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.

  • Super Bowl LII & other things

    Super Bowl LII adverts

    It was the Super Bowl LII in the US which means a festival of TV advertising

    If Super Bowl LII had a star it would be Tide’s ad as  the most interesting because of the way it let the audience ‘in’ on the advert playing off against the cliches used in US advertising:

    • The car ad
    • The pharma ad with its disclaimers
    • The beer ad
    • Perfume ad
    • The rustic setting based ad (for conservative folks)
    • The car insurance ad
    • The luxury ad

    Brittle Chinese sensitivities

    Less about enjoyment and more about interest in social campaigns. Chinese netizen outrage at perceived slights is now affecting channels blocked in China.

    mercedes benz

    Mercedes-Benz put up a filler motivational post on Instagram quoting the Dalai Lama. Instagram isn’t available in China, but that didn’t stop the Chinese web getting angry. Ok when I said the Chinese web, I meant a particular faction of it young people with extreme nationalist tendencies called 愤青 fenqing (said fen-ching). They are a diverse group in terms of beliefs, but a simple view would be to think of the nationalism of Britain First supporters, but with Chinese sensibilities.

    Expect the threat of a Chinese government inquiry. Mercedes for their part apologised on Weibo:

    ..extremely wrong information

    Which caused further outrage as netizens wanted an apology on Instagram. So Mercedes apologised again. Mercedes is stuck between a rock and a hard place, an apology like that on Instagram would blow back on them outside China.

    What you are likely to see is a greater degree of self censorship by brands.

    Lunar new year

    Talking of China we’re starting to run into the lunar new year advertising season and my favourite so far has been this one by Nokia. It also ties quite nicely into a campaign that they ran online over Christmas.

    nokia

    The focus on family moments shows a maturity in Nokia’s advertising versus many competitors who talk about features.

    Taiko

    Taiko versus a vintage big band sound

    Mark Moore

    I have been exploring mixes by London clubland legend Mark Moore.

  • Fake porn videos + more things

    Pornhub Is Banning AI-Generated Fake Porn Videos, Says They’re Nonconsensual – Motherboard – a whole new world of ethics and intellectual property violations on image rights has opened up. Adult entertainers work often lives on way after they’ve left the life. Deep fake porn videos would allow for stars careers to never end (and they not get paid for it). Celebrity porn indistinguishable from reality, rathe than the pornalikes seen in spoof adult films like Who’s Nailin’ Paylin? Or porn made from digital humans, which would allow for new levels of extreme content

    Why Paper Jams Persist | The New Yorker – constant industrial design evolution

    Goodstuph creates ‘Jason’, a same-day idea delivery services for clients | The Drum – PR meets ad agency in approach for agile creative ideation. This would be particularly use for social creative, which relies much more on memes and catching the zeitgeist

    Spotify Launches ‘Spotlight,’ A New Multimedia Format – Reminds me that visuals over DAB that didn’t take off, success will depend on how it affects podcasts current pattern of usage, but will have interest from brands. Spotify is background content rather than active listening, so the visual aspect of this will be less important

    Meet Fashion’s First Computer-Generated Influencer | Intelligence | BoF – boom digital disrupts Instagram and YouTube wannabes. Digital humans don’t need a good behaviour clause, or disintegrate under the pressure of fame. You can prototype products and have them show case it to get an understand of demand and likely customer concerns.

    Optimizely’s decision to ditch its free plan suggests A/B website testing is dead | VentureBeat – testing isn’t dead but won’t improve conversion instantly

    A Kingdom from Dust — The California Sunday Magazine – big agriculture in California. So many aspects mixed into this including immigration, the environment and ethics.

    Rokid Home  – Interesting voice interface company who have an AR prototype as well. The mix of voice and AR could be very interesting as a concept

  • The art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

    Untitled

    Sonny Liew’s The art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye is the autobiography of a fictional comic book creator. It is also an illuminating history of Singapore and a clever exercise in multilayered storytelling.

    Charlie’s story takes you through his family’s history, growing up in a shop house run by his parents and his own life that largely stands still as an unknown comic writer.  It covers his disappointments in comic publishing and the decline in ‘pavement libraries’ as TV became an important form of information and entertainment. One of Chan’s comic book superheroes is a ‘night soil man’ who gets bitten by a cockroach and develops super strength and abilities. Until the necessary infrastructure was built out Singaporeans used to dispose of their toilet contents manually. They would be collected by a night soil man and driven for disposal in a lorry.

    Various life events of Chan are outlined; his parents selling the shop to pay for his father’s unsuccessful medical treatment in Singapore. The love of his life marrying a business man and an unsuccessful visit to ComicCon. All of this tangentially addresses changes in Singaporean society in terms of public housing, medical care and economic improvements. Chan’s failure reflects on what they author felt Singapore lost by not having this kind of critique.

    Through Chan’s comic stories we see a post-war Singapore lose respect for the British following their defeat by Japan and the path toward a post colonial future. The book takes an oblique but cutting tilt at the legacy of the People’s Action Party and Lee Kuan Yew and asks at the end what if things had turned out differently.

    Beyond the storytelling and the historic analysis of Singapore, the book is a homage to the greats of the comic book world:

    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Walt Disney
    • Will Eisner
    • Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

    Despite being relatively oblique in its critique of Singaporean history, the Singapore National Arts Council withdrew a grant $8,000 for the book. Citing “sensitive content” and its potential to “undermine the authority and legitimacy” of the government. Just a few decades earlier Liew could have received a stronger reaction to his work from the state.

    It leaves some interesting questions, Singapore has been a success growing from a post-war where much of the infrastructure was destroyed to an economic power house unlike any other country in South East Asia. Admittedly, it did much of this prior to the opening up of China; but it also didn’t enjoy the natural resources of its neighbours either.  Had Singapore missed out in this dash to economic success?

    The post-war change of sentiment towards fallible British rulers raises questions about whether a post-Brexit freebooting global Britain open for trade will be successful in the face of 7 decades of diminished responsibility and respect around the world?

  • Google Translate sucks & other news

    Why Google Translate fails

    The Shallowness of Google Translate – The Atlantic – Google Translate really weak on language that uses metaphors or symbolic elements in their discussion. So examples that I am familiar with Google Translate failing on include both Cantonese and Mandarin. It’s Mandarin is slightly better, likely due to a wider body of material to work from.

    Beauty

    Kiehl’s sends its moisturizer for men to space – POPSOP – it hits all the touch points for luxury: limited, heritage (space race), desirable and captures the imagination

    Business

    Apple plans to reduce net cash balance to “approximately zero” FT – I personally think that this is a bad idea (paywall)

    Consumer behaviour

    Are you addicted to your smartphone? You may need professional help | SCMP – it is interesting that ‘internet addiction’ isn’t diagnosed as say obsessive compulsive behaviour or sociopathy but its own unique disorder. The likes of TV soap operas or music offered similar escapes – the amount I spent on vinyl was definitely the wrong side of sanity (paywall)

    ‘Social discovery’ is not about making friends. It’s about sex, narcissism, & gossip | VentureBeat – interesting if slightly depressing interview with the people at Tagged

    Edelman Study: ‘Selfie-Style’ Entertainment On the Rise – In2 – interesting that selfie is now used as a descriptor for instant self gratification

    Design

    A synth has been designed to get kids into making electronic music | hhhhappy – want

    BIC – Universal Typeface Experiment – I really like this idea by BIC, it could also build a very useful data set for technologists

    Shanghai Street View: Branding The Zone | Young’s Chinese Business – interesting article on the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Shanghai

    Economics

    Mainlanders’ spending in Hong Kong doesn’t show up in our GDP – that’s statistical reality | South China Morning Post – which is crazy when one sees how much retail is done to cater to cross-border visitors

    Ethics

    Robert Peston’s speech warns of threat to journalism from native ads – full text | theguardian.com – usual chest thumping about PRs, interesting commentary on native advertising

    Watchdog voices fears of privatisation risk to ethical standards – FT.com – Commissioners tended to assume that providers would conform to ethical standards so they were not explicitly incorporated into either the selection of providers or contracts. If monitoring occurred at all, it was focused on performance and financial measures rather than ethics, the committee said. (Paywall) – because that’s going to work well…

    Ideas

    Automating Influence: The Manipulation of Public Debate – Stratfor – nice digestible write-up (paywall)

    Legal

    Knowledge Hub | Review of PAA Forum in Beijing – federation of regulation in China was interesting, since Mr Xi’s moves more like bring order towards the centre

    Luxury

    Prada promotes its latest Candy fragrance with a comic book | Popsop – it reminds me a bit of Modesty Blaise in terms of the drawing style

    Media

    Adidas Launches World Cup Campaign with Google | Adweek – interesting move more because of the new Google ad formats

    Xaxis rolls out a new, real-time global DMP | CampaignAsia – with real-time audience profiles, interesting to see my old client Crystal Semantics technology is now used by Xaxis

    Online

    In a Mobile-First World, Shorter Video Ads Drive Results | Facebook Business  – Average watch time for both the 6-second and 30-second video ads was the same, but ad recall was significantly higher for the 6-second ads. The difference in ad recall underlines the importance of keeping video ads short and communicating key messages in the first few seconds. – And here is the flaw in the argument

    Retailing

    Alibaba’s 11 Main online mall bids to lure U.S. shoppers – SFGate – interesting that development is separate rather than utilising the TMall codebase

    Technology

    Safety in their hands | Federation Internationale de l’Automobile – biometric data from racing gloves

    Netflix Closing Public API Later this Year | ProgrammableWeb – interesting that Netflix closed their public API as this would be handy for new start-ups making next generation consumer electronics product like Roku or Apple TV

    Twitter’s new API lets developers sift through every tweet in history | TheNextWeb – potentially good news for social listening / analytics tools

    My Thoughts On It » Is Paper From Facebook To Be Tossed? – interesting comScore data on Paper app

    Daring Fireball: Only Apple – interesting article. I think that Apple’s decision to not try and build a curates egg helps, also iOS and OSX are being evolved rather than being completely shaken up at the moment. Lastly Apple has to worry about a smaller amount of variance in hardware than other software teams

    Web of no web

    BBC News – Tomorrow’s Cities – thought that this was interesting primer for smart cities, internet of things, programmable web, machine-to-machine

    Nokia’s Here Buys Medio Systems To Push More Personalised Location Services | TechCrunch – interesting move putting lots of contextual pieces in place

    Wireless

    Goodbye, Pure: near-term, post-transition guidance for ex-Nokians regarding their branded future – Evleaks – interesting insights into rebranding a newly acquired company

    Huawei, ZTE On Global Hiring Sprees | Young’s China Business – a symptom of the decline of Alcatel Lucent, Nokia and Ericsson’s business. Expect Cisco and HP to suffer too

    Weibo Adds Gaming, Review and Payment Features to Mobile App Update | TechNode – starting to look more like the kind of eco-system Tencent has built around WeChat and QQ respectively. More related content here.

  • Personal online brand

    Ketchum’s David Gallagher wanted to know whether he should have his own website as part of managing his personal online brand? He initially felt that publishing on Facebook and LinkedIn was enough. There was also discussion around platforms like Medium. None of which give you real control over your content. Wadds like me felt that owning your own platform was important.

    Why have a website as part of your personal online brand?

    • LinkedIn and Facebook don’t have the same agenda as you. Your content becomes a hostage to their business whims
    • It is hard for users to discover your content, Facebook and Google make it so
    • Even on Medium you no longer really own your content. It can’t be easily exported like content on the Blogger platform
    • Even in the world of Facebook, Google is still a reputation engine

    So show do you manage the process?

    You need to find a system that works for you. Here is what mine looks like for social syndication.

    1801 - personal publishing

    IFTTT – if then, then that. A service that allows you to trigger actions based on pre-created inputs. It allows rules to be built up based around different inputs:

    • A new post via RSS
    • A favorited tweet
    • A photograph tagged with a particular label or hashtag

    It supports numerous services including Flickr photography and pinboard.in

    Buffer – buffer is a social publishing tool. I have pre-scheduled slots. It is also compatible with publishing posts sent via IFTTT.

    Pinboard.in – pinboard is a way of storing your bookmarks with notes and tags online rather than on your computer. Your bookmarks then become accessible wherever you are. It is handy to be able to search things that you have found previously. Google seems to have moved away from organising all the world’s information to mainly focus on ‘now’ content. Pinboard helps you get around this.