Ged Carroll

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.

  • Munich migration + other news

    Munich Windows migration

    And we return to Munich migration back to Windows – it’s going to cost what now?! €100m! • The Register – interesting to see this war over Munich public sector computing still being fought in the background by Microsoft two decades later. I remember working at Edelman when its open source competitive de-positioning work was just taking off. I had to write a two page document explaining what open source was. Munich was seen as one of the key battle grounds back then 

    Design

    Who Is Making Amazon Echo? (1) – Nikkei Technology Online – interesting teardown data and insights into manufacturing

    Legal

    Trump urges Justice Department to ‘act’ on Comey, suggests Huma Abedin should face jail time – The Washington Post – interesting poor information security – saving classified passwords in her Yahoo! account. More related content here.

    Lifehacks

    Boolean Query Writing: Everything You Need to Know | Brandwatch – I’ve been using Boolean for years, but many people haven’t come across it. Brandwatch have done a great guide

    Marketing

    ASA bans Captain Morgan Snapchat lens as it questions efficacy of app’s age verification policy | The Drum – surprising for a company that should know the Portman rules inside out

    Media

    BBC StoryWorks unveils new tool which measures impact of branded content | Marketing Interactive – “In addition, the product showed that the creative execution succeeded in driving a clear uplift in subconscious association between Huawei and key brand attributes such as being innovative, inspiring, environmentally responsible, and high quality. Following exposure, audiences also had a high desire to engage with the Huawei brand; brand awareness rose by 216%, brand association went up by 23% and purchase intent increased by 19%”

    Online

    How the Chinese vs Western battle of internet giants will unfold | Analysis | Campaign Asia – over the next 12 months the Western big three will find themselves head to head with the Chinese internet giants, across ecommerce, brand partnerships and most notably AI. What’s not certain is who will come out on top and whether BAT can adapt to succeed in a different environment- at least in non-Chinese Asian markets

    Security

    Massive Intel Vulnerabilities Just Landed — And Every PC User On The Planet May Need To Update – I can see the conspiracy theories starting about how this is a ‘feature’ requested by the deep state / military intelligence industrial complex – and they might be true

    Web of no web

    Maps | Mapbox – for building navigation services including turn by turn directions

  • Facebook API + more news

    Facebook Is Shutting Down Its API That Marketers Lean on for Research – Adweek – big for proprietary agency tools, social media tools and ad platforms that rely the Facebook API – it shows how vulnerable the ad tech sector is

    Spicing up Hong Kong’s Café scene | Marketing Interactive – great write-up of Café de Coral

    China’s central bank believes bitcoin will die | Quartz – I am more on the bearish side along with the Bank of China. A key function of bitcoin for China was aiding capital flight out of the country

    Unilever moves global comms planning to Mindshare from PHD | Media | Campaign Asia – huge win for Mindshare and a move away at the global level between planning guidance and media buying. It would be analogous to investment managers to go back to taking advice from sell-side analysts. I guess part of the problem is trying to get global guidance to be implemented at a country level

    Flotogram v1.1 Preview on Vimeo – interesting app that blurs the boundaries between AR and photography

    Google’s AI Built its own AI That Outperforms Any Made by Humans – one thing humans jump to is the implications of a more general purpose rather than narrow focus machine learning tool

    China’s Tariff Cuts Won’t Hurt Daigou Business For Now | Jing Daily  – China plans to reduce tariffs on 187 consumer goods, including cosmetics, apparel, health supplements, food, and pharmaceuticals. The new policy will go into effect on December 1. The average tax rate will drop to 7.7 percent from 17.3 percent.

    China’s Toutiao Tried to Buy Reddit — The Information – One reason was general skittishness among Reddit’s investors about selling to a Chinese internet company whose user and revenue numbers were tough to assess – and there is the burn

    Chinese Smartphone Maker Xiaomi Eyes 2018 Stock Market Listing — The Information – interesting move given Xiaomi’s challenges with other Chinese smartphone companies

    Futuristic Warfare Arena Ghost in the Shell: Arise Stealth Hounds – VR ZONE SHINJUKU – I’d love to have a go at this

    Are we witnessing the end of the jumbo jet? | Quartz – interesting mix of game theory and economics involved

    Apple: Chinese Buying Huawei et. al. but Sticking with iPhone, Says Morgan Stanley – Barron’s – The Jigaung data also highlights that in the 4 weeks ending October 22nd, more “switchers” left their Chinese branded smartphone for an iPhone than iPhone users left for a Chinese branded smartphone, across all local vendors. In fact, Apple’s net switching rate, or the net amount of switchers gained/lost as a percentage of all brand switchers increased to 7.6% in the latest 4 week period, up from 6.7% in the prior 4 week period ending October 8th. Comparatively, Vivo was the only Chinese smartphone vendor to gain “net switchers”, albeit at a significantly lower rate. We expect this trend to only accelerate as future data sets will include the period after the iPhone X first began shipping.

    Amazon (AMZN) is so good at keeping prices low, it’s changed how economists think about inflation — Quartz

  • Out and about: Chasing the Dragon

    October has been amazing month of cinema releases for me. The last I am going to write about is Chasing The Dragon. Hong Kong cinema is considered to be in its death throws. There are small independent films of course, but its far from its hey day with production houses known around the world like Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest or Media Asia.

    Mainland productions have the money and many technical experts and directors now work across the border. Korea has come on in leaps and bounds taking up the overseas arthouse audience.

    There aren’t many new stars coming through, even in Chasing the Dragon; character actors and main stars are largely industry veterans since the 1990s. However, Chasing the Dragon gives me some hope for the Hong Kong film. Its an unashamedly Hong Kong film focusing on the economic boom of the 1960s and mid-1970s. It is a technical tour-de-force. Much of the Hong Kong shown in the film from old Wan Chai to the Kowloon walled city only exist in fading photographs. So much of it was green screened in instead.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adj5dtSKF8U

    It is probably too local for a mainland audience to fully appreciate the nuances and historical references. It shows a Hong Kong on the ascendancy, rather than suffering under a century of shame. It also holds up an unflinching view of British colonialism with its rampant individual corruption.

    A modern British audience would have very little idea of how serving British police officers at all levels and government officials were central cogs in the corruption. Eventually the stench got to much when chief superintendent Peter Godber was found to have over $600,000 US stashed away.

    Andy Lau plays ‘Lee Rock’ a clear analogue of Lui Mo Lok (呂慕樂) a corrupt policeman known as the The Five-Hundred-Million-Dollar Inspector by Hong Kong people. In some respects one can view Chasing The Dragon as a reboot of the 1991 film Lee Rock II where Lau played the same character through the same time period. Chasing the Dragon adds verve, detail and taunt storytelling to the mix.

    The film is being shown at the Odeon in Panton Street.

     

  • iPhone X launch + more things

    iPhone X launch

    In terms of the news agenda, the iPhone X launch dominated the news. I wrote about it here and here.  This image from the Chinese internet summed everything about the iPhone X launch up for me.

    Chinese reaction to iPhone X

    We’re in a place of innovation stuckness at the moment – we’re celebrating incremental improvements in user experiences on smartphones as transformational, they aren’t. This is a category challenge, not a vendor-specific one. Even infrastructure and component vendor Qualcomm is struggling to envision ways to move things on.

    I have been mostly listening to this playlist from this years Love International Festival

    And FIP Radio

    Japanese group meforyouforme combining traditional Japanese culture and dance with modern tap dancing FTW


    Hong Kong stars Donnie Yen and Andy Lau go back to the 1970s with Chasing the Dragon – a thriller based on real characters involved in drug smuggling and organised crime in the turbulent go-go economic boom of Hong Kong – Lee Rock (Lui Lok) was a corrupt policeman nicknamed 500 million dollar Inspector, who avoided corruption charges by moving to Canada and then Hong Kong. Crippled (or Limpy) Ho was a triad called Ng Sek-ho who rivalled the 14K triad group.  It is against the backdrop of the post-1967 riots economic boom which saw Hong Kong blow up in manufacturing and financial services. This brought rich pickings in corruption which led to the formation of the ICAC – the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

  • Marketers: you are not a goldfish and neither is anyone else

    I have grown tired of a ridiculous statistic being used so frequently that it becomes marketing truth. It’s regurgitated in articles, blog posts, social media and presentations. The problem with it is that affects the way marketers view the world and conduct both planning and strategy. The picture below is a goldfish, his name is Diego. If you’ve managed to read this you aren’t Diego.

    Diego

    I realise that sounds a little dramatic, but check out this piece by Mark Jackson, who leads the Hong Kong and Shenzhen offices of Racepoint Global. It’s a good piece on the different elements that represent a good story (predominantly within a PR setting). And it is right that attention in a fragmented media eco-system will be contested more fiercely. But it starts with:

    Over the course of the last 20 years, the average attention span has fallen to around eight seconds; a goldfish has an attention span of nine! The challenge for companies – established and new – is to figure out how to get even a small slice of that attention span when so many other companies are competing for it.

    Mark’s piece is just the latest of a long line of marketing ‘thought leadership’ pieces that repeat this as gospel. The problem is this ‘truth’ is bollocks.

    It fails the common sense test. Given that binge watching of shows like Game of Thrones or sports matches is commonplace, book sales are still happening, they would have to be balanced out with millisecond experiences for this 8-second value to make any sense as an average. The goldfish claim is like something out of a vintage Brass Eye episode.

    To quote DJ Neil ‘Doctor’ Fox:

    Now that is a scientific fact! There’s no real evidence for it; but it is scientific fact

    Let’s say your common sense gets the better of your desire for a pithy soundbite and you decide to delve into the goldfish claim a bit deeper.  If one took a little bit of time to Google around it would become apparent that the goldfish ‘fact’ is dubious. It originally came from research commissioned by Microsoft’s Advertising arm ‘How does digital affect Canadian attention spans?‘. The original link to the research now defaults to the home page of Microsoft Advertising. Once you start digging into it, the goldfish wasn’t actually part of the research, but was supporting desk research and thats when its provenance gets murky.

    PolicyViz in a 2016 blog post The Attention Span Statistic Fallacy called it out and provided links to the research that they did into the the goldfish ‘fact’ in 2016 – go over and check their article out. The BBC did similar detective work a year later and even went and asked an expert:

    “I don’t think that’s true at all,” says Dr Gemma Briggs, a psychology lecturer at the Open University.

    “Simply because I don’t think that that’s something that psychologists or people interested in attention would try and measure and quantify in that way.”

    She studies attention in drivers and witnesses to crime and says the idea of an “average attention span” is pretty meaningless. “It’s very much task-dependent. How much attention we apply to a task will vary depending on what the task demand is.”

    There are some studies out there that look at specific tasks, like listening to a lecture.

    But the idea that there’s a typical length of time for which people can pay attention to even that one task has also been debunked.

    “How we apply our attention to different tasks depends very much about what the individual brings to that situation,” explains Dr Briggs.

    “We’ve got a wealth of information in our heads about what normally happens in given situations, what we can expect. And those expectations and our experience directly mould what we see and how we process information in any given time.”

    But don’t feel too bad, publications like Time and the Daily Telegraph were punked by this story back in 2015. The BBC use the ‘fact’ back in 2002, but don’t cite the source.  Fake news doesn’t just win elections, it also makes a fool of marketers.

    This whole thing feels like some marketer (or PR) did as poor a job as many journalists in terms of sourcing claims and this ‘truth’ gradually became reinforcing. Let’s start taking the goldfish out of marketing.

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