Category: hong kong | 香港 | 홍콩 | 香港

哈囉 – here you’ll find posts related to Hong Kong. That includes the territory, the culture, business, creativity and history. I lived and travelled to Hong Kong a number of times, so sometimes the content can be quite random.

In addition, I have long loved Cantonese culture and cuisine, so these might make more appearances on this category. I am saddened by the decline in the film and music production sectors.

I tend to avoid discussing local politics, and the external influence of China’s interference in said politics beyond how it relates to business and consumer behaviour in its broadest context.

Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Apple Daily launched a new ad format that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in branding as well as Hong Kong.

If there are subjects that you think would fit with this category of the blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

Eric Vietnam Sadler + more things

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

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

February 5, 2020
Yellow economic cycle

The yellow economic cycle has manifested itself as a positive boycott.

The anti ELAB protest movement in Hong Kong exposed the fracture lines between pro-Beijing (blue) and pro-Hong Kong sides (yellow). Some of Hong Kong business community came out and criticised the protestors. This resulted in consumers boycotting their business.

Maxim’s

The classic example of this was when Annie Wu criticised Hong Kong protestors. Wu’s father James co-founded Maxim’s Caterers Limited. Maxim’s is has a wide range of restaurants for all budgets. It also owns bakeries, provides catering for universities and businesses. Maxim’s even has a joint venture with Starbucks. Starbucks coffee shops in Hong Kong and southern China are run by this joint venture called Coffee Concepts.

Mainland businesses, especially Chinese state-owned enterprises like China Mobile and Bank of China were defaced by protestors. McDonalds restaurants in Hong Kong and China are majority owned by CITIC – a Chinese state-owned investment company.

Garden Bakery

Garden Bakery’s Life bread ended up becoming a yellow brand by default when it was criticised by members of the Hong Kong Police. Hong Kong protestors rallied around and even brought along loaves to demonstrations.

#AnywhereButChina Challenge

Consumers bought everyday products that weren’t made in China and shared the product and its country of origin online. This becomes quite tricky as products from western brands like Wrigley chewing gum or pair of Nike sneakers could be made in China.

It’s particularly interesting as it raises questions about long term perception of quality. Back before the protests when I was living in Hong Kong LG and Samsung smartphones being sold advertised with pride that they were made in Korea. It was a similar story with high-end Sony TV sets. #AnywhereButChina channels China’s political and quality related issues in one meme.

Solidarity with their customers

Many small businesses in Hong Kong started to do what they could for their young customers. And the customers paid them back with loyalty. By trying spend their money only in yellow businesses and avoid blue ones by creating a yellow economic cycle.

Online assets were created to point customers in the right direction. Here is one of the posters that have been circulating on Twitter. The use of QRcodes is much more common in east Asia than Europe. The code takes you through to a Google Maps overlay of Hong Kong featuring Yellow businesses which would be preferable to shop and eat at. Green businesses which are preferable to blue businesses. Blue businesses will be avoided wherever possible.

Reviews of yellow shops and restaurants on review sites like Open Rice have been poisoned by pro-government supporters placing bad reviews and protestors piling in to defend their yellow economic circle members. At its worst, even the most hardened Wikipedia editor would be daunted by the pitched battles going on.

January 28, 2020
Convenience store + more things

CivicScience | Convenience Store Food Taking Aim at Fast Food – god this brings back memories of fishballs and curry sauce in the 7-Eleven convenience store common in Hong Kong. More stories on retailing here

7-Eleven convenience store in Tung Chung (Lantau Island) MTR station circa 2006

TBWA HK offers service pack to help brands through “financial winter” | Advertising | Campaign Asia – sales over brand building. More on this later

What the Heck Does Luxury Mean Now? | GQ – a new and enticing definition of the word emerged with flawless-diamond clarity: big European houses hired a swath of truly cool designers who rewrote the rules of exclusivity and quality, breaking brands free from its tiresome cliches about who and what was indulgent, beautiful, and elegant. Figures like A$AP Rocky and Frank Ocean became the new doyennes of style and taste; Alessandro Michele, Virgil Abloh, and Kim Jones became worldwide superstars; and Supreme convinced a new generation that you could make inexpensive stuff with the rigorous sensibility of a fashion house. Things that were once secret became matters of global pop-cultural importance—a lot of people now follow the haute couture and menswear shows like others follow football

PopSockets, Sonos, and Tile Ask Congress to Rein in Big Tech | WIRED – it wasn’t until PopSockets agreed to spend $2 million on retail marketing that Amazon finally clamped down on the fakes and knockoffs. Amazon denies this, and says that worked “with PopSockets to address our shared concerns about counterfeit.”But there were still other problems: Barnett says Amazon frequently lowered the price of PopSockets products, and then expected his company to make up the difference—even though that was never part of their contract. Amazon would “dress up requests as demands, using language that a parent uses with a child, or more generally, that someone in a position of power uses with someone of inferior power,” Barnett wrote in testimony sent to Congress. Am I shocked that Amazon is playing hard ball in the way that everyone from Tesco to Wal-Mart have done? No. But the problem isn’t the tactics per se, but the scale at which Amazon operates. Also Tesco and Wal-Mart might try and tear your face off with look-a-like private label products, but they won’t intentionally cross the line into selling counterfeit products

Twitter picks 2019’s most creative brand campaigns – Some interesting tactics, all of which look like PR and are run of the mill in nature

How China’s state-owned enterprises milk listed subsidiaries – Nikkei Asian Review – no surprise in this report but nice to see it explicitly stated

Facebook apologises after Xi Jinping name translated as an obscenity – While China does not allow its citizens to access Facebook freely, the country is the company’s largest source of revenue after the US. Facebook is setting up an engineering team at its Asia-Pacific office in Singapore to focus on the lucrative Chinese advertising market, Reuters reported this month.

How Britain’s big retailers missed their online moment – most traditional retailers still operated separate pools of stock, often in different warehouses, for stores and online. This really surprised me

Old Masters, New Clothes: Highsnobiety’s Latest Streetwear Collab | Sotheby’s – STFU – this is just taking the michael. Years from now, I might look back on this as the peak of the current premium streetwear bubble

January 23, 2020
Plastic flowers + more things

Hong Kong’s Industrial History : How Plastic Flowers Built A Global Metropolis – In the years after World War II, buying a bunch of plastic flowers was trendy, not tacky, and Li Ka-shing built their novelty into a business empire that now spans the globe – the Hong Kong manufacturing boom went on until the opening up of China. At this time Hong Kong was a more equitable society. The business entrepreneurs either pushed into China or deindustrialised and became Hong Kong property developers. As for plastic flowers, you often see them around you and don’t realise what they are. More on Hong Kong here

Airline vlogger faces backlash, including a death threat, for his negative review of Singapore Airlines – TODAYonline – Singapore gets its unofficial 50 cent army

The durable history of Casio’s durable G-Shock watch – the company gets asked all the time about how it might create a smartwatch that lives up to users’ rugged expectations for its storied brand, but that any such product would have to be a G-Shock first. “I believe you can rest assured that it will be uniquely G-Shock in its form factor, unlike anything we have seen before.” If Casio carries its tradition forward, you’ll be able to read all about it—right on the face of the watch itself

Inside the Feds’ Battle Against Huawei | WIRED – interesting that it misses out on past behaviours of concern such as the T-Mobile robot arm technology theft and the African Union system infiltration (paywall)

No Free Lunch, but almost: what DoorDash actually pays, after expense — #PayUp – uberization of workers in action

EU’s former ambassador to South Korea suspect in China spy probe | South China Morning Post – shit meet fan

Facebook does not understand the marketplace of ideas | Financial Times – The first critical flaw in Mr Zuckerberg’s thinking is the idea that the marketplace for goods is efficient without regulation. Much of the thrust of economics over the past half century has been to understand what regulations are needed to ensure that markets work. We have tort laws that ensure accountability if someone is injured and we don’t allow companies to pollute willy-nilly. We have fraud and advertising laws to protect consumers against deceptions — recognising that such laws circumscribe what individuals may say and publish – well worth reading the rest of the article (paywall)

Fun With Charts: A decade of Apple growth – Six Colors – I wonder if these values were normalised to compare like with like?

Marine Commandant: ‘The Farther You Back Away From China, They Will Move Toward You’ « Breaking Defense – take the fight to them rather than the other way around

How Loro Piana serves ‘nomadic elite’ with €7,000 cashmere coats | Financial Times – A recent report from consultants Bain & Co argued that new growth in the luxury goods industry was going to be driven by brands that go beyond just offering shoppers a product and were able to also provide a mixture of new experiences and ideas, and even provoke emotions

LinkedIn – Louis Vuitton menswear fall/winter 2020 lifestream – its odd to see a YouTube style lifestream on LinkedIn. Engagement seems to be relatively low given Louis Vuitton’s million-plus followers

A new way to find clothes, shoes and more on Search – bringing back Froogle, I suspect this is to counteract Amazon in product search and advertising

Betfred owners make millions from company treating gambling addicts | The Guardian – now that’s vertical integration

New Tesla registrations in California nearly halve in fourth quarter: data – Reuters – which tells you something about the value proposition of Tesla

Jeff Staple On How Streetwear Set The Tone For Today’s Mainstream—And What To Expect Next – now, a single post can disrupt everything. A single verse from the right musician can kill off an entire brand. So the velocity at which retailers must adapt had to catch up. They could no longer wait for the Vogue “September Issue” or New York Fashion Week to see what was hot. It was blatantly obvious down to the exact number of “likes.”

Chow Tai Fook, Sa Sa closures deepen Hong Kong retail crisis | Campaign Asia – this is about deflating an overinflated retail and real estate economy. Its popularity was from the prevalence of adulterated products in China and the lack of sales tax in Hong Kong. Chow Tai Fook failed to look at international expansion and has no one to blame but its board of directors

January 19, 2020
Lovemarks
A decade and a half ago Kevin Roberts wrote his book Lovemarks. In reality, Roberts reiterated the factors needed for a successful (consumer) brand. Though much of it would benefit a business-to-business brand as well. Indeed someone like Snap-On are are a great example of this.

I took the piss out of Roberts book after I read it. It tried to rebrand branding by repeating the same tools that branding uses anyway. Roberts’ Saatchi & Saatchi famously parleyed Lovemarks ‘thought leadership into winning the JC Penney advertising account.

I still think that it was money for old rope. But in retrospect, I view it also as plea to make branding great again; in the face of the nascent performance-only digital marketing that was gaining momentum.

Moving forward to 2019 and brand marketing is a dark place. Digital now accounts for 70 per cent of media spend in the UK. God knows advertising now needs a move back to craft as advocated to Roberts back then.

One thing that Roberts failed to grasp in his book is often that consumers put the ‘value’ or love in a brand. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the Apple fan boy. Being under attack by the IT department and peers did. I remember whilst at college advocating Macs to other students and get them up and running on (secondhand) machines that they bought. Or subscribing to Guy Kawasaki’s Apple ‘EvangeLIST’ and Small Dog Electronics ‘Kibble and Bytes’ email newsletters – which helped me realise:
- There were other people like me out there
- I had rational ammunition to deal with opponents
- Technical advice to exist in a Windows world
A more recent example of this is the outpouring of support for Garden Bakery in Hong Kong. Garden Life bread is like Wonder bread in the US, Brennan’s bread in Ireland or Warburtons in the UK.

During the stand-off at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. A policeman was quoted as saying that:

Protestors were irresponsible, brainless rubbish that he looked down upon. They eat ‘cold bread’ that’s usually eaten by poor old people while police go to Shenzhen for hotpot and beer

The cold bread that he was so dismissive of is Garden Life Bread – which is a well loved local brand. It is part of the hybrid cuisine of Hong Kong like Hong Kong style milk tea or Spam fritters for breakfast. It is usually eaten toasted with coconut jam, or peanut butter and condensed milk. You can often buy it as toast with scrambled egg on it.

The brand love that came back from Hong Kong protestors was part politics, part Hong Kong pride.

It inspired art

And even started to appear at protests

The challenge Garden Bakery have is an interesting one. It is a local champion brand, but also has presence in China and sells biscuits to overseas Chinese communities – who are split in their view of the Hong Kong protests. The Chinese government has substantial influence or even ownership of overseas Chinese language media outlets.
December 18, 2019