audience, more of them were up to speed and complying with GDPR than The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Act – not for profits seemed shocked to find out that they weren’t exempt

    Content crowdsourcing platform Tribe

    Tribe talked about how Logitech used Instagramers to create photos for their paid media campaign to drive direct sales.

    Ad creative was lasting a week and a half on Facebook (Facebook & Instagram) before ‘ad fatigue’ set in. From my own personal experience, traditional creative lasted appreciably longer. Tribe didn’t indicate whether they had an opinion on the cause of this premature ad fatigue. Factors that might be responsible include context collapse (lower usage, with less time per session on the platform by consumers) that has been afflicted the Facebook platform for a few years

    Logitech internal division of labour on social influencer marketing campaigns

    One of the perennial questions that is asked is where does PR stop and (digital) marketing teams start with regards social media influencers. Logitech’s approach was a common sense approach to this question. High follower number influencers were dealt with by the PR team just like members of the press or celebrities. Micro and nano influencers were co-opted by marketers as part of the process to drive sales. It makes sense, but it was the first time I had heard it broken down explicitly by a brand in public.

    MSL research on the future of influencer marketing

    They had wanted to explore both consumer and influencer attitudes to extrapolate insights; given the codependent nature of influencers on agencies and brands.

    The research involved surveying 1,000 consumers and 100 influencers. So take the insights with a pinch of salt. The slides weren’t shared but I’ve reconstructed the data from photos I took at the event.

    • 1,000 consumers were asked about their thoughts on the influencer landscape
    • 100 influencers were asked on their views on brand partnerships

    Slide4

    Slide5

    Slide6

    Slide7

    Influencers don’t like to be pigeonholed as influencers, according to consumers the title has become a dirty word

    This conclusion is counter intuitive. The common wisdom is that:

    • Gen-y and gen-z are happy to ‘sell out’
    • Professional v-logger (YouTube, Twitch, TikTok etc) are desired professions in the same way that DJ, rock musician or celebrity were previously

    Yet the influencers surveyed think that they are changing the world for the better. For instance some of them are dealing with fans who share their suicidal thoughts. But the label of ‘influencer’ was considered to have lost its currency.

    Influencers that other influencers respect. People who have demonstrated resilience; they have gone through trials and tribulations and triumphed. Zoella and Lilly Singh were among the most popular cited.

    Influencers feel that they are being treated like a channel and the process has got too transactional. Yet one of their key motivations to stay in their career as influencers is to pay the bills.

    Panel discussion

    If you’d have ran this event ten years ago. The panel discussion would still have been very similar. Measurement was considered very immature, but then the panel bifurcated. Measurement is much easier when you are using advertising and tracking through to a purchase. The discussion got muddled as paid and non-paid measurement strategies were discussed side-by-side without differentiation or explanation.

    Social agency Goat made an interesting disclosure. They’ve worked with about 100,000 influencers and found that the vast majority did not work in delivering sales. But there are no data or heuristics about which influencer is likely to work, or the reasons why?

    What was missing in influencer marketing discussion?

    The main item that I felt the discussion missed was the role of social platform algorithms in creating social bubbles and reducing campaign reach. OgilvyOne’s paper on considering life after the demise of organic reach doesn’t seem to have factored into PR agencies (publicly expressed) thinking some five years after it has been published.

    Secondly, I was surprised at the lack of progress. Whilst the platforms have changed over the past ten years. The issues don’t seem to have altered at all for communications agencies. Whilst some agencies like Edelman (and 90TEN where I am currently working) realise that a blended PESO* media mix is required – there was a large faction of earned media only practitioners in attendance. Ten years later, advertising and creative agencies have learned many of the techniques that PR agencies considered to be their domain in order to improve ‘talkability’.

    This is out of step with clients requirements for two reasons:

    • Clients want to effectively measure their success and the tools available to paid media are more complete
    • As OgilvyOne proved in their research a number of years ago, we’re heading to a demise in organic reach

    Brand marketing is in a resurgence after marketers had fetishised technology-based performance marketing for at least the last decade and a half. Influencer marketing may now be too important to be left to the the PR team…

    *PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) – different media types.

  • Snowden revelations + more things

    Looking back at the Snowden revelations – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic EngineeringThe brilliant thing about the Snowden leaks was that he didn’t tell us much of anything. He showed us. Most of the revelations came in the form of a Powerpoint slide deck, the misery of which somehow made it all more real. And despite all the revelation fatigue, the things he showed us were remarkable – this is such a good read. I suspect that the level of surprise expressed is mostly a US thing. I was disappointed, but not shocked by it all. Back in the day the NSA used to publish one of the best guides to ‘hardening’ macOS – documents that they no longer seem to host online. The Snowden revelations were nothing new. I grew up in Europe when:

    • GCHQ were tapping all of Ireland’s overseas telecoms and data traffic via the Capenhurst tower. Having lived in the neighbourhood of Capenhurst during the 1980s and 1990s, this was well known but only confirmed in the media in 1999
    • The ECHELON network was hoovering up microwave, fax, satellite and telephone calls

    After Duncan Campbell’s lifetime of work, the Snowden revelations are part of a decades long pattern of behaviour. Admittedly the US’ rivals will be up to the same things and worse.

    Luxury watch maker Patek Philippe and Leagas Delaney launch new Generations campaign – Marketing Communication News – the most interesting aspect of this to me is the way its looking to address a younger audience. Secondly, if you look at the background with the plants and rain its moved the look and feel to more tropical than their previous campaigns that were northern European in feel. (It was actually shot in Italy). Because? My guess, China. Younger rich people due to second generation wealth. Two children reflecting the recent law changes around family size in the country

    Is the era of the $100+ graphing calculator coming to an end? | The Hustledon’t feel too sorry for Texas Instruments: over a 20-year period, TI set out to manufacture demand by making its calculators mandated classroom tools. The company established partnerships with big textbook companies that integrated TI-specific exercises (complete with screenshots of buttons) into classroom curricula. It sought approval for standardized test use from administrators like the College Board. And every time a competing tech innovation came along, it lobbied to maintain its perch atop the parabola. According to Open Secrets and ProPublica data, Texas Instruments paid lobbyists to hound the Department of Education every year from 2005 to 2009 — right around the time when mobile technology and apps were becoming more of a threat. The company campaigned against devices with touchscreens, internet connection, and QWERTY keyboards” – hate the game, not the player etc. etc.

    Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier – WSJ – which is being used in an antitrust investigation. No real surprises for anyone who has followed Facebook over the years. This negates Facebook’s main defence of ‘if it wasn’t us, it would be China’

    The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism | The New Yorker – the sub heading ‘Big technological shifts have always empowered reformers. They have also empowered bigots, hucksters and propagandists

    New York in 1984 was the time, and the place, dance music became a culture – Features – Mixmag – great write up, the only thing missing is a name check for the Latin Rascals, Cutting Records and the Freestyle scene

    Jason Dill HYPEBEAST Magazine Interview | HYPEBEAST – great interview, partly due to the car crash of journalist interviewing technique

    Parenting’s New Frontier: What Happens When Your 11-Year-Old Says No to a Smartphone? – Voguemy son had decided three things about smartphones. 1. They’re infantilizing, a set of digital apron strings meant to attach you to your mother. (He was onto something there.) 2. They compromise a boy’s resourcefulness because kids come to rely on the GPS instead of learning Scout skills. 3. They make people trivial. This final observation bugs me the most, because he still expresses it whenever he sees me jabbing at my own device: “Texty texty! Emoji emoji!” And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. In short, my son says, he doesn’t want a phone because he wants to be free

  • I like: StarTech Thunderbolt 3 adapter

    I like the StarTech Thunderbolt 3 adapter, or to give it its full name: StarTech.com TBT3TBTADAP Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter.

    Like many people who have bought a new Apple laptop recently. The move to USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 has been extremely disruptive. I spent a fortune on new accessories. One thing I wasn’t prepared to do was throw away my Belkin hubs and Apple Cinema monitors. I tried Apple’s own Thunderbolt 2 – Thunderbolt 3 adapter; and it worked inconsistently. One day I would switch on my computer and the monitor or hub wouldn’t work. For apparent no reason, on a seemingly random basis.

    StarTech ThunderBolt 3 to ThunderBolt 2 adapter

    StarTech are a Canadian company who have been involved in unsexy, but necessary parts of the technology and video industry. Their focus is purely on interconnectivity of different video display standards. Whilst they aren’t a well known brand like Logitech or Belkin, there are probably some of their products used by your office sys.admin. They used to make a well respected Thunderbolt 2 hub, that didn’t seem to ship to the UK. So in desperation I decided to give their adaptors a chance. 

    Let’s get the negative aspects about them out of the way first. They are bulky, with the electronics coming in a case about the size of a stack of playing cards, rather than a small pack of chewing gum like Apple’s own convertors. They’re in a shade of dark grey only a sys.admin could love. 

    But once you get over these cosmetic issues you get a product that just works. It is ironic that I had to go to a non-Apple supplier to get this most Apple of attributes. I can wholeheartedly recommend these convertors. 

    More on my trials and tribulations with USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 here.

  • Juul sales halted in China + more

    Juul Sales Halted in China, Days After Launch – WSJ – this could be as much about IP as anything else that caused the Juul sales halted in China. The e-cigarette was invented by a Chinese engineer looking for a healthier option to cigarettes. Secondly tobacco is a monopoly in China run by a state owned enterprise that is a valuable source of government revenue. There are even tobacco sponsored universities. I am only mildly surprised that Juul sales halted hadn’t happened in the US, given that Juul is so popular with teens

    Trend-bucking Maccas turns back to tradition | The Australianthe most interesting implication of McDonald’s selection of W+K is what it says about client conflict. W+K already has the North American account for KFC and has been producing spectacular work for the brand. McDonald’s made no request of W+K to drop KFC in order to work for it, with its North American chief marketing officer, Morgan Flatley, noting the potential client issue “doesn’t concern us”. “We wanted to make the decision around getting the best work that this business deserves,” she said. – it wouldn’t have been that long ago that a major client would tolerate that degree of client conflict

    Exclusive: Australia concluded China was behind hack on parliament, political parties – sources    – Reuters – the Australians were too scared of the Chinese to confront them about it at the moment. This is a situation that could

    Gasp | The Blogfather | Brand Building Breakdown – nice summary which emphasises why brand is more important than activation in terms of marketer focus

    McDonald’s picks Wieden & Kennedy New York as lead U.S. creative agency | AdAgeit “also suggests that a bespoke agency model … may not be the definitive answer for major marketers when it comes to creative partners.”

    The New Target That Enables Ransomware Hackers to Paralyze Dozens of Towns and Businesses at Once — ProPublica – similar to tactics that Chinese hackers have been doing for years. Yet another argument against cloud

    China’s TikTok social media app has captured the NFL, but not Hong Kong protesters – The Washington Post – you know ByteDance are censoring the sh*t out of it to keep the Xi administration happy, more online related content here

    LS Keynote 2019 Speaker Introduction: Pablo Mauron, DLG (Digital Luxury Group) – luxury brands need to find ways to adapt and integrate their globally-developed creative assets for use in different markets

    LS Keynote 2019 Speaker Introduction: Kai Hong, JINGdigital – how brands can truly engage and grow their WeChat communities with the right social CRM strategy

    LS Keynote 2019 Speaker Introduction: Jacques Roizen, EVP Digital Transformation and New Ventures, Baozun – the evolution of omnichannel retail and how brands can leverage new opportunities to create better customer experiences

    Frankfurt Motor Show: Winter Is Coming | EE Timesthe moon shot of autonomous driving may one day lead to falling accident rates, but that the development costs — and liabilities of public testing — may destroy them on the way. Almost everyone has stepped back from the brink of a ludicrous business model. This begs the question about autonomous driving as a killer app for 5G

    Standing out is the key brand challenge, so great brands play with their codes | Marketing Week – purpose-wank aside, removing every single letter from your packaging is actually a very smart and very effective move. Because when companies play with well-established codes like this and remove or alter their appearance, the impact on salience and brand image is significantly improved – great article by Mark Ritson, but requires decades of brand consistency to work well

    Design: pharma’s next frontier | eyeforpharma – on human centred design

    Facebook warns about Apple iOS 13 privacy improvement – the blog post appears to be a way to get out in front of software changes made by Apple and Google that could unsettle Facebook users given the company’s poor reputation for privacy.

    The new Microsoft To Do is here – pity the poor product manager who is trying to transfer Wunderlist which built up an amazingly loyal following

    Underwear Ads Lose the Macho: How Marketing Has Embraced Real Men – The New York Times – I suspect that it’s like Gillette in that men who buy Hanes by out of habit and women buying for men are the people to influence