Ged Carroll

Category: london | 倫敦 | 런던 | ロンドン

Why London?

First of all I live in London, I put down my roots here because of work. Commuting from the outside towns into the city takes a long time. People only tend to do that when they don’t have to come in every day or getting their kids into a good school is important for them.

Secondly it is an area distinct from the rest of the UK, this is partly down to history and the current economic reality. It is distinct in terms of population make-up and economic opportunity. London has a culture that is distinct from the rest of the UK, partly due to its population make-up. Over 30 percent of the city’s inhabitants were born in another country. From music to fashion, its like a different country:

  • As one women’s clothing retailer once said on a news interview ‘The further north you go; the more skin you see’.
  • The weekend is a huge thing outside the city. By comparison, it isn’t the big deal in London. The reason was that there were things you could enjoy every night of the week.
  • You can get a good cup of coffee
  • The city was using cashless payments way before it became universal elsewhere in the country
  • The line has extended into politics. London opposed Brexit. London, like other major cities it is one of the last holdouts of Labour party support in the 2019 UK general election

London posts often appear in other categories, as it fulfils multiple categories.

If there are London subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • Brexit part 1

    Why I am writing a post called Brexit part 1? Generally I find politics a bit too grubby and dirty for this blog and have only touched it when I absolutely, positively didn’t have a choice. So expect Brexit Part 1 and Brexit Part 2.

    On June 23, 2016 the UK goes to the polls to vote on whether the country should stay in or leave the European Union.

    Over the next few days I will be writing two posts (this is the first one). The first of which is about how it has all been presented. The second post will be a guide for my non-UK based friends on what the hell it all means.

    Political marketing generally isn’t the most amazing work, though there have been iconic campaigns. Given the momentous decision ahead of voters you would think that there would be a creative advertising campaign.

    The US has led the way in iconic political campaigns. My favourites being the ‘Daisy’ ad used by Lyndon B. Johnson against Barry Goldwater.

    Ronald Reagan’s ‘It’s morning in America again’ which is curiously soothing yet exceptionally emotive

    Barack Obama’s simple messages of ‘Hope’, ‘Change You Can Believe In’ and ‘Yes We Can’ together with a focus on repetition and reach brought out the vote in his favour.

    The UK has come up with good campaigns too; the Saatchi brothers ‘Britain Isn’t Working’ that helped get Margaret Thatcher the first time around. Ironically the poster doesn’t contain real unemployed people, but 20 Conservative party members shot over and over again to create the ‘conga line’.
    Labour isn't working
    It is such an iconic poster that the Labour party still has to jump over the hurdle of proving it wrong 30 years after its publication.

    By comparison Vote In’s adverts lack… creativity and any sort of emotion to pull the audience in. It is like they are selling machine parts to procurement professionals, not a life-changing decision.

    Ryanair’s campaign discounted flights for expats to come back to the UK and vote to remain has more engaging creative. WTF.
    ryanair

    Vote Leave isn’t much better. Let’s start off with their domain strategy ‘voteleavetakecontrol.org’ – Google’s Adwords team must have been rubbing their hands with joy. For a campaign the ideal URL would have been voteleave.co.uk (which is a rick roll link) or brexit.com. According to redirect on brexit.com

    www.Brexit.com & www.Brexit.co.uk were offered to the various national Out campaign groups for no charge.
    After no contact was offered in response it is now up for sale.
    £3500

    School boy error. If you look at their content, they have managed to latch on to emotive themes, but the production values of the material look as it has been done by Dave in Doncaster who does wedding videos on the weekend.

    And as we have less than a week to go to the polls the quality of the marketing isn’t likely to get any better.
    Around London
    In fact, the best piece of advertising for either side that I have seen was in Whitechapel. It is simple, snappy, emotive and likely done by an art student given the lack of declaration of campaign affiliation (i.e. a call to action to visit strongerin.co.uk or a claim that it was done on behalf of ‘Stronger In’ or ‘The In Campaign Limited’).

    One last thought to ponder in this post

    WPP in particular has a reputation for hiring marketing talent from political campaigns, and these people are sold on to clients as fresh thinkers and doers for their brands. Positive examples of this would be Obama campaign veterans Thomas Gensemer and Amy Gershkoff, or my old colleague Pat Ford who worked on Ronald Reagan’s campaign.

    There will be marketers getting jobs with serious salaries on the back of this work and the designer of ‘Brits Don’t Quit’ will be working in an intern farm somewhere if they’re lucky. Life just isn’t fair.

    You can read Brexit part 2 here.

    More Information
    Campaign on Labour Isn’t Working.
    Ryanair’s EU referendum ad investigated by police | The Guardian – it might be illegal, but at least it has a pulse.
    Thomas Gensemer LinkedIn profile
    Amy Gershkoff LinkedIn profile
    Patrick Ford LinkedIn profile

  • Velvet by Brubaker & Breitweiser

    Velvet is the antithesis of mainstream comics. In a world of Marvel-dominated culture, it is hard to imagine more realistic material. Ed Brubaker got the freedom to publish Velvet after several years at DC, Vertigo and Marvel.

    Velvet is a welcome antidote to the superhero genre of graphic novels. Instead, you get a cold war era spy drama with modern storytelling. Velvet tells the story of a middle-aged Anne Bancroft-like secretary and one-time agent. The story gets going when she is set up for murder by persons unknown.

    In this respect, it outlines the kind of spy plot that would be familiar to readers of Len Deighton or Alistair Maclean. Brubaker’s choice of the early 1970s goes back to a pre-cellphone and computer age. This provides him with a broader canvas to work with.

    The story feels modern in its non-linear narrative that moves back and forth between 1956 and 1973. The story zips through Europe across both sides of the Iron Curtain as Velvet tries to find who set her up. The comic features highly kinetic action reminiscent of Matt Damon-era Jason Bourne.

    The first two volumes of it are available here and here. Volume three is due out in September. More book reviews here.

  • Granny’s Got Talent

    Granny’s Got Talent – The Korean Cultural Centre has a fortnightly screening of films. The latest one that I went to was Granny’s Got Talent or 헬머니 (pronounced Helmeoni – a literal translation would be Hell Granny).

    The premise is built around an old woman who is released from jail. She lost contact with her eldest son and tries to build that connection whilst living with her youngest son. The eldest son is a salary man with an over-bearing set of rich in-laws. The youngest son an inveterate gambler. To bail the youngest son out of trouble she participates in a Korean reality TV show based around cursing and chaos ensues. Veteran Korean actress carries off the role of Hell Granny with aplomb. I laughed so hard at some points I ended up crying.

    The raucous bawdy humour of Granny’s Got Talent works despite subtitles and has some amazing comedic set-pieces. But this rudeness is only the top layer in the story, where the viewer gets a glimpse at the hard life a strong woman had to live in a fast-developing South Korea.

    The film works on a number of levels touching a number of distinctly  Korean themes including the obsession with hierarchy, its turbulent political past, the corrupt aspects of chaebols and the love of family (no matter how dysfunctional).

    The piece that British audiences will most relate to is the exploitative nature of reality TV formats. Something that the English title translation picked up, rather than going with a literal translation of the Korean ‘Hell Granny’. ‘Hell Granny’ as a title focuses on the profanity. When I was young someone who swore or used bawdy language was said to have the mouth of a washer woman – a low class blue collar job. For more Korea related posts, go here.

    More Information
    Movie page on Daum in Korean

  • Hacks and Hackers notes

    I went to the Hacks and Hackers London presentations this evening host at the Institute of Directors and here is a summary of the notes that I made.

    Presenting at Hacks and Hackers this time was:

    • Simon Rogers
    • Kate Day

    Simon Rogers is ex-Guardian and Twitter. He talked about how Google uses Google Trends, combining it with third party data such as information from the likes of Associated Press. They build some nice visualisations around them. Most of the data that they used was basically the same data that consumers had access to through the Google Trends tool. Google seem to deliberately restrained in terms of the data that they could deploy on this, but they did work on tightening up and redefining regions from the way their internal data held it to the way it related to the real world.

    There was some nice work done that looked at associated search terms that came up by people who searched for US presidential candidate names. It reminded me of the work that Hunch did around consumer behaviour patterns and likely political beliefs – but less sophisticated. (Hunch was bought by eBay and eventually shut down).

    Kate Day talked about the launch of US site Politico in Europe. The business had a split business model with a B2B subscription offering that provided European Parliament intelligence. and a more conventional consumer advertising audience model which targeted people who were professionally interested in European parliamentary politics.

    From an editorial point of view stories which drove big peaks in traffic often brought in the wrong kind of audience who either wouldn’t be likely to return, or ‘get’ the content on offer.

    Targeting on social media was purely done through careful selection of the copywriting, which requires professional knowledge and a desire to self select as a ‘policy wonk’ rather than using Facebook or Twitter’s ad targeting mechanisms. In common with other subject areas regular coverage of a beat area matters to drive continued engagement. Politico has managed to get UK press scoops by showing up at all the press briefings in Brussels rather than following the British eurocrat events – this probably says a lot about the small size of teams that other national news outlets have operating there.

    More media related topics here.

  • People that have made my year

    2015 has been a year of constant change. Here are the people that have made my year. From winning the global Huawei smartphone business, launching New Balance Football and making margarine more digital. There were also low points like going through the pain of working on Huawei yet again. Also Racepoint Global’s financial position meant that I and other senior staff were let go from the London office:

    My good friend and go to creative Stephen Holmes at Bloodybigspider whose office in Whitechapel I had access to during the autumn

    Ian Wood with whom I shared coffee and ideas  throughout the year

    The team at Mullen Lowe Profero who have helped me get to grips with a number of projects that I picked up in mid-flight whilst working at Unilever. This included media buying best practice, a global website template, an ad for the Mexican market and assets for an interim UK website.

    Haruka Ikezawa who was my desk mate and creative sounding board at Racepoint. Haruka is a multi disciplinary creative who can turn her hand to illustration, animation, video editing and graph  design. In her spare time she also drums with a couple of bands.

    My good friend Cecily Liu at China Daily, who is always a great source of intellectual discussion

    Luke Zak who drove a lot of the work on New Balance Football through his love of the beautiful game and deep knowledge of working with sports star talent. Luke had previously worked on adidas and Visa’s sponsorship programmes.

    Vicky Neill who shared many of the highs and lows of pitching and driving campaigns for Huawei. Vicky is based in Hong Kong and we used to work at Racepoint Global together.

    More marketing related things here.

    Those are the people who have made my year; who are the people that made yours?