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 Master Switch author Tim Wu is an American lawyer, professor and expert on internet matters. He is main claim to fame is coining the phrase ‘net neutrality’ back in 2003. He is well known as an advocate of the open internet.
One needs to bear all this in mind when thinking about The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. In it Wu posits a natural lifecycle for the rise and maturation of platform and media companies; which he called the ‘long cycle’.
Wu uses the following companies as examples:
Western Union’s telegraph monopoly
Western Union-owned Associated Press’ relationship with the nascent newspaper industry
AT&T in telecoms
The early film industry and the rise of Hollywood studios
Apple’s history – though this point is less nuanced because Apple has cycled a number of times between open and closed systems – a nuance that Wu doesn’t fully pick up on
In The Master Switch, he points about how these companies have moved from open systems to closed systems in order to maximise profits and resist change. Wu then uses these cycle to argue that a repeat of history was under way with the modern internet. In 2010 when the book was written; this would have ben the rise of Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Ed Vaizey announced that ISPs should be free to abandon net neutrality in the UK and it was abandoned in the US when FCC chairman Ajit Pai was appointed by Donald Trump. More telecoms related content here.
Directorate S author Coll is a veteran journalist and professor of journalism. He did time abroad working for an American newspaper covering South Asia. Later Coll wrote for The New Yorker on defence and intelligence.
In 2004, Coll’s book Ghost Wars covered America’s involvement with Pakistan’s intelligence service. He focused on the Soviet invasion Afghanistan through to 2001.
Directorate S is a natural successor to Ghost Wars picking up the story on September 11, 2001 to the end of 2016. Directorate S takes its name from part of the Pakistani intellgience service. It covers the perspectives from all the parties involved. Surprisingly it included more than I expected about clandestine operations in Pakistan.
Coll knows his material and what unfolds is an in-depth scholarly blow-by-blow account. It doesn’t have the zip and excitement of say Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down. Coll’s story instead sits at the seat of power. Colls tells the story of:
Ambassadors
Policymakers
Generals and civil servants
Politicians
When Coll dips into the operational reporting, it is used to illustrate a wider point.
What comes out is not one story of a war, but a succession of parallel agendas and pivots. The CIA and special forces had very different objectives to their military colleagues. The planning and chain of command was fragmented. Directorate S takes a good deal of commitment to read, but it looks as if it will be as much of a go-to book as Ghost Wars. More book reviews here.
Unilever under fire over Gaytime ice cream in Indonesia | PR | Campaign Asia – no idea where they got that idea, I imagine it could become a cult brand if launched elsewhere. Gaytime ice cream makes me think of a more innocent time in my life when, if I was home from school, I would be sat down with Marie biscuits and a cup of Barry’s tea by my Mum. This was a thinly veiled bribe to be quiet, which wasn’t really needed.
The reason for this ritual would be a soap opera called Harbour Hotel and a chat show called The Gay Byrne Show. Both where on RTÉ Radio 1. Back then gay could mean happy; or in the case of Gay Byrne it was short for Gabriel. The radio meant that voices from home where beamed into our house around the clock via medium wave and long wave.
https://youtu.be/hByFDVwiQq8
Of course, I wouldn’t have mentioned it at my English school as there would have been an ocean of sniggers. The Muslim outrage at Gaytime also mirrors the PC revisionist view of The Flintstones ‘we’ll have a gay old time’ lyric in their theme tune. Apparently its original meaning of happy or fun, was interpreted as being intolerant of the LGBTQ community.
The problems that the Labour Party faces with Corbyn and the general distrust of politicians in what should be ‘heartland’ seats
The continued credibility of Nigel Farage
The anti-German sentiment. The EU was seen as a German vehicle to win the war again by stealth – this has almost a Basil Fawlty quality to it. But at least some of the panelists believed it was true
How the political divisions around the societal change driven by Margaret Thatcher’s government reverberated into the Brexit vote
Poundland’s naughty elf campaign which riffed on British smut and the ‘Elf On A Shelf’ franchise affected consumer attitudes to the brand according to YouGov. The research is at odds with the overall positive response it got from Twitter (outside the London media-advertising industrial complex) – YouGov | Poundland’s X-rated ads generated publicity, but consumer perception has dropped
Three Thoughts on Day One at CES 2018 – not surprised that computing is moving to the edge as the network represents latency and potential unreliability – think about how cloud failure when it hit Nest devices and IoT obselescence
Casio AL-1000 – the nixie tube display and ferrite core memory make it a thing of beauty to behold
Huawei’s US market dreams ‘harmed again’ after AT&T walks away from smartphone pact | South China Morning Post – “We have been harmed again,” Huawei’s consumer business unit chief executive officer Richard Yu said in a text message to the South China Morning Post – you can see from later articles how Huawei progressively got their act together in terms of media response though much of the coverage added a thin veneer of analysis whilst repeating the original WSJ article – China’s Huawei hit by last minute collapse of AT&T phone distribution deal | Reuters – the collapse of the deal with AT&T, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, will mean that Huawei will likely struggle to make a hit of its smartphones there as a U.S. mobile carrier would typically promote the products as well as provide subsidies and special package deals
Chad Dickerson’s Fieldnotes – Fieldnotes is an email newsletter from one of the key people during Yahoo!’s web 2.0 geek golden age and former CEO of Etsy. Chad Dickerson was in charge of Yahoo!’s Brickhouse incubator and the Yahoo! Developer Network. He then went to be the CTO of Etsy and was then promoted to CEO. Dickerson came from a background in technology for online media, having worked at CNN, Salon.com and InfoWorld before Yahoo!
Shipping time lapse
This is the second time lapse film I’ve seen done by an officer on a ship. I get it. No internet would give you a lot of time to put the film together. It opens up a world that I had only heard of from people older than me who had served on ships when westerners were sailors. I love the way clouds boil away, time lapse allow you to better see the liquid nature of clouds.
20 choice edits and reworks
Greg Wilson put together this mix of his favourite edits that had been done in 2017. Everyone of them are are an amazing track. Wilson was one of the original resident DJs at the Hacienda. He was the first UK DJ to be seen scratching on TV. He took a break from DJing and returned later to both DJing and production. Wilson is one of the pioneers in the nu disco movement.
LV Pass Apple Messenger icons
Louis Vuitton’s LV Pass app did some really nice integration with Apple’s Messenger stickers. It is based on Jeff Koons artworks and the iconic Louis Vuitton brand. More related content here.
Switch off for the holidays
Fair play to Nokia for running this campaign on their website over Christmas. They realise that consumers are over connected and need a screen break, so they have been encouraging consumers to switch off and connect in real life for the holidays.
Reuse, reedit, remix and recycle a minimum viable campaign
I have been working on a couple of briefs over time that have suddenly seen budgets cut quite dramatically. It’s often a struggle to pare the list of requirements back to a minimum viable campaign.
One thing that tends not to happen too often is seeing the reuse, reedit, remix and recycle of assets effectively.
Reuse, reedit, remix and recycle for international campaigns
I saw the principles of reuse, reedit, remix and recycle being used more often in international campaigns. Some brands like Mars have looked to do reuse, by spending a lot of time aligning their brands across markets. In the UK and Ireland, consumers of a certain age will remember the migration of Marathon bars to become Snickers and Opal Fruits to become Starburst a decade later. The principles of reuse, reedit, remix and recycle was incorporated into thinking at Unilever making TV ae lssets more easily localised in different countries including adapting end slides and one shot for culturally appropriate product uses.
Mexico
Germany
But perhaps the best example I can recall was one that used to show repeatedly on cable TV when I was in the final year of my degree. I would have the TV on in the background, whilst I slowly but steadily cranked out my final year series of assignments and essays.
BreathAsure seemed to have given their London advertising agency very little to work with, but this cheeky voiceover turned the ad around and was an insiders nod to how awful the original American creative was. I am guessing that this probably would not have passed muster if it needed sign off by an American global marketing supremo.
In case you’re wondering what ever happened to BreathAsure, it seems that soon after this ad campaign originally ran Warner-Lambert took them to court in the US regarding their product claims. More marketing related content here.
