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.

 

  • Puma + more news

    Puma Poaches Manchester City Kit Deal From Nike | Business of Fashion – big move by Puma in football, especially considering that all the money is boot sales and Puma is currently a distant number four behind Nike and adidas. New Balance is considerably closer for Puma to reach than the top two. Kit sponsorship deals are self liquidating brand marketing.

    A Perfectly Cromulent Cultural Moment – memes as societal discourse

    A Brief History of Computer Vision (and Convolutional Neural Networks) | Hacker Noon – a great read, it reminded me about the work that search engines like Yahoo! and Google were doing around image recognition back in the day and Virage et al did in the mid-1990s onwards

    Know-It-All Robot Shuts Down Dubious Family Texts – WSJ – which begs the question why Facebook wasn’t here, providing a similar kind of service on its platforms? (Paywall)

    Subaru Recalls Cars to Fix Glitch Possibly Caused by Fabric Softener – WSJ – no you haven’t read the headline wrong, it apparently affects a sensor. The investigative process must have driven the engineers crazy

    Musical.ly, now TikTok, to pay fine to settle FTC allegations | Digital – Ad Age – Social video app Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that it illegally stored data from underage children and refused parents’ requests to delete it.Data collected from children under the age of 13 included names, email addresses and, for a period, user locations, the FTC said. The settlement represents a record penalty under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a 1998 law designed to put parents in charge of what information is collected about their children on the internet.

    Creepy AI Tech From China Can Identify You 50 Meters Away With Your Back Turned, Face Covered – interesting how they are using gait analysis for identification. Of course the way around it is to put something in your shoe. More related posts here

    Prada tries to put luxury’s derailing train back on course | Trendwatching – It’s not hard to see the link between this innovation and recent events in the luxury fashion industry. When it comes to diversity and inclusion, iconic fashion brands have lurched from one epic fail to another recently. Gucci perpetuated blackface via a sweater. Prada itself perpetuated blackface via its window displays. Burberry sent a noose down the runway. Philipp Plein fat-shamed a journalist. D&G offended many in one of its key markets when its ad showed Chinese models struggling to eat spaghetti with chopsticks – Prada is also listed in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange so this makes sense from a shareholder perspective as well

    Who needs malware? IBM says most hackers just PowerShell through boxes now, leaving little in the way of footprints • The Register – running in RAM rather than memory

  • Hasan Minhaj and other things that caught my attention this week

    Supreme by Hasan Minhaj. I hadn’t watched much of Patriot Act mainly because there is more content that grabs my attention on Netflix. This clip is a great dive into hype culture by Hasan Minhaj – often the best humour is that with uncomfortable truths in it.

    Amazon playbook on Amazon Vine. Gartner L2 made this useful clip on the effective use of Amazon’s Vine programme.

    Key take-outs (my observations in italics):

    • Amazon don’t allow vendors any editorial controls over reviews and look to keep them honest and authentic
    • Vine seems to be really good in the process of accelerating product launches for vendors
    • Use Vine BEFORE Amazon’s sponsored products and sponsored brands advertising function; by the sounds of it pretty similar to the way you’d have previously used PR in a product launch marketing campaign
    • L2 recommends ensuring the efficacy of the product; but Vine COULD be used as the last gate in the innovation process before you go gangbusters. Lots of negative reviews could still save you on a massive production run and huge advertising spend

    Sophie Cope (Electronic Frontier Foundation) on digital privacy and the surveillance state. Great video on the World Affairs channel – interesting how this has become such a big issue amongst ‘wonkish’ audiences. More privacy related content here.

    Lynx (Axe for non UK audiences) have latched on to the ASMR meme that has been popular for a couple of years. It feels weird to watch, I am not sure what the strategic insight(s) were for this work beyond the fact that beards are sticking around for a good while yet.

    https://youtu.be/x9T7BJ-jf6o

    The last thing is the positive experience I had with American Express this week when I lost my card. I spoke to a real person on a decent phone line who quickly canceled my old card sent me out a new one that arrived in 48 hours.

  • Pioneer Axe + more things

    Pioneer Axe was an old-time US manufacturing company. The company used skilled labour and machine tools to manufacture axes. The Pioneer Axe plant didn’t seem to have been invested in during the 20th century and globalisation was starting to make itself felt in light industrial areas. This documentary film about their manufacturing process was made just prior to the the business closing. I’m a sucker for these kind of films that show case processes. There is something poetic about them. The processes have likely evolved from an initial plan over time organically to enhance productivity.

    This is one of a series of ads done for RACV Pet Insurance in Australia. It’s the kind of work you’d be proud of doing. I love some of the customised rigs that the disabled dogs have been given to enable to keep being good dogs.

    Naomi Wu demonstrates a bin that heat seals its bags. At first I thought it was frivolous; but then thinking about the kind of summer we had last year I can understand the appeal to reduce smells and the opportunities for insects to take up home in your bin content. The bin is positioned as a smart device; but it isn’t really.

    Water Margin Podcast: Outlaws of the Marsh – my favourite general interest podcast to fill the gap after Cocaine and Rhinestones. It is a podcast that explains in relatable terms the Chinese classic. This makes a lot of sense as the number of characters starts to expand a lot.

    I ended up working out of Somerset House for some of this week and shot this Thameside time lapse video. It is amazing how much river traffic there is on the Thames in central London. Despite the congestion charge and outrageous parking charges, the car is still very popular. More London related content here.

  • To kill the truth by Sam Bourne

    To kill the truth is very much a book of our time. It explores the power of historical records, the alt-right and technology. The plot opens with a very current battle between ‘woke’ academia meets the polo-shirted, tiki torch-bearing far right. A former academic has gone to court in order to dispute our understanding of the slave trade and create a revisionist history.

    Historical records and accounts were picked apart to cast sufficient doubt on them. By using this legal standard record-by-record the mass of evidence is ignored. The truth becomes lies, rather like social political discussions over Brexit and Trump’s election.

    Untitled

    Then key establishments of historical record start to burn down around the world. Online repositories from websites to Google are brought to their knees by hackers. Into this mess steps a smart wonkish protagonist Maggie Costello. Maggie is tired of the political machine and gets pulled back in. Soon she suffers from online identity theft.

    Taking one side Costello’s gender for a moment. Costello feels familiar. This is partly because she is so similar to Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Smart bookish heros who could see what the establishment couldn’t.

    The second parallel to Clancy’s work is that characters are secondary to the big ideas and technical wonders. And here lies the book’s achilles heel. Costello has obviously beeen developed as a smart vulnerable ‘woke’ hero. But she feels like a cardboard cut-out rather than a believable character. The androgynous nom-de-plume Sam Bourne hides the identity of Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland. His wonkish credentials created a great high concept, but he hasn’t managed to create a character that we can root for.

    Enjoy the exploration of big contemporary issues, just keep our expectations low on the character development.

  • 3 year phone contracts + more things

    Paying for Keeps | CC Insight – 3-year phone contracts will suppress smartphone market even further, that includes 5G handsets (the why 5G in a handset is a whole other question). 3-year phone contracts will also likely encourage SIM only shopping. More wireless related content here.

    MOFT – World’s First Invisible Laptop Stand – of course early laptops had more opportunity to do ergonomic design which isn’t available when you fallow Apple’s ‘size zero’ design ethos. My first laptop an Apple PowerBook 165 had small rotatable legs. I am surprised that class action suits aren’t a thing due to RSI and carpal tunnel syndrome on modern laptops. The ergonomic information required to make the case for MOFT has been available for decades

    Uncover Harassers – rage as a plug-in. Surprised that there isn’t a UK version for gammons and remoaners respectively. Download this plug-in to optimise you’re being triggered. I get where they coming from but I can also see the downside of it as well

    The Facts About Facebook – WSJ – Zuckerberg’s op-ed falls flat with WSJ subscribers. A lot of people have written out how this back end binding of the services is as much about fending off coming regulation as anything else. Think Internet Explorer and Windows when Microsoft were taken to task. Read also Opinion | Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Be Your Ghost Writer – The New York Times – funny but true, love the VCR analogy (paywall)

    I Bought a Fake Canada Goose Jacket on Amazon – The Atlantic – Amazon is full of fake stuff. There doesn’t seem to be a vendor quality control facility on Amazon Marketplace

    Global mobile ad spend set to tip TV in 2019 thanks to programmatic boom, and 5G boost – a 5G boost really?

    Huawei/Edelman Relationship Ends Before It Starts | Holmes Report – very interesting reading and the optics are pretty bad for Huawei.

    Xiaomi Mijia laser 4K projection TV goes on sale for 14999 Yuan ($2210) – Gizchina.com – who has clear space for a 100 inch screen to be thrown up on a wall?

    China has a special passport for its elites—like Huawei’s detained executive — Quartz – the smoking gun that connects Huawei to the government in the way that the company has always denied. I was really surprised that more hasn’t been made of this story. A P series or ‘Public Affairs’ passport is a non-diplomatic, but otherwise VIP passport for party officials and others who are very tightly involved with the Chinese government. It is the smoking gun that links Huawei and the Chinese government in a way that hasn’t been previously done and shreds a lot of Huawei’s counter arguments

    Tencent, NetEase Shut Out Again in New Batch of Games OK’d by China – Variety – “Given the current speed of new game approval, the backlog of games waiting for licensing, and the government’s stricter control over game content, we estimate it could take two to three years before the Chinese games industry stabilizes,”

    ‘They need the scale’: DTC brands like Peloton and Chewy are buying more TV ads | Digiday – because TV advertising still works

    WSJ City | Russia accuses Facebook Twitter of failing to comply with data laws – surprised more countries aren’t Balkanising personal data storage