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.

 

  • Cinema in China + more news

    Cinema in China

    China’s total number of cinema screens now exceeds the US | Marketing Interactive – why Hollywood makes odd casting and big spectacle films. That also doesn’t mean that Hollywood is making the same revenue per screen either. Anecdotally, I heard of cinemas in China, running a ticket up as a local film and then crossing the cinema screen number off and changing it for a Marvel film. The customer gets to see the film that they want and the revenue goes to the local film instead. Hollywood already has a very limited access to the Chinese cinema market. The Communist Party of China is looking to grow domestic soft power, that means further limiting Hollywood’s access to cinema in China

    Business

    Macron wants limits on Chinese investments, takeovers in Europe’s strategic industries – smart move, there is a strong case for a ‘China reciprocity law’ forcing technology transfer to the EU and restricting investment in strategic industries

    It’s business, and it’s personal: How Amazon Web Services decides to enforce non-compete contracts – GeekWire – sounds like most non-compete clauses

    China

    China’s Biggest Gaming ‘Whales’ Are Werewolves — The Information – I was introduced to Werewolf in the early noughties by some of my geekier friends

    Consumer behaviour

    Americans won’t wait more than four minutes for a slightly less disgusting hamburger | Quartz – which funnily enough was the time that the McDonald’s restaurant I worked in for six weeks at the start of my working career aimed to surpass

    Design

    Owl Labs Meeting Owl – cute product design for… – I am reminded of the wood cut faces on the beneath the facias of old Nokia 5110 handsets

    Design in the Era of the Algorithm | Big Medium

    Economics

    The Political Kindling of the Grenfell Fire – The Atlantic – Britain has slipped to sixth in the economic rankings. Yet either position, fifth or sixth, is misleading: Broadly speaking, Britain is an economically average country, with one exceptionally rich region—London, which is reportedly home to more multimillionaires and billionaires than any other city in the world, and serves as the country’s economic engine. Of the EU’s 15 strongest economies, none rely as heavily on one area as the U.K. does: London’s per capita GDP is almost two and a half times Britain’s national average. But London’s enviable self-confidence, its robust financial services sector, and glittering facade, obscure the devastating inequality that plagues the U.K. While the city is Britain’s lone representative among the 10 richest regions in northern Europe, the country also includes a stunning nine of northern Europe’s 10 poorest regions. – One paragraph deflation of British hubris that underpins the likes of the Leave campaign and a great argument for London becoming a city state.

    The Car Was Repossessed, but the Debt Remains – The New York Times – For low-income Americans, the fallout could, in some ways, be worse than the mortgage crisis. With mortgages, people could turn in the keys to their house and walk away. But with auto debt, there is increasingly no exit. Repossession, rather than being the end, is just the beginning. “Low-income earners are shackled to this debt,” said Shanna Tallarico, a consumer lawyer with the New York Legal Assistance Group

    Finance

    Investors step in to play risky role of lender | WSJ City – at what point does this become similar to China’s shadow banking practices?

    FMCG

    Unstoppable at home, Ramdev’s Patanjali gets a reality check in Nepal | Quartz – Ramdev’s products have given the likes of Unilever a scare in India, interesting to see his brand has limits

    Ideas

    Targeting and the F3EAD Process | Havok Journal – interesting perspective with key focus of reducing time to insight and action

    Japan

    WATANABE KATSUMI: “GANGS OF KABUKICHO” | #ASX – amazing portrait images

    Why is Japanese customer service so amazing? Because in Japan it’s one strike and you’re out | SoraNews24

    Luxury

    Brands are learning millennials’ language for luxury: “organic,” “sustainable,” “ethical” — Quartz – oh god sounds awful. More related posts here

    Cathay Pacific still ranks among top five airlines in the world, with other Hong Kong carriers also taking home accolades | South China Morning Post – despite all the problems

    Marketing

    Harbin beer and Starcom join hands to push China’s e-Sports | Marketing Interactive

    P&G Malaysia goes on LINE to grow online following | Marketing Interactive – probably very big in Thailand for this as well

    Media

    WPP folds Neo@Ogilvy into Mindshare | Campaign Asia – interesting move to bring all paid media inside GroupM

    Group M downgrades UK ad growth forecast in part due to brand safety fears | Campaign Live – Advertisers are increasingly taking a more measured view toward digital as they grapple with developing data strategies; setting more coherent objectives; attribution considerations; increased brand safety and accountability expectations and the appreciating trade-off between risk, price and performance

    Security

    Tim Cook was right to fight the FBI | TheNextWeb

    Software

    Inside Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence Comeback | WIRED – interesting article on two levels. Firstly, Microsoft’s approach and direction on AI, secondly the classic approach to storytelling from a PR perspective. Not surprisingly they are focused on Facebook and Google

    Minecraft’s New 4K Textures Don’t Even Look Like Minecraft | Extreme Tech

    Technology

    Apple Culture After Ten Years of iPhone – Monday Note – The First Trillion Dollars is Always the Hardest

    Robots are doing the work of $326,000-a-year Goldman Sachs employees – Axios

    Wireless

    Roam like at home? Not so fast – POLITICO – interesting exceptions

    Sunrise preps 2G switch-off | total telecom – interesting move by the Swiss carrier. Greater focus on in-building and long distance performance of LTE

  • Global activation, local amplification

    “Global activation local amplification” – four words that make a process sound easy.  Yet it is amazing how many established successful multi-nationals struggle with this process.

    I was talking to  friend the other week who talked about a project that they were asked to pitch for. A global multinational asked them to come and workshop the company’s digital global activation strategy for local teams – so that they could then work out how to localise it.

    The implication was that a global activation strategy had been decided upon that didn’t take into account who it could be scaled for markets with low budgets (small countries) or atypical digital usage.

    Global activation, local amplification

    I’ve used the words atypical here for good reason. These markets may not have gone through widespread desktop online usages. They may be transitioning between feature phones and SMS to low specification smartphones on lean data plans. However, in the likes of Kenya, their use of mobile payments with services like mPesa are far ahead of the west.

    You also can’t assume that usage is one phone, one person. In the likes of rural India the phone may be used by other family members with SIMs being the individual’s own.

    How much of their media consumption is side loaded on to mobile devices?

    A global activation approach requires extensive discussions with local company stakeholders BEFORE it’s sufficiently baked. I worked on web properties at Unilever and we thought about how could graphical assets be leveraged, a common social publishing platform (Percolate) and common measurement (Adobe Analytics) as a primary focus. We recognised that markets may want to build leaner, smaller websites or roll out changes when they had marketing budget.

    Bringing key stakeholders gives them ownership of the strategy, so they are much more likely to give a decent effort in local amplification. More related content here.

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  • Interface design

    Interface design

    This reflection on interface design has taken a while to write. When I started we were on the cusp of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. If you’re interested in technology, but aren’t an Apple fan it still matters as it sets the agenda. Apple’s moves affect wearables, smartphones, tablets and OTT (over the top) TV services.
    The New York Times published an interesting article Apple Piles On the Apps, and Users Say, ‘Enough!’.
    Ignore the title of the article itself, which is a function of clickbait rather than content. Instead, it provides an good critique of interface design across platforms. It highlights:
    • The difficulty in finding and installing other apps inside Messages. Many users aren’t aware of the functionality. This is different to the ‘interface as oldster barrier’ that SnapChat had. DoorDash – a Deliveroo analogue dropped a support after a few months due to a lack of users. Apple took a second run at this with iOS 11 trying to improve discoverability
    • Apple 3D touch isn’t used to drive contextual features by app developers
    • The Apple Watch’s mix of crown, button and small touch screen made ‘lean in’ interactive apps hard. The Apple Watch interface isn’t learned by ‘playing’ in the same way that you can with a Mac or an iPhone. Apple’s forthcoming watchOS update looks to have Siri ‘guess’ what you want. It wants to provide contextual information to users (and reduce interactions)
    If you ignore 3D touch for a moment, these problems are cross platform in nature. (Some vendors like Huawei have attempted a similar 3D touch feature in their own apps. They did not try to get developer adoption.)
    Thinking about Messenger app developers struggle to integrate disparate features into the interface. The exceptions are:
    • LINE
    • WeChat – the take up of mini-apps in WeChat have been disappointing performers. Is this indicating a possible ceiling for functionality?
    Wearables as a category looks thin, with Apple being one of the largest players. Pebble got acquired by Fitbit. Jawbone seems to be a dead company walking. Their blog was last updated in October 2016, Twitter in February. It’s ironic: their original BlueTooth headset business would now be a great opportunity.
    I’ve tried Casio’s BlueTooth enabled G-Shock, four Nike Fuelbands and a Polar wearable. I am on my second Apple Watch and I still don’t know what the real compelling use case is for these devices.
    So how does this stuff come about? I think its down to the process of creation, which affects analysis and critical analysis of the product. Creation in this case is essentially throwing stuff up against the wall until it sticks and then the process becomes reductive. As a case in point, look how smartphones have evolved to the slab form factor. 
    Throwing stuff against the wall
    I’ve worked enough times on digital products to understand the functionality is king. It’s the single most important thing. I’ve worked on products that wonderful functions but:
    • Consumers didn’t know they had a need, its hard to get consumers to build new habits. Forming habits can be hard
    • They were a bitch to sign up with. Yahoo!’s sign-up process killed products. It’s a fact. We’d get consumers hyped up, we’d deliver them to the relevant page and they wouldn’t convert. I didn’t blame them, if I wasn’t an employee or digital marketer I’d have done the same
    That’s how products are now built. The focus is on speed of execution of the idea. It isn’t about thinking through the complete experience. Agile methodologies with their short sprints puts emphasis on function. Away from data to feed into big picture optimisation. A function focus means that you end up with ‘lean in’ interaction designs as default.
    There aren’t many organisations that get it right. I’d argue that the early Flickr team and Slack ‘got it’. Though there are common factors:
    • Both Flickr and Slack had common key team members
    • Both products fell out of failure. Flickr came out of tools for Game Neverending. Slack began as a tool in the development of Glitch
    Where are the ergonomists and futurists?
    There are people who can provide the rigorous critique.
     
    Back in the day organisations with large R&D functions like NASA and BT employed writers to envisage the future. Staring into the future became a career. People like Syd Mead provided a visual map of the future. Mead and others did a lot of work thinking about the context of technology to users. At the present time lots of criticism levelled at VR glasses is it being anti-social. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has read William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Social interaction is more likely to come glasses wearer to glasses wearer. It will happen in a virtual third space. Neal Stephenson explored this third space in Snow Crash. The Black Sun was a virtual night club.

    Bill Moggridge, designer of the GRiD Compass computer – the world’s first laptop thought a lot about ergonomics. The laptop had a 11 degree slope from pop-out leg to the keypad. This is something that your MacBook Pro or Surface doesn’t have. There is a lack of depth in technology design compared to what Moggridge had. He brought in psychologists and studied human computer interaction. He eventually co-founded IDEO.

    Whilst the elements that Moggridge looked at were well known the thinking doesn’t seep into product categories. We are very good at asking can a product be made. We are poor at asking what does the product really mean. Apple’s viewpoint on the tablet segment is a case in point.

    The vast majority of tablets are used for lean back media consumption from watching films and reading books to reviewing emails. It can work as a productivity device in specific circumstances with custom built apps – say field sales or replacing a pilot’s flight paperwork. The keyboard and power of modern Macs (and PCs) provide a better tool for content creators; whether its analysing a spreadsheet or writing this blog post. 

    Yet, since its launch by Steve Jobs, Apple has viewed the iPad as a new PC. The iPad Pro has been designed to try and catch up in features with the Mac. It is ironic that Microsoft has moved a slim ‘MacBook clamshell design’ analogue into its latest Surface range.  

    Shanzhai

    It is very different to the pragmatic design ethos of China’s ‘shanzhai‘ gadget markers who came up with both laughable and exceptionally smart solutions. Everything from the dual SIM phone to the phone / electric razor hybrid. Successes bloomed, educated a collective knowledge of makers and a manufacturing ecosystem of facilitators, while the oddities slipped into the night.

    The manufacturing ecosystem played a crucial role in upping smartphone quality. Metal phone enclosures started to trickle down to other manufacturers once Apple had grown the capability of CNC manufacturers with orders for thousands of machines in Foxconn factories. This also fed expertise in how to use these machines in mass manufacturing. Which shows how physical interface design can be influenced almost as fast as software interface design in terms of commercial rivals.

  • True Names by Vernor Vinge

    I was inspired to read True Names by a podcast. New York Times journalist John Markoff was interviewed by Kara Swisher on the Recode podcast in February and talked about reading science fiction to better understand how technology is likely to affect us.
    Untitled
    It’s actually a great piece of advice. Back in the day, large corporates used to employ authors to write stories based on scenarios as part of their research programmes. Many people have attributed the clamshell mobile phone to the Star Trek TV series and the flip communicator devices.

    Markoff outlined his favourite stories.

    “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson (1992): “The premise is, America only does two things well. One is write software, and the other is deliver pizzas. [laughs] What’s changed?”
    “The Shockwave Rider” by John Brunner (1975): Markoff said he built his career on an early understanding that the internet would change everything. He said, “[The Shockwave Rider] argued for that kind of impact on society, that networks transformed everything.”
    “True Names” by Vernor Vinge (1981): “The basic premise of that was, you had to basically hide your true name at all costs. It was an insight into the world we’re living in today … We have to figure it out. I think we have to go to pseudonymity or something. You’re gonna participate in this networked existence, you have to be connected to meatspace in some way.”
    “Neuromancer” by William Gibson (1984): Markoff is concerned about the growing gap between elders who need care and the number of caregivers in the world. And he thinks efforts to extend life are “realistically possible,” pointing to Gibson’s “300-year-old billionaires in orbit around the Earth.

    I had read Snow Crash relatively recently and Neuromancer was revisited last year. I had a vague recollection of The Shockwave Rider and True Names, but hadn’t read them in over 20 years.

    Vinge’s True Names is published by Penguin with a collection of essays from a range of technology thinkers including

    • Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer who founded Habitat one of the first massive online multiplayer games, back when dial up bulletin boards were the bleeding edge. Farmer worked at Yahoo! when I was there and was involved in Yahoo! 360 and still consults on community / social platform issues
    • Bruce Schneier wrote about how security products fail us. Bruce is one of the world’s leading commentators on all things hack and cryptography related
    • Mark Pesce is better known now as an Australian-based computer academic, but two decades ago he invented VRML – a way of representing the internet as a 3D thing and prescient in the light of Oculus Rift and others.
    • Marvin Minsky; was a pioneer in AI and machine learning provided an afterward to the story

    That True Names managed to attract essays from these people should be an endorsement in itself.  Re-reading it two decades on, Vinge’s story echoes and riffs on the modern web. Hacking, cyberterrorism, constant government surveillance and the tension between libertarian netizens versus the regulated  real world. The central theme of Mr Slippy; a hacker who is identified by US government officials and co-opted as an unwilling informant and agent provocateur feels reminiscent of LULZSec leader and super grass Sabu. It’s amazing that Vinge wrote this in 1981 – although he envisages the web as being rather like a Second Life / Minecraft metaverse – with NeuroSky style interfaces.

    Penguin’s careful curation of essays riffing on the themes of True Names is where the real value is in my opinion. For someone who cares about technology and consumer behaviour. It is worthwhile keeping this book on the shelf and diving in now and again. More related posts here.

    More information
    Want to understand the future? Read science fiction, John Markoff says. | Recode
    Habitat Chronicles – thoughts on gaming, online products and community building by Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer
    Schneier on Security
    Mark Pesce’s professional website and his columns for The Register
    Vernor Vinge lecture on long-term scenarios for the future via The Wayback Machine

  • Explore something new

    Explore something new in every brief: there is a huge tension that I see in the challenge facing FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) marketers. On the one hand they have to continue innovating as their brand media spend slowly fragments across new channels in pursuit of consumers.

    Limits on the drive to explore something new

    Although I think that there are limits on how much this fragmentation can happen in reality:

    • To explore something new in business models is expensive at a brand level, but it might make sense at a group level
    • Specifically direct to consumer a la Birchbox is attractive on paper and a great candidate to explore something new. It is what Scott Galloway would call a ‘rundle’: a recurring revenue bundle offering. But it only works on high value, high margin products. It won’t work for margarine
    • Personalised marketing is in a similar place, you need to have a certain size of the customer’s spend in order to make even database maintenance worthwhile. This also has implications for overall brand architecture. Yet digital transformation would be a key driver to explore something new

    Explore something new in every brief

    On the other hand, Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) is now being used to bring increased accountability to marketing activity. Which fine in theory, but the advice to “explore something new in every brief” – whilst laudable, becomes harder to achieve. Unless the organisation has a ’20 percent fund’ for learning that allows that something new in each brief and the budget to capture learnings.

    ZBB

    The move towards ZBB implies that FMCG sectors are value industries, and recent stagnant growth largely validates that impression – businesses like Dollar Shave Club and the like are edge factors rather than core drivers. Secondly ZBB doesn’t lend itself particularly well to long term brand building because ROI is measured over a much smaller time period – leaning towards activation. More related content here.

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