Ged Carroll

Category: luxury | 奢華 | 사치 | 贅沢

Over the space of 20 years, luxury changed enormously. The Japanese had been a set of new consumers for luxury, but in terms of numbers they hadn’t eclipsed the US as the biggest market for luxury.

China’s ascent into the WTO (World Trade Organisation) made a lot of business people and politicians a lot richer. China challenged the US in terms of luxury market size. On their rise, Chinese consumers changed a lot in their sophistication as they educated themselves on luxury consumption.

These new consumers picked up new traits such as wine drinking. This also meant that luxury goods became new asset classes as Chinese money looked to acquire only the best. Chinese culture in turn impacted luxury design. Chinese new year became more important than Christmas.

Then there was the second generation money. Young rather than old consumers. Consumers who were looking for something less formal, either because they didn’t wear anything but streetwear or they worked in the creative classes rather than the traditional professions and high finance.

The industry had traditionally avoided rap artists and R&B singers, now Jay Z and Beyonce are the face of Tiffanys and Fendi had collaborated with Rihanna.

They no longer wanted to have to wear a jacket and tie to have afternoon tea at the Mandarin. They took an eclectic look more attuned to the Buffalo Collective than Vogue Italia.

You had hybridisation with the street to create a new category of luxe streetwear in a way that also owes a debt to football casual terrace wear and the pain.

Now you have Zegna badge engineering approach shoes from alpine brand La Sportiva and Prada has done a similar thing with adidas’ iconic Stan Smith tennis shoes. Balenciaga with their Speed Sock looks like a mix between Nike’s flyknit football boots and the Nike Footscape sole.

As I have written elsewhere on this blog:

Luxury has traditionally reflected status. Goods of a superior nature that the ‘wrong sort’ of people would never be able to afford. Luxury then became a symbol that you’d made it. In Asian markets, particularly China, luxury became a tool. People gifted luxury products to make relationships work better. It also signified that you are the kind of successful business person that partners could trust. You started to see factory managers with Gucci man bags and premium golfwear to signal their success. Then when the scions of these business people and figures in authority were adults, luxury has become about premium self expression.

  • Bumper issue of stuff from the web

    This is a bumper issue of my regular(ish) posts of interesting stuff around the web

    Apple’s Cook meets China regulator after pulling Hong Kong app – Reuters – Quisling Tim Cook takes more orders from China

    Daring Fireball: Apple Removes HKmap.live From App Store – I still haven’t seen which local laws it violates, other than the unwritten law of pissing off Beijing. This is a bad look for Apple, if you think capitulation is a bad look.

    The Nike of China Wants to Go Global and Has Xi in Its Corner – Bloomberg – Anta seems better positioned to challenge the Western sporting apparel giants because it’s building a family of brands with reach far beyond China. He says the company has been bolstered by its recent $5.2 billion acquisition of Finland’s Amer Sports Oyj, parent of ski brands Armada, Atomic, and Salomon, as well as high-end outdoor gear company Arc’teryx and equipment company Wilson. “Anta is heading towards the Winter Olympics in much better shape than Li-Ning was in 2008,” Martin says. “With the winter and outdoor sports brands, it’s very relevant. Anta’s already in a better position to leverage the sponsorship.” – (paywall) – interesting article. What isn’t discussed is that Salomon and Arcteryx are key providers to western militaries including special forces units. Arcteryx’s LEAF outfits have a lot of material and design innovations that have aided operators. This is a very real security risk that hasn’t been addressed at all. Buying Salomon and Arcteryx provides Anta with a bumper issue of technology and innovative design

    China Celebrities Help Fan New Generation of Nationalists – Bloomberg – mando pop idols used to push nationalist agenda. Also explains government restrictions on K-pop in China. North, south, east or west – the party is first is going to make for very dull content

    Terminus 2049 | NBA events and national madness – sane Chinese thoughts on the NBA debacle, fascinating read which provides insight into the conundrum of correlation between Chinese national fragility / sensitivity and Chinese power

    Chinese Values Are Changing America – The Atlantic – China is transforming the US rather than the other way around

    On-Board ‘Mystery Boxes’ Threaten Global Shipping Vessels | Threatpost – Commercial shipping environments are rife with vulnerabilities, according to researchers – up to and including unpatched “mystery boxes” that no one knows anything about. “In every single [nautical pen] test to date we have unearthed a system or device, that of the few crew that were aware, no one could tell us what it is was for,” said Andrew Tierney, researcher with Pen Test Partners – given the importance of logistics in the global economy this should be frightening. That sounds like a bumper issue of security faults…

    Home Bargains delivers bigger profit than Harrods | Financial Times – there’s room at the bottom of the UK market as the middle class collapses. Instead the new poor will have a bumper issue of made in China products

    The Boycott Blizzard Movement Is Weighing on Activision Blizzard Stock – Barron’s – Boycott Blizzard responsible for an 18 – 23% drop in US revenue – multinational corporations alignment with the Chinese government is not starting to burn the businesses in markets outside China

    Redrawing the Map of Global Capital Flows: The Role of Cross-Border Financing and Tax Havens – We find that private capital flows from developed countries like the U.S. and Eurozone to firms in large emerging economies – including Brazil, China, India, and Russia – are substantially larger than previously thought. (PDF)

    Huawei’s 5G Tech Isn’t Worth the Risk – Huawei may assert that it has already taken an unbeatable lead in 5G infrastructure, judging who’s truly ahead in the field means looking at multiple criteria. Such indicators can include commercial contracts, deployed performance, integration with network infrastructure, and real technological innovation. For example, Huawei has claimed that it has more 5G patents than all U.S. companies combined, but quantity does not necessarily correlate with quality—especially in China, where patents are often of dubious value. – Interesting article, it burns Huawei in a different and probably more damaging way if it gained traction

    FE Investegate |Sports Direct Intl. Announcements | Sports Direct Intl.: Media Statement – interesting move by Sports Direct looking to counter Nike’s move to a direct to consumer only model over the next two years

    WSJ City | Congress Probes Bot E-Cigarette Messages – interesting how the US is a world away from the UK in terms of vaping regulation and marketing

    What can we tell from China’s reviving sales of instant noodles? | HKEJ Insight – inelastic spend / consumption patterns?

    China fact of the day | Marginal Revolution – Starting with the Opium Wars in the 19th century, foreign powers bullied a weak and backward China into turning Hong Kong and Macau into European colonies. Students must memorize the unequal treaties the Qing dynasty signed during that period. There’s even a name for it: “national humiliation education.”

    Flora ends Mumsnet partnership over spread of anti-trans sentiment | The Drum – proud of my old colleagues from my time contracting at Flora

    What luxury brands can learn from Golden Week 2019 | Marketing | Campaign Asia – the silver generation has gone on to become the driving force behind holiday consumption. According to data from Alibaba, this demographic is now tech-savvy and will order food delivery, book travel packages online, and purchase high-end skincare and health packages from their phones. As much as luxury brands focus on millennials and Gen-Z, they shouldn’t ignore Chinese seniors, many of whom are retirees willing to splurge on luxury goods and go on luxury holidays. According to a study by the China-Britain Business Council, Chinese seniors who are 60 or older have set aside an average of 15 percent of their annual income for travel.

    ADMAP | June 2019 | Tim Doherty on how China is finding its voice – YouTube – Chinese using voice interfaces for entertainment and surf the web, 77% use of voice on smartphones. I wonder how much of this is voice messages on WeChat rather than Siri type interactions? Interesting how strong government support has bolstered voice technology

    Handbag Market Dynamics Have Changed | NPD – Today’s consumer is looking for a solution, not just a bag. Consumers expect a lot from the products they are buying, from function and versatility to a brand’s engagement in the social and environmental issues that matter to them, and the luxury market is not immune to these pressures

    Here’s How the UK Avoided A “Vape Lung” Epidemic – “I think the difference between the U.K. and the U.S. are due to the American propensity to turn health issues into moral crusades,” University of Louisville doctor and tobacco addiction expert Brad Rodu told Vice. “It appears that policymakers in the U.S. are either completely ignorant of the history of tobacco, or completely ignore it.”

    LinkedIn Adds Tools to Help Marketers Sharpen Their Campaign Targeting – Adweek – another Matt Muir zinger: The ability to create targets using Boolean parameters is quite a nice touch (if that sentence fragment meant nothing whatsoever to you then know that I am so, so jealous of your innocence), as is the live view of the exact demographic breakdown of your target audience as you set your ads up (so, for example, you can see what percentage of the overall X,000,000 people you could potentially reach are senior managers, what percentage janitors, etc). Really rather useful, although it doesn’t stop LinkedIn from being a miserable, awful place where joy goes to die

    Facebook’s Workplace hits 3M paying users, launches Portal app in a wider push for video | TechCrunch – I’ll leave you with Matt Muir’s critique: – 3million paying users is a lot for a product which, whenever I’ve seen it in use, doesn’t appear to actually fulfil any practical purpose whatsoever other than giving HR another channel through which to spout platitudes about cake-based fundraising initiatives and what’s on the canteen menu today. Still, some people obviously like it (ha! Joke! Noone ‘likes’ this stuff; at best, one tolerates it while one waits for the sweet release of death), and should you be one of said people then you will be THRILLED to hear of a few exciting updates to the service. “Workplace is announcing several steps of its own into video. It’s releasing a special app that can be used on the Portal, Facebook’s video screen; and alongside that, it’s announcing new video features: captioning at the bottom of videos; auto-translating starting with 14 languages; and a new P2P architecture that will speed up video transmission for those who might be watching videos on Workplace in places where bandwidth is constrained.” Oh, and there will be a bunch of new materials and tools available to help the aforementioned HR people to get people to actually use the service, as well as METRICS and ANALYTICS and OTHER STUFF. Lucky, lucky us.

    Daily chart – Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime | Graphic detail | The Economist – explains the rise of rabid Han nationalism in China

    How NBA crisis brings US-China tension into American living rooms – Inkstone – “What used to be the gap between the hard consensus on China in Washington and the ambivalence or bias toward a positive perspective on the street, that gap is closing,” said Jude Blanchette, chair in China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington

    LVMH’s Luxury Ventures Fund Invests in 2-Year Old Streetwear Brand Madhappy — The Fashion Law

    Facebook to Pay $40M in Proposed Settlement in Video Metrics Suit | Hollywood Reporter – According to a brief in support of the settlement, Facebook would pay $40 million to resolve claims. Much of that would go to those who purchased ad time in videos, though $12 million — or 30 percent of the settlement fund — is earmarked for plaintiffs’ attorneys. The suit accused Facebook of acknowledging miscalculations in metrics upon press reports, but still not taking responsibility for the breadth of the problem. “The average viewership metrics were not inflated by only 60%-80%; they were inflated by some 150 to 900%,” stated an amended complaint.

    That’s the end of this bumper issue of links. Watch out for the next bumper issue that is likely to be equally diverse in nature

  • Galloway on Louis Vuitton & more

    Section 4’s Scott Galloway on Louis Vuitton. Professor Scott Galloway talks about the way Louis Vuitton has re-engineered its business to handle the modern luxury consumer consumer’s needs and tastes.

    Modern consumers are younger and based in Asia rather than the traditional older luxury purchasers in Europe and the US. This has meant that digital became more important, as had casual luxury over formal luxury.

    All of that innovation was extended by Louis Vuitton with streetwear type drops rather than seasons. Shops are a brand experience in their own right. Including online games and pop-up Instagrammable stores. They focused on products that can be driven into the market faster with an agile supply chain.

    Casual styling allows you to go to smaller goods with a lower price point and replaceable more often.

    The line between streetwear and luxury has been blurred. More on luxury related issues here.

    A great mix of the hits of European disco producer Daniel Bangalter (Vangarde). Daniel Bangalter started with a husband and wife team, writing and producing their songs. Around this time, he partnered up with Jean Kluger. Their first project was a pseudo Japanese band called the Yamasuki Singers. It was the early 1970s and a bit strange. Kluger and Bangalter then went on to produce Ottowan including D.I.S.C.O. They also produced the Gibson Brothers song Cuba. You can hear the influence of his sound (and probably at least some of his studio equipment) in the Daft Punk sound.

    Daft Punk includes his son Thomas Bangalter. Apparently Daniel helped Daft Punk when they were starting out.

    Mark Ritson on 50 years of Effies. Some of the content is as worth watching as listening to Ritson’s commentary.

    Scott Galloway on online business. Some interesting points here

    Fabio Wibmer does to the Austrian city of Wien (Vienna) what Bullit did to San Francisco.

  • The future of fashion + more things

    Are sneakers the future of fashion? – i-D – not a bad article. Native advertising for Christian Louboutin’s sneaker collection – though they remind me a lot of various vintage of ASH and Alexander McQueen sneakers. More on the why of streetwear and sportswear merging with luxury. The reason why the future of fashion is more casual is because the big markets are in East and Southeast Asia. They are younger, often the scions of first generation money.

    French Billionaire Arnault Calls Greta Thunberg ‘Demoralising’ | News & Analysis | BoF – interesting commentary with a philosophical angle

    Volvo is asking people to share seat-belt selfies so it can improve safety in future cars | AdAge – Grand Prix for Creative Strategy – interesting approach to norming

    Black & Abroad, Volvo grab Grand Prix glory at Cannes | AdAge – Forsman & Bodenfors achieved something similar, but with a completely different message to a entirely different audience. The agency was tasked with promoting equal road safety for men and women, and set about sifting through decades of crash data that Volvo had been collecting since the 1970s. It found that women are more likely than men to suffer injuries from a crash, in part, because most auto companies use male crash-test dummies to test their cars—which over the years has hindered how car manufacturers design safety features for their vehicles.

    Dentsu creative: Ill-conceived purpose campaigns are ruining the industry | Advertising | Campaign Asia – good point by Toshihiko Tanabe. 16 out of 21 Grand Prix awards at Cannes were social purpose / cause campaigns

    UK ministers accused of sealing Thomas Cook’s fate | Business | The Guardian – “Two governments were prepared to back a British brand, the UK government wasn’t,” said the source. “Without that, there wasn’t enough confidence around the table to make it work.” 

    In a separate move, the German government were providing Thomas Cook subsidiary airline Condor with a bridging loan, allowing the company to keep flying.

    U.N. postal union clinches deal to keep U.S. in club – Reuters – interesting move given the subsidies Chinese companies are given on postage for small things sold in Amazon Marketplace, eBay etc

  • Snowden revelations + more things

    Looking back at the Snowden revelations – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering – The brilliant thing about the Snowden leaks was that he didn’t tell us much of anything. He showed us. Most of the revelations came in the form of a Powerpoint slide deck, the misery of which somehow made it all more real. And despite all the revelation fatigue, the things he showed us were remarkable – this is such a good read. I suspect that the level of surprise expressed is mostly a US thing. I was disappointed, but not shocked by it all. Back in the day the NSA used to publish one of the best guides to ‘hardening’ macOS – documents that they no longer seem to host online. The Snowden revelations were nothing new. I grew up in Europe when:

    • GCHQ were tapping all of Ireland’s overseas telecoms and data traffic via the Capenhurst tower. Having lived in the neighbourhood of Capenhurst during the 1980s and 1990s, this was well known but only confirmed in the media in 1999
    • The ECHELON network was hoovering up microwave, fax, satellite and telephone calls

    After Duncan Campbell’s lifetime of work, the Snowden revelations are part of a decades long pattern of behaviour. Admittedly the US’ rivals will be up to the same things and worse.

    Luxury watch maker Patek Philippe and Leagas Delaney launch new Generations campaign – Marketing Communication News – the most interesting aspect of this to me is the way its looking to address a younger audience. Secondly, if you look at the background with the plants and rain its moved the look and feel to more tropical than their previous campaigns that were northern European in feel. (It was actually shot in Italy). Because? My guess, China. Younger rich people due to second generation wealth. Two children reflecting the recent law changes around family size in the country

    Is the era of the $100+ graphing calculator coming to an end? | The Hustle – don’t feel too sorry for Texas Instruments: over a 20-year period, TI set out to manufacture demand by making its calculators mandated classroom tools. The company established partnerships with big textbook companies that integrated TI-specific exercises (complete with screenshots of buttons) into classroom curricula. It sought approval for standardized test use from administrators like the College Board. And every time a competing tech innovation came along, it lobbied to maintain its perch atop the parabola. According to Open Secrets and ProPublica data, Texas Instruments paid lobbyists to hound the Department of Education every year from 2005 to 2009 — right around the time when mobile technology and apps were becoming more of a threat. The company campaigned against devices with touchscreens, internet connection, and QWERTY keyboards” – hate the game, not the player etc. etc.

    Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier – WSJ – which is being used in an antitrust investigation. No real surprises for anyone who has followed Facebook over the years. This negates Facebook’s main defence of ‘if it wasn’t us, it would be China’

    The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism | The New Yorker – the sub heading ‘Big technological shifts have always empowered reformers. They have also empowered bigots, hucksters and propagandists

    New York in 1984 was the time, and the place, dance music became a culture – Features – Mixmag – great write up, the only thing missing is a name check for the Latin Rascals, Cutting Records and the Freestyle scene

    Jason Dill HYPEBEAST Magazine Interview | HYPEBEAST – great interview, partly due to the car crash of journalist interviewing technique

    Parenting’s New Frontier: What Happens When Your 11-Year-Old Says No to a Smartphone? – Vogue – my son had decided three things about smartphones. 1. They’re infantilizing, a set of digital apron strings meant to attach you to your mother. (He was onto something there.) 2. They compromise a boy’s resourcefulness because kids come to rely on the GPS instead of learning Scout skills. 3. They make people trivial. This final observation bugs me the most, because he still expresses it whenever he sees me jabbing at my own device: “Texty texty! Emoji emoji!” And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. In short, my son says, he doesn’t want a phone because he wants to be free

  • Juul sales halted in China + more

    Juul Sales Halted in China, Days After Launch – WSJ – this could be as much about IP as anything else that caused the Juul sales halted in China. The e-cigarette was invented by a Chinese engineer looking for a healthier option to cigarettes. Secondly tobacco is a monopoly in China run by a state owned enterprise that is a valuable source of government revenue. There are even tobacco sponsored universities. I am only mildly surprised that Juul sales halted hadn’t happened in the US, given that Juul is so popular with teens

    Trend-bucking Maccas turns back to tradition | The Australian – the most interesting implication of McDonald’s selection of W+K is what it says about client conflict. W+K already has the North American account for KFC and has been producing spectacular work for the brand. McDonald’s made no request of W+K to drop KFC in order to work for it, with its North American chief marketing officer, Morgan Flatley, noting the potential client issue “doesn’t concern us”. “We wanted to make the decision around getting the best work that this business deserves,” she said. – it wouldn’t have been that long ago that a major client would tolerate that degree of client conflict

    Exclusive: Australia concluded China was behind hack on parliament, political parties – sources    – Reuters – the Australians were too scared of the Chinese to confront them about it at the moment. This is a situation that could

    Gasp | The Blogfather | Brand Building Breakdown – nice summary which emphasises why brand is more important than activation in terms of marketer focus

    McDonald’s picks Wieden & Kennedy New York as lead U.S. creative agency | AdAge – it “also suggests that a bespoke agency model … may not be the definitive answer for major marketers when it comes to creative partners.”

    The New Target That Enables Ransomware Hackers to Paralyze Dozens of Towns and Businesses at Once — ProPublica – similar to tactics that Chinese hackers have been doing for years. Yet another argument against cloud

    China’s TikTok social media app has captured the NFL, but not Hong Kong protesters – The Washington Post – you know ByteDance are censoring the sh*t out of it to keep the Xi administration happy, more online related content here

    LS Keynote 2019 Speaker Introduction: Pablo Mauron, DLG (Digital Luxury Group) – luxury brands need to find ways to adapt and integrate their globally-developed creative assets for use in different markets

    LS Keynote 2019 Speaker Introduction: Kai Hong, JINGdigital – how brands can truly engage and grow their WeChat communities with the right social CRM strategy

    LS Keynote 2019 Speaker Introduction: Jacques Roizen, EVP Digital Transformation and New Ventures, Baozun – the evolution of omnichannel retail and how brands can leverage new opportunities to create better customer experiences

    Frankfurt Motor Show: Winter Is Coming | EE Times – the moon shot of autonomous driving may one day lead to falling accident rates, but that the development costs — and liabilities of public testing — may destroy them on the way. Almost everyone has stepped back from the brink of a ludicrous business model. This begs the question about autonomous driving as a killer app for 5G

    Standing out is the key brand challenge, so great brands play with their codes | Marketing Week – purpose-wank aside, removing every single letter from your packaging is actually a very smart and very effective move. Because when companies play with well-established codes like this and remove or alter their appearance, the impact on salience and brand image is significantly improved – great article by Mark Ritson, but requires decades of brand consistency to work well

    Design: pharma’s next frontier | eyeforpharma – on human centred design

    Facebook warns about Apple iOS 13 privacy improvement – the blog post appears to be a way to get out in front of software changes made by Apple and Google that could unsettle Facebook users given the company’s poor reputation for privacy.

    The new Microsoft To Do is here – pity the poor product manager who is trying to transfer Wunderlist which built up an amazingly loyal following

    Underwear Ads Lose the Macho: How Marketing Has Embraced Real Men – The New York Times – I suspect that it’s like Gillette in that men who buy Hanes by out of habit and women buying for men are the people to influence