Ged Carroll

Category: finance | 은행업

Finance is a really odd section for me to have. I don’t come from a finance background, I have no interest in fin-tech. Yet it makes its appearance here on this blog.

When thinking about this category, I decided to reflect on why its here. It’s usually where curated content sits, rather than my own ideas.

The reality of life in the west is that everything has become financialised. As I write this as people think about web 3.0, they are thinking about payment systems first and working about utility later. This implies that the open web we know won’t be part of the metaverse in terms of ideas or ethos.

Instead of economic growth consumer spending depends on different ways of creating credit. Its no accident that delayed payments finance company Klarna is the biggest thing in European e-commerce at the time of writing this page.

Back when I started writing we were heading into the financial crisis of 2008, the knock on effects of that could still be felt a dozen years later and was a contributing factor to Brexit and Trump victories. The ‘occupy’ movement was catalysed by the financial crisis and then turned into something else. For instance it became a pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.

We had the implosion of financial brands like Lehman Brothers and the Royal Bank of Scotland. This created a lack of trust in business, the media and the government.  We are still seeing that play out today, from cryptocurrency to conspiracy theories and a lack of trust by the public in experts.

  • Plastic surgery hack + more

    Hackers threaten to leak plastic surgery pictures – BBC News – this follows on from the hack on Finnish mental health services. Given the link between plastic surgery and self image; black hat hackers have a lot of sustained leverage. More security related posts here.

    Regulators tell Jack Ma’s Ant Group to rectify five problems – the five areas included: Ant’s inadequate governance; regulatory negligence; unlawful profit-seeking; monopolistic practices and; infringement of consumer rights, said China’s central bank vice governor Pan Gongsheng. China orders Ant Group to rein in unfettered expansion as regulators put up fences around financial risks | South China Morning Post – Ant must return to its origins in online payments and prohibit irregular competition, protect customers’ privacy in operating its personal credit rating business, establish a financial holding company to manage its businesses, rectify any irregularities in its insurance, wealth management and credit businesses, and run its asset-backed securities business in accordance with regulations, the People’s Bank of China’s deputy governor Pan Gongsheng said in a statement on Sunday.

    Beijing launches antitrust investigation into Alibaba | FT – of course, its not political.

    Who’s behind Marcus Rashford? – UnHerd – interesting profile of Roc Nation’s UK arm

    SolarWinds Adviser Warned of Lax Security Years Before Hack – Bloomberg – I’d be surprised if there isn’t shareholder class action suits now

    The OnlyFans revolution – The Face – Selena suggests we ​“talk about OF in a way that doesn’t glamourise the economics of the operation”. Instead, we need a more ​“nuanced conversation about the nuts and bolts of what the actual labour looks like. We aren’t seeing the injustices. It’s either focused on our trauma or on the glamorous hyperbolic examples, while most of us are somewhere in the middle.”  There are many sides to running an OnlyFans that are less visible, including work that goes into maintaining a profile and the emotional labour involved in keeping up with fans. Historically, sex workers basically act as ad hoc therapists to their clients – it’s said to come with the territory, from escorting to camming to BDSM. And the ​“girlfriend experience” applies here too. A key part of the site’s success is one-to-one connection – often creators’ bios will explicitly state they talk with all their followers – for the right brands there is an opportunity for influence campaigns

    North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts November 2020 Billings – Semiconductor Digest – generally a good sign for the global economic outlook. A dip in semiconductor equipment is usually the canary in the coal mine for global economic time.

  • Caribbean phone networks + more

    Revealed: China suspected of spying on Americans via Caribbean phone networks | US news | The Guardian – China is alleged to have used Caribbean phone networks to conduct its surveillance. I’d imagine that they aren’t the only people to do this – At the heart of the allegations are claims that China, using a state-controlled mobile phone operator, is directing signalling messages to US subscribers, usually while they are travelling abroad. Signalling messages are commands that are sent by a telecoms operators across the global network, unbeknownst to a mobile phone user. They allow operators to locate mobile phones, connect mobile phone users to one another, and assess roaming charges. But some signalling messages can be used for illegitimate purposes, such as tracking, monitoring, or intercepting communications.– always use a VPN when roaming whether it’s Caribbean phone networks or elsewhere. We don’t know which Caribbean phone networks are vulnerable, could it be Digicel? More security related posts here.

    Robinhood faces legal action over ‘gamification’ of investing | FT – not terribly surprised by this. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were adopting B.J. Fogg’s dark principles in his work Persuasive Technology

    LS Keynote Shanghai 2020: The Digital Transformation of International Brands in China – studies by Boston Consulting Group for the luxury sector showed that 93 per cent of purchases in China are influenced by digital touchpoints – which is significantly higher compared to the 60 per cent observed in the global market. This makes developing digital offerings in China more significant for luxury brands. On top of its external transformation, it is also crucial for brands to establish an effective organisational structure and infrastructure internally. When it comes to creating omnichannel experiences, the development of online channels should be done so in tandem with offline touchpoints, opined Liang. Any projects that straddle online and offline must be supported by frontline staff – something he sees as a key challenge for luxury brands today – interesting stuff from Luxury Society

    Facebook says French and Russian disinformation trolls spar in Africa | Financial Times – this is fascinating. It is interesting that western agencies are trying to beat Russia at its own game

    To the moon and back, Chinese R&D is leaving the US behind | Financial Times – Once upon a time, the US government invested heavily in research. US federal R&D spending surged after the Soviets launched Sputnik, peaking in 1965 at 11.7 per cent of federal spending and at 2.2 per cent of gross domestic product. Frontier discoveries from that time led to the internet and GPS, the global navigation system. But in the decades since putting a person on the moon, US government investment in ideas has waned. In constant dollars, Nasa spending had fallen by more than half by the early 1970s; it has been flat ever since. By 2019, total federal R&D spend constituted just 2.8 per cent of all federal spending and just 0.6 per cent of GDP — the lowest since the start of the cold war.

    What to do when the UN human rights office may have violated human rights? | South China Morning Post – UN shopped human rights activists to China, exposing them to retribution

    US orders emergency action after huge cyber security breach | Financial Times – Hundreds of thousands of organisations around the world use SolarWinds’ Orion platform. The US department of Homeland Security’s cyber security arm ordered all federal agencies to disconnect from the platform, which is used by IT departments to monitor and manage their networks and systems. FireEye, a leading cyber security company that said it had fallen victim to the hack last week, said it had already found “numerous” other victims including “government, consulting, technology, telecom and extractive entities in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East”.

    ‘This Feels Uncomfortable’: Nike Tackles Racism In Japan – observers criticised Nike for misunderstanding or disrespecting its host country — as if racial prejudice were somehow a component of Japanese culture that should not be challenged. The issue is more complex than both the content and the censure suggest, but the reaction was a reminder that Japan is still less accustomed to ‘purpose-driven’ brand work than many economically advanced markets. It also underscored that extreme right-wing views exist in Japanese society, even if people rarely give voice to them in an offline environment. For some ordinarily bold brands, it is likely to prompt a round of second-guessing before adopting a sensitive social topic as part of their marketing efforts. “People think discrimination isn’t part of Japanese life, but it is,” said one Japanese in-house communications head at a multinational consumer-facing company, who wanted to remain anonymous. She added that she did not see the work as offensive but as helping to raise awareness of unconscious bias. At the same time, she said she would weigh the risks with extra care before embarking on any diversity-oriented campaign

    Finnish Data Theft and Extortion – Schneier on Security – when the ransomware hustle didn’t work on a Finnish mental health clinic, the hackers looked to extort employees and patients

    China pulls back from the world: rethinking Xi’s ‘project of the century’ | Financial Times – two Chinese banks lent $462bn, just short of the $467bn extended by the World Bank, according to the Boston University data. In some years, lending by the Chinese policy banks was almost equivalent to that by all six of the world’s multilateral financial institutions — which along with the World Bank include the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the African Development Bank — put together. In global development finance, such a sharp scaling back of lending by the Chinese banks amounts to an earthquake. If it persists, it will exacerbate an infrastructure funding gap that in Asia alone already amounts to $907bn a year, according to Asian Development Bank estimates. In Africa and Latin America — where Chinese credit has also formed a big part of infrastructure financing — the gap between what is required and what is available is also expected to yawn wider. China’s retreat from overseas development finance derives from structural policy shifts, according to Chinese analysts. “China is consolidating, absorbing and digesting the investments made in the past,” says Wang Huiyao, an adviser to China’s state council and president of the Center for China and Globalisation, a think-tank. – there are limits to what even China can do to defy economic laws. Overall the infrastructure costs of the British empire were much higher than is generally realised

  • Ant Group saga + more things

    Ant Group saga

    Beijing interviews Jack Ma over $37bn Ant IPO | Financial Times – Ant Group founder and shareholder Mr Ma last month gave a speech in Shanghai criticising regulators in China and abroad. He felt that Ant Group shouldn’t suffer their excessive regulation of banking and financial technology.

    That didn’t go down that well with Chinese financial regulators and then Shanghai’s stock market operator calls a halt on Ant Group’s imminent listing, citing changes in regulatory environment | South China Morning Post which resulted in Ant to refund US$167.7 billion to 1.55 million Hong Kong investors in two batches after IPO is suspended | South China Morning Post 

    Ant Group aggregates large loans from banks and doles out the money as high interest small loans to young Chinese. Think Wonga or similar payday loan businesses that have sprung up since the 1990s. Ant also have savings and investment products that they get from other firms and act as an agent to sell. The huge IPO valuation of Ant Group already felt like hubris before Jack Ma criticised the financial regulators. More on China related stories here.

    Everything else

    MERICS China Industries Briefing – October 2020 | Merics – The laws have significant ramifications for Europe. Vague wording in both the Export Control Law and the draft Personal Information Protection Law open the door to sweeping retaliation measures against foreign companies and countries. The former cites harm done to China’s “national security and interests,” while the latter cites “discriminatory” measures taken against China concerning personal data as examples of legislative violations that warrant retaliation. On a more practical level, European firms with extensive operations in China, especially in R&D, will likely face additional compliance hurdles. These could include novel license requirements and security review procedures related to exporting goods, technologies and services, as well as collecting, processing and transferring personal information

    Battle at Arm China threatens $40bn Nvidia deal | Financial Times – Mr Wu also has backing in some corners of the Shenzhen government. In September, for example, Mr Wu was named on a high-level reform committee in the city, alongside other high-profile business figures such as Merlin Swire and Zhang Lei, founder of Hillhouse Capital, according to a document seen by the FT. Both the Shenzhen government and Beijing have a keen interest in the outcome of the battle, since Arm’s intellectual property underpins almost every mobile phone chip designed in the country. – what a mess

    Stanley Black & Decker shuts Shenzhen plant amid US-China trade war ｜ Apple Daily – Chinese media also report that most of the workers have already been recruited by other factories and obtained employment on the same day. Middle management and executives were snapped up by other firms. Staff from a neighboring electronic factory claimed they hired up to 200 former employees of Stanley Black and Decker. Kevin Tsui, an associate professor of the Department of Economics at Clemson University, casted doubt on the authenticity of these reports. While the Chinese economy has shown steady recovery, it is unlikely for firms to be able to take over unemployed workers on such a large scale. Stories of the generous compensations were published to stabilize public sentiment and prevent people from panicking as more and more foreign investors are pulling out, he added. Veteran news commentator Johnny Lau said the growing production costs in China, as well as new labor law restrictions, have prompted firms to move to South East Asian countries, which are more welcoming to foreign investors – fascinating reading on how globalisation is affecting China from a negative perspective

    Key Takeaways | ChinaFile – reading this a topline report, it reminds me a lot of the UK’s disparate CCTV operations

    In Hunt for Coronavirus Source, W.H.O. Let China Take Charge – The New York Times – it is hardly the only international body bending to China’s might. But even many of its supporters have been frustrated by the organization’s secrecy, its public praise for China and its quiet concessions. Those decisions have indirectly helped Beijing to whitewash its early failures in handling the outbreak.

    Burberry announces partnership with Tencent Games’ blockbuster title Honour of Kings – Burberry – As interactive digital content is increasingly becoming a source of inspiration in luxury fashion, games offer another opportunity for consumers to connect with Burberry’s products online. Younger consumers are redefining community spaces, choosing to connect with each other and with brands in digital environments, such as sharing experiences through online games. Chinese luxury consumers’ offline and online lives increasingly intertwine, with more demand for a seamless connection between the two. Adding virtual products into existing online games environments offers a bespoke experience that aligns with the consumer’s existing lifestyle. – only a decade or more behind sports apparel…

    Inside Apple’s Eroding Partnership With Foxconn — The Information – Foxconn has tried a variety of tactics to enhance its margins, all previously unreported, such as using Apple-owned equipment when doing work for Apple’s rivals and taking shortcuts on component and product testing, ex-employees said. In turn, Apple has tried to step up its monitoring and tracking of Foxconn employees and of Apple’s own equipment that resides in Foxconn facilities. Meanwhile, the relationship between the two companies is changing, as described by interviews with more than two dozen former Apple and Foxconn employees, including some senior managers. Apple, like its rivals Samsung, Nintendo and speaker design firm Sonos, is diversifying its manufacturing sites in an effort to hedge its bets. These companies are aiming to expand the number of manufacturers they work with and the countries where they operate in response to growing geopolitical risks such as the U.S.-China trade war. As a result, Foxconn’s bright satellite in Apple’s orbit has lost some shine. – This looks like a slow car crash

    30 female engineers from India ask Silicon Valley to do better on caste discrimination – The Washington Post – The legacy of discrimination from the Indian caste system is rarely discussed as a factor in Silicon Valley’s persistent diversity problems. Decades of tech industry labor practices, such as recruiting candidates from a small cohort of top schools or relying on the H-1B visa system for highly skilled workers, have shaped the racial demographics of its technical workforce. Despite that fact, Dalit engineers and advocates say that tech companies don’t understand caste bias and have not explicitly prohibited caste-based discrimination. A new lawsuit shines a light on caste discrimination in the U.S. and around the world. In recent years, however, the Dalit rights movement has grown increasingly global, including advocating for change in corporate America. In June, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a landmark suit against Cisco and two of its former engineering managers, both upper-caste Indians, for discriminating against a Dalit engineer

    Tory group in push for watchdog to counter Chinese interference | Financial Times – and so it starts, I have been expecting this for a while

    How Borat 2 reveals the playbook for the streaming movie blockbuster – it had exactly four weeks to generate word of mouth. In Hollywood marketing terms, a four-week movie campaign is unheard of, ludicrous—or, as Borat would say, “Very nice—not!” Yet Amazon pulled it off by leaning on Baron Cohen’s relentless energy and creative salesmanship. There were Borat stunts galore both online and IRL, which helped create a burning sense of immediacy and helped the film explode into the cultural consciousness, as opposed to being slowly fed to audiences by an IV-drip marketing campaign over the course of lumbering months – I also imagine this was due to legal scrutiny of the film content

    Three actionable insights with… Sir Martin Sorrell | The Drum – ”Marketeers have surrendered control. Too few marketeers are CEOs of companies. There are probably too many CFOs who are CEOs of companies and I can say that as an ex-CFO. I think this started in 2008 after the Great Recession. Then there’s a huge pressure in 2009. It rebounded in 2010, but ever since then and up to 2018 there’s been a relentless pressure on cost. It‘s nonsense that it‘s Google and Facebook that are putting pressure on the holding companies. The simple fact of the matter is the clients have been so focused on cost, they put pressure on the agency middlemen or middle women, and they push them. Remember the chat around ‘non-working’ costs around advertising — basically on production costs. But you know this phrase ‘non-working’ and the implication that a lot of what the agencies did wasn‘t working or it wasn‘t working well enough, so you had to get rid of it. This is huge pressure. So, instead of asking media owners for 60-day credit or 90-day credit, they asked the agencies. – Sir Martin Sorrell is as much sinner, as sinned against but this rings true

    Breakingviews – China’s latest five-year plan girds for battle | Reuters – The message from China’s leadership seems to be that things will get worse before they get better. It elevated the status of technological self-reliance to be a “strategic support” for national development as a shield from overseas restrictions on imports. That will translate into greater R&D funding and subsidies, and diversion of funds to high-end manufacturing from property markets. There are early signs the approach is working: new registrations for semiconductor makers have jumped by a third this year, according to local media reports – the move away from overheated property markets is a good thing

    The FT – Huawei develops plan for chip plant to help beat US sanctions and a good analysis on the challenges that will be faced on Radio Free Mobile – Huawei – Nowhere to run pt. XXIV. – these will be way behind the curve, it makes more sense if Huawei partners with other Chinese chipmakers

    The resource curse and Hong Kong: Why the city has stagnated ｜Dr Michael Lawson ｜ Apple Daily – in many ways Hong Kong is now suffering in the grip of a resource curse, where the opportunities from catering for finance and tourism for mainland China have crowded out almost all other areas of the economy. It has often been said that Hong Kong is a very bureaucratic place, where trying to do anything new is almost impossible without multiple government approvals. This can be seen from the lag in adopting electric buses, the ban on electric bikes that is unique in the world, and the strange rule prohibiting tandem paragliding. This is because due to easy access to income sources which require little innovation, there has been no pressure to let anything change or develop in the Hong Kong economy. Like the rulers of other resources cursed countries, the nettle of economic reform is not grasped and vested interests are allowed to divide up the spoils. In fact, it is noticeable that the decline of the film and manufacturing sectors of the Hong Kong economy has neatly coincided with the rise of China as an economic powerhouse, with many of the established industries in Hong Kong willingly moving their operations there before being overtaken or taken over by more nimble mainland firms – pretty succinct analysis of the current economic problems facing Hong Kong

  • T Factory + more stuff

    Korea’s Largest Telecom has Partnered with Apple, Microsoft & Samsung in new kind of High-End Retail store called T Factory – Patently Apple – interesting tech department story T Factory by SK Telecom. T Factory seems to be much more ambitious than Hong Kong’s 1010 mobile carrier shops

    Ex-Morgan Stanley bankers make a splash in Hong Kong as new boutique firm adds Ant Group, Xpeng to list of clients | South China Morning Post – launched last year by two former senior Morgan Stanley bankers, Crawford Jamieson and Daniel Wetstein, and has since added top-notch companies including Alibaba Group Holding, Ant Group, and Xpeng among its clients. The firm offers corporate finance advice to companies and financial sponsors in the technology, health care and financial services sectors, backed by experience in completing US$500 billion worth of deals between them since late 1990s.

    Who will win the battle to replace Huawei in Europe? — Quartz
    https://qz.c – “Open-RAN is something in the future,” says Strand. “It is not an alternative to the equipment Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, and ZTE are delivering today.”

    Comparison Shopping in the Age of Information Overload | INSEAD Knowledge – interesting research that is important for online shopping

    An XR partnership between Orange and Deutsche Telekom – Hello Future Orange – a bit happy clappy but shows some interesting ambition around the web of no web

    Google is bringing its own VPN to desktops and phones with $9.99 Google One subscription – The Verge – hmmm poacher turned gamekeeper?

    PlayStation CEO says VR won’t be a ‘meaningful’ part of gaming for years – The Verge – Sony PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan says virtual reality won’t be a meaningful part of interactive entertainment in the near future. Ryan indicated to The Washington Post that VR still has a long way to go, although he emphasized that Sony isn’t giving up on the medium. The statement suggests that an update to Sony’s PlayStation VR headset is years away.  “I think we’re more than a few minutes from the future of VR,” Ryan told the Post. “PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that.” – Interesting take. On one hand the hardware in Sony’s VR sets for the PlayStation doesn’t need to change due to displays, on the other hand the pause in take up seems to be software related. Does gaming have the kind of storytelling issues that VR cinema has?

    Facebook Is Up To 10 Million Active Advertisers, But Zuck Says He Fears For The Future Of Personalized Advertising | AdExchanger – headwinds coming in the form of an evolving regulatory landscape, continued uncertainty to do with transatlantic data transfers and coming platform changes, particularly on Apple’s iOS.

  • North Face + more things

    From Supreme to Gucci: How North Face uses big-name collaborations to drive ‘brand heat’ – Glossy – Tim Hamilton, North Face’s head of global creative, said it typically does two collaborations per year, at most. In addition to its upcoming collab with Gucci, North Face has an ongoing collab with Supreme that started in 2015. And it released collabs with athletic brand Brain Dead and MM6, the sportswear line of Maison Margiela, in August.  Hamilton said the brand’s collaborations typically require a lead time of 1-2 years and are almost always manufactured and produced by North Face. The MM6 collab, for example, began with discussions between Hamilton and the Margiela design team in 2019. – This lead-up time probably explains the balance in their collabs between hype and steadier brands. Hence no Virgil Abioh or Yeezy deal with North Face. Abioh has flirted with Canadian technical brand Arcteryx; which is owned by Chinese sports and outdoor clothing conglomerate Anta – who have a lot of cash. It is interesting that nothing has come from Abioh’s visual love letter so far.

    Op-Ed | New Balance Collabs Are Second to None This Year – New Balance places an emphasis on “aligning with brands that are authentic in their space and have substance behind their message.” New Balance’s roster of collaborators represent a wide range of aesthetics, communities, and subcultures, meaning the brand can speak to a variety of consumers based on what product has been matched with which collaborator. In a sense, putting together a New Balance sneaker collaboration is like a game of exquisite corpse. “We’re able to keep product executions and stories fresh while creating different followings for each type of partnership,” – you could argue that adidas and Nike’s deals with Yeezy and Off-White relegate adidas and Nike to little more than original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). But New Balance also doesn’t have the deep pockets to go up against adidas and Nike head-on. That lack of deep pockets also affects North Face as well. I am surprised that the North Face and New Balance haven’t collaborated, though part of the issue maybe New Balance’s Danner Boots business. This competes somewhat with North Face’s boots business, but they have a very different aesthetic appealing to a different audience. North Face is owned by VF Corporation with sister brands Dickies, Timberland and JanSport. This means that brand collabs for North Face are probably complex politically.

    A millennials love affair: China’s second-hand luxury goods market booms | Reuters – yes Chinese like new things like new apartments. Yes but: Chinese luxury consumers have become more sophisticated. Chinese consumers have travelled and seen the pre-owned market like Milan Station and BRAND OFF in Hong Kong and Japan respectively. In absolute terms middle class wages are lower in China still than the US; yet this isn’t reflected in luxury product pricing

    Alibaba Takes Over China’s Top Hypermart Chain for $3.6 Billion – Bloomberg – interesting that Alibaba is working on an offline retail strategy

    Robert Lighthizer Blew Up 60 Years of Trade Policy. Nobody Knows What Happens Next. — ProPublica – I am not normally interested in publishing about politics, but this article on US trade policy is an interesting starting point to think about the current debacle

    Revisiting Lyn Collins’ “Think About It” – Micro-Chop – great essay. Its also good to see how the edits of Ultimate Breaks and Beats played a role in popularising the ‘think’ break

    Hong Kong walks: discovering traditional, trendy Tai Hang | Financial Times – it makes me ‘home sick’ as Hong Kong island was my home for a while

    Baaaa for business: Princess Diana’s iconic sheep sweater is back | Financial Times – its interesting that luxury brands are now raiding not just archives but childhood memories for cues. Also the convoluted customer journey outlined in the article for the original purchase via a bridesmaid’s mother

    Debate over vegan ‘sausages’ and ‘burgers’ heats up ahead of EU vote | Financial Times – unsurprising given the size of the beef and pork industries in the European Union

    WPP back on hunt for deals, says chief | Financial Times – Read’s challenge is to win back investors who think agency holding groups are struggling with multiple structural tests: cost-cutting and clients taking business in-house, competition from consultancies such as Accenture, and waning clout as middlemen in digital ad markets dominated by Google and Facebook. WPP’s share price is 65 per cent lower than its 2017 peak, and has fallen more than a third since the pandemic battered the economy. The three-year decline is a more severe than at rivals such as Omnicom and Publicis. Meanwhile, investors have flocked to the simpler growth story of adtech providers such as The Trade Desk, which this year has soared to almost three times WPP’s market value on a tiny fraction of its revenues. The £2bn market capitalisation of Sir Martin’s S4 Capital, a digital-only advertising group, is almost a quarter of WPP’s value even though it generated less than three per cent of its £12.4bn sales in the year to June 30.  – a number of things from this interview. The Trade Desk has a lot of heat around it, WPP attempted to do this with Xaxis but has got little credit. Read tried to spin that Accenture and WPP have sweet spots at different points in the economic cycle. Hence the comment about Accenture being good at cutting marketing costs.

    Mr Read’s pitch is that WPP has combined its traditional creative strength with the tech expertise to build ecommerce platforms for clients such as Sainsbury’s, and become the single biggest integrator of Adobe’s software. “Our goal is to be to revenue growth what Accenture is to cost reduction,”

    Chinese-Americans campaign for Trump on WeChat | Financial Times – it is becoming increasingly difficult to organise on WeChat, not only because of the looming US ban but also because of Chinese censorship. Simple WeChat filters for sensitive terms such as “democracy” can detect articles about US politics. Sometimes when Mr Ming sends articles to his groups, those with Chinese-registered phone numbers on their WeChat accounts cannot receive the links, no matter where they are in the world. Ms Wen, who used WeChat in 2016 to organise a door-knocking campaign for Mr Trump, was glad to shift away from the platform this year. “I know it is completely surveilled. Nowadays I mostly use Telegram,” she said, referring to the encrypted messaging app. – interesting move to Telegram, mirrors what I saw in my Hong Kong friend network after the Hong Kong National Security law was passed

    Google’s new ‘hum to search’ feature can figure out the song that’s stuck in your head – The Verge – now this is clever

    The future of fashion week? Look to Shanghai | Vogue Business – Shanghai Fashion Week, which pioneered digital pivots like live streaming, returns today as a largely physical event, featuring around 90 brands across a number of venues, including its main stage in fashionable shopping district Xintiandi and emerging designer platform Labelhood

    How to steer clear of discounts this holiday season | Vogue Business – “Markdowns have almost single-handedly ruined our industry,” says Hewitt. “They train the consumer not to buy in-season because they can come back in three months and get a discount. It’s a vicious cycle.” – during the 2008 recession Rolex reputedly bought back watches in its retail and wholesale channels. And then recycled them

    Kibbles & Bytes #1122: Apple Releases Four iPhone 12 Models and the HomePod mini – Don Mayer nails the assessment of 5G in the latest edition of his newsletter.

    Why a new generation of challenger brands need to rethink how to challenge | A Little West of Centre – Blands. That’s what Ben Schott, writing for Bloomberg, coined them. And what a coining it is. The new generation of humble, conscious, in-it-to-sell, underdog companies, sporting D2C models, consumer champion narratives, minimalist aesthetics, affordable luxury positionings and post-choice selling techniques (this is THE mattress, that is THE toothbrush).

    Sony Launches SR Display: You Can See 3D Pictures Without Wearing 3D Glasses – Gizchina.com – really interesting technology

    Indonesia’s central bank hints burglary in e-wallet player – consumers should look at the track record of providers before using them to save large amounts of money. Indonesia’s total e-wallet transaction value size is expected to reach US$15 billion by 2020, according to a recent report by The Asian Banker

    Problem Solved #13: A lesson in tackling bloody taboos from Bodyform | The Drum – the result was to present the viewer with flame-engulfed apartment of a perimenopausal women; a monster ripping at an endometriosis sufferer’s uterus; a ‘flood gate’ moment following an unexpected sneeze; a woman who has chosen not to have children; and the often-turbulent journey of trying to conceive

    Diane von Furstenberg: Interview | Vanity Fair – The iconic wrap dress, designed in 1974 and sold more than 15 million times since, made von Furstenberg an overnight sensation and began a dialogue with women that she has maintained ever since, in a large part through admirable philanthropic efforts, including the annual DVF awards. Now she’s taking that dialogue to the podcast, a medium she champions for its value in shifting the focus away from appearance.

    British Airways Avoids Huge £180 Million Data Breach Fine for Hack That Compromised the Personal Details of Over 400,000 Customers – good for BA given airlines are haemorrhaging cash at the momen. I am worry about the message that this sends to large corporates and customer data

    Shenzhen — Justin McGuirk – pretty much nails how I found Shenzhen over the decade that I visited regularly. More on Shenzhen related posts here.

    Facial recognition data leaks are rampant in China as Covid-19 pushes wider use of the technology | South China Morning Post – interesting that this is being collected by non-state actors such as property management companies and schools as well as the state bodies

    iPhone 12 launching without earbuds or wall chargers is compared to eating without chopsticks in China | South China Morning Post – I was expecting this as Chinese consumers are value orientated, brands focus on ‘client delight’ and there is a culture of free gifts with products. So taking items out of the box and the green explanation won’t wash

    Beijing 1986: portraits of a forgotten China | Financial Times – amazing photos from 1986.

    Shenzhen/Huawei: the other Bay Area | Financial Times – The impression of military manoeuvres by alternative means was reinforced by Tencent, another Shenzhen resident. It was among big Chinese social and video platforms including iQiyi and Weibo, that simultaneously cancelled the livecast of Apple’s iPhone 12 launch – a small example of the nexus between the Chinese government, corporate decision-making influenced by the government and an undercurrent of Han nationalism