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.
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.
Samuel L Jackson has a second go at playing re-conned blaxploitation private investigator John Shaft. This time it seems to be a bit more self conscious and ironic in tonality. Think Jackson’s first outing as John Shaft mixed with Snakes on a Plane
Gillette Spain comes up with an advert that looks at masculinity without offending their customer base with heavy handed patronising messaging or ‘brandsplaining’ as I like to think of it.
https://youtu.be/A5PHG9AHdhk
A couple of weeks ago I showed the controversal advert featuring William Chan to promote Chanel’s J12 watch. There are parodies across the web of Chan’s Chinglish and general weirdness of the ad. This is my favourite one.
Singapore newspaper TODAYonline | In Hong Kong, foreign maids are racing to reclaim their voices – foreign domestic helpers live outside society and at worst they are horribly mistreated, suffer from loneliness or are victimised with scams and MLM schemes. It’s great to see a positive story about this community managing to do fantastic achievements on their own terms.
What we’d know as Eid in the UK, is known in Malaysia and Singapore as Hari Raya. You get seasonal tentpole ad campaigns. Here are some of the ones that I liked the most.
Reputation Inflation | National Bureau of Economic Research – A solution to marketplace information asymmetries is to have trading partners publicly rate each other post-transaction. Many have shown that these ratings are effective; we show that their effectiveness deteriorates over time. The problem is that ratings are prone to inflation, with raters feeling pressure to leave “above average” ratings, which in turn pushes the average higher. This pressure stems from raters’ desire to not harm the rated seller. As the potential to harm is what makes ratings effective, reputation systems, as currently designed, sow the seeds of their own irrelevance. Or in plain language how ratings programmes fail over time as they get bigger.
Toyota Already Has Upgrades for the New Supra • Gear Patrol – really interesting tension in the Supra – leave space for tuning – which is where the passion for the car grew out of whilst not gouging customers with a shonky value proposition versus rivals
Swatch have been doing some interesting things around personalisation of watch design, but Swatch and Brexit feels like a leap too far. They’ve got a really nice user experience in the web interface, which makes this a disappointing post to make. I do wonder about who they think Swatch and Brexit is actually aimed at? What other fashion or luxury brand has looked to exploit Brexit like a tawdry souvenir seller?
More Beyond campaign
Cathay Pacific – Move Beyond campaign might have passed by without a mention for me for a number of reasons.
It doesn’t say anything new, but reaffirms the Cathay Pacific that I’ve known and loved to fly with
It’s very much a campaign designed to top up brand awareness and consideration for the airline which has taken some brand knocks at home and declining awareness abroad
It’s about brand purpose, which seems to be a hygiene factor at the moment. More on that from Mark Ritson. I am not sure that Cathay Pacific’s brand purpose passes Ritson’s test of being prepared to stick with the brand purpose, even when it costs money – like when they moved away from having the Mandarin Oriental handling lounge catering…
Creatively its nice. A generic, safe looking brand film with catalogue corporate video backing track. I know Jack Scott shot it and some of the cinematography is nice (that word again), the colouring of the film is on point for money well spent. As an audience member it is pleasant enough to watch drift by, but not necessarily enough to spike a change
In fact, if it wasn’t for the MTR (Hong Kong’s equivalent of London Underground and Overground) and Hong Kong International Airport outdoor advertising it would be utterly forgettable. One of the print posters has a couple of clothed men holding hands running on a beach. An ideal compromise between a socially conservative society and western virtue signalling.
The poster wasn’t initially allowed to run on the MTR or in Hong Kong International. I heard some murmurings of China’s dark shadow casting a censoring hand on the posters – by westerners on social media. To be honest, they’d be more concerned about dealing with free speech, Falun Gong supporters, the Hong Kong independence movement rather than homosexuals being encouraged to walk on a beach in business smart suits.
Instead the reality is more mundane. A minority of Hong Kongers: Taoists, Buddhists, the non-religious and Christians alike are a bit ‘mid western American’ about the gay community. There is an obvious tension between deeply-held beliefs, the longevity of the family through children and grandchildren. Thankfully, the LGBT community and straight supporters managed to have the ban reconsidered.
William Chan Chinglish
I am guessing that Chanel has insights to show that women buy its J12 watches, whether as a gift for someone else or themselves. William Chan is an interesting brand ambassador choice in this video. There is criticism in the YouTube comments on his pronunciation and ‘Chinglish’. It also feels a bit too ‘sweet’ to me. At least he’s a good boy who loves his Mum.
Royyal Dog
Asian Boss put together this great documentary on Royyal Dog – Korea’s top graffiti artist.
Sony
Lastly I found this amazing corporate film by Sony of their corporate history that I guess was shot in the early-to-mid-1970s. The manufacturing process, in particular test and measurement being so labour intensive is fascinating. The 5 inch micro-TV set is a beautiful piece of product design, as is the early Trinitron TV set. The hi-fi equipment is achingly beautiful. Well worth watching it from start-to-finish. More Sony content here.
How Streetwear Is Driving Innovation in Hardware | HYPEBEAST – the innovation in hardware that Hypebeast is concerned about is fasteners clips and connectors in clothing and accessories. Some streetwear brands are using zips in a similar way to Vivienne Westwood during punk. They are borrowing from technical clothing, military gear and alpine sports for inspiration. More design related content here.
Branding
Cause Marketing Isn’t Working for Young People – Adweek – according to DoSomething’s survey, “Nike still only secured a 60% aided awareness of an association with any cause at all and only 27% with racial justice.” – doesn’t work unless it goes beyond a single campaign. This also has implication for this work and ZBB
Ralph Lauren’s CMO on retelling its brand story to ‘reach the kid looking for Supreme’ | The Drum – “We’ve marketed those in a very bespoke, very direct way to newer audiences. We can market on one hand to someone who’s been into the brand for 20, 30 years, who wore Polo Sport back in the 90s, but we can also market that product mix and that story to a younger kid who’s looking for Supreme. – hype isn’t only about media targeting yet according to this puff piece its all about digital media technology which is BS. It indicates a wider lack of focus there on craft, planning style insights, design, curation, the move to online ‘drops’ on certain collections
Anki shutting down despite $200 million in funding – Axios – bigger question consumers must start to have about having cloud in the product, is it really that smart as a model. I personally don’t think so. Also should cloud and product be sold by different companies a la Alexia and Harmon Kardon etc
Peepy and Mother Lee take influence to the next level. These Thai influencers are on point with style that crosses gender boundaries and is atemporal in nature. I am surprised the Peepy and Mother Lee don’t get more publicity outside Thailand. I am also surprised that they haven’t become the muse of a prominent fashion house or two.
They look like precisely the kind of people someone like Vivienne Westwood would embrace as a muse. More on luxury here.
Yet another way of landing the same Burger King message: Burger King’s flame-grilled glasses are too hot to handle | Creativepool. Having worked on FMCG brand, I know how hard it is to continually land the same messages in different ways that won’t generate groans from the client base. These are brands that people have known for decades, it’s hard to say the same thing in different ways that don’t jade audiences.
This Adobe marketing gimmick was going around a lot of the people that I know – Creative Types – the characters are nicely drawn, but I don’t know how accurate they are. I suspect something even less accurate than the MBTI. This was clever because people want to find out more about themselves, its an itch that they can’t help but scratch. In return Adobe builds their marketing email list.
Great economic analysis on China from the DLD Conference earlier this year
Tristan Harris is getting a lot of traction for his message in wonkish circles and I don’t see big technology firms having their ducks in a row to deal with the outcome. I suspect that some of the problem might be what I describe as a wilful autism. 20 years ago, Silicon Valley was a place with utopian outlook, the unforeseen outcomes happened when the internet reached a societal critical mass.
