Category: gadget | 小工具 | 가제트 | ガジェット

What constitutes a gadget? The dictionary definition would be a small mechanical or electronic device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one.

When I started writing this blog the gadget section focused on personal digital assistants such as the Palm PDA and Sony’s Clie devices. Or the Anoto digital pen that allowed you to record digitally what had been written on a specially marked out paper page, giving the best of both experiences.

Some of the ideas I shared weren’t so small like a Panasonic sleeping room for sleep starved, but well heeled Japanese.

When cutting edge technology failed me, I periodically went back to older technology such as the Nokia 8850 cellphone or my love of the Nokia E90 Communicator.

I also started looking back to discontinued products like the Sony Walkman WM-D6C Pro, one of the best cassette decks ever made of any size. I knew people who used it in their hi-fi systems as well as for portable audio.

Some of the technology that I looked at were products that marked a particular point in my life such as my college days with the Apple StyleWriter II. While my college peers were worried about getting on laser printers to submit assignments, I had a stack of cartridges cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol to deal with any non catastrophic printer issues and so could print during the evening in the comfort of my lodgings.

Alongside the demise in prominence of the gadget, there has been a rise in the trend of everyday carry or EDC.

  • 2023 – that was twenty twenty three

    2023 has been an eventful year. I thought it made sense to go back and reflect on everything that has gone on this year. I was inspired to do this after coming across a similar post that I had done for 2005.

    Double Duck

    Contrary to what much of the tech sector believed just six months earlier, 2023 was not going to be the year of the metaverse. In reality, it never was. Sales of VR devices had dropped in 2022, and the technology was years away from the hype.

    It was also going to be a bad year for speculators buying and selling on secondary markets. Previous hot properties like Rolex watches, Porsche 911s and the luxury industry in general dip. Rolex watch prices peaked in 2022 and prices normalised during 2023, despite the watch industry’s efforts to sustain artificial demand. The weakness in luxury markets was mirrored by a weakening of the performance of luxury business. Cryptocurrency saw successful legal proceedings brought by the US government against two of its highest profile industry advocates Sam Bankman-Fried and Changpeng Zhao – both former CEOs of trading platforms FTX and Binance, respectively.

    LLMs and experiments in using them to generate a wide range of outputs drove technology trends instead. Amazon was noticeable by its absence from being at the forefront of this trend, despite its Alexa service. FOOH (fake out of home) became a marketing fad as clients didn’t have budget and still wanted to creat viral moments.

    From a health perspective 2023 was the year of Semaglutide. Novo Nordisk displaced LVMH in the third quarter to become Europe’s most valuable company. FMCG brands and retailers blame the drug (likely falsely) for impacting sales of certain food categories. WW (the brand formerly known as Weight Watchers) jumps into telehealth to offer the treatment direct to patients. Ozempic, Semaglutide or Wegovy were mentioned most days in the media.

    January 2023

    The rail strikes that had disrupted travel in 2022, continued into 2023.

    The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicks off 2023. Themes included narrow throw projectors to replace large panel TV screens. The Displace wireless TV looked to turn the large screen into a giant tablet device – as a gimmick it caught a good deal of media attention.

    CES had new areas that weren’t given their own focus just a few years ago around the Internet of Things:

    • Food technology
    • Health technology
    • Sports technology

    Harmon showcased a modular solution to car-based computers, allowing an upgrade path. Currently cars might be based on software and processors that are over a decade old. The Wall Street Journal pointed out the forthcoming ‘gadget gap’ due to a drop off in venture capital funding, resulting in less future start-ups.

    Apple launches its M2, M2 Pro and M2 Max series of processors

    Brand planning pioneer Jeremy Bullmore dies. Later on in the year so does the last vestiges of J Walter Thompson – the agency where Bullmore had his career.

    China ended its COVID-19 related travel restrictions as the world moved to managing the virus as endemic rather than epidemic. COVID ripped through the Chinese population with an estimated 90 percent infection rate. Lunar year related travel had been restricted in previous years under the government’s zero COVID approach. At the time there were great hopes of an economic resurgence, but the Rhodium Group pointed out that progress would be stymied by Chinese corporate and local government debt. In the face of government interference, China’s most famous entrepreneur Jack Ma cedes control of financial services business Ant Group.

    I read Adam Fisher’s oral history of Silicon Valley, Valley of Genius. The reality was that technology leaders were viewed in a more complex light during 2023 and the book title was indicative of the hubris infested in many Silicon Valley leaders. The FT highlighted how it felt software leaders were failing in the physical realm. Just writing that sentence made me think of big tech executives as JRR Tolkien’s ring wraiths. IBM loses its historic top spot in US patent filings and Microsoft invests in OpenAI with a view to integrate ChatGPT into their products and services.

    Mastodon the federated answer to gets a hard pass from the Financial Times after trying to run their own instance. It was a minefield of legal and regulatory issues.

    The US department of justice is investigating Binance – a crypto currency exchange. Already in January 2023, the ongoing legacy of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong carries on as the Hong Kong chief executive is given the right to ban Jimmy Lai’s British barrister from representing him agains the National Security Law charges that he will face. Talking of authoritarian regimes, the UK retail sector embraces facial recognition to try and combat shop lifting and violent crime in their stores.

    Huawei patents EUV lithography tools used for making microchips with pathways below 10nm in size. This news was greeted with skepticism. Later on in the year Huawei launches a processor that might have been made using this technique. This raises major questions about proliferation of critical technology.

    Meanwhile other Chinese companies look to launder their Chinese identity to be more acceptable for their foreign customer base.

    Professor Scott Galloway coins the term ‘Patagonia vest recession‘ to encapsulate how knowledge economy jobs have been impacted more than blue collar roles in late 2022 onwards. I write a post on it and it turns out to be the best performing blog post on my site this year.

    Asian communities celebrate the lunar new year (it’s the year of the rabbit).

    Work-wise I was enmeshed in a number of marketing and innovation projects for GSK Vaccines.

    At the end of the month, Adaline Lau passed away. Adaline was a friend that I made in Hong Kong.

    Adaline Lau, Asia Editor of ClickZ asking a question to Douglas Stotland of Facebook
    SES Asia: Adaline Lau, Asia Editor of ClickZ asking a question to Douglas Stotland of Facebook. Taken at SES Hong Kong 2011.

    Adaline had been living in Singapore and had moved back to Hong Kong. At the time I first met her, she worked reporting on the online media and advertising worlds for ClickZ as their Asian bureau editor.

    Prior ClickZ, Adaline had written at Marketing Magazine and The Singapore Marketer. Outside of her professional writing, Adaline was an avid blogger and photographer, constantly seeking out and documenting vegetarian restaurants wherever she travelled. For many years, Adaline’s Doufu Mafia blog, Flickr and Instagram account was the first place I pointed people to, when they asked about vegetarian or vegan fayre.

    February 2023

    The issue of the day at the start of February 2023 was Chinese spy balloons with a debate that raged for months about whether the balloons were surveilling sensitive military sites or not. The balloon in question had a payload that was 30 feet long.

    If the balloon had made it to the UK, it would have found very little to observe as much of the civil service, the NHS and railway unions were on strike.

    A freight train accident in Ohio inspires a barrage of online misinformation, a good deal of it happening via Chinese sources. The west and China might be locked in a cold war, but the information war is raging hot.

    In Japanese media circles, the last print issue of Popteen magazine marks the transition towards digital media for consumer magazines. Adidas continues its annus horriblis into the early part of 2023 with write downs on both Yeezy and Ivy Park collaborations with Kanye West and Beyonce respectively. Drop sales later on in the year of Yeezy designs help bail Adidas out.

    Online NORA (no real answer) or knowledge search is expected to become a thing as Microsoft provides ChatGPT powered search results. The results are a bit underwhelming. The Chinese government bans its own technology companies from providing services based on ChatGPT.

    The EU moves to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel-powered cars in 2035, there has been a lot of reflection about whether this is the right thing as Chinese government supported electric vehicle companies eviscerate Europe’s car manufacturers.

    Wegovy was launched in the US back in 2021, and by the beginning of 2023, the international discussion about obesity and weight loss management had gone global. Knowledge of the drug amongst patients and the general public spread far faster than the ability to prescribe it as a medicine.

    Pharrell Williams signs on as creative director for Louis Vuitton’s men’s collection. Williams has already worked on collections for Billionaire Boys Club and adidas. His appointment reinforces the ongoing links between premium streetwear and luxury. Meanwhile long time technology veteran Susan Wojcicki steps down from the CEO role at YouTube.

    20190818 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protest
    Studio Incendo

    TV documentary maker and journalist Bao Choy launches The Collective HK, a new news media outlet. The increasing authoritarian nature of the Hong Kong authorities has seen the closure of several media outlets who had a different perspective to the authorities. Her decision shows immense bravery. The Hong Kong government launches its ‘Hello Hong Kong’ tourism campaign which was heavily criticised.

    South Park touches a British cultural live wire with their criticism of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in the series episode ‘Worldwide Privacy Tour‘. My Mam and Dad knew far too much about this episode of South Park, it was unnerving.

    Nissan America launches a four-hour advert for the Nissan Ariya electric car. It owes a lot to the Lofi Girl YouTube channel.

    US television and broadband provider Dish Network gets taken offline by unknown hackers. It is an unprecedented infrastructure attack.

    Some UK retailers ration sales of fresh fruit and vegetables due to disrupted supply chains on products imported from southern Europe and north Africa.

    This month marked the first anniversary of the Russian invasion in Ukraine and the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon album.

    March 2023

    Silicon Valley pioneer and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore dies. Xi Jinping is appointed as the leader of China for a third term. This was considered to be a measure of how much power Mr Xi has consolidated around himself. China mediates a detente of sorts between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

    US regional bank SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) goes bankrupt dizzyingly fast. Concern about smaller banks ripples throughout the world. Switzerland forces UBS to takeover Credit Suisse to prevent a similar crisis. HSBC picks up SVBs European business catering to start-ups and US technology companies with European offices.

    Microsoft shuts down its VR based social network Altspace VR. Altspace has a small engaged and passionate community, but it was all far too small to make a difference to Microsoft as it pivoted to LLM-based artificial intelligence. Open AI launches Chat GPT4, technology pundits and the advertising world lose their shit. Later on in the month Google opens early access to Bard – a ChatGPT competitor which receives much less publicity

    The Ford Motor Company patents a particular use case for autonomous vehicles, the ability to self-repossess itself if the owner misses their finance payments. The Chinese government detains members of due diligence research firm The Mintz Group. The more opaque China becomes, the less tenable it becomes to conduct work there, do business with Chinese companies or invest in Chinese companies and the Chinese economy. 

    In adland, my friend Iain Tait launches a new agency called Food. An academic research paper shows that negativity drives online news consumption. This has important implications, calling into question ad-funded online news media and social platforms used to consume online news.

    New York’s iconic I love NY tourism campaign gets an unnecessary makeover to We love NYC. It’s unnecessary and the typographic design is an abomination. Luxury car maker Ferrari gets hacked and its customer data gets leaked online.

    In a move that anticipates more office time in the hybrid work mix. Armani advertises bespoke suits and pushes a return to the office.

    Armani channeling the 1980s &  1990s hoping for a return to the office from hybrid working

    Adidas’ relationship with Beyoncé finishes. Ivy Park had underwhelmed in its performance, making less than 25 percent of its projected revenue. In China, women who had fallen in love with virtual characters during COVID arrange in real life meet-ups with cos-playing analogues.

    On a personal note, I had been using the Yahoo! platform including Yahoo! Mail for 25 years. I had forgotten this fact until Yahoo! emailed me to let me know.

    April 2023

    Chinese online marketplace app Temu launches in Europe and the UK, seven months after its US launch. It heavily features online advertising across social platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Like Wish it is the usual mix of scam listings, damaged and or late deliveries, incorrect orders and no customer service.

    Amazon closes the Book Depository. The service was closed down with just three weeks notice to customers and staff. It seemed a world away from when Amazon had bought the online book store back in 2011. I will miss it. It was a life saver when I lived in Hong Kong due to its free global shipping. It was also a place that I used for gift shopping, sending items to friends based abroad.

    Audemars Piguet looks to address rampant watch crime by replacing new watches that are stolen during the first year of ownership. This is a first for the luxury industry. De-influencing – a negative trend for brands used to social media influencers as boosters became a concern for industry marketers who had doubled down on influence as marketing pixie dust. De-influencing is when an influencer provides a negative review of a brand that they don’t like. In luxury beauty L’Oreal buys Aesop to bolster its luxury portfolio. The latest thing in luxury travel is a good nights sleep, with sleep tourism becoming a thing.

    Telehealth startup Ro, promotes its ‘Body Program‘ service to Americans. The service prescribes and ships Wegovy the obesity and weight management medicine direct to patients.

    Bud Light’s influencer marketing activity with transgender social media personality Dylan Mulvaney; sparks a boycott that sees sales drop by over 20 percent. It acts as a catalyst for a bigger discussion on the merits of brand purpose in marketing circles.

    Cloud phone service 3CX gets hacked, leaving lots of large corporates vulnerable to hacking. And in Australia, satellite failures cripple GPS enabled automation on tractors. This is important for sowing crops like wheat and barley. The feature allows the farmer to do the process much more efficiently.

    The modern world as we know it exists largely due to the Xerox corporately funded research centre in Palo Alto. Known as Xerox PARC had originally financed it to be ready for future innovation that would disrupt their existing business. In the end they weren’t ready. Innovation continues there to this day, but Xerox but handed over PARC to the SRI International. SRI conducts research and development on behalf of US government departments and companies across a wide range of disciplines. SRI had been where Doug Engelbart had done much of his key work.

    Damien Roach, aka patten releases Mirage.FM – the first album made purely with generative AI created sounds. It sits somewhere between early Reese or Juan Atkin electronic tracks and the layered production of The Avalanches. 7-Eleven Hong Kong uses generative AI created backdrops for their TV and video ads supporting their 7-Select food range.

    The Russo Brothers launch Citadel – a series on Amazon Prime Video. The show isn’t my cup of tea, but what was notable about it, was the degree of commerce integration. You could buy close to the same outfits the characters wore on screen.

    Citadel

    At work, our agency teamed up with online plant seller Plant Drop and researchers from Oxford University to promote the wellbeing and detoxifying nature of house plants. The government shuts down the NHS COVID-19 tracking app as usage had declined.

    A product giveaway went wrong for BMW. Not necessarily that big an issue, except this was in China at the Shanghai auto show. The brand had been giving out ice creams to stand attendees. They seem to have ran low and kept the ice creams strictly for foreign attendees. Chinese netizens, ever vigilant for anything they can construe as a slight went wild online. Meanwhile, the Milan Furniture Fair is called out for an exhibition of racist glass sculptures from the 1920s.

    May 2023

    The WHO had downgraded COVID-19 from its global health emergency.

    “This virus is here to stay. It is still killing, and it’s still changing,”

    Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general, WHO (World Health Organisation)

    The regional bank crisis continues. First Republic Bank collapses and gets acquired by JP Morgan Chase. Unlike SVB, the international impact is muted. Part of this is down to First Republic being a true regional bank, whereas SVB had an international footprint that followed its technology client base around the world.

    Google demonstrates Bard, a ChatGPT analogue – with a heavy focus on generating software code at Google I/O 2023 – their version of Apple’s WWDC (worldwide developer conference).

    Klick Health published research showing that ChatGPT demonstrated 10x more empathy than medical professionals. Meanwhile, WPP announces a partnership with Nvidia to use generative AI in advertising.

    Disney continued its trend of poor performance in the box office with the live action adaptation of The Little Mermaid, it was particularly badly received in Asian markets. In the west, views were divided based on how important the viewer thought fidelity to the original films casting was important.

    Hublot took the movement in luxury towards a circular economy a little too seriously with a limited edition watch made from recycled Nespresso pods.

    The FT’s Cristina Criddle lifts the lid on how Bytedance had accessed her phone through the TikTok app and surveilled her.

    June 2023

    If there was a word of the month for June 2023, it would be decivilisation. President Macron used the term to encapsulate the widespread civil unrest and radical political action ripping through France in a closed door session with experts. The phrase was leaked and the rest is history. Decivilisation isn’t only a French phenomenon, in New York the beleaguered police department went after car manufacturers rather than car thieves.

    Apple unveils its Vision Pro goggles. You won’t be able to buy them in 2023, but Apple wanted to get out its software development kit out to have developers come up with potential killer apps. Apple sought to avoid the traps of the metaverse and comparisons to mixed reality devices with its ‘spatial computing’ concept. Alphabet scraps its next generation of augmented reality (AR) glasses, but continues to develop software for AR devices.

    German engineering manufacturer Rheinmetall puts a smart factory in a shipping container, allowing spare parts to be manufactured using additive manufacturing closer to where the parts are needed. There is a clear need in the Ukraine invasion battlefield.

    A submersible designed to take tourists to the bottom of the ocean implodes. The Ocean Gate Titan was taking passengers to visit the wreck of the Titanic. Omega chooses to launch the following teaser ad campaign at an inopportune moment.

    Omega watch advert a week after Ocean Gate submersible accident

    The Hong Kong government tries to spur consumer consumption with a campaign called ‘Happy Hong Kong‘ – a key element being a series of discounts at several local businesses. The government also sponsors the floating Double Ducks temporary installation by Florentijn Hofman in Victoria Harbour. One duck deflates in the heat. Hofman had previously exhibited one duck in the harbour in 2013.

    Disney’s woes continued into June with the commercial failure of Pixar film Elemental.

    In advertising, GroupM forecasts low growth in media spend. Meanwhile luxury conglomerate Kering buys British fragrance house Creed.

    July 2023

    If decivilisation was June’s word of the month, July 2023 would be represented by the term ‘doom loop’. Doom loop hit its zeitgeist as international media including El Pais and the Financial Times discussed multiple problems that are plaguing San Francisco. San Francisco is just the canary in the coal mine, with mayor Eric Adams seeing similar challenges just a couple of months later.

    Nintendo launches Pokémon Sleep – a gamified sleep tracker with Tamagotchi-type care requirements. Years of news coverage has been highlighting how insufficient sleep of Japanese workers and students has been harming their health and the economy. Twitter rival Threads is launched by Meta. It joins T2/Pebble, BlueSky Social, Mastodon and Post.news.

    The FIFA Women’s World Cup is held in Australia, brands get behind it and the public gets to see great football on the pitch. This sparks a discussion about sports media budgets and football as a business.

    Wild fires across Greece disrupt various holiday destinations, just as leisure travel hits its stride post-COVID. July would be eventually found to be the hottest July on record around the world.

    Barbeheimer – the act of going to watch Barbie and Oppenheimer one after the other at the cinema becomes a cultural moment. The movies are so different, there contrasting nature of the films, together with the post-COVID novelty of getting back into the cinema creates a box office chimera. In Japan, Barbeheimer was viewed negatively trivialising the crime against humanity inflicted on civilians in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    In Hong Kong, McDonald’s Restaurants hold an art exhibition in conjunction with Kevin Poon to celebrate 40 years of the golden arches in the city.

    Toyota focuses on solid state battery technology alongside its work on hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles. Dyson’s abortive electric car project failed partly because it was unable to source solid state batteries. Meanwhile, a Reuters investigation found that Tesla cars were designed to lie about their range to their drivers.

    August 2023

    August felt like the world was on fire. The UK was in the middle of a heatwave. The news had coverage of wild fires in Tenerife, Greece and Canada. The smoke from forest fires in the Northwest Territories of Canada wrapped New York in choking smog. I worried about extended family in Toronto.

    The word of the month is gatekeeping – meaning to keep earned knowledge to yourself, such a personal favourite restaurant or life hack.

    Wiko stores indicates intent to file for bankruptcy and Clinton’s Cards closed a fifth of their shops. It isn’t only bricks-and-mortar retailers having problems, luxury e-tailer Farfetch closed down its beauty business. Meanwhile Rolex buys international watch retailer Bucherer, though their plans for the group aren’t clear and fire a good deal of speculation.

    China’s largest property developer Country Garden defaults on bond debt. Country Garden has been better managed than Evergrande and this shows how systemic problems are in the China property market.

    Google has one of the biggest changes that I can remember in its UK management structure; the rationale isn’t immediately apparent. Speculation starts on Meta’s microblogging platform Threads after usage drops off. OpenAI, the company who created ChatGPT is burning through $700,000 a day to run just one of their services with no clear path to profitability.

    The APG publish their results of their annual skills survey. Planners are required to have a ridiculously large set of skills, data and technology aspects were considered to be under-estimated.

    In a move that feels more like it should have been done in 2020, PayPal launches its own Stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.

    I launch a monthly newsletter published on this blog and on LinkedIn.

    September 2023

    Temperatures at the beginning of September went as high as 32 celsius. Stonegate who own the Slug and Lettuce chain of bars introduce ‘dynamic‘ aka surge pricing at the evening and during the weekend.

    Following events like the Bud Light boycott, a corresponding ‘anti woke economy‘ is emerging in the US to cater for socially conservative leaning audiences.

    The media and advertising sector continue to think that retail media will be the breakout channel for 2023. Meta stops supporting media on its platforms in Europe and faces a backlash from publishers and politicians. Rupert Murdoch announces his retirement and puts the family succession plan in place.

    Iconic computer game series Myst celebrates its 30th anniversary. Apple’s Wanderlust event sees new evolutions of its iPhone range and Apple Watch. Meanwhile IDC predicts that global smartphone sales will hit their lowest point in a decade, indicating market maturity and saturation. The UK walks back an attempt to gain access to encrypted messaging services like Signal, iMessage and WhatsApp. Technology vendors had threatened to pull out of the UK rather than attempt to comply with the proposed British regulations. Malcolm Penn’s Future Horizons updated their forecast for the semiconductor industry, predicting a return to growth. Iran’s religious leaders use artificial intelligence to issue fatwas.

    Toyota announces plans for mass production of solid state batteries for their vehicles. Production is slated to start in 2027.

    Russell Brand faces a criminal investigation, allegations including sexual assault, stalking and harassment. The media don’t bother reflecting on how the had acted as an enabler of Brand’s conduct over the years. Brand wasn’t the only one in trouble, US casino brands MGM Resorts and Caesars suffer from cybersecurity incidents that force the shutdown of their computer systems.

    Adidas’ Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 are running shoes designed to last just one race. They cost $500 a pair.

    October 2023

    Qualcomm launches a series of processors designed to be used in personal computers. Their performance is supposed to be superior to Apple’s M2 family of processors launched back in January. A few days later Apple launches its M3 family of processors.

    Conflict breaks out on the Gaza strip with HAMAS taking hundreds of hostages and killing hundreds more. The event fractures progressive political support throughout the world.

    DeBeers resurrects their ‘A Diamond is Forever’ marketing campaign to try and arrest declining sales in both China and America. Studio Ghibli’s The Boy & The Heron has its UK premiere at the London Film Festival. It goes on UK and US general release in December.

    The Rugby World Cup is in full swing, but sponsor luxury watch brand Tudor is wrapped up in a dispute with the tournament’s referees over its role as official timekeeper.

    LVMH sees a 7 percent single day drop in share price, leading other luxury groups decline in value. Much of this decline is considered to be due to the perceived end to a golden age of luxury good consumption during the 2020s. Time will tell if this marks the luxury sector’s equivalent of the dot com bust.

    A Vogue Business research report finds that the fashion industry is still failing on size inclusivity. Meanwhile Nike collaborates with Dove on girl’s body confidence due to the confluence of their brand purpose and the realisation that a combined effort would be beneficial.

    Sales of electric cars decline year-on-year in the UK as vehicles don’t meet consumer needs in terms of range and pricing. Retail sales have hit a two year low; implying a broader cyclical downturn.

    Intelligence chiefs warn western technology companies about an uptake in Chinese attempts at industrial espionage.

    My alma mater Concentric gets acquired by Accenture Song from marketing group Stagwell. TV advertising costs have increased, but there is considerable debate on the degree of the increase. Meanwhile President Biden unveils an executive order to try and provide a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence development and distribution.

    November 2023

    The month starts with the closure of micro-blogging platform Pebble. Almost a year to the day of the bankruptcy of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman Fried is found guilty of criminal charges including fraud. Russian volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka erupts, while it was largely ignored by the media, the eruption disrupts trans-Pacific flights and air freight, affecting air routes to Korea and Japan in particular.

    The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and ISBA announce their principles on the use of generative AI in advertising.

    The UK hosts 2023 Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit – it probably more important in spurring a direction rather than any ‘hard outcomes’. Despite the media coverage, most of the general public didn’t care. It won’t have burnished the reputation of prime minister Rishi Sunak and his interview with Elon Musk is particularly toe-curling.

    10 Downing Street YouTube channel

    The interview is part of Musk’s launch plan for Grok – an LLM-based chat bot to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.

    Disney+ is to add a ‘with ads‘ subscription option.

    Gallup withdraws from China as the communist government closes the country off from the west. The South China Morning Post – historically Hong Kong’s paper of record celebrates its 120th anniversary on November 6, 2023. The English language paper is still important for luxury brand advertisers, alongside the premium end of the food service and beverage sector. How long that will remain the case is open to debate as Hong Kong looks to replace expat talent with mainland Chinese? Hong Kong still has the potential to surprise with its hosting of the 2023 Gay Games. This was the first time that they had been hosted in Asia.

    The China Project – a media business of informative podcasts, news and events closes abruptly on the same day as the SCMP 120th anniversary – the timing was pure coincidence. Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn interviewed a plurality of opinions and perspectives on all aspects of China. What did join the SCMP and The China Project was that their respective founders shared a similar vision. As the SCMP founders put it in the first edition of the newspaper:

    ‘tell the truth for the good of humanity’.

    South China Morning Post editorial Friday November 6, 1903

    Eurasia Group subsidiary, GZero Media ran a survey of attendees at the 2023 Paris Peace Forum about the state of democracy around the world. Over three quarters of participants surveyed were of the opinion that democratic progress was going backwards.

    gzero survey at Paris Peace Forum

    Humane launches their AI pin. It’s an interesting mix of ideas that represents a challenge to both smartphones ‘pictures under glass’ and AR goggles paradigm, but the use case for the AI pin isn’t apparent at launch.

    Russian cyber crime outfit LockBit who managed to affect the Royal Mail’s IT systems in January, net two big whales: legal firm Allen & Overy and China’s largest bank by deposits ICBC. The ICBC infection is supposed to only affect the systems of its New York office. Given the symbiotic relationship that groups like this have with arms of the Russian intelligence services, it’s surprising that they didn’t back away from the ICBC infection.

    ICBC is a state-owned bank, in Chinese terms this is like throwing a petrol bomb at a Chinese embassy. Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency platform Binance steps down over money laundering controls and could do prison time.

    LinkedIn passes 1 billion registered users. WeWork files for bankruptcy, weirdly the company got additional funding from SoftBank just days before going under. SoftBank lost $16 billion from its investments and loans to WeWork. Meta and Amazon team up to reduce purchase friction between Meta advertising for items on Amazon marketplace. A new in-app experience provides seamless shopping.

    Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III launches to a worldwide marketing blitz, just in time for the Black Friday consumer fest and Christmas shopping for middle-aged Dad gamers.

    Eli Lilly has its obesity treatment Zepbound approved by US regulator, the FDA and the UK’s MRHA. The efficacy of the treatment and Eli Lilly’s scale from marketing to operations represent serious competition for Novo Nordisk’s portfolio. (Disclosure: in a past role I worked on global advertising creative campaigns for Novo Nordisk’s obesity products). Expect these medicines to dominate the consumer and media zeitgeist similar to Prozac or Viagra during their respective heydays.

    YouTube launches a policy on AI-generated or ‘synthetic content’ as they called it. AI is already used widely in many content videos to provide a consistent narrator experience, such as King Clarence’s inner voice on the Jimmy & Clarence channel which uses Siri. What’s less clear from the policy is how YouTube will detect creators who don’t comply with their rules.

    I got to spend time at the FT Future of AI conference, great to see ‘danr‘ as Yahoos knew him on stage. While the complexity of trip planning screams out as an AI use case, the solutions introduced by travel sites aren’t great. Even the Booking.com CEO admitted it to Axios. Sam Altman leaves and returns to OpenAI – the not for profit / ethical control of the business in tatters.

    UK inflation drops to 4.6% as economic growth tends towards zero. WHO posts statement on undiagnosed respiratory illnesses breaking out across northern China.

    Leica launches the first camera to support the C2PA standard which ‘vouches’ for the integrity of photography and considered as a way of helping authoritative sources to not publish misinformation.

    Charlie Munger

    Berkshire Hathaway‘s Charlie Munger dies just shy of his 100th birthday. Henry Kissinger managed to make it to a century, but many people will remember it as the day Shane Magowan left us.

    December 2023

    If COP 28 had been an instalment of a film franchise, rather than the UN Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, it would have been given a sub-heading of Oil Strikes Back? Ipsos’ Almanac highlights the consumer concerns about the latest generation of artificial intelligence models, the polycrisis, and the advertising keeps failing in numerous aspects of diversity.

    The UK high street took another low-key knock, Adrian’s Records – famous to record collectors around the world (and cost-conscious indie music fans of a certain age) shut their high street store. The business is still unwinding their stock via direct sales to the record retail trade and both eBay and Amazon marketplace.

    This is more down to the fact that owners Adrian Rondeau and Richard Burke are retiring. Adrian had been running the shop since 1969.

    Walmart launches Add to Heart; a short form video series that allows the audience to shop-the-look as they watch. This will run on Roku, TikTok and YouTube. Of course, this is only 18 years after Girlswalker’s Tokyo Girls Collection have been doing it…

    Robinhood, abandoned an effort to launch in the UK 3 years ago, it came back at the beginning of December with a waiting list. By comparison, fans of Grand Theft Auto will have to wait until some time in 2025 for the next instalment to drop. The trailer set in contemporary Florida has distinct synthwave vibes.

    Games Workshop has partnered with Amazon to bring Warhammer to life. Probably a smart move given how Amazon has sympathetically developed Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher series and Michael Connolly’s Bosch books.

    McDonalds delves back into their marketing archive to inspire a new format of restaurant: Cosmcs. They’re probably hope it memes like the Grimace shakes during the summer. Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack has gone from partnerships with McDonalds and Nike to hitting its acme with Audemars Piguet on a set of 200 highly customised Royal Oak watches. They are already on the secondary market for $500,000 within a week of its launch. It’s a bit of a risk, as Scott’s had moments just as controversial as Kanye West, representing brand reputational risk.

    Unilever investigated in the UK by CMA over its green claims. Having been on the inside, I can say that the green efforts are genuine. They also involve trade-offs, so refill plastic sachets would have a lower carbon footprint for transport, but they’re still plastic. Being second-guessed by regulators adds to the complexity.

    Former proprietor of the Hong Kong Apple Daily newspaper and British citizen Jimmy Lai goes on trial in a case that is expected to take about 80 days to be heard. Lai’s case is the most prominent trial under the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Lai is charged with ‘collusion with foreign forces’ and sedition.

    Hong Kong Police announced bounties against five people overseas on on suspicion of inciting secession or colluding with foreign forces. This includes the founder of Hongkongers in Britain, and a US national working for World Liberty Congress.

    With courtroom drama taking up much of the oxygen in Hong Kong, it’s not surprising that the top grossing domestic film in 2023 was courtroom comedy drama A Guilty Conscience – which grossed five times more than any other Hong Kong film in the box office this year – and the highest grossing Hong Kong or Chinese film in city to date, surpassing the previous record set in 2022.

    The French Competition Authority €91 million ($100 million) fine for Rolex France restricting authorised dealers from selling watches online isn’t likely to benefit multi-brand dealers and instead more likely to drive vertical integration. Vertical integration was partly to blame for the fire sale of Farfetch to Korean online services firm Coupang.

    From an adidas perspective, we’re now in a post-Yeezy & post-Ivy Park world. It launched a joint venture with fashion house Fear of God as a long term collaboration a la Y-3 with Yohji Yamamoto. They indicated that they want to move away from the hype drop model that fuels secondary markets (StockXGOAT etc.) and build something ‘more sustained’. 

    While we’re on the subject of hype, it started for Christmas adverts started before Hallowe’en. The advertising industry needed a good news and the 4.8% lift (year on year) in UK advertising spend for Q4 was a sorely needed top-up for the sector. This year’s tone through the ads is more downbeat reflecting a subdued economic environment. Loath as I am to nominate one effort over another during the Christmas season; Uncommon Studios for JD Sports ‘a bag for life’ was an acknowledgement of how iconic the draw string bag is, and has been since before Liquid’s Sweet Harmony first rang out. Liquid’s Eamon (aka Ame) works making music for advertising and TV for Clerkenwell Sound Collective while releasing tracks under the Liquid name and Shane (aka Model) is still making music. Perhaps it’s better that they didn’t show how messed up your kicks will be after dancing all night in a basement or industrial unit.

    On a more serious note, the small details in this got me and gave me goosebumps; in particular the ever-present sirens of urban Britain in the background at the end. It’s not ‘Christmas’ – it’s a working class Christmas. For me, it’s timeless and adds yet more grist to the mill on thinking about things in terms of life stages rather than ‘generations’ which hides what unites us and creates false divisions. 

    Midjourney version 6 is released, so by the time St Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day for UK people) or December 26th for the rest of the world – my LinkedIn feed became flooded with images people were prompting whilst bored post-turkey dinner.

    Meanwhile WHSmith, quietly rolls out a rebrand for its shop signage with WHS. I didn’t think I would be writing about a rebrand this late in the year, but it makes sense being able to get shop fitters in during the Christmas holiday.

    The new sans serif font and blue background parallelogram confuses the media and consumers due to its resemblance to the NHS logo. While the more design conscious among us may realise that the NHS uses italics to suggest movement, whereas WHSmith uses the box instead, some consumers won’t see the nuance.

    At the time of writing, I don’t know what job the rebrand was designed to do. I have a hypothesis that the semiotics of the design were to imply that the stationery shop is a valued service to its customers (like the NHS). The consumer confusion is understandable, given that many town centres had NHS-branded COVID vaccination centres. This is part of a wider change at WHSmith; which is increasingly dependent on its travel terminus business in airports and train stations in the UK, Europe and the US.

    The rebrand hadn’t been extended to their online presence so far. If the storefront signage has been confusing, extending the rebrand to mobile web bookmarks and mobile app icons would likely cause even more confusion. Might there be enough time to consider bringing back the WHSmith ‘cube’ icon?

    I will finish up on Google’s year in search, though having done these lists for Yahoo! Search in the past, I have a good idea of how sanitised these trends reports are.

    The sales pitch

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

    More on what I have done to date here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy
  • Jeremy Deller + more stuff

    Jeremy Deller

    Jeremy Deller is famous for examining 1980s events from the MIner’s strike to rave culture. Most notably his work Acid Brass, working with the William Fairey Brass Band on cover versions of early house and techno music. In this documentary he walks a group of sixth formers through the context that rave culture began in.

    Smiley detail

    Jeremy Deller has hosted a reenactment of the Battle Of Orgreave and made an inflatable version of Stonehenge in a piece called Sacrilege.

    Jacobs cream crackers

    As a child, I would have eaten several cream crackers manufactured on this line. In more recent times the production of Jacobs products were moved abroad for cost cutting reasons. There is something mesmerising about watching the process of production.

    Cyberpunk

    Quinn’s Ideas exploration of Neuromancer pointed out some links that I hadn’t realised in the formation of cyberpunk as a genre and cultural force.

    LA Noir

    Why film noir happened when it did, and why it is so synonymous with the city of Los Angeles is explained in this documentary which features an interview with author James Eilroy.

    EDC

    Everyday Carry (EDC) – whilst having evolved as an online cultural phenomenon has been around for as along as men and boys have had pockets. My childhood friend Nigel was obsessing about Swiss Army knives and really small Leica binoculars back when I was in primary school. His Dad was a well-to-do dentist and Nigel fulfilled his EDC goals before coming a teen. It was only natural that it eventually became a thing when the internet came around. Kevin Kelly had been talking about cool tools on the the web for the past quarter of a century; Drop.com when it was founded over 12 years ago covered products that would be considered EDC today.

    All of which leaves me more puzzled why EDC has sudden become the focus of media attention in the quality newspapers.

    Tacit and explicit knowledge

    Vicky Zhao’s content are handy thought starters for presentations and problem solving. I particularly enjoyed this one on tacit knowledge.

  • Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption + more

    Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption

    I started thinking about Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption when I read this article: Canon looks to nanoimprint tech for 2nm lithography | EE News Europe. Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption looked on the horizon with the announcement of its nano imprint technology. Nano imprint approach is something that has been explored for a a couple of decades, but had so far been rejected due to challenges of implementation.

    Moore's Law over 125 Years
    Future Ventures on Moore’s Law

    Canon now claims that they have it ready for production on middle edge processes with a potential address current leading edge processes. Canon has stuck with nano imprint as a development approach because it is adjacent to Canon’s core technology expertise in inkjet printing.

    Canon semiconductor disruption depends on whether it can change the technology roadmaps of memory chip makers and other fabs. This is going to be unlikely, but Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption could disrupt the outlook for other vendors, notably Dutch equipment maker ASML.

    Canon semiconductor disruption seems to be part of a wider movement to rethink how semiconductors and adjacent products are manufactured to better facilitate further scaling at reduced capital costs, but few if any will be successful: Dracula plans Europe’s largest OPV plant with inkjet printing | EE News Europe

    China

    Scottish Water admits solar farms could use parts linked to China’s forced labour camps | Scotland | The Guardian

    The end of China’s economic miracle shows how China has followed a similar curve to Korea and Japan in terms of economic growth.

    CSIS

    Design

    A quote from Benedict Evans | Simon Willison – on the limitations of chat-based interfaces for LLMs

    Huge entertainment ‘city’ in Tokyo transformed with variable typographic identity – expect this to be fashionable in design circles

    Economics

    Retail sales, Great Britain – Office for National Statistics – UK consumers spending power is relatively inelastic and inflation is eroding it.

    Britain needs to take its sheds more seriously | FT – more attention needed for logistics and warehousing (I imagine that Brexit has added pressure)

    Energy

    Electric truck pioneer Volta Trucks files for bankruptcy | EE News Europe – supply chain collapse for its batteries caused the business to file for bankruptcy.

    Ethics

    Excerpt from ‘Career and Family’ by Claudia Goldin – Harvard Gazette – the idea of ‘greedy careers’ is very interesting.

    Starbucks is trying to distance itself from union workers who have taken a pro-Palestinian stance | Quartz – brand purpose is complex.

    Gadgets

    Daring Fireball: There’s a New Apple Pencil With a USB-C Port, and My Thoughts Turn to the Complexity of the Overall iPad Lineup

    Health

    EMA looks into falsified Ozempic with German and Austrian origins – Endpoints News – it was inevitable that this was going to happen.

    How neurodivergence became a subculture | Dazed

    Hong Kong

    ‘We don’t feel safe here’: Hongkongers in UK fear long reach of Chinese government | Transnational repression | The Guardian

    Innovation

    Japan trials wireless fast charging of moving vehicles | EE News Europe

    Yamaha’s Self-Balancing Motorcycle Seeks to Push Human-Machine Interface – Core77

    NEC develops 150 GHz Antenna-on-Chip transmitter IC | EE News Europe

    Japan

    Halloween Spooks Shibuya – Matt Alt’s Pure Invention – the impact of the western Hallowe’en festival on Japanese culture.

    Luxury

    A New Age Of Genderless Brands? – Branding Strategy Insider – Mikimoto pearls managing to attract men. I see this as an extension of century’s old ‘dandy’ culture from the pearly kings and queens, to 1970s African American style in Detroit and some of Dapper Dan’s work that looked to come up with ostentatious looks.

    Marketing

    WPP, Y&R, WTF? ‘Merging’ Away Storied And Expensive Agency Brands Doesn’t Add Up | The Drum

    Brands lose by ignoring Gen X — here’s what the numbers say | Marketing Dive – the bit that these miss is that this cohort has always been missed out because of its size, this cohort has always been underrepresented in advertising. Secondly, half of your consumer life time spend is done by the time you are 35 and a lot of brand associations are built by then. More on the same theme which seems to have been provoked by a Wavemaker report – Myth-representation is mis-representation: What’s stopping brands targeting over 50s? | Creative Moment.

    DDB on localising adidas Originals: “We Gave the World an Original, It Gives Us a Thousand Back” | LBBOnline – I think DDB Hong Kong’s ‘original spirit’ is better than the global campaign theme.

    Media

    Jon Stewart’s The Problem Canceled at Apple Amid Creative Differences – The Hollywood Reporter“Mr. Stewart told members of his staff on Thursday that potential show topics related to China and artificial intelligence were causing concern among Apple executives, a person with knowledge of the meeting said.”

    Disney ads chief: TikTok is now our ‘programming extension’ – The Media Leader and TikTok moves into OOH and cinema – The Media Leader implies that TikTok represents an existential threat to media buying function of agency for some clients

    Online

    The Digital Town Square Doesn’t Exist Yet | The Atlantic

    Chinese Bloggers Might Soon Be Required to Display Their Real Names on Social Media Platforms – the government already knows who they are, this seems to be an effort to expose them more to the general public – which can be volatile and vindictive. And so, this is likely to be an effort to use crowd pressure to reduce divergent or innovative opinions, so the party becomes the originator.

    Security

    Latest 23andMe data claim would take leaked records to 5M • The Register

    Hamas-linked app offers window into cyber infrastructure, possible links to Iran | CyberScoop

    Five Eyes spy chiefs warn Silicon Valley over Chinese threat | FT

    Fearing China, South Korea targets firms building Taiwan navy submarines | Reuters

    Israeli Cybersecurity Startups: Impact of a Growing Conflict | Dark Reading

    Predator Files: Technical deep-dive into Intellexa Alliance’s surveillance products – Amnesty International Security Lab more on it here.

    Software

    Amazon is thinking about quantumcomputing | Patent DropAmazon’s tech essentially acts as a middleman between a quantum computer and the user interface. First, a user makes a request with this service through an “edge computing device” — their own device that isn’t connected to the quantum computer itself. Then the system will “automatically translate the quantum task, quantum algorithm, or quantum circuit” into a representation that a quantum computer can understand. This system will then pick the right quantum computer for a certain job, and work with it on the back end to complete the request

    Taiwan

    New space age collaboration: how Taiwan’s satellite supply chain is driving innovation | DigiTimes

    Taiwan’s aging population | Taiwan Data Stories

    Technology

    Qualcomm, Google confirm RISC-V wearable chip | EE News Europe – something to think about if you were ARM Semiconductor. More here: Does Qualcomm’s new RISC V chip matter? | Digits to Dollars

    Foxconn taps Nvidia for AI data centres and EV factories | EE News Europe

    Chinese chip equipment makers grab market share as US tightens curbs | Reuters

  • Listening pleasure

    I was reminded by an article in an old copy of the FT’s HTSI (How To Spend It) magazine about the diversity of what listening pleasure means to different people.

    TA 9000ES pre & power amplifier
    My own pre-amp / power amp combo

    Aural wallpaper

    For many of us, the personal equivalent of muzak masks distracting sounds in the neighbourhood or the odd sounds emanating from the heating pipes. It is a listening pleasure of sorts, masking things that might otherwise side track or agitate us while we carry on our own lives. Prior to COVID this meant an office or coffee shop full of workers with Bose noise cancelling headsets on, now its more likely to be Apple AirPods firmly implanted, although they struggle to hold up to the demands of a days worth of Microsoft Teams calls.

    In the home it can be: your smartphone, your computer, BlueTooth speaker, the radio, an old boombox or the TV set. I have a ritual in hotel rooms where after dropping my bags, the 24 hour TV news channel goes on low volume, ideally CNN. If I can’t get that, then I connect up my laptop and stream Bloomberg Live or podcasts.

    Dedicated listening

    If you derive listening pleasure by focusing more on what you are listening to then a higher quality system makes sense. Digital and analogue media can both provide a high quality audio experience. There are some fantastic vintage systems out there, it’s worthwhile educating yourself on products and setting up those eBay searches. Some streaming services now claim better than CD quality audio too, but more on that later.

    Good quality speakers can be inexpensive, though brands and models which were bargains just five years ago are now expensive as purchasers have educated themselves. A good deal of the listening pleasure from these kind of systems is the hunt and building the system as much as what you have playing through it.

    Space is the place

    Good quality audio performance is dependent on the source, the hi-fi, the speakers and the room that the hi-fi is set up in. A room can enormously impact speaker performance. When I used to DJ, I found this out to my cost. Perfectly parallel walls create reverb meaning you can have multiple versions of a recording coming back to you. Furniture and people are great at absorbing bass.

    Despite what you might see in hi-fi shows held in hotels, few of us have a room that would do a pair of B&W Nautilus justice, nor do we need a top of the range Mark Levinson amplifier.

    Instead it makes sense to look at good quality headphones, I use AKG K872 headphones. But this also means that you can get supporting hardware by the likes of Schiit Audio for a much more reasonable price.

    What sounds good is subjective and different equipment lends itself to different use cases. Do you want to listen to music, films or games? What genres will you be listening too?

    If you like fuzzbox-driven rock music, you probably wouldn’t like my audio system. My tastes vary from Vladimir Cosma and Manuel Göttsching to The Reflex, Jeff Mills and even a bit of Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash. I spent a good deal of my youth in friends bedroom recording studios and DJing in night clubs. All of which affected what sounds good to me. My own listening pleasure leans to a more analytical, transparent sound.

    The source

    Finally, there is the fidelity of recordings themselves, in the late 1990s and 2000s we saw what some musicians would call the ‘Loudness’ wars. Recordings were overly compressed by mastering engineers and we now have a generation of engineers who think that this is how things are done and genuinely believe that they are addressing the listening pleasure of the general public. Veteran audio engineers and hi-fi enthusiasts have noticed a 10+dB difference in recording sound levels. In reality each dB a doubling in volume as you hear it, so 10dB is a 1,204 times louder. Why did the over-compression happen? There are a number of hypotheses:

    • Digital signal processors and digital audio workstation software made it easier to tweak everything and so people did.
    • Older recordings get digitally remastered with an expectation that these recordings will be played on BlueTooth speakers and smartphones.
    • I have heard the remastering is also for car stereos as well, but the reality is that many car stereos have been better than the average persons home audio system for decades – because they are designed for the vehicle cabin.
    • The decline of consumers actively listening to music, using it as aural wallpaper, so looking for a constant volume.
    • The rise of nascent streaming services like Real Networks and Yahoo! Music.

    How do you know what is the best level of compression? This is a matter of personal taste. It depends on the genres of the music you like, does it have highs and lows? Are there quiet segments or pauses before a breakdown? Does it makes use of stereo spacing to move its sweeping sound around you?

    Audio spacing is important not only for listening to music but gaming and the home cinema experience.

    The problem with modern streaming services that look to provide ‘better than CD quality audio’ is as much on the original source as it is about the quality of streaming. Apple has tried to address this with its ‘Mastered for iTunes’ tools optimising for its platform, but that doesn’t have universal adoption in terms of remastering.

    The reality might be closer to what I saw at Yahoo! Music in the mid-2000s where ‘mastering’ for the service meant ripping retail compact disc using a HP desktop PC and uploading the song to the servers. Nothing particularly special was involved in the process.

    More information

    How much should you pay for your speakers? FT HTSI magazine

    Ruining Oxygene | renaissance chambara

    The Vintage Knob – some of the best content on vintage quality Japanese hi-fi

    Sennheiser HD250 II Linear headphones | renaissance chambara

  • Western fast fashion + more things

    Western fast fashion

    Western fast fashion brands have managed to spread around the world, despite concerns over working conditions, product quality and impact on the environment. But things have gone into reverse for western fashion brands in China. Just over a decade ago saw China as a potential growth market. But over the past five years things have gone badly for them.

    Looking at western fast fashion brand H&M’s presence in China, there has been a consistent decline since a 2017 peak of 507 stores in China.

    fast fashion
    Data via Daxue Consulting and South China Morning Post

    The reasons cited by Chinese consumers online include:

    • Western fast fashion brands aren’t cut / styled for ‘Asian body types’. This sounds like a need for extended sizing
    • Local trends: the clothing doesn’t fit with local trends in design in the same way that local rivals can. Brands to keep an eye out for include Urban Revivo and JNBY
    • Other foreign brands meet the needs of young Chinese consumers better. These include Brandy Melville, and its “Malibu beach babe” look, while Chuu, is a Korean brand with K-pop aesthetics

    More related content here.

    Beauty

    Luxury skincare for dogs is a thing. Here’s what to know about dog shampoo and paw care.

    China

    Panda Diplomacy: The Departure of DC’s Beloved Pandas May Signal a Wider Chinese Pullback – The Diplomat

    US Department of State: Global Engagement Center Special Report: HOW THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA SEEKS TO RESHAPE THE GLOBAL INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT

    Consumer behaviour

    Wavemaker unveils first-of-its-kind global research into Gen X on social – Wavemaker Global – subtext they will be more prosperous due to their parents dying. I still think understanding life stages is more important than understanding ‘generations’

    Economics

    How China’s “debt traps” actually work – by Noah Smith – interesting assessment on how the Belt and Road projects actually fared. The Chinese government was let down by poor planning and execution by its contractors

    Energy

    New technology uses wind power to reduce cargo ships’ emissions, fuel use : NPR – interesting article. Back when my Dad worked in shipbuilding 40 years ago there were proposals and trials for similar designs. Economics are now making this technology a reality

    Finance

    Hong Kong fintech unicorn WeLab targets eight-fold growth in customers, tapping digital banking demand in Southeast Asia

    Gadgets

    Ming-Chi Kuo: The iPhone 15 Pro Overheating issues aren’t related to TSMC’S 3nm node – Patently Apple – compromises in design and performance trade-offs

    Apple releases fix for issue causing the iPhone 15 to run ‘warmer than expected’

    Health

    Opinion | America’s Next Public Health Moonshot Should Tackle Health Spans – The New York Times

    How Japan dealt with its amphetamine problem.

    UK prime minister wants to raise the legal age to buy cigarettes in England so eventually no one can – the New Zealand model

    Hong Kong

    Nope | Big Lychee, Various Sectors – vintage curation by Hemlock

    Japan

    Japan’s toddler superstar: the baby bringing hope to a ghost village | Financial Times

    Luxury

    China’s ‘Chanel’? Chinese Beauty Brand Florasis Is Raising Eyebrows on Weibo | What’s on Weibo – this might find ridiculous, but a mix of Chinese guo chao and targeting the global south’s wealthy could see it happen. Whether or not the products are actually comparable is a whole other question

    Inside Hatton Garden’s turbo-charged watch market – The Face

    Prada is designing Nasa spacesuits. Will luxury customers wear them next? | Vogue Business – if nothing else it puts Prada’s innovation credentials out there which are a key part of the brand’s apparel story

    Marketing

    Gooding: Feminist brands need to be conscious and proactive – The Media Leader

    The power of awe – The Media Leader

    How VMLY&R Created a Jennifer Lopez AI for Virgin Voyages | LBBOnline – AI Jenni from the blockchain (sorry I couldn’t resist)

    AI Coming to White Castle Drive-Thrus With Help From SoundHound, Samsung

    Coca-Cola credits ‘world class marketing’ as it ups growth forecast – credits work on lowering entry points through price-pack architecture and digitised B2B platforms after raising organic revenue forecast for 2023

    Media

    Dentsu warns brands over tech ‘battling’ to increase ad revenue – The Media LeaderGlobal media buyer Dentsu’s forward-looking report said there had been an “explosion of the ad-supported segment” and that next year will see “an intensification of competition between ad platforms” with more lookalike apps, data partnership possibilities, premium subscriptions and a further proliferation of advertising formats and offerings. “Brands will have to balance these opportunities with risks to alienate audiences”, the report said. Especially given the fact digital adspend is forecast to hit $450.6bn in 2024, but its year-on-year growth is slowing to 6.2%. This means tech platforms are “battling” to increase their advertising revenue by launching new formats and carrying more placements. Some examples the report highlighted included: developments in adoption of search advertising on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the rise of retail media on commerce sites, ticketing platforms and delivery apps, forecasted “spectacular growth” in advertising on connected TV (CTV), advertising video on-demand players launching new formats like YouTube’s unskippable 30-second ads, and major streaming players (and Amazon’s Audible) trialling or launching ad-supported plans

    Security

    The Gambling Industry in Ukraine: Financial and National Security Threats | Royal United Services Institute

    Gulnara Karimova Accused of Running Criminal Organization in New Swiss Indictment – The DiplomatSwiss federal prosecutors filed an indictment against Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s first president Islam Karimov, and an unnamed former general director of the Uzbek subsidiary of a Russian telecommunications company for alleged involvement in a criminal organization, money laundering, bribe taking, and forgery. The charges extend over a period of time running from 2005 to 2013 and mark the latest expansion and extension of criminal proceedings against Karimova and her associates. Karimova, once envisioned as a possible successor to her father, lived large and fell hard.

    S Korean spy agency warns shipbuilders of N Korean hacking attempts — Radio Free Asia

    Taiwan

    The Big Lie About Taiwan – The Atlantic – TL;DR – Taiwan is not China

    Technology

    Power drives SK Telecom to AI pyramid strategy | EE News EuropeThe AI Infrastructure plan consists of data centre, AI semiconductor, and multiple large language models (LLM) will serve as a technology platform. This will introduce energy-saving technologies including immersion cooling system and hydrogen fuel cells, and expand into the AI hosting business that generates higher margins by bundling these energy-saving solutions with Sapeon’s neural processing unit (NPU) and SK Hynix’s high bandwidth memory (HBM). – I am surprised that we haven’t seen similar ventures from Oracle, IBM and Fujitsu so far

    Intel begins EUV lithography of ‘Intel 4’ process in Ireland | EE News Europe

    Intel plans to IPO its FPGA business | EE Newechs Europe

    Apple reportedly absorbs rising costs for making iPhone 15 in India | DigiTimes

    Web of no web

    Apple Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Wonders Why anyone Needs Apple Vision Pro and more – Patently Apple – where’s the compelling app? It might be in the enterprise, like aircraft servicing