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.

 

  • The futility of QRcodes on tube

    Traveling on the London Underground ‘tube’ recently I have noticed that more and more adverts have a QRcode. But the trips also highlighted the futility of using a QRcode, particularly on many of the deep lines.

    I am not too sure if tube QRcode is a recent phenomena or that I have been paying more attention as a number of the projects that I’ve been recently looking at are about the ‘web of no web‘: the interface between the web and the real world. I am a big fan of progressive approaches to marketing, however, the more I thought about the phenomena, the greater the waste of time that it seemed to be:

    • Londoners often joke about the tube being like cattle trucks; in reality European Union regulations wouldn’t allow livestock to travel on a train with the conditions of the tube on a hot summers day. A combination of overcrowding together with the lack of air conditioning  means that some of the lines can be as hot as a walk in the desert. The over-crowding also means that would be hard to take a picture of a QR code. So whilst the advert may have a large reach, the realistic reach of the QR code call to action is a lot smaller
    • So you happen to be lucky in terms of where the crush places you and try to snap the QR code with your phone. You probably won’t be successful, tube lines aren’t known for the smooth ride of say the Paris Métro, so you will be trying to hold your camera still whilst the train carriage rocks and sways in front of your smartphone. Your phone won’t be able to focus and take a clear image of the QR code. That’s one of the reason’s why there isn’t a tube advert shown here to illustrate this post, despite at least three attempts over the past week to snap a picture of an appropriate advert
    • Unlike other mass transit systems in the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong, huge high-traffic sections of the lines are underground or in such a deep cutting that they are inaccessible to mobile phone networks so QR code won’t take the audience through to an appropriate web page, but instead prompt a ‘network unavailable’ message

    The futility of QRcodes on the tube shows that the media buyers, marketers and or designers don’t pay much attention to the context of their advertisement art work, which could artificially skew campaign objectives and measurement adversely. In order to combat ‘the futility’, we need to go beyond TGI data and media packs. We can start this process by keeping our eyes open to the world around us.

  • London through a tourist’s eyes

    My friend Tomoko was in London the other week and it was interesting seeing what excited her about London, as Tomoko’s London is very different from my own.

    Firstly ‘knowing London’ means knowing central and Northwest London rather than central and East London. Shoreditch, Clerkenwell and Soho aren’t attractive; St Johns Wood and Mayfair are – big learning curve for me here, as I have assiduously avoided anything west of Soho during my 13 or so years in London.

    Whilst we may think that London has everything to offer with contemporary clubs like Cargo and the East Village, it was Whisky Mist that Tomoko went to. With a clientele drawn from or aspiring to be in a P.G. Wodehouse adaption styled by Jack Wills; that you would only find me in under duress, but was what she wanted to do. Tradition and the class system trappings is a huge selling point for the UK – in terms of experience it beats Cool Britannia of modern UK life into a cocked hat. We had a drink and a catch-up late one evening in the Rockcliff Bar in The Trafalgar Hotel which I felt was a reasonable compromise.

    One thing that she was surprised at was how early in general London closes its bars and restaurants on a week-day; its not as swinging as the reputation would have others believe and certainly not up to the standard of Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai or Singapore.

    Fifteen or twenty years ago, the UK had a reputation as the worst cooks in Europe. Tomoko’s trip was as much about being a gastronomic journey. She learned how to prepare a proper English afternoon tea (the rest of the world thinks that we don’t go to Pret-a-Manger and Starbucks apparently) and we had a taster menu lunch at Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant (more on this in another post).

    There was an interesting take on shopping:

    • Mitsukoshi for convenience – not having to fight your way through Mayfair, along Regent Street or up Oxford Street to Selfridges
    • Jermyn Street for male family presents; Covent Garden antiques market for souvenirs and bringing presnts to female family presents
    • Old and New Bond Street were of interest for window shopping

    Which makes me think that a lot of central London retail space is looking seriously over-priced and that high footfall – long the measure of a desirable retail space can be as lethal for a shop as a branch of the Sue Ryder charity opening up next door.

    All of this made think about what what my current home city means to people around the world. I have met people within my industry where having worked in London agency life carried a lot of kudos, the popularity of modern dance music elsewhere in the world was spearheaded by the middle-aged UK DJs who were involved in the late 80s acid house scene. Modern design with a twist of irreverence from James Dyson and Paul Smith to Jonathan Ives at Apple are the product of a forward-looking country. But that doesn’t seem to have translated into a brand identity for London that is less Daniel Craig and more David Niven.

    Asian countries like Korea, Japan and China have managed to forge identities that are modern, yet are complementary to the centuries of culture and history that they have. On the other had, Egypt (at least as a tourist destination) is all about the ancient Egyptian society that flourished and declined 2,000 years ago. I would prefer to see London being able to balance a modern identity with a nod to the history rather than be trapped by it. Perhaps the best place to start would be through the creative destruction of the Central London built environment.

  • Pepsi cola + more news

    Pepsi cola

    PepsiCo Gives Pepsi-Cola a Renewed Marketing Push – WSJ.com – You just can’t go dark on brands and expect them to hold their value (paywall). At a corporate level PepsiCo had tried to focus more on functional / healthy foods and so had under invested in Pepsi cola as a brand. Market share depends on market penetration and relative share of voice so keeping a steady investment in Pepsi cola would have made more sense, even if the ‘social good’ points aren’t earned. By comparison, Pepsi cola main competitor

    Ideas

    Phys Ed: The Science of Toning Shoes – NYTimes.com – is it about whether they work, or encourage people to exercise?

    Innovation

    Did Microsoft steal the Kinect? – Hack a Day – or is it like the light bulb which had about 8 inventors at the same time

    Nice try, Amazon: ‘One-click’ payment too obvious to patent • The Register

    TECHNOLOGY REPORT » Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Marvin Minsky on the current state of AI Research – a high tech research version of the ‘if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’

    Japan

    Japan’s attention to detail is all in the delivery | The Japan Times Online – since security is no longer guaranteed, fun is a key decider in roles

    London

    Afternoon Tea – Japanese tourists love it apparently

    Luxury

    Prada Woos Young Chinese With Sister-Brand Miu Miu – WSJ

    Only In China: Paper Gucci Insert Causes Vogue China Buying Frenzy « Jing Daily – shows the power of the brand, however does this dilute the brand for purchasers?

    Watches Are Rediscovered by the Cellphone Generation – NYTimes.com – an interesting article. Watches aren’t only about what information they convey to the wearer, but also what they say to other people. I remember reading an article about stainless steel Seiko analogue watches being popular with Japanese job hunters who wanted to convey that they were punctual

    Security

    Microsoft admits Patriot Act can access EU-based cloud data | ZDNet – Can Microsoft guarantee that EU-stored data, held in EU based datacenters, will not leave the European Economic Area under any circumstances — even under a request by the Patriot Act? – This screws US technology sales in a number of areas

    Software

    Why Microsoft’s ‘single ecosystem’ for PCs and tablets carries huge risks | guardian.co.uk – unified user experience just isn’t going to cut it across the different user contexts

    Judge finds HTC guilty of infringing two Apple patents; could mean trouble for Android

    Amazon’s Appstore problems run deep: a developer speaks out | ExtremeTech – interesting that Amazon has had problems

    Telecoms

    I, Cringely » The enemy of my enemy – Bob Cringely on Google’s next likely move after losing the Nortel patent portfolio to an alliance of its enemies – RIM and Ericsson together put up $1.1 billion with Ericsson getting a fully paid-up license to the portfolio while RIM, as a Canadian company like Nortel, gets a paid-up license plus possibly some carry forward operating losses from Nortel, which has plenty of such losses to spare. For RIM the deal might actually have a net zero cost after tax savings, which the Canadian business press hasn’t yet figured out. Microsoft and Sony put up another $1 billion. There is a reportedly a side deal for about $400 million with EMC that has the storage company walking with sole ownership of an unspecified subset of the Nortel patents. Finally Apple put up $2 billion for outright ownership of Nortel’s Long Term Evolution (4G) patents as well as another package of patents supposedly intended to hobble Android.

  • Idea Man by Paul Allen

    Self-described ‘Idea Man‘ Paul Allen was the technical foil to Bill Gates’ when he founded Microsoft. Much of the Microsoft story is the story of Bill Gates – partly due to the way the company’s PR machine built Gates up as a software superman. The wheels came off the wagon with the Judge Jackson trial video testimonial. Allen dropped out of the story despite being instrumental in many of the key early products; instead he became known as a local billionaire who liked to jam with rock star friends and owned some local sports teams. Now he is trying to reinsert himself carefully in Microsoft’s story with Idea Man.

    Gates is now re-inventing himself has a modern-day Rockerfeller through charitable donations, trying to redefine his place in history as a convicted monopolist. With this change, Allen becomes even less significant. A cynical person may describe this book as Paul Allen’s attempt to write himself back into history, but without the Gates stigma. This view was reinforced by the books launch occurring round about the same time that Allen took legal action against many of the most successful technology companies for alleged patent violations.

    A student of Microsoft’s history would recognised the flawed human portrait of Bill Gates who is portrayed  as argumentative, ruthless, driven determined and petty. So in many respects Allen doesn’t add much to the Gates canon; Allen acts as an apologist for Gates in many respects being exceptionally tolerant of his faults; a co-founder equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome. Ballmer comes across as being a more decent human being, yet Allen’s accurate but unnecessary visceration of Microsoft’s performance feels as if it is aimed more towards liquidating Ballmer’s historic legacy.

    What I didn’t get from the book was the sense of Allen the person, what is he really like? What drives him? What are his demons? In this respect, Allen is absent from his own memoirs and the book comes across as two-dimensional because of it.

    There are sections on his relationships with famous musicians and sportstars, but it didn’t mean that much to me so I can’t comment beyond saying  that I didn’t find it that engaging.

    If you are going to read any book that touches on Microsoft and the PC era; I would instead recommend Robert X. Cringely’s Accidental Empires or Jennifer Edstrom (daughter of Waggener Edstrom’s Pam Edstrom) and Martin Eller’s Barbarians Led By Bill Gates.

  • Son of ACTA + more news

    Son of ACTA

    US Proposals For Secret TPP ‘Son Of ACTA’ Treaty Leaked; Chock Full Of Awful Ideas | Techdirt – the draft proposals for son of ACTA look like an overreach:

    • Expanding what’s patentable, for instance the US allows processes like Amazon’s one click purchase to be patentable
    • Blocking people from buying copyrighted goods in other countries and taking them home (no multi-region DVDs, music imports etc), this is to allow differentiated pricing by country or region. It is more a Hollywood thing than a music industry thing; pre Internet distribution, music imports were a big business tapping into engaged music fans. The son of ACTA could be seen on the EU’s single market status and record labels in places like Italy
    • Expanding liability for ISPs whose users commit acts of infringement, forcing ISPs to identify their users to anyone on demand, and getting rid of third-party patent review. This draft son of ACTA looks as if it has been written by a Hollywood lobbyist

    You have to remember this son of ACTA overreach is intentional. There will be lots in there that the

    Design

    The rise of polyester | FT.com – its not cheap and if made well feels better than natural fabrics

    Wristwatches, Reimagined – Will Young Shoppers Care? – NYTimes.com – more wearable computing ideas

    Ideas

    Long-term capitalism | McKinsey & Company – pretty much straight out of Will Hutton’s The State We’re In published in the early 1990s

    Innovation

    Why Facebook open-sourced its datacenters – Simon Willison wraps a bit of smart analysis around this

    Japan

    FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Micro towns bring evacuees a sense of order – helps with societal cohesion. There is one bit near the end where an old person talks about being awake in the middle of the night and there is no snoring meaning that lots of people are still awake afraid of sharing their troubles with others – it’s a real sucker punch when you read it (Paywall)

    Luxury stocks’ tumble: a contrarian view | Material World – FT.com – yet luxury goods manufacturers have been de-emphasising Japan for a number of years so best prepared for impact

    Korea

    n+1: Behold the Koreans – the rise of the Korean motor industry in the US

    Luxury

    Burberry To Join China’s Digital Revolution With Beijing Fashion Bash « Jing Daily – complex distribution and a fast-growing market has forced fashion houses to embrace much faster than they previously had

    Chinese Media: Luxury Goods In China Up To 50% More Expensive Than Overseas « Jing Daily – less discounts due to strong demand

    Media

    Rupert Murdoch Asked Gordon Brown To Help Weaken NoTW Phone Hacking Investigations: The Observer – but what was the benefit to the Brown administration?

    Managing in Asia: Agence France-Presse News Chief Emmanuel Hoog Pushes Multimedia – WSJ.com – embracing social media blah, blah, blah. The real interesting bit about this story is that the WSJ is interviewing AFP

    Online

    Sina Corp, Large Chinese Portal, Drops Google As Search Provider – interesting that they’ve built their own search engine

    Retailing

    Etail’s creeping influence on retail (and you) | FT.com – the user experience and colour scheme at Net-a-Porter is influencing designers choice of colours

    Women’s retail report: changes ahead? | FT.com – change in behaviour due to reduced time to market?

    Security

    EU admits deep impact cyberattack in run-up to key summit • The Register – Microsoft Exchange servers compromised

    Software

    Microsoft Co-Founder Hits Out at Gates – WSJ.com – this comes off worse than Jennifer Edstrom’sBarbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside. (Yes, Jennifer Edstrom is the daughter of Pam Edstrom of Waggener Edstrom: Microsoft’s agency-of-record). It will be interesting to see how it is spun.

    James gosling joins google- The Inquirer – the Java father at Google. This will be interesting

    Technology

    Sun finally shines under Oracle | FT.com – shows that Jonathan Schwartz was probably a better CEO at Sun than most people give him credit for