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.

  • Montblanc + more things

    Montblanc

    Montblanc launches connected pen and paper | Luxury Daily – interesting move by Montblanc. The technology for connected pens similar to what Montblanc is doing has been around for a while. However it is interesting seeing a luxury brand like Montblanc enter the field. Montblanc has also done interesting things in wearables as well.

    Business

    Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert – WSJ

    Culture

    A great documentary on the (little known in the UK) early 1990s US rave scene that blossomed on the west coast and gave us the likes of Hawke, The God Within aka Scott Hardkiss, Onionz and the like.

    Design

    The last day of hot metal press printing at the New York Times

    Media

    WeChat and Brands | WeChat Blog: Chatterbox – Caesars Entertainment and interesting concierge bot trial

    Evolving App Store Business Models – David Smith – move to ads from payments or subscription pricing

    Security

    Cisco’s Network Bugs Are Front and Center in Bankruptcy Fight – Bloomberg – and there is the opportunity for other vendors to get in

    Now for a more disturbing piece of technology, that my colleague Matt shared with me: OfferMoments looks like a privacy nightmare a la Minority Report. I found this a disturbing 90 seconds of viewing as marketing walks all over privacy in an unprompted very intrusive manner.

    Software

    Instagram lawyers tell owner of anti-litter app to change its name | The Guardian – interesting move, will this open the door for them to go after the likes of Telegram (messaging app) later on

    Wireless

    Un-carrier Network List of Firsts | TelecomTV Tracker – summary of T-Mobile US rollouts

    Apple Plug – neatly skewers the iPhone 7

  • 2016 Apple event

    In a now annual ritual its 2016 Apple event held on September 7 left me a lot to reflect on.

    Style

    • The presentation was telling a hard story to an audience that were likely to be underwhelmed. Phil Schiller rather than Tim Cook carried the most difficult parts of the keynote.
    • The piano finish device was an obvious attempt to provide a style angle to the new iPhone and mask the aerial sections. However it is a class action waiting to happen as it will dull over time with micro-scratches
    • The story that the audience was told didn’t feel right. Lets talk about the headphone jack. The double camera only appears in the Plus, so the requirement for room isn’t a credible argument on its own, other vendors have managed to waterproof handsets with headphone jacks. I suspect that Apple isn’t sure that its backing the right horse. Its the least aggressive change they’ve made in a while. The inclusion of an adaptor shows that their user aggression still isn’t as high compared to when they got rid of: SCSI, Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), iPod 30 pin port (still pissed about that one), AppleTalk, floppy disks or optical disk playback and storage – I suspect that they are fearfully waiting to see what the pre-order numbers will be like and they should be. A straw poll of AdAge readers (core Apple user demographic) showed overwhelming disappointment
      AdAge readers on new iPhone
    • There is a lot of really nice features in iOS 10 – I’ve been using it for a while, why didn’t they make more of this and macOS Sierra?

    Substance

    • Innovation in the smartphone category has flattened out. The iPhone 7 provides reasons for laggard iPhone users to upgrade, but nothing for 6 and 6S series users. There are few if any innovations for the likes of Huawei to ape in their new models
    • Innovation in smartwatches has plateaued. Apple is coalescing around fitness and dedicated products are much more cost effective for consumers. In China Xiaomi’s fitness band sells for about £15, for many consumers it would be enough. Fitbit is doing well – Apple’s wrist computer (alongside Samsung Gear etc) looks like a sledgehammer to crack a nut
    • Apple have done nothing to address the latent demand for new laptops amongst consumers (I am still happy with my 13″ Retina MacBook Pro). There was no replacement for the Cinema display (again, I am happy with my current set-up, but where is the pro-user love)
    • Apple abandoned its flirtation with luxury by discontinuing the gold Watch. They are still holding out to be viewed as stylish by doubling down with Hermes and a white ceramic device – it would work on the opposite wrist to a Chanel J12
    • It was curious that Apple moved away from talking about security and privacy; the collaborative document working using iWork which could be seen as a potential attack vector on to the desktop. The Air Pods that sync seamlessly with a device without visible security precautions.  iPhone security was addressed in the James Corden car karaoke skit at the beginning of the show rather than woven through the materials.
    • The speech about the app store was to try and bolster developer support, I suspect that services will shore up the Apple financial numbers over the next 12 months
    • The Nike branded Apple Watch was part of a broader move reposition the Apple Watch 2 as a fitness device and probably the biggest transition of the 2016 Apple event.

    More related content can be found here.

  • Travel hacks & inspiration

    Some travel hacks:

    • Mytaxi – works for European cities, similar to Hailo or Uber
    • 3 Feel Like Home – not having to worry about roaming charges in a number of countries. There are a couple of things to be aware of:
    1. If you have a tethered broadband component to your phone tariff it won’t be part of Feel Like Home
    2. You will be on 3G networks rather than LTE back in the UK, your mileage may vary

    More travel hacks here

    The New Yorker has been producing some fantastic surreal content

    The Suicide Squad movie was disjointed to say the least, but one good thing that came out of it was a collaboration between Action Bronson and Mark Ronson

    Korean cosmetic brand Innisfree tapped into the aspirations of Korean and Chinese consumers with this fantasy VR bike ride to Jeju Island. The execution was canny, from a technical perspective it deals well with the motion / balance issues that VR projects sometimes have. Jeju Island is a famous for its pleasant weather and more relaxed lifestyle. Chinese investors have recently been driving up property prices there. More Korea related content here.

    Finally, man gets tattoo in shape of scar to support son after surgery.

  • Alan Kay on AI + more

    Alan Kay

    Computing pioneer Alan Kay on AI, Apple and future – FactorDaily – interesting take on current approaches to AI by computer pioneer Alan Kay. I first came across Alan Kay in Bob Cringely’s book Accidental Empires. The fact that you can read this page in a browser window is partly down to Alan Kay. Alan Kay had worked at the titans driving forwards computing. He studied at the University of Utah when it was doing pioneering work on computer graphics. He went into commercial research at Xerox PARC, which basically provided a polished roadmap for computing as we know it following Doug Engelbart’s ‘mother of all demos’ while at SRI. Alan Kay came up with the concept of the Dynabook which foreshadowed the iPad and iPhone by a few decades. While Alan Kay may have slowed down his contributions, he hasn’t slowed down his critiques. Alan Kay had is last role running the Viewpoints Research Institute which explored new ideas in computing and personal computing

    Consumer behaviour

    Headphones Everywhere – The New Yorker – interesting insights into behaviour and world perception

    Why small Northern towns voted to leave. There is so much in this. Their perception that things are better in London. When you look at similar people in London there is still poverty. One of the key differences is that talent has left these area. This was the second shoe dropping from the 1985 miner’s strike and similar industrial action. Ironically de-industrialisation has been blamed implicitly on the European Union, when it was a very British decision based on the Chicago School style economics and anti-union action when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

    What happens when people like these realise things are going to get worse, not better for them? And being a small country between big economic blocs is going to decimate even the little jobs that they have left, their benefits and their health system?

    Culture

    Breaking up with London’s most-loved party | Dazed – I fell out of love with the internet the moment Tumblr appeared. Too accessible, too many filters… the same three pictures of Kate Moss and the Britney Spears circulating… I did, however, make a private Facebook group and an event. I love the idea of how limited Facebook is, visually. The way we used the group/event page was still very DIY. It became a resource, a way to practically get the party moving, from people getting in touch to help, to DJ’s finding out if people had spare headphones

    John Ciena on patriotism. WWE stars do a lot of work making personal appearances around the world on USO (United Services Organizations) tours. But this is different in that it presents a multi-dimensional, progressive view of patriotism. One that’s probably at odds with at least some of the stereotypes people might have of WWE fans.

    Economics

    Economic Anxiety Really Is (Part of) the Reason White Men Are So Pissed Off | Mother Jones – I would expect similar patterns driving this in the UK as well. More on economics related issues here

    225m reasons for China’s leaders to worry | The Economist – before the late 1990s China barely had a middle class. In 2000, 5m households made between $11,500 and $43,000 a year in current dollars; today 225m do

    Finance

    The chip card transition in the US has been a disaster | Quartz – with the model of the EU and many APAC countries there for them already, how could they make such a mess of it? This is beyond me

    FMCG

    Big Food is disclosing the nitty gritty details of our food—in a place where no one looks | Quartz – this could drive increasing US use of QRcodes over time

    Gadgets

    Razer made a mechanical keyboard for the iPad Pro | The Verge – regardless of whether you game or not, having a decent keyboard for the iPad is a good thing. Not sure the iPad/tablet format is a laptop killer though

    Innovation

    Fail-Safe Nuclear Power | MIT Technology Review – interesting read. China is betting big on fast breeder reactors, sodium-cooled reactors and fast breeder reactors. Technology that the west was ahead on and then walked away from for various political rather than technical reasons. The ironic thing is that we’re instead left with reactors that owe more to military needs than energy needs due to Admiral Hyman Rickover’s support of the pressurised water reactor in commercial usage. However, if you wanted a lot of plutonium for nuclear warheads fast breeder reactors are also a good option for a country like China with strong military – civilian business linkages

    China Manufacturing Contracts, Part 2: ODM Arrangements | China Law Blog – interesting legal implications on China climbing up the value stack and crowdfunding

    Where machines could replace humans–and where they can’t (yet) | McKinsey – Interesting article and good use of Tableau by McKinsey for publicly facing content

    Ireland

    Statement: the status of EU nationals in the UK – News stories – GOV.UK  – When we do leave the EU, we fully expect that the legal status of EU nationals living in the UK, and that of UK nationals in EU member states, will be properly protected. – interesting that this contradicts the keeping their options open stance of some senior government officials. Would Irish status continue to be the same?

    Brexit forces Ireland to make new friends fast — FT.com – interesting article because of nuances it implies about UK Brexit negotiations

    Japan

    ジャパンアーカイブズ – Japan Archives 日本の近現代史150年をビジュアルで振り返る – OMG I love it

    NHK World to cover Sumo in English! | Japanator – dialling up Japanese soft power

    Luxury

    Interactive Site Brings Hennessy’s Mastery To Life | Marketing Daily – Droga 5 look at the consistency and quality of Hennessy’s VSOP through an interactive site. Which a very high creative bar to get across. What surprised me more is that this was the first US ad campaign for Hennessy’s VSOP in a decade. More on luxury here.

    Marketing

    Mercedes-Benz uses influencers to reach millennials | Digiday – every brand is starting to look like Red Bull’s Mediahouse

    LG’s Ken Hong: ‘It’s Very Hard To Unseat WPP’ | Holmes Report – “There are very few companies in the world that have products as diverse as LG, so we’re finding it more challenging every time procurement calls for a review to find agencies that can handle this wide scope. Simply because there are so many players in this space and so many conflicts.” 

    Hong noted that seven contenders were invited to pitch for the business this year but declined to confirm how many actually took part. The Holmes Report understands that at least two major groups — Omnicom and Interpublic — declined the opportunity, after previous attempts to win the business proved fruitless. 

    “We invited most of the major holding companies, but I’ve seen a lot of these companies running into conflict accounts very early on,” said Hong. “We are maybe going to have rethink our strategy going forward if we’re going to keep asking agencies to come in.” – interesting article. Reading this if I were WPP I would look to gradually raise my prices as the client has basically admitted that they are in a monopoly position and both Omicom and Interpublic won’t even bother pitching for the business. Publicis and Havas aren’t likely to be in the running. More on marketing conglomerates here  including how to unseat WPP.

    Converse Gives Away 38,000 Samples for FREE feat. RJD2, HudMo, Com Truise and more – Converse had been working hard on its lifestyle brand positioning. It was fortunate that it’s affordability had already aligned it with popular culture and this sample library is a great way of reinforcing the linkage by being useful

    Toyota builds an actual Initial D concept car, plus awesome manga artwork for it 【Photos】 – the most amazing aspect of this for me, was that this project was commissioned by Toyota GB, not their Japanese domestic market (JDM) counterparts!

    The Ad Contrarian | Revenge of the Philistines – There is no one who has ever made more money from the advertising business than Martin Sorrell. There is no one who has ever had more influence on the advertising business than Martin Sorrell. And there is no one who has ever done more damage to the advertising business than Martin Sorrell. – probably disruption rather than damage, but you get the idea

    Media

    Video: Dame Kelly Holmes on the GSK Human Performance Lab – Telegraph – interesting native advertising content

    Breitbart takes its pro-Trump evangelism to the Bernie Bros. – The Washington Post – The polls suggest the pitch may not play well with most Sanders voters. But among the hardest core holdouts, there’s a chance Breitbart’s outreach could work. Many Sanders supporters resent the mainstream media, which they see as neglecting to take them seriously or address their concerns adequately. When they find a news outlet that treats them differently, they latch onto it tightly.

    Accountability Journalism: A Cost-Benefit Analysis – Nieman Reports – interesting, but I wonder what the ROI was to The Washington Post which is probably a more pertinent consideration for media companies at the moment

    Joshua Topolsky, Former Verge Editor, Raises Funding for Digital Media Venture – WSJ – funding round was led by the New York-based RRE Ventures, which has invested in the likes of BuzzFeed, Business Insider and the Skimm. Other investors include Advancit Capital, Boat Rocker Ventures and Nextview Ventures. (paywall) More media related content here.

    VIRALS – The Woolshed Company – punk’d viewers of viral content

    How technology disrupted the truth | Katharine Viner | Media | The Guardian – “It was taking an American-style media approach,” said Banks. “What they said early on was ‘Facts don’t work’, and that’s it. The remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. It just doesn’t work. You have got to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump success.”

    Modanisa | Facebook for Business – interesting international lookalike targeting

    Google Announces New Shopping, Travel Search Features | Digital – AdAge – interesting move into visual ads in SERPs

    Is This The End Of Freemium Music On Spotify? [Mark Mulligan] – hypebot – interesting analysis on the freemium offering

    Online

    Posting photos or GIFs on Twitter | Twitter Help Center – 15GB GIFs WTF

    Uber to Merge China Business With Didi to Create $35 Billion Company – Bloomberg – the best outcome that Uber could have hoped for in China

    A messaging app will overtake Facebook by end of 2017 | Techinasia – interesting speculation by Simon Kemp, I think he’s right. The pendulum is swinging back towards privacy so this makes a perfectly sensible prediction. The only challenge is the huge footprint that Facebook has makes it a tall order to achieve

    Baidu Announces Second Quarter 2016 Results | PRNewswire – finances tanked due to Chinese government issues

    Retailing

    Amazon’s Chinese counterfeit problem is getting worse | CNBC – not just an Alibaba problem

    Security

    ‘Webcam hackers caught me wanking, demanded $10k ransom’ – ABC – great headline, serious article

    AP: Islamic State’s Twitter traffic drops amid US efforts | AP – interesting story on the US state department efforts to counter ISIS on Twitter

    Dennis Cooper fears censorship as Google erases blog without warning | Books | The Guardian – His advice to other artists who work predominantly online is to maintain your own domain and back everything up.

    The ISHU – interesting use of ‘anti’ flash photography technology in fabrics

    Technology

    Tech workers think Silicon Valley and startups are losing their luster | Quartz – not terribly surprised by this

    Web of no web

    Uber to pour $500m into global mapping project – FT.com – interesting that they don’t want to use HERE, TomTom or Google. $500m isn’t enough to support detailed 3D mapping for Uber’s autonomous car project

    More than a year after its release, and still no one wants to buy an Apple Watch | Quartz – I suspect that this is a wearables category issue and the problem is compelling use case

    Wireless

    Uhans A101 – a nostalgic Nokia phones tribute in the making ? – Gizchina.com – and I was just saying the other day I could do with a good robust voice orientated mobile phone to go alongside my iPhone

    [Update: Huawei removes photo, responds] Huawei publishes implied P9 camera sample, but EXIF data reveals $4500 camera took it – absolute corker

    Beijing Extends 4G Coverage Through All Subway Lines | ChinaTechNews – and London struggles with decent wi-fi in stations

    5G manifesto | European Union – Having read the 3,000-word document, its apparent that they don’t have a clue what the killer app for 5G will be (PDF)

  • Native materials + more news

    As Tastes Mature, Chinese Crave Native Materials | Global Currents | BoF – also mirrors a desire to look less flashy and moving away from tu hao jin products. Native materials also reflect a growing pride in China and what it means to be Chinese

    Photographer Bill Cunningham left the fashion world some brilliant advice on how to dress millennials – “I think what they should really think about, and be fearful [of], is the high-tech, and the high-tech kids,” he tells the interviewer, fashion consultant Fern Mallis. “They’re no longer dressing the outsides of their heads. This generation are dressing the inside of their heads.” 

    Asked by Mallis to clarify what he meant, he continued: “The whole country is electronically connected. They’re educating the insides of their heads, as they should do! Not the outside, with a fancy hat or a dress. Simple clothes… That’s the key. I think that’s what the fashion world should really think about.”

    BlackBerry has not informed Verizon or AT&T that BlackBerry 10 devices have been discontinued | CrackBerry.com – being a BlackBerry user must feel like being a Mac user circa 1996, though I don’t expect there will be any salvation with those few keeping the faith. In Senate, Blackberry Era Officially Over | bomble.com – the West Wing will start to look dated pretty darned quick once this goes through. More on BlackBerry here

    Brands who are part of Beijing’s Hutong Neighbourhoods – SocialBrandWatch – interesting the way Nestle has built a quality Chinese brand

    After Brexit, British scramble for foreign passports | HKEJ Insights – really good read on the change in dynamic between Britain and Ireland

    Chinese smartphone brands are dying off fast as market consolidates | Techinasia – Xiaomi’s diversifying strategy may look smart

    Private Equity Has a Crush on Tech – WSJ – recurring subscriptions, but cloud may disrupt traditional packaged enterprise software and is cycle resistant only insofar as the clients stay in business

    Amazon Is Quietly Eliminating List Prices – The New York Times – “When Amazon began 21 years ago, the strategy was to lose on every sale but make it up on volume,” said Larry Compeau, a Clarkson University professor of consumer studies. “It was building for the future, and the future has arrived. Amazon doesn’t have to seduce customers with a deal because they’re going to buy anyway.”

    Pollster who called the EU referendum right: No late Leave swing after all • The Register – interesting descriptions about errors in poll design

    Sony chief Hirai places faith in AI | FT – interesting move given Sony’s relatively lack of prowess in software and services

    DriveTribe social network founded by the former ‘Top Gear’ presenters is launching this year – Business Insider – interesting that they’ve set up a passion based network.

    Remarks at the SASE Panel On The Moral Economy of Tech – really interesting essay

    EU regulations on algorithmic decision-making and a ‘right to explanation’ by Goodman & Flaxman – potential impact of the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation on the routine use of machine learning algorithms. The problem revolves around the ‘right to explanation’ (PDF)