Category: spain | 西班牙 |스페인 | スペイン

Hola y bienvenido – – welcome to the Spain category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to Spain, business issues, travel related experiences,  the Spanish people or culture.

I have been fortunate enough to travel to Spain a few times for work and pleasure. The Prado museum in Madrid is one of my favourite places and I have been slowly exploring the other museums in the city along with places like Retiro Park.

But there are still huge parts of the country from the deserts of the south where spaghetti western films were made to the Moorish architecture of Granada that I still haven’t managed to explore. All of which was due to a complex history. A history of conquest. A history of cultures and ideas. A history of religions. The dynamism of Spain is down to a young population and economic and social catch up after years of military rule under General Franco.

Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Spanish bank Santander launched a new advertising campaign. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Spain.

I have included some posts here, a mix of film, travelogues and the occasional inspirational marketing campaign

If there is Spain related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • October 2023 newsletter – 3rd time’s the charm

    October 2023 newsletter introduction

    As I write the October 2023 newsletter. it’s getting noticeably darker outside earlier, but the sunrises reward us with a wider variation of colours. And we all have Halloween to look forward to. This is the third issue and I am still finding my way writing these things. I hope that the third time’s a charm, but I will let you be the judge of that. You can read the earlier ones here.

    Strategic outcomes

    I looked into where the phrase ‘third time’s a charm’ came from. Apparently it comes from Old English Law, if a prisoner survived three attempts at hanging and survived, they would be set free.

    Last of Days

    You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. Let’s get it started!

    Things I’ve written.

    • Climate despair – how NGOs and companies are failing young people in the way they talk about climate change and what they can do to change their communications to increase active participation in reducing the degree of climate change.
    • Technopolarity – how technology is subverting the power structures of elected governments and instead empowering the likes of Elon Musk.
    • Clustomers – how Intuit MailChimp’s ad campaign, whilst clever, might reinforce C-suite misconceptions around marketing and advertising

    Books that I have read.

    • These 38 Reading Rules Changed My Life – RyanHoliday.net – whilst its not a book, it does contain great advice for readers
    • Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Fogg’s simple model for understanding individual behaviours has helped drive everything from health campaigns to online services. Tiny Habits how consumers and businesses can help foster behavioural change, one tiny habit at a time. More on my review of the book here
    • The long awaited Mick Herron book The Secret Hours did not disappoint. It’s from the Slow Horses universe, but not a Slough House story per se. More than a nod to Boris Johnson’s stint as foreign secretary and prime minister. I will leave it at that rather than give you plot spoilers.
    • China A History by John Keay. Keay’s book was recommended to me by a number of people. In 535 pages he attempts the impossible in terms of covering China’s history as a civilisation through the start of Xi Jinping’s first administration. It’s a dense read – it’s well written, covering the complexity of history well. The current communist government is barely a footnote (ok exaggerating a bit here), but it puts things in perspective.
    • Spain A History edited by Raymond Carr. The book highlights the notable trends, intellectual and social, of each particular era in its history. Roman rule created the notion of ‘Spain’ as a distinct entity. The chapters on the Visigoth monarchy, Moorish Spain, the establishment, an empire, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, all chart the cultural, political and economic arc of Spain. It then goes on to explore 19th century liberalism and the pivot during much of the 20th century towards authoritarian rule, followed by a return to democracy and onwards up to the 21st century. My favourite chapter was about the Visigoths, which was a period I didn’t know much about prior to reading this book – the author did a particularly good job of bringing the Visigoths to life on page. 

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Halloween. I have been looking forward to the holiday for at least a month. Growing up in an Irish household with rural origins, I had an appreciation of the changing seasons and loved the traditions around Halloween, especially tales of the fairy forts and the banshee. It’s also a big money earner, in the advertising world allowing for interesting tactical executions that couldn’t otherwise be attempted. Outside advertising, ignoring increased food sales, a third of consumers will spend 51 – 100 USD on putting together their own costume, or buying one off the rack. The most hardcore 10% of those surveyed admitted to spending 250+ USD.

    I was not into costumes, instead I look forward to the most is my Mum’s barmbrack. For the first time in a few years my Mum baked a few barmbracks and sent one of them to me. It’s a Halloween tradition. The barmbrack itself is a spicy fruited bread with a texture somewhere between brioche and and a pan loaf. Traditionally, the brack would contain a ring or trinket, which would turn up in a random slice.

    When I was small, commercial bakeries still used to have a an aluminium ring that looked like it was from a cheap Christmas cracker contained wrapped in greaseproof paper baked into the brack.

    barmbrack

    Downloadable recipe PDF here (Dropbox) or here (Google Drive) if you fancy baking your own over the weekend.

    While we’re on the subject of food, Hope & Glory’s collaboration between Lick paint and Heinz ketchup for a ketchup shade of wall paint creates talkability, though I wouldn’t be buying it for my own home.

    lick

    Buoyant Bob – I am stil not sure if Buoyant Bob is a social object, a brand, both or something else. Buoyant Bob was a successful entry into the US cannabis marketplace. The brief in the campaign was to work around restrictions in cannabis advertising and show it as the most fun brand in the space. 

    Buoyant Bob was released as a single: retail takeovers, vinyl records at dispensaries, and fans sharing Instagram Stories using “The Man Who Got So High” all followed.

    OnlyWatch – an auction in Geneva in aid of research Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy features one-off luxury watches from all of the major Swiss timepiece houses. Some of the entries are unique colour ways but Bulgari went the extra mile with their Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Marble. Their watches are already well known for being some of the thinnest timepieces available. A tourbillion is a demonstration of the watchmakers art. The one in this watch is just under 2mm thick – that’s just over double the thickness of a credit card for a moving mechanical assembly. And then they managed to cover the entire titanium case and strap of the watch in marble and make a marble dial – without making the watch any bulkier than its usual ridiculously slim case. It’s not something I would wear even if I could afford it, but I am in awe of the ingenuity. 

    bulgari one off for OnlyWatch 2023
    Bulgari for OnlyWatch – Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Marble

    Finally Dentsu Health published a great must-read byline on how media and entertainment can aid health equality. More here.

    Things I have watched. 

    I got to see The Boy and The Heron early at the BFI London Film Festival. You won’t get any plot spoilers from me here. Official release is December 26 in the UK, December 8 in Hong Kong. It’s Studio Ghibli, what else do you need to know?

    General Magic – a great documentary about a Silicon Valley start-up of the same name.. Back in the early 1990s General Magic was as visionary as Apple and as hyped as WeWork. If you’ve ever worked with a start-up or care about technology give it a watch. More on my thoughts here.

    The Pentagon Papers – Despite this being a made-for-TV film, James Spader does a great job of playing Daniel Ellsberg; the RAND researcher to gave the materials to the media. In terms of pacing acting and storytelling, I would put this on a par with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman’s film adaptation of All The President’s Men

    Tampopo is a beautifully shot Japanese film with comedic moments that tells the story of a widow, her son and their ramen shop. More on what I thought of here.

    A relatively modern Halloween tradition in the Carroll family has been watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown – recommended for young and old alike. While my Dad and I usually end up watching The Crow later on.  If you want more classic horror, then you could do worse than watching the livestream by the Creature Features show.

    Useful tools

    ITV Adlabs and Magic Numbers recovery budget planner

    Pretty much essential to look at if you have responsibility for UK media spend at a brand. This allows you to examine various scenarios and see likely outcomes based on media spend. More here.

    Google bundles generative AI and LLM with search

    I downloaded Chrome especially to try this out, it looks a bit more mature than Bing’s initial integration of ChatGPT. Go here to give it a try if you’re a Chrome browser user.

    Post-It Z-Notes

    You’re workshopping something with clients or thinking something through on your own – Post-It notes are key. The own brand ones can vary from really good to useless, so spend a bit more and get proper Post-It notes. In fact, I’d advise that you go one step further and get Post-It Z-Notes. The notes alternate sides in terms of where the ‘sticky end’ is and if you lift them from the pad you get a ‘Z’ before they peel away. They come away effortlessly and work brilliantly if you have them in a desk holder.

    Foldable wireless keyboard

    At the start of my career, I used to have a Palm PDA ( personal digital assistant – think a smartphone, without the phone and communications bit). I also had a long commute to Luton on a daily basis. I got a lot of reading and writing done thanks to a ‘Stowaway’ foldable keyboard made by a company called Think Outside. The company no longer exists, but the desire to be able to turn my iPhone into a simple writing tool lives on. Recently, I have been using this foldable Bluetooth keyboard. It folds up, can be used on a train seat table or even an economy class aircraft seat and recharges easily. The keyboard isn’t the usual rubbery mess that you tend to get in a lot of these devices. It’s one fault so far is that it feels flimsy, but I have already got my money’s worth out of it in just a few months. I fire up the iPhone’s notes app and get to work. I can then edit and refine once I have a bit more time on my Mac at a more convenient time.

    The sales pitch.

    Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my October 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. DON’T FORGET TO PUT YOUR CLOCKS BACK BEFORE YOU GO TO BED ON SATURDAY. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. 

  • Ford Fiesta

    My Ford Fiesta driving experience

    The Ford Fiesta will be forever linked to my early driving experience. I started learning to drive in the 1990s. Back then leasing agreements and car finance weren’t really a thing due to high interest rates. (There is a whole other blog post that I should write at some point about the risk of sub prime car loans, but not today.)

    Car insurance was cripplingly expensive. It was even more expensive when you had no no claims and three points on my licence for an accident that I still claim wasn’t my fault.

    I also have a Dad who is a time-served mechanical fitter and all-round engineering wizard. At the time we had access to a garage with a vehicle pit, welding equipment and an engine hoist on the evenings and from Saturday afternoon on during the weekend. My Dad had good personal relationships with a number of people who ran scrapyards. You went in, tore the parts you wanted off the cars and took them to the owner and negotiated a deal.

    One salvage yard took things a step further by tearing cars down themselves and selling the parts alongside the basics that you’d need for servicing and usually buy from a motor factors. They’re still going strong and still only do business in-person or over the phone. No fax machine, email or website.

    My Dad had been servicing and repairing cars since the mid-1960s and worked repairing a wide range of tracked and wheeled vehicles for the likes of Bord na Mona and Massey Ferguson.

    Driving bangers

    The vehicles that I owned were nothing to brag about, but they were really, really cheap and at least one of them was really, really dangerous. The most dangerous car was a Fiat 126. It cost £150 and I bought it off a former colleague who I met working one summer repairing tools and equipment rented out for use on construction sites. Even in the early 1990s that was a ludicrously cheap car.

    The engine was terrible, as were the drum brakes. The body work crumbled in a way that one would expect for a Fiat made in the 1970s. Drum brakes ‘fade’ with repeated use (like going through a set of turns), they don’t work particularly well in the wet and they were prone to locking up on occasion.

    Because of the noise, dangerous brakes, exceptionally poor build quality and Russian roulette-like standing starts it was tiresome to drive anywhere for anything more than an hour. The lights were pathetic the wipers were ineffective and the all the rubber seals leaked.

    But it also put a smile on my face more times than any other car that I have owned. It handled really well. You could go sideways around corners and still stay in lane. You had a ludicrously low seating position and an exceptionally direct gear change. As a young man with a complete lack of appreciation for risk, it taught me that small cars can be fun.

    Also as a cash-strapped young man, I appreciated that paying less to run a car was a good idea, so I aspired to own a diesel.

    Building a Ford Fiesta

    Eventually, through my Dad’s contacts I managed to get the diesel engine from a Ford Escort van that had been rear-ended and a Ford Fiesta delivery van with a blown petrol engine. At the time a friend that I knew through scuba diving had done a diesel engine swap into a mark two Ford Fiesta XR2. My vehicle was much rattier.

    1987 Ford Fiesta XR2
    A mark two XR2 very similar looking to the car my friend transplanted with a diesel engine. The only difference being that his had the ‘pepper pot’ alloy wheels. Picture by Kieran White on Flickr (creative commons licence)

    We used the beefier Escort springs to handle the increased engine weight, but kept the Fiesta braking system and gearbox. So I had a diesel Ford Fiesta van. Over a weekend, we used a Makita jigsaw to remove the van panels were the windows should be. New window gaskets and rear side windows from a totalled Ford Fiesta mark one. In went the mark one seats and rear seat belts and I had a car.

    The van was old enough that I didn’t need to pay VAT after converting it to a car according to the DVLA at the time.

    The gearbox was less direct than my previous cars, the steering lacked the go-kart feel of the Fiat and there was more body roll, but the Fiesta was a good car to drive. It had enough power for confident standing starts at junctions and motorway driving was comfortable. The best part was the fuel economy, I typically got 70 miles to the gallon (over 29 kilometres per litre).

    I read that Ford was getting rid of the Fiesta and I was reminded of my old car and the role that it played in taking me around the country and allowing me to earn a living before I had moved to London.

    Why are Ford Motor Company likely to be binning the Ford Fiesta?

    I suspect that it is down to a number of factors:

    • Consumers want the higher driving position of a crossover or SUV, super mini vehicles like the Ford Fiesta have fallen out of favour
    Ford Fiesta Van.
    Carl Spencer | Flickr (creative commons licence)
    • Small vans no longer share the same body shape as their car equivalents. Ford has its Transit Courier small van with a body better designed to cope with large objects or small pallets. So there are less common tooling that they can use to mitigate for lower production volumes
    • Germany is an expensive place to built a small car, even in a highly automated factory
    • It makes sense to prioritise scarce components in crunched supply chains to vehicles that produce the highest profit margin
    • An electric version of the Fiesta would give only a limited range between recharges. Electric battery carrying capacity is directly proportion to the size of the vehicle floorpan and Fiestas are very small. BMW couldn’t get its I3 to work from a business and consumer offering perspective
    • The price point of an electric Ford Fiesta would represent poor value for money for consumers

    Goodbye to the Fiesta

    Ford of Europe put together a farewell video to announce the end of Ford Fiesta production.

    https://youtu.be/UYcoJ5cU-v4
    Ford of Europe

    YouTube channel Big Car did a great history of the Fiesta that is worth watching. Until I watched this video I had no idea that the impetus to develop the Ford Fiesta didn’t come from within Ford of Europe, but from American executive Henry Ford II. Henry Ford II is most famous amongst gear heads now as being the executive who drove support for the Ford GT40 after talks had collapsed with Ferrari.

    Hank Deuce as he was known was portrayed by Tracy Letts who acted opposite Matt Damon and Christian Slater in the movie Ford vs. Ferrari.

  • Mamasan & things this week

    AI Mamasan

    A Mamasan is the owner of a neighbourhood bar who listens with empathy and occasionally doles out advice to their patrons. Kind of like the proprietor in the Midnight Diner anime by Yaro Abe. This was then adapted into a Japanese TV series and movie.

    When suit company Yofuku no Aoyama decided to create a virtual bar, they interviewed a real life Mamasan called Yoshiko extensively.

    They then took the conversations and incorporated them into a chat interface to dispense bar top wisdom. The bar is called ‘A.I. Yoshiko’s virtual bar‘, interestingly they didn’t look to get any kind of data through a site registration. I suspect that was to reassure users that what gets said in the bar, stays in the bar.

    AI Mamasan
    Aoyama Tailors

    As you’d expect with a chat bot, AI Mamasan Yoshiko will greet you and ask what’s on your mind. She gives you a lengthy list of common concerns, which you can then narrow down to more specific stress sources. More content similar to this here.

    Madrid walking tour

    Luxury hotel brand Mandarin Oriental produced a guided tour of the golden art triangle of Madrid. The Mandarin Oriental Ritz is situated across the road from the Prado Museum. The tour is on the VoiceMap app that provides an audio track based on the phone’s GPS location.

    Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid

    Easternkicks review of Drifting

    Probably one of the best film reviews I have read in a good while about the Hong Kong film Drifting that does a good job of contextualising the film and its environment of Sham Shui Po and the district of the same name. It made me hanker after the early Sunday morning walks that I used to take through the neighbourhood (usually because I got lost) before wandering through the secondhand electronics market. Take five minutes to go and read it now.

    Ghibli Museum

    If you’re fan of Studio Ghibli animated films then you’ll have heard of the Ghibli Museum. Japanese businesses have been hit hard and continue to be under financial stress. The Ghibli Museum is no exception and is looking for donations from Japanese people via the the hometown tax credit.

    Ghibli Museum news
    via Twitter account of the Mitaki City local government where the Ghibli Museum is based.

    The idea of the hometown tax (ふるさと納税) needs a bit of an explanation. Some aspects of it are not dissimilar to the UK tax system where you can get a tax credit on your charitable donations, that is claimed by the charity from the government. Current prime minister, Yoshihide Suga was a government minister at the time, introduced the hometown tax in 2007. Taxpayers who contribute more than 2000 yen can have their income tax and residence tax reduced. The amount deducted is the taxpayer’s entire contribution minus 2000 yen and set amount. To receive the subtraction, the taxpayer files a final tax return.

  • John Shaft & things that made last week

    Samuel L Jackson has a second go at playing re-conned blaxploitation private investigator John Shaft. This time it seems to be a bit more self conscious and ironic in tonality. Think Jackson’s first outing as John Shaft mixed with Snakes on a Plane

    Gillette Spain comes up with an advert that looks at masculinity without offending their customer base with heavy handed patronising messaging or ‘brandsplaining’ as I like to think of it.

    https://youtu.be/A5PHG9AHdhk

    A couple of weeks ago I showed the controversal advert featuring William Chan to promote Chanel’s J12 watch. There are parodies across the web of Chan’s Chinglish and general weirdness of the ad. This is my favourite one.

    Singapore newspaper TODAYonline | In Hong Kong, foreign maids are racing to reclaim their voices – foreign domestic helpers live outside society and at worst they are horribly mistreated, suffer from loneliness or are victimised with scams and MLM schemes. It’s great to see a positive story about this community managing to do fantastic achievements on their own terms.

    What we’d know as Eid in the UK, is known in Malaysia and Singapore as Hari Raya. You get seasonal tentpole ad campaigns. Here are some of the ones that I liked the most.

    Happy Hari Raya!

  • GDPR resources

    Partly due to Cambridge Analytica, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is going to have a more profound impact on data usage globally. GDPR would have been seen as an extra-legal reach, but Facebook is making it look like a good idea.

    I thought I would pull together a few resources that I thought would be of interest around GDPR since there is a lot of snake oil being sold as consultancy around it at the moment. I am not going to pretend that I am an expert, so I thought it would be useful to share some of the GDPR related resources that I have been looking to learn from.

    Not only in terms of what the regulation is, but what techniques can be deplored to act in the spirit as well as the letter of regulations. Demonstrating a basic respect for the consumer won’t harm any brand, but might point to badly designed KPIs that direct and digital marketers might be measured from.

    Andreessen Horowitz put together a good podcast on it.

    Privacy by Design – The 7 Foundational Principles by Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D. (PDF) – is a must read paper for creative agencies and product teams. It is based on work that was started in the late 1990s. Cavoukian lists a site as a reference ‘privacybydesign.ca’ – but that seems to be down.

    1. Start by thinking about privacy by design from the start or as Cavoukian says preventative rather than remedial, proactive rather than reactive
    2.  Privacy as the default setting
    3. Privacy embedded into the design of systems and processes (which sounds like a reinforcement of her first point
    4. Not viewing consent in terms of a zero-sum
    5. Privacy secured throughout the lifecycle from end to end.
    6. Being open and transparent about processes to keep the organisation honest and stakeholders informed
    7. Respect for user privacy based on a user-centric ethos

    Via James Whatley’s newsletter this article on UX –  GDPR: 10 examples of best practice UX for obtaining marketing consent seems to be complementary to Cavoukian’s work. This is in sharp contrast to the dark patterns often used to force consent by many sites.

    More related posts here.