Category: retailing | 零售 | 소매업 | 小売業

Looking back to when I started this blog, it would have been reasonable to expect an inevitable march of retailing from offline to online. Amazon was on a tear and search advertising volumes were increasing year on year. By the time I was at Yahoo! search advertising (focused on online retailing) counted for about half of all revenue for the company.

At that time Yahoo! had a Spotify-like subscription streaming music service that was viewed as a threat to Apple’s iTunes download only offering. When I worked there Yahoo Music was the number one online music site in terms of audience reach and total time spent by consumers on the site. Also display advertising was much bigger for brands than it is today and Yahoo! was guaranteed a good share of the online marketing spend from any movie launch at the time.

The reality of online retailing, was slower than our expectations. While COVID drove an increase in online retailing there has also been corresponding innovations in retailing as well.

Amongst the pioneers in this change have been luxury brands like Burberry and Nike, who brought digital into their stores to provide a superior customer experience.

Adidas brought manufacturing into its stores with its speedfactory experiment, allowing for fast time to market and customisation.

Supreme changed the cadence of retailing with the Thursday morning ‘drop’  which saw queues outside stores. Every Thursday became a launch day as far as their customers where concerned. The queue has moved from Apple’s annual cadence, to every week.

  • Liberation day + more things

    Liberation day

    Liberation Day was a glorified press conference where the Trump administration revealed their tariff scale on every country around the world. Weirdly enough, Russia wasn’t tariffed. Here’s some of the interesting analysis I saw prior to, and after the event.

    Liberation day social media post.

    The Trump administration leant into an aesthetic influenced by patriotic memes, the steeliness of The Apprentice and generative AI – a look I call Midjourney Modern. Liberation Day was no exception.

    The Economist did a hot take that calls the whole thing a ‘fantasy’.

    America’s Cultural Revolution – by Stephen Roach – Conflict – Stephen Roach was an Asian focused chief economist at Morgan Stanley. The American Cultural Revolution narrative is something I have heard from a few contacts in China and Roach echoes that perspective in this article.

    China says weaponising agriculture in US trade war should be off-limits | South China Morning Post – agricultural price shocks in the past have led to civil disruption in China

    Liberation Day and The New World Order | Fabricated Knowledge

    Opinion | I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America. – The New York TimesPresident Trump is focused on what teams American transgender athletes can race on, and China is focused on transforming its factories with A.I. so it can outrace all our factories. Trump’s “Liberation Day” strategy is to double down on tariffs while gutting our national scientific institutions and work force that spur U.S. innovation. China’s liberation strategy is to open more research campuses and double down on A.I.-driven innovation to be permanently liberated from Trump’s tariffs.

    Beijing’s message to America: We’re not afraid of you. You aren’t who you think you are — and we aren’t who you think we are. – Thomas Friedman – Overall, I would agree with the sentiment, BUT, you have to remember what he’s been shown is the best view of what China can do and reality is much more complex. I still think that there is a lot of the future being made in places like France, Finland, Latvia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – as well as China. What China does best is quantity that has a scale all of its own, something America has historically excelled at.

    Consumer behaviour

    Bachelors Without Bachelor’s: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates by Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman, Joseph Winkelmann :: SSRN

    Culture

    Montreal DJs move clubbing from midnight to morning, adding coffee and croissants | Trendwatching – early morning clubbing, reminds of Marky J‘s mornings at the Baa Bar in Liverpool.

    Health

    Is Gen Z more mentally ill, or do they just talk about it more? | Doomscrollers

    Europe Rapidly Falling Behind China in Pharma, Astra Chief Warns – Bloomberg

    Ideas

    I’m Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better | Joan Westenberg

    Innovation

    Samsung Develops Groundbreaking Achromatic Metalens With POSTECH – Samsung Global Newsroom

    Korea

    South Korean movie theater launches monthly knit-while-you-watch screenings | Trend-Watching

    Luxury

    Counterfeit luxury goods: London raids miss the target | Dark Luxury

    Vogue Business Index top 10: Preppy is back and so is Ralph Lauren | Vogue Business

    Polène: The global success of the French handbag made with love | Le Monde

    Marketing

    X-tortion: How Advertisers Are Losing Control Of Media Choice | Forrester – I am surprised how ‘on the nose’ Forrester is in this post.

    Technicolor, Parent Company of The Mill, MPC, and Mikros, Facing Potential Closure | LBBOnline – this hit the creative industries like a lightning bolt.

    Influencer Marketing: The quiet reset in the influencer economy, ET BrandEquity – the total number of influencers has shot up from 9,62,000 in 2020 to 4.06 million influencers in 2024, reflecting a staggering 322% growth.

    Materials

    DIY Birkin? China’s Gen Z 3D print dupes, share on RedNote | Jing Daily – Armed with affordable 3D printers and free design templates, young consumers are crafting their own versions of iconic luxury accessories. – Homage flowerpots or penholders rather than ‘dupes’ but 3D printing feels mainstream

    Online

    Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests | Censorship | The Guardian – After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos of anti-state protesters or content that criticises and alleges corruption among their politicians. Google’s own data reveals that, globally, there are 5.6m items of content it has “named for removal” after government requests. Worldwide requests to Google for content removals have more than doubled since 2020, according to cybersecurity company Surfshark.

    The reason you feel alienated and alone | Madeline Holden – your Dunbar number is filled with para-social relationship rather than social relationships.

    China’s fragile online spaces for debate | Merics

    AI Discoverability: Amazon’s Mistakes NN Group

    Retailing

    Lidl TikTok Shop launch sells out in under 20 minutes | Retail Gazette – I am curious about Lidl fulfilment approach

    Security

    Military delegates lose sway at China’s signature political gathering | FT

    Putin is Unlikely to Demobilize in the Event of a Ceasefire Because He is Afraid of His Veterans | Institute for the Study of War – which poses economic challenges in Russia and a greater incentive to attack outside Ukraine once the conflict winds down

    Exclusive: Secretive Chinese network tries to lure fired federal workers, research shows | Reuters

    FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado – Ars Technica

    Technology

    Google’s Sergey Brin Asks Workers to Spend More Time In the Office – The New York Times – 60 hour weeks are productivity sweet spot according to Sergey Brin. Silicon Valley looks more-and-more like Huangzhou.

    Alibaba exec warns of overheating AI infrastructure market • The Register

    Telecoms

    SoftBank and Ericsson agree to collaborate on next-gen telco tech

    Web-of-no-web

    Meta announces experimental Aria Gen 2 research smart glasses | CNBC

    WeRide to open driverless taxi service in Zurich | EE News – Chinese operator is set to launch a fully unmanned taxi service in Zurich in the next few months. This follows the launch of its latest generation Robotaxi, the GXR, for fully unmanned paid autonomous ride-hailing services in Beijing. The GXR, with a L4-level redundant drive-by-wire chassis architecture, is WeRide’s second Robotaxi model to achieve fully driverless commercial operations in the city following pilot trials.

    Wireless

    London’s poor 5G blamed on spectrum, investment, Huawei ban • The Register – the comments nail it

  • DeepSeek & more things

    DeepSeek

    I decided to pull together some of the better resources I could find on DeepSeek. It distracted and disrupted my writing calendar as I was researching a post what will be called Intelligence per Watt, once i have it published.

    John Yun’s take on DeepSeek is well researched and thoughtful rather than a hot take trying to explain why the sky fell in on Nvidia’s share price.

    ChinaTalk have put together a large amount of expert opinions on DeepSeek.

    DeepSeek FAQ – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

    With DeepSeek, China innovates and the US imitates | FT

    DeepSeek displaces ChatGPT as the App Store’s top app | TechCrunch

    Advances by China’s DeepSeek sow doubts about AI spending | FT

    DeepSeek cost tough for Nvidia but great for corporate world | Axios

    Consumer Behaviour

    Going gaga over Labubu – by BBH Culture Studio – Bleats – Chinese toymaker POPMART is the Bearbrick of the 2020s

    We Asked 12 Young Men Across America How They Feel About Trump, Masculinity, and Money. | Esquire

    Everyone’s done with dating apps | Doomscrollers

    FMCG

    Health

    Rapid trials prompt deals rush for Chinese ‘super me-too’ drugs | FT

    More than one in 10 women are taking weight-loss jabs, survey finds | The Telegraph – Concerns around those who are a healthy weight obtaining injections privately, as well as distribution of fake pens

    Study: 67% Of Gen Zs Want To Take Charge Of Their Health But Face Gaps In Communication | Provoke Media – Despite being known as the digitally native generation, Gen Z is skeptical of online health information and even telehealth appointments. In fact, eight in 10 Gen Zs say they’ve encountered false or misleading health information online and more than 60% say prioritizing in-person visits over virtual ones is important to feeling respected by healthcare providers.

    Innovation

    Have America’s industrial giants forgotten what they are for? | FT – Critics say fragmented ownership, weak culture and a fixation on financial results have harmed innovation. The ghost of Jack Welch and Chicago School of Economics continues. But all this isn’t a new idea Judy Estrin’s book Closing The Innovation Gap laid all this out back in 2008.

    Legal

    “Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed – Ars Technica

    Luxury

    Louis Vuitton APAC strategy: Inside the luxury brand’s Asian success | Jing Daily“Given the economic downturn and competitive luxury market in China, Louis Vuitton has been seen adjusting its strategy to appeal to more diverse audiences, i.e. launching more affordable bag styles, participating in pricing games (points collecting, coupons refund), and launching cross-over marketing activities,” says Yu.

    This year alone, the house has hosted its exclusive four-hands dinner at its Michelin-starred restaurant, The Hall, alongside Chengdu’s Latin American Michelin one-star restaurant, Mono; launched ultra-limited-edition diamond bracelets and a serpent-inspired timepiece for the Year of the Snake; rolled out its highly anticipated Murakami collaboration; and unveiled a new men’s store at Shanghai’s IFC Mall.

    “[Louis Vuitton’s] strategy is rooted in consistency,” says Xuan Wang, activation director and partner at Tong Global and luxury PR veteran. “It has embraced a more localized approach — granting its Chinese team greater creative autonomy — while not losing the essence of the brand.”

    Breitling to add a third watch brand? | Professional Watches – I am not sure that this is going to work out that well.

    Marketing

    How Beats navigates being at the forefront of culture, not culture wars | The Drum

    Materials

    Interesting video on carbon fibre fabrication and how it has evolved over time, from an artisanal process to mass manufacturing.

    Media

    Apple asks court to halt Google search monopoly case | The Verge

    Online

    The Death of Social Media – by Jonathan Stringfield

    Social media is dead – Boundless Magazine

    Retailing

    Japan’s Costco Resale Shops Struggle to Distinguish Themselves – Unseen Japan

    Technology

    Antiqua et nova. Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence (28 January 2025) – the Holy See on generative AI

    Reckitt: Don’t use AI to increase efficiency at the expense of recruiting junior talent

    Kaspersky finds hardware backdoor in 5 generations of Apple silicon – Robby Pedrica’s Tech Blog

    Tools

    AI prompts for communication and PR | Gemini for Workspace | Google Demini – useful for strategists as well

    Web-of-no-web

    The mainstreaming of AI glasses starts today | Machine Society

    endless.downward.spiral – is this the beginning of the end of What3Words? – Terence Eden’s Blog

    Meta’s CTO said the metaverse could be a ‘legendary misadventure’ if the company doesn’t boost sales, leaked memo shows – probably not that likely.

  • January 2025 newsletter

    January 2025 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my January 2025 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 18th issue. As a child 18 represented experiences denied. 18 and R18 in the UK and Ireland is broadly equivalent to Hong Kong’s ‘category III’ or the US R and NC-17 ratings. This was prior to the Marvel universe infantilising adult cinema.

    12 jade zodiac

    18 is considered lucky in both Chinese culture and numerology. Talking of lucky, January 29th sees the lunar new year, which will be the year of the snake. According to Chinese horoscope, so 2025 should be a good year for my Chinese horoscope sign in terms of professional and financial areas. Here’s hoping.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here

    Strategic outcomes

    Things I’ve written.

    • Japan Re-Emerges + more things – if nothing else visit this post for Ulrike Schaede’s talk on Japan’s reinvention over the past four decades.
    • Interpublic acquisition by Omnicom – a slow read, rather than a hot take. It got a bit of traction when I published it thanks to Stephen Waddington for sharing it on his Facebook group House of Marketing and PR
    • Foreign workers + more stuff – a mix of stuff from around the web including a documentary on how Filipino, Indonesian and Burmese domestic workers in Singapore have banded together to found a mutual support community around a shared love of roller-skating.
    • CNY 2025 – a round-up of ads and observations in the run up to the year of the snake. I haven’t written this as an article on LinkedIn this year, as LinkedIn’s video embed function no longer seems to work properly in articles.

    Books that I have read.

    • I managed to finish The Peacock and the Sparrow – IS Berry drew on real-world events such as the Arab Spring political movements and the Fat Leonard scandal to provide a story that moves between Bahrain to Cambodia and back. There was also a universality to the book, for instance it captured that worst excesses of the expat experience that resonated with my own experience and was something I sought to studiously avoid when living in Hong Kong. I was surprised that the book implies that the post-petroleum phase of Bahrain’s development, seemed to happen so abruptly. This was at odds with the gradual decline in petroleum production that we’ve seen in North Sea oil production and mid-west oil fields prior to fracking. Bahrain is a former petro-state that has now pivoted to Gulf area tourism and related services industries.
    • Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway. I am skeptical of works that look to fill in the universe created by a deceased writer. Christopher Tolkien’s efforts were as much an academic study of JRR Tolkien’s archive curated for the completist reader. Ian Fleming’s James Bond franchise was overrated when he was still alive. It didn’t merit the ten authors that have worked on expanding the book canon to date. John Gardner’s own enjoyable character Boysie Oaks, (similar to Len Deighton’s protagonist in The IPCRESS File) was overshadowed by Gardner’s stint writing Bond books. Nick Harkaway’s book pleasantly surprised me. Harkaway’s real name is Nicholas Cornwell and he was the son of David Cornwell aka John Le Carré. He literally and figuratively grew up as his father wrote the great George Smiley trilogy (Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People) and the BBC adaptations. Karla’s Choice feels and reads ‘right’ and slots neatly into the Le Carré lore. I can highly recommend it as a read. Despite it being a period piece, Russia’s resurgence gives it a strong sense of zeitgeist.
    Palo Alto
    • Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris. Harris’ book is curate’s egg. On one hand it’s is a politically left polemic by the author on how the world is based on slavery, genocide and other forms of exploitation – which manifested in the authors trauma of a privileged upbringing in Palo Alto. Amongst all this Harris manages to write a Bay Area history that surfaced nuggets that I didnt know from the range of previous books on the area that I had read. Included in them is quotes from Silicon Valley pioneer Wilf Corrigan on offshoring chip manufacturing and packaging. It’s an oddity. If you like left leaning political theory, or a history of technology buff who is prepared to wade through the editorialising it might be worth your while.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    The Sun Also Rises, But Not on Magazines

    There are times when you reach a personal tipping point in your view on something. It can feel shocking, nauseous in a visceral way. I have only been there a few times.

    With the dot com boom it was talking with financier at an incubator fund sometime in April 2000. Pegasus Research’s iconic quantitative research on ‘burn rates’ had been published a month earlier and had started to become more known if one read around enough. So I asked him how they thought that they would be making money and his response was:

    Ged, I am really surprised that you asked me that. Don’t you realise, we’re trying to move at ‘internet’ time. We’ll think about monetising it later on.

    With some notable exceptions like Monocle magazine, print media has been struggling.

    Wired Jan / Feb 2025

    Over the Christmas period I was reading the January / February 2025 edition of Wired magazine (published by Condé Nast). Right from unwrapping the magazine from its postage packaging something felt wrong. The magazine felt light; very light. Thankfully the print stock and graphic design was up to its usual standards. So I did a quick page count and noted the number of advertisements in the magazine.

    • 88 pages
    • 5 adverts from paying advertisers
    • 3 adverts from Condé Nast
    • 1 advert for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The advertising space might have been donated by Condé Nast

    I was alarmed at the decline. Seeing declining magazine media spend on slide ware is different to feeling it happen on a publication that you loyally subscribe to. Thankfully my other usual print magazines Monocle and Japanese style magazine HailMary don’t seem to have had a similar exodus of advertisers yet. But it put me on alert about the precarious health of magazine print adverts as a medium. Creative magazine print done right can provide experiences that TikTok can’t.

    • Think about the size of visual real estate
    • The tactile experience of the page which helps with memory formation
    • Being able to smell a product fragrance on the page
    • Sampling opportunities
    • The ambient reach of re-reading or being left in a shared environment
    • Creative offline to online linkages

    For the right brands it offers targeted upper funnel experiences that can then be reinforced digitally.

    Which brought me to Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises as I groped around in my head trying to find the words to explain what was happening to magazines as a advertising medium:

    “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

    “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

    The value chains driving the creator economy.

    I spent some time during Christmas reading Influencer marketing unlocked: Understanding the value chains the paper was written by 15 academics following the 12th Triennial Invitational Choice Symposium held at INSEAD’s Fontainebleau site. Having worked on influencer campaigns on and off for the past two decades I was curious to see what progress had been made in the thinking underpinning influencer marketing.

    Measuring ROI is still complex, as are the challenges that influencers face balancing ‘editorial’ integrity with promotional content.

    Brands continue to struggle with measuring ROI beyond short term metrics and puts a focus on engagement. Metrics on long term impact (if any), sales and profitability are insufficient. The authors recognised that there were gaps in proving causation between engagement and sales or long term brand equity.

    There is still work to be done understanding the marketing impact of influencer marketing on both influencer and brands including:

    • Customer acquisition, retention and lifetime value
    • How can authenticity be maintained in paid promotions

    There is still the tension between brands need to qcquire and develop customers vs. influencers own need to cultivate ‘follower equity’. Influencers also depend on their relationship with the platforms they exist on, which can snuff them out if they no longer fit the ad revenue created vs. the revenue the influencer gets through promotions. Platforms boost influencers until a certain point and then limit their reach to maintain control.

    China’s ‘closed loop’ ecosystem was considered to be more effective. This is platforms such as Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese market twin) and Pinduoduo aka ‘together, more savings’ seem to do better due to tight integration between content and commerce. Then there is the live-streaming business which is basically QVC on social media. TikTok and Instagram Commerce are still playing catch-up. Chinese influencers are thought to have a lifecycle of up to five years, which is why MCNs use an ‘idol’ development model.

    Creative consistency

    Creative consistency was one of 2024’s marketing efficiency tenets thanks to research conducted by System1. System1 studied how consistency affects creative quality, stronger brands and greater profits.

    When comparing the most to the least consistent brands, analysis found that a higher proportion of consistent brands reported larger sales value gain, market share gain and profit gain.

    Chart of the month: decline in digital health investment

    The FT published an article just prior to JP Morgan’s annual Healthcare conference. The article put some sober perspective on the current state of investment in digital health innovation.

    Investment in digital health

    Things I have watched. 

    E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial – I hadn’t seen ET since I watched it as a child in the cinema. Watching it again as an adult was like watching a different film. From the atmospheric introduction prior to the stars cape onwards, it felt emotionally heightened, with more of a direct line back to Spielberg’s earlier Close Encounters of The Third Kind in terms of look-and-feel. There were references that I didn’t get at the time (for instance takeaway pizza and Reese’s Pieces weren’t really a thing in the UK). I got to appreciate Spielberg’s use of distraction, light and colour grading as an adjunct to storytelling. Finally, the shameless product placement surprised me. 1980s America was a very consumerist society with ultra-processed food that would cause convulsions in The Guardian newsroom – but the product placement was far less subtle than modern Korean dramas. I could see why Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces got an apparent sales uplift from the film.

    Bangkok Dangerous – A Thai take on Hong Kong’s ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre emblematic of John Woo films. The directors Danny and Oxide Pang are better known for horror film The Eye. Bangkok Dangerous feels more alive than its Hong Kong peers thanks to Danny Pangs editing and Oxide Pang’s over-saturated colour grading. The brothers careful use of cinematography, inventive storytelling and sparse dialogue make this debut film film feel so polished. Finally, the brothers manage to make city the star, in a similar way to Wong Ka-wai’s films in Hong Kong.

    Persepolis – A film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel published in two volumes Persepolis and Persepolis 2. Persepolis tells the story of Marjane’s life from childhood in Paris and pre-revolutionary Iran, how she experienced the revolution. She was sent away by her upper middle class family to Vienna for secondary school. Afterwards she went to university in Iran, was treated for depression and attempted suicide. The story ends as it began with Marjane returning to Paris. The film is true to the graphic novel in terms of style – think a modern-day Tin Tin. Like the book, the story is an emotional rollercoaster ride. It’s subject matter feels equally relevant now, as is did when Satrapi originally wrote her story.

    Useful tools.

    Advertising awards list

    Probably not that useful for me at the moment, but The Thought Partnership have put together a list of awards listed by entry deadline covering the whole of 2025, which should be handy for advertising, marketing and public relations agency marketers.

    Adobe Acrobat Pro alternative

    Adobe Acrobat Pro is a useful piece of software, but it’s not worth almost £20 / month. PDF Reader Pro gives you a lifetime licence for the same functions for a one off payment of $25.

    Long term tracking

    Use Apple AirTags but have battery charge anxiety because you forget when you put the battery in? I know I did for the one in my travelling IT kit bag. And I found a solution. Elevaton Lab’s TimeCapsule 10-year battery case. its a two-piece black plastic slap held together by screws. Inside a couple of Duracell AA batteries will give a decade of operation for your AirTag. Sparingly use a little bit of gasket maker on the two halves seams and LocTite Threadlocker on the screws gives you a nigh indestructible tracking module.

    The sales pitch.

    I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my January 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into the year, and for those of you celebrating the lunar new year on January 29th 恭喜發財 (Gong Kei Faat Choy).

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

    Get in touch if there is anything that you’d like to recommend for the newsletter.

  • CNY 2025

    CNY 2025 or Chinese new year 2025 is shorthand often used as a hashtag on social media to circulate songs, sales promotions and advertisements from across China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. I started off this post into gathering some of the best examples of CNY 2025 advertising just after Christmas and there was a poor range of adverts just a month out from CNY 2025. Imagine if there were no Christmas adverts appearing by the third week in November?

    Small businesses like the Davely Bakery Café in Malaysia had started promoting organic social content on their Facebook page by November 19. (In markets such as the Philippines, Hong Kong and Malaysia, Facebook is still big business.)

    CNY 2025 - Davely Bakery Café

    But where were the large company promotions this close to the festival? Brand campaigns only really started to appear from the second week in January onwards.

    CNY 2025 themes that I took away from researching this post:

    • Increased emphasis on demand generation and sales promotions.
    • Less big brands advertising than previous years.
    • Campaigns were run over a shorter period. Roughly half the six weeks I would have expected for successful brand building campaigns.
    • Less of a focus on storytelling and deep emotional cues than previous years.
    • Lower production values as a whole than previous years.
    • A move towards bus wraps in Singapore for CNY 2025 campaigns. These were replicated in ‘bus simulator’ games popular amongst transport fans in Hong Kong and Singapore. This replication was less about a ‘brand gaming strategy’ and more about fan curated bus skins for absolute fidelity to their favourite bus routes.
    • Less emphasis on creative consistency than in previous years.
    • Shorter ads, each with a lot of 15-second edits.
    • Increased use of humour.
    • Increased use of songs, presumably to gain earned and shared media support – very hard to do successfully as a strategy when there are so many songs to choose from.
    • Lazy use of celebrities – I hadn’t see this in previous years doing this.

    As a marketer, I saw things in CNY 2025 that I thought was good and things that I worried about in these changes between CNY 2025 and previous years:

    • Smarter memory structure building: fluent objects such as Kevin the First Pride nugget, the use of jingles and ear worm songs, the use of humour
    • Red flags for brand mental availablility: a lack of creative consistency, shorter ads and lazy use of celebrities. Shorter ads can, if done right be used to build brand, BUT, there are a number of factors to consider when doing it successfully. These include variety of formats, reach / marketing penetration, repetition, single-minded creative execution and the thumb-stopping factor.

    Reading the ‘tea leaves’ I suspect that marketing budgets have been cut, and brands might not be expecting as much of an uplift this year as China’s poor economic performance affects its neighbours.

    China

    Apple

    Apple continued its shot on an iPhone series. The Chinese New Year film is run in lots of markets but primarily made for China. I am surprised that this got past the censors. Time travel is usually a a no-no. It also reminds China’s currency economically challenged consumers of the 1990s go-go years of year-on-year double digit growth. The core aspect of the creative is the direct questions that younger family members receive.

    CNY 2025 is the first time that Apple didn’t have a Chinese film maker shot its film. Finally, Apple’s film comes in at a whooping 11 minutes 59 seconds although a good minutes is the credits.

    Bottega Veneta

    Bottega Veneta’s Chinese New Year film is all about vibes. There were some interesting styling choices in the film. The older guy with the women’s hand bag. That most of it seemed to be around older alleyways that have been refurbished. The lady in the 1980s era Jaguar. Pre-1997, a number of more anglophile Hong Kong businessmen used to get driven around in Jaguar and Daimler cars with a large V12 engine – that spoke to old money in this film.

    I was stuck by the lack of explicit references to new year, which you can also see in the Miu Miu film – what there is are more subtle cues.

    All of which is a world away from many luxury brands slapping a snake on everything this year.

    Gucci

    Gucci taps into the traditional multi-generational party and memories of ‘snake’ new years of the past. It’s probably the strongest bit of storytelling and the most cinematic of all the films that I have looked at this year.

    Miu Miu

    Prada sub-brand Miu Miu is one of the few stand out brands in a tough 2024 for the luxury sector. This Chinese New Year film is playful, borrowing from Asian mid-century set design and 1990s era Chinese electronica to tell a small story.

    Hong Kong

    Coca-Cola

    Coca-Cola has a dominant position in the soft drinks market thanks to its dominance in distribution. The only places I could buy Pepsi was in my local Pizza Hut when I lived there. This year they focused on out of home posters to reinforce memory structures. The unusual aspect to the campaign was that it went up in early February at the end of Chinese New Year. That’s a bit like launching your Christmas advertising on New Year’s Eve. Not sure why that’s happened.

    coca cola hong kong

    Giordano

    Multinational clothing brand Giordano promoted a CNY 2025 collaboration featuring the Kung Fu Panda character on its social media accounts. The preponderance of red in the clothing isn’t only about it being a seasonal colour, but also you are supposed to wear new red clothing for the new year.

    This social media film was run on channels in Hong Kong, Malaysia and other countries where Giordano has a presence.

    Malaysia

    100PLUS

    100PLUS is an isotonic drink similar in function to Gatorade or Lucozade Sport popular in Malaysia and Singapore. Its advert for Malaysia promotes the drink as alternative to colas during new year celebrations. A secondary aspect is the opportunity to win a free prize draw. The blue in the outfits is to presumably signal the blue in the brand and packaging.

    It’s slightly unusual in that it doesn’t feature multi-generational family members, which I suspect is down to a single-minded focus on teens and young adults.

    Aeon

    Japanese supermarket Aeon highlighted their CNY themed collaboration with Italian artist TokiDoki as a music video format that you could sing along too. It’s a little too mild to be an aggressive earworm of a tune.

    Aglow Clinic

    Aglow Clinic is an aesthetics clinic in Malaysia that treats a range of skin conditions including sun spots. They partnered with social media personality Roderic Chan to make this film. Considering the small size of the brand they hit well above their weight in terms of production values.

    Aiken

    Aiken is a Malaysian based beauty brand. The creative was done by the media buying agency and features Malaysian influencers as the talent in the advertisement.

    Aiken wishes you Double the Brightness for a Brighter Year! is clever word play that implicitly links feeling beautiful and the promise of good fortune. This advert went out very late into the market for 2025.

    Carina

    Carina is a household tissue brand in Malaysia, similar to Kleenex in the UK and Ireland. It has gone down the ear worm route with its song. The montage of footage feels crowdsourced.

    Eu Yan Sang

    Eu Yan Sang did separate creative for Malaysia. There are higher production values than their Singapore creative and storytelling that ties back to creating memories and tradition being a key part of Chinese New Year. The advert sought to show that the family weren’t wealthy, but had food on their plate, good manners and retained their cultural roots. As a first-generation emigrant myself this one spoke to me.

    First Pride

    Tyson Foods First Pride range of processed chicken product including chicken nuggets and satay slices featured a simple sales promotion with a sweepstake format. The advert also introduced a fluent object ‘Kevin’ the chicken nugget on a TV advert.

    Kevin had previously been shared only on out of home formats. It would be interesting to see if and how they make future use of Kevin.

    Guardian

    Guardian is the Malaysian brand of the better known Asian pharmacy retail chain better known as Mannings in Hong Kong and China. A UK analogue would be Boots. It has higher production values and evokes togetherness, good fortune and memory-making for our young protagonist. Click here to see on YouTube.

    guardian cny 2025

    Haier

    Chinese white goods manufacturer took an unconventional storytelling approach. it’s the kind of creative concept that could be used year on year, just changing the product line-up.

    Harvey Norman

    Electrical retailer Harvey Norman ties into the fact that bargains are a constant discussion around the table during Chinese New Year (and any other family gathering). The production feels rather low rent compared to other adverts here.

    HongLeong Bank

    HongLeong Bank took the story of two customers that fitted neatly with the festivities around Chinese New Year. It gives a good old tug on the heart strings.

    Julie’s

    Julie’s a is a biscuit brand that tries to focus on the human side of food. Given the visiting and gifting culture for Chinese new year – the opportunity is ideal for its brand. I was surprised by the high production values of the advert. The 3d animation is creatively consistent with work that they’ve put out over the past year. As a direction the CNY 2025 campaign is very different from their last festival campaign for CNY 2022.

    Julie’s can continue to run this campaign after CNY 2025 is over due to the lack of overt seasonal themes in the advert.

    KitKat

    KitKat Malaysia have attached the Chinese New Year creative back to ‘have a break, have a KitKat’ for creative consistency. There is enough in here to say new year. But a sufficiently light touch that they could use it year-in, year-out – so long as the brand uses the same promotional packaging design.

    If they had used snake imagery, it would be one-and-done.

    Knife

    Knife are a food flavourings brand from Malaysia. Their main advertising push is for Chinese New Year and they have made a constant effort to bring creative consistency and storytelling into their work. CNY 2025 is no exception to this approach.

    https://youtu.be/Oxo8jP-67tE?si=aSnwKB5YVxoT96z_

    Lay’s crisps

    Lay’s (known as Walkers in the UK) highlight their role as a snack at new year’s gatherings. The ad promotes a new year themed sweepstake including mahjong sets.

    Lotus’s

    Lotus’s is a supermarket market chain. In Malaysia, the shops were formerly Tesco Malaysia and sold on to a Thai retail group. This film focuses on the stress of preparing for new year, together with sales promotions. Aside from holding red t-shirts with the ‘Fu’ symbol on them, this sales promotion video could be for any time of the year. The 1970s called and wants it’s ad creative back from this Malaysian supermarket chain.

    Melinda Looi

    Malaysian fashion designer Melinda Looi came up with a homage to Wong Ka wai’s In The Mood For Love. The advert nails the mid-century elegance but struggles to get the cinematic richness and tension of the original.

    I respect that they gave it a good try and love their ambition; but it’s like Ted Baker trying to pull off the introduction to The Italian Job.

    Mr DIY

    Mr DIY is a hardware chain similar to Lowe’s in the US or B&Q in the UK. Their advert riffs on the heightened tensions of family get togethers and the relative popularity in Hong Kong film making of court room dramas – to add a bit of cultural relevance. It taps into the stressor of very direct questions similar to BRANDS Singapore campaign.

    Mr Muscle

    Household cleaner brand Mr Muscle had a Korean celebrity record a CNY 2025 specific message for their Facebook page viewers.

    The advert features Korean drama and film actor Kim Seon Ho. In common with other Korean celebrities he endorses a variety of brands in Korea and other Asian countries. For some of the brands endorsed, they have had record sales which they attribute to working with Kim. It’s not sophisticated but will appeal to his many fans in Malaysia.

    Munchy’s

    Munchy Food Brands is a Malaysian snack brand. The advert itself is pretty self explanatory. Like Watson’s they are leaning hard into trying to create an ear worm to aid long term brand recall that’s complete with an EDM-style drop.

    Nivea

    Nivea looked to promote their men’s products as a way to solve for the stress of direct family feedback on how you look. It has been shot for mobile.

    Pantai Hospital

    Pantai Medical Group runs a private hospital in Malaysia that caters to more well-off Malaysians. The emphasis on healthy food in the advert relates to the central role that food plays in Chinese New Year celebrations.

    Their elective treatments are likely to be quiet during CNY 2025, so they have provided the option for health-focused external catering. It’s an interesting product innovation for those close to their hospital in Penang. The behind the scenes clips at the end draws on Korean and Hong Kong productions. The best known in the West would be the blooper reels that used to appear at the end of Jackie Chan films.

    https://youtu.be/2tKxHrCldts?si=WIQqF1PRPsyzdKEG

    Petronas

    Petronas is the Malaysian national oil company. There is a natural fit with CNY 2025 because children go home to see their parents and siblings. Later on during the celebrations they will drive to visit relatives. On the Malaysian peninsula you could be a long time in heavy traffic, so pit-stops for fuel and refreshments are pretty much obligatory.

    Ribena

    Brutally short creative with the tagline left right at the end. ‘Ooo Juicy Fu’ – the fu is a reference to the Chinese character fu symbolising ‘fortune’. It is creatively consistent with campaigns that Ribera ran for Ramadan and the previous CNY in Malaysia.

    Shopee

    Shopee is a mobile marketplace think Shopify, Depop or Uber Eats in an app. Like Watsons Malaysian campaign it relies on a ‘new years’ song. Why a song? Entertainment during Chinese new year features newly composed catchy earworms. These may come from film series put out as family entertainment for the new year like the All’s Well, That Ends Well series of Hong Kong comedies, or television and adverts.

    Watsons

    Watsons is a Hong Kong-headquartered pharmacy chain with stores across Asia and a strong focus on health and beauty products. It’s parent company AS Watson is a set of diversified retail brands including:

    • Superdrug and Savers in the UK
    • Rossmann
    • Fortress (a PC World or Best Buy analogue)
    • PARKnSHOP, Taste, FUSION, GREAT FOOD HALL – grocery stores
    • Watson’s Wine

    They have been teasing a song related Chinese New Year campaign for Malaysia to embed in your memory structures, but were only showcasing the song 2 1/2 weeks before CNY 2025. Rapid screening of sales promotions drown out the ‘Happy Beautiful Year’ themed brand building effort.

    https://youtu.be/KpAXOYxxGvc?si=jzwNGGW5HXz8pbHk

    Yakult

    The Japanese yoghurt drink brand used some good fortune themed imagery to promote a brand sweepstake. A very simple execution that could be used again in future years.

    Singapore

    BRANDS

    BRANDS is a food and supplement business. Traditional Chinese Medicine often recommends eating particular foods to treat different ailments, which is why BRANDS essence of chicken sits in a kind of ‘wellness’ space.

    Their advert draws on the universal experience of very direct questions that people have to field from relatives when they go home for Chinese new year.

    Eu Yan Sang

    Eu Yan Sang run traditional Chinese medicine and related wellness foods shops and clinics across Asia. This Singapore ad focuses on the challenge of gift giving and the close link between good fortune and good health. Unusually, they’ve also run a second lot of creative promoting their CNY themed hamper designs as well.

    https://youtu.be/dGc3_cDjtCA?si=pTA3fXpeL481jw-P

    FairPrice

    FairPrice is a Singapore institution. Like the UK’s Co-op, it is a supermarket owned by the National Trade Union Congress and is the largest grocery chain in Singapore owning both supermarkets and convenience stores.

    The ad focuses on everyday Singaporeans with many of the shots modelled on HDB flats – Singapore’s public housing. The colour grading and small moments designed to evoke different types of nostalgia from the rituals of family and the Chinese New Year.

    Hockhua tonic

    Hockhua is a Singaporean local wellness foods brand who did a simple sales promotion for their hampers to be provided for the new year. The cut-off time then gave the brand a few weeks to assemble to the appropriate amount of hampers.

    Lazada

    E-tailer Lazada leads with sales promotions. The imagery draws on Fu xing, the god of good fortune who you would pray to in order to get a prosperous new year.

    Ministry of Digital Development and Information

    The government of Singapore used Chinese new year to reinforce a common Singaporean identity and celebrate the 60th anniversary of the city state. Sing-a-longs are a part of Chinese new year. The video featured a 1980s song that was originally recored by the artists in 1998 re-recorded by them for the government department encouraging t he citizens to look out for each other. The video was published just days before new year and relied primarily on the reach of the former prime minister’s Instagram account. It shares a common theme of small but joyful moments with the FairPrice CNY 2025 advert.

    Thailand

    This is the first year that I have covered a Thai market campaign. Thailand has a significant ethnic Chinese minority (between 10 – 15% of the population depending on which estimates you reference). Like Indonesia, Thailand integrated them for political reasons and many of them no longer have Chinese sounding family names – but the traditions live on. A second aspect is the increased role in the Thai economy that Chinese expats and tourists now play.

    Central

    Central is a premium department store in Thailand (think Peter Jones in London) and has a mid-tier brand called Robinsons (think Debenhams or House of Fraser). You have a stylistic version of the new year dinner and a cool grandfather who owes a lot to mature Japanese hipsters and The Sartorialist. The film has high production values and leans on vibes rather than storytelling, but is distinctive.

    You can find my previous reviews of Chinese New Year ads here.

  • Foreign workers + more stuff

    Foreign workers

    Foreign workers in Singapore parlance are people who come from around Southeast Asia and South Asia to do blue collar and pink collar jobs in the city state.

    In a number of Asian countries including Hong Kong and Singapore; Filipino and Indonesian workers came to care for old people at home, look after children and conduct household tasks.

    This group of foreign workers freed up middle class married women in Singapore and other countries to participate more to their economy, capitalising on their education and ability to earn more in fast-growing economies. They had higher levels of workforce participation than their female counterparts in Japan and South Korea.

    foreign worker philipppines

    The Philippines relies almost five-fold more on remittances for its GDP than similar countries like Indonesia.

    What’s less reflected upon is the social upheaval and challenges that these foreign workers face in their new homes. They are in a different culture, away from friends and family as a support network. They have tremendous pressure to remit as much money as possible home.

    They only have each other to rely upon. This skate team is just one of the activities that foreign workers do. From informal gatherings with friends to sophisticated beauty pageants, volleyball and basketball leagues. More Singapore related content can be found here.

    Beauty

    China’s beauty market is a sight for sore eyes | FT – The brand keeps prices of its products, from face powders to creams, closer to those of premium international brands, in line with L’Oréal’s Lancôme and Shiseido’s Nars. The rise of a domestic premium brand points to a significant shift in mainland shoppers’ buying habits as well as highlighting improvements in the quality of domestic products

    Business

    Business execs just said the quiet part out loud on RTO mandates — A quarter admit forcing staff back into the office was meant to make them quit | ITPro

    China

    Impatient for tech breakthroughs, the Communist Party is pushing aside private initiatives | Merics – the government is trying to pick winners and backfill the funding gap left in the VC industry which has declined over 40%.

    China’s long view on quantum tech has the US and EU playing catch-up | Merics – China sees quantum technology as pivotal in global science and technology (S&T) competition and has stepped up government spending on scientific and industrial development to about USD 15 billion.

    Consumer behaviour

    Paper People | Yun Sheng | Granta – virtual dating simulators and virtual love. Japan leads where the aging world is likely to follow

    2024 Year in Review – Pornhub Insights – young people (gen-Z) make the highest traffic.

    Gen Alpha report: Teens see Starbucks as the new Venmo – Fast Company – equivalent to rounds in a bar.

    From like to love: understanding why consumers fall in love with some products | Kearney

    Culture

    Y3K: Futuristic fashion trend sweeps China | Jing Daily – Inspired by AI, VR, and the metaverse, and propelled by K-pop idols and Korean brands, Y3K is rapidly gaining popularity among Gen Z. – very William Gibson ‘Burning Chrome’ era

    Economics

    Diverging demographic destinies: Cars and the middle class | WARC – According to Pew, the American middle class has shrunk significantly in the last few decades. The top 20% of earners now take more than 50% of aggregate income because theirs has grown faster. 88% of Americans have less than $2000 in their checking account and 50% have less than $500 in savings. The average cost of a new car in 1984 was $6000 and the average household income was $27k. Today average household income is $80k [Fed] but averages conceal the widened gap between maxima and minima: the median income per person is around $35k [Census]. The average price of a new car is almost $50k, which is surprising enough that CNN wrote an article about it. They explain that “much of the reason Americans are paying nearly $50k for a car is that automakers decided to go all-in on expensive cars. The more they charge for a car, the more money they make off it.” 

    Whereas forty years ago an average new car cost about a fifth of an average annual salary, a new car is now prohibitively expensive for most. That’s why Americans have a record $1.6 trillion of outstanding car debt and delinquencies are rising.

    What the Bubble Got Right | Paul Graham

    2025 AI & Semiconductor Outlook | Fabricated Knowledge – early indications for an economic downturn?

    Energy

    Is China’s “peak coal” just spouting emissions? | Too Simple, Sometimes Naive

    Hong Kong

    Asia’s Walled City: The Erosion of Transparency in Hong Kong | International Republican Institute – interesting report, particularly some of the knock-on effects for sectors such as public affairs professionals, financial analysts and being able to do due diligence on businesses.

    Japan

    FirstFT: Nissan and Honda hold talks about a merger


    Biden’s Move to Block US Steel Deal Is No Way to Treat Japan – Bloomberg
    In the executive order preventing the deal on spurious national security grounds, staffers for President Joe Biden appeared to accidentally copy-and-paste the title of a previous presidential order — one ordering a Chinese crypto mining company to vacate property near an Air Force base. The left the Nippon Steel directive entitled: “Regarding the acquisition of certain real property of Cheyenne leads by MineOne Cloud Computing Investment.”

    Luxury

    Interesting research from two sources that don’t quite square with each other. Walpole’s The State of London Luxury 2024 report came out and painted a rosy picture about the ultra high end aspect of the London property market. Meanwhile over at the FT, Why London’s property market is stagnating points at the same end of the market as being moribund in nature.

    United States Luxury Fine Jewelry Market Expected to Reach USD 24,374.3 Million by 2034, Driven by Sustainability and Personalization Trends | Future Market Insights. – The luxury fine jewelry market in the United States is poised for steady growth, with the market size expected to reach USD 17,353.6 million in 2024. The market is projected to continue expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.5%, reaching USD 24,374.3 million by 2034

    Marketing

    Ipsos In Talks To Acquire Kantar Media | Media Post Agency Daily

    Full article: Infusing Affective Computing Models into Advertising Research on Emotions | Journal of Advertising Volume 53, 2024 – Issue 5: Computational Advertising Research Methodology – academic study to look at the kind of research techniques that the likes of System 1, iPSOS and Kantar use in assessing advertising

    Ageism in advertising: AI and layoffs exacerbate the issue | Ad Age – baked in (but largely incorrect) perceptions about ‘not being able to use AI’ and reducing headcount is crippling the existing DEI dumpster fire in the advertising industry.

    Media

    Jellyfish Launches Share of Model™ Platform, First-to-Market Solution to Track How LLMs Perceive Brands, Products & Services – Marketing Communication News – Share of Model™ Platform – a first-of-its-kind solution that enables companies to analyze how different Large Language Models (LLMs) perceive their brands, products and services. Critically, the new platform can identify whether or not brands are optimizing their digital presence enough to prompt coveted recommendations from Gen AI models such as ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s Llama, when people tap into them for guidance.

    The Media Mix Navigator tool

    Retailing

    Foot Locker hit by slower spending and NIKE ‘softness’ | WARC | The Feed

    How WhatsApp for business changed the world – Rest of World

    Security

    Romania blames Russia for election meddling | FT

    How Chinese Hackers Graduated From Clumsy Corporate Thieves to Military Weapons – WSJ

    How macOS has become more private – The Eclectic Light Company

    Afgantsy Redux: How Russian military intelligence used the Taliban to bleed U.S. forces at the end of America’s longest war

    Technology

    Intel on the Brink of Death – SemiAnalysis & The Death of Intel: When Boards Fail – by Doug O’Laughlin. This interview with former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, back when he was the project manager for the Intel 386 processor. In retrospect, Gelsinger’s return as CEO could be seen as an Intel C-suite cargo cult hoping for 386-like success again.

    Telecoms

    U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid cyberattack | NBC News

    Web-of-no-web

    Top secret lab develops atomic clock using quantum technology – GOV.UK