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.

Protect Hong Kong heritage + more

Officials in unprecedented move to protect Hong Kong’s heritage by creating new system to save modern buildings from developers’ wrecking ball | South China Morning Post – potentially big move, it would be interesting to see how this goes down with the developers. Protect Hong Kong heritage as a concept has picked up momentum over past few years. A point of inflection was the demolition of Queen’s Pier in 2007 as part of land reclamation work in Central. The bigger issue is that the support to protect Hong Kong heritage would be seen by the mainland authorities as an inherently political movement looking to cling to old colonial ways. More on Hong Kong here.

Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club upended the shaving industry — then conglomerates snapped them up – Axios – former Treasury secretary Larry Summers quotes on Twitter were very interesting. They reflect on a challenge that European tech start ups have faced for decades: “This article is as vivid an example as I have seen of the need for an overhaul of US antitrust. If this can be happening in shaving industry, problems may be pervasive even outside technology. The interesting question is how much of the problem is failed enforcement of existing law and how much is that existing law needs to be altered. I suspect the former. You do not have to have a broad new theory of antitrust to be appalled by these developments. They look terrible for consumer welfare.”

Google may decide to charge for Google My Business listings – Search Engine Land – you have to wonder about this. Google for years beat up Yahoo!, Kelkoo etc over paid inclusion

Analysis: Edelman ‘Undaunted’ Amid Perfect Storm | Holmes Report – interesting read, if a rather naive view of what ad agencies do now

Planning tool: 100 Ideas On Tiny Budgets – Planning Dirty – something that I helped out on. Handy for planners (Google Slides)

A Mysterious Hacker Group Is On a Supply Chain Hijacking Spree | WIRED – surprised that this hasn’t happened more often

Opinion | Nike Told Me to Dream Crazy, Until I Wanted a Baby – The New York Times – of course Nike hates women, look at their manufacturing practices, this sponsorship story should be no surprise as it fits into a wider narrative. But they love female consumers who buy Nike

A History of Competition: The Impact of Antitrust on Hong Kong’s Telecommunications Markets | Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal – I’ve only got part way through this but interesting reading for anyone working on clients in the Hong Kong mobile provider market (PDF)

K-pop’s rise in China is fueling fears of a masculinity crisis | Quartz – I suspect that a lot of this is government agenda driven. A bit like the notion of ‘leftover women’. ‘Masculine’ hiphop culture also poses a problem

SoundCloud » Share new music on SoundCloud directly to Instagram Stories – this makes a lot of sense when you think about how music marketing has become much more data centric and meme driven. Old Town Road: The Best Entertainment Case Study of 2019 Lil Nas X being the poster child of this

May 17, 2019
Cathay ticketing error + more things

Cathay ticketing error … again: first-class fares at tenth of original price – Is there problems in Cathay’s Pacific backend algorithm that is causing the Cathay ticketing error? This is the second time that a Cathay ticketing error has happened recently. More related posts here.

NGT48 pop idol Maho Yamaguchi’s apology for home assault sparks outrage at Japanese victim-blaming | South China Morning Post – A Japanese girl group pop star gets assaulted in her own home by a crazed fan. She is then made to apologise by her management company for the whole incident. So reading between the lines management are likely to be scum bags, possibility connected to the criminal underworld, if not a yakuza family. The yakuza historically have had strong links to the entertainment industry. Periodically there is a scandal where photos of entertainers mingling with Yakuza appear in the media

2019 Predictions | The Daily | Gartner L2 – no surprise on the Amazon predictions. Amazon has little incentive to buy legacy retailers as its advantages comes from the lack of legacy infrastructure and people. Amazon’s increase in value makes sense due to its cloud computing market share, and increase in share of basket and performance advertising.

Qualcomm CEO defends chip licensing business in FTC trial – CNET – Qualcomm’s “no license, no chips” policy is at the heart of the FTC’s case against Qualcomm, which lawyers are arguing before Judge Lucy Koh in US District Court in San Jose this month. Mollenkopf was among the witnesses who testified on Friday. Under the policy, companies must license Qualcomm’s patents before it will sell them chips. Qualcomm customers, such as Apple, don’t like that one bit.

Hong Kong-based online travel agent Zuji, now without a licence, unable to operate | South China Morning Post – just wow, I remember when Zuji was a hot start-up. Like European countries Hong Kong startups have challenges when they are up against competitors with scale.

January 15, 2019
Chinese space program & things that caught my eye this week
This week saw a huge leap forward for Chinese space exploration and the Chinese space program. China landed a space ship on the far side of the moon and is currently exploring it. The Chang’e 4 space ship is named after a Chinese goddess who reputedly lives on the moon. It carried the Jade Rabbit 2 rover. Chang’e was kept company on the moon by her pet jade rabbit.

This is a huge achievement. It has been fifty years this August since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. NASA has plans for its Saturn rockets, but the actual knowledge to build that size of rocket is being relearned through its SLS programme. NASA engineers now marvel how 1960s era welders managed to manually create perfect long welds in the rocket motors with lost craftsmanship.

Secondly there is the context of the Chang’e project. China builds programmes like the Chinese space program by thinking in terms of decades. It will be doing invaluable research and the space programme may spur Chinese innovation just like what happened in the US during the 1950s and 60s. You couldn’t have had Silicon Valley or many household goods without space programme knowhow. The Chinese would be much more open to harvesting resources from the moon and beyond. In the same way that the Apollo programme was a part of the cold war, Chang’e is part of a wider political context. Premier Xi is focused on China’s rejuvenation that includes
- Ethnic based national(ist) pride. China’s Han ethnicity makes up over 90 per cent of the population. The Chinese government recognises 50 different ethnicities in the country
- Pride in Chinese culture and elimination of inferior western culture in China
- Technological supremacy
- Social progress
- Supremacy in hard and soft power
So it was with a certain amount of irony that the Chinese space program published a post on Weibo quoting Pink Floyd’s Breathe from Dark Side of The Moon album.

Pepsi tried to tap into the space age excitement with its early entry into the pantheon of this years adverts celebrating Chinese New Year. This is a seven minute long film that’s part of an integrated marketing campaign around the theme of ‘Bring Happiness Home: Reach for the Stars’

Talking of Chinese New Year adverts, Singtel is another one who is rolling out their campaign a bit earlier than most other brands this year. It follows on from last years advert that focused on the family reunion dinner. You can see the best of last year’s Chinese New Year adverts here

This afternoon I have been listening to the this glorious homage to 1980s R&B. Lizzo’s Juice is a great pastiche of TV tropes together with a great song. I discovered it via Matt Muir’s Web Curios. Whilst you’re listening to the song go over and sign up for his weekly newsletter right now. (Don’t worry I’ll here until you come back).

This week has been CES in Las Vegas, which explains why the magazine type stories in news programmes have been about gizmos or robots. I found the show pretty disappointing this year. The biggest news was more of a business story. Apple has managed to get iTunes movie and TV series store on Samsung TVs. In addition several brands signed up to support Apple’s Air Play standard for video and HomeKit standard for your internet of things. Quite what all this means for Apple TV sales is another thing. What I found far more interesting was exploring the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame – IEEE Spectrum. Going through it is instructive. Zojirushi’s Micom Electric Rice Cooker from 1983 brought early artificial intelligence into the home with its use of fuzzy logic to cook rice to perfection. Fuzzy logic then went into image stabilisation and auto focus on cameras and camcorders. Fuzzy logic sold on the benefits and concealed the technology from western consumers. Machine learning techniques are likely to become common in a similar way rather than the current hype. I still lust after the Wadia Digital 170i Transport. 46 years after launching the Technics SL-1200 turntable, they rolled out the SL-1200 Mk VII. This is particularly interesting as they originally stopped production a decade ago and scrapped the tooling. At the time, there wasn’t considered to be enough interest to keep production going in Osaka.
January 12, 2019
Zodiac signs perils

We’re less than a month away from the year of the pig on February 5, 2018. Marketers need to be cautious using Chinese zodiac signs.

Chinese new year is a time of gifting. It may be red envelopes with cash, Christmas style gifts (like a new iPhone), or zodiac animal themed gifts. Shops often gift if you buy above a certain amount. I bought a sweatshirt in Decathalon and was given a Mickey Mouse towel free to celebrate the year of the rat.

If you have a premium bank account you might be given a zodiac ornament of some type. Coffee shops like Pacific Coffee and Starbucks get in on the act with zodiac animal themed merchandise and gift cards. Zodiac signs are big business.

Of all the zodiac signs, the pig presents some unique challenges for marketers.

On one hand it can be seen as a kawaii or cute looking creature, like the Hong Kong cartoon character McDull. A pig is also seen as gluttonous and fat. Chinese and other east Asian cultures are not shy about saying if someone is fat. This means that consumers can more be sensitive about their body image.

Starbucks Hong Kong seems to have upset a small but significant number people who have shared their dislike on Facebook.

They didn’t want a pig faced coffee tumbler because of what it implied about them whilst they used it.

Hong Kong clothing brand Giordano have played with the concept of the pig in their promotions. Again the association between this design on clothing and the wearer could be an interesting one. The idea of a fat year, meaning a prosperous year maybe lost in translation for some Hong Kongers.

The key takeout for brands should be to practice critical thinking. They need to go beyond the cute design and repetition of last years gift with a different animal design. Think about the context and interaction of the end user with the product. What does the symbolism say about them? More related content here.

January 6, 2019
Facebook secret rulebook + more things

Inside Facebook Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech – The New York Times – Moderators express frustration at rules they say don’t always make sense and sometimes require them to leave up posts they fear could lead to violence. “You feel like you killed someone by not acting,” one said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement. – the Facebook secret rulebook for global free speech raises as much questions as it provides answers and gives Facebook dangerous extra governmental powers. More Facebook related content here.

Amazon Alexa crashes after Christmas Day overload | The Irish Times – The crash, at about 10am Irish time, prompted Amazon customers to complain about not being able to play festive songs, turn on their living room lights or get cooking instructions for Christmas dinner. – reminds me of working on the Cellnet / O2 Genie WAP portal that did a similar thing on Christmas day. And the technicians from Logica (now part of CGI) who supported it all having to roll back the Oracle database underpinning many of the systems including email.

Silence has been golden for Jardine Matheson | Financial Times – today’s Jardines is primarily Sir Henry’s creation. It is an intensely conservative institution that does not give a fig for modernity or the views of outside shareholders, and is overseen by an all-male, family infused board of directors. It is equally a daring merchant adventurer with plenty of grit. – Jardines were more averse to the risk that the 1997 handover of Hong Kong represented and have built up businesses in other countries unlike their peer Swire

Amazon Alexa Shopping Tripled as Bose, Nerf Topped Holiday Sales | Fortune – Amazon on Wednesday said that the number of voice-activated orders placed via its virtual personal assistant Alexa were three times greater during the 2018 holiday season than they were in the last year – is this proportionate to the increase in Alexa powered devices, this comparison is important in order to understand the ramifications of the growth pattern

Huawei Veterans Selling AI to Banks Shape China’s Newest Unicorn – Bloomberg – 4Paradigm looks as if it could get crushed by Huawei’s wolf culture. The only thing holding it back is the lack of trust in the associatedHuawei name abroad and concerns about letting Chinese software manage the most sensitive data

December 29, 2018