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
Jason Barron’s book The Visual MBA looks to distill down business principles into more easily understandable formats. The Visual MBA has been translated into a number of European languages since it was published in 2019, which is a good indicator of the book’s utility. So I thought I would take the time to reviewThe Visual MBA and see how I got on with it and whether it lives up to its premise.
Areas covered in The Visual MBA
The content of The Visual MBA is broken down into a number of areas including:
Leadership
Corporate financial reporting
Entrepreneurship (management and financial focus)
Management accounting
Business finance
Marketing
Operations management
HR
Strategy
Ethics
Decision making
Startups
The book itself is a robust hardback book that would be fine in a daypack lugged around campus. As with any book there are things that could be put in and taken away. My impression of the content is that would be useful to someone studying business at A’level or in the first year of an undergraduate degree. I personally found the marketing section frustrating. Part of the reason for this is that the depth of the subject was barely scratched. Readers were not prompted to even ask the right kind of questions.
There was nothing that would spur you to read more and read widely. I suspect that this would be the case with the other areas covered by the book as well. It creates the false confidence that would appeal to a surface player. I think that is dangerous for readers and the businesses that they work for.
Do I think the premise of the book works?
The book neatly summarises many of the key concepts that would be taught in a general business course and it explains the points in a simple manner. For instance the idea of balance sheets reminded me of the first semester in the first year of my marketing degree in terms of its explanations.
Where I am less sure of the book’s benefits was whether the illustrations would make me retain any better the content of the book? I will ignore the fact that for some pages the drawings weren’t illustrated but instead representations of the headlines in a hand drawn typography. I might the book beneficial if they were my diagrams that I was sketching in my notes. But I don’t think they have the same effect on a reader of the book.
In summary I would recommend that one buys the book as a simple guide to business studies or commerce rather than the visual aide memoire that the book seems to promise. If this sounds of interest to you you can get more information here.
I didn’t expect to be writing the words objectified garlic in such close proximity, ever. The reason for this post is down to an advert put together by an area of South Korea to promote its high quality garlic to Korean city dwellers. The advert was full of double entendres and was accused by critics of having objectified garlic.
The house I grew up in
Hiscox home insurance did this TV advert that makes really good use of projection mapping to tell a story. I can’t believe that this is now eight years old as an execution.
Fuzzy logic versus cloud based AI
I have written a good deal before on the benefits of fuzzy logic which is a much more efficient technology than machine learning for a lot of challenges, particularly if the machine learning is based on cloud computing a la the internet of things (IoT).
E-mu Systems SP1200
Back in the 1980s E-mu Systems were known as one of the pioneers of sampling with their Emulator series of keyboards, alongside the likes of CMI with the Fairlight and New England Digital’s Synclavier. They were bought out in 1993 by Creative Techology like rival Ensoniq – eventually they were both merged together. The SP1200 was a sample based drum machine and sequencer that came out in 1987. It gets its distinctive sound from 12 bit sampling done at about 26 KHz. By comparison, a CD based on 16 bit sampling at 44.1 KHz. It was beloved of hip hop producers from the late 1980s though to the mid 1990s. It is still sought after now.
This video gives you a good idea of how it is operated and hints at the benefits of hardware controls over software interfaces on modern digital audio workstation applications.
PES are a stop motion animation house, whom I was introduced to by Guy, one of the creative directors that I work with. Film food trilogy is one set of films that they did a number of years ago, over a seven year period.
The film food trilogy starts with Western Spaghetti
The second film Fresh Guacamole was short listed for an Oscar nomination.
The final one in the food film trilogy is Submarine Sandwich.
Doraemon and Toyota collaboration for advertisement
The premise in these Toyota films is that it is 30 years later and the human characters have grown up, but have still stayed in the respective relative status to each other. The giant is still a bully for instance and Nobita is still a dweeb.
https://youtu.be/OfnUNmjHzoQ
Big Data China: AI – Surveillance symbiosis
Interesting discussion on the use of big data and machine learning in China. The programmable world with Chinese authoritarian characteristics. Some interesting insights in this stream. The event covers:
how China‘s large-scale investments in surveillance technology is both enhancing the state‘s capacity to repress dissent and providing commercial advantage to Chinese AI companies operating in the facial recognition and surveillance space.
CSIS
It is worthwhile looking at the materials that the CSIS is doing in association with Stanford University on Big Data China.
How LVMH took over Asia
Asianometry looks how Louis Vuitton grew so big in Asia. Japan and Hong Kong took over luxury sales increased in the 1970s due to a massive increase in disposable income. Its interesting that much of it was driven initially by Japanese department stores in the 1960s and Ferragamo was one of the first western luxury brands that they stocked. Louis Vuitton opened their first store in Japan in the Ginza district in the 1970s, they had somehow managed to leap the chasm that stymied other rivals who were traditional medium-sized enterprises like Louis Vuitton at the time. Well worth a look at this video.
Which means the only listings are likely to be old industry listings of state owned firms that foreign investors wouldn’t want to deal with anyway. The second one was: Alibaba scales back global expansion plan to rival Amazon | Financial Times – Alibaba.com’s US operation has failed to meet its initial targets, forcing the Chinese company to readjust its growth plans, according to three people familiar with the operations. The project has also been hit by dozens of staff departures from its New York office. The troubles at its US business-to-business arm come as Alibaba steps up its international push as its domestic operations continue to get hit by Beijing’s tech crackdown, slowing economy and rising competition. However, Alibaba.com has struggled to retain US sellers since its launch, in part down to the difficulty of competing with the prices of global merchants. “US manufacturers aren’t as competitive, the cost of everything is a lot higher including labour. The team do not have enough support internally, so they can’t get enough suppliers and sellers on board,” one current employee said – you could read this as the US is uncompetitive, or Alibaba only manages to sell on cost rather than value (quality, flexibility, after sales service don’t matter).
Aviation sector will be disrupted for years, Qatar Airways boss says | Financial Times – “Covid has damaged the supply chain of the industry . . . I think that it will last for a couple of years — it is not going to go away tomorrow,” Akbar Al Baker told the Financial Times in an interview. Labour shortages in Europe, delays in aircraft deliveries from manufacturers and a lack of spare parts had all affected Qatar Airways, he added. – and this is without the problems that airports have faced in baggage handling etc. If aircraft deliveries were really an issue, why did Qatar pick a fight with Airbus?
HSBC’s past may not help its future | Financial Times – There is no place in the new Hong Kong for a pre-eminent bank which is not institutionally subject to the Chinese government. As China turns inwards, it makes sense for the ruling party to want its own financiers in command of a smaller standalone lender that will be well-capitalised, regionally-focused and prepared to serve national objectives, not global shareholders. The installation of a Communist party committee at HSBC’s Chinese investment banking subsidiary, reported by the FT, is a prelude of what is to come: a slow, patient strategy of small steps designed to make inevitable a break-up already determined on high in Beijing. That is why Ping An has fired the first shot in the final battle over the colonial legacy of Hong Kong — a place China has always called “a problem left over from history”. – the smart play would be to cut the PRC and Hong Kong business off from the rest of the network. While China is the growth engine, it relies on the rest of the network for this profitable wealth management business. Secondly, what will happen with Standard Chartered?
Ideas
Reviving Progress in the UK – there is an issue with the capital injection required by the plans outlined. Would anyone trust the UK government that they would be able to execute in a competent manner on the ideas? I think that the UK is suffering from a crisis of competence as much as anything else.
Associated Press Aims to Drop the Term “Assault Rifle” from StylebookThe Firearm Blog – really interesting change towards more neutral language while the progressive media obsesses about the new SIG-Sauer MCX Spear which is similar in terms of lethal effect to the longer range rifles field during the first part of the cold war. These cold war era designs have been modernised and are available to gun owners across most of the US. The MCX Spear relies on a newer, harder to get ammunition. This ammunition is also harder to fill at home than existing formats like the earlier NATO 5.56mm and 7.62mmm rounds. Older weapons like the Heckler & Koch G3 are a bit heavier but offer a similar performance, yet you wouldn’t get this information from the progressive media. Regardless of your opinion on gun control, the facts matter.
Beijing detains high-flying Tsinghua semiconductor boss, report says | Financial Times – Zhao Weiguo, the former head of an expansive Chinese conglomerate with state backing and deep investments in the global technology sector, has been placed under investigation by officials in Beijing, according to local media. The 54-year-old, who led cash-strapped chipmaking giant Tsinghua Unigroup for a decade, has been out of contact after being taken from his home by authorities in mid-July, reported Caixin, a Chinese business publication.
Decoded was originally written in 2013. I read this version. I know that there is a new edition being published in September 2022. Barden had been a marketer working at T-Mobile (now EE, BT’s mobile phone network), Diageo and Unilever.
His background and a foreword written by British marketing grandee Rory Sutherland give an indication of the book’s quality.
Once more with emotion
Barden’s background has skewed towards CRM, online marketing and consumer marketing. I disagree with Barden in one important way. Barden doesn’t think that emotion has any benefit in marketing. I agree with Barden to a point, beyond nostalgia, I won’t have an emotional connection with the brand of margarine spread that I buy. The nostalgia is largely out of control of the brand.
However, both the IPA and WARC have shown that communications that provokes an emotional reaction can build long term awareness over time. Think about the adverts that get stuck in your memory, versus rational adverts. Emotional adverts make you feel something, even if they don’t change your opinion of the product they can build memory structures with enough exposure.
The challenge as Barden points out, being able to do this consistently. The example that Barden cites is Cadbury’s inability to match the quality of its ‘Gorilla’ advert.
Getting beyond emotion
Beyond a difference of opinion on the effect of emotion in communications, I thought that the content in Decoded was very good. The book felt to me as if it was aimed at British junior inhouse brand marketers at the likes of Unilever and Diageo where Barden aimed his stripes. The book is full of British examples, this might limit its success in the US. The examples are already old enough that they might not resonate with marketers who recently left college; but they would leave US readers clueless. While British marketers are often exposed to US authors at the start of their careers like David Aaker and Philip Kotler; the same isn’t true for their American peers of British marketing thinkers.
I also see it valuable for marketing undergraduate students, with its real world examples. He also does these summary pages at the end of each chapter that reminded me of ‘Dummies Guides‘ format books.
Decoded covers behavioural science principles and is valuable for the quality of reading list that it provides the reader to delve into after they have read the book.
Barden dives into the kind of concepts that brand marketers would come across in shopper marketing and ad testing from the likes of Kantar. He provides a sound basis on which marketers can rely to understand, if not, critique their agency’s efforts.
Beside emotion, my biggest concern is that marketers might think that Decoded is the final step on their education journey, rather than the first step. It provides a useful primer that the engaged marketer can then delve into. Unfortunately for us all, there are a lot of surface player who would declare mission accomplished at this point.
If like me, you wanted a follow on read from Decoded, my recommendation would be Phil Graves Consumerology, which I reviewed here. Graves’ work nicely fits in with the discussion Barden had on shopper marketing from an expert in the field.
