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.
SITA | SITA statement about security incident – this gave limited and basic information – specifically your name, membership number and tier, seating preferences and a code corresponding to your meal preferences. – according to Cathay Pacific. It looks like this attack on SITA was more about tracking the travel of persons of interest around the world; so more likely to be a state actor rather than commercial motives. China is known to use this kind of data to track and harass its enemies
Jack Ma personifies the contradiction of China’s ideology | Financial Times – interesting end to the article, with a question about whether Goldman Sachs, BlackRock et al will be able to convincingly align themselves “politically, intellectually and emotionally” with Xi Jingping? How will the west regard Communist party cells in their management decision structures?
Tymbals : The Agency of the Future – I was reading this by Nigel Scott. I suspect that he’ll be right. My main concern as a marketer is the piss-poor job that the martech stack players do, supporting brand building. The fundamental problem is they only view things from a performance marketing perspective because engineers, programme managers and even the company CMOs don’t get brand. These are the people that brought us growth hacking. Their model is a secondhand car lot salesman.
Why the Europeans Don’t Have a Russia Policy – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – the belief held by the older generation of German Social Democrats—and Christian Democrats—that Russia should not be isolated. This was the thinking behind Germany’s Ostpolitik, or Eastern policy, which was begun by the Social Democrats in the late 1960s. That policy was based not only on the idea of dialogue with Russia but also on the notion of Wandel durch Annäherung, or change through
Wave Goodbye, Hello MIPS as Chapter 11 Resolved | EE Times – still has a strategic focus on the RISC-based processor architectures. They are looking to support a mix of legacy MIPS technology and a new “standards-based 8th generation architecture,” based on the open source RISC-V processor standard
I haven’t driven a BMW in well over 20 years, so Doug DeMuro’ update on the BMW brand was fascinating.
BMW Twitter account
The BMW brand issue hadn’t been on my radar until Doug DeMuro talked about it. A number of things seem to be happening with BMW.
The company’s customer base is predominantly gen-x and baby boomers; because their cars are expensive. For decade these people have been told that the BMW brand represents the ultimate driving machine.
An important part of the visual BMW brand: the design language that it is implementing on is problematic. In particular the ugly ‘beaver teeth grill. This is ironic given that an electric car doesn’t need a grill for its engine.
It didn’t help things that from a certain angle the rear of the BMW iX has a resemblance to the Nissan Juke.
Nissan Juke 1.6 Advance 2017 by RLGNZLZ
It has at least an internal perception that it has lost its BMW brand mojo as there is a slow steady move away from the internal combustion engine.
If you look at other YouTube automotive channels, BMW seems to be having reliability issues with its current cars and the repairs are expensive to do. Back in the early 1970s the BMW brand was tarnished with negative perceptions about the cars being rust buckets and the company managed to lick that. The current engineering problems sound more complex.
All of this makes the BMW brand sound more difficult to fix than being on the socials and being up to date with their yoofspeak.
Canada concerned as Hong Kong starts to force dual citizens to choose status – The Globe and Mail – individuals who declare themselves Canadian could now lose their residency rights to live in Hong Kong.“It’s the beginning of the end for people in Hong Kong with Canadian status,” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland. The policy on dual citizenship stems from a 1980 law in mainland China that was then applied to Hong Kong when the United Kingdom handed over the city to Beijing in 1997. “The law was on the books for years but it wasn’t always enforced,” Mr. Kurland said. – interesting move
The Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China strategy – Atlantic Council – single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping. China has long had an integrated, operational strategy for dealing with the United States. The United States has so far had no such strategy with regard to China. This is a dereliction of national responsibility – interesting read. Right on with its diagnostics, but off base with its proposed solution. The west thought that Xi was a moderate when he came into power. He has extended his loyalists in every aspect of the party. The Jiang Zemin faction of the party, which would be an alternative aren’t liberal; they used the army to put down student protests in 1989.
Commission chief tells charities not to be ‘captured’ for politics | Charities | The Guardian – Charities that support politically or culturally contentious causes should expect their charitable status to come under regulatory scrutiny even if they are acting within the law, according to the outgoing chair of the Charity Commission. The Tory peer Tina Stowell, who is stepping down after three years in the post, warned charities against being “captured” by unnamed people who wish to push a partial view of the world and use charity platforms to wage war on “political enemies”. – this is going to be interesting
Looking downstream – Tortoise – as a long time netizen I am less certain that regulating platforms for content will work and worry about the precedent it would set for authoritarian regimes. Should OTT platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime carry news? Here my first question is how do you define news? Should they do real time news reporting, probably not even if they could. Should they do current affairs analysis – they already do if you look at the kind of documentaries that they have. I think that there should be real questions about those documentaries in terms of quality and bias? While we’re on about documentary making, surely the BBC could be doing more work with Adam Curtis or Bellingcat and have those people training the documentary film makers of tomorrow
Liu Yifei Announced as Face of Louis Vuitton China | Radii China – LVMH betting on woke western liberals not being their customer base and choosing polarising star. It also shows how far Fan Bingbing’s star has fallen since her tax troubles. Crystal Liu was the protagonist in the car crash live action version of Mulan. She’s also not as beautiful as Fan Bingbing
How Europe Became a Model for the 21st Century – DER SPIEGEL – Despite its long list of crises in recent years – including the most recent vaccine snafu – the European Union has become a global pacesetter. Its laws and regulations have established global norms. This has made the bloc a 21st century model. – I agree with the direction of this article, even if some of the examples could be debated
Silicon Valley’s iron grip on venture capital is slipping — Quartz – the shift to smaller tech hubs that’s been going on for years is set to move even faster, according to Stanford. “The pandemic has thrust the VC ecosystem into new territory where Zoom meetings and alternative deal sourcing methods reign supreme,” he wrote in an analyst note. “This shift has, at least somewhat, leveled the playing field for investor attention…Over Zoom, it doesn’t matter if the company is in the same building, city, state, or country.” – no credit given for the dissipation technology start-ups to places like Singapore and Shenzhen. For instance, social darling Clubhouse is based on Chinese voice technology. But there’s also a bigger issue about the decline in hard innovation which is easier to do in a tight cluster. Since its no longer happening, the cluster makes less sense. More on innovation here.
Bases for Trust in a Supply Chain – Lawfare – With a supply chain attack, there is a potentially long delay between the introduction of a vulnerability and its exploitation. In addition, infiltrating a supplier generally requires a well-resourced adversary and interaction with that supplier. So compared to the alternatives, preparations for a supply chain attack take longer and have a higher risk of discovery. The risks of discovery can be reduced, however, if inserted vulnerabilities resemble ordinary flaws and, thus, the malicious intent is disguised. The digital systems on which individuals and nations increasingly depend are large and complex, so today they are likely to be rife with vulnerabilities. Many of those vulnerabilities will be known, some unpatched, and others easily discovered by analysis. In short, such systems are easy to compromise.
Russian hack brings changes, uncertainty to US court system – new rules for filing sensitive documents are one of the clearest ways the hack has affected the court system. But the full impact remains unknown. Hackers probably gained access to the vast trove of confidential information hidden in sealed documents, including trade secrets, espionage targets, whistleblower reports and arrest warrants. It could take years to learn what information was obtained and what hackers are doing with it – you can’t hack paper
February 12, is CNY 2021 (Chinese new year 2021); based on the lunar calendar. It is the year of the ox, the second animal in the Chinese zodiac cycle. It is celebrated by people of Chinese heritage around the world.
Some of the best creative in Asia comes out of the new year campaigns. Here are some of this years.
China spring festival adverts
I find it hard to find many good CNY 2021 adverts this year. Two consistent top performers are adidas and Apple.
adidas has an advert that’s part of an app-driven multi-channel experience. Hence why the call to action at the end of the ad is the app. App driven e-commerce by the big sports leisure apparel brands. Nike has the ‘Nike’ app and SNKRS aimed at streetwear fans. Some of the more exclusive shoes are only available to purchase on SNKRS.
adidas seems to be taking a similar line in China. The clothing presented is sports fashion in nature. adidas is also clever in the way it taps into Chinese culture with this app.
adidas used gamification tactics to improve digital engagement and strengthen the brand salience with target segments, especially sports and street culture fans.
The campaign consumer insights were:
Going beyond the Chinese New Year tradition of sharing wishes for good luck and good fortune. The brand took this in an engaging direction by showing audiences how they could honour their blessings and make wishes come true through their actions. This is something that that many Chinese take for granted
Many Chinese move back from the big city to smaller towns, the visuals of the ad draw on visual elements and atmosphere of a small town Chinese new year.
https://youtu.be/HDyx2_MS8SE
Apple has released a ‘Shot on an iPhone’ Chinese new year themed advert this year. This follows on from similar mini-movies that it has done in previous years by partnering with well known film makers. This year Apple turned to Chinese film maker Lulu Wang to reinterpret an old Chinese folk tale with a modern twist. The folk tale is related to Chinese new year celebrations.
https://youtu.be/t-9YuIg7R1I
Lulu Wang for Apple Inc. – Nian
And there is a making of the film here
https://youtu.be/9pHO5hpgj7k
Apple Inc.
Chinese video platform Kuaishou decided to make a Chinese new year film. (Kuaishou is a direct competitor to Douyin – the China specific version of TikTok.) The story was based on the real stories shared by Kuaishou users. The worked with film maker Jia Zhangke who had worked with Apple two years earlier on their Chinese new year film.
For those that would be normally travelling home at this time of year, the film given added poignancy, given China’s restrictions on travel over the Chinese new year period to try and combat resurgent COVID-19 outbreaks.
A honourable mention to H&M which I haven’t been able to find in a format to share online.
Hong Kong CNY 2021 adverts
The CNY 2021 themed ads are symptomatic of a couple of things:
Masks have established themselves as strong consumer brands. This has manifested itself in both retail presence and advertising
Budgets have been constrained by two years of economic declines, which explains some of ads low production values
Chinese new year revolves around food and indulgence rather like Thanksgiving or Christmas in the west. On Kee Dry Seafood Co., Ltd sell abalone and other delicacies. Given that Hong Kong has been in a recession even before COVID-19 – discretionary spend is under pressure.
On Kee Dry Seafood Co., Ltd
What surprised me about this advert how much it looked as if it has been shot in a studio (look at the ‘retail product range’ shots around the 14 second mark to see what I mean. But any firm that is investing in its brand during a recession deserves the respect of marketers.
Sun Shun Fuk Food Co. Ltd are a competitor to On Kee and have managed to come up with a shorter 15 second spot, but with higher production values. 15 second ads are hard, trying to get creative to land the messages in the creative and still have time for the brand compulsory pack shot and strap line on the end. I think they’ve done a good job with this.
Sun Shun Fuk Food Co. Ltd
HealthMe Plus put together a sub-30 second spot for its seasonal children’s masks. If you had asked me if this would have happened 12 months ago, I’d have said absolutely not. The effect of major brands like Solvay and 3M to meet consumer demand has allowed local champion mask brands to spring up.
The music takes me back to hearing The Chieftains in China album as a child. And more recently, when I’ve visited or lived in Hong Kong, the local supermarket muzak during the run up to Chinese new year.
McDonald’s Hong Kong innovate a lot more than their UK counterparts. A case in point being their Chinese new year menu with special burgers and curly fries. The Chinese new year menu features a Hello Kitty tie-in on packaging (and likely a soft toy giveaway, if you collect enough tokens). The 15-second spot isn’t anything special unless you’re a diehard Hello Kitty fan.
McDonald’s Hong Kong
McDonald’s Hong Kong
McDonald’s Hong Kong
I particularly like the seasonal ‘red envelopes’ that celebrate the different aspects of the McDonald’s Chinese new year menu.
Malaysia Chinese new year adverts
Malaysia is impressive for the quality of the ads, particularly given the country’s economic performance before and during COVID-19.
The most impressive set of adverts for me so far have been done by Malaysian power company Tenaga Nasional Berhad. It is based on the same folk tale that Apple China adapted for their advert. There is a five minute film, a ten second and 30 second trailer to maximise impact. It feels like a mini Stephen Chow film.
TENAGA
Grab is similar to Uber, it does transport, food ordering and food delivery. Grab like Singapore’s Singtel builds on successful ads from last year. It mixes Chinese New Year with the tropes of a kung fu movie like the Grab book of Tai Chi. The production values on it are very high.
Grab Malaysia
Traditional Chinese medicine brand focuses on family in their engaging minute film.
Eu Yan Sang
Yakult is a six minute drama that is very now. A mother misses her daughter who is coming apart at the seams working in a challenging environment at a hospital. In the end they come together over food virtually.
Yakult – Miles apart, but close at heart
Mercedes-Benz went with telling a heart-warming story rather than trying to have a product hero. At 1 minute, the film seems extravagant compared to some of the ones I have been looking at this year. It plays on the mix of happiness and awkwardness that happens during family gatherings like Christmas or Thanksgiving in the west. The overlapping family banter is done really well and the code switching feels very natural.
Mercedes-Benz
Samsung Malaysia came out with Chinese New Year story for the COVID era, that is as much about relating with the audience as it is pushing product – although technology helps stave off the worst of a dystopian present.
Lego created an ad with local online personality Danny Ahboy as the protagonist. It was interesting that they focused on nostalgia and had an all-adult ensemble, apart from the flashback scenes.
https://youtu.be/Iqv_EKlWKaA
The Lego Group
Malaysian mobile phone carrier Celcom went with an uplifting message and artfully crafted b-roll, to show how Malaysians in the past faced adversity together with the bonds strengthened by Chinese new year festivities.
Celcom
It’s not necessarily the most memorable campaign, but it wins points for not putting the brand front and centre in the creative, and instead is a hymn to their stakeholders.
The biggest surprise for me was Coca-Cola who have down a relatively safe route with their Have a little celebration with big meanings together, but its a 15 second spot which creatively very restrictive. I found this especially surprising, given how long Coca-Cola stopped its media spend for in 2020. I would have thought that they would need to spend on brand salience at this time.
The Coca-Cola Company
Singapore CNY 2021 adverts
Singapore telecoms carrier Singtel has consistently done great Chinese new year themed adverts. This is a sequel to their CNY 2020 campaign. This year the hero product is 5G connectivity. It’s a mini cinematic production clocking in at 6 minutes. But it pays the audience back for their attention with drama, comedy and a heart warming ending.
Singtel
Mobile e-commerce platform Shopee came up with an ad to target shopping for CNY gift giving. It is the kind of ear worm song that is likely to stick with you from childhood, well into adult life and trigger nostalgia down the road. So a potentially great brand building vehicle.
Shopee Singapore
Uniqlo Singapore goes after COVID-19 head on, it treats this brand tribute to the spirit of Chinese new year as a look book. Check out the dancing Grandma. The staging of it makes clear that it’s an everyman tale. The story plays out in a well maintained HDB flat.
Fast Retailing
CNY 2021 advert conclusions
For CNY 2021, across all the countries that I looked at, there were signs that advertisers budgets seem to be hurting. I have looked at this for a few years and never seen as many spots done on just a 15-second execution before. Especially given the opportunity that Chinese new year gives to get consumer spend and built brand salience.
Imagine the John Lewis Christmas ad, or the Coca-Cola holidays are coming creative treatments as just 15 second spots?
The Coca-Cola Company
Storytelling becomes much harder. The planner has to craft a tighter brief and the creatives have to work harder to just get a good result, let alone a great result.
A friend of mine once said that there might be a correlation between the amount of presents featured in a John Lewis Christmas ad and the likely retail performance during the holiday. I think we can draw a similar heuristic between 15 second spots and likely business performance.
More information on past Chinese new year celebrations
Collapse OS — Bootstrap post-collapse technology – a vision of dystopian technology that fits right in with William Gibson’s more recent views of the future with the Jackpot. A slow moving systemic collapse due to global warming, flooding, pollution, global conflict, terrorism and pandemics
The battle inside Signal – Platformer – Casey Newton has pulled together an interesting portrait of Signal and how its developing as its user base scales
Online retailers are playing a risky game with the UK high street | Financial Times – like Arcadia and countless rivals, Debenhams had underlying conditions stemming from over-enthusiastic cash extraction. CVC, Texas Pacific and Merrill Lynch acquired Debenhams in 2003 in a £1.8bn leveraged buyout that needed just £600m of equity. The trio then extracted more than £1bn via property sale and leaseback agreements and floated it again for almost the same price in 2006 – the Times makes a really good case with regards private equity excesses. Other examples outside the retail sector include TWA and Eircom
Jim Slater and the warning from the 1970s that we ignored – BBC News – a very brief piece in the BBC Online reflecting on the legacy of Slater Walker. The reality is that there needs to be a far deeper reflection on the effect of his asset stripping model had lighting a touch paper that led directly to deindustrialisation, populism and Brexit.
“Marketing is what you do when you have a sh#tty product.” – Christopher Lochhead – not particularly smart viewpoint, though great product and service design really helps marketing and helps reduce the amount that needs to be spent due to word of mouth. A second thought occurred to me, people with this mindset are building the entire martech stack….
Apple’s first VR headset will reportedly be powerful and pricey – CNET – its a rumour so take with a pinch of salt, the approach outlined reminded me of being rather similar the way Oculus was in their early model VR headset devices. It is also interesting how they consider a VR headset as a stepping stone to AR glasses. Will Apple be enough to mainstream the VR headset? More related content here.
Next drops bid to buy Topshop after Arcadia’s breakup | Philip Green | The Guardian – The Next consortium was pitted against Shein, a Chinese online fashion retailer and Authentic Brands, the US owner of the Barneys department store, which has been linked to a joint bid with JD Sports. The online retailers Asos and Boohoo are also thought to be involved in the mix. Shein tabled an offer worth in excess of £300m for Topshop and Topman, according to Sky News which first reported the development. It added that a separate process was being run for other Arcadia brands such as Burton and Dorothy Perkins
‘Absolute carnage’: EU hauliers reject UK jobs over Brexit rules | Brexit | The Guardian – data showed that an increasing number of freight groups rejected contracts to move goods from France to Britain in the second week of January. Transporeon, a German software company that works with 100,000 logistics service providers, said freight forwarders had rejected jobs to move goods from Germany, Italy and Poland into Britain. In the second week of January the rejection rate for transport to the UK was up 168% on the third quarter of 2020 and had doubled in the first calendar week of the year
Battle of the Robots Still Favors Japan and Europe—For Now – WSJ – Covid-19 has accelerated automation in factories, especially in manufacturing powerhouse China. Foreign companies have long dominated the market for industrial robots and automation tools there—but there are signs that dominance is fraying around the edges. As the factory for the world, China is unsurprisingly far and away the largest market for industrial robots. Before the pandemic, however, the U.S.-China trade war was slowing growth. New installations of industrial robots amounted to 140,500 in 2019, a 9% decline from the previous year, but still almost three times the number for second-place Japan, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Last year was likely much better: Credit Suisse estimates that China’s industrial-robotics market grew 9.5% in 2020.
Audi and BMW shut down car subscription programs | Engadget – When Mercedes-Benz shuttered Collection, however, it cited mediocre demand and complaints about the hassles of switching personal items between vehicles. While it wasn’t mentioned at the time, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t helped matters. People are commuting less if at all, and may be more interested in saving money than the flexibility of swapping cars.Subscription ervices like Volvo Care are still going, although it’s not certain how well they’re faring.There may be a slight revival. Automotive News claims Cadillac is testing a resurrected Book service with dealers, although it would arrive a year after the brand’s hoped-for early 2020 revival. However, the overall market appears to be contracting
Majority of Europeans fear Biden unable to fix ‘broken’ US | World news | The Guardian – “Europeans like Biden, but they don’t think America will come back as a global leader,” said the thinktank’s director, Mark Leonard. “When George W Bush was president, they were divided about how America should use its power. With Biden entering the White House, they are divided about whether America has power at all.” The survey of 15,000 people in 11 European countries, conducted at the end of last year, found that the shift in European sentiment towards the US in the wake of the Trump presidency had led to a corresponding unwillingness to support Washington in potential international disputes
Exclusive: City of London Corp boss says ‘not our place’ to criticise China : CityAM – Nathan Law, one of the leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests in the territory and now in exile in London, told City A.M.’s City View podcast yesterday that UK firms’ “compliance and collusion” with the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda threatened the West’s “democratic values”. The pointed criticism comes after firms including HSBC and Standard Chartered, headquartered in London but who see significant revenues in Asia, backed the imposition of a draconian National Security Law in Hong Kong
