Category: ethics | 倫理 | 윤리학

Ethics: moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. I went to school with people who ended up on the wrong side of the law. I knew more of them when I used to DJ which was my hobby since before I went to college.

I probably still have some post-it notes around the place that I used as bookmarks from when I used to work at a call centre but that was about the extent of my ethical transgressions.

My business experience meant that I dealt with a lot of unpleasant unprofessional clients, but didn’t necessarily see anything unethical in nature. When I started writing this blog I was thinking about culture rather than ethics and the most part still do.

But business and work changed. Ethics became more important:

When I started in social and digital campaigns I didn’t think about ethics as a standalone thing. It was just part of doing a good job. It went without saying.
I don’t think any of us back then would have foreseen slut shaming, trolling, online bullying, dark patterns and misinformation

Now things are different. The lack of ethics is impacting all parts of business life.

How ad tech data is used
How content is created
How services are designed
How products are made

I think that much of the problems with ethics is cultural and generational in nature. The current generation of entrepreneurs have perverted knowledge in the quest of growth hacking and continual improvement and change for its own sake. Its a sickness at the centre of technology

October 2023 newsletter – 3rd time’s the charm
October 2023 newsletter introduction

As I write the October 2023 newsletter. it’s getting noticeably darker outside earlier, but the sunrises reward us with a wider variation of colours. And we all have Halloween to look forward to. This is the third issue and I am still finding my way writing these things. I hope that the third time’s a charm, but I will let you be the judge of that. You can read the earlier ones here.

I looked into where the phrase ‘third time’s a charm’ came from. Apparently it comes from Old English Law, if a prisoner survived three attempts at hanging and survived, they would be set free.

You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. Let’s get it started!

Things I’ve written.
- Climate despair – how NGOs and companies are failing young people in the way they talk about climate change and what they can do to change their communications to increase active participation in reducing the degree of climate change.
- Technopolarity – how technology is subverting the power structures of elected governments and instead empowering the likes of Elon Musk.
- Clustomers – how Intuit MailChimp’s ad campaign, whilst clever, might reinforce C-suite misconceptions around marketing and advertising
Books that I have read.
- These 38 Reading Rules Changed My Life – RyanHoliday.net – whilst its not a book, it does contain great advice for readers
- Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Fogg’s simple model for understanding individual behaviours has helped drive everything from health campaigns to online services. Tiny Habits how consumers and businesses can help foster behavioural change, one tiny habit at a time. More on my review of the book here.
- The long awaited Mick Herron book The Secret Hours did not disappoint. It’s from the Slow Horses universe, but not a Slough House story per se. More than a nod to Boris Johnson’s stint as foreign secretary and prime minister. I will leave it at that rather than give you plot spoilers.
- China A History by John Keay. Keay’s book was recommended to me by a number of people. In 535 pages he attempts the impossible in terms of covering China’s history as a civilisation through the start of Xi Jinping’s first administration. It’s a dense read – it’s well written, covering the complexity of history well. The current communist government is barely a footnote (ok exaggerating a bit here), but it puts things in perspective.
- Spain A History edited by Raymond Carr. The book highlights the notable trends, intellectual and social, of each particular era in its history. Roman rule created the notion of ‘Spain’ as a distinct entity. The chapters on the Visigoth monarchy, Moorish Spain, the establishment, an empire, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, all chart the cultural, political and economic arc of Spain. It then goes on to explore 19th century liberalism and the pivot during much of the 20th century towards authoritarian rule, followed by a return to democracy and onwards up to the 21st century. My favourite chapter was about the Visigoths, which was a period I didn’t know much about prior to reading this book – the author did a particularly good job of bringing the Visigoths to life on page.
Things I have been inspired by.

Halloween. I have been looking forward to the holiday for at least a month. Growing up in an Irish household with rural origins, I had an appreciation of the changing seasons and loved the traditions around Halloween, especially tales of the fairy forts and the banshee. It’s also a big money earner, in the advertising world allowing for interesting tactical executions that couldn’t otherwise be attempted. Outside advertising, ignoring increased food sales, a third of consumers will spend 51 – 100 USD on putting together their own costume, or buying one off the rack. The most hardcore 10% of those surveyed admitted to spending 250+ USD.

I was not into costumes, instead I look forward to the most is my Mum’s barmbrack. For the first time in a few years my Mum baked a few barmbracks and sent one of them to me. It’s a Halloween tradition. The barmbrack itself is a spicy fruited bread with a texture somewhere between brioche and and a pan loaf. Traditionally, the brack would contain a ring or trinket, which would turn up in a random slice.

When I was small, commercial bakeries still used to have a an aluminium ring that looked like it was from a cheap Christmas cracker contained wrapped in greaseproof paper baked into the brack.

Downloadable recipe PDF here (Dropbox) or here (Google Drive) if you fancy baking your own over the weekend.

While we’re on the subject of food, Hope & Glory’s collaboration between Lick paint and Heinz ketchup for a ketchup shade of wall paint creates talkability, though I wouldn’t be buying it for my own home.

Buoyant Bob – I am stil not sure if Buoyant Bob is a social object, a brand, both or something else. Buoyant Bob was a successful entry into the US cannabis marketplace. The brief in the campaign was to work around restrictions in cannabis advertising and show it as the most fun brand in the space.

Buoyant Bob was released as a single: retail takeovers, vinyl records at dispensaries, and fans sharing Instagram Stories using “The Man Who Got So High” all followed.

OnlyWatch – an auction in Geneva in aid of research Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy features one-off luxury watches from all of the major Swiss timepiece houses. Some of the entries are unique colour ways but Bulgari went the extra mile with their Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Marble. Their watches are already well known for being some of the thinnest timepieces available. A tourbillion is a demonstration of the watchmakers art. The one in this watch is just under 2mm thick – that’s just over double the thickness of a credit card for a moving mechanical assembly. And then they managed to cover the entire titanium case and strap of the watch in marble and make a marble dial – without making the watch any bulkier than its usual ridiculously slim case. It’s not something I would wear even if I could afford it, but I am in awe of the ingenuity.

Bulgari for OnlyWatch – Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Marble

Finally Dentsu Health published a great must-read byline on how media and entertainment can aid health equality. More here.

Things I have watched.

I got to see The Boy and The Heron early at the BFI London Film Festival. You won’t get any plot spoilers from me here. Official release is December 26 in the UK, December 8 in Hong Kong. It’s Studio Ghibli, what else do you need to know?

General Magic – a great documentary about a Silicon Valley start-up of the same name.. Back in the early 1990s General Magic was as visionary as Apple and as hyped as WeWork. If you’ve ever worked with a start-up or care about technology give it a watch. More on my thoughts here.

The Pentagon Papers – Despite this being a made-for-TV film, James Spader does a great job of playing Daniel Ellsberg; the RAND researcher to gave the materials to the media. In terms of pacing acting and storytelling, I would put this on a par with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman’s film adaptation of All The President’s Men.

Tampopo is a beautifully shot Japanese film with comedic moments that tells the story of a widow, her son and their ramen shop. More on what I thought of here.

A relatively modern Halloween tradition in the Carroll family has been watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown – recommended for young and old alike. While my Dad and I usually end up watching The Crow later on. If you want more classic horror, then you could do worse than watching the livestream by the Creature Features show.

Useful tools

ITV Adlabs and Magic Numbers recovery budget planner

Pretty much essential to look at if you have responsibility for UK media spend at a brand. This allows you to examine various scenarios and see likely outcomes based on media spend. More here.

Google bundles generative AI and LLM with search

I downloaded Chrome especially to try this out, it looks a bit more mature than Bing’s initial integration of ChatGPT. Go here to give it a try if you’re a Chrome browser user.

Post-It Z-Notes

You’re workshopping something with clients or thinking something through on your own – Post-It notes are key. The own brand ones can vary from really good to useless, so spend a bit more and get proper Post-It notes. In fact, I’d advise that you go one step further and get Post-It Z-Notes. The notes alternate sides in terms of where the ‘sticky end’ is and if you lift them from the pad you get a ‘Z’ before they peel away. They come away effortlessly and work brilliantly if you have them in a desk holder.

Foldable wireless keyboard

At the start of my career, I used to have a Palm PDA ( personal digital assistant – think a smartphone, without the phone and communications bit). I also had a long commute to Luton on a daily basis. I got a lot of reading and writing done thanks to a ‘Stowaway’ foldable keyboard made by a company called Think Outside. The company no longer exists, but the desire to be able to turn my iPhone into a simple writing tool lives on. Recently, I have been using this foldable Bluetooth keyboard. It folds up, can be used on a train seat table or even an economy class aircraft seat and recharges easily. The keyboard isn’t the usual rubbery mess that you tend to get in a lot of these devices. It’s one fault so far is that it feels flimsy, but I have already got my money’s worth out of it in just a few months. I fire up the iPhone’s notes app and get to work. I can then edit and refine once I have a bit more time on my Mac at a more convenient time.

The sales pitch.

Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

The End.

Ok this is the end of my October 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. DON’T FORGET TO PUT YOUR CLOCKS BACK BEFORE YOU GO TO BED ON SATURDAY. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
October 25, 2023
Climate despair
I started thinking about climate despair last month as I was researching my post on psychotherapy + culture.

Depth of climate despair

The driver was a research report that appeared in The Lancet in December 2021. Researchers surveyed 10,000 respondents aged between 16 – 25, in ten countries across the Asia Pacific region, North and South America, Europe and Africa. The respondents were drawn from Kantar’s LifePoints online research panel. Of those who started the survey less than 70 percent completed it. The gender split was slightly overweight towards males: 51·4% male, 48·6% female.

The survey was developed by 11 international consultants with expertise in climate change emotions, clinical and environmental psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry, human rights law, child and adolescent mental health, and young people with lived experience of climate anxiety. Which means that there was an incentive to come out with the findings they received and that may have biased the results. But the indications are clear in terms of direction around climate despair.

Key datapoints supporting the sense of climate despair amongst respondents:
- Survey respondents across all countries were worried about climate change (59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried)
- Over half of those surveyed reported each of the following emotions: sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless or guilty
- 75% of those surveyed said that they think the future is frightening
Derek Read – “C̶l̶i̶m̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶C̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶ We Change”

The report says:

Distress about climate change is associated with young people perceiving that they have no future, that humanity is doomed, and that governments are failing to respond adequately, and with feelings of betrayal and abandonment by governments and adults. Climate change and government inaction are chronic stressors that could have considerable, long-lasting, and incremental negative implications for the mental health of children and young people.
Hickman, C.,Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R.E. & Mayall, E.E. (December 2021) Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey. (UK) The Lancet Planetary Health

The article then goes on to hold governments accountable for a moral harm on the young people. However, a good deal of the moral harm is also due to the way companies and NGOs actually talk about climate change.

Anecdotal evidence from therapists interviewed by the New York Times suggests that climate despair tends to be more prevalent in young female patients that they see. However, this might be down to a young men being less likely to see a therapist than a young woman.

Positive reinforcement

This video from WARC features research why it is ineffective to play into the constant environment doom loop if we want action. A change in approach should start to combat the deeply entrenched feeling of climate despair.

WARC highlighted research that positive environmental images motivate people to take action. The research paper in the Journal of Advertising Research is Are consumers moved by a crying tree or a smiling forest? Effects of anthropomorphic valence and cause acuteness in green advertising written by three Taiwanese researchers based on a number of studies, each with 35 – 50 participants.

Research key findings

The paper had four key findings:
- When the environmental issue is considered a sudden disaster, negative anthropomorphism is more persuasive.
- By contrast, when the environmental issue is viewed as an ongoing tragedy, positive anthropomorphism results in a more favourable attitude, higher willingness to pay, and more money being donated.
- Consumers’ connectedness to nature serves as the underlying mechanism in this messaging. If this level of connectedness to nature is low, nonprofit organizations and companies must alter these perceptions by choosing a more appropriate anthropomorphic valence and cause acuteness in their green advertising.
All of which seems to point to a possible challenge amongst both NGOs and companies over their inability to discern the difference between important and the most urgent elements. If collectively they can’t understand the categorisation, it’s no wonder that a significant minority of their audience slips into climate despair and is discouraged from taking a more active role.

Secondly, working on consumer’s connectedness to nature is a major communications JTBD (job to be done).
October 10, 2023
The Freshest Kids + more things

The Freshest Kids

The Freshest Kids tells the story of early breakdancing. My own attempts at breakdancing were very poor. My moonwalk was closer to John Hurt’s shuffle as part of his portrayal of John Merrick in The Elephant Man. Because of that I have a real appreciation of those people who can do breakdance properly. You can watch it here.

RAYS Engineering

I have a thing for manufacturing videos that shows how a product is made. RAYS Engineering alloy wheels are famous as providers of high quality after market wheels, particularly among fans of Japanese import vehicles. Their manufacturing process is unique. The forging process provides their wheels with superior properties to normal cast alloy wheels.

Anjihood pop-up book

Anjihood is the 32 square kilometre development (less than 3% the size of Hong Kong, or over 100 times bigger than Canary Wharf in London) outside Shanghai. It looks to blend the benefits of urban living with a more green environment – a 21st century analogue to the Victorian garden city concept. They commissioned Shanghai creative agency The Orangeblowfish to create a pop-up book that would convey the concepts behind Anjihood and the emotions they hope the development will evoke.

Innovation in Japanese hospitals

Japan is using a mix of robotics and machine learning tools to help assist staff in its hospitals cope with its aging population. NHK World goes in-depth in how a mix of commercial off the shelf solutions are being used in concert with each other.

No to obsolescence

Porsche Netherlands did this film to show no matter how old you’re Porsche, if they don’t have the relevant part available. They will go back to the original design drawings and remanufacture it for your vehicle.

I am not too sure how this would hold up for electronics components which might not be able to get the relevant integrated circuits. But it’s an interesting commitment to make. In a low carbon economy, keeping existing vehicles on the road for longer is as important as a world full of Teslas.

The Porsche 111 was first made some time in the early 1950s. Porsche only started building sports cars in 1948, but had been building tractors on and off since 1934 under the Porsche brand.

September 28, 2023
Wonderlust Apple event
The Apple Wonderlust event happened on September 12, 2023. The events timing fitted in with the two Apple events a year that we have grown to expect:
- Worldwide Developers Conference – in June.
- Autumn event in September / October.
Unlike when I started buying Apple products these events are no longer hosted at external conference centres but at Apple’s own conference centre as part of its campus. For the past decade and a half Apple hasn’t participated at wider trade shows, in the same way that the likes of Samsung or Microsoft would at CES.

Apple Inc.

Apple events from the late 1990s onwards built their reputation for being great live performances by Steve Jobs and the management team. COVID-19 seems to have allowed Apple to move to a pre-recorded keynote that the media and general public watch together either in person or streamed online, followed by the media being allowed to get hands on with the products.

This allows for a polished event presentation, all-be-it one that might be out of touch with its audience. More on that later.

Is wonderlust even a word?

A quick look at dictionaries offline and online kept bringing up results for wonderlust – the hankering to travel. That was until I hit Urban Dictionary that categorised wonderlust this way:

the desire to be in a constant state of wonder
Joe had a serious case of wonderlust: he was bored of anything ordinary.

There were other definitions, but I think that they were outside the scope of where Apple wanted to go.

TL;DR

If you’ve bought an Apple product in the past three years there weren’t any ‘must buy’ products showcased in the Wonderlust event. Your iPhone and Apple Watch will still be good enough and benefit from this years upgraded OS. If you have a device over three years old then upgrading to the new products is worth considering.

Apple still hasn’t jumped on the folding screen bandwagon that Samsung has. Given that we don’t see question-and-answer sessions that Steve Jobs sometimes indulged us with we don’t know the definitive ‘why’ yet.

The meh moments

There was more to criticise in this Apple events than other recent ones.

USB-C as a benefit

The reality is that in order for Apple to sell in the European Union it has had to move the iPhone and AirPods to a USB-C connection, away from the the Lightning connector. Apple tried to play this off as an improvement that they’d made to their phones, but the reality is that it was a change forced upon Apple.

Cringeworthy ESG update

Part of the pre-recorded content was a skit where Mother Nature turns up at Apple HQ for a meeting with the team about improvements in their environmental record. The problem was that the film was out of touch with the audience and has been roundly criticised.

For five minutes, we had the same thing over and over. It might be about materials one moment and packaging the next, but it was a single gag stretched out too far.

It was stretched so thin that you could see the thinking behind it. Every single element was good by itself, and no one would cut anything.

But the result is that every single element was undermined by the repetition. And instead of Apple showing it was better than just sell-sell-sell videos, the result was that the sketch felt like padding in an event that’s like drinking tech data from a fire hose.
AppleInsider – Apple’s ‘Mother Nature’ sketch was a complete dud, and didn’t belong in the iPhone 15 event

I do think it went on too long — the whole segment (sketch plus details) in fact was just 10 minutes long, not 20. But seemingly everyone, including me, felt like it lasted 20 minutes, which is never a good sign.
Daring Fireball (John Gruber) – Thoughts and Observations on This Week’s ‘Wonderlust’ Apple Event

There were some good points highlighted:
- Recycled materials usage. There were also claims made about leather usage, but these only applied to Hermés straps sold within Apple’s own retail channels.
- Taking plastic out of packaging. Apple has been minimising packaging by taking items out of the box (iPhone earphones, iPhone charger being two high profile examples). But now it’s taking plastic out of packaging as well. Its able to do this due to control of all aspects of its manufacturing process and packaging re-engineering. This is also pleasing to Apple shareholders. Given that Apple’s packaging is bought at scale, decreased materials usage and size means less risk of damage and reduced cost of manufacture & transport – any increased cost in design and packaging development will be amortised across millions of units. You see a similar benefit in Apple’s product materials as well such as aluminium laptop chassis.
- Carbon offset for energy used not only in the manufacture of Apple Watch, but also throughout their expected life.
- A move towards more ocean freight to reduce logistics carbon footprint, compared to air travel. This will have had a direct impact on the flexibility and responsiveness of Apple’s global supply chain, particularly custom specified products like non-standard MacBook Pro configurations.
Apple still has a lot of problems however and here are three of the biggest:
- With the exception of the Apple Pro, Mac models can no longer be upgraded, which reduces reparability and product life.
- AirPods can’t be repaired, only thrown away. This is a problem for the wireless earbud category in general, but Apple are a leading player in the market and can set the the tone in the market through innovation.
- The very nature of Apple’s business could be considered to drive excessive consumption. In sharp contrast, one of the traditional reasons why one owned a Mac was that you got a computer that was useful for longer. I am currently using a couple of Apple Thunderbolt displays that are between 8 and 12 years old. Prior to the iPhone I was using Macs that may have been eight years old by the time that i parted company with them.
Incremental product improvements

The announcements would have felt like tweaks for consumers. Apple Watches got more powerful processors for the first time. The iPhone Pro titanium frame would marginally reduce the weight of the handset. Apple has previously used titanium in laptops between 2001 and 2003, so the material isn’t completely new to the brand. The camera can create video and photography with depth for the Apple Vision Pro. Camera performance with darker skin tones has been improved to match Google Pixel driven innovation. But battery life is ‘about the same’ as previous generations.

Many of the software improvements including live stickers are likely to be be in the iOS upgrade available to previous generations of phones.

Ok, so what if anything was interesting about the event?

There were three things that while they wouldn’t make me want to go out and buy a new device are still important developments, based on the direction that they are taking Apple products.

Service integration

Apple iPhone is moving beyond emergency satellite text services to breakdown care via satellite as well. It’s interesting that Apple is continuing to go beyond cellular. It is starting to look like the kind of differentiation Vertu used to enjoy with its single button concierge service. It supports the viewpoint that Apple is a luxury adjacent, if not luxury brand.

Mechanical engineering on the iPhone camera

Apple has managed to cram in a lens with an equivalent focal length of 77mm into the iPhone 15 Pro through a novel prismatic lens design. The device also uses a similar mechanism design to that used on Pentax DSLRs to compensate for device shake. The titanium frame probably provides additional rigidity for this system to work to its full potential. However the weight loss of the device might drive increased shake so there is a careful calibration in choices that the engineering team made.

On-device machine learning

The Apple Watch had redesigned silicon to move machine learning from the cloud or iPhone device on to the Watch itself. This improves response time, but also points to a move of taking large language model systems and neural networks out of the cloud and on to the device. Given that the watch also features ultra wideband wireless connectivity, it’s an especially interesting choice decoupling the watch from the iPhone.

More Apple-related content here.
September 19, 2023
Deluxe – how luxury lost it’s lustre
I had this copy of Deluxe on my shelf for a while and finally managed got round to reading it. Deluxe – how luxury lost its lustre was written by Dana Thomas. Dana knows the subject that she’s talking about.

Dana Thomas

Dana Thomas is a Paris-based journalist who covered the fashion industry. Thomas started her journalistic career writing for the ‘style’ section of The Washington Post. For a decade and a half Thomas was a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris. She has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Architectural Digest. Deluxe is one of three books that she has written, the other is Fashionopolis, which focuses on the fast fashion industry and Gods and Kings covered the career of fashion designers Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.

Deluxe – How Luxury Lost its Lustre

In the introduction starts with a scatter gun approach. She bemoans Gucci and Burberry factory seconds on sale in China, revealing the global supply chain used by luxury brands now. She also criticises that luxury goods are used as currency by some sex workers from compensated dating to ‘returning gifts’ and pocketing the difference minus a restocking fee.

I get the sense that Thomas would like to see these companies remain small ‘secrets’ only known by a cosmopolitan cognoscenti, obviously including herself. What my younger peers would call ‘gatekeeping’ in a derogatory way.

Parasite singles

Most of Thomas’ ire focuses on Louis Vuitton early on. She describes Bernard Arnaud in unflattering terms and makes the globalisation of the brand sound like a mix of a happy accident and opportunity. Along the way she critiques the weakness of Japanese society’s love for luxury goods down to subtle social signalling and ‘parasite singles’ – young women living at home with their parents who spend their disposable income on luxury goods.

(The reality is that could be young people with a job in Spain or Italy either as east Asians and Southern Europeans tend to only move out of home to marry or to follow work or education.)

Japanese tourists took their luxury shopping abroad, taking advantage of duty-free shopping. It’s no coincidence that LVMH owns DFS (Duty Free Shopping) outlets across America and the Pacific rim. Some of the lessons that DFS and LVMH learned selling to Japanese luxury buyers, such last late closing, you can still see in showrooms across the Asia Pacific region.

Jumping from Japanese duty free shoppers in Hawaii, Thomas moves on to the connection between a generation of Italian designers and Hollywood. Richard Gere’s star power was as much down to his styling making him look the part by Giorgio Armani as it was to his considerable acting prowess.

From Hollywood, the book delves into the perfume operations of the design houses. It highlights how perfume formulation moved from being an in-house activity for design houses to being outsourced to a few specialists companies who work with a ‘creative brief’.

Quality issues

The area where I can agree most with Thomas is around the decline in quality of luxury goods. Deluxe approaches this from the different tactics that luxury companies have used to conceal their use of Chinese factories. However as Apple has shown, made in China doesn’t necessarily mean cheap or poorly made. Indeed, a decade and a half after Deluxe was written, we’re seeing local luxury brands displacing international luxury brands in the Chinese market for several reasons, usually explained using the term ‘guo chao‘.

Thomas estimates that there at least four factories in China who manufacture most of the luxury industry’s handbags and leather goods – alongside private label brands for department stores and supermarkets. I was surprised that even back in 2004, manufacturing in China only saved 30 percent of the bill of materials.

The book goes on to cover the cost cutting that has gone into luxury products, from clothes with cheap stitching, skipped tailoring such as no lining in jackets and dresses. Thomas highlights that these changes happened to allow luxury to go mass market. Luxury then followed customers out of the office or the salon into all aspects of their life including sportswear and ‘streetwear’. What my friend Jeremy calls the ‘Supremification’ of luxury.

The reliance on the mass market bought about two challenges in Thomas’ eyes:
- Counterfeit products that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing by experts
- Rockier finances for the large luxury corporates who are no longer sheltered from economic cycles by the continued spending of ultra high net worth individuals.
The future

Thomas left us with two parts to what we saw the future of luxury looking like:
- The continued pursuit of emerging markets with India replacing China due to demographics.
- The new luxury of industry specialists spinning off and creating new houses, because they were jaded with the existing business practices and structures. The book highlights Tom Ford; who recently gave up his label and sold it on in November 2022 to cosmetics business Estée Lauder and fellow fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna.
In summary

Dana Thomas’ Deluxe is a book of its time in the early to mid 2000s. Thomas clearly has some bias’ due to history with some of the protagonists, which is worthwhile bearing in mind. The historical part of the book is useful; but the luxury industry has moved on and in some ways the problems are now much worse. With those provisos in mind, I can recommend the book as a background read on the luxury sector.

More book reviews he r e.
September 18, 2023