Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.
Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.
Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.
Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.
Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.
More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.
Mastertape volume six by The Reflex was on heavy rotation for me over the past few weeks. Mastertape volume six is up to The Reflex’s usual high quality.
Valerie Plume’s ‘Undercover’ ad makes use of her CIA heritage in a political ad that breaks new ground. It feels like a high quality television trailer. Plume’s identity as a CIA officer was blown by the Bush regime in the run up to the Iraq war. Her husband who was a former diplomat expressed doubts over Saddam Hussein’s nuclear programme. State department official Richard Armitage, leaked her details to the New York Times. So Plume developed a career as an author and aspiring politician. There had been some controversy over anti-Semitic comments that have been attributed to her.
https://youtu.be/ICW-dGD1M18
Retail and food services at an architectural level often lack theatre and experience. Once you’ve looked past faux Edison bulbs and raw brick walls, there isn’t much difference between a WeWork office, a clothing boutique and a burger joint. So its nice to see innovation like this – a giant circular juice machine that turns discarded peels of squeezed oranges into 3D printed juice cups. The mix of form, function and theatre and kinetic sculpture is a winning one.
The baked goods market in china by Daxue consulting – baked goods sales in China are interesting because of their direct link with middle class consumer style consumption. Trying to get good bread in China isn’t easy, even in top tier cities, particularly if you are looking for . More on FMCG related content here
Keanu Reeves speaks Japanese to Cyberpunk 2077 fans at Tokyo Game Show【Video】 | SoraNews24 -Japan News- – can Keanu Reeves become even more legendary? Yes, because he’s Keanu Reeves. On a more serious note, it will be very hard for Cyberpunk 2077 to live up to the hype around the game. Even if it fails Cyberpunk 2077 has breathed new life into cyberpunk culture and sparked new interest into its canon of literature and film.
Looking back at the Snowden revelations – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering – The brilliant thing about the Snowden leaks was that he didn’t tell us much of anything. He showed us. Most of the revelations came in the form of a Powerpoint slide deck, the misery of which somehow made it all more real. And despite all the revelation fatigue, the things he showed us were remarkable – this is such a good read. I suspect that the level of surprise expressed is mostly a US thing. I was disappointed, but not shocked by it all. Back in the day the NSA used to publish one of the best guides to ‘hardening’ macOS – documents that they no longer seem to host online. The Snowden revelations were nothing new. I grew up in Europe when:
GCHQ were tapping all of Ireland’s overseas telecoms and data traffic via the Capenhurst tower. Having lived in the neighbourhood of Capenhurst during the 1980s and 1990s, this was well known but only confirmed in the media in 1999
The ECHELON network was hoovering up microwave, fax, satellite and telephone calls
After Duncan Campbell’s lifetime of work, the Snowden revelations are part of a decades long pattern of behaviour. Admittedly the US’ rivals will be up to the same things and worse.
Luxury watch maker Patek Philippe and Leagas Delaney launch new Generations campaign – Marketing Communication News – the most interesting aspect of this to me is the way its looking to address a younger audience. Secondly, if you look at the background with the plants and rain its moved the look and feel to more tropical than their previous campaigns that were northern European in feel. (It was actually shot in Italy). Because? My guess, China. Younger rich people due to second generation wealth. Two children reflecting the recent law changes around family size in the country
Is the era of the $100+ graphing calculator coming to an end? | The Hustle – don’t feel too sorry for Texas Instruments: over a 20-year period, TI set out to manufacture demand by making its calculators mandated classroom tools. The company established partnerships with big textbook companies that integrated TI-specific exercises (complete with screenshots of buttons) into classroom curricula. It sought approval for standardized test use from administrators like the College Board. And every time a competing tech innovation came along, it lobbied to maintain its perch atop the parabola. According to Open Secrets and ProPublica data, Texas Instruments paid lobbyists to hound the Department of Education every year from 2005 to 2009 — right around the time when mobile technology and apps were becoming more of a threat. The company campaigned against devices with touchscreens, internet connection, and QWERTY keyboards” – hate the game, not the player etc. etc.
Parenting’s New Frontier: What Happens When Your 11-Year-Old Says No to a Smartphone? – Vogue – my son had decided three things about smartphones. 1. They’re infantilizing, a set of digital apron strings meant to attach you to your mother. (He was onto something there.) 2. They compromise a boy’s resourcefulness because kids come to rely on the GPS instead of learning Scout skills. 3. They make people trivial. This final observation bugs me the most, because he still expresses it whenever he sees me jabbing at my own device: “Texty texty! Emoji emoji!” And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. In short, my son says, he doesn’t want a phone because he wants to be free
If Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be, Why Are We Living in the Past? | Newsweek – Our past keeps growing, and as it does, it continues to crowd out our present, shortening the already narrow nostalgia gap. If Tom Vanderbilt thought treating last month’s music as classic was silly, think about various #TBT (“Throwback Thursday”) posts online, which celebrate historical events that happened a mere seven days ago.
We could shrink this gap even further. Like many kids her age, my 20-year-old sister is obsessed with the 1990s. When Netflix announced that it was remaking the ABC television show Full House , she and her friends took to Facebook to share their delight that a show from “their childhood” was coming back.
This reaction struck me as odd because my sister was born in 1996: a year after the original series ended. She does the same thing with other ’90s phenomena, taking to social media to share images and songs and neon colors from a decade that she describes not as her favorite , but as her own.– more on consumer behaviour here.
Canadian charity SickKids put together this amazing ad. The production is beautiful. The ad plays with idea of super powers. It focuses on the self esteem and resilience of the children.
Guinness and Japanese women’s rugby. Not a combination that I would have normally thought of. But this ia lovely advert that pays tribute to Japan’s first women’s rugby team. Again its another ad that focuses on resilience and dignity. Guinness has had a long history with promotion round rugby as sport.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE_mVvJyWQY
AMV BBDO & Grey London
Luxury brands have done a good job of tapping into modern culture from streetwear to gaming and everything in between. Frieze and Gucci partner on a mini-documentary looking at the history and origins of techno. Part of Kim Jones’ success at Dior has been his ability to draw on culture like this. This is the reason why he draws from 90s street wear and even got Shawn Stüssy to collaborate with Dior.
This history of techno is an attempt by Gucci to do a similar meld with culture. It pulls on Detroit’s manufacturing history, pre-dominantly based around the US automotive industry. Detroit always had a distinct culture. Black people in Detroit were known to spend more money on their outfits in the 1960s and 70s. It was a birthplace for the Motown sound.
A six year old Korean YouTuber buys a house. Korean public reactions are interesting. The Korean influence sector is large. What is particularly interesting is how profitable mainstream content is. The UK influencer scene is much more skewed towards beauty, fashion and hospitality.
Child influencers will hopefully have a happier ending than many child actors.
Quentin Tarantino couldn’t happen today. There is no need for an encyclopaedic knowledge of film trivia or the role of video store assistant as algorithm. He was familiar with a particularly wide library compared your average Blockbuster. Tarantino was a product of a childhood watching films on TV, dingy cinemas and a great independent video rental shop. TV film selection exposed him to films that algorithms wouldn’t have picked for him. Publishers like Eureka, Artificial Eye, Tartan and The Criterion Collection in the US have tried to carry the torch through careful curation.
Most video shops had students or grumpy middle aged men as assistants who might grunt at you if you were lucky. But occasionally you would get someone who was a film fan who would love to share their knowledge like Quentin Tarantino did. Record shops and comic book shops were a similar experience, but for the fact that working in a record shop was considered a cooler job.
This video is a great guide to Quentin Tarantino’s sources.
The story of Yoshie Akiba, owner of Yoshi’s nightclub which specialises in jazz. The video below is just amazing to watch. More Japanese related content here.
Vidal Sassoon took an interesting approach to this ad in China, more here – Do as you’re told? No thanks | The Work | Campaign Asia. The idea of not obeying authority is a subversive one in a collective society. Let alone a collective society in a totalitarian state. Brands are recognising that women can have a full independent life, this is at odds with government that wants a more traditional wife and mother role. China needs to raise its birth rate and needs married couples to increase social stability.