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.

  • Illegal spy camera + more things

    Illegal spy cameras are still easy to find in Shenzhen’s gadget paradise | Abacus – this will make you very paranoid. The size of the devices now mean that you can have illegal spy cameras everywhere. Smartphone adoption has driven the quality of small cameras up and their size down.

    Jollibee acquires US-based Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf | Marketing | Campaign Asia – this is huge. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is a credible Starbucks competitor with a substantial footprint and great tasting coffee. It has a substantial presence in the US and Asia, with a particularly big footprint in Korea. Korea is one of the major coffee consuming nations in Asia.

    Inside Amazon’s pitch for new audio ads in music on Alexa devices | AdAge – Amazon sells 15 and 30 second radio type adverts. It looks like a modern version of Rediffusion style radio that piped content directly into consumer homes in the post war period. Cable radio used to be a thing in the United Kingdom Barbados, Malaysia, Malta, Singapore and Hong Kong….

    Forever 21 Sent Some Customers Atkins Diet Bars And People Are Very Angry | Buzzfeed News – I wonder what persuaded Atkins to come to Forever 21 with this tie-up. Is there something in their customer base demographic profile that isn’t obvious to me? I could see why at first glance Forever 21 could have seen the product drop as a ‘delight’ for customers. But in retrospect the sensitivity is understandable. It is also interesting how Forever 21 took the brunt of consumer displeasure on what was a co-promotion with Atkins.

    Extinction Rebellion breaks into fashion in Stella McCartney sustainability campaign | The Drum – Extinction Rebellion gets co-opted by fashion brands. The FT have an interesting interview with Greta Thunberg about how XR and he wider climate change protest movement spiralled out of control

  • Celine + more things

    Work & Co.’s clean looking website for Celine. Its a beautiful piece of luxury orientated user experience for Celine. It was founded in 1945 by Céline Vipiana. Celine was originally a made-to-measure children’s shoe business. In 1960, the brand decided to pivot, focusing its business on a ready-to-wear fashion brand for women with a sportswear approach. The brand offered a range of leather goods such as bags, loafers, gloves and clothes. By the 1970s Celine had boutiques in Switzerland, Monte Carlo, the US, Canada and Hong Kong. They were bought by Bernard Arnault in 1987 or 1988 around about the time that he took over at LVMH to build it into the world’s largest luxury conglomerate. More luxury related content here.

    I have deliberately ignored a lot of the brands trying to cling on to the proverbial vapour trail of the Apollo space programme; but this video caught my eye because it showed the amazing engineering chops of Sony. Just look at the detail-orientated design. You can understand why Sony was held in such high esteem as a brand when you watch this video.

    Dentsu (the agency network formerly known as the Dentsu Aegis Network) released its CMO survey (registration wall). From the almost 40 pages of content, one paragraph struck me as being the single most important take out:

    CMOs are often simply not incentivised to deliver long-term change. In terms of performance metrics, they’re primarily accountable for growing the customer base (see Figure 3), while medium/ long-term brand health and digital transformation are way down the pecking order. Coupled with the fact that, in many markets, CMOs often ‘enjoy’ the shortest average tenure of anyone in the C-suite (around three and a half years in the United States, for example) there is little reason for many CMOs to look beyond the near-term.

    2019 Dentsu Aegis Network CMO survey (sample size 1,000 CMOs)

    If you take into account the relatively short tenure of CMOs, it looks like a toxic brew for businesses in the medium to long term.

    It’s like as if this opinion piece was written with marketing in mind…. Watermelons vs. Sesame Seeds | World Bank.

    Interesting academic research paper that reflected on the triad actions against Hong Kong’s civil society and democracy movement in 2014, which seems sensible to revisit. Resurgent Triads? Democratic mobilization and organized crime in Hong Kong – Federico Varese, Rebecca WY Wong, 2018  

  • A fierce head cold & other aspects of my week

    My week had been truncated somewhat by a fierce head cold and am cranking this post out with less deliberation than normal due to a backlog of household chores that aren’t going to take care of themselves. Add to that a Lemsip induced haze to try and combat the fierce head cold and you see how the rest of this post will go

    Paul Armstrong shared this AR/VR example with me: Swedish creative agency Warpin posted a video of a H&M-commissioned experience for Magic Leap glasses. The concept looks like everything my cyberpunk fan brain would want; like being inside Max Headroom’s mind. I’d also imagine that it would be hellish for any length of time. More related content here.

    Warpin Media for H&M

    BBH came up with this campaign for Carabao energy drink. The ad is aimed at the Chinese market and asks the question ‘What fuels your fighting spirit?’. In western English – this would be closer to ‘what makes you resilient, or what gets you through?’. It’s pretty much the same question that any ad planner or creative in an agency has asked as they chug their energy drink of choice whilst working on a client pitch, or particularly tough creative brief.

    BBH Shanghai for Carabao

    ‘Dear young people don’t vote’ by Shokasonjuku is a great video highlighting the need for younger Japanese to get involved in the electoral process, if they want issues that they care about to be heard. Shokasonjuku is a production company set up by Nana Takamatsu – a Japanese comedian. Young people in Japan aren’t educated or engaged by the political process, something that Takamatsu wants to change.

    Shokasonjuku

    Martin Lindstrom on how data separates businesses from consumers and how ethnography can bridge the gap. It’s also interesting how he talks about small data; or what you and I would call qualitative data that leads to insight based on a human truth.

    Smart cart guides the visually-impaired around grocery stores | Trendwatching – so a beer brand comes up with a smart shopping cart, but is the marketing benefit to the beer brand anything other than ambient marketing? There’s nothing wrong in that of course, but the linkage that will be made with social purpose looks spurious at best. If you want to help people and you sell alcohol. Stop. Don’t enable drunk drivers, wife beaters and alcoholics.

  • To lose a child & things from last week

    Amazing Singaporean content on what its like to lose a child. The pain and anguish of the parents talking about what its like to lose a child comes through. Time doesn’t seem to be the healer when it comes to The questions were a very powerful device to get across this story.

    Hong Kong bakery’s ‘anti-extradition bill’ mooncakes and cookies leave customers hungry for more | South China Morning Post – given that grandparents often hold more pro-establishment views than their children and grand children I can imagine that this likely to make for very tense mid-Autumn festival celebrations

    Nor “Pheonix” Diana is the first hijab wearing Malay women’s wrestler. Japan’s heritage in wrestling has encouraged interest in the sport throughout Asia. The exception to the rule would be China, where despite the efforts of WWE and domestic entrepreneurs, they haven’t managed to make wrestling work in the marketplace. The other protagonist in this video Zeda Zhang (real name Julie Ho) is an MMA artist and pro-wrestler. She was taken on by WWE when they were looking to crack the China market and let go when those plans fell apart for various reasons.

    Yunying Huang challenges the Eurocentric perception of techno-culture in China | It’s Nice That – think Chinese meme culture and cyberpunk dropped in a Blendmatic 5000. China has its own fascinating takes on sci-fi so Yunying Huang’s work makes complete sense. With the exception of Cixin Liu, little has been done to bring Chinese science fiction to a wider audience, in the same way that happened with Japanese cyber punk in the 1980s.

    Amazing video from SamBakZa – Korean ska. You can see There She Is here. Besides the carefully manufactured K-pop acts Korea also has a thriving music scene from dance music to indie-rock. But SamBakZa is the first ska artist that I know out of Korea. Its understandable given the cross pollination that happens between Japanese and Korean music trends.

    https://youtu.be/-uqnKQwwcJo

  • Sohu returns + more news

    Can Chinese internet pioneer Sohu finally pull off a comeback after missing the mobile era? | SCMP.com – Sohu making a comeback has interesting parallels with Yahoo! in the west, but without the incompetent board and Carl Icahn. I suspect that the rejuvenation of Sohu will be a fruitless task as the internet doesn’t give second chances

    Anti-China Bonds Between Hong Kong and Taiwan Are Growing – The Atlantic – The year was 1984: China was in the early days of its economic rise and was experiencing one of its most politically free periods under Communist rule; Hong Kong was the booming financial hub and crown jewel of what remained of the British Empire; and then there was Taiwan, which was nearing the end of nearly four decades of brutal martial law. At the time, if you had wagered on which of those places would be the freest 35 years later, Taiwan would have had long odds…

    Huawei, the CSSA and beyond: “Latent networks” and Party influence within Chinese institutions – Asia Dialogue – well worth reading. It’s worthwhile treating United Front organisations and organisations like the CSSA as enemy agents. Not that all the members are hellbent on destruction of the west; but the Chinese government wields them in a similar way to the Soviet Union using trade unions and protest groups in the past

    WSJ City | Huawei dispute US cyber firms findings of flaws in its gear – but the findings mirror similar issues found by GCHQ that Huawei said could take years to correct

    Is Apple dead creatively? Campaign – I couldn’t have imagined Campaign asking this question even five years ago

    Mark Ritson: 5G is the latest hot topic on the bullsh*t roadshow | Marketing Week – yep that sounds about right (paywall)

    Music on the Move: Sony’s Walkman Turns 40 | Nippon.com – wonderful walk through Sony’s product history and cultural impact. More Sony related content here.