Ged Carroll

Category: branding | 品牌推廣 | 브랜드 마케팅 | ブランディング

The dictionary definition of branding is the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.

I have covered many different things in branding including:

  • Genesis – the luxury Korean automotive brand
  • Life Bread – the iconic Hong Kong bread brand that would be equivalent of wonder loaf in the US
  • Virgil Abloh and the brand collaborations that he was involved in
  • Luxury streetwear brands
  • Burger King campaigns with Crispin Porter Bogusky
  • Dettol #washtocare and ‘back to work’ campaigns
  • Volkswagen ‘see the unseen’ campaign for its Taureg off road vehicle
  • SAS Airline – What is truly Scandinavian?
  • Brand advertising during Chinese New Year (across China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia)
  • Lovemarks as a perspective on branding
  • BMW NEXTGen event and Legend of Old McLanden campaign
  • Procter & Gamble’s Gillette toxic masculinity ads
  • Kraft Mother’s Day campaign
  • Kraft Heinz brand destruction
  • Porsche Design in the smartphone space
  • Ermenegildo Zegna
  • Nike’s work with Colin Kaepernick
  • Counterfeit brands on Instagram, Alibaba and Amazon
  • Gaytime Indonesian ice cream
  • Western Digital
  • Louis Vuitton collaboration with Supreme
  • Nokia
  • Nike Korea’s ‘Be Heard’ campaign
  • Mercedes SLS coupe campaign
  • Brand collaborations in Hong Kong
  • Beats headphones
  • Apple
  • Henrion Ludlow Schmidt’s considerations of branding
  • Cathay Pacific
  • Bosch
  • Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid
  • Microsoft Surface launch
  • Oreo Korean campaign
  • Chain coffee shop brands and branding
  • Samsung’s corporate brand
  • North Face’s brand overeach in South Korea
  • Mr Pizza Korean pizza restaurant and delivery service brand
  • Amoy Hong Kong food brand
  • Chevrolet Corvette ‘roar’ campaign promoting a build your own car service

  • Chip implants + more stuff

    Swedish people are getting chip implants to replace cash | NY Post – is it just me who thinks that this might not be the smartest thing to do? Chip implants are the stuff of conspiracies. And the mind boggles what kind of new crimes that this might inspire.

    Israeli group’s spyware ‘offers keys to Big Tech’s cloud’ | Financial Times – affects Facebook, Amazon, Apple and more. Guessing that major state actors can also do this already. Private companies like NSO basically democratises this for countries that don’t have this capability inhouse, including some of them that authoritarian in nature

    Individual Beyond the Personal | Ogilvy Consulting – Global Strategy and Innovation – interesting take on AR/VR level immersion

    Salesforce talk about a vision that’s way beyond narrow machine learning skills to something that looks much more like general purpose AI. We are told by experts that general purpose AI is still decades away. Consequently I can’t work out if this is long term concepting or snake oil….

    ‘Cordless’ Dyson fan advert falls foul of watchdog – BBC News – really interesting judgement. I think the ASA is right, but there are implications for future demonstration visuals of products

    Black Pastors Group Petition Nike to Drop Colin Kaepernick – Footwear News – ok this is going to get interesting. More on Nike here.

    Juul CEO: “I’m Sorry” for Teen Vaping Epidemic – “First of all, I’d tell them that I’m sorry that their child’s using the product,” Burns told CNBC during an interview for an upcoming documentary on the rise of vaping in the U.S. “It’s not intended for them. I hope there was nothing that we did that made it appealing to them. As a parent of a 16-year-old, I’m sorry for them, and I have empathy for them, in terms of what the challenges they’re going through.” – Good design attracts users of all ages….

  • Ultra deep watch + more things

    OMEGA SEAMASTER PLANET OCEAN ULTRA DEEP | Watches News – I love some of the design details in this Planet Ocean Ultra Deep such as the lugs. I was less convinced by the aesthetics of the dial, the hands and the lack of protection given to the crown on the Planet Ocean Ultra Deep. More on design here.

    So, Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent the Printing Press | Literary Hub – way before Samsung Korea was innovating the shit out of the world, here’s the story

    The Redirect Method – its rare to get this much of an inside view inside a campaign, well worth reading

    NHS teams up with Amazon to bring Alexa to patients | Society | The Guardian – the push here seems to be accessibility; but a call centre is even more responsive than Alexa is

    Shiseido’s Beauty App Promises Perfect Skin — at $92 a Month – Bloomberg – Shiseido is targeting women facing “the dilemma of valuing skincare but struggling to find the time to find the perfect formula,” Shigekazu Sugiyama, president of Shiseido Japan, said at a news conference in Tokyo. Research by the company shows that the more hectic the lifestyle, the greater the fluctuation seen in complexion, he said. 

    Optune’s cylindrical device mixes and dispenses a personalized formula twice a day, with as many as 80,000 different combinations. The product’s software, available as an iPhone app, takes photos of the user’s face in order to detect skin conditions. The data is analyzed together with sleep rhythms and menstrual cycles, as well as external factors such as weather and air pollution, in order to deliver the right mix of serums.

    Unilever tackles marketing bias with DNA tests | WARC – The exposed group who perused their personal DNA results and participated in the immersive training recorded a 35% decrease in unconscious stereotyping when measured against the control group. 

    Similarly, Santos revealed, the exposed group also logged a 27% increase in original thinking measured against their peers in the control group. 

    Such an insight builds on a growing slate of evidence that the part of the brain associated with stereotyping influences the cognitive activities that are needed for creativity, too.

    Podcast: WARC’s David Tiltman On Marketing Effectiveness – great listening for the lunch hour on advertising effectiveness

    Nomads travel to America’s Walmarts to stock Amazon’s shelves – The Verge – “If somebody likes a certain scent or how something works, they become loyal to that item, even if just the packaging has changed. They can no longer find that item in a store, and Amazon is one place they’ll look for it. It’s people like us who travel around that can find it.”

    Mediatel: Newsline: The scourge of short-termism comes from the top – “The Media sector has several examples of companies that placed short-term earnings growth over long-term investment and saw their earnings and, ironically, share price suffer. RELX (the old Reed Elsevier) suffered a collapse in its share price, which took several years to reverse, after the market realised previous management had underinvested to boost earnings growth to meet LTIP plans. On the other hand, companies that invest see returns to shareholders. Sky, which famously prioritised organic investment over shareholder returns and meeting earnings targets, eventually was bought out at a big premium to its historic share price”.

    How 5G will affect marketing communications | Advertising | Campaign Asia – so adtech will slow up the theoretical speed of 5G, this is all very depressing

  • Mulan live action trailer & things that made the week

    Mulan live action film trailer

    Disney posted this beautiful trailer of the Mulan live action adaption this weekend. I presume it was to try and take the sting out of a black mermaid earlier this week on Chinese social media. The Mulan live action film will have to meet the exacting standards of fans who loved the animated version of Mulan and avoid communist party imbued fascism

    McDonalds bacon rolls

    Kudos to my former work neighbours at Leo Burnett London for this lovely bit of craft in a McDonald’s UK ad for bacon rolls

    40th anniversary of Sony Walkman

    Sony have been celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Walkman. There used to be a lovely museum of Sony gear through the ages that was not only great to behold; but an education in product design. Anyway check out this short Sony video of Walkmans

    Doxxed colonial policemen

    I’ve been following the ongoing events in Hong Kong with interest. It seems that the Labour Party proved to be more effective than the government in striking out for the Hong Kong people. Shadow minister Helen Goodman doxed one of three British expat senior policemen who were involved in the harshest Hong Kong police action to date on June 12. The Times newspaper published the names of the other two officers Rupert Dover and David Jordan. Their identity had appeared on Hong Kong protest banners after June 12 and were well known to the expat community.

    The June 12th tactics were more suitable for Northern Ireland during The Troubles than the kind of demos one would see in Hong Kong. Superintendent Julian Shave’s profile on LinkedIn (since removed) showed that considered himself an expert in counter-terrorism. There was nothing about his expertise in the use of tear gas against Hong Kongers.

    Given Goodman’s and the Labour Party’s stance about this, Messrs Dover, Jordan and Shave might think of looking for a job in Bahrain or China’s burgeoning private security sector, rather than risking a day in a UK court under a future Labour government…

    K-pop idol experience

    Hallyu or Korean popular culture has been on a sustained boom since the early noughties. A key part of this has been the way Korea seems to mass produce boy and girl bands in a much more consistently successful way than the likes of Japan. They even seem to do it even better than western producer dynasties like Simon Cowell, 19 Management or Stock, Aitken and Waterman. This documentary by Asian Boss is very insightful on the idol experience from an insider and how she’s pivoted into being a YouTuber

  • Chinas booming streetwear scene + more

    Inside Chinas booming streetwear scene – Inkstone – great video on Chinas booming streetwear scene that’s morphing into someithing very different

    Tesco Is Said to Work With Israel’s Trigo on Cashierless Stores – Bloomberg – if Chinese cashier less stores experience is anything to go by, this might not be a good idea

    ‘Adapt or die’ – Martin Sorrell’s message to ‘Pavlovian’ ad industry holding companies – Mumbrella Asia – S4 Capital’s low overheads and a cheaper wage bill due to the average employee age being 25 at Mightyhive – the programmatic firm – and 33 at MediaMonks, the production house, meant it could deliver greater bang for the buck than the networks – so its not a smart marketing play but a manpower cost play? We’re better run because we employ cheaper staff? Sorrell gets made to look like a chump in this article; I’d also suggest that he does his homework looking at effectiveness and creativity more closely

    Opinion | A Major Police Body Cam Company Just Banned Facial Recognition – The New York Times – interesting move by Axon. The US seems to be doing to facial recognition what the EU did to online data with GDPR

    FCB parts with Nivea amid rising tensions, including allegations of homophobic remark | AdAge – client reported said ‘we don’t do gay’ on agency call. That’s being leaked from FCB staff or freelancers

    Crazy/Genius: Are Influencers Frauds or the Future? – The Atlantic – the dystopian age of whuffie capitalism

    Nike Withdraws Products After Brand Partner Vexed China for Supporting HK | Jing Daily – Nike and the bullshit of brand purpose, especially when you contrast this to the Colin Kapernick campaign. When sales are lacklustre principles go to shit

    Huawei Personnel Worked With China Military on Research Projects – Bloomberg – looks like a mix of internal security work (analysing emotions in online video content, and external security on collecting and analysing satellite images and where 2.0 data. One also has to remember that Qualcomm has got a heavy national security background in the US. Given the current situation this news couldn’t have landed at a worse time for Huawei.

    Naomi Wu has an interesting discussion on professionalism versus engagement to maximise pay off on video. You need to have 2 million+ viewers to make the transition from 1080P to 4K worthwhile

    Carrefour sells 80% of China grocery business — Quartz – surprised they didn’t use China to jump start experience on e-commerce so they could take Amazon on in the home market. Talk about a missed opportunity

    China’s millennials are mourning the end of an era in online hook-up culture | Quartz – really interesting, given how early marketers like China Merchants Bank used drift bottle for its CSR programme. Its also unsurprising given China’s tightening grip on media distribution

  • BMW NEXTGen & things that made the week

    BMW NEXTGen event included a concept car the BMW Vision M Next. What I found most interesting about this is how BMW whilst looking forward with the i8 and the M Next; is still stuck with designs resembling the Giorgetto Giugiaro designed M1(E26) of the late 1970s. Don’t get me wrong, when I was a pre-teen my ideal car would have looked like the BASF sponsored M1 track car with the spiral paint work. It would have been nextgen for my pre-teen self, in the same way that the future also looked like a Star Trek communicator. Though our current smartphones would look nextgen to the original Star Trek set and prop designers.

    BMW M1 écurie BASF série PROCAR 1980

    Here’s what the M Next looks like (© Copyright BMW AG, München, Deutschland.)

    BMW M Next courtesy of BMW

    Which raise an interesting question. From a branding perspective does iconic legacy design make it harder to draw a line under one technology as you transition to another? We have various bias’ in our expectations, some of which BMW have tried to challenge with the sonic experience in their cars. I’d argue that they need to think about this outside the vehicles as well. From a safety perspective and because part of driving a BMW is being ‘seen’ to drive the marque.

    I think that there’s still work to be done by BMW and other manufacturers on getting their arms about the future of performance from a brand perspective, for a post-ICE (internal combustion engine) age.

    Abacus (a tech media publication from the South China Morning Post) has channeled the Pixel Boys to come up with a way of trying to make the Chinese tech sector make sense to foreigners. China Tech City | Abacus is well worth checking out.

    In an era when there is a chance that Jeremy Corbin could be a prime minster in waiting should a general election come along, And I speak with people who profess to be MacBook totting communists. I am surprised that Marxman haven’t seen a resurgence in popularity. I randomly came across this great interview of them by a French TV programme around about the time their first album broke.

    Hong Kong’s leaderless movement against the Chinese extradition law (or their CIA paymasters if you believe the Chinese government) have been doing some really nice creative to rally internal and international audiences to their cause. There were print ads that ran in the newspapers of many G20 countries and video content. Taking the politics to one side for a moment, just look at the craft in this video. At the time I have written this has been dubbed into:

    • Taiwanese variant of Chinese
    • Dutch
    • English
    • French
    • German
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Nepali
    • Norwegian
    • Spanish
    • Swedish
    • Tagalog

    It makes Led By Donkeys look a poor effort in comparison.

    Bubble tea shops are opening around London outside of the usual China town locations. It’s success is in a sharp contrast to the likes of Jamies and Patisserie Valerie chains recent closures. Bubble tea actually came out of Taiwan in the late 1980s and London has been way behind in adopting the drink. Asian Boss tracked down the Taiwanese inventor of bubble tea Lin Hsiu Hui (of Chun Shui Tang) and the interview is great.