Category: 小工具 | gadget | 가제트

Things that caught my eye this week

Post author By admin
Post date March 20, 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Really interesting extension by Nordic Choice Hotels. How do you build loyalty and revenue from customers when they aren’t at their hotels? Nordic Choice Hotels, is building on a concept pilot project it has named Hotellkänslan (Hotel Feeling).

The project, launched in October 2019, has seen two dozen members of the hotel’s Nordic Choice Club loyalty programme who live nearby to the Clarion Hotel Amaranten in Stockholm presented with housekeeping services in their homes. The hotel chain has two million members in total.

Christian Lundén, director of future business at Nordic Choice Hotels, has stated in the campaign video that the brand is thinking about what would be best for its guests in relation to loyalty. ‘If our most frequent guests are visiting us maybe 60 days a year,’ he says, ‘That’s a great frequent guest – what happens with the other 305 days? How can we become a bigger part of our guest’s life in their own town and not just when they are travelling?’
Contagious

An overly emotional but stepwise analysis of where Microsoft’s Xbox went wrong versus Sony’s PlayStation.

Gene Kelly was usually associated with the golden age of Hollywood. With amazing song and dance routine. Kelly also had a seldom seen serious actor side to his work. His best performance came during the second world war. Kelly was the main protagonist in a film on PTSD.

Apple has spent over 30 years doing product placement in film and television. Apple Japan put together a film showing Apple laptops in anime. This takes a different slant on product placement programmes that Apple used, but didn’t go public on. More Japan-related posts here.

Knix aims to celebrate the bodies of women over the age of 50. With this film they make Dove’s work seem crass and money grasping. Dove didn’t embrace race as part of body positivism in the same way that Knix have.

ICYMI | 万一你错过了| 당신이 그것을 놓친 경우에 대비해서

Post author By admin
Post date March 17, 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Chinese attitudes to immigration. Some really interesting interviews done by Inkstone. Inkstone is part of South China Morning Post. Whilst the attitudes seem shocking, you do see them mirrored in other monocultural countries.

Marketing in times of upheaval | LinkedIn – cites Beeston’s Law and then fulfils it

The 1970 Osaka Expo: Looking back at the past to gauge where Japan sits in the present | The Japan Times – some of these pictures are fascinating

SMS In Emergency Situations: SF COVID19 Updates Via SMS | Forrester Research – mature platforms work well

Coronavirus Is A Headwind For Search Advertising, But The Outlook Remains Promising – not a terribly surprising analysis given Baidu’s recent financial performance in the Chinese New Year period

Innovation of the Day | Heineken – alcohol free beer aimed at drivers without running the risk of drunk driving

Augmented-Reality Startup Magic Leap Is Said to Weigh a Sale – Bloomberg – interesting that Johnson & Johnson are mulling an investment in Magic Leap

Introducing Fluent Devices – System1 Group – is it fashion or is it a lack of effectiveness?

cyberpunk « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! – great series of posts on cyberpunk and its impact on culture

Innovation of the Day | Time – letting exhiibition attendees get some sense of the experience involved in the 1963 civil rights march on Washington DC and experience Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a dream speech’. VR’s real power to engage audiences is emotional experiences rather than storytelling in the way that we usually understand it

Persona Spotlight: Generation X – GlobalWebIndex – While younger audiences are actively trying to regulate their digital activity – nearly 3 in 10 millennials and Gen Zs track their screen time each month – only 1 in 5 Gen Xers have done the same. Another possible reason is that, compared to Gen X, younger age groups are now using social media more passively. When on these sites, 4 in 10 Gen Zs fill up their spare time or search for funny content, while Gen Xers still flock to their social accounts with a greater emphasis on socializing. – this bit feels like they’re throwing hypotheses against the wall, planners pick your favourite

In February Smartphone sales in China Crashed more than 50% – Patently Apple – not terribly surprising, Apple’s increase in iPad sales probably didn’t compensate for the drop

The Public Interest and Personal Privacy in a Time of Crisis (Part I) – Google Docs – translation of a Chinese blog

Is busy the new stupid? – hustle porn etc.

SoftBank Vision Fund’s Rajeev Misra: 18 months will prove I’m right | CNBC – it will be interesting to see how this plays out

Measure your distinctive brand assets | Ehrensberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science – well worth downloading and reading (PDF)

ICYMI | 万一你错过了| 당신이 그것을 놓친 경우에 대비해서

Post author By admin
Post date February 22, 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Tablet demand in China gaining momentum from epidemic | DigiTimes – compared to global demand drop of 20% predicted for tablet computers. This is a fascinating change. Any explanation of this tablet demand is just a hypothesis. My own guess is . More tablet computer related posts here.

Great mix by Andy Weatherall. It is interesting that for a considerable amount of time there was destination radio and a loyal taping culture. Some cassette decks featured timers similar to a video recorder. People would set them up before they left. Prior to digital formats becoming commonplace, I remember die-hard fans using VHS Hi-Fi audio recording to capture these shows in as high a quality as possible. More listening material here.

Targeting v context | Campaign Live – really interesting article by Dave Trott. I’d argue (like Dave has) targeting and context together is what matters, rather than targeting or context.

Experts react to Google’s Brexit-driven decision to move UK data to the US – Business Insider – also probably Google trying to avoid double-jeopardy between EU and UK law presented by UK consumers being out of the EU

WSJ City | Victoria’s Secret goes private at $1.1 billion valuation – this is down from over $7 billion. This marks the end of an astonishing destruction of value. The company was also quick to get the power of online. Designers now think live-streaming their show is a matter of course. Back in 1999 I worked at an agency where we did their first live stream. They were also quick to get into e-commerce.

WSJ City | Grocers Wrest Control of Shelf Space From Struggling Food Giants – is this really news? Interesting that Clorox and General Mills are called out though

Hackers can trick a Tesla into accelerating by 50 miles per hour – MIT Technology Review – MobilEye complains that it would also fool the human eye, but most humans would at least question it. Artificial smarts isn’t intelligence

Banned recording reveals China ambassador threatened Faroese leader at secret meeting | Berlingske – the problem might not be Huawei but the Chinese government with Huawei just a conduit – but yeah

Five for Friday | 五日（星期五) | 금요일에 다섯 가지

Post author By admin
Post date February 21, 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

DingDing – a Chinese equivalent of Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Skype was getting 1-star ratings in Apple and local app stores. Many school children are in lockdown due to the corona virus Covid 2019 and having to use the app as a virtual class room. DingDing was the most downloaded app in the Apple app store on February 5

They weren’t happy and bashed the app across app stores. Some of it was acting out and some was trying to get the app removed from the stores all together.

With its ratings dropping rapidly across app stores. Marketers put out this meme literate video. In it the DingDing mascot cries and begs children not to penalise it. It seems to have worked in terms of stabilising its rating.

Click to expand the video and wait through the short advert (sorry about that). There is an international version of DingDing called DingTalk that is often used by cross-border teams. The iOS and macOS versions are nicely designed. And unlike WeChat it doesn’t send your messages in the clear. But as with any software designed for the great firewall, use with care.

Back when I worked in-house at Yahoo!, Google seemed to get media coverage with ease. The Google Maps campaign around the Oscars reminded me of this. Google Maps collected famous movie locations and showcased them on Google Maps. Trendwatching has a great case study on the campaign.

Chinese brand Yili-owned baby milk formula brand JinLingGuan (JLG) decided to make its own smart speaker for parents. Which I found a bit odd given the amount of voice products available in China. But it seems more like skill-building and product giveaway in conjunction with Xiaomi. It built a parenting skill that featured 1,200 questions.

Key parental insights according to Mindshare:

62.5% of young parents in China worry they are not good enough for their children
70+% of mothers experience postpartum anxiety

Results according to Mindshare

Programme drove over 55 million Q&A sessions, 210% more than expected

Over USD$2.2m (RMB¥15m) in sales and all 10,000 smart speaker gift sets sold out

This is just tremendous – Legendary Disco Producer Cerrone Walks Through the Making of his 1977 Hit ‘SuperNature’ | WhoSampled

Cerrone 3 Supernature record cover — Record sleeve cover for Cerrone 3 Supernature

Stories of Apple – John Couch on Lisa’s software revolution and the perils of market research – more posts on Apple here.

ICYMI | 万一你错过了| 당신이 그것을 놓친 경우에 대비해서

Post author By admin
Post date February 5, 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Eric ‘Vietnam’ Sadler interview – Folio Weekly – rare interview with Eric ‘Vietnam’ Sadler of the Bomb Squad production team

Public Enemy Papercraft — Public Enemy (without Eric ‘Vietnam’ Sadlerpaper craft figures via csalinas86

Venture capital investors should harpoon more whales | Financial Times – hard versus soft innovation – soft innovation is winning the money. More on innovation here.

Gen Z brand advisors – JWT Intelligence – because they are over millennials

和 Virgil 一同「压轴登场」的 Arc’Teryx，是怎样的户外品牌？ – Chinese fashion show people trying to work out why Virgil Aboha wore Arc’Teryx goretex shell. Interesting that they don’t go to the obvious answer – technical outdoor wear is streetwear

Wristwatches (手表) | Mao Era in Objects – interesting read and gives a lot of food for thought on brand and perceived luxury products in the Chinese market

reut.rs | Trump executive order to clampdown on counterfeit and pirate goods sold at e-commerce – interesting as Amazon and eBay sure to suffer

FM音源伝説 | FM音源を愛するすべての人へ – cool game chip based synthesizers

Study: Men who own luxury cars are often jerks – what types of people own these cars. Sure enough, he found that less cooperative, less kind, and less considerate men often drive high-status cars. “The same traits also explain why such people break traffic regulations more frequently than others,” says Lönnqvist. He found no connection between female self-centeredness and luxury cars. Before you start flashing the bird at passing luxury vehicles, know that not all classy car owners suck. In fact, some are quite dependable: The study also found that conscientious men and women—people who are organized, ambitious, respectable, and often high-performing—are also frequent owners of high-status cars, which Lönnqvist says likely reflects an appreciation for quality and an urge to present a self-image of classy reliability. – a bit more nuance to this than the title suggests

The rapid rise of ‘Buy now, pay later’ – BBC News – this isn’t new, its the Littlewoods catalogue model all over again wearing digital clothes

Bank of England drops productivity optimism and lowers expectations | Financial Times – not terribly surprising

ハタプロ – way too cute robot Google Home type device hybrid

Markera kraftigare mot Kinas försök att påverka pressfriheten | :Utgivarna – Utgivarna urges to mark more strongly against China‘s attempts to influence the freedom of the press. Swedish media pushes back against Chinese government and including the local ambassador and United Front cadre

Apple Hires Key Netflix Engineer in Bid to Boost Subscription Services – WSJ – Ruslan Meshenberg, who helped build out Netflix’s platform and was involved in key initiatives to create a speedier, more consistent service for viewers, joined Apple’s internet-services organization this week

A new year marks a new phase of Hong Kong protests | Financial Times – some are calling on taxpayers to pay more. The aim of the so-called “$1 more” campaign is to cripple the tax authorities’ operations by forcing them to handle possibly millions of rebate payments, tying them up in bureaucracy and bringing the system to a grinding halt

‘Get Ready for Brexit’ was a £46m flop – so get ready for ‘Ready to Trade’ | MAA – this must be embarrassing for Engine Group

Apple TV+ ‘Immaterial’ to Services Revenue Amid One-Year Free Deal – Variety – loss leader

Apple FQ1 20 – Big battery. – Radio Free Mobile – back to basics with battery life being the key USP