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.
Vice are running a series on classic EDM (heart sinks) but the first is Darude – Sandstorm. Lets not even get into the music taxonomy Vice are using…
Darude – Sandstorm is interesting because the catchy hook is straight out of the Stock Aitken and Waterman playbook, complete with a key change. It sounds timeless, it could have been from any time from the early 1980s onwards – since it fits in with records like Rofo’s Theme. It is also surprisingly simple which is why it became endlessly memeable.
The back story of how Darude – Sandstorm took off is fascinating.
VR in jail
Re-entry into society is astonishingly difficult for criminals that have completed their prison sentence. Its not only that businesses are reluctant to employ convicted criminals, but that life has changed. Imagine going into jail before the internet and coming out today. You might know about the changes, but knowing isn’t the same as experiencing them.
Secondly, interacting outside is different to jail. You don’t have opportunities to prepare for the transition. And that’s where the Colorado correctional facilities use of VR comes in. Convicts can experience scenarios and learn from the experience.
The team at The Vinyl Factory put together videos on how Rega make turntables…
How McIntosh Labs make amplifiers
How McIntosh Labs make amplifiers. McIntosh Labs have been producing amazing hi-fi for over seven decades, with a design language that hasn’t changed that much over the years. It is really impressive that McIntosh Labs have been competitors like Bob Carver come and go. It’s also impressive that McIntosh Labs still make their products in the US.
Daring Fireball: Marzipan – Gruber posits that Marzipan is a unified development environment that allows programmers to create apps optimised for iOS and macOS. Marzipan means that the only have to write the app only one time, rather than having to rewrite completely for each platform. It makes more sense than the original Guzman article on a future merging of iOS and macOS
Apple Took the Lion Share of Smartphone Industry Profits in Q3 2017 at Close to 60% – Patently Apple – there are many ways to cut this data. Apple is still doing well, Samsung has made big strides to get back into the game over the last year and the largest Chinese manufacturers are still living on thin margins of $15 per handset. Huawei’s numbers are likely to be mixed. The Honor handsets will have a much lower margins and so pull down Huawei’s aggregate value.
Consumer behaviour
The politics of social status: economic and cultural roots of the populist right – Gidron – 2017 – The British Journal of Sociology – Wiley Online Library – the answers may lie on the ‘supply side’ of political competition, where recent movements in party platforms have made the populist right more attractive to many voters. A convergence over the past three decades in the economic platforms of the centre-left and centre-right toward the right have reduced the appeal of the centre-left to the working class. In this context, many voters now complain that no one speaks for them. At the same time, parties on the populist right have moved their economic platforms to the left, making them more plausible providers of jobs and social protection. Moreover, in order to mount distinctive appeals at a time when the differences between parties on economic issues has narrowed, many parties have put more emphasis on identity or values issues, which often draw middle-class voters to the left but working-class voters to the right
The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth – The New York Times – public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits. – When does pork barrel politics start to look like organised crime?
Huawei executive detained on suspicion of taking bribes | HKEJ Insights – it is worthwhile bearing in mind that Huawei is a big ass company, so the odds of at least some employees being bent is a sure thing, just on the scale of numbers. It isn’t necessarily proof that the company is rotten. Huawei has its cultural foibles but corruption isn’t necessarily one of them
Upgrade to 5G Costs 200 Billion Dollars a Year, May Not Be Worth It | Advertising Age – this will be interesting. 3G mobile networks were in a similar position at launch. I remember going to a Cap Gemini conference at the time, where research from European mobile operator c-suite opinions was presented. TL;DR no one knew how it was going to make money. Some like Three had ideas of making money on short form media like sports highlights. Three didn’t manage to build a business selling football clips. None of the current ideas look worth $200 billion a year. Not even at the inflated values that we currently have, nothing close to 200 billion dollar markets. More related content here.
Why Is There No Freighter Equivalent of the Airbus A380? – this is explains why Airbus made non-cargo optimised design decisions (like a cockpit on the lower flight deck so you can’t fit a cargo door in the nose). I would be very surprised if Airbus doesn’t make the same mistakes in the future.
Hiroshi Fujiwara Explains Why Fragment Sneakers Are So Hard to Get | GQ – There’s many shoes out there. I want everyone to have it who wants to have it. But it’s hard because so many people buy them just to make money. And I don’t like that. And sometimes it’s good to work hard to get a sneaker, because otherwise you won’t buy it – Fujiwara-san on point as ever
Over the past two decades the China marketing agency landscape had got used to go-go growth, just by showing up. The Xi-era of China has seen the end of the go-go years in economic growth in China. This economic maturation was one of the factors picked up on Arun Sudhaman’s analysis of Chinese marketing agency landscape changes, with a particular focus on PR services.
Arun also noted dirvergence in fortune of domestic and multi-national firms.
Here are some of my thoughts on China marketing agency landscape changes.
Digital disruption affecting China marketing agency landscape
Multi-national PR agencies often led with corporate communications and public affairs expertise. This meant that their businesses were led by leaders who paid lip-service to digital at best. My experience trying to sell digital internally was one of the most painful processes that I have ever done. It was one of almost insurmountable cultural differences: not Irish-Chinese, but analogue-digital.
To be fair many corporate and public affairs specialists in London are still trying to get to grip with what digital means. They know it’s important, but they don’t have a clue how it all comes together.
That mean’t that they didn’t really get social media beyond being a publishing platform. Chinese KOL (key opinion leader) work whilst effective, is paid media. PR agencies generally don’t have the depth of tools and analytics to provide comprehensive planning and execution for KOL projects. It is hard to get management teams to invest adequately in tools and talent.
Change in legal and regulatory environment
Premier Xi has changed the landscape for public affairs practitioners. The government is less flexible, it feels that it no longer needs to be. China is on the ascendence in the face of western existential crises and America in rapid retreat from the world stage. Hence, new laws that discriminate against foreign technology companies as part of its wider approach to cyber sovereignty. Public affairs still has a place in terms of research to provide understanding, but their foreign multinationals won’t like what the results will likely tell them.
Digital media landscape
Digital has hit the industry hard. It moved at an accelerated pace compared to other industries. Unlike the west were television isn’t in decline but has stopped growing, Chinese TV isn’t undergoing the golden age that we are seeing in the west. The government has made it less entertaining – which has only helped the acceleration of digital marketing channels in China. Government control of television content has meant less reality shows or remakes of Korean drama stories and more content extolling Chinese Communist Party values. Worthy content, but not particularly engaging.
Disintermediation and displacement
In China, the major digital platform companies try and go direct to clients for social media advertising cutting out the media buying agencies. This gives media and digital agencies extra incentive to go and grab the paid engagements of key opinion leaders. These are often performance-related deals with directly attributable online sales or online-to-offline voucher redemption. Digital and media agencies are better equipped to handle influencer relations than their public relations peers. It is less about influence and more about performance.
Changes in the client boardroom
Multinational PR agencies also have problems with their established client base of international brands. Under Premier Xi we have seen a more confident China. This confidence is manifested in Chinese board rooms. The way strategy and goal-setting works in Chinese companies illuminates this difference:
Big board meeting where outrageous unrealistic targets are set by the Chairman
Planning department turns the ridiculous goals into plans
Management goes to arrange funding
The business then goes to staff up and do whatever is needed. They will build massive conglomerates – what is known as building the eco-system – something that is frowned up in the West as being bad for shareholder value
Chinese entrepreneurs care about market share more than profitability. And sometimes they fail spectacularly like LeEco or Evergrande, collapsing under the weight of their own debt.
A lot of it reads like bubble-era corporate Japan. While it seems insane to outsiders, corporate China is much more closely knitted into the government than the keiretsus ever were. Corporate China may go pop in the future, but it won’t happen at the moment.
Multinational clients struggling
By comparison, multinationals are worried about activist shareholders and meeting their quarterly numbers can’t be as aggressive in comparison to their Chinese peers. This type of aggressive pursuit of growth would also be an anathema to the likes of WPP, Omnicom, Publicis and IPG who suffer from a similar risk of activist shareholder shenanigans as their multinational clients.
Which is why Chinese brands have been blowing up across sectors. 91 percent of smartphones now sold in China are from domestic brands. Apple has somewhere around 7 per cent share. Foreign FMCG brands are being slaughtered, even Amazon has only a few percentage points of market share.
Quite simply, multinational PR firms have generally bet on the wrong horse. China is the one market were American scale and capital actually diminishes in impact over time as the Chinese domestic market picks up. Multinationals in strategic business areas were always going to lose over time.
Knowledge and business transfer
Where Chinese brands have wanted to expand globally, they have taken on foreign PR agencies. Part of this process was knowledge transfer. If one looked at an organisation like Huawei, you can see how they have learned and built internal capability with Chinese characteristics in their corporate communications function over time. It would be a similar process in other companies.
Even foreign luxury brands have struggled to be as agile as their Chinese customers. Between the crackdown on corruption and the rapid development of experienced luxury consumption – the only constant in the luxury market has been change. It is only a matter of time before China has its own answer to Michael Kors or Christian Dior. Western luxury brand problems will affect the agencies that work with them with massive fluctuation in marketing budgets.
A second transfer of capability from foreign to domestic is the move of multinational agency talent into local agencies. You combine that Chinese entrepreneurship and foreign agencies look vulnerable. Clauses that have kept western agency staff in check from plundering clients and talent don’t hold up as well in China.
Luxury Brands Win Right to Block Sales of Goods on Amazon in Europe – WSJ – in its findings giving the right to block sales on Amazon, the European Court of Justice takes an expansive view of luxury brands “The quality of luxury goods is not simply the result of their material characteristics, but also of the allure and prestigious image which bestows on them an aura of luxury,” the ECJ said. “That aura is an essential aspect of those goods in that it thus enables consumers to distinguish them from other similar goods.” – essentially luxury brands are experiential as much as they are selling products. That’s one of the key points to block sales and prevent Amazon getting into luxury
