Category: jargon watch | 術語定義 | 용어의 정의 | 用語の定義

Jargon watch as an idea was something that came from my time reading Wired magazine. I found that in my work terms would quickly spring up and just as quickly disappear. So it made sense to capture them in the moment.

The best way of illustrating jargon watch is by example. I came across the term black technology through mainland Chinese friends. One of the key things that Chinese consumers think about technology products is the idea of ‘black technology’. This makes no sense to your average western reader. It equates to cool and innovative.

The term itself comes from a superior technology featured in a Japanese manga series plot. As an aside the relationship between Chinese and popular Japanese culture is becoming increasingly attenuated due to Chinese nationalism.

What might be black technology this year might be humdrum in six months as the companies quickly catch up. Black technology is a constant moving target, but generally its sophisticated and likely has a cyberpunk feeling to it.

I keep an eye out for jargon like this all the time, hence jargon watch. I find this content in my professional reading and in the sources that I follow online. What makes something worthwhile to appear here is purely subjective based about how I feel about it and how much I think it resonates with my ideas or grabs my attention. A lot of British youth culture doesn’t make it because it doesn’t have that much of an impact any more beyond the UK.

Orchestrated media

I decided to revisit the idea of orchestrated media recently. I had been working on the SEO of a post from 2011. This post linked out to an article by BBC research and development on orchestrated media.

Test card from Chinese public broadcaster CCTV.

The BBC where aware that media consumption had become more complicated. Attention whilst watching the TV at one time competed with the occasional trip to the kettle; or flicking through a newspaper that was to hand but otherwise undivided. What became the TV changed with the advent of content distributed over internet connections to the web and mobile devices. But it wasn’t only about the proliferations of screens, but also how it interplayed with other media.

It doesn’t necessarily imply simultaneous consumption of content via these different media forms. Nor does it imply the consumed content is related across the screens (e.g. an audience member may be using Facebook or Twitter for a completely unrelated purpose, while paying less attention to the TV show).

Thinking in those terms is perhaps unnecessarily limiting in scope and misses the broader picture around the opportunities of social media, creating more seamless media experiences, and how these flow from home environment to beyond.
Jerry Kramskoy on the BBC R&D blog on ‘orchestrated media‘

This gives marketers a number of interesting things to think about. When is TV not TV. Think about live event programmes like The Apprentice or Britain’s Got Talent where social acts a ‘giant sofa’ as viewers share their opinions on what they see on screen. Twitter has tried to tap into this link between TV and discussion in its marketing efforts.

As broadcasters, the BBC started to think of the potential in a two-way conversation that was far more democratic than SMS polling, email or letter bags and phone-ins.

Orchestrated Media (OM)to refer to this experience of interaction, synchronisation, and collaboration of programme and companion content across devices. OM creates a new form of audience engagement with the broadcaster. Let’s start with some high level goals

• Enable interactivity around the content (voting, games) and synchronisation thereof, based on time and/or events (such as a producer-console triggered “button push”)
• Enable richer exploration of programme
• Enable social network interactions through sync-related information and content identifiers for replay purposes
• Migrate content between the TV and mobile devices (such as a load-and-go service that runs overnight to load the mobile with video corresponding to the unwatched portion of a program, or a resume-for-home service that picks up viewing on the TV from where it left off on mobile)

Some of the necessary components in reaching these goals include
• Visual feedback of shared interactions on TV screen
• Private interactions on mobile screens
• Support for not only live experience but also time-shifted and on-demand and pay-per-view ones
• A back-channel to broadcaster for interactions, behaviour etc
• Audio for different languages, directors commentary, clean audio etc, selectable per individual, synchronised to the programme
• Accessibility for all above
• Application life-cycle and runtime management
Orchestrated Media – beyond second and third screen (II)

This seems to be aimed to provide a seamless anytime, everywhere experience. Think of the way services work in the background as part of Apple’s ‘Continuity’ service layer. As marketers, if we’re thinking about an orchestrated media landscape, how do we hand off between channels and provide prospective customers a similar kind of seamless experience. How do we manage long term and short term attribution and feed these insights into proportion of media spend?

September 13, 2020
Yellow economic cycle

The yellow economic cycle has manifested itself as a positive boycott.

The anti ELAB protest movement in Hong Kong exposed the fracture lines between pro-Beijing (blue) and pro-Hong Kong sides (yellow). Some of Hong Kong business community came out and criticised the protestors. This resulted in consumers boycotting their business.

Maxim’s

The classic example of this was when Annie Wu criticised Hong Kong protestors. Wu’s father James co-founded Maxim’s Caterers Limited. Maxim’s is has a wide range of restaurants for all budgets. It also owns bakeries, provides catering for universities and businesses. Maxim’s even has a joint venture with Starbucks. Starbucks coffee shops in Hong Kong and southern China are run by this joint venture called Coffee Concepts.

Mainland businesses, especially Chinese state-owned enterprises like China Mobile and Bank of China were defaced by protestors. McDonalds restaurants in Hong Kong and China are majority owned by CITIC – a Chinese state-owned investment company.

Garden Bakery

Garden Bakery’s Life bread ended up becoming a yellow brand by default when it was criticised by members of the Hong Kong Police. Hong Kong protestors rallied around and even brought along loaves to demonstrations.

#AnywhereButChina Challenge

Consumers bought everyday products that weren’t made in China and shared the product and its country of origin online. This becomes quite tricky as products from western brands like Wrigley chewing gum or pair of Nike sneakers could be made in China.

It’s particularly interesting as it raises questions about long term perception of quality. Back before the protests when I was living in Hong Kong LG and Samsung smartphones being sold advertised with pride that they were made in Korea. It was a similar story with high-end Sony TV sets. #AnywhereButChina channels China’s political and quality related issues in one meme.

Solidarity with their customers

Many small businesses in Hong Kong started to do what they could for their young customers. And the customers paid them back with loyalty. By trying spend their money only in yellow businesses and avoid blue ones by creating a yellow economic cycle.

Online assets were created to point customers in the right direction. Here is one of the posters that have been circulating on Twitter. The use of QRcodes is much more common in east Asia than Europe. The code takes you through to a Google Maps overlay of Hong Kong featuring Yellow businesses which would be preferable to shop and eat at. Green businesses which are preferable to blue businesses. Blue businesses will be avoided wherever possible.

Reviews of yellow shops and restaurants on review sites like Open Rice have been poisoned by pro-government supporters placing bad reviews and protestors piling in to defend their yellow economic circle members. At its worst, even the most hardened Wikipedia editor would be daunted by the pitched battles going on.

January 28, 2020
Truth decay
Truth decay was a concept that I came across when reading Monocle’s Forecast issue.

President Donald Trump

Michael D Rich is the head of the The RAND Corporation – a not-for-profit think tank. When he was interviewed and described as being preoccupied with ‘truth decay’. Truth decay occurs when society and the body politic can’t even agree on basic facts.
- Increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data
- A blurring of the line between opinion and fact
- The increasing relative volume and resulting influence of opinion and personal experience over fact
- Declining trust in formerly respected sources of facts
Truth decay. One point that we’ve made over and over again is that no important problem can be solved in the US within the span of just a four-year presidency or a two-year Congress. And the way those problems have been surmounted in the past is consensus and compromise. That’s impossible if two sides can’t agree on the basic facts.
Thought Leaders – The Forecast 2020 Monocle magazine

All of this sounds like the rhetoric used to describe Vladislav Surkov and his work for the Russian government, or Dominic Cummings and Cambridge Analytica. The idea is that language and truth no longer mean anything. There is no right, there is no left, there is no ideology except the other group and the desire for power.

The RAND Corporation is America’s foremost think tank. It spun out of Douglas Aircraft Corporation. From national security it expanded to social and economic areas. It now has its own grad school and nine different research facilities. It’s website is a good source of resources across a range of areas.
January 6, 2020
Treasure hunt

Treasure hunt

Treasure hunt as defined by NPD is the process of consumers bargain hunting. It might be discounted pricing on items or looking for substitute pre-owned products.

Sale

Discounted items used to be seen in the retail trade as the preserve of older consumers alongside couponing. But as empirical experience going along to discount outlets show bargain hunters reach across social classes, income levels and age groups. Discounted products accounted for 3 percent growth in retail, even while retail declined by 1 percent overall in the last quarter.

There hasn’t been as much of an exploration into whether its the discounts that people want or whether its the thrill of the hunt itself, especially when Google makes it much easier online.

As for pre-owned goods, whilst NPD thinks that this is a millennial trait – vintage clothing stores, crate digging for records and and eBay are evidence that this trait isn’t new. I was reminded of being told that the collective memory is about eight years or so. So this explains how trends come back and get regurgitated or remixed by trendspotters and agencies.

Admittedly the motivation that they are ascribing to vintage shopping by millennials and gen-z adds environmental aspects to vintage consumption. (Though is probably quality aspects as well as apparel globalisation and fast fashion have gone hand-in-hand in the demand for heirloom design).

January 2, 2020
Dark mode + more things

Opinion | Living in Dark Mode – The New York Times – of the Hong Kong liberation movement was a plot device in a William Gibson novel, I would expect him to write a character like Karen. (Paywall) – dark mode is a great metaphor for the dystopian ennui. Yet I find it much easier to work in dark mode on my computer, which provides an interesting contradiction to idea

As facial recognition tech races ahead of regulation, Chinese residents grow nervous about data privacy | South China Morning Post – interesting that concerns are starting to appear around privacy and biometrics

Will Reddit Ads or Facebook Ads Have Lower CPC? – yes

The white working class is a political fiction | The Outline – It turns the working class into something people are, not a function of what they do. It becomes a cultural description totally divorced from labor and wealth, only to be gleaned from outward displays of “class” that come with intelligence, appearance, taste, and all those things that make up meritocratic ideas of “workers.”

The Uber Bubble: Why Is a Company That Lost $20 Billion Claimed to Be Successful? – early similar to a lot of dot com businesses

An update on YC China – Silicon Valley retreating from China.

Daring Fireball: Tim Cook Appears Alongside Trump in Re-Election Campaign Ad Shot in Mac Pro Plant in Austin – ironic given Apple’s actions in Hong Kong

How a Zara shirt raises ethical issues in sustainable fashion — Quartzy – (paywall)

Is TikTok really a national security threat? | Slate – yes it is

Dynamic Norms Promote Sustainable Behavior, Even if It Is Counternormative – Sparkman & Walton – Association for Psychological Science paper on dynamic messaging

Mobile: Social – Unpacking what holds the loyalty industry back… from what it could be. | LinkedIn – wider implications around people who’ve been conditioned by mobile ( and other technologies towards internet, multi-channel TV etc) to expect instant gratification in general

Zuckerberg’s Anti-China Rhetoric Roils Facebook Employees — The Information – Facebook is grappling with its large community of Chinese employees, some of whom are becoming more vocal and critical in internal company forums over what they claim is a bias against mainland China. (paywall)

Chinese netizens think Mark Zuckerberg betrayed China – The Facebook CEO has been widely admired in China, but his more recent negative comments about the country aren’t going over well | Abacus – why should Zuckerberg care

November 28, 2019