Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • Lotte + more news

    Lotte

    Lotte shareholders reject bid to remove Chairman Shin Dong-bin as family feud continues | The Japan Times – particularly interesting Chaebol feud given the unique Japan-Korea structure of Lotte. Lotte in Korea is huge in FMCG, entertainment, hospitality and retailing. Lotte has been driven out of China by the government. More Korea related posts here

    Business

    Changing of the Guard – Edelman – nice bit of shade by Richard Edelman on group margins and independent versus publicly listed holding groups

    Consumer behaviour

    Which Generation is Most Distracted by Their Phones? | Priceonomics

    Economics

    Silicon Valley Has Not Saved Us From a Productivity Slowdown – The New York Times – In mature economies, higher productivity typically is required for sustained increases in living standards, but the productivity numbers in the United States have been mediocre. Labor productivity has been growing at an average of only 1.3 percent annually since the start of 2005, compared with 2.8 percent annually in the preceding 10 years – Silicon Valley failed

    How to

    Tracking story changes with NewsBlur – as if NewsBlur’s learning technology and mobile clients aren’t enough, being able to track changes on stories is a powerful online journalism tool

    Ideas

    The People’s Net – Douglas Rushkoff’s original article on the dot com crash for Yahoo! Internet Life revisited for the current age of unicorns – Time to channel my inner Dave Winer – Joi Ito’s Web and Joichi Ito on the same theme

    The rise of American authoritarianism – Vox – scientific explanation behind Trump but also the pervasive fear of terrorism that has gripped the west

    Korea

    As 4th trial nears, Samsung asks judge: Make Apple stop talking about Korea | Ars Technica – it because perhaps they’ve mentioned the dishonest involvement in political slush funds as background to explain relative brand honesty and trustworthiness?

    Media

    Maxus launches mood-based planning tool | Marketing Interactive – interesting, particularly with political campaigns

    Welcome to the Era of Programmable Marketing – The AppNexus Impressionist – great primer on programmatic

    China’s new television rules ban homosexuality, drinking, and vengeance – Quartz – so that leaves dramas about patriotic war against the Japanese sans Nanking massacre and dramas about Mao sans cultural revolution

    Online

    Apple is Running BitTorrent Trackers in Cupertino – TorrentFreak – Using the file-sharing protocol, we launched a side-project called Murder and after a few days (and especially nights) of nervous full-site tinkering, it turned a 40 minute deploy process into one that lasted just 12 seconds – interesting article that touches on the enterprise use of BitTorrent. I suspect Apple’s use of trackers is IP enforcement related

    Retailing

    It’s Discounted, but Is It a Deal? How List Prices Lost Their Meaning | NYTimes.com – interesting article. I remember being shocked when I was first guided through Shenzhen’s markets where products originally destined for UK markets were sold to local consumers – with price reduction tags already attached.

    No surprise with Powa | Steven Prowse – almost as good as The Kernel’s legendary dissection of SpinVox

    So how much was Powa Technologies really worth? | FT Alphaville – clear gap between claimed value and real value even before administration (paywall)

    Adidas to operate 12,000 shops in China by 2020 in bid to tap growth in leisure wear, sports participation – interesting that they are going to 3,000 additional real-world stores rather than focus on e-tailing (paywall)

    Security

    Swarm of Tiny Pirate Transmitters Gets the Message out in Syria – could also reinvigorate pirate radio…

    The FBI Might Be Apple’s Best Ally In iPhone Encryption Flap | Fast Company – the government messed up and its backfired

    Software

    Microsoft canceled $8 billion Slack bid due to Bill Gates and Satya Nadella pushback – Business Insider – Qi Lu would have known Butterfield from Yahoo! ,both worked in the search business at the some time

    Why I’m breaking up with Slack | Quartz – interesting perspective

    Wireless

    In Search of the Amazingly Elusive Non-Smartphone Owner | Recode – not really surprising. I imagine the privacy aspects might encourage a small set to follow them

  • 6 things learned in a corporate environment

    The idea for 6 things learned  in a corporate environment came from having spent four months working day-in, day-out onsite at a large corporate.

      • The working environment is very different to an agency. My desk had to become much more portable. Since the space was all hot-desking with only team PAs assigned permanent desks.  This meant no reference charts stuck up or post-its around the monitor. Instead I boiled my process down to the laptop, a notebook that acted as my organisation memory and a day book that focused on my tasks. That was it, no further paper work
      • Many of the traditional spaces for memos weren’t available. So the back of a toilet door with its regularly updated notices was a lifeline to what was happening where. The coffee machine, once a traditional networking point was less useful as hot desking meant that your serendipitous meetings are random in nature. They often lack the depth of what you have an agency environment. These aren’t shallow people, its a level of impermanence built into the working space
      • The importance of mobile was brought home to me. Each desk space had a phone. You keyed in your number and a PIN and your direct dial number moved with you. But 20 per cent of these phones were out of action at any given time. This wasn’t a problem as people tended to use their mobile phones a lot. We used to talk a lot, over bridged conference call numbers. You would see people on calls pacing the floor listening and talking on their calls via headsets plugged into their mobile handsets. For the first few minutes it feels slightly weird
      • Sustainability and being environmentally friendly were more than having a prominent recycling bin. There is an application that reminded me any time I printed something just how bad I was for the environment. Being green was thoughtfully built into processes rather than bolted on as an afterthought
      • Admittedly, my time at Yahoo! was in a very different company and culture, but being a client is very much a team sport. You only have a limited amount of control, a lot of work has to be done by consensus and through a process. You feel like a very small cog in that process and every small gain was an appreciable win. Making this happen takes up an inordinate amount of time
      • It seemed to be timely when writing this post that I read this article Silicon Valley Has Not Saved Us From a Productivity Slowdown – The New York Times – new enterprise software like Workday is still as reassuring clunky as their forebears. Many of the same problems of collaboration and information sharing are still being resolved

    What other things learned in a corporate environment have you come across?

  • Facebook Canvas + more news

    Facebook Canvas

    Creating Facebook Canvas ads: step-by-step guide | The Digiterati – great step-by-step guide by Marie Page. Facebook Canvas. Facebook Canvas are full screen mobile adverts.

    Facebook Officially Launches Canvas Ads That Load Full-Screen Rich Media Pages In-App | TechCrunch – Instant Articles, meet Instant Ads. Facebook wants to give advertisers an immersive way to reach people without making them leave the social network

    Business

    Is Taking Yahoo Private An Option? | MediaPost – does it make sense taking Yahoo private? – Probably yes, getting the activist shareholders off the company’s back would have benefits. All be it ending up with a highly leveraged business. Does it make sense to have the current team do it? That’s a much trickier call to make, there is a strong argument to say no. But you would struggle to find a qualified management team who could step up to take it on

    Morgan Stanley Marks Down Its Stake In Palantir, Dropbox – Fortune – not terribly surprising clipping of the unicorns. Palantir seems to be a solution looking for a problem. This is a common issue with enterprise software. Given its defence connections and the need for extensive consultancy and software one has to wonder about breakout use cases

    Ideas

    The Information Revolution’s Dark Turn – Tech – GovExec.com – interesting article discussion on whether technology frees us or dominates us

    Kiddle – Ask Jeeves mark II? Will Kiddle finally be the people to get natural language search to work well consistently?

    Reactions: Not everything in life is Likable — Facebook Design — Medium – interesting breakdown in methodology

    Media

    Warner Bros to buy Korean-focused DramaFever – BBC News – they have been taking a kicking from Viki (Korean based) owned by Rakuten

    Most Germans Think the Press Is Lying to Them About Refugees – SPIEGEL ONLINE – as if the media doesn’t have enough on its plate, a lack of belief in its core proposition could kill it entirely. More German related topics here

    Wireless

    Demand for heat pipes for smartphones may emerge – DigiTimes – suggests a lack of die size and power saving improvements. Interesting technology through. Will heat pipes for smartphones reduce the localisation of heat on shells and how will cases affect their efficacy?

    Web of no web

    【双语】Shenzhen pilots vehicle ID chips 深圳八类车上将安装“电子车证” – The chips will be installed in 200,000 vehicles in Shenzhen-mostly commercial vehicles and public buses-and allow officers to access vehicle data

  • MWC 2016 as a case study on talkability, brand mentions and brand performance

    Mobile World Congress (or in industry parlance MWC 2016) is where the telecoms industry goes to set out its stand. It has gradually changed from being a conference where the big issues of the day are hashed out, to more of a trade show a la CES or CeBIT.

    From a brand point of view, it was of interest to me for two reasons:

    • It offers largely culture neutral brand discussions, many of which occur online
    • I have an interest, having worked on a few mobile brands during my agency career (Palm, Ericsson, Verizon Wireless, Samsung, Qualcomm, Telenor Myanmar and Huawei)

    I pulled this slide ware together for a talk I am giving at an internal event at an agency.

    The first data that I have put together is looking at the amount of mentions that occurred regardless of the channel. It is a relatively easy data point to pull out of monitoring systems very quickly.

    Obviously the value of mentions will depend on how many people view them, what is the context that the mention appears in. What was the content around it? Who said it, are they expert or trustworthy? So looking purely at the number of mentions would be crude, offering little value apart from nice PowerPoint slides.

    Breaking the mentions down by platform gives an idea of relative marketing communications competencies of brands. So looking at Huawei and Xiaomi shows contrasting approach to building talkability and conversations. Huawei focuses on traditional media channels where as Xiaomi focuses on social.

    By comparison LG and Samsung seem to have a more holistic approach.

    I then moved on beyond the mention data to try and look at relative authority of whoever mentioned the brand and looking at the relative distribution by brand and channel.

    I had done some initial analysis on the event in general here. These numbers showed how well brands had built high authority communities and the discussions around them.

    What was quite surprising was the polarised authority of mainstream media sources. Newswire syndication had destroyed authority of many online traditional media channels. A second cross brand observation was the relatively low authority of the blogosphere.

    These slides only start to delve into understanding talkability and are time consuming to create in comparison to looking at raw mention numbers, but offer superior strategic insight for both earned and paid media approaches for future launches.

    I did some broad profiling of online conversations around MWC here.

  • Come to Singapore + more

    Come to Singapore

    Come to Singapore! The Sights (And Branding) Are Lovely | WIRED – it feels very Monocle-esque in terms of editorial style. Come to Singpore! is very different to the Conde Naste Traveller type editorial. Singapore is aiming at developing a start-up culture so targetingWired (US) readers make a good deal of sense. More Singapore related posts here.

    Decline of cyberspace

    William Gibson on the decline of cyberspace. It is fascinating in terms of how Gibson’s inspiration has evolved over time. He was reacting against genres that he didn’t want to write as much as ideas he wanted to convey. The ability to say no, is a very interesting creative process and it reminds me of an interview I saw with an Apple executive talking about why the iPod didn’t have an FM radio.

    Renault Alpine Vision

    Interesting to see Renault going back to Alpine’s sports roots with the Vision sports coupe. It is made to a similar formula to the original 1960s cars that made Alpine famous. A light, small car, a rear-mid engine placement with a highly tuned small capacity engine. Performance is viewed by the Alpine team in much more holistically with an equal focus on handling and breaking.

    Tesla Model X

    I am a sucker for well done manufacturing and process films. The first one up is from Tesla, highlighting robots working in a manufacturing cell on their X model vehicle. Tesla has had problems around areas like panel fit. I am not sure if they have resolved those quality issues, but robots should provide them with a very consistent process and higher throughput.