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

  • El Capitan + more things

    Things that made my day this week. I have been quiet on here as El Capitan has a real problem with memory leakage with regards to mail.app, this necessitated a complete rebuild of the computer (which didn’t solve anything) and an eventual pruning of the library. This is a real software quality problem for Apple. Be careful with El Capitan, otherwise you might have the same kind of pain that I endured. 

    Piers Sanderson, who I first met a few years ago has put out a new film called the Art of The DJ which uses the story of Steve Lawler to tell the wider story of the rise of the superstar DJ. When I met Piers he was struggling to get sponsorship to pay for the licensing rights to the music in his acid house film High on Hope. This time around, he has Lawler’s record label backing him and the documentary has been realised as a paid for stream through Lawler’s Facebook page. If you want to watch it it costs 3.50GBP.

    Taco Bell managed to make a brand event out of their rescue of the original Taco Bell store, which is being moved to Taco Bell headquarters for posterity. More from the old school web cam footage here.

    Jakob was just your average IP infringing online oversharer until the Business Software Alliance (basically Microsoft) legaled him in his native Czech Republic. He was offered a deal to appear in an anti-piracy film and had to gain 200,000 viewers. It looked like a win for the software owners, in reality Jakob has become a figure that netizens seem to have rallied around if you look at the comments on his video.

    I read Liar’s Poker in college and enjoyed his book The Big Short that is ostensively about investors who realised first that the mortgage market was unsustainable, but acted as a insiders guide to mortgage cons in a similar way to his insiders view of derivatives in Liars Poker over 25 years earlier. Hollywood is hoping to cash in on Lewis’ book in the same way that it did with Money Ball and the trailer looks awesome (hat tip  for the trailer to Whatleydude).

    More stories related to Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Short here.

  • Mac vs PC + more news

    Microsoft and partners revive Mac vs PC ads — without mentioning Mac – CNET – This is all a bit odd. If you’re going to do a competitive comparison you have to mention the competition. That and the humour was why the Mac vs PC ads worked. Not mentioning them looks like Voldemort like fear in this context. Yet the ads seem to be run more like a PR campaign where you don’t mention the competitor. More Microsoft related content here.

    Taking Stock With Teens – Fall 2015 – US only research, OTT video increase is no surprise, what is how far Hulu has fallen

    The subprime ‘unicorns’ that do not look a billion dollars – FT.com – Michael Moritz calling out unicorn businesses due to their risks, negative sentiment to Silicon Valley boom. No big deal except that Moritz is a former journalist who knew the likes of Steve Jobs well. He then moved to Sequoia Capital and funded businesses like Google, Yahoo!, PayPal and Zappos (paywall)

    Is Tencent leading the way or lagging behind Facebook? | Walk the Chat

    The CEO of one of South Africa’s largest mobile networks thinks Whatsapp is a freeloader | Quartz – interesting that WeChat clocks in at 7% usage for South Africans

    HKMA warns banks about security loopholes with NFC credit cards – the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) ordered banks Monday to conduct a thorough review of the security of their credit cards

    Hong Kong Luxury Stores See Worst “Golden Week” Ever – overly dramatic but interesting

    New-media firms shift attention to TV  – online a training ground for media mainstream?

    The DraftKings Crash | Slate – Nevada gaming laws may make Overseas expansion a ‘do or die’ requirement

    Lenovo nixed idea of selling Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet – CNET – interesting that HP and Dell will sell it

    Why mass market VR won’t come soon | GigaOM – assuming you have to run at 4K, HD would be good enough and the content could be immersive but passive like film rather than games. More on web of no web experiences here.

    WSJ: NX could launch in 2016, will be Nintendo’s most powerful console ever – this is a high risk play given how the last console did

    IBM Allows Chinese Government to Review Source Code | WSJ – (paywall)

  • Hells Club + more things

    Hells Club -an amazing film mash-up, spot the different appearances. In the words of the maker

    There is a place where all fictional characters meet. . Outside of time, Outside of all logic, This place is known as HELLS CLUB, But this club is not safe
    TERMINATOR VERSUS TONY MONTANA VERSUS TOM CRUISE VERSUS CARLITO BRIGANTE VERSUS BLADE VERSUS JOHN TRAVOLTA VERSUS AL PACINO VERSUS PINEAD VERSUS THE MASK VERSUS ROBOCOP VERSUS DARTH VADER VERSUS MICHAEL JACKSON.

    The film editing that went into Hells Club is impressive.

    Colin Faver, one of the first pioneers of house and techno in the UK died on September 5. Faver who co-founded Kiss FM and played all the big seminal nights in London and beyond even merited his own obituary in The Telegraph – I am sure that the irony of this wouldn’t have been lost on him. Mr C did a great tribute mix to Faver highlighting some of the tracks that he had championed, with a particular focus on his house music legacy. The mix is 3 hours and 3 minutes in length (3:03) a nod to the Roland TB-303 that is responsible for the ‘acid’ sound. Listen to it and spare Colin a thought.

    Ok the next two things that I want to share with you are a bit weird (but not in an NSFW way) so sit down and buckle up. And before you wonder about my internet habits these where shared with my by colleague Jenn Russell who worked on video stuff with me and is based out of Hong Kong.

    Southern Comfort have put a couple of ad spots on their YouTube channel. These spots feature a campaign message ‘SHOTTA SoCo’ which I guess is what some aging advertising copywriters thought was how young people would say a shot of Southern Comfort (presumably for their Bourbon whiskey and Coke).

    The video looks as if it has been made by Next Media Animation (out of Taiwan) or some similar high throughput CGI shop. I think that I can see the reason for this; NMA videos are quite popular online, it looks a bit like machinima (which young people love because they are on their consoles all the time).

    Ok, so far so good? These videos wouldn’t have been that expensive since they are all pre-existing models so maybe $20,000 a pop spend with NMA. There are a couple more including one that warns about the perils of drink driving.

    SHOTTASoCo seems to be something that Southern Comfort are doubling down on, but they don’t seem to have spent any money on advertising to promote the videos and get them views. The NMA style videos have garnered between 3,000 – 13,000 views – so somewhere on the bell curve of viewership that I have seen on other consumer accounts I have worked on. Southern Comfort also invested in (presumably more expensive) SHOTTASoCo videos by American producers Funny Or Die – none of which have over 600 views – weird or what? And why aren’t spending on paid to amplify campaigns like this? More marketing related content here

    Dark ambient veterans Autechre have put together a four hour mix that is like a history of electronica (taking in Kraftwerk, electro, freestyle, post disco, house and back again) for the Dekmantel podcast series. It is well worth a listen to cleanse the audio palette after Disclosure et al.

    Bonus mention, a dinner at Wagamama Hammersmith (in a converted fire station) with some of my former Racepoint colleagues.
    Dinner with former Racepoint colleagues
    More on this trip out from a digital point-of-view on a later post.

  • Nielsen TV data + more things

    Facebook and Google, Two Giants in Digital Ads, Seek More – The New York Times – Facebook combining Nielsen TV data, treating its ads like TV. and Google plays catch-up with targeting by email address. I think that this doesn’t make a lot of sense from a data perspective. But I can understand why Nielsen TV / Facebook deal was done from a commercial perspective. It will be interesting to see if any comparative data on effectiveness comes out from Nielsen TV

    “Negropodamus” disses Internet of Things, predicts knowledge pills | Ars Technica – I think Negroponte gets it right on a lot of IoT applications. More related posts here.

    Two HN Announcements – Y Combinator Posthaven – big move but interesting why they felt now was the right time

    Volkswagen Faces Harsher Penalties Than a U.S. Company Might | NYTImes – interesting that the New York Times admits discriminatory prosecution practices against foreign firms

    China’s smartphone market continues online shift | TelecomAsia – implied no carrier subsidies and probable show rooming behaviour. For handsets like Xiaomi and OnePlus this is likely to be trying a friend’s device

    Valuing Vodafone | Digital Evangelist – Liberty was a joker of a bid anyway, Ian give its a more in-depth response

    Sony to skip PlayStation Vita 2, blames mobile gaming for handheld’s decline | ExtremeTech  – When the DS debuted and promptly tanked, I wondered if there was still a market for dedicated handhelds. Nintendo proved there was, provided you hit price points and committed to supporting it over the long term. Sony didn’t — and that fact explains far more of the difference between the two companies than all the smartphones in the world

    Could Didi Kuaidi take on Uber Internationally, and Win? | SocialBrandWatch.com – probably not but it is gaining traction

    Apple Is Sourcing A9 Chips From Both Samsung and TSMC | Chipworks – interesting because of the work that has to go into two different taping out processes

    Google To Let Advertisers Upload And Target Email Lists In AdWords With Customer Match – not terribly surprised by this, Facebook and Twitter have done this for a good while. Sina Weibo have been doing it

    The Royal Spanish Botnet Army | Motherboard – interesting article on political social media spam in Spain

    The Switch – I love the idea of this Netflix switch and the way they have approached making it available

    NHS Approved Health Apps Could be Leaking Your User Data | Lifehacker – which makes it harder to encourage adoption

    Guess what: Millennials aren’t all the same when it comes to news consumption » Nieman Journalism Lab – not terribly surprising, though the millennials I have worked with don’t read news in the traditional sense

    Smaller, Faster, Cheaper, Over: The Future of Computer Chips – The New York Times – new directions required as Moore’s Law is running out of steam

    Is Android a monopoly? | The Verge – I don’t necessarily agree with the author’s argument, although I could see that you could argue consumer benefit. I could also see how the government can see clear parallels between Microsoft’s bundling policies which got them in hot water and Google’s bundling of its own services on Android

    Here’s what happens in tech when the money runs dry – Business Insider – “Uber for X” or gaggle of startups that want to recreate everything their mom did for them – probably the best descriptor of many start-ups today

    China Company Directors and China Criminal Liability | China Law Blog – interesting piece on the differences in Chinese company director convictions and those in the west. It’s about direct responsibility

    What Happens Next Will Amaze You | Idlewords – the title is ironic, great downbeat summary on the state of the web

    An NPR Reporter Raced A Machine To Write A News Story. Who Won? : Planet Money : NPR – so if machines can turn out stories where does that leave press release writing and media relations?

  • Weiden Kennedy Tokyo + more

    Weiden Kennedy Tokyo did this great brand video for Nike Korea, they supported it with a ‘Be Heard’ campaign on KakaoTalk. Weiden Kennedy Tokyo work for Nike is consistently of a really high standard. More marketing inspiration here.

    One of the things that had been keeping me busy over the summer was working with Racepoint Asia on the planning and strategy behind this video to promote the Huawei P8. On reflection it could be cut down to 3:15 with a branded end screen to make it tighter, but its a great bit of video shot by Jenn Russell.

    Ashley Vance talks about his talks with Elon Musk of PayPal mafia, Tesla and SpaceX fame

    Adidas China put together a few videos of local artists in China to promote the Superstar ‘shelltoe’ trainer. They feature musician Eason Chan (Canto-pop veteran with some EDMish remixes), VJ Mian, pixel sculptor Li Tian Lun, and street muralist Hua Tu Nan. This is hosted on YouKu so you will need to be patient to get it to load

    There is something meta about the concept of TED Talks at the Burning Man festival; its like a cliche of daikaiju proportions, but if this gets people interested in mathematics, so much the better.