This blog came out of the crater of the dot com bust and wireless growth. Wi-Fi was transforming the way we used the internet at home. I used to have my Mac next to my router on top of a cupboard that contained the house fuse panel and the telephone line. Many people had an internet room and used a desktop computer like a Mac Mini or an all-in-one computer like an iMac. Often this would be in the ‘den’ or the ‘man cave’. Going on the internet to email, send instant messages or surf the internet was something you did with intent.
Wi-Fi arrived alongside broadband connections and the dot com boom. Wi-Fi capable computers came in at a relatively low price point with the first Apple iBook. I had the second generation design at the end of 2001 and using the internet changed. Free Wi-Fi became a way to attract people to use a coffee shop, as a freelancer it affected where I did meetings and how I worked.
I was travelling more for work at the time. While I preferred the reliability of an ethernet connection, Wi-Fi would meet my needs just as well. UMTS or 3G wireless data plans were still relatively expensive and slow. I would eventually send low resolution pictures to Flickr and even write a blog post or two. But most of the time I used it to clear my email box, or use Google Maps if I was desperate.
4G wireless services, started to make mobile data a bit more useful, even if the telephony wasn’t great
NGT48 pop idol Maho Yamaguchi’s apology for home assault sparks outrage at Japanese victim-blaming | South China Morning Post – A Japanese girl group pop star gets assaulted in her own home by a crazed fan. She is then made to apologise by her management company for the whole incident. So reading between the lines management are likely to be scum bags, possibility connected to the criminal underworld, if not a yakuza family. The yakuza historically have had strong links to the entertainment industry. Periodically there is a scandal where photos of entertainers mingling with Yakuza appear in the media
2019 Predictions | The Daily | Gartner L2 – no surprise on the Amazon predictions. Amazon has little incentive to buy legacy retailers as its advantages comes from the lack of legacy infrastructure and people. Amazon’s increase in value makes sense due to its cloud computing market share, and increase in share of basket and performance advertising.
Qualcomm CEO defends chip licensing business in FTC trial – CNET – Qualcomm’s “no license, no chips” policy is at the heart of the FTC’s case against Qualcomm, which lawyers are arguing before Judge Lucy Koh in US District Court in San Jose this month. Mollenkopf was among the witnesses who testified on Friday. Under the policy, companies must license Qualcomm’s patents before it will sell them chips. Qualcomm customers, such as Apple, don’t like that one bit.
‘I love my Mac!’ – Zoë Smith – “My phone rang, and the video I was watching on the computer paused!” – when we are running computers hundreds of thousands of times the power of the entire NASA Apollo space programme computers, why wouldn’t this happen? This seems like a relatively easy CX related win, yet it seems like magic. This says a lot about the poor user experience in computing. More design related content here.
Selling extremism: Nationalist streetwear and the rise of the far right – interesting given the multi-cultural history of street wear. However clothing has also been a code for subcultures and communities. In the past the far right borrowed the workwear look from the skinhead culture. MA-1 jackets, Fred Perry shirts, Ben Sherman shirts, Levi’s jeans and Dr Marten boots. As the codified items get coopted by other groups they get replaced. Skinhead haircuts are replaced something more high and tight. It was only a matter of time that extremists borrowed from streetwear and football casual style.
At a macro level, the world is in a pretty strange place at the moment. Populism is at the centre of uncertainty across many countries in terms of political direction, macro economics, technology and consumer uncertainty.
Populism and nationalism is on the march: Duterte in the Philippines. Trump in the US. The German right wing populism leaning political party AfD is shifting the Overton window in Germany. The yellow vests in France and the UK is channeling anger into political activism along fringe party lines providing an opportunity for populism. The UK has seen a rise in far right grassroots media mirroring the rise of The Canary and similar publications on the left both of which fuel different forms of populism. The Russians don’t need to do it as the populism and divisive politics is homegrown. The Queen’s speech called for unity in the country and the UK government’s Prevent anti-radicalisation programme has more far right cases than Islamic extremists. Even China has been gradually moving to a Han nationalism as part of its more forceful foreign policy. India and Pakistan have both seen a rise in sectarian politics. This has impacts in terms of foreign trade and economic growth. We are already seeing domestic brands rising in China and India; we may see a decline in brands and product SKUs in the likes of the UK – all of which will impact advertising budgets. At an agency office level; the chilling effect of nationalism is going to affect the movement of talent on both client and agency side. It’s hard to articulate the atmosphere of an agency that I was working in the day after the Brexit vote without using the word bereavement. I know people in my family and peers who are moving away. Over time this will impact culture and creativity. It is hard to remember but back in the 1970s the UK was much more parochial and less multi-cultural than it is now. Everyday things we take for granted like good food were much poorer experiences.
There are so many variables in play we don’t know where populism and divisive politics is going, but there are dark possibilities to the government ‘by the seat of their pants’ which seems to be prevalent.
Cryptocurrency and block chain: We’ve seen a wide range of crypto currencies decline in values this year. What are the factors might drive a recovery? Why would there be a spike in demand? I don’t know what that ‘X factor’ would be. I suspect that experiments in block chain such as verifying online media spend to prevent online fraud will start bumping up against the limitations of the technology. Blockchain has a relatively low transaction rate compared to legacy payment systems. Decentralisation still isn’t as good as an Oracle database or a mainframe a la the traditional banking system. Some applications just make no sense.
From Farm to Blockchain: Walmart Tracks Its Lettuce – The New York Times – is a classic example of technology for technology’s sake. How much lettuce would Walmart be selling day in, day out? That data has to be collected across a complex supply chain. Secondly, its a privatised centralised blockchain which negates the technical benefits of Blockchain and makes me wonder why IBM weren’t selling in Db2 or Oracle high transaction speed relational database on a z-series mainframe. It’s announcements like this that makes one wonder if blockchain has jumped the shark.
Virtual reality hasn’t seen the level of adoption that was predicted. The problem is no longer one of technology hardware (lets ignore battery life for a little while) but content. VR changes the way stories are told and experienced, it makes it hard to build brand experiences and compelling content. Microsoft has managed to build a community of early adopters in Altspace – a Second Life type environment. Augmented reality (AR) has been sporadically adopted and Apple has been putting a lot of work into building creator tools, but the decline of Blippar. Magic Leap’s demo film for its partnership with Cheddar doesn’t currently look like a compelling AR application to me. It does mirror, anecdotal evidence that suggests the most common use of VR is to replicate a big TV experience in a small space through the Netflix application.
https://youtu.be/xjYE-joYjQs
If 2017 and 2018 were the years when ad fraud became the bête noire of marketers, 2019 might see harder questions asked of influencer marketing practices. The move from influencers to micro-influencers was down to cost per reach and engagement. The move to nano-influencers implies a similar kind of shift again. Yet it seems to be largely taken on blind faith by marketers at the moment that influencers are good thing. I think many of the challenges that influence marketing faces when I wrote about them earlier are still valid. One question that I haven’t seen seriously considered by marketers is when you’re in a culture where ‘selling out’ has moved from being shameful to gen-x; to a badge of validation in the space of a decade that has to change the value proposition that influence brings? As a marketer the possible answer to that question worries me.
The focus on ad fraud might be partly responsible for a slight resurgence in the realisation brand advertising is valuable. Performance advertising is about the now, brand advertising is all about sowing acorns that are reaped for decades to come. As a concept it’s easy to grasp at an empirical and research driven level. But when marketers typically stay in a role for a short time, the now becomes of outsized importance. They have to make an impact and then plan their exit strategy in what’s typically a three year cycle. Brand is hard for FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) brands to take on board as they see channel and shelf disruption from the likes of Amazon and Ocado. They have experimented with the direct sales model a la Birch Box and Dollar Shave Club, but that will only work with certain products. Consultants selling disruption are selling chaos; clients hedging against black swans often miss where change isn’t happening – consumer behaviour doesn’t change at the speed of PowerPoint. I’ll leave the last word on digital disruption to Mark Ritson.
It’s hard to get emotional or feel any of the romance of news media from a home page, but the paper edition carries with it the great cultural power of journalism. Print editions will become the ‘couture’ offering of the news brands – loss-making but important assets for building and retaining authority and influence over the market
Validation of traditional media can be seen all around us. Amazon printing catalogues, online brands having flagship stores. Underground and out of home adverts for e-commerce businesses surround me as I go about my daily life in London.
Stories with everything – I don’t know whether the recent trend of every social platform having a short form video function that disappears a la ‘stories’ is a wider socio-cultural trend or the constant carousel of changing formats as part of a ploy to keep users engagement rate up. For established platforms there is little to be lost by throwing new features agains the wall and seeing what sticks.
I’ve omitted talking about 5G as it will take more than a year to get up and running. It won’t be clear what its application is until we start to see how effective the network is in practice. Gadgets like fold out phones won’t fundamentally change the pictures under glass interface used in smartphones for the past decade or so. Their impact may be exaggerated due to their high cost that consumers will bear one way or another.
I realise that these are a series of random thoughts but would be interested to know what you think. Feel free to comment below.
Key takeouts from the Tencent Annual Staff Meeting:
They made a big issue of treating customers honestly, which made me think that might not be in the culture up to now. There was also a call to focus on users rather than competitors
More on user focus – WeChat is a tool, not a platform. Only tools are the most friendly and meaningful to users. WeChat has been trying to do one thing, to treat every user as a friend
They wanted mini games become a platform for ordinary people to show their creativity. If this goal is not achieved, then they were happy if the mini games on the platform died
A recognition of the cognitive dissonance on social platforms where people show their best lives on Douyin and the unhealthy nature of it
Tencent launched the most stringent youth anti-addiction system in history. This is a long-term initiative that is very beneficial to the entire industry and a responsibility we must assume as an industry leader
2018 Year in Review – Pornhub Insights – I wish that I’d this quality of data when I was cranking out press releases for Yahoo! Search. The review is as much about cultural change as it is about trends in smut. More on adult entertainment industry related content here.
Interesting video that’s as much an illustration of collective delusion that drives VC thinking in a very wasteful manner and where they are likely to be putting their focus moving forwards
Aston Martin Will Make Old Cars Electric So They Don’t Get Banned From Cities – Slashdot – surprised more companies like Porsche aren’t doing this. This upgrade process reminded me of the service that Bristol Cars have provided for years. Like Aston Martin has planned, Bristol Cars has steadily upgraded cars with better brakes, handling, electronic fuel injection and more emissions friendly engines. Their purchase by Fraser Nash is now looking at an Aston Martin like electric upgrade service. More luxury related content here.
Mark Ritson: The story of digital media disruption has run its course – Marketing Week – It’s hard to get emotional or feel any of the romance of news media from a home page, but the paper edition carries with it the great cultural power of journalism. Print editions will become the ‘couture’ offering of the news brands – loss-making but important assets for building and retaining authority and influence over the market
WSJ City | Britain’s stock link to China falls flat – many larger foreign institutions can already access mainland-listed Chinese stocks via trading accounts in Hong Kong. – Not terribly surprising. The big problem is how much hope had been pinned on it from a Brexit point of view
Unilever’s rules for influencer marketing | WARC – that its influencer efforts focus not just on a product, but on attempts to covey a brand’s purpose – as shown by Dove, the personal care line, focusing on “real beauty”. “We are using influencer marketing for Dove across the whole spectrum. In some cases, we use influencers to talk about the features and benefits of the products,” Di Como said. “But, more and more, we are using them to talk about the idea to buy into – to talk about the brand value, of why the brand exists, and the purpose of the brand.” “There is an obsession that the only KPIs out there are ‘reach’ or ‘number of followers’,” said Di Como. “We need to talk about what the real impact is on brand equity – the real impact on the values of the brand.” – which is interesting as I heard that there were efforts to move away from brand tracking surveys and instead interpolate the equivalent data from social listening
46 insurgent brands shake up China’s FMCG market – Kantar – the redefinition of consumers, merchandise and stores known collectively as“New Retail.” China’s consumers have growing expectations for tailored and specific offerings, which creates many niche opportunities for insurgent brands to capture. The traditional scale advantages of incumbents, such as large sales forces and large retail shelf space, have in some ways turned into disadvantages by digital disruption. For example, the e-commerce channel can reach millions of consumers without a single sales rep, and online platform advertising can reach millions of consumers with much lower budgets than traditional brands typically spend
