Ged Carroll

Category: china | 中國 | 중국 | 中華

Ni hao – this category features any blog posts that relate to the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese communist party, Chinese citizens, consumer behaviour, business, and Chinese business abroad.

It is likely the post will also in other categories too.  For example a post about Tong Ren Tang might end up in the business section as well. Inevitably everything is inherently political in nature. At the moment, I don’t take suggestions for subject areas or comments on content for this category, it just isn’t worth the hassle.

Why have posts on China? I have been involved in projects there and had Chinese clients. China has some interesting things happening in art, advertising, architecture, design and manufacturing. I have managed to experience some great and not so great aspects of the country and its businesses.

Opinions have been managed by the omnipresent party and this has affected consumer behaviour. Lotte was boycotted and harassed out of the country. Toyota and Honda cars occasionally go through damage by consumer action during particularly high tensions with Japan.

I put stuff here to allow readers to make up their own  minds about the PRC. The size of the place makes things complicated and the only constants are change, death, taxes and the party. Things get even more complicated on the global stage.

The unique nature of the Chinese internet and sheltered business sectors means that interesting Galapagos syndrome type things happen.

I have separate sections for Taiwan and Hong Kong, for posts that are specific to them.

  • TAG Heuer + more things

    TAG Heuer Pushing Brand in China, as Rivals Scale Back | Business of Fashion – it makes sense given the lower price point of TAG Heuer watches. TAG Heuer is in an interesting place. Due to the government clampdown on corruption, the market for ostentatious watches has been curtailed for the time being.

    You could dispute whether TAG Heuer is even in the luxury space. Its range competes with the likes of Tissot on the bottom end and touches on Omega at the top end. The positioning that gives it a (temporary) tactical advantage in the Chinese market, leaves it vulnerable to the Apple Watch, which seems to have devoured the mid-market aside from rugged models. More on luxury here.

    iPhone Future — Monday Note – great piece of analysis

    Death to the Mass — Whither news? — Medium – the article proposes that content no longer king, and neither is distribution. Obviously if true, it would have major implications for the media sector. Jeff talks about conversation being more important now, which is an interesting framing of the challenge. I’d look at the opportunity as filtering or curation, and possibly social. Though in these times trust has declined alongside distribution.

    This Company Might Make Apple and Google Irrelevant — NewCo Shift — Medium – dramatic title but interesting write up on Viv. Viv seems to be a ‘Wildfire’ type personal assistant proof of concept. The idea is that it would displace the intelligence of Siri or Google on the devices. Viv hopes to upend the current platform model. Just because it’s good technology doesn’t guarantee success. It is interesting to reflect again on how mobile carriers went from having the platform business in their hands to poorly compensated dumb pipes for the likes of Facebook, Google and Tencent. And why they are now starting to retreat from the nascent global empires that they built in a fit of hubris.

  • Wednesday Campanella

    Haruka introduced me to WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA『桃太郎』

    The videos are pretty far out but draw on Asian culture, hence peaches. More on Japan related topics here. The song writing is absolutely top notch as well. Well worth keeping an eye on WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA for the future. There’s more to Japan than idol groups than the identikit model of K-pop, of which WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA is a prime example of distinctiveness.

    Interesting video on entrepreneurial opportunities in China. Probably a bit optimistic as Credit Suisse is on the sell side of opportunities for foreign investors – just saying…

    Interesting way to approach content for a travel portal and a great bit of storytelling.

    The mag that captured 60s countercultural Japan | Dazed – check these photos out from Provoke magazine, Showa era FTW. These are just tremendous and shows a side of the counterculture revolution that was seldom seen here in the west. Its gives a bit of context of the scene that Yoko Ono came out of.

    I am not the greatest fan of Wired UK and prefer its US counterpart, but this documentary on Shenzhen is quite nice. It captures all the main elements of note about Shenzhen:

    • The Blade Runner type skyline of the Shenzhen central business district (CBD). You add in the hyper humid haze and it looks like a piece of Syd Mead architectural paintings. Buildings are lit up with massive LED screens advertising offices available for lease or cosmeticals and smartphones
    • The standard workshop-of-the-world tropes with factories that look aged in the tropical heat of southern China
    • Maker culture – this is notable in itself because of Chinese people generally not having hobbies which are often seen as a waste of time. But enough of that for another time
    • Business to business and business to consumer bazaars

    You can almost taste the South China humidity. If you liked this video its well worthwhile checking out Scotty Allen’s Strange Parts YouTube channel.

  • Ten most popular posts of H1 2016

    In order of traffic volume, the ten most popular posts of H1 2016  on my blog (up to the beginning of June):

    1. What are the major reasons behind Yahoo!’s drastic decline – a Quora question inspired post. The reasons I highlight are a bit different to the popular media narrative around the Yahoo! business
    2. How the Panama Papers story broke online – a look at how the story broke across social media and traditional news with data
    3. What the IFTTT is going on? – IFTTT changed the way it approached development which left many service users such as me in the lurch. The key outtake is don’t trust services that you don’t pay for.
    4. Inside Virgin Atlantic’s online racism crisis – how the Chinese diaspora teamed up to highlight a racially motivated incident on a Virgin flight.
    5. On Writing – inspired by a similar post that Stephen Waddington did. We had a contrast of approaches and motivations
    6. The Trouble with Twitter – with growth stalled what does it mean for the social media platform?
    7. Yahoo! how did we get here? – similar post in many respects to to the top-ranking post that highlights missed opportunities
    8. Online advertising and technology data points – this is the April edition of a monthly (or as near monthly updates on statistics that I can do)
    9. The Smartphone Market and Huawei – analysis of Huawei’s consumer business. One can see the impact of smartphones on Huawei’s business. Huawei’s feature phone business was more successful than their smartphone business in terms of profit margin for a good while. Whilst Huawei has aspired to become progressively more  I updated it in a separate post when Huawei published its annual results at the beginning of April
    10. Everyday tools that are a part of my process part one – items that I use in my everyday workflow to create, curate content and brand strategy.

  • Jeremy Corbyn + more things

    Jeremy Corbyn Facebook strategy is so much more sophisticated than you think | Business Insider – I am not convinced that this is going to move the needle for him, it won’t reach beyond his core followers. It doesn’t match marketing best practice which makes me believe Jeremy Corbyn will be very disappointed come election time.

    How e-commerce changes lives in rural China | South China Morning Post – interesting article the key thing to remember is that the South China Morning Post is owned by Jack Ma of Alibaba. More on China here.

    Deodorant Changes Attractiveness Of Men And Women In Different Ways – PsyBlog – How men who appear low in masculinity can be more attractive to women.Wearing deodorant makes men who are seen as low in masculinity more attractive to women, new research finds. – the original Lynx / Axe brand positioning was closer to the mark than we thought

    Can a Neuroscientist Understand Donkey Kong, Let Alone a Brain? – The Atlantic – Two researchers applied common neuroscience techniques to a classic computer chip. Their results are a wake-up call for the whole field.

    This ‘Demonically Clever’ Backdoor Hides In a Tiny Slice of a Computer Chip | WIRED

    The Chinese Government is Setting Up Its Own Major Science Fiction Award | io9 – this is really interesting, think about how Star Trek inspired the cellphone or Neuromancer and Star Wars inspired augmented reality. I wonder what way the government will be directing the content towards. Now do you see what China is doing here? A second thing is the that science fiction writer Cixin Liu is the one bright spot in Chinese (government-approved) soft power at the moment

    The Perks Are Great. Just Don’t Ask Us What We Do. — Backchannel – life inside a malvertising company. Interesting expose

    Berlin clubbers are now snorting chocolate to get high | Dazed – WTF. I’d imagine that just because chocolate sounds innocuous doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be painful to snort

  • 2016 Mary Meeker presentation

    2016 Mary Meeker’s annual presentation on internet trends is a tradition within the technology sector that goes back more than two decades. Meeker used to be a sell side analyst during the dot com boom and was known as a cheerleader for the sector. Unlike Harry Blodget she didn’t come unstuck with the subsequent bust.

    More recently Meeker moved to Silicon Valley and took a job with a VC firm. Hence the reason why the 2016 Mary Meeker presentation is done in conjunction with KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers).

    The key themes explored in the presentation this year include:

    • Mobile – a favourite for a number of years, but with over half of all internet sessions being done on a smartphone or similar it was inevitable that it would take up a substantial amount of the presentation. Mobile is maturing which is shown in the decline in growth rate of the sector this year. Android is picking up market share due to its cheaper handsets but still lagging behind in share of profit
    • Declining global economic growth. Global debt has risen higher and faster than global GDP. Population growth is also slowing and ageing. Meeker thought that India may be the bright spot due to its demographics, but this assumes that it can get over its structural issues and take advantage of its young population. That is probably overly-optimistic because of rising hindu nationalism
    • Online advertising – efficacy still a serious issue to be dealt with. Consumers hate it hence ad blocking.
    • Social: Meeker saw the big factors being video, images and messaging
    • Voice: the rise of voice driven assistants in the home and on mobile devices. The decoupling of China versus the rest of the world is apparent in this new category.

    Here is the latest iteration for 2016

    More on Mary Meeker here.