FMCG or fast moving consumer goods sprang out of the mass industrialisation. Brands sprang up originally as a guarantee of quality. Later on as these brands needed to be promoted, we saw the foundation of the what we think of as modern marketing and advertising.
Today media and entertainment takes up an increasing amount of the household spend, as does housing, but FMCGs are a crucial part of their essential and disposable income spend.
They have nostalgia wrapped up in them, distinctive aromas, taste and packaging designs. From the smell of my Granny using so much Pledge on the TV that I was surprised it didn’t burst into flame to the taste of Cidona and texture of Boland’s Fig Roll biscuits in my mouth.
The sound of their advertising jingles was the soundtrack of my childhood. Digital advertising is largely rationale, it lacks the fluent devices that provide the centre to advertising and made FMCG advertising iconic. Fluent devices like the Peperami ‘Animal’, the M&M characters or the Cadbury Smash robots were embedded in deep marketing research. FMCG brands still sponsor the best research in marketing science.
I had the good fortune to work inhouse at Unilever and agency-side for their brands. I also managed to work on Coca-Cola and Colgate during my time in Hong Kong.
In Deep Geek through his Middle Earth playlist goes in depth into the world that JRR Tolkien built around The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings. Christopher Tolkien added to the world through his work compiling and editing his father’s manuscripts. Keeping track of it all is a huge undertaking and Tolkien fans often disagree over nuances. Hence, the Middle Earth playlist acts as a sort of audio CliffsNotes analogue to all things Tolkien-related.
Ahascragh races
The Ahascragh of my memories is a one-road town with a petrol station slash local garage and tractor repair workshop, pub and one or two general stores. It was the local market town closest to the farm where my Dad grew up in Galway. By comparison it barely merits the name of town compared to the local urban centre Ballinasloe. This TV news section is from 1977. This seems to be encouraging child jockeys and raising money for the local GAA club.
Big Trouble In Little China
Big Trouble In Little China has a number of problematic aspects to it, but is saved by its efforts to honour the Chinese and Hong Kong cinema that went on before. It’s one of my guilty pleasures as I am a big John Carpenter fan.
Cadbury Lunch bars
Cadbury South Africa promoted their Lunch Bar using a character called Tumi who is the ultimate side hustler.
According to Dan Parmenter who was the creative director on the project
So, we created the story of Tumi, a streetwise hustler who has a couple of different vocations and even owns his own small business. His streetwise nature means that even though he’s managed to snag a part as an extra in a war film, he’s still not shy of a bit of his own shameless self-promotion.
Using StableDiffusion algorithm to create a video that explore our past, present and future. It has a charm to it that reminds me of old stop motion animation.
Alan Dulles
Alan Dulles talks about the role of intelligence and regime change in foreign states in this old film. It is interesting that the film starts off with a modern Soviet tank that the CIA managed to acquire through theft. Dulles was the head of the CIA during the early cold war. He was responsible for coups in Iran and Guatemala. His career finished with the Bay of Pigs.
I have had my head in PowerPoint presentations and market research reports so haven’t paid much attention this week until I read in this weekend’s FT about the Korean drama trade.
The premise of the Korean drama trade is a paradox, that while Netflix as a business isn’t doing well with investors and has experienced a lot of short selling, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the companies who produce content for the platform.
In many western and developing world media markets, consumers have been used to international content. Media industries that more closely match their own values tend to do better. For instance, there has been a brisk Korean drama trade in Middle Eastern countries because there was less sex and violence on display than American media.
Cracking foreign language markets
In the English speaking western world, foreign language media has had a tougher time to gain mass market acceptance. Things opened up a bit with the popularity of Scandinavian media, in particular ‘Scandi-noir’ dramas. The ironic thing is that prior to 1964 the films available to broadcast in the UK were either old b-movies, pre-war pictures from smaller studios or foreign-language films. Hollywood saw television as competition, so there was an informal blockade. This ended in the UK when Samuel Goldwyn and MCA began selling films as packages to the BBC and ITV. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing however.
Netflix then became the world’s entertainment broadcaster*. This meant that over time Netflix had to build up a body of content for lots of different markets. And if you want to be successful in Korea, you need Korean dramas and movies.
Freedom through the Korean drama trade
One of the standout aspects of the Korean dram trade has been that it has allowed Korean writers and directors to push the limits of the genre. A classic example of this is Hellhound. Hellhound gets to explore interesting questions around religion, morality, hysteria and power.
Or you have the nihilism of Squid Game.
This meant that Korean dramas have got a bigger creative palate and become exposed to a far larger potential audience than previously possible on niche streaming platforms like Rakuten’s Viki or Kocowa. Warners must be kicking themselves, having bought and then shut down early K drama streaming service DramaFever in 2018. Bob Cringely talked about innovation in terms of surfing waves and the danger of wiping out by being too early was as big as missing the wave altogether.
Back to the Korean production companies that have made these films. June Yoon over at the FT noticed what is now a well trod short term investment play
See what K-drama performs well when launched on Netflix
Buy shares in the production company if it is listed on the Korean stock market
Hold shares and then sell before the price starts to decline to a more reasonable level (after four weeks or so)
According to Yoon, this is the Korean drama trade. You have seen a similar bounce in the entertainment agencies of K-pop bands with international success already. So this surfing of the wave in Korean stocks makes sense.
Zurich
The reason why I hadn’t been paying much attention is that I had a workshop in Zurich. The preparation was all-consuming. This all sounds very glamorous but it wasn’t. I flew in and went to the client office near the airport. Co-hosted a workshop and departed via Zurich airport after seeing next to nothing of the city. It was a long 19-hour day of work and travel. No Instagrammable moments or even shots grabbed by the departure gates. The few observations that I did have:
The pound now almost has parity with the Swiss Franc, which gives you an idea about how much Sterling’s depreciation since Brexit must be driving inflation
Mars had a really strong presence in the duty free shops. Which was really strange given the strong association of Switzerland with chocolate. It was a major win for the Mars brand that manages to associate its brands with the Swiss country brand in the minds of travellers
Switzerland still has a strong presence for tobacco advertising and promotion. The Marlboro chevron was on view in the duty-free store and there was a Winston smoking lounge for the nicotine addicted. I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at this 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. But it caused cognitive dissonance on this visit. (Disclaimer: I grew up around tobacco advertising, having had Uncles who ran cigarette machines in Ireland and were wholesalers to Irish bars, shops and petrol stations. I still have somewhere a few packs of Jordan B&H playing cards, a couple of Carroll’s Number 1 ash trays for keeping change in and a Reemtsma-branded Maglite torch.)
*With the exception of China, given that the media industry is one of many sectors that China views as being central to its state interests. This has meant that Taiwanese dramas and documentaries on the Hong Kong democracy movement have been given a platform on Netflix.
Industry Structure: Fabs are in Favor – LTAs are the Tell – Fabricated Knowledge had this interesting article on the role of NCNRs – which means non cancelable, non refundable orders. Chip foundries have to spend an enormous amount of money to be at the cutting edge of manufacturing. They also need to retain staff who understand the best way to use this capital and the machines that it buys. So they spread the risk, which is where NCNRs come in. NCNRs provide the chip foundry with guaranteed revenue and remove the foundries dependence on all the other aspects of the customers supply chain. Don’t long term agreements do the same thing? Long term agreements do guarantee revenue over a set number of years, but it might not be delivered in an even manner, for instance Apple might half orders in one quarter and push back up again in the next. But if you combine NCNRs within an LTA you end up with an entirely predictable revenue stream. NCNRs mean that you capital expenditure becomes more predictable and your operating expenses have money to meet them. The foundry has worked to derisk this business by moving it on to the customer.
NCNRs works for the largest cutting edge foundries and their clients. But it could be also used to keep legacy foundries alive for the likes of car manufacturers.
Economics
Economists must get more in touch with our feelings | Financial Times – Jon Clifton, the head of Gallup, which has been tracking wellbeing around the world for many years, notes a polarisation in people’s life-evaluations. Compared with 15 years ago (before the financial crisis, smartphones and Covid-19) twice as many people now say they have the best possible life they could imagine (10 out of 10); however, four times as many people now say they are living the worst life they can conceive (0 out of 10). About 7.5 per cent of people are now in psychological heaven, and about the same proportion are in psychological hell.
Xi’s Great Leap Backward | Foreign Policy – Amid China’s worsening economic crisis, nearly one-fifth of those between the ages of 16 and 24 are now unemployed, with millions more underemployed. One survey found that of the 11 million Chinese students who graduated from college this summer, fewer than 15 percent had secured job offers by mid-April. Even as many U.S. and European workers are seeing their salaries surge, this year’s Chinese graduates can expect to earn 12 percent less than the class of 2021. Many will make less than truck drivers—if they are lucky enough to find a job at all – so much in this to unpack
Why banning Huawei is proving easier said than done | Business | The Sunday Times – Huawei remains in the UK, with 1,000 or so staff working at offices including an HQ in Reading and a research and development centre in Cambridge, where it is investing £1 billion. It provides funding to universities and has a small stake in Oxford Sciences Innovation, which commercialises research from Oxford University. The BBC still shows Huawei adverts on its websites outside the UK, even though the company is alleged to have provided Chinese authorities with surveillance technology to target the Uighur population.
Chinese secret police warned exiled Hong Kong businessman over parliament plan — Radio Free Asia – China’s state security police threatened an overseas Hong Kong businessman who recently announced plans to set up a parliament-in-exile with repercussions for his family members who remain in the city, RFA has learned. Hong Kong’s national security police said last week they are investigating former pro-democracy lawmaker-elect Baggio Leung, overseas businessman Elmer Yuen and journalist Victor Ho for “subversion of state power” under a draconian national security law after they announced plans to set up the overseas parliament. “They warned me in advance [not to go ahead with the plan], but I ignored them,” Yuen told RFA in a recent interview, saying he had been contacted by state security police in Beijing, not the national security unit of Hong Kong’s police force. “They gave me a number of warnings, [including] saying I still have family members in Hong Kong,” he said, adding that there “no point” in worrying about it. Yuen’s comments came as his daughter-in-law Eunice Yeung, a New People’s Party member of the current Legislative Council (LegCo) whose members were all pre-approved by Beijing ahead of the last election, took out an advertisement in Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily News, publicly severing ties with her father-in-law – a couple of things. 1/ This will drive awareness and consideration of the parliament. 2/ It is very similar to the cutting ties done by Myanmar families of opposition members
Hong Kong’s shortened covid quarantine won’t revive its economy — Quartz – the Hong Kong government this week finally shortened mandatory hotel quarantines for inbound travellers from three days to seven. But the city remains as cut-off from the world as ever. Tourists and business travellers are deterred by Hong Kong’s stringent, costly, and often unpredictable quarantine measures. As a result, Hong Kong’s economy has taken a hit, sliding into a recession last month following two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. The outlook is clouded with uncertainty, as zero-covid policies locally and on mainland China continue to weigh on consumer demand and trade.
Innovation
Interesting view on DARPA’s Gambit project. It builds on scram jet technology to build a more efficient energy.
MoFi sold high end vinyl pressings and claimed that they had a high-end analogue only chain from master tape to vinyl pressings. The reality is rather different. That doesn’t mean that the records are not great quality recordings, but they aren’t what they claim to be.
Millennial Internet Tics Have Gone From Cool to Cringey – The Atlantic – I’m still guilty of the “Millennial pause.” After hitting “Record,” I wait a split second before I start speaking, just to make sure that TikTok is actually recording. Last year, @nisipisa, a 28-year-old YouTuber and TikToker who lives in Boston, coined the term in a TikTok about how even Taylor Swift can’t avoid the cringey pause in her videos. “God! Will she ever stop being relatable,” @nisipisa, herself a Millennial, says. Gen Zers make up a larger portion of TikTok’s base, and have grown up filming themselves enough to trust that they’re recording correctly. Which is why, as short-form video comes to Instagram (Reels), YouTube (Shorts), and Snapchat (Spotlight), the Millennial pause is becoming easier to spot
China National Intelligence Law – article seven makes for particularly grim reading if you are engaged in the Chinese market, have Chinese employees or use Chinese products
Interesting dig into the US aid being sent to the Ukraine and what it implies about strategy.
Saying out loud the quiet bit about work-life balance; tectonic plates of streaming move again – I’ve found myself thinking about one panel in particular – the participants in the session on advice for aspiring leaders went beyond the usual platitudes, and shared a couple of uncomfortable truths about an industry which is trying to rebrand itself as a gentler place to work. – I think that we’ll see more of this move away from a gentler place to work as companies look to cut staff. I entered the workforce in the middle of recession before I went to college, this was the time of micro serfs and mcjobs. The idea of a gentler place to work seemed to be a transient one to me – one that would come and go with economic growth. Zero hour contracts really grew during and after the 2008 financial crisis, which is as far away from a gentler place to work as you can get.
Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google. :: Reasonably Polymorphic – The primary purpose of the web today is “engagement,” which is Silicon Valley jargon for “how many ads can we push through someone’s optical nerve?” Under the purview of engagement, it makes sense to publish webpages on every topic imaginable, regardless of whether or not you know what you’re talking about. In fact, engagement goes up if you don’t know what you’re talking about; your poor reader might mistakenly believe that they’ll find the answer they’re looking for elsewhere on your site. That’s twice the advertising revenue, baby! But the spirit of the early web isn’t gone: the bookmarks I’ve kept these long decades mostly still work, and many of them still receive new content. There’s still weird, amateur, passion-project stuff out there. It’s just hard to find. Which brings us to our main topic: search. – It is more than search, there is also motivation and consumer behaviour change in the old web versus the new one – The Founder of GeoCities on What Killed the ‘Old’ Internet | Gizmodo
Innovation
How the American semiconductor industry claimed back technological and market leadership from the Japanese
Ocado, the online supermarket – is this a legitimate content partnership with Disney? Something feels a bit off about the Ocado | Disney inspired meals. The ‘inspired by Disney’ tagline and the Lion King themed ‘green grub pasta’ feels weird.
Government concerns over China-owned CCTV company embedded in UK – Channel 4 News – There are more than a million of Hikvision’s cameras installed across the UK – monitoring every aspect of our lives. But Channel 4 News has learned that there are growing concerns within the government about the Chinese state-owned tech company.
I didn’t expect to be writing the words objectified garlic in such close proximity, ever. The reason for this post is down to an advert put together by an area of South Korea to promote its high quality garlic to Korean city dwellers. The advert was full of double entendres and was accused by critics of having objectified garlic.
The house I grew up in
Hiscox home insurance did this TV advert that makes really good use of projection mapping to tell a story. I can’t believe that this is now eight years old as an execution.
Fuzzy logic versus cloud based AI
I have written a good deal before on the benefits of fuzzy logic which is a much more efficient technology than machine learning for a lot of challenges, particularly if the machine learning is based on cloud computing a la the internet of things (IoT).
E-mu Systems SP1200
Back in the 1980s E-mu Systems were known as one of the pioneers of sampling with their Emulator series of keyboards, alongside the likes of CMI with the Fairlight and New England Digital’s Synclavier. They were bought out in 1993 by Creative Techology like rival Ensoniq – eventually they were both merged together. The SP1200 was a sample based drum machine and sequencer that came out in 1987. It gets its distinctive sound from 12 bit sampling done at about 26 KHz. By comparison, a CD based on 16 bit sampling at 44.1 KHz. It was beloved of hip hop producers from the late 1980s though to the mid 1990s. It is still sought after now.
This video gives you a good idea of how it is operated and hints at the benefits of hardware controls over software interfaces on modern digital audio workstation applications.
