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  • 2024 – that was twenty twenty four

    2024 introduction


    This retrospective look at 2024 was inspired by a post from 2023. I reflected on the year’s events, with conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, and numerous elections worldwide.

    Generative AI and cryptocurrency sectors dominated the tech scene. The Farfetch-Coupang deal highlighted the influence of top luxury brands, while Richemont became a speculative takeover target.

    L Catterton’s strategy of acquiring undervalued brands continued in 2024.

    GLP-1 weight management medications trended in healthcare, with tirzepatide as a focus. Advertising saw a downturn in 2023, but a positive outlook was forecasted for 2024 by the IPA Bellwether report.

    January 2024

    IP

    2024 marked the first iteration of Mickey Mouse, known as Steamboat Willie, entered the public domain. Copyright protection had been extended for 95 years due to political pressure from the media industry. Modern variants of Mickey Mouse remain protected.

    Just in time for generative AI to conjure up new variations.

    Florida bypassed intellectual property-based pricing by importing prescription drugs from Canada to reduce costs.

    Mastermind?

    In the trial of British citizen Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, the prosecution alleged he orchestrated the 2019 protests, overlooking longstanding social issues highlighted by the Beijing liaison office. Lai’s Next Media and Apple Daily, sparked controversy akin to the Daily Star in the UK, but weren’t a counter-revolution.

    If Mr Lai is the figurehead of the Hong Kong protests, it implied fragility within the Chinese state. Committing crimes like sedition and colluding with a foreign power doesn’t require being a mastermind.

    Data Element – X

    China unveils a three-year ‘Data Element – X‘ plan from 2024 to 2026, anticipating a 20% annual growth in data-related sectors—four times the current economic growth rate. Data Element X encompasses various industries and technologies, including machine learning, data processing, big data, databases, data gathering, digital transformation, smart cities, digital twins, cloud computing, and metaverse services. This initiative is poised to gain increasing prominence in international business and policy circles over time.

    Luxury inclusiveness

    LVMH bolstered its watch division, appointing Frédéric Arnault to oversee Hublot, TAG Heuer, and Zenith. Loewe experienced a surge in momentum, highlighted by a campaign featuring veteran actress Dame Maggie Smith and signed Jamie Dornan as a global ambassador for 2024, likely making it the most inclusive luxury campaign of 2024.

    loewe
    Loewe

    Watches of Switzerland saw a decline following a profit warning, there was inadequate forward guidance despite the decline in the luxury watch secondary market since mid-2021. Highsnobiety announced its selection of new luxury brands for 2024.

    new luxury

    January 2024 in marketing and adjacent areas

    The month began slowly, with many decision-makers out of office until January 15th. Byron Sharp published a paper “The Market-Based Assets Theory of Brand Competition” in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, challenging classical marketing methodologies of segmentation and targeting. Despite speculation about the demise of CMOs, research suggested it won’t happen yet.

    WPP consolidated major PR brands H&K and BCW, leading to significant job consolidation, particularly in finance and HR. The rebranded business Burson signifies a departure from WPP’s usual naming conventions. The restructuring is expected to impact Europe and Asia-Pacific the most. Provoke Media provided insight. (Disclosure: I previously worked with Corey duBrowa at WE; and later at Burson-Marsteller & Colgate’s Red Fuse agency.)

    CES 2024 expanded beyond consumer electronics, featuring products targeting enterprises. Notable highlights included logistics robots, vehicle microchips, and device operating systems. L’Oreal’s demonstration of 3D printed lipsticks marked a shift towards disrupting manufacturing, and their keynote marked a historic moment for beauty companies at CES.

    Health was a key focus at the 2024 show, but more intriguing developments unfolded at JP Morgan’s Health Care Conference in San Francisco. CES organizers excel in gathering research on consumer electronics and technology, with one slide from their presentation catching my attention this year.

    CES_Tech Trends To Watch 2024

    The slide examines US consumer technology spending, specifically focusing on software and services. Entertainment content continues to dominate, reminiscent of the 1970s, while retailers and e-tailers still profit from high-margin extended warranties like AppleCare. In contrast, digital health services barely register on the chart.

    AI is as ubiquitous at CES 2024 as MSG on my favourite Japanese instant noodles.

    Amazon implemented job cuts, particularly affecting its media divisions such as Prime Video, Twitch, and MGM, amidst industry-wide consolidation efforts. Additionally, Amazon Prime Video introduced an extra fee for ad-free viewing. Technology layoffs continue into 2024, focusing on realignment around AI, impacting companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and SAP.

    According to Davos attendees I know, finance professionals discussed AI-powered trading models, prompting nightmares about Greg Secker becoming Goldman Sachs’ CEO.

    AI-based trading models, previously reliant on fractal theory and the assumption of market organicity akin to Gaia theory, have gained traction. The work of one team was celebrated in Thomas A. Bass’ book “The Predictors,” yet risks remain, illustrated by Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan Concept and the Long-Term Capital Management failure.

    Japanese novelist Rie Kudan discussed her use of AI in her life and writing.

    Stanley’s insulated tumblers gained popularity, with secondary markets like StockX seeing considerable mark-ups. The maximum price paid on StockX was £290.

    stanley

    The Mac turns 40.

    Despite the Philippines’ healthy economic growth forecast of 6% in 2024, CNN Philippines shut down all channels: broadcast, mobile, and online.

    In other news

    During the 2024 New Year period, Japan faced a strong earthquake and a two-plane accident. Fortunately, passengers on one plane escaped without serious injury. In 2024, the UK lost veteran DJ Annie Nightingale, aged 83, known for championing new music, particularly various dance music genres stemming from house music, the warehouse scene, and digital production.

    Annie Nightingale

    The US SEC approves the first cryptocurrency-based ETFs, while Korean Telecom (KT) shut down its NFT platform.

    In Taiwan, Lai Ching-te and the DPP win the election but lack a parliamentary majority.

    Unusual cold weather in the middle of the month was followed by strong winds, caused a large metal wheeled bin to roll down my road.

    In Russia, a law is passed claiming territory previously held by Russia, including Alaska. Meanwhile, the UK considered introducing conscription due to tensions with Russia, but survey respondents express reluctance towards it.

    An FT opinion piece discussed how views among young cohorts have diverged between progressive politics and conservatism, with implications for various political and social issues. Rob Henderson called it the ‘gender equality paradox‘ based on findings in academic research in psychology.

    gender split
    Financial Times

    This highlighted that ‘generations‘ as a marketing concept is a delusion. Richard Reeves’ book “Of Boys And Men” and research by the American Institute of Boys & Men explore reasons for men’s divergent political views from women.

    How January 2024 memed?

    UK quiz show University Challenge went viral after host Amol Rajon responded to a contestant’s answer with, “I can’t accept Drum & Bass. We need Jungle, I’m afraid.” This led to various remixes.

    February 2024

    February 2024 saw the transition in the lunar calendar from the year of the rabbit to the year of the dragon. Flickr turned 20 years old.

    Apple starts taking orders for the VisionPro. The Vision Pro generates lots of reviews. The general consensus was interesting, but not ready for consumer adoption and no one is clear what its ‘killer app’ is. It has this in common with the Mac’s launch some four decades earlier. We forget now that the Mac was seen by IT people as a toy. It didn’t have a ‘use case’ until Adobe and Apple partnered on the LaserWriter PostScript-powered laser printer. This allowed Aldus Software’ PageMaker desktop publishing software to print its designs.

    The iPhone had a similar problem when launched, but the second generation had the app eco-system which sold the iPhone.

    Things I Like: Newton eMate 300
    Apple Newton eMate 300

    The first generation Vision Pro may be a future success, or an interesting diversion like the Apple Cube or the eMate. This explains why there was a high initial return rate of Vision Pro headsets.

    Cube

    nVidia’s quarterly result exceeded expectations by a large margin and the share price went up 17% overnight to 35x earnings. It felt like a bubble, here’s what Malcolm Penn of Future Horizons had to say:

    nVidia’s right place, right time Perfect Storm. nVIDIA’s meteoric rise over the past year was triggered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT launch on November 30, 2022. Once word got out it was using 10,000 nVIDIA GPUs, the flood gates burst open. In a deluge of hope, hype and hysteria, not seen since the late 1990’s Internet driven Dot-com boom, AI is up front and center of every firm’s ambition with stock market investors swooning at dreams of an AI-overlord future. nVIDIA deserves its place in the sun and the chip industry thrives on legendary moments like these. Leaving aside the hype, AI will eventually make current products better and smarter, and enable new products to be build that were previously impossible, it’s what the chip industry does best, but no chip market has ever taken off based on a US$40,000 IC!

    Chinese government contractor I-S00N was hacked and a trawl of data dumped on Github like Mosseck Fonseca. It showed the asymmetry of costs between hacking and being hacked.

    A US Senate hearing spotlights online platforms’ harm to children felt different. Social media platforms faced severe criticism, with Mark Zuckerberg offering apologies. TikTok’s responses sparked debate on the hearings’ undertones, contrasting with Meta’s approach.

    Good news for the Hong Kong economy ahead of lunar new year, with a 7.8% year-on-year increase in December. However, the rise masked challenges, including the popularity of warehouse shopping in Shenzhen, leading to less spent in Hong Kong. Retailers are grappling with the recent growth of Hong Kong’s e-commerce sector. Despite this, excitement was dampened by a failed attempt at ‘tentpole events,’ as an exhibition soccer match with Inter Miami saw the team’s stars benched. The match, organised by Tatler Asia, raises more questions than answers.

    Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee likely had a better time than Labour Party politician David Lammy, who faced criticism from Indian business elites during a business trip to India over London’s violent Rolex robberies.

    Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman brought his deflating rubber ducks art installation to Kaohsiung port in Taiwan this month.

    Starbucks partnered with Gopuff for late-night coffee deliveries, challenging competitors like Shell filling stations and McDonald’s McCafe.

    Novo Nordisk acquired another pharmaceutical company to grow Wegovy production, potentially affecting future price reductions.

    Tod’s planned to go private in a deal with L Catterton, maintaining majority ownership with the Della Valle family and minority stakes for LVMH. This followed on from the L Catterton deal to take Birkenstock private and then relist at a much higher valuation.

    Adidas and Nike shift away from scarcity models for sneakers, signalling a peak in the secondary market.

    China aimed to revive its housing sector and economy with a cut in home borrowing rates over five years.

    Marketing and adjacent areas

    The Guardian used ‘dadcast’ to describe a podcast perceived as privileged and exhibiting toxic masculinity. There’s speculation about jealousy towards profitable podcasts catering to middle-aged men’s interests. Some noted on LinkedIn that ‘Dad’ is increasingly used in mainstream media as a disparaging term.

    Vice Media undergoes significant layoffs, prompting reflections from the CYBER podcast team on the company’s decline. Amazon reports advertising revenue exceeding 8 percent in Q4 2023, largely at Google’s expense.

    Amazon’s success is attributed to AWS facilitating data collaboration for media buys and Prime Video’s brand-building content. However, a study from Australia finds that brands shifting from linear TV to video on demand lose market share due to ineffective media planning.

    The “bad neighborhood” effect may contribute to poor YouTube performance, with many ads promoting low-quality products.

    Metalheadz celebrates its 30th anniversary with a collaboration with Stüssy. Burberry’s Harrods takeover got attention for dressing the doormen in ‘knight blue’ check.

    Burberry knight blue

    i-D magazine shifted direction, suspending print and online publication but continuing daily updates on social media as part of a new business model and editorial leadership. This move reflected an evolving landscape of fashion publishing.

    Condé Nast parted ways with Vogue China editor Margaret Zhang. Zhang’s background in translating Chinese youth culture for Western audiences in corporate settings may not have prepared her for leading a large editorial team profitably, especially in the digital age. Her lack of immersion in Chinese culture and experiences of online harassment didn’t help.

    Despite challenges, Zhang initiated notable projects such as a mentoring scheme for Chinese designers. Luxury brands like LVMH explored product placement and financing Hollywood projects, tapping into the growing demand for high-end wardrobe in popular shows.

    Taylor Swift’s impact on the Super Bowl contrasted with lacklustre advertisements during the event, while Lunar New Year ads felt safer than usual. Jollibee, a Filipino fast-food chain, succeeded on Valentine’s Day with its film “My Kwentong Valentine’s Day: 30 Dates,” showcasing its connection with customers through relatable storytelling.

    Ring surprised customers with a 43% increase in subscription fees, from £34.99 to £49.99 per device per year for basic plan users, effective March 2024. The price hike sparked outrage among customers, leading to cancellations and tips on locking-in better deals for longer.

    Rabbit AI, touted as the standout product of CES 2024, resorted to static ads on YouTube to boost pre-orders. This approach raised doubts about whether extensive global media coverage and event hype resulted in a substantial waiting list.

    Seeing a lot of these Rabbit pre-order ad spots

    Humane AI, which launched in 2023, announced a delay in shipping their AI personal assistant. Meanwhile, the BBC updates its approach to using generative AI responsibly, a process evolving since October last year when initial principles were established. Kara Swisher published Burn Book; her memoir as a tech journalist, which is part-therapy, part dot-com boom to late state capitalism evolution of Silicon Valley. More in my review here.

    Unbeknownst to many, the BBC has a history of innovation, evidenced by creations like the LS3/5A loudspeaker design originating from a 1972 BBC research paper. Over the years, the BBC has adopted a ‘co-pilot’ approach to language translation for its World Service, utilizing a service called Frank, initially funded under the EU GoURMET programme.

    The recent BBC update focused on enhancing content propagation through different formats and more personalized marketing, raising concerns about reducing a common truth across diverse audiences and potentially exacerbating societal polarization.

    In other news, The Body Shop appointed administrators, drawing attention to its challenges since its acquisition by L’Oreal.

    The power of design

    Europe doesn’t get to enjoy the bold design of the 2024 Lexus GX, which combines luxury with a rugged Tonka toy aesthetic, surpassing even Mercedes’ G-Wagen.

    YouTube’s top car reviewer, Doug DeMuro, likened the GX’s impact to that of a Lamborghini Countach.

    London Fashion Week was either hybrid or reminiscent of past eras, lasting just four days. Highsnobiety hosted events under the ‘Not in London‘ banner. London Fashion Week was 40 this year, as was UK magazine Gay Times, which underwent a process of reinvention as it slips into middle age.

    Tate & Lyle updated designs for its Golden Syrup on plastic packaging and extensions, but not on its traditional tin.

    How February 2024 memed?

    Let’s steer clear of the conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift. Instead, consider the “AI-two step,” a term I got via Antony Mayfield. It describes the process of job destruction in knowledge worker sectors through the implementation of AI-enabled software: step one involves introducing these processes, followed by step two: gradual layoffs to avoid media attention. This phenomenon parallels last year’s “Patagonia vest recession.”

    March 2024

    March began with cold, rainy weather as I freelanced at PRECISIONeffect. In Rochdale, a veteran politician won the election, known for anti-Israel and pro-Russia views. The Washington Post obtained documents revealing Russian misinformation campaigns. The United States and the Jordanian air force airdropped food aid along the Gaza Strip coast after land delivery resulted in 100 deaths. Train fares increased, causing frustration with Avanti West Coast cancellations. Taylor Swift concerts were discussed for their geopolitical impact. President Biden addressed gender inequality in medical research, and Chalmers University in Sweden unveiled a computer model predicting 90% of lymphatic cancer cases.

    Luxury

    Omega ran a teaser campaign that harks back to its long association with the NASA Silver Snoopy award and the Speedmaster range of chronograph watches. The timing of this release was about getting ahead of the bevy of new products launched at Watches & Wonders trade show. It was yet another Swatch homage to the Omega Speedmaster, in white plastic and an animated Snoopy, which is like Gordon Ramsay shilling for Pepperami.

    snoopy
    Omega

    Bangkok, Thailand, now a hub of Asian pop culture, boasts local artists rivalling former Cantopop and K-pop stars in Southeast Asia. Louis Vuitton’s The Place in Bangkok offers a unique retail experience combining exhibition, immersive experience, restaurant, and luxury store.

    Trade magazine Business of Fashion and Bloomberg called out LVMH quiet luxury brand Loro Piana over exploitation of indigenous people in Peru.

    “In New York, Milan or London, the fashion house Loro Piana sells a vicuña sweater for about $9,000. Barrientos’ Indigenous community of Lucanas, whose only customer is Loro Piana, receives about $280 for an equivalent amount of fiber. That doesn’t leave enough to pay Barrientos, whose village expects her to work as a volunteer.”

    Marcelo Rochabrun for Bloomberg

    Matchesfashion.com went into administration, three months it was bought as a turnaround target. This is the latest in a number of distressed multi-label boutiques. Farfetch was sold out Coupang at the end of 2023.

    Marketing and related areas

    My blog renaissance chambara turned 20 years old on March 13, 2024, and the stone tablets of advertising planning were made 50 years ago. BBH did a nice essay on the original JWT London planning guide here. It was 35 years since De La Soul released their iconic first album 3 Foot High and Rising – now remastered with bonus unreleased tracks.

    De La Soul
    De La Soul by DeShawn Craddock

    Remember when Adidas parted ways with Kanye West (back in 2022)? Well, Adidas waited until March to sell the last tranche of shoes from the Yeezy range. Later on, they announced their first net loss since 1992. The resurgence of interest in the Gazelle and Samba shoes through spring and summer last year were not enough to plug the gap. Adidas hopes that China will drive double digit growth, though the Chinese market can be volatile and there are more homegrown and foreign brands to compete with. In the meantime, pain was piled on pain, with the German football association opting to go with Nike rather than Adidas from 2027.

    The US Congress passed a law to force Bytedance to sell TikTok, or, face a ban from US app stores within six months. ‘The TikTok Ban‘ – so TikTok had user deluge politicians with calls. The advertising world went into a tizzy about THE TIKTOK BAN.

    Less commented on was LinkedIn’s ability to embed video in posts like this, or create hyperlinks within articles using its editing functions became broken. Hence the move to images and writing this offline and cut-and-pasting back in which at least kept hyperlinks.

    What was almost as important, but got a lot less coverage was the news that Meta was finally going to zuck CrowdTangle with a shutdown due in August this year. NewsWhip tried to step into the breach left by the demise of Crowdtangle.

    The continued inflation pressuring low income households was good news for instant noodles. According to the FT, their long shelf life made them a hedge against inflation. Lower income customers bought instant noodles to make ends meet, Nestlé was pressured by ESG investors to pivot towards healthier foods.

    Maggi logo
    Nestlé

    Nestlé brand Maggi – is one of Asia’s most popular instant noodle, soups and seasonings, which is likely to fall foul of the ESG push.

    CNN estimated that the Bud Light influencer marketing campaign with Dylan Mulvaney cost $1.38 billion in revenue terms through 2023. In the aftermath of the Bud Light backlash, AB InBev’s share of the US beer market declined by 5.2 percentage points in the second quarter, dropping to 36.9%. By February, the company had closed the deficit from its May peak by 1.2 percentage points, with a steady rate of ground gained every three or four weeks. However, the expenditure required to close this gap remains undisclosed.

    Unilever announced the spin-off of its ice cream brands, framing it as a shift towards higher-performing brands. It’s surprising that Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s weren’t considered high-performing, suggesting a macro view on categories. Combining them with the Heart brands’ ice creams made sense from a supply chain and distribution perspective, possibly driving the decision.

    Other news

    Iris Apfel at O Cinema Miami Beach to present IRIS, by Albert Maysles

    Iris Apfel, known in fashion and textiles for decades, passed away at the age of 102. She began her career writing for WWD (Women’s Wear Daily) before founding Old World Weavers Inc., which reproduced textiles from the past for restoration projects. Apfel managed the business for nearly five decades before retiring in 1992. Her fame as a socialite grew from her client base, and soared after her retirement. Her unique style, influenced by five decades of travel, garnered attention, leading to the publication of her autobiography and representation by IMG.

    We also lost science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, author of True Names – a predictor of the modern internet. David Brin wrote a poignant tribute to Vinge. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman died aged 90.

    Joseph E. Chandler
    Joseph E. Chandler by Kerri Chandler

    The term “house music legend” has been used casually, but it aptly describes veteran New York DJ/producer Kerri Chandler. In honour of his father Joseph E. Chandler, a disco-era DJ who influenced him, Chandler released 73 tracks for free download. His father would have turned 73 had he lived.

    Karl Wallinger, frontman of World Party, has passed away. He is best known for his song “She’s The One,” famously covered by Robbie Williams.

    How March 2024 memed?

    The meme likely to define the year, akin to last year’s Patagonia vest recession, was coined by Scott Galloway: Corporate Ozemic. It encapsulates businesses’ adoption of LLM-based services to automate workflows and reduce staff. Klarna, a pay-later business, served as a poster child, admitting to displacing 700 former employees.

    At SXSW, there was audience pushback against ‘AI’, a phenomenon not seen during the dot com boom. Big tech needed to invest heavily in political campaigns, lobbyists, PR firms, and lawyers.

    The first photo of Princess Kate since her surgery was withdrawn by Associated Press for manipulation that didn’t meet their standards. Speculation ensued, leading to a popular meme identified by StickyBeak. Later a BBC video disclosed her cancer treatment.

    Kate Middleton's family picture memeing

    April 2024

    April started as a bank holiday in the UK and Europe. The global economy has very mixed data. In the UK, the NHS looked to roll out insulin pumps to a lot of people with type 1 diabetes. Google introduced its medicine-specific large language models. Health technology business ZOE lays off a number of staff.

    Luxury

    Industry exhibition Watches and Wonders 2024 saw new timepieces from fashion brands like Chanel and Hermés alongside watch-makers like IWC and Rolex. Rolex’ gold Deepsea is the most conspicuous luxury item that I have seen to date. It’s a sold wedge of gold, ceramic and titanium.

    As a tool watch, the Deepsea is a ridiculously large slab of stainless steel. In gold it became surreal and garish due to its scale. Gold has very different physical properties to stainless steel, which is why key structural parts are having to be made from titanium and ceramics. It weighed in at 397 grams, or the equivalent of wearing two large iPhone 15 Pro Max’ on your wrist.

    Gold Sea-Dweller deepsea is quite a statement

    The Deepsea was the antithesis to the growth in women’s watches at the show like a last stand of toxic masculinity embodied in horology. Meanwhile export earnings by LVMH, were larger than the whole of France’s agricultural sector. Earth Day happens across LinkedIn. The best thing I read was the pointed critique why Vogue Business didn’t cover it.

    No brand is doing enough to warrant a celebration of its impact on the planet.

    Rachel Cernansky, Vogue Business

    Marketing and related areas

    JP Morgan announced a new advertising venture utilising Chase customer spending data. It was unclear whether this mirrors the brand partnership agreements like those of Amex, or if it entails a more programmatic approach.

    An investigation of Forbes alleged that the publication was selling premium priced online advertising inventory on ‘spammy’ sub-domain for seven years. This raised yet more questions about the wisdom of using online media.

    Hootsuite acquired TalkWalker; adding social media listening to its publishing and reporting capabilities. Meta’s Threads announces an intention to provide a Threads API in June and published developer documentation.

    Japan’s LDP uses an AI-generated slogan for its election campaign. Economic revitalisation: Providing tangible results. – was chosen from 500 options written by copywriters and AI respectively.

    Online and tech

    Google Podcasts is shutdown, more on the Google product death march here. Google leaked Apple’s plans for RCS support. Apple launched the first major update to VisionOS allowing for shared experiences. It was ideal for education or training scenarios. eBay UK went free-to-sell for individual sales of pre-used fashion, taking Depop head-on. News-focused Twitter alternative Post.news announced plans to shut down over the next few weeks. Humane AI’s pin device not well received by reviewers despite impressive engineering.

    Other news

    Pharrell Williams launched a new album called Black Yacht Rock, while creative director at Louis Vuitton. It was my album of 2024.

    https://flic.kr/p/2pJAup9

    Hong Kong’s ban on many single-use plastics comes into force, with criticism from retail and hospitality sectors. 1990s skate brand iPath comes back from the dead.

    How April 2024 memed?

    Probably the biggest story online was how Rishi Sunak wore a box fresh pair of Adidas Samba soccer training shoes to an interview and went viral online. Sunak later apologised for wearing the shoes, but the style damage was considered to be done already for Adidas (at least in the UK).

    Rishi Sunak MP
    Rishi Sunak

    May 2024

    The end of April and beginning of May was uncharacteristically cool and wet. We had an impressively loud thunder storm. Universities in the US and Europe cleared out campuses occupied in protest at the Palestinian cause. This had a ‘Streisand effect’ like impact, internationalising the protests. Novo Nordisk looks for even further uses for semaglutide – looking at alcohol use and liver damage along with a trial currently running looking at potential benefits with regards Alzheimers.

    For months previously, the political discourse I heard around me was that we need change. Sunak needs to go. Sunak announced a July 4th election with just six weeks of campaigning and most of the amateur pundits I knew looked as if they had been on the wrong side of a Power Slap championship match.

    Luxury news

    Supreme
    Stan Wiecher

    Premium priced streetwear brand Supreme turns 30, but it’s not all good news as Vogue Business claimed Stüssy’s drops are more popular than those by the younger upstart. Synthetic diamonds had a moment for a while in the US jewellery trade. But now that Danish jewellery brand Pandora has succeeded with synthetic diamonds it feels like global mainstream sales are just around the corner.

    TAG Heuer teamed with Kith and brings back the Formula 1 at the 2024 Miami formula one Grand Prix race. It is a watch that sits somewhere between a scuba Swatch and the Luminox dive watch.

    Luxury’s involvement in NFTs resulted in Dolce & Gabbana being taken to court over an NFT-related metaverse offering.

    Can two turkeys make an eagle? Balenciaga and Under Armour seemed to think so with their collaboration revealed on social media at the end of May.

    PDD Holdings, the owners of tat merchant Temu and Chinese e-tailing platform Pinduoduo became worth more than China’s Amazon analogue Alibaba. Tough market conditions for luxury and a decline in the consumer relevance of TMall vs. Pinduoduo may be partly responsible for this.

    Marketing, media and advertising news

    ZAK published a report on how different cultures are having a global influence. It tells a nice story that conceals a layer of complexity. For instance, Hallyu has been an overnight success, the best part of four decades in the making with the sales of international dramas and films. I do like their model on brand partnerships.

    It was lovely to see a project that my former colleague Rohit worked on had won a bronze award at the New York Festivals Health Awards for a film that was made to explain a key concept that differentiated the client’s vaccine.

    Marketers and long-time Apple customers complain about Apple’s crush! advertisement. YouTube followed Apple’s lead in censorship in Hong Kong, following a Hong Kong court ruling banning protest anthem ‘Glory to Hong Kong‘ from appearing online. Unlike YouTube, Apple didn’t need a court order to ban HKmap back in 2019 during the citywide protests.

    Nestlé launched its Vital Pursuit range in the US. This is a range of high-fibre, high protein foods with calorie-controlled portions aimed at consumers using weight loss medications based on GLP-1. Kao expanded its ambition for ESG, as Unilever went in the opposite direction.

    media spend

    WARC research predicted that Meta advertising will imminently equal or even surpass global linear television. This doesn’t include connected television, or indicate that Meta advertising has comparable brand building effectiveness to linear television. It also doesn’t include the wide variance in customer base. Meta has enjoyed a large amount of growth from China based direct-to-consumer e-tailers and apps like Temu and Shein.

    Online media powerhouse LADBible expands its commercial footprint to cover south east Asia and Hong Kong through partner Val Morgan Digital. And the London Evening Standard stops publishing on a daily basis, moving to a weekly format thanks to changes in working amongst Londoners.

    Other news

    _DSF8978

    We lost Tony O’Reilly this month. O’Reilly was Richard Branson-like figure in Ireland. He was famous for creating Kerrygold dairy products way back in 1968. He also negotiated a distribution deal for Erin Foods with Heinz and ended up running Heinz up until 2000.

    Film executive Roger Corman died. Corman’s impact on Hollywood was pervasive. He wrote, directed and produced cult classic films in his own right. He fostered talent that went on to great things and distributed important foreign films from French new wave directors to Akira Kurosawa.

    Technology news

    Apple continued to suffer from depressed sales in China and launches new iPad models for the first time in two years. OpenAI totally did not copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice in a creepy homage to the Spike Jonze film Her. As The Atlantic wrote at the time:

    The Scarlett Johansson debacle is a microcosm of AI’s raw deal: It’s happening, and you can’t stop it.

    OpenAI Just Gave Away the Entire Game – The Atlantic

    This is important not only from a technology point of view, but from the mindset of systemic sociopathy had become pervasive in Silicon Valley. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs thought generative AI will eventually boost GDP and productivity.

    Key details about how Google search works was leaked and poured over by search marketers and the media.

    Spotify ended support for its Car Thing device and offering refunds to consumers.

    How May 2024 memes?

    Kendrick Lamar // Melkweg Amsterdam

    Kendrick Lamar and Drake had a running feud. Lamar made allegations of Drake having a secret child and alleged that Drake slept with minors. A straw poll of people I know, seemed to show that on balance they were team ‘Kenny’.

    June 2024

    May 2024 ended in a similar manner to the way it had started with blustery showers, though we did get a bit of sunshine in between. I had worked through the end of April and May on a project for GREY / TANK Worldwide. It was a great experience working with GREY team members based in Copenhagen, Port Elizabeth and Mumbai, alongside a TANK team based in London.

    We went into June 2024 with a UK general election hanging over us with voting due on July 4, 2024. Labour party candidates only finalised selection on 4 June 2024. IPSOS provided some of the best voter intent data.

    It’s hard to communicate how little enthusiasm there was for the general election. The news agenda seldom touched on the election, but was captured by gambling related scandals that embarrassed both the Conservatives and Labour.

    ITV hosted one of the worst formatted events I have seen for a television electoral debates.

    The 45-second answer format allowed for little more than formulated soundbites rather than a nuanced informed debate. Neither candidate impressed. The 41st edition of British Social Attitudes (BSA) report, published by the National Centre for Social Research revealed a lack of confidence in UK’s system government and its politicians – which meant that all parties had an uphill battle ahead of them.

    In Hong Kong, the authorities used Article 23 for the first time to arrest and charge seven people. This seemed to be an action to pre-empt any commemoration of the June 4th protest movement and subsequent Tiananmen crackdown. Among them was barrister Chow Hang-tung, who was already facing a possible 10-year prison sentence under the 2020 National Security law.

    Tianamen Candlelight Vigil 2015
    Tianamen Candlelight Vigil 2015 – VeryBusyPeople

    Chow faced an additional seven years in prison for inciting “hatred and distrust of the central government, the Hong Kong government and the judiciary” via social media.

    All of this added additional complexity for Meta and Google in the territory and was at odds with Hong Kong government efforts to reignite its past status as Asia’s ‘world city’ through tourism and inbound investment. Cathay Pacific was pressured by the government to focus more on Middle East destinations.

    Luxury

    Karl Lagerfeld prodigy Virginie Viard left Chanel. Chanel had been commercially successful under Viard. Her departure was the final break with the Karl Lagerfeld legacy. Fendi announce their own range of in-house manufactured perfumes, selling for a cool £300 each.

    OTB announced it is to sell NFC tagged items that would be verified via Aura blockchain. This will is rolled out in the fall / winter collections of Jil Sander, Maison Margiela and Marni. Expect this to become commonplace as European Union digital passport rules come into force.

    LVMH buys L’Épée 1839 – who make decorative clocks and kinetic artworks. L’Épée 1839 is stocked in luxury jewellers like Pagnell and Bucherer. Speculation re-emerged about a LVMH acquisition of Richemont.

    Frasers acquired multi-brand online boutique Coggles from THG.

    A number of western luxury brands closed their Tmall stores (AMBUSH, NYX Professional Makeup, Mark Jacobs Fragrances). Commentators point out that the cost of running and promoting a store on Tmall had got too expensive.

    Balenciaga created a haute couture dress that is designed to unravel after its first wear. It’s an ocean of nylon mesh that sparked concerns about luxury ‘fast fashion’.

    Marketing, media and advertising news

    Mainland Chinese restaurant and café brands LMM Lemon Tea 柠濛濛, Western Hunan fast-casual chain Luobo Xiangnan 萝卜向南, Takoyaki chain Gulugulu 咕噜丸子屋, and BBQ brand Xita Laotaitai 西塔老太太 shut their Hong Kong stores. An increase in Hong Kongers going to Shenzhen due to the strong US dollar (which the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to vs. the yuan) and a lack of tourists are thought to be partly to blame.

    Spotify allegedly used audiobook bundling as a way to reduce payments to publishers and songwriters. ChiefMartec’s 2024 landscape of marketing technology finds that the amount of products has now grown by over a quarter to over 14,100 and claims that there are over 400,000 marketing agencies around the world. All of this is played out as marketing platforms from Amazon, Bytedance, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet have steadily consolidated greater share of marketing spend.

    The long-running discussions between Skydance and National Amusements which held the fate of Paramount Pictures in the balance were stopped. Discussions had been ongoing since the end of 2023.

    The UK general election campaign was mischaracterised in the media as ‘the first TikTok election‘. According to GWI, the biggest platforms for political content in the UK were X (21%), YouTube (20%), and Facebook (18%). Labour had outspent the Conservatives on advertising prior to legal restrictions kicking in; but Conservative posts seem to have got the most impressions for their money.

    Harley-Davidson took UK retailer Next to court over trademark infringement on clothing design. Vodafone’s The Nation’s Network creative work starts to appear. The insight tried to address the very human truth of wider feelings of disconnection in the general public. However, given that Vodafone had been trying to consolidate its network with Three UK, the tagline seemed disingenuous to some observers. Why would Vodafone need to merge with Three if it was already the nation’s network?

    Design newsletter Sidebar retired (at least for a while), 12 years and the cost of running a daily newsletter hitting 90,000 subscribers took its toll. All of which makes Dave Farber’s Interesting People list seem even more remarkable. At the time, Interesting People had been running since May 1993.

    WPP’s consolidation of brands continued with Burson .

    The New York Times partnered with grocery delivery service Instacart on shoppable recipes. This was not only an opportunity for quality media, but a threat to the likes of Fresh Direct and other DTC meal kit companies.

    Defunct radio station brand Atlantic 252 returned to the airwaves over 20 years after going off-line. the media pack claimed a 40+ target audience with whom the brand has some recognition.

    Chinese brands were prominent sponsors of the UEFA Euros 2024: Hisense, Ant Group, Vivo, BYD, and AliExpress. Cannes festival of advertising saw a campaign that I was involved with shortlisted. The film was aimed at healthcare professionals in Greece and the Philippines.

    2024 Cannes festival of advertising had a focus change towards audience enjoyment, while downplayed the focus on purpose. Ad agencies were reassured by platforms like Tiktok and Meta not wanting to squash them and steal their clients.

    It didn’t take long for private equity funded YouTube channels to see an exodus of talent.

    Speculation revolved around IPG agencies R/GA and MullenLowe.

    Other news

    Donald Sutherland

    Donald Sutherland, the offbeat tank commander in Kellys Heroes and arch villain in the Mockingbird film series died at 88.

    Technology news

    Mixed reality business Magic Leap announces a strategic partnership with Google. Magic Leap seemed to be focusing on its optical design, with Google handling software duties. Google got rid of its endless search results page.

    Microsoft announced further layoffs limiting mixed reality plans to existing defence and enterprise contracts. There were also lay-offs in cloud services.

    Raspberry Pi announced a low-power on-device AI option that could work for uses like facial recognition. This represented an opportunity for hobbyists and product designers. It wasn’t as powerful as Intel’s Lunar Lake or Qualcomm’s SnapDragon powered processors.

    Apple WWDC 2024 saw generative AI techniques integrated into the company’s operating systems, applications and software development kits. Apple took steps to do as much work on device as possible and ensure privacy when cloud processing was used. Apple announced that Apple Intelligence related features will not be on EU phones in 2024.

    Japan forced Apple, Microsoft and Google to allow third-party app stores. The EU introduced tariffs on Chinese manufactured electric vehicles and took legal action against the Apple app store and Microsoft Teams.

    Several retailers and FMCG companies came together to call for the QRcode to replace the barcode on products as part of the GS1 standard. As regulatory standards like the EU’s digital product passport regulations come in, the barcode is no longer fit for purpose. Amazon started to compete directly with Temu and Shein.

    Habbo Hotel returned. Illegal movie streaming site Fmovies goes offline. It turned out that the network of sites were run from Vietnam.

    Goldman Sachs published a sobering analysis on generative AI from productivity gains to likely return on investment. This became popularised in July amongst investors and business leaders. It is at odds with Mary Meeker’s assessment of generative AI.

    How June 2024 memed?

    Across both Chinese and western social media, the ‘boyfriend photographer‘ trended. The general consensus was that boyfriends didn’t take the best pictures of their girlfriends for their social media account, at best they were snaps. Girlfriends looking for reciprocal pictures were better photographers.

    Boyfriend photographer meme

    July 2024

    By mid-June it still hadn’t felt like summer had arrived, but silly season had arrived. Surrey police rammed an escaped adolescent cattle. The Conservatives polled as low as 23 percent prior to the general election.

    As June rolled into July, the heat arrived and then went. For polling day we had bright sunshine and a pleasant breeze. Before the rain rolled back. We were well into the middle of July before the heat arrived.

    Advertising and marketing news

    The middle of 2024 saw some high profile interest in M&A activity. Following on from IPG-related news; WPP rebuffed a private equity offer to buy FGS Global. Carlsberg bought Britvic, the UK’s Pepsi bottler and a soft drinks brand in its own right. This will have implications for agencies as Britvic is integrated. Ford brought back the Capri as a mum truck. But the teaser campaign to build hype and ultimately disappoint car enthusiasts was pretty clever. The new 2024 Capri is a badge engineered Volkswagen.

    Luxury

    Private club memberships hit a slump in Hong Kong. Secondary market prices on memberships trade at a 20% discount. Factors include reduction in corporate memberships, less business being carried out in the city, less expats and less of a nightlife orientation for mainland 1000 talents visa holders from the mainland.

    Ford RS200 - Double
    Boreham Motorworks

    Ford partnered up with Boreham Motorworks and announces a continuation / restomod of the RS200 and the mark 1 Escort RS2000. Teenage me would have been very excited at this news. 2024 marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Ford RS 200.

    Burberry decided it needed to become more accessible and replaced its CEO. Sunglasses oligopoly EssilorLuxottica bought Supreme from VF Corporation just as the streetwear brand had entered its wilderness period. Formula 1 dandy Lewis Hamilton became a brand ambassador and guest designer for Dior menswear. LVMH brand TAG Heuer became formula 1’s timing partner from the 2025 season, displacing Rolex.

    Giorgio Armani moved out of fashion watches and into the luxury segment with the 11, made by Parmigiani Fleurier. Originally these had been launched as a 200-piece limited edition in 2022, but the advertising seems to indicate an ongoing product now.

    armani x parmigiani

    Virgin Atlantic announced the cancellation of its last far east route; Shanghai finished at the end of October 2024. L Catterton bought into Bicester Village – a UK based luxury outlet mall.

    Media and online

    Twitter rejoins GARM as a move towards increased brand safety needed to start getting advertisers back. Social media network Noplace launched. It is designed to appeal to the nostalgia for better online times circa 2008. The Wall Street Journal fired Hong Kong-based journalist Selina Cheng for being elected to the HKJA ( Hong Kong Journalists Association) – a local professional association. The WSJ approach – espoused support for western values and progressive principles BUT not in China or Hong Kong.

    Apple did a deal with Taboola for its Apple News service. OpenAI launched SearchGPT and Reddit barred a number of major search engines from crawling its service except Google. Over three years after Google planned ‘depreciating’ third party cookies, it took until July 2024 for the company to backtrack on this plan. Apple launched a web version of Apple Maps.

    The IPA Bellwether report indicated continued increase in marketing spending.

    Other news

    Trump

    During the US presidential campaign Donald Trump was shot at. President Biden declared that he wasn’t going to run for a second term. Kamala Harris became the candidate to run against Donald Trump and JD Vance. England went through to the final of the Euros. China’s third plenum signalled a continuation of the Xi administration’s economic approach with little change to take account of domestic conditions.

    90210.jpg
    Shannen Doherty and fellow Beverly Hills 90210 star Luke Perry in happier times.

    Beverly Hills 90210 was ubiquitous on television in the 1990s and its stars became some of the best known faces. One of the most famous, Shannen Doherty died on July 14th.

    Cheng Pei Pei

    We lost Hong Kong film actress Cheng Pei-pei. Cheng was a martial arts star who came up through the Shaw Brothers studio system and made her mark as female protagonist Golden Swallow in Come Drink with Me. Over six decades she appeared in films shot across Asia, America, Australia and Europe. She reached a western audience in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – reprising the wushu skills she’d used in numerous Shaw Brothers films.

    Technology

    Samsung launched a ring (Samsung Galaxy Ring) which monitors health-related data and syncs with the company’s smartphones and watches. Sasan Goodarzi at Intuit fires over 1,000 people for ‘poor performance’ as a big bet on automation. Apple mocked for ‘launching‘ a black Apple HomePod under a different name. Crowdstrike struck out countless enterprise Windows PCs through botched update to security software. On the plus side, it happened on a Friday.

    I was wilfully ignoring the Olympics in Paris, but the sabotage of the high-speed rail system caught my attention. It reminded me of a 2002 attack on the BT network.

    How July 2024 memed?

    Change

    2024 was a year of elections around the world. July 2024 saw two big elections, the general election in the UK and the French national legislature. The UK general election saw a new labour party government headed by Kier Starmer. This ended a 14-year run of conservative governments. In France, president Macron saw a European parliament election and national legislature election which rejected his leadership. It wasn’t a good time to be an incumbent politician.

    240613_Alex-Kier_Starmer-PR0045

    August 2024

    The end of July brought a heatwave. Early August cooled slightly and we had a bit of rain. The hot weather brought a febrile atmosphere to the UK, which resulted in riots.

    The government did a slow drip feed of news about how broken the UK economy is in advance of the autumn budget. The conceit that they didn’t know in advance wore thin according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

    nike - winning isnt for everyone

    I did my best to ignore the 2024 Olympics in Paris; but the William Defoe voiced Nike ad broke through. It’s a really nice piece of craft, it divided opinions. I would love to know what communications job was the advert supposed to do? Because only then can we really understand if it was successful or not. Nike would not have been happy with the negative criticism regarding the table tennis bat licking which was seen to be insulting China.

    adidas terrex

    The Nike ad contrasted with the film Adidas did featuring Japanese olympian Nonaka Miho (Japanese names have the family name first).

    But Nike was right winning isn’t for everyone; and their financial results were not winning for shareholders who had a lot of complain about through 2023 and 2024. The UK had a similar problem to Nike, not fulfilling its promise; Labour looked under hood and saw that £20 billion of spending plans were unfunded.

    Luxury

    Chanel launches a smartwatch / earphones combo. Other luxury companies had tried to play in the connected space in the past from an LG / Prada collaboration in the mid to late 2000s to TAG Heuer’s smartphone and smart watch products. Jing Daily, a luxury business publication focused on China finally launched its ‘pro‘ subscription-based tier.

    Marketing

    No sooner had Kelloggs broken into two companies, than Mars purchased Kellanova – the maker of Pringles and Poptarts. The Mars purchase is a bet against the transformation of grocery sales by GLP-1 weight management treatments. Agency consolidation is an area of obvious efficiency gains. Steve Bartlett, the Social Chain and Flight Group founder, had ads banned for Huel and Zoe.

    Generative AI-assisted search engine Perplexity announced plans for advertising before end of 2024.

    Online

    MySpace turned 21 years old. US authorities win an antitrust case against Google.

    TechCrunch Disrupt Europe: Berlin 2013

    France arrested Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov. This broke new ground in an attempt to regulate platforms. Twitter got banned in Brazil. BlueSky added support for video and features to limit dogpiling and hostile quote posts.

    Middle class families in the UK and Ireland disappointed as demand and ticket touts outstripped supply of Oasis reunion tour tickets. I found Creamfields underwhelming.

    Other news

    We lost internet publishing pioneer and journalist Mike Magee. French actor Alain Delon died. He starred in Le Cercle Rouge and La Samourai amongst 90 film appearances and was the face of Dior Eau Sauvage.

    dior
    Alain Delon by Perfums Dior

    Retail legend Myron E. Ullman III died. Ullman started at IBM, but then built a career driving successful retail operations at Macy’s, DFS (Duty-Free Shopping) now part of LVMH, Starbucks and JC Penney.

    Technology

    Google gets rid of the Chromecast, replacing it with a set-top box. Nvidia announced it was using an LLM machine learning model to aid in design of its graphics processing unit (GPU), central processing unit (CPU) and networking chips. Their intent was to speed up design process and increase the pace of chip development.

    IBM shuttered its R&D facility in China. Technology website Anandtech, most famous for its deep thorough reviews of of significant products closed down. Online ad business The Trading Desk was rumoured to be developing a smart TV operating system in order get more advertising revenue and share some of it with TV set brands.

    How August 2024 memed?

    Misinformation

    Cardiff-born Axel Rudakubana attacked a Taylor Swift-themed children’s party in Southport. He was charged with three murders and ten counts of attempted murder. False information on Rudakubana’s background, religion and immigration status spread across social media.

    Thuggery

    This sparked riots in Southport, Rotherham, Hartlepool and Sunderland. A mosque was attacked and at least some of the violence was put down to far right activists. The far right were involved in much of the online discussion of false information. Twitter received much of the blame for being a conduit of the misinformation. The UK government warned social media platforms of their obligations under UK law. The misinformation was repeated in WhatsApp messaging groups, causing one county councillor in Wales to resign his position after spreading false information. The evidence of Russian involvement in the misinformation activity is scant at best. Kier Starmer’s comment about ‘rot deep in the heart‘ of British institutions and politics could equally well be extended to British society.

    A similar attack claimed by the Islamic State that happened in Solingen, Germany didn’t result in Southport-style rioting.

    September 2024

    I spent August in the north and much of the weather I experienced felt more like spring or autumn than summer. This wasn’t just summer showers, but the storm force winds that came with it. The weather seemed appropriate for the tempestuous feel of the United Kingdom at that moment.

    September 1st, the temperature went back up to 27 celsius, with showers and thunderstorms, the torrential rain continued through the week.

    Party conference was somewhat overshadowed by a drip-feed of low-level revelations of donor gifts.

    Business news

    2024 turned out to be an annus horribilis for large German industrial companies. Volkswagen announced a plan to shutter one or more German car plants. The company failed to recognise its sales problems stemmed from multiple issues including vehicle quality, a failure to build hybrid vehicles and poor pricing strategy for purchase vs. leasing. Ex-Bain Consulting executive John Donahue shown the door at Nike – after failure to recover from strategic and tactical decisions were dumpster fires at a time of increased competition from the likes of On Running and Hoka. Donahue’s actions cratered the Nike share price, it rose 10 percent on news of his departure.

    Luxury news

    Charles, Prince of Wales

    Queen Elizabeth passed away two years ago This meant royal warrants, that are perceived as a mark of quality were changed to reflect the King’s views and tastes. Brands where royal warrants were lost, worried about brand impact. Brands that gained a royal warrant, gained some perceived value – but probably won’t have the impact it did when Elizabeth came to the throne.

    Loro Piana and New Balance launched a co-branded version of the 990 v6 shoe. You paid $1,500 for the cobranded shoe, rather than $240 usually charged. The two-speed luxury sector continues into September 2024, with Burberry removed from the FTSE 100.

    gucci
    Gucci

    Gucci got in on the act of having an older muse a la Loewe and with a campaign featuring Debbie Harry. Talking of an older muse, Donald Trump launched a $100,000 gold watch with a Trump branded dial. LVMH sold Off-White, the streetwear brand founded by the late Virgil Abloh.

    Marketing

    UK retailer John Lewis brings back ‘never knowingly undersold’ price promise. ASOS sold Topshop and Topman. Sony announces a free version of Grand Turismo 7 to celebrate 30 years of the PlayStation to be launched at the end of the year. China sees a 50 percent drop in mooncakes sold and threatened to blacklist western brands not using Xinjiang cotton, starting with Calvin Klein. The reasons are partly economic and partly health consumer attitude related as mooncakes are very calorie rich.

    DJ Nigo collaborated with Nike
    Nike

    As Nike lost its CEO, the settlement of a lawsuit between Nike and A Bathing Ape allowed the sports apparel brand to collaborate with BAPE founder and current Kenzo artistic director Nigo.

    Nike x Nigo collaboration
    Nike

    Quote of the month

    The biggest fallacy in marketing is that consumers want more choice, they don’t, they want more confidence in the choice that they make – Professor Scott Galloway on his podcast The Prof G Pod (September 18, 2024).

    Media

    Authorities in the US issued an indictment against Tenet Media for work carried out for state media company Russia Today. US government goes to court with regards Google’s ad tech business.

    Meanwhile GBNews owner Paul Marshall bought The Spectator for a reputed £100 million. The Observer was put up for sale.

    The Fabulous Wonder Twins in "If It Makes You Happy" by Sheryl Crow

    Gracenote’s provided ‘pop-up video’ type trivia for large video platforms. These kind of pop-up facts and reactions are more commonly used on Asian TV programmes in the likes of Japan and South Korea. Hoonigan, the automotive parts, lifestyle and media brand founded by Ken Block filed for bankruptcy with over $1.2 billion in debt due to over-expansion.

    Online

    Twitter still banned in Brazil, fined $900,000 per day by Brazilian courts. TikTok went to court to try and prevent a ban of the platform in the US.

    Other news

    Loewe muse and star of stage and screen Maggie Smith died at the age of 89.

    Technology

    Generative AI company Anthropic launched Claude for Enterprise; which supports enterprise features like SSO (user single sign-on). In what was believed to be a supply chain attack, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkie handsets used across Lebanon and Syria detonated at the same time. Israel was considered the likely culprit.

    Meta Orion AR glasses prototype
    Meta

    Meta demonstrated their Orion prototype AR glasses. Apple updated its smartphone, smartwatch and earbuds product lines. It also updated its operating systems across its TV set-top box range, Mac computers, head sets, mobile devices, tablets and smartwatches. Further personnel departures at Open.AI and consolidation of power within the organisation.

    How September 2024 memed?

    Joy

    Kamala Harris

    Maja Pawinska Sims wrote for Provoke Media about how the US presidential race, to Charli XCX and Taylor Swift had been using the power of joy strategically in terms of their influence campaigns. I recommend going to the article and giving it a read.

    October 2024

    October continued with the damp 2024 feel, with remnants of a hurricane coming across the Atlantic and drenching the country. The UK launches its industrial policy: Invest 2035: the UK’s modern industrial strategy. Hong Kong’s single use plastic ban comes into force.

    Storm Ashley

    Storm Ashley battered the Atlantic coastline of Europe, reaching the west of Ireland first. It trended as a hashtag trended across social media platforms.

    Luxury

    Rolex opens first wholly-owned store in China. This follows a year on from the Bucherer acquisition. Watches of Switzerland purchased Hodinkee, which explained why the watch publisher withdrew its retail offering. On Running launches collection with Loewe – the Cloudtilt collection.

    Louis Vuitton

    LVMH announced poor financial results and uncertain outlook. This was for a few reasons: China’s economic outlook, the strength of the Japanese yen vs. the Chinese yuan. Middle class financial health had declined from 2020 highs.

    2024 marked a 12% drop in sales for the Swiss watch industry. Into this change, Patek Philippe launched their first new range of watches in 25 years. The Cubitus was designed to reach a new generation of watch wearers. It’s a divisive design, GQ collected the positive takes, others like pre-owned watch dealer BQ Watches were less enthusiastic.

    Godfather of streetwear Shawn Stüssy dropped his first collection under his S/Double moniker in a decade. Stüssy had announced his return in July. This first collection was Australia and New Zealand only, done in association with the Hill Brothers who are behind Globe.

    Media

    Meta allows brands to shut down comments on ads. Reuters introduced paid online consumer subscription. WPP warned markets over economic uncertainty going forwards.

    Online

    Twitter allowed in Brazil again, after it paid its fines and blocked banned accounts; Elon Musk also had spent time cosying up to the Russian government. Dutch police arrest people behind Bohemia and Cannabia dark web marketplaces. Roblox alleged to have inflated metrics and become a ‘pedophile hellscape‘ for children. Meanwhile, the UK prosecuted its first person for using generative AI to create child pornography.

    The Internet Archive’s ‘Wayback Machine’ was hacked, responsibility claimed by pro-Palestinian hacktivist group. Content delivery network Cloudflare breaks RSS for many sites across the web. London online car service Addison Lee gets bought and plans to expand to other cities including Liverpool. YouTube rolled out a controllable playback speed across videos. Rather than picking from a number of predefined speeds you now can speed up or slow down using a slider.

    Technology

    Apple made a ‘subtle‘ change to the iPhone’s contact-sharing permissions that make it hard for address book based growth hacking of apps – while still facilitating usage, but at a slower pace. IronNet which was founded by Pentagon veterans as an enterprise security firm filed for bankruptcy. Chinese scientists reportedly used a D-Wave quantum computer to crack AES and RSA and published a paper on it. Amazon refreshed its Kindle range. Apple Intelligence launched but failed to impress partly due to a more intentional, integrated approach and general bugginess.

    How did October 2024 meme?

    Donald Trump
    Anxiety and glee respectively greeted razor fine margins between both Republican and Democrat presidential candidates in the final weeks before the election. There was the bizarro headlines to contend with as well. It all made grimly compelling watching, rather like the Dickie Davis-narrated Mega Crash series of motor racing accidents compilation VHS tapes.

    November 2024

    October ended with an uncharacteristically late storm (Super Typhoon Kong-rey) hit Taiwan causing hundreds of injuries. November started cool and dry, though you could cut the air like butter with the tension surrounding the US election and Rachel Reeves’ first budget. Collin’s Dictionary made ‘brat‘ one of its words of the year killing off the summertime meme. Donald Trump had a decisive win in the US presidential election. Speculation started on what a Trump president would mean across all policy, economic and social areas.

    Luxury

    Loro Piana took over Harrods windows for the Christmas shopping season with its workshop of wonders.

    Marketing

    Broke Ad School closes their website Instagram and LinkedIn presence. Jaguar rebrands, gets slated in The Guardian. I desperately tried to ignore the debate around it. Bayer announced a big single customer view project with Salesforce.com and Alibaba Cloud.

    Media

    The Vatican launches its manga style mascot, designed on their behalf by Tokidoki. Hello Kitty turned 50. Christmas advertising spend rose 7.8% from 2023. The Onion bought InfoWars – the media outlet of Alex Jones. BlueSky saw a boost as Twitter faced an exodus of high profile users. Sony made a bid for Kadokawa Corporation. Kadokawa publishes manga including the Gundam series, owns the BookWalker platform – a kind of Kindle store for manga, computer and gaming magazines, anime films and TV series, record label, role-playing table top games and computer games including Elden Ring.

    At the end of the month, two things showed a difficult future for the UK media industry. A UK parliament report reflected on both local and national news media futures. UK TV programme exports dropped slightly in 2024 by 2%.

    Online

    Amazon launched a sub-$20 offering called Amazon Haul to compete with Temu and Shein, in plenty of time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It allowed free product returns. Ted Baker returns as an online store. Which? launches a class action suit against Apple with regards to iCloud storage options.

    In a sign of a weak economy, John Lewis partnered with Klarna.

    Other news

    2014 Global Citizen Awards

    Record producer Quincy Jones died. Typhoon Toraji prompted a T8 warning (gale force winds and very heavy rain) in Hong Kong, later lowered to T3 (equivalent to a UK amber weather warning for rain). It historically has been unheard of to see a typhoon this late in the year, typhoon season is typically in July, August and September. In the UK, storm Bert lashed the country with uncharacteristically warm weather, high winds and torrential rain.

    A Hong Kong court sentenced 45 former opposition politicians to up to ten years in prison. The heaviest sentence was given to Benny Tai. Tai is a former associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong and the most prominent thinker. Tai used his expertise in constitutional law to help the Occupy Central sit-in, 2016 Legislative election and the 2019 district council election upsets.

    Ireland goes to the polls, given its proportional representation system, the vote counting (and recounting) took a while.

    Technology

    Amazon’s assistant Alexa turned 10 years old. Long time technology journalist Om Malik wrote about the decline in rate of growth for the internet. ChatGPT turns two.

    December 2024

    It was a damp start to December. The Irish general election results were slowly trickling out and thankfully the Irish electorate rejected some of the far right candidates.

    Business

    Novo Nordisk announced trial results for its latest weight management treatment CagriSema, the share price dropped significantly. To add insult to injury rival Eli Lilly were allowed to use their rival weight management product to treat sleep apnea by US regulators. Unilever abandons its pioneer position in sustainability, mirroring the thinking in Nick Asbury’s The Road to Hell.

    Luxury

    Jaguar unveiled its new direction in Miami.

    Media

    The Guardian agrees the sale of its Sunday newspaper The Observer to Tortoise Media. Apple+ TV celebrated its 5th anniversary. Taylor Swift’s Eras tour which had ran through much of 2023 + 2024, finally finished. The 149 shows grossed $2 billion in ticket sales. Group M announced that global media spending for 2024 past $1 trillion – over half of it going to technology platforms.

    Marketing

    McDonalds brought back its McRib burger, complete with a Christmas themed advertisement and jingle. For the UK’s main Christmas ads, I put them all together here. IPG acquired by Omnicom in deal announced. Expected to go through in the second half of 2025.

    Online

    Foursquare shut down its City Guide app, it looked like they will be merging some of its features into their Swarm app instead of you having to use two apps. The revised Swarm app is due to appear sometime in 2025.

    renren 'upgrade' notice December 2, 2024

    Chinese social network RenRen went offline. A notice on their site dated December 2, 2024 talked about a fundamental upgrade, comparing the existing service to a petrol car and the forthcoming new service to an electric vehicle (literally translated new energy vehicle – which covers electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids etc).

    人人网服务升级公告
    亲爱的人人网用户们, 感谢您一直以来的陪伴与支持!我们想告诉您,人人网正在进 行一次“换车”升级—一就像您的燃油车开了多年,也想试试
    新能源车一样。 在这期间,您在人人网上的所有数据都得到了严格的保护,确 保您的个人信息和隐私安全不受任何威胁。您的数据安全,对
    我们来说至关重要。 请耐心等待我们的“新车”上路,届时您将享受到更加稳定、
    安全、丰富的社交体验,让我们共同期待人人网的全新启程!

    Data showed Amazon had biggest Black Friday takings ever. Krispy Kreme got their online ordering system hacked. The hack had a material effect on Krispy Kreme’s financial results.

    Pre-owned online retailer musicMagpie was acquired by the AO Group.

    Other news

    F 242 Blackout tour

    I got to see Front 242 perform their last show in the UK at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. The Black Out Tour was their last tour. After this tour, they retired. South Korean president Yoon declares martial law and then cancels the declaration of martial law hours later. The Assad regime ruling Syria collapses in the space of a week.

    Technology

    Pat Gelsinger abruptly retired as CEO of Intel.

    How did 2024 meme?

    Pharmacist Holding a Box of Ozempic

    Ozempic face, the thinner but aged look of the wealthy who have managed to lose weight rapidly with the help of semaglutide injections given for aesthetic rather than medical reasons.

    To bring you up to speed, The Economist did a really good podcast about this category of drugs.

    Given that I worked on Wegovy, the planner in me feels a little disappointed that we didn’t get Wegovy to verb. Ozempic instead stole brand gold mainly down to Novo Nordisk suffering from ‘unprecedented demand’ at US launch until now. At the end of May, semaglutide had its own episode of South Park.

    The money quote from Cartman:

    “Rich people get Ozempic, poor people get body positivity”

    South Park: The End of Obesity

    On June 10th, 2024 Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen went on Bloomberg Television to explain that they haven’t created, nor are they responsible for the social media hype surrounding semaglutide medications.

    Later that month it even appeared on the runway at Berlin fashion week. At least Ozempic face is better than ‘skinny jab‘.

    The sales pitch.

    I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from January 2025 onwards; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

  • The John Donahue post

    Who is John Donahue?

    John Donahue is the outgoing CEO at Nike. Full disclosure, I have Nike in my wardrobe and I own a share in the company at the time of writing. Anyway back to Donahue, according to his biography on the Nike website:

    John Donahoe is President & CEO of NIKE, Inc. He is responsible for the continued growth of NIKE’s global business portfolio, which includes the Nike, Jordan and Converse brands. John became president and CEO of NIKE in January 2020 and has served on the Board of Directors since 2014. Previously, he was the president and CEO of ServiceNow and of eBay Inc., and he continues to serve as chairman of the board at PayPal. Earlier in his career, he worked for Bain & Company for nearly two decades, becoming the firm’s president and CEO in 1999. A former basketball player and lifelong sports fan, John received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Dartmouth College.

    john-donahoe
    John Donahue via the Nike website.

    He is a business strategy wonk and has extensive experience in online businesses and online commerce. When Apple had the vision thing, they hired Tim Cook – a famed operations and logistics executive in the technology industry to deliver. John Donahue had been hired to do great operational execution, by a company that was running low on the vision thing.

    Donahue may not have had permission to deal with some of the systemic issues in Nike and some of them issues might be due to the board itself.

    Penetration

    Nike’s collective strategy to move to D2C via its own retail stores and e-tailing platform was ostensively a way to increase profitability and presumably focus on heavier, brand loyal users. I can understand why they might have felt that due to the ubiquity of their products on the backs and feet of customers around the world.

    Secondly, prior to 2010 (and in most business schools still) the perceived wisdom was that modern marketing is supposedly about focusing on loyal, heavier buyers; focusing on retention (not acquisition) and return on investment.

    However, things changed in 2010; Ehrensberg Bass researchers Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk summarise the marketing science research that their institution had been doing in their books How Brands Grow part one and part two. A key part of their findings was that brand loyalty is positively correlated with brand penetration – if you have higher levels of penetration then your customers will tend to be more loyal. However, if you have lower levels of penetration then your customers will tend to be less loyal. Smaller brands suffer from a double jeopardy of sorts: their sales are lower because they have fewer buyers, who buy the brand less often. 

    Which kind of makes sense. When you go to a supermarket, you can only buy what’s on the shelf when you’re in the supermarket. It would take a lot to go and try another supermarket to just buy one product. Most people will just buy what they can on their list and maybe look at substitute products.

    Nike is a huge brand, but it wilfully reduced its marketing penetration, by reducing the amount of places it appeared. It withdrew or reduced engagement with a range of partners:

    • Amazon
    • DSW
    • Footlocker
    • JD Sports
    • Macys
    • Olympia Sports
    • Urban Outfitters
    • Zappos

    When Nike goes back to those partners, there will be a shift in the power dynamic away from Nike. These retailers have options because Nike let other brands in to fill the void it chose to leave behind.

    On LinkedIn, people have talked about this as Nike has a brand problem. This is far beyond a brand problem; but brand has suffered.

    Where’s the community?

    Nike’s Londoner celebrated community back in 2018. Nike has continued to win in culture with collaborations including Nigo and Yoon Ahn of Ambush. But the culture didn’t translate into the degree of sales that Nike wanted so far.

    Part of the reason for this is Nike’s focus on sub-cultures rather than broader transformational trends in middle class and working class consumers.

    On Running have built their brand around running groups. Nike used to have running clubs ran by staff at their retail outlets. They were also were supporting Charlie Dark’s Run Dem Crew in the early 2010s.

    When did Nike give competitors space in communities? Was it down to a pivot win focus from retail to online? Given that part of the rationale for Nike’s move to selling direct to customers was to be closer to them, this all seems really odd.

    Charlie Dark has since become a global running ambassador for Lululemon.

    Core competences

    In the late 1990s and early 2000s Nike sold watches. The most famous of which was the Triax range that angled the display to make it glanceable for runners. There were also Nike MP3 players made with Philips. There was also the Nike fuelband, an in-house attempt at a wearable.

    The company decided to focus on what it did well and has since made products that are complementary to Apple’s product line like watch straps and apps. Under Donahue’s watch Nike extended itself into the technology space with NFT offerings and metaverse experiences. Both of which seem to have been expensive follies.

    Fading stars

    Nike was formed at a unique point in time and over the decades has worked with a range of game-changing athletes who were known globally thanks to mass media and the internet.

    Nike’s biggest brand and star is still Michael Jordan. The Air Jordan 1 was launched in 1984. That means that the shoe design and when he played in it is older than the young people it is sold to. The linkage between the iconic jumpman performance and his signature shoe is becoming elongated by time.

    Granted Adidas sells the Superstar, the Stan Smith, the Samba and Gazelle shoes which are older than the Jordan 1. But Adidas doesn’t lean as heavily on any one design. Instead they rotate in and out of style. Even then Adidas has suffered from problems executing consistently such as the Yeezy scandal.

    Nike’s Dunk design comes from 1985, the Air Force 1 came out in 1982. They are not bad shoes, but they will fade in and out of style.

    Nike had also been relatively slow to take advantage of the surge of interest in women’s basketball with Caitlin Clark only getting a signature shoe deal this year.

    Nike also managed to grossly underestimate the demand for replica jerseys of its England and Australia women’s football teams.

    Jordan has since expanded into a brand that Nike has used to sponsor the likes of French football team Paris St Germain.

    In golf, Nike parted ways with Tiger Woods this year. Woods is launching his own line instead. While Nike has other golfers on its roster, they don’t have the cultural impact that Woods had on the game.

    The brand has better news in football where it has a deep bench of both teams and player sponsorships to draw on. Nike still has a great bench of athletes comparable to rivals like Adidas, and that’s the problem. They glitter like the Milky Way rather than radiate like the sun.

    The secondary market

    Hypebeasts

    The rise of streetwear as an industry took off in the late 1980s. Its origins go further back. You had Dapper Dan in Harlem in the 1980s, football casual culture, Japanese fashions and the California surf culture influence. Soon after it took off you had unobtainable items:

    • Major Force t-shirts – (Major Force was a Japanese hip hop and house label featuring artists like Hiroshi Fujiwara)
    • The Tommy Boy Carhartt Detroit jacket
    • Numerous Stüssy Tribe letterman jackets
    • Supreme drops from 1994 onwards

    Trying to scratch that itch made you a hype beast. I know hypebeasts who are 60 years old and have college age children. The signs of this secondary market being bubbly could be seen back before COVID.

    The end of easy money

    Nike like other premium brands benefited during COVID-19, when interest rates were low and consumers had money in their pockets. Interest rate rises, inflation and an economic dip took away the easy money. Nike doesn’t seem to have factored this into its expectations. The decline in Chinese economic growth, seems to have hit Nike particularly hard.

    The polyurethane problem

    Nike shoes took off on them being tradable alternative assets like sports cards, or vintage bottles of wine. Nike trainers have a shelf life due to the materials that they are made from. Adhesive bonds can be reapplied, stitching can be repaired, but polyurethane midsoles crumble over time and can’t be replaced.

    The plastic breaks down and and the soles disintegrate. I have had pairs go at the four year mark. Chemistry undermines the collector segment that supports much of the secondary market for Nike products.

    A long train running

    Passengers relax and view the scenery from the lounge car of the Empire Builder enroute from Chicago to East Glacier Park Montana, and Seattle, Washington, June 1974

    John Donahue was in charge when Nike had unprecedented decline in sales. But there have been issues for a long time. Donahue was executing on a strategy for direct-to-consumer sales via its own retail stores and online, that Nike had committed to prior to his arrival as CEO.

    This is obvious from John Donahue’s recruitment process.

    • Donahue’s reputation was helped by his roles at ServiceNow and eBay
    • Donahue was a former partner at Bain and a friend to many in Silicon Valley
    • He received his MBA from Stanford School of Business – which is a great institution and happens to be the one that Phil Knight went to.

    What Nike didn’t do was commission a headhunter, hold a beauty parade or anything akin to a rigorous recruitment process in hiring their CEO.

    All of which points a board-wide issue rather than just a CEO issue. Which begs the question, will Nike become the sports apparel version of Yahoo!? A rotation of CEOs, intractable board level issues and an inevitable slide out of the limelight? Nike has been wrong-footed before, it was clobbered by the rise of Timberland in the early 1990s driven by the brown boots usefulness for standing on cold wet street corners in the criminal underworld adjacent to hip hop culture. But Nike came back. That was a different Nike with a more energetic Phil Knight and Tinker Hatfield.

    The scale of this stumble seems bigger and faster than before. Nike might not be resilient enough to withstand it.

    The innovation problem

    Former Nike designer Steve McDonald has painted a very different picture on Nike innovation internally within the company than has been seen on the outside. Outdoor sub-brand ACG was ‘never supported‘ when it was launched back in 1989. It was an immensely political environment with star-designer Tinker Hatfield warring with rival designers. Instead Nike used golden birdcage contracts to lock up and stifle talent. Hatfield is in charge of Nike’s Innovation Kitchen, but there seems to be a lack of commercially beneficial output.

    Hatfield’s days as a star designer are numbered following several decades at the top and there doesn’t seem to be a star-status worthy successor coming though.

    Nike seemed to abandon mainstream sustainable innovation some time after 2012, with its ISPA range as a sporadic tokenism to green issues.

    NikeLab – a premium line that fits in with On Running’s apparel seems to receive only sporadic support. All of which implies that product innovation had problems way before Hoka and On Running turned up.

    Nike’s Vaporfly running shoes were originally released back in 2018 and by 2020, World Athletics rule changes meant that Nike has a range of competitors providing similar shoes.

    The next battle ground has been fought over consumers focusing on wellness and fitness. When Hoka and On Running did turn up, Nike didn’t have much in the tank to respond.

    It was really brought home to me in sportswear-loving Merseyside where On Running shoes are the universal choice of everyone from office workers to scallies. Before COVID they’d all be in Nikes with the Air Max 95s being particularly popular.

    More information

    Nike withdraws full-year guidance ahead of CEO transition | FT

    Nike tries to get back in the race as sneaker sales gather pace | FT

    As Nike cuts ties with retailers, competitors try to take its wholesale place | Modern Retail

    Steve McDonald on Instagram

  • Luxury beliefs + more things

    Luxury beliefs

    Luxury beliefs is a term that I came across from the writings of Rob Henderson. Henderson has a similar kind of story to JD Vance. Addiction in the family and escaping his home environment by enlisting in the US Air Force.

    After his service Henderson used funding via the GI Bill to go to Yale. He then got a scholarship to go to Cambridge to do a doctorate. Like Vance he had written a memoir: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class that highlights the challenges faced in working class American society including violence and addiction. In his book Henderson explores the idea of luxury beliefs, how they benefit the privileged and harm the most vulnerable in society.

    What are examples of luxury beliefs?

    The luxury beliefs Henderson cites are seen to be widely held progressive views including:

    • Defunding the police
    • Defunding the prison system
    • Decriminalising or legalising drugs

    Getting rid of standardised exams – Henderson sees these as helping less privileged children get into college

    Rejecting marriage as a pointless concept. – Henderson claims that one of the strongest predictors of success was if they were brought up in a nuclear family.

    Henderson believes that the common thread that holds luxury beliefs together is that they are held by privileged people, the beliefs make them look good (and feel good about themselves), but harm the marginalised.

    Luxury beliefs allow the privileged to look good by:

    • Playing the victim
    • Protest without penalty – which is less likely to happen to more marginalised protestors
    • Push the less privileged down

    Henderson labelled this ‘saviour theatre’. Henderson reminded of previous generation protestors like Patty Hearst and participants in the Weather Underground’s Days of Rage which would seem to fit Henderson’s definition of holding luxury beliefs.

    More posts about new terms can be found on this blog.

    Branding

    What does Hong Kong airport smell of? Or your go-to hotel? The business of scent branding | South China Morning Post If you are a fragrance enthusiast, you may have heard of Shiu Shing Hong, a quaint shop in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district that has been around for more than 50 years.

    The store, which recently went viral on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, not only sells house-made essential oils – must-have souvenirs for visitors from mainland China thanks to the exposure – but recreates the signature scents of popular malls and other venues in Hong Kong.

    On its shelves are familiar – sometimes odd – concoctions. Bottle labels reference K11, a shopping mall in Tsim Sha Tsui, the five-star Rosewood Hotel, and the Hong Kong International Airport. Sportswear brand Lululemon has one too.

    J. D. Vance Has a Point About Mountain Dew | The Atlantic – brands and identity

    China

    Deaths in China to reach ‘an unprecedented scale’, peak at 19 million in 2061 | South China Morning Post – due to aging population

    WTO says China is backsliding on key reforms and lacks transparency on subsidies | South China Morning Post – World Trade Organization report cites studies that say subsidies could top US$900 billion – providing fuel for critics of Beijing’s practices such as the EU and US

    Consumer behaviour

    Inside China’s Psychoboom – JSTOR Dailymental illness has transformed from a bourgeois Western taboo into a legitimate public health concern.

    The consequences of the psychoboom are both logical and contradictory. As the Chinese economy has expanded and citizens have grown wealthier, the demands of everyday life have grown in number and kind, expanding from physiological and safety concerns to a desire for love, esteem, and self-actualization. At the same time, such desires run counter to traditional Chinese values like the age-old concept of Confucian filial piety and the relatively new  ideology imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), both of which place the well-being of the collective above the happiness of the individual.

    Kamala Harris, Usha Vance, and the twice-born thrice-selected Indian American elite

    Design

    Adidas partners with Mexican artisans for hand-embroidered soccer jerseys | Trend Watching

    Economics

    Maersk says Red Sea shipping disruption having global effects | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

    Ethics

    Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic Used Thousands of Swiped YouTube Videos to Train AI | WIRED

    Microsoft DEI Lead Blasts Company in Internal Email After Team Is Reportedly Laid Off – IGN

    Finance

    Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Say Recovery in Private Equity Deals and Fees – BloombergMorgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are confident that their most important clients are about to get active after a long spell on the sidelines and help goose the long-awaited revival in investment banking fees.
    The private equity deal machine has been mostly jammed up for the past two years, leaving many investment bankers twiddling their thumbs while their bosses talked up green shoots that failed to flourish. There are plenty of potential road bumps ahead, but there’s reason to put more weight on the better outlook now even compared with just three months ago: The wave of debt refinancing that has led banks’ revenue recovery this year has also been helping to fix the prospects of many companies owned by private equity firms

    The Financial Instability Hypothesis* by Hyman P. Minsky, The Jerome Levy Economics Institute of Bard College – interesting paper used in current negative critiques or private equity like Has private equity become a Ponzi scheme? – UnHerd

    Gadgets

    Sony is killing off recordable Blu-ray, bidding farewell to disc burning | TechSpotSony admitted it’s going to “gradually end development and production” of recordable Blu-rays and other optical disc formats at its Tagajo City plants in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Essentially, 25GB BD-REs, 50GB BD-RE DLs, 100GB BD-RE XLs, or 128GB BD-R XLs will soon not be available to consumers. Professional discs for video production and optical archives for data storage are also being discontinued. – the big shocker is the issue for archival formats

    Alexa Is in Millions of Households—and Amazon Is Losing Billions – WSJa pet project of Bezos, and the Alexa voice assistant and the Echo speakers through which it communicated were inspired by his interest in the spaceship computer in “Star Trek.”

    “When launching products back then, we didn’t have to have a profit timeline for them,” said a former longtime devices executive. “We had to get the system in people’s homes and we’d win. Innovate, and then figure out how to make money later.”

    To do that, the team had to keep prices low. Amazon sometimes even gave away versions of the smart speaker as part of promotions in a bid to get a larger base of users.

    Health

    “It’s All Just F*cking Impossible:” The Influence of Taylor Swift on Fans’ Body Image, Disordered Eating, and Rejection of Diet Culture – ScienceDirect and 100-Pound Weight Loss: My health improved. My self-esteem didn’t. | Slate

    Another Danish biotech can help investors’ hunger for obesity drugs | FT – this probably explains why Zealand pivoted from taking its medications to market to becoming research and selling on as its not big enough to exploit this opportunity on its own. (Full disclosure, I worked briefly on the diabetic emergency injection product until the company pivoted).

    Ozempic Tracker Insights: Price Remains the Largest Obstacle   – CivicScience

    The economics of GLP-1 – Marginal REVOLUTION

    Patients checking into rehab after abusing weight-loss jabs | The Times Online

    Innovation

    IKE and hyperice’s boots and vest massage athletes’ feet and keep their bodies cool

    Dude, where’s my (flying) car? – POLITICO

    RISC-V Thrives Through Research, International Collaboration – EE Times

    Xiaomi’s ‘lights-out factory’ to mass produce new foldable smartphones | DigiTimes – but it doesn’t mean that the products will be better, just consistent. I keep thinking of the Fiat Strada, an ugly rust bucket of a car, that was ‘hand built by robots’.

    Luxury

    Luxury brands roll out 50% discounts as Chinese shoppers rein in spending | FT – this will destroy the intrinsic value of the brand

    Italy’s competition watchdog probes Armani and Dior over alleged labour exploitation | FT – the question is more why now? It’s been known for years that Chinese workers are exploited in factories based in Italy.

    Age of Ozempic: Predictions for the luxury industry | Vogue BusinessAnalysts agree that the pop culture influence of weight loss drugs is giving luxury labels and mass-market brands, alike, licence to refocus on straight-size. “Luxury brands have long been staunchly unwilling to cater to plus-sizes outside of the occasional token representation, but typically premium and mass players would invest more readily in plus-size,” says Marci. “Now we’re seeing the effects of Ozempic and weight loss culture on retail as a whole.”

    Already, a host of US-based retailers and fashion companies including Rent the Runway are seeing boosted demand for smaller clothing sizes, and falling demand for larger sizes, according to The Wall Street Journal. Retailers have been investing in fewer products that offer larger sizing

    Burberry’s new CEO has a task | FT Fashion Matters

    EssilorLuxottica expands into streetwear with $1.5bn Supreme dealthe deal was a “no brainer” and had happened “very quickly” because VF was under pressure to divest its most “iconic asset”. EssilorLuxottica planned to use Supreme’s wealth of customer data and its Gen Z fans in China, Japan and South Korea to target new consumers – it shows how good a deal James Jebbia got with private equity and VF Corporation

    Lewis Hamilton Named Dior Ambassador | BoF – formula 1 driver and pit lane dandy has also worked with Dior men’s artistic director Kim Jones to guest design a collection of clothing and accessories set to launch in October

    Marketing

    Rediscovered Absolut Blue Painting Inspires New Bottle | MarketingDaily

    Focus on value pivotal for brands as consumers get more cost-conscious – The Media Leader

    The King’s Speech 2024 – GOV.UK – restrictions on fast food advertising and energy drinks

    Proportion of UK businesses increasing marketing spend hits 10-year high – The Media Leader

    Evolution not revolution as Sorrell unveils Monks and reorganizes for easier client access | The Drum

    Media

    The return of piracy – net.wars

    ‘New model for human civilisation’: What is so unique about China’s style of modernisation? – CNA – interesting that CNA don’t provide a critical analysis on the positives and the negatives of the China model.

    Online

    Even Disinformation Experts Don’t Know How to Stop It | New York TimesResearchers have learned a great deal about the misinformation problem over the past decade: They know what types of toxic content are most common, the motivations and mechanisms that help it spread and who it often targets. The question that remains is how to stop it.

    A critical mass of research now suggests that tools such as fact checks, warning labels, prebunking and media literacy are less effective and expansive than imagined, especially as they move from pristine academic experiments into the messy, fast-changing public sphere.

    LGBT and Marginalized Voices Are Not Welcome on Threads – MacStories

    Google Is Mind-Bogglingly Bad – On my Om – more ‘Google is Dead’ material – grist for the mill and Daring Fireball: Google Is Shutting Down Its URL Shortener, Breaking All Links

    Apple Maps launches on the web to take on Google – The Verge

    Retailing

    Tesco takes on Waitrose and M&S in premium range fight | FT – implies that Tesco thinks consumer spend is likely to be going up again

    The shifting world of e-commerce liability | The Daily Upside – Amazon’s legal issues and the fact it has over 553million SKUs

    Security

    American Hacker in Turkey Linked to Massive AT&T Breach | 404 Media

    Software

    Meta won’t bring future multimodal AI models to EU | Axios

    GPT-4o mini: advancing cost-efficient intelligence | OpenAI – computing power per watt reduction is the most interesting part of this. You also see it in Mistral NeMo | Mistral AI | Frontier AI in your hands

    Inside Microsoft, nobody really owns Copilot – The Verge

    Taiwan

    TSMC proposes Foundry 2.0 to alleviate antitrust concerns | DigiTimes – Trump-proofing the semiconductor industry

    Technology

    AI Chip Startup Graphcore Acquired by SoftBank – EE Times

    Web of no web

    The Future of AR Beyond the Vision Pro Is Already Brewing – CNET

    Google’s XR Re-Entry Point | Spyglass

    Wireless

    China’s Transsion sued by Qualcomm and Philips as IP woes mount | FT

  • Omakase and luxury futures

    Omakase and luxury seem made for each other. Think about the core elements of omakase:

    • An expert provides a personalised experience that is about quality, ceremony and theatre.
    • The expert decides what you will have and prepares it for you. You are there from selection to the provision of the item.
    • The ingredients are of fine quality (and often locally sourced).
    Tokyo
    Marc Veraart

    As a trend omakase has expanded geographically with Japanese cuisine. But it has also expanded in terms of categories covered.

    Koreans have taken omakase and pushed it into other areas:

    • Coffee
    • Dessert tasting
    • Barbecue restaurants which are normally a local neighbourhood staple
    • Wine and champagne-tasting

    So how can omakase and luxury come together in the future?

    In order to understand how omakase and luxury in the future it is worthwhile paying a good deal of attention to the pressures that the luxury industry is currently under.

    Luxury is under pressure

    Undoing the mistakes of the past

    Luxury has expanded to be the size of industry it currently is due to ‘massification’ by most of the maisons. The exceptions to this would be the likes of Hermés.

    Massification

    Massification means lowering quality, using globalisation in the supply chain as well as the retail network to manufacture products cheaper. Massification occurred over a three decade period and was covered extensively by former fashion editor Dana Thomas in her book Deluxe.

    Around about 2014, Gucci led the way for luxury brands to do streetwear, leading to a more accessible luxury product. Louis Vuitton did the archetypical collection with its 2017 Supreme collaboration.

    Contrary to what most people believe luxury is aimed at the middle classes rather than the wealthy. But targeting middle class customers rather than the wealthy poses a number of problems:

    • Increased capital outlay due to the scale required.
    • Scale brings challenges in terms of supply chain management and consistency of customer experience. Greater control can be obtained by vertical integration within the supply chain and owning the retail channels. But all of this requires greater expertise and management oversight.
    • Increased economic sensitivity to shocks such as interest rate and cost of living rises.
    • Increased risk of devalued stock during an economic downturn. Gucci earnings were down 20 percent alone in Q1, 2024.

    Bigger might not always be better over a longer view.

    Secondary markets

    Secondary markets have been both a boon and a bane for the luxury sector. At one time pre-owned was seen as an ‘entry-level’ product. I bought my first nice watch secondhand once it had depreciated. It was often said that the best entry-level Porsche was a secondhand one.

    But gone are the days when you may buy a pre-owned Louis Vuitton purse on a second hand market stall in Paris. Now that will be on Vinted, Vestaire or some other platform.

    Secondary market inflated pricing affected luxury businesses in a number of ways

    • You would be interviewed to go on the waiting list for a Porsche or a Rolex.
    • Authorised dealers became order takers and dealer customer service slipped.
    • Your purchasing history would acquire you the rights to buy a Hermés bag over time.

    Luxury groups extended their businesses into the pre-owned market. LVMH owned part of secondhand watch retailer Hodinkee. Richemont owned Watchfinder and Yoox-Net-a-Porter who sold a mix of new lines and vintage preowned items. Rolex rolled out its ‘CPO’ programme selling inspected pre-owned Rolex watches through its authorised dealer network.

    Things looked really good for the luxury industry, they managed to managed to scale, to a point that LVMH is one of the largest companies in the world:

    • Massification through global manufacturing supply chains.
    • Keeping margins high, while letting quality go low.
    • Address a rising middle class in China, Korea, Japan, the Gulf countries and Russia to counteract the hollowing out of the middle class in the US and western Europe.
    • Maximising margins through controlling costs via vertical integration up and down the supply chain, from raw materials to retail.

    Market change

    A few things underpinned the craziness of COVID:

    • Money was put in consumer pockets, for which they had few outlets.
    • Supply chains were disrupted as factories closed down or pivoted to manufacturing essential products. For instances Perfums Christian Dior made hand sanitiser for hospitals for free.

    A Forrester effect (also known as a bull whip effect) resulted, driving inflation that the world’s economies are coming to terms with now. Secondary effects of this event were the increased interest rates used to reduce demand driven inflation.

    Other secondary effects include increased crime levels. London has gone from a luxury shoppers paradise, to having a global reputation amongst elites of being plagued by violent watch and bag robberies. COVID-19 isn’t the only driver of this crime wave, but is a contributing factor.

    It has also had a catalysing effect on reducing globalisation to increase national resilience.

    Consumers know that a good deal of luxury goods don’t match up with the European artisan heritage story that brands try to sell them. Experts like William Lasry has made public which brands make what kind of products where. Luxury brands often make in places like China due to capability and scale – similar reasons to why Apple products are designed in California and assembled in China. (Seriously, check out William Lasry’s channels, I love some of his visits to high-end Japanese manufacturers).

    China

    China has been a key focus for luxury brand, but it has changed in a number of different ways:

    • Chinese consumers have changed in their confidence of native brands and have a lower opinion of many foreign brands. This is partly down to a change in attitudes called guo chao. Guo chao can be traced back to the increased confidence in the run up to the 2008 olympics in Beijing. This was partly fuelled by a series of essays published in 1996 by the likes of academic Wang Xiaodong called China Can Say Now which advocated a modern robust form of Chinese nationalism, which was in stark contrast to the Deng-era vision of globalisation and biding one’s time. In the April before the olympics Chinese consumers boycotted French supermarket brand Carrefour. Over time the negativity of these boycotts have become more-and-more performative and extra-territorial in nature. The current Xi administration has seen fit to weaponise this nationalist sentiment by directing (wrangling is a more accurate term, like cowboys with a cattle train in the Old West) public opinion to further its own ends. A more positive aspect of it has been a more open market for domestic ateliers and brands than had been seen previously. Since before 2019, there have been Chinese efforts to build a rival luxury groups to LVMH and Kering and this fits in with Xi’s distaste for irrational worship of the west.
    • Xi-era growth. China under Xi Jinping faces multiple challenges around growth. The population is aging and in decline which has implications for declining consumption. Secondly economic growth has slowed compared to the double digit annual economic growth of the Deng, Jiang and Hu administrations. Foreign direct investment in China has declined for a mix of reasons including unattractive Chinese government policies, decline in China’s country brand and long term economic growth forecasts.

    Regulatory change

    I know what you’re thinking ok, this is very well Ged, but what does it have to do with omakase and luxury futures? Give me a little bit more time and all will be revealed.

    While China is an economic superpower with a desire to export its world view and the United States is a hard and soft power super power; the European Union’s super power is legislative in nature.

    European regulation drove the globalisation of the GSM mobile telephony standards during the 1990s and 2000s. They have also driven increasing internet privacy standards on web services, much to the chagrin of Alphabet, Meta and Twitter.

    Now they are driving environmental standards across a range of areas including:

    • A carbon tax to take into account the use of fossil fuels in extraction of raw materials, transportation, energy as an input to manufacturing and processing materials.
    • Product passports from raw materials to product end-of-life encouraging a circular economy and sustainable manufacturing.

    This means that the luxury sector has new restrictions on how it operates in the future.

    In summary:

    • We’ve likely reached peak massification due to economic and trade changes.
    • Market share in China looks uncertain due to changes in consumer sentiment and tastes, meaning, a more local approach might be required or a strategic withdrawal.
    • Secondary markets show that consumers are open to ownership beyond pristine new products.
    • Product passports and European legislation means re-examining the whole supply chain and the data to better control it through an entire product life.

    Finally, omakase and luxury futures!

    Omakase and luxury look like a happy meeting in the future. Think about the tenets of omakase.

    • An expert provides a personalised experience that is about quality, ceremony and theatre.
    • The expert decides what you will have and prepares it for you. You are there from selection to the provision of the item.
    • The ingredients are of fine quality (and often locally sourced).

    Going back to go forward.

    The future of luxury is about looking back. Tailors who suited generations of families and made alterations to Grandfather’s suit that the son is now wearing. The shirt maker replacing the collars and cuffs. The shoe-maker who refurbishes your shoes and has a set of lasts with your name on, for when he has to make a new set. Getting measured, having your foot cast for a last or getting your watch could be memorable events once again. So there this a precedence for expertise and service levels. But it implies a retail experience that will change dramatically.

    New techniques and questions.

    Previously with the exception of measuring sessions, these processes were largely concealed from the consumer and were difficult to scale. So it’s worthwhile thinking about how luxury’s omakase future could be extended with modern technology? We have some experiments that might give us some ideas. First up, L’Oreal has showcased bespoke make-up manufacture for a while.

    How could high-end perfume makers adapt for products beyond make-up? Improved analysis equipment from the likes of Oxford Nanopore could facilitate individually formulated fragrance products based on skin chemistry.

    Adidas experimented with its Speedfactory concept that blended the retail and shoe assembly together.

    Technologically there is a lot of promising ideas. Adidas have worked with up-cycled plastics retrieved from the debris brought together by an ocean gyre made into 3d printed soles and fibres. (Look for the Parley label, who Adidas partnered with on this.)

    How can additive or automated manufacturing and other processes feel luxe? In what way could they add to the theatre?

    This hybridisation of retail and manufacturing changes the nature of both offline and online retail completely. Would even the largest concession in Selfridges or a shopping mall be big enough, or would fashion houses need a single purpose brand experience?

    Given that there is likely to be a bit more time between manufacture and presentation of the product than there would be in a sashimi restaurant, what else would go into the maison experience? LVMH is already investing in hotels and resorts like Cheval Blanc which gives it a better understanding of more areas in luxury experience and service.

    Localisation would likely to be needed to handle omakase and luxury due to culture and the need for local materials. This might include new materials, such as fungus-derived leather. Of course, this might have negative implications for luxury house supply chains, whether it’s Louis Vuitton’s iconic plastic coated leather, or the Hermés crocodile farm.

    Which means that product line-ups could no longer be global in nature. So luxury companies may revisit that the creative process looks like. Should there be a single global vision anymore? Luxury maisons instincts would be to say yes, but could this be an opportunity to own local ateliers in markets like China or the US?

    • Will there be more local brands instead?
    • What will a maison’s heritage mean in the future? A luxury maison is about what remains the same as much as what changes. What will happen to long-standing motifs?
    • Will there be a greater opportunity for more auteurs who are closer to the customers?
    • How to bridge the tension in terms of choosing for the customer and creativity as well as quality?

    We’re talking a very different profile of creative in terms of thinking, attitudes and skills compared to the present.

    Service, repair and reuse could learn a lot lessons from traditional tailors and the service networks of watchmakers like Rolex or luggage maker Rimowa.

    I could not think of a more exciting or scary time to be setting the brand direction for a luxury maison, let alone the overall direction or the likes of LVMH. But by wrapping local materials, expertise, ritual and a bit of theatre the future could look like a fusion of omakase and luxury.

    More information

  • Innovation signalling

    What is innovation signalling?

    Innovation signalling has some similarities with its counterpart virtue signalling in terms of authenticity in terms of behaviour and the projected image. An organisation looks to demonstrate its ‘high degree’ of innovation with actions and projects with the external image firmly in mind. There may be an internal learning, or business benefit to this as well, but the image projected is the main objective.

    How to Complete Label’s Fashion Challenge in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

    As I wrote this post a collaboration between Moncler and Adidas dropped putting innovation signalling at its core involving both involving NFTs and AI generated designs and models.

    Open Sea has an NFT where the owner gets a Rolex watch on submission of the NFT. This has since been extended into the US market by CRM Jewellers in Miami.

    AI has its place for instance, simulating and optimising product design based on physical properties. NASA has used AI for just this purpose in conjunction with additive manufacturing techniques for small production runs of parts needed for the space programme.

    It’s not just the luxury sector

    This might read like I have been picking excessively on the luxury sector. I use them as exemplars mainly because their examples are so high profile. But there are examples in other sectors. For instance, Walmart partnering with IBM to use block chain to track individual lettuce heads from farm to customer trolley.

    There were similar partnerships that IBM hatched with Unilever, Nestlé and Dole Foods as well, but the fruits of these projects were not publicised to the same degree.

    You can find similar posts here and this metaverse discussion paper that helps to cut through the blockchain and metaverse hype.

    More information

    Dior takes its Chinaverse presence to new heights with second virtual showcase | Digital | Campaign Asia

    How the metaverse downturn is benefitting digital designers | Vogue Business

    Kim Jones designs skins and vintage car for Dior’s gaming debut | Vogue Business

    Inside The Metaverse Strategies Of L’Oréal And LVMH | The Drum

    Meta’s new digital fashion marketplace will sell Prada, Balenciaga and Thom Browne | Vogue Business

    When it comes to Roblox, Gucci is not playing around | Vogue Business

    Gucci Town Lands on Roblox With Activities and Shopping Experiences – Robb Report and Gucci Cosmos Land brings physical heritage to the metaverse | Vogue Business – on The Sandbox

    VR Experience for Santos de Cartier Launch – Virtual Reality Marketing

    Cartier Plugs into VR to Sell Historical Watch Story to China | Jing Daily

    LVMH’s Arnault is wary of the metaverse “bubble”. Should luxury be? | Vogue Business

    Marni introduces digital fashion with new virtual world | Vogue Business

    Tiffany’s Alexandre Arnault joins the NFT Cryptopunks community | Vogue Business

    Roblox earnings: Why enticing brands is key to the future of the metaverse platform – Digiday

    What fashion week looks like in the metaverse | Vogue Business

    Luxury brands are ditching KOLs for virtual influencers in China: how Alexander McQueen, Dior and Prada are turning to digital avatars and AI idols to woo millennials | South China Morning Post

    An Outfit to Match Your Chain – Google Drive – Highsnobriety has interviews where these intersect with luxury and fashion. It will be probably handy for a couple of client presentations

    NASA Turns to AI to Design Mission Hardware | NASA.gov

    From Farm to Blockchain: Walmart Tracks Its Lettuce – The New York Times

    Walmart and 9 Food Giants Team Up on IBM Blockchain Plans | Fortune.com