Ged Carroll

Category: media | 媒體 | 미디어 | メディア

It makes sense to start this category with warning. Marshall McLuhan was most famous for his insight – The medium is the message: it isn’t just the content of a media which matters, but the medium itself which most meaningfully changes the ways humans operate.

But McLuhan wasn’t an advocate of it, he saw dangers beneath the surface as this quote from his participation in the 1976 Canadian Forum shows.

“The violence that all electric media inflict in their users is that they are instantly invaded and deprived of their physical bodies and are merged in a network of extensions of their own nervous systems. As if this were not sufficient violence or invasion of individual rights, the elimination of the physical bodies of the electric media users also deprives them of the means of relating the program experience of their private, individual selves, even as instant involvement suppresses private identity. The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.”

McLuhan was concerned with the mass media, in particular the effect of television on society. Yet the content is atemporal. I am sure the warning would have fitted in with rock and roll singles during the 1950s or social media platforms today.

I am concerned not only changes in platforms and consumer behaviour but the interaction of those platforms with societal structures.

  • What consumers need + more

    What Consumers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis – Harvard Business School Working Knowledge – “NEARLY A QUARTER OF BRANDS HAVE GONE DARK, PAUSING ALL OF THEIR PAID MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE FIRST AND SECOND QUARTER OF THE YEAR.” – their emphasis not mine. On the face of it that article is a good guide on what consumers need to hear most times; but I would have preferred to see that there was empirical research behind this. It relies on ‘common sense’ and smart people’s guess work / opinion to try and figure out what consumers need to hear from brands. What is undeniable is not that what consumers need to hear, but that consumers need to hear something. Media without advertising support will go under. Brands going silent are losing salience and brand consideration. Consumption still goes on. We communicate now, to influence post-COVID markets, that isn’t about what consumers need, but what brands need. More on related topics here.

    In the Battle Against the Machines, She’s Holding Her Ground – The New York Times – machine learning stuggles with things like multiple voices

    Chinese factories go to extremes to fend off second wave of coronavirus cases – The Washington Post – paywall. Interesting the kind of precautions Foxconn et al are taking to stop re-infection from decimating its workforce and shutting down their manufacturing lines

    Coronavirus Surveillance Helps, But the Programs Are Hard to Stop – Bloomberg – Two people taunted on social media for having an affair because the data showed they were at the same hotel at the same time turned out to have been there for a church gathering.

    UN’s partnership with Tencent at odds with its push for global unity – this is very dark, particularly when you take into account the hand China has played with compromising the WHO

    Thevintageknob.org • View topic – The web of japanese contractors – fascinating investigation into the complex web of sub contractors who supported the Japanese hi-fi industry

    TikTok Told Moderators: Suppress Posts by the “Ugly” and Poor – I presume this helped change the algorithms as well? It is a mirror of wider society

    Zoom admits user data ‘mistakenly’ routed through China | Financial Times – security has become a hot mess for Zoom

    What is Gen Z spending its money on? — Quartz – is it really that different?

    US prez Trump’s administration reportedly nears new rules banning ‘dual-use’ tech sales to China • The Register – ok this is going to get interesting

    Suspense – Single Episodes : Old Time Radio Researchers Group : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive – “On September 30, 1962 a major milestone in radio drama came to an end with the final episode of the long running series, SUSPENSE. Ironically, the episode was titled “Devil Stone” and was the last dramatic radio play from a series that had its roots in the golden age of radio. What began as a “new series frankly dedicated to your horrification and entertainment” took on a life of its own mostly due to the talents of some outstanding producers and adaptations and original stories from the cream of mystery writers of the time. The golden age of radio was truly the golden age of SUSPENSE as show after show broadcast outstanding plays which were “calculated to intrigue…stir [the] nerves.” 911 radio plays from the 40s, 50s and 60s! SO MUCH STYLE! Honestly, I’ve listened to a few of these now and they are wonderful; great stories, great acting, and proper time travel – wonderful, and a perfect bedtime story if you’re in the market for such a thing. – via Matt Muir

    The life and timepieces of Ralph Lauren | How To Spend It – I love Lauren’s attitude to watches

    Gen Z. The Myth. The Reality. | Geometry – I sometimes read out a excerpt from an article in Time Magazine to my colleagues when discussing Gen Z:“Deeply committed to the redemption of social imperfections, they have taken on a vast commitment towards a kinder, more equitable society; they are markedly saner and more unselfish than their elders.”Everyone nods respectfully, seeing images of Greta Thunberg in their mind.There’s One Phrase for the Aspirations of Gen Z that I Think is Oracular in an Interesting Way. The twist: it’s from a 1965 issue of the magazine. And they’re actually talking about Baby Boomers.

    Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising? | WIRED – The most interesting thing is what this article misses – the questionable effectiveness of targeted advertising as opposed to smart mass advertising in the marketing mix a la Byron Sharp

    Porn platform poses as a snack delivery app on iOS – Porn is illegal in China, so one porn platform is hiding in plain sight | Abacus – interesting, how did this get through testing? Did they have a working snack delivery service up and running for testing; to get this through iOS testing in particular?

    Michel Lamunière: “Print is going to thrive in luxury and fashion” | Luxury Society – I agree that print is being challenged in categories like news and general women’s lifestyle ­– I don’t see much of a future for those kinds of media. But with luxury, I think that, and I believe, that there will be less players in the future, and that the ones who do it right will really be able to continue to grow. So the product itself needs to be absolutely beautiful. There’s no room for average layouts and content. The content needs to be exclusive, unique, and super engaging

    Axios China – China’s v-shaped coronavirus recovery looks too good to be true – interesting PMI data that looks ‘too perfect’

    Can Taiwan Benefit From China’s Ouster of US Journalists? | The Diplomat – great opportunity for Taiwan

    Coronavirus gives China more reason to employ biometric tech – Nikkei Asian Review – (paywall)

    The Karen meme — TikTok escapism in a time of crisis | Financial Times – Karens are moms — pushy ones. They share corny inspirational quotes on Facebook, buy merchandise inscribed with “Live Laugh Love” and love to ruin teenage fun. What really marks out a Karen, however, is their capacity to complain and get their own way. If you ever worked in a shop or restaurant when you were younger, you will remember who the Karens were — they were the ones who asked to speak to your manager. – I must admit I am with the kids on this

  • Misleading ad metric + more news

    Facebook executives ‘knew for years’ about misleading ad metric | Financial Times – The lawsuit claims that Facebook represents the potential reach metric as a measure of how many people a given marketer could reach with an advertisement. However, it actually indicates the total number of accounts that the marketer could reach — a figure that could include fake and duplicated accounts, according to the allegations. – Facebook’s misleading ad metric isn’t news in its own right. What’s interesting is that the FT article goes on to claim that potential audience size in some states were bigger than publicly available data and seemed nonsensical in comparison to say census data

    UK lays out plans for legal e-scooters, medical drones and more transportation innovation in test cities | TechCrunch – if electric scooters is going to be anything like what I saw in Paris, it’ll be carnage

    Xenophobia amid the coronavirus pandemic is hurting Chinese immigrant neighborhoods – Vox – anti-Asian xenophobia and racism have become a bigger issue around the world as a result of Covid-19. As Nylah Burton reported for Vox, in major cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, and Toronto, East Asians have been targeted — from racist comments made by TSA agents to verbal street harassment. Meanwhile, Chinese restaurants across the globe say they are struggling for business because of widespread misconceptions about the “cleanliness” of their food – exceptionally dark reading

    Time Out rebrands to Time In as coronavirus ‘social distancing’ takes effect | The Drum – circumstance encouraged Time Out to rebrand, but the strong equity they have in their brand allowed them do so successfully, like Pizza Hut’s Pasta Hut or the Google Doodle

    Madison Avenue Insights | Creative agencies: winning the battle but losing the war – Creative agencies have mastered the requirements of integrated campaigns, from TV to online video, websites, Facebook, Instagram, ad banners and e-mail marketing. It’s a pity, then, that this victory is being undermined by agency price-cutting strategies that leave agencies understaffed and underpaid. Senior agency executives need to create winning business practices – they’re losing the business war. – great read by Michael Farmer. I suspect the piece that’s missing is the devastation wrought by procurement

    Russian influence operations using netizens in Ghana to target African Americans – Grapfika – The operation used authentic activists and users, fronted by an ostensible human rights NGO, to covertly propagate an influence campaign. It is not the first time such an attempt has been made, but the tactic is of concern. The unwitting individuals co-opted into the operation bear the risk of reputational or legal jeopardy; indeed, CNN reported that the Ghanaian operation was raided by law enforcement as a result of their online activities. For the human rights community, the risk is that genuine NGOs may be misidentified as being involved in influence operations by accident or malice, and there is also the danger of tarnishing the reputation of important work and organizations across the field – its a fascinating read – a mix of information ops, subterfuge and offshoring. The west African link is interesting

    The Public Interest and Personal Privacy in a Time of Crisis (Part II) – Google Docs – part two of an essay by a Chinese academic- l linked to part one in this post

    Between Privacy and Convenience: Facial Recognition Technology in the Eyes of Citizens in China, Germany, the UK and the US by Genia Kostka, Léa Steinacker, Miriam Meckel :: SSRN 

    Lao Dongyan, “Artificial Intelligence” – Reading the China Dream – piece on biometric recognition

  • Playlists and mixtapes

    Working as a remote team got me thinking about playlists and mixtapes. One of my colleagues started off a themed playlist on Spotify. The playlist creativity was based around a narrative. The narrative is driven by song title.

    cassette tape
    Thegreenj / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

    Spotify made it easy to collaborate on putting more in there.

    Its a form of surface data, easy to see. Easy for machines to grasp.
    It is easy to analyse. Hence Spotify’s ad campaigns and pitch to advertisers based on data.

    Initially, I thought it was this data treasure trove that made me feel uneasy about music streaming services. Where other people felt Spotify’s ads were clever, I felt they were intrusive, even voyeuristic. It felt voyeuristic reading some of them.

    Music curation is a very personal thing. But in the end I realised it wasn’t the data that bothered me. Now I realise its the nature of curation and consumption on the platforms.

    Music is something that exists in everyone’s lives. For some people it was background wallpaper. It occasionally took on ‘sound track’ starring roles at important life moments. For instance, the track the bride and groom choose to dance to at their wedding. Or a one-hit wonder attached to holiday nightlife memories.

    For some people it moves beyond being a trigger. It stirs a passion. Myself and some friends have collections of records. Owning a thing has a power of its own. Digital services don’t really understand this drive.

    iTunes organisation

    iTunes in its day revolutionised digital music. It made music accessible in way that consumers wanted. But it wasn’t a perfect experience.

    For instance, someone like myself won’t necessarily follow an artist. Electronic music often sees artists change names as often as changing an overcoat.

    The producer or remixer becomes important. Tom Moulton back in the days of disco, Danny Krivit’s famous edits or London’s Nicolas Laugier (The Reflex). All of them have distinctive sounds that bring tracks to life.

    A record label becomes synonymous with a particular sound. Blue Note Records’ jazz, Strictly Rhythm’s New York tinged house music or the early rock of Sun Records. This is a mix of a curators ear, in house studios, producers and engineers.

    Yet in iTunes you could never search by remixer, or record label in the way that you could search for an artist or group name.
    Even the way iTunes treated DJ names indicated a lack of understanding. Someone like myself would treat DJ, the way rock fans would treat ‘The’ in a band name. So DJ Aladdin would come before The Beatles. But DJ Krush would come after.
    In iTunes, it ignores ‘The’ so The Beatles sit just behind The Beastie Boys. Both of them come before DJ Aladdin who is grouped with with all the other DJ names.

    Playlists and mixtapes

    iTunes introduced the concept of playlists with the iPod, but the marketing around it was creating lists for how they made you feel. Music to run by, a chillout list etc.

    In design, this was closer to a mixtape than a typical Spotify playlist. Apple worked on making them social. At one stage artists could share playlists of tracks that influenced them. Apple tried to create editorial content around it. It was an interesting idea, but discovery in iTunes was problematic.

    A mixtape is about careful curation. You take the listener on a journey, it is often meant to convey a feeling or an emotion. One of the few people that I’ve seen do this within Spotify has been Jed Hallam’s Love Will Save The Day selections. A non-verbal message.

    A mixtape was often time bounded by its medium.

    • Cutting your own vinyl record which was done on 78rpm discs might give you 2 minutes. Enough for a short voice mail home, if the record survived the postal system.
    • Reel to reel tape might give you up to 90 minutes at reasonable quality on a 10 1/2 inch reel of tape.
    • Cassette tapes were typically 30 or 45 minutes per side.
    • CDs could provide up to 80 minutes, depending on the disc. But the original ‘Red Book’ standard capacity was 74 minutes

    The playlist has no capacity considerations. No limitations that force choices or prioritisation.

    Consuming playlists and mixtapes

    A mixtape often brought a deeper experience to the listener. Whether it was an expression of love, passion or nerdiness. A playlist tends to operate much more at a surface level. This changes the dynamics of consumption. A playlist doesn’t require active listening. Its like drive-time radio. A backdrop to life.

    A playlist is often found, again rather like tuning into a radio station. It is usually a more passive consumption experience. The audience has less invested in it.

    Playlists and mixtapes business models

    This difference in attitude helps explains how music changed in fundamentally in business model. When you’re more passive, you don’t need to own your music.

    You don’t mind if tracks disappear due to licencing disputes. Music becomes a utility that you pay for each month. In this respect Spotify looks a lot like the post-war Rediffusion service.

    It’s an operating expense rather than a capital outlay for young consumers. It facilitates algorithm as taste maker which leads to a reductive path. Apple Music has tried to keep away from this. They’ve got specialist curators in niche genres. Want to hear the best of bluegrass and outlaw country? Apple Music likely covers you better than Spotify.

    If I am following your playlist, it opens up opportunities for payola. Artist brands become less important than a steady stream of releases in popular genres. Music plugging becomes an arbitrage play; streams versus promotional costs RoI. Traditional artist development no longer makes sense. Instead you end up with a model that looks closer to a fast-failure production line. More on media related topics here.

  • Attitudes to immigration + more

    Chinese attitudes to immigration. Some really interesting interviews done by Inkstone. Inkstone is part of South China Morning Post. Whilst the attitudes seem shocking, you do see them mirrored in other monocultural countries. The monocultural country has a very strong sense of self. In China this is exasperated by Han nationalism which explains Chinese attitudes to immigration. In Japan, despite a demographic crisis, attitudes to immigration has meant that the country has focused much more on robotics to solve the human labour deficit beyond manufacturing.

    Marketing in times of upheaval | LinkedIn – cites Beeston’s Law and then fulfils it

    The 1970 Osaka Expo: Looking back at the past to gauge where Japan sits in the present | The Japan Times – some of these pictures are fascinating

    SMS In Emergency Situations: SF COVID19 Updates Via SMS | Forrester Research – mature platforms work well

    Coronavirus Is A Headwind For Search Advertising, But The Outlook Remains Promising – not a terribly surprising analysis given Baidu’s recent financial performance in the Chinese New Year period

    Innovation of the Day | Heineken – alcohol free beer aimed at drivers without running the risk of drunk driving

    Augmented-Reality Startup Magic Leap Is Said to Weigh a Sale – Bloomberg – interesting that Johnson & Johnson are mulling an investment in Magic Leap

    Introducing Fluent Devices – System1 Group – is it fashion or is it a lack of effectiveness?

    cyberpunk « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! – great series of posts on cyberpunk and its impact on culture

    Innovation of the Day | Time – letting exhiibition attendees get some sense of the experience involved in the 1963 civil rights march on Washington DC and experience Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a dream speech’. VR’s real power to engage audiences is emotional experiences rather than storytelling in the way that we usually understand it. More related content here

    Persona Spotlight: Generation X – GlobalWebIndex – While younger audiences are actively trying to regulate their digital activity – nearly 3 in 10 millennials and Gen Zs track their screen time each month – only 1 in 5 Gen Xers have done the same. Another possible reason is that, compared to Gen X, younger age groups are now using social media more passively. When on these sites, 4 in 10 Gen Zs fill up their spare time or search for funny content, while Gen Xers still flock to their social accounts with a greater emphasis on socializing. – this bit feels like they’re throwing hypotheses against the wall, planners pick your favourite

    In February Smartphone sales in China Crashed more than 50% – Patently Apple – not terribly surprising, Apple’s increase in iPad sales probably didn’t compensate for the drop

    The Public Interest and Personal Privacy in a Time of Crisis (Part I) – Google Docs – translation of a Chinese blog

    Is busy the new stupid? – hustle porn etc.

    SoftBank Vision Fund’s Rajeev Misra: 18 months will prove I’m right | CNBC – it will be interesting to see how this plays out

    Measure your distinctive brand assets | Ehrensberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science – well worth downloading and reading (PDF)

  • Ever more digital media + more

    Whilst the world is becoming ever more digital, the book publishing industry has remained print focused due to customer demand. This is a great segment from CNBC that goes into it in more depth.

    Dina Amin’s stop-motion assembly and disassembly video of everyday objects caught my eye. I would be surprised if this doesn’t show up in future ad agency work concepts.

    What’s inside by Dina Amin.

    Even my lack of expertise in gaming means that I have heard of Crash Bandicoot. What’s interesting in this video is how the development of Crash Bandicoot for the original PlayStation is similar to getting software to work on early PCs. Crash Bandicoot was one of a handful of titles that drove PlayStation popularity.

    How Crash Bandicoot hacked the original PlayStation from Ars Technical’s

    I did some initial work on dental health campaigns in APAC. It fell apart due to politics within my own agency, making us unable to collaborate with our colleagues at Red Fuse. Our agency was appointed for social media marketing work; but we couldn’t get anything out the door. During that time I came across some really smart people working in this space. This is why work like this: Colgate Ice Cream and Candy – The Inspiration Room made me smile. Great insight, simple execution in collaboration with confectionery companies ensuring a win-win outcome.

    Greg Girard’s street photography from Tokyo in the 1970s feels like postcards from the future – check out these previews from a forthcoming book of his work: Rare 1970s Street Photography from Tokyo Published in New Photo Book. You can see more Japan related posts here.  

    I’ll be working from home for the foreseeable future, but will be working hard to try and keep this blog as free of coronavirus-related content as I can.

    I am not a virologist, so my expertise doesn’t matter. I do know about the media and social platforms. You will see contradictory information, confusion and uncertainty. A classic example is the way hoarding toilet paper became a self-perpetuating meme.

    While I am working from home, I don’t imagine that it will be too much of a trial as the office environment itself has become ever more digital. I am going to use the time that I’d have spent commuting to improve my reading. I have a stack of unread books that won’t read themselves. I may even explore the ideas from them here with you my reader(s).