Ged Carroll

Category: marketing | 營銷 | 마케팅 | マーケティング

According to the AMA – Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. This has contained a wide range of content as a section over the years including

  • Super Bowl advertising
  • Spanx
  • Content marketing
  • Fake product reviews on Amazon
  • Fear of finding out
  • Genesis the Korean luxury car brand
  • Guo chao – Chinese national pride
  • Harmony Korine’s creative work for 7-Eleven
  • Advertising legend Bill Bernbach
  • Japanese consumer insights
  • Chinese New Year adverts from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore
  • Doughnutism
  • Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
  • Influencer promotions
  • A media diary
  • Luxe streetwear
  • Consumerology by marketing behaviour expert Phil Graves
  • Payola
  • Dettol’s back to work advertising campaign
  • Eat Your Greens edited by Wiemer Snijders
  • Dove #washtocare advertising campaign
  • The fallacy of generations such as gen-z
  • Cultural marketing with Stüssy
  • How Brands Grow Part 2 by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp
  • Facebook’s misleading ad metrics
  • The role of salience in advertising
  • SAS – What is truly Scandinavian? advertising campaign
  • Brand winter
  • Treasure hunt as defined by NPD is the process of consumers bargain hunting
  • Lovemarks
  • How Louis Vuitton has re-engineered its business to handle the modern luxury consumer’s needs and tastes
  • Korean TV shopping celebrity Choi Hyun woo
  • qCPM
  • Planning and communications
  • The Jeremy Renner store
  • Cashierless stores
  • BMW NEXTGen
  • Creativity in data event that I spoke at
  • Beauty marketing trends
  • Kraft Mothers Day marketing
  • RESIST – counter disinformation tool
  • Facebook pivots to WeChat’s business model
  • Smartphone launches

  • CNY 2024

    What is CNY 2024

    CNY 2024 or the Chinese new year is celebrated across east and south east Asia as it marks the new year according to the lunar calendar. It is as important an advertising spot as Christmas in the UK or the Super Bowl advertising slots in America.

    This Saturday marks the new year. This year is the year of the dragon, it is a time for family and for cementing relationships through gift giving. Packaging and promotions will lean heavily on red, gold or yellow colours signifying good luck and general positive vibes.

    The packaging can often be very ornate as this example by Shanghai design agency The Orangeblowfish for client Chow Sang Sang shows.

    In many small businesses red or Christmas decorations are often left up and enhance the lunar new year decorations. Corporate florists will bring in miniature orange trees that are also a symbol of the season. (Pro-tip, don’t try one of the fruit).

    Given it’s such an important time in the marketing calendar, you see some of the most creative campaigns conducted in the region. Here’s a sampling of this year’s advertisements broken down by country.

    China

    China’s ‘Galapagos Syndrome‘ social platforms mean that it’s really hard for me to share campaigns with you here. In addition, many of the main advertising agencies no longer seem to share their work on more accessible platforms in the west any more. Each year it becomes harder to write a post like this. It’s almost like they’re ashamed of it.

    Amushi

    Food brand Amushi worked with Leo Burnett on an advert that conveys the main elements of new year celebrations. You need to watch it on Campaign Asia.

    Apple

    Apple has done some really interesting Chinese new year films documenting different aspects of Chinese new year and this focuses on the trials of childhood and the magic of new year. The protagonist is ‘Little Garlic’, a young girl with special shape-shifting powers.

    Coca-Cola

    By January 2nd, Coca-Cola already had year of the dragon cans for sale in Beijing. They created a mini-film around a family gathering, but its on WeChat. Contact me if you would like me to share it in-app with you.

    Lululemon

    I am guessing that Lululemon’s campaign was planned to be running across Mandarin-speaking markets as well as appealing to Asian Americans. The theme of spring is an analogue for the new year, but it is a celebration of traditional Chinese culture rather than lunar new year traditions per se. Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian but has global recognition amongst Asian cinema fans and her Hollywood appearances.

    The problem is that Lululemon has fallen foul of Asian Americans and this ad might have its media spend pulled outside Asia? If it happens it would be a shame, as this is the most ‘high concept’, artistic and cinematic of the ads that I have watched so far.

    Nike

    Nike in partnership with Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai have been turning out high quality Chinese New Year adverts for a number of years now and this year was no exception. It took me so long to get a copy of it, that it almost missed going into this post.

    If you have been in a rush to do your Christmas shopping you can empathise with the struggle of getting ready for lunar new year and the vignettes are really nicely done.

    Prada

    Prada did a photo shoot which is shared on Sina Weibo microblogging platform. The photographs were designed to emulate the classic mid-century elegance of Wong Ka wai’s film In The Mood For Love. This also ties into the popularity of Wong Ka wai’s recent mainland Chinese TV series Blossom set in Shanghai during the early 1990s that is similarly visually rich.

    prada cny 2024

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong usually doesn’t have a rich source of lunar new year video advertising. You will see print and poster ads though as sales promotions are the main driver of marketing activities.

    Coca-Cola

    Coca-Cola HK

    Coca-Cola Hong Kong went with really short takes, a celebration, fireworks, a branded giveaway and dragon-branded cans make it feel as if the creative was literally dialled in. Where’s the magic that’s integral to the brand?

    Watsons

    Hong Kong’s ubiquitous pharmacy and beauty care retailer has a brief ad promoting their new year sales promotions and the potential to win a Mofusand co-branded ‘Jenga’-style game – which would be ideal when you have young family members over for CNY 2024.

    Their associated web page has promotional price offers containing 688 which its considered to be lucky.

    Happy Beautiful Year | Watsons Hong Kong

    Macau

    Macau government tourist board

    I am not even going to try and explain what you are about to see. It’s special. But once you watch it, it can’t be unseen. I will leave it at that.

    Malaysia

    Astro

    Astro is a Malaysian satellite TV and OTT broadcaster. As is common with other media businesses in Hong Kong and Singapore they rolled out a song to celebrate Chinese new year. This video showcases their varied broadcast talent.

    Cetaphil

    Cetaphil is a range of skincare products from Galderma. Chinese new year means looking your best, including new clothes. This combined with gifting is why the holiday makes so much sense for Cetaphil.

    Coca-Cola

    Coca-Cola made use of high profile 3D OOH spaces such as this one in Malaysia with a very traditional dragon motive. It’s nicely executed and fits into the magic of the brand.

    https://youtube.com/shorts/pzkmtDpb–Y?si=CbofAjMddntIdF7n

    Eu San Yang

    Eu San Yang is a traditional Chinese medicine retailer originally from Malaysia, that now has branches in Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. It’s advert talks about relationships particularly assumptions like ‘I thought’ or ‘I took for granted’. Click the link, as they aren’t allowing embedding. It touches on the tension between tradition and modernity that is generational and is quite meta in the way it references lunar new year adverts as a popular trope in the dialogue between father and son.

    Loong Kee

    Malaysian dried meat brand Loong Kee put together a music video featuring ethnic Chinese influencers and celebrities.

    Mr DIY

    Mr DIY is kind of like Homebase or Wilkinsons but with an extended product range. Their film has a Christmas Carol type transformation to it. I’ll leave it at that for you to enjoy.

    This comedy clip explains the universal insight above really well.

    Pepsi: Finish The Unfinished

    Pepsi’s campaign is built around the insight that during new year meals and celebrations there are lots of partly finished cans of drinks left around. The idea of finishing something is an important part of Chinese new year, echoed in the series of Hong Kong family entertainment films released for the new year called ‘Alls Well That Ends Well‘. The original film was released in 1992 featuring Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung and Stephen Chow – and spawned seven sequels. The advertisement connects with a gold cup giveaway that is also tied into this the theme of ‘finish the unfinished’.

    Petronas

    Malaysian government-owned energy company Petronas promotes its corporate brand with a short film that riffs on the harmony of Chinese new year. They were careful to cast talent from the countries three main ethic groups: Malays, Chinese and South Asians.

    Tune Talk

    Malaysian mobile provider Tune Talk focuses on filial piety and the high level of change that’s signified by the Dragon in the horoscope. At first when I saw the ad I thought that it would be warning about online scams, but the story is much more straight forward. It’s fun and high energy, just what you need for lunar new year.

    Watsons CNY 2024 campaign – Enter The Dragons

    Watsons is part of AS Watson, the retail arm of CK Hutchison Holdings and the owner of Superdrug. They have their own branded pharmacy stores with a large range of beauty products throughout China, Dubai, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine, Vietnam and Malaysia as you can see.

    Yee Lee

    Yee Lee is a Malaysian manufacturing and packaging company – imagine an analogue of Unilever and Tetrapak. Their products include food, bottled water, oral care, household cleaners, and industrial products. It also manufactures corrugated cartons and aerosol cans for a wide range of customers. The music video is notable for its use of rap lyrics. Also, notice how the cast is older than Loong Kee’s music video.

    Yeo’s

    Yeo’s is a local FMCG brand with a range of products including drinks, teas, instant noodles, canned food sauces and dairy products. Every household has some Yeo’s products in the pantry or the fridge. This advert neatly captures the stress and joys of new year celebrations.

    Singapore

    Mediacorp

    Mediacorp is a Singapore government-owned commercial media company that would be analogous to the BBC in terms of the media footprint, and Channel 5 in the way it takes advertising. Chinese new year songs are a thing, with new ones launched each year. Mediacorp’s song is also an advertisement for its talent and the company’s OTT service – kind of equivalent to BBC Sounds and iPlayer.

    SingTel

    Singapore’s dominant telecoms provider SingTel have a reputation for delivering high quality Chinese New Year ads and this year was no exception. This time the ad focuses not only on reunion, but also remembering those people who we can no longer enjoy CNY 2024 with Mr DIY’s campaign we see greater than expected evolution of a senior citizen.

    Taiwan

    7-Eleven

    Convenience store 7-Eleven created a 30-second spot to promote its range of Chinese new year products.

    Here are the examples that I found in previous years:

    2023

    2021

    2020

    2019

    The sales pitch

    I work alongside Craft Associates and together have helped a number of clients including Oxford Nanopore Technologies on their successful China GTM approach and SK-II on their content strategy for Hong Kong. I have also worked with the team to help advise Chinese enterprises on going international over the years in the consumer technology space.

    Whether you want to advertise to a Chinese audience, or advertise a breakfast cereal to people in Wolverhampton, you can contact us here.

    More on what I have done to date here.

  • FOOH (and John Holmes)

    The inspiration for this post on FOOH (fake out of home advertising) was Ryan Wallman’s marketing predictions for 2024 on LinkedIn. In particular two of his five predictions

    2. Someone will post a viral ad that is a) fake and b) terrible. Hundreds of people will comment: ‘Genius!”

    5. Marketers will try to emulate the success of Barbie but will completely misconstrue its relevance to their brand, culminating in a series of fucking stupid and totally unsuccessful stunts.

    Ryan Wallman

    As with many marketing predictions, they are equally applicable for 2023 as well as next year (and probably several years on).

    These two particularly resonated with me, due to the current trend of FOOH. This is where a creative agency has put together photography or video showing an out of home execution that doesn’t exist.

    These aren’t concepts that have been mocked up for a client to show them how indicate how their campaign would look when activated. Or as a creative calling card by an agency or team to catch the eye of a new client a la the famous Volkswagen Polo car bomb advert which leaked out on to the general public.

    Instead, they are created with the express intent with fooling a good deal of the public that the execution is real. In the case of Maybelline, it was pushed out on third party influencer accounts on TikTok and YouTube as ‘truth’.

    Other examples

    The Popeyes and Truff collaboration campaign can be seen here. British Airways mocked up a billboard at the Glastonbury festival, but wouldn’t have been able to buy the space even if it wanted to.

    The Independent were fooled by Jacquemus with these FOOH-ed giant handbags. It is particularly interesting that a mainstream news media channel was fooled.

    And I find that troubling for a number of reasons. And let’s illustrate this through a quick thought experiment.

    The John Holmes thought experiment

    You probably don’t know me, I am an overweight white male with a shaven head and distinctly average in every physical way.

    A quick John Holmes primer

    John C Holmes via Wikipedia

    The late Mr Holmes was taller than me. He was an army veteran and then worked a number of blue collar jobs from ambulance driver to factory worker and forklift truck driver. He eventually hit a patch of unemployment and agreed to do nude modeling and appear in pornographic films. At the time these films were closely linked with organised crime in the US. Times things changed. During the early 1970s the industry saw a golden age where porn films became mainstream culture. Roger Ebert reviewed these films for the Chicago Sun-Times and his peers did similar at the likes of the New York Times.

    Holmes became a popular culture figure and his name spread far wider than the viewership of his films. Mark Wahlberg’s character in Boogie Nights is heavily influnced by John Holmes. He was famous for his penis size.

    For the latter part of his adult life he was an addict, which affected his ability to work. The movie Wonderland dramatises a low point in Holmes life and his association with murder of the Wonderland drug gang.

    Back to the thought experiment

    By some strange incident, a video of me stepping out of the shower and then putting a towel happens to be made. A creative chum decides to make lemonade from these lemons and uses <insert generative AI video tool du jour here> to create a realistic looking, but fake, appendage.

    Nothing has changed, I am still as I introduced myself earlier, distinctly average in every physical way. Then I add it to a dating profile. In my opinion it would be both unedifying and distinctly dishonest. This is what brands are doing when they create FOOH campaigns to generate social currency (virality, talkability etc).

    Authenticity

    These videos and photos are demonstrations of creative craft and creativity, but good judgement asks not only can something be done, but should it be done. It’s often not part of an ad format that makes it clear that the image isn’t ‘real’ and there is no ‘wink-wink’ moment to bring the audience in on the truth. This isn’t ‘truth well-told’ as advertising as McCann the advertising agency would have put it.

    Brands step across the line of believability, inevitably letting consumers down.

    Authenticity vs. fakery

    While FOOH showcases the incredible capabilities of CGI and digital storytelling, so do 3D digital billboards. 3D billboards do it in a more honest, authentic and entertaining way. The Air Max Day billboard campaign in Tokyo would be genuinely memorable, creating a sense of wonder and generate talkability.

    By comparison FOOH is a fiction cosplaying as reality. FOOH raises questions about the authenticity of the brand experience itself. Advertisers push the boundaries of what is possible with a minimum spend. These simulations of awe-inspiring moments dilute the credible real-life experiences we’ve come to appreciate. Authenticity is a pivotal factor in establishing trust between a brand and its audience. What does it say about the brand as a corporate citizen, when they are normalising fraud, lies and astro-turfing on social platforms? We have enough problems in the media eco-system already, without brands making it worse. FOOH can be seen as a manifestation of brand sociopathy.

    More related content can be found here.

  • Every old idea is new again

    Inspiration for every old idea is new again

    The inspiration for this post on every old idea is new again came from my opening up Rakuten‘s Viber messaging app on my iPhone. Viber is a messaging platform and also does voice over IP, including out to the phone network. It is a hybrid of Skype and WhatsApp in terms of functionality. Viber is popular in parts of Asia, much of central and Eastern Europe, Greece and Russia – often as a second string to Telegram or Zalo.

    Scratchcards, giveaways

    I saw the following image in Viber.

    Viber’s scratch card giveaway promotion.

    Which took me right back to roughly the same time of the year back in 2012, when I worked at Ruder Finn and did a similar digital scratch card execution to promote The National Lottery scratch cards in the run up to Christmas.

    And so it begins

    I was fortunate to work with a great creative and technology team: Stephen Holmes and Dru Riches-Magnier on the project. The promotion was executed within a high security environment because Camelot’s IT standards were way beyond what we usually worked with.

    Here’s the case study that I wrote up about the scratch card project in my portfolio.

    Slide 8
    Slide 9

    This was the most stressful time I had during my time working at Ruder Finn and one of two high points in terms of the work that we did.

    So when I saw the Rakuten Viber execution, I had a deja-vu moment and the epiphany that every old idea is new again.

    Strawberry fields forever & the square mile

    So how do we get to a point where every idea is new again? Years ago I used to DJ in bars, clubs and parties. A couple of young lads on a music production course saw a record label release one of their assignments to tap into the psychedelia and dance-indie hybrid sound. The record was a cover version of a Beatles track with a Soul II Soul type break beat underneath. It became successful and topped the charts.

    There were a surprising number of people who didn’t realise that it was artfully created cover version of The Beatles, I even heard the original described as a poor version of Candy Flip.

    Newness is a matter of perspective. This was brought home to me at a talk that Damien McCrystal gave years ago. This was about the time that he was a business columnist at The Observer. I can’t remember the context but McCrystal said that the memory of ‘the square mile’ (think Wall Street in US parlance) was about eight years.

    Which was the reason why the 2008 mortgage crash looked eerily like the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s. And that is despite most of the people in investment banks having a passing familiarity of Michael Lewis’ insider account Liar’s Poker which outlined how derivatives fuelled much of the 1980s Savings & Loans crisis.

    I got to read it in college, despite having no interest in entering the world of finance. By and large I managed to stay clear of finance aside from being an in-house marketer early on in my career at what’s now HBOS and credit card provider MBNA. I also had a bit of early luck in my career timing, as I left MBNA before the payment protection insurance scandal hit the sector.

    This was the classic example of every old idea is new again, but with the added wrinkle that a bad set of ideas can suddenly turn into good ones over time.

    But as a strategist, this taught me to be careful on interventions pointing out a given concept is an old idea, given that every old idea is new again at some point.

  • Padel + more things

    Padel

    The racket sport padel seems to have got the zeitgeist, if not the player numbers yet. We haven’t really seen a surge in sports fads since the 1980s. During that time skateboarding rose from a peak in the late 1970s, to a more stable underground sport that we have today. The closure of a squash racquet factory in Cambridge, saw the sport globalise manufacture and playing. In a few short years rackets went from gut strings and ash wood frames to synthetic strings and carbon fibre composite rackets. It was as much a symbol of the striving business man as the Filofax or the golf bag. Interest was attracted by a large amount of courts and racket technology that greatly improved the game.

    Squash had its origins in the late 19th century and took the best part of a century to reach its acme in the cultural zeitgeist. Skateboarding started in the late 1940s and took a mere 30 years to breakout. Padel falls somewhere between the two. Padel was invented in 1969. But it took COVID-19 to drive its popularity in Europe and North America.

    There is a new world professional competition circuit for 2024. And it has attracted the interest of court developers looking to cater to what they believe is latent consumer demand.

    Finally, you can get three padel courts in the space for one tennis court. More on the padel gold rush from the FT.

    The challenge is if padel is just a fad, or has it longevity? Skateboarding is popular, but many councils didn’t see the benefit of supporting skate parks built in the 1970s around the country. Squash still has its fans but doesn’t have the same popularity that it enjoyed in the 1980s.

    How to play padel

    More on the basics of how to play padel here.

    Business

    British American Tobacco writes down $31.5 billion as it shifts its business away from cigarettes

    China

    “He Always Talks About the West”-Former University President Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison in China and Who’s Afraid of Chizuko Ueno? The Party’s Ongoing Counteroffensive against Feminism in the Xi Era don’t inspire investor confidence in China

    China’s Xi goes full Stalin with purge – POLITICO – the narrative feels wrong around this article, even though the purge is on

    Bloomberg New Economy: China’s Economic Heft Sinks for First Time Since 1994 – Bloomberg

    Consumer behaviour

    Firewater | No Mercy / No Malice – on young people and risk

    What’s it like being a Disney adult? – The Face – this is much more common in Hong Kong, but then people had annual passes to go there. I found it interesting that The Face othered it as a sub-culture

    Vittles Reviews: There Is Always Another Province – Province-chasing isn’t just a Western phenomenon; China is still so vast that when the barbecued food of Xinjiang, one of China’s border provinces, showed up in a former sausage shop on Walworth Road at Lao Dao, it didn’t need to open to the general public for months, choosing only to take bookings via Chinese social media. The paradox is that the success of regional Chinese restaurants has created a Western audience which wants more, but that same success has allowed these restaurants to bypass those customers altogether

    Culture

    Television: one of the most audacious pranks in history was hidden in a hit TV show for years. – Watch enough episodes of Melrose Place and you’ll notice other very odd props and set design all over the show. A pool float in the shape of a sperm about to fertilize an egg. A golf trophy that appears to have testicles. Furniture designed to look like an endangered spotted owl. It turns out all of these objects, and more than 100 others, were designed by an artist collective called the GALA Committee. For three years, as the denizens of the Melrose Place apartment complex loved, lost, and betrayed one another, the GALA Committee smuggled subversive leftist art onto the set, experimenting with the relationship between art, artist, and spectator. The collective hid its work in plain sight and operated in secrecy. Outside of a select few insiders, no one—including Aaron Spelling, Melrose’s legendary executive producer—knew what it was doing. The project was called In the Name of the Place. It ended in 1997. Or, perhaps, since the episodes are streamable, it never ended

    Design

    Sony Access Controller Review: A Beautiful Addition for All Gamers | WIRED

    Is the flat design trend finally over? | by Chan Karunaratne | Dec, 2023 | UX Collective

    Economics

    China’s accelerating rise in consumer defaults | FT – inspite of the social credit scores and lack of opportunity to declare personal bankruptcy

    China challenge is too much for Republican market fundamentalism | FT

    Energy

    Audi to build all-electric rugged 4×4 to rival Defender and G-Class | CAR Magazine – differentiating from the SUV field. Interesting that the Land Cruiser and Ineos doesn’t make the comparison list, yet the G-Wagen does.

    China uranium grab poses threat to western energy supply, warns Yellow Cake | FT

    Ethics

    After $500m Zuckerberg donation, Harvard university gutted its disinfo team studying Facebook | Boing Boing

    AI’s carbon footprint is bigger than you think

    Are fashion’s buying practices really improving? | Vogue Business – buyers think that they are taking a long term more collaborative approach, supplier feedback reflects an unchanged reality

    Finance

    Blockchains are entering their “broadband era” | Visa – I was surprised by the amount of faith that Visa has in the future of Blockchain technology

    Against the odds, China’s push to internationalise its currency is making gains

    Gadgets

    Rode acquire Mackie | Sound On Sound – this is big for podcasters, but also for artists that record in their own studios. Mackie mixers have powered the home grown set-ups of artists like The Prodigy, The Crystal Method, Brian Eno, Daft Punk and Orbital.

    Health

    China e-cigarette titan behind ‘Elf Bar’ floods the US with illegal vapes | Reuters – In the United States, the firm simply ignored regulations on new products and capitalized on poor enforcement. It has flooded the U.S. market with flavored vapes that have been among the best-selling U.S. brands, including Elf Bar, EBDesign and Lost Mary. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, Zhang has complied with regulations requiring lower nicotine levels and government registration while building an unmatched distribution network — and driving a surge in youth vaping

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong migrants revel in Cantopop concerts, films from home as tears flow, emotions high in ‘collective healing’ at venues in Canada, UK | South China Morning Post

    Hong Kong’s first ‘patriots-only’ district council poll reflects political tale of two cities, as some eagerly rush to vote and others shy away | South China Morning Post – Hong Kong on election day splits into two camps, with one eager to vote out of civic duty and others giving polling stations wide berth over lack of political diversity. ‘I thought more people would come and vote because there has been more publicity,’ one elector says after discovering sleepy atmosphere at local polling station – the question is will Beijing take anything from this voter turn out? Does it signal suppressed but indignant separatists, or Hong Kongers who are more focused on prosperity and weekend Netflix? If they suspect the former then the security situation is likely to get more dire

    Ideas

    A simple theory of cancel culture – by Joseph Heath

    Innovation

    The first humanoid robot factory is about to open | Axios

    Japan

    “Hoarder Hygge” is the Anti-Zen – Matt Alt’s Pure Invention – this applies equally well to Hong Kong as well, presumably for similar reasons

    London

    Outernet now London’s most visited tourist attraction | The Times

    Luxury

    Inside Louis Vuitton’s Hong Kong spectacle | Vogue Business – While Hong Kong is gradually recovering from the pandemic lockdowns, growth in Mainland China is slowing. According to HSBC estimates, luxury sales there are expected to grow 5 per cent in 2024, a sharp deceleration compared with 2023’s projected 18 per cent.

    New 2024 Porsche Macan EV: we reveal tech secrets of Stuttgart’s first electric SUV | CAR Magazine

    Marketing

    How One Campaign Changed Everything for Coca-Cola | AdWeek

    Stop focusing on ‘Gen Z’: we’re missing the true audience challenge – The Media Leader

    Behind the Pop Culture Roots of Pepsi’s Modern Retro Redesign – so Pepsi’s own advertising over 30 years had less impact than films from the 1980s and 1990s with younger consumers – that’s a damning indictment if ever I heard one

    Media

    Spotify Is Screwed | WIRED

    Disney global ads president: expect streaming consolidation – The Media Leader – and presumably they think Disney will be a winner?

    Meme

    When My Dog Died, I Turned to a Specific Image for Comfort. Many Do. | Slate – how the idea of the ‘rainbow bridge’ heaven analogue for dogs came about.

    Online

    Techrights — CNN Contributes to Demolition of the Open Web

    Quality

    You are never taught how to build quality software | Florian Bellmann | Be curious, explore and meditate.

    Retailing

    The EU is taking on fashion’s open secret: Destroying unsold goods | Vogue Business

    McDonald’s Launching Spinoff Restaurant Chain Called CosMc’s | Today – I’ll write more about Cosmc’s once I have collected my thoughts on it.

    Security

    Daring Fireball: 23andMe Confirms Hackers Stole Ancestry Data on 6.9 Million Users

    UK’s data regulator resists call to investigate China’s BGI over genomic concerns | Reuters

    Stealing AI models

    Software

    Warning from OpenAI leaders helped trigger Sam Altman’s ouster – The Washington Post

    Practical Ways To Increase Product Velocity | Stay SaaSy

    How it’s Made: Interacting with Gemini through multimodal prompting – Google for Developers

    Apple Makes a Quiet AI Move – On my Om

    Putting China’s Top LLMs to the Test – by Irene Zhang

    Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech | MIT Technology Review

    Documentary on the state of AI

    Technology

    GPU Cloud Economics Explained – The Hidden Truth

    Chipmaking Amid War in Israel – by Nicholas Welch – everything is political.

    ASML axes CTO role with new CEO | EE Times – given that the next stage technology path is rocky to say the least and innovation needs to be a key focus for ASML this made me nervous.

    Broadcom first to add AI to network switch chip | EE Times

    Wireless

    Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are staying connected to the world via donated eSIMs

    Report: 5G global mobile data traffic set to triple in six years | EE News Europe

  • Breakin + more things

    Breakin

    Breakin was a 1984 film which brought hip hop culture around the world. You can criticise the plot and awkward dialogue, but the break dancing and body popping was amazing. The film was a sufficiently successful commercial success that a sequel was made to the original film.

    The broom sweeping scene

    The broom sweeping scene in Breakin was inspirational drawing from mime, body popping and breaking sparked the imagination of people around the world. It made the dancer Michael “Turbo” Boogaloo Shrimp Chambers a global celebrity. Chambers himself credited stop motion animation of films like Ray Harryhausen’s works as being a key influence. He went on to teach Michael Jackson the ‘moonwalk’.

    The broom sweeping scene from Breakin was shot at 4323 Melrose Avenue, which in turn has turned into a pilgrimage for fans. So a camera crew and Chambers went back to the site and reshot the scene over one night. The production team had wrapped the building to resemble the original in 1984.

    Despite Chambers recovering from knee surgery, he still has the skills some 34 years later.

    Caterham Project V

    Caterham are famous in the car world for their evolution of Colin Chapman’s Lotus 7 design, which was the purest manifestation of Chapman’s design philosophy to make light, great handling cars. Caterham has been looking at making the jump from internal combustion engine powered vehicles to electric power. Like previous Caterham cars, much of the design process is about curating parts from other manufacturers parts bins with their own chassis and suspension design to come up with a perfect handling chimera.

    ‘Military Magic’

    The role of innovation and military development has on each other is a subject that is often discussed. Our modern online world is down to cold war thinking about resilient data and telecommunications network. But Kuo’s research has found that innovation can also hurt combat effectiveness and highlights the kind of factors where this might occur. Innovation isn’t bad, but can be done badly. More on related content here.

    Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

    In the US, Keurig k-cup capsules are the default home brewed coffee standard, rather like Nespresso in Europe and much of Asia. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters worked with Kevin Costner to create signature roast varieties for him. The subsequent ad lampoons how brand partnerships often move from the authentic to the ridiculous.

    7-Select

    7-Eleven Hong Kong is a standby for workers wanting a grab-and-go breakfast, lunch or dinner at their desk. They have a range of foods called 7-Select. They promoted it online and via TV advertising this year using local celebrity Dee Gor and generative AI-based artwork.

    The 7-Select range features many Hong Kong stables that merge western dishes like sandwiches in a local way that is emblematic of Hong Kong cuisine. Below is a video on the making of the advertisements including green screens and wire work – usually a staple of Hong Kong’s fantastical martial arts film industry.