Ged Carroll

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  • CNY 2021

    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

    Chinese new year 2020

    Chinese new year 2019

    Chinese new year 2018

  • China crackdown + more things

    MACAU DAILY TIMES 澳門每日時報 » Hong Kong | Thousands flee for UK, fearing China crackdown – What’s surprising is not the content of the article itself. There are plenty of pieces in the English language media around the world about the fear of a China crackdown due to the Hong Kong National Security Law driving Hong Kongers away. (The reality is less likely to be a China crackdown and more likely to be a progressive anaconda-type squeeze.) I am surprised to see this article in the usually tame Macau media. Which left me with the question why? My initial thoughts were that space constrained Macanese could take up some of the slack in Hong Kong as locals vacate? If so it would solve problems in the housing market and the need to build additional infrastructure in Macau.

    Hong Kong Bar Association’s new chair on national security law and China ｜ Apple Daily – I can’t see Mr Harris’ tenure ending well, given his lack of alignment with the line of travel on Hong Kong’s national security law. We might see a more forceful China crackdown on the legal sector, than just the mainland media criticism so far

    Next generation of horseshit | The Ad Contrarian newsletter – more on why life stage is more important than generations

    Merrick Garland Wants Former Facebook Lawyer to Top Antitrust Division | Prospect – this could be good for Facebook

    Majority of B2B advertising is ‘ineffective’ | Marketing Week – Of the 1,600 B2B ads shown to a sample of 6 million people worldwide over the past four years, 75% scored one star or less on System1’s FaceTrace emotional measurement tool – so ineffective in brand building, but potentially effective in terms of performance marketing? We don’t know

    QAnon Is Alive and Well in Japan – The Diplomat 

    China-Australia clash may be more about Beijing’s economic fears than a coronavirus probe | South China Morning Post 

    Today’s jet fighter designers don’t get the point – Asia Times – the cockpit itself is “beautiful,” full of screens that allow you to bring up an incredible amount of information about the fighter with just a few finger swipes, and customize the data to tailor it for the particular mission. The F-35 is the first to use touch screen technology. Unlike switches, which take up permanent cockpit space, touch screens allow the same LCD screen space to be instantly repurposed, the report said. One minute, a display could be used to pull up data on an aircraft’s fuel reserves, and the next, it could help target an enemy position on a mountainside. That goes a long way toward simplifying the cockpit and not overwhelming a pilot with wall-to-wall physical switches, dials, and single-use displays, the report said. But the problem with touch screens, the pilot explains, is a lack of tactile feedback. Switches have a nice, satisfying click that instantaneously lets the user know they were successfully flipped, the report said. The anonymous pilot reports failing to get a result from a touch screen about 20% of the time – the need for haptics has never been clearer

    China Raises Threat Level Over Rare Earths — Radio Free Asia – “Rare earth ore exports are limited in value, and the global demand for raw materials is relatively low,” said Liu Enqiao of Anbound Consulting. But Liu added that the decline “might be partly due to China’s tightening of regulations on strategic resources” under the country’s new export control law, which took effect on Dec. 1.

    Asian Fans Turn Their Back on Korean Pop Culture – The Chosun Ilbo – a lot of the problem seems to be down to overexposure and the Black Sun club scandal

    Mystery surrounds huge rise in Huawei executives’ social media followings | Financial Times – they aren’t the first corporate to be apparently caught astroturfing and won’t be the last. The New York Times tackles this from a different angle point out how accounts like this were used to lobby against 5G decisions against Huawei in Belgium – Inside a Pro-Huawei Influence Campaign – The New York Times 

    Facing the Jackpot with William Gibson | Ploughshares at Emerson College 

    The EU must protect the right to privacy and not attack end-to-end encryption – interesting that so many vendors came together on this. Its also interesting that its missing big tech names

    US-China tech war: former Google chief and others call for action to handle ‘asymmetric competition’ from Beijing | South China Morning Post – US tech group, formed in July 2020 to tackle ‘the most difficult questions regarding US competitiveness with China on technology’ also includes Jared Cohen. Report calls for determined action to tackle tech competition with China and says a certain amount of ‘bifurcation’ is inevitable

    Elderly woman DJ becomes online sensation in China | South China Morning Post – to be fair she’s about the same age as a number of big name DJs in the west. Pete Tong is 60, Carl Cox is 58, Junior Vasquez is 71, DJ Hell is 58 and Georgio Moroder is 80.

    Artificial Intelligence Will Define Google’s Future. For Now, It’s a Management Challenge. – WSJ – most of Google’s problems related to AI are rooted in the company’s approach to managing staff, adding that science, and not ideology, should guide ethical debates. “Google is the coddler-in-chief,” he said. “Their employees are so coddled that they feel entitled to make more and more demands” regarding how the company approaches AI and related issues. – TL;DR – millennial and gen-z Googler snowflakes preventing the company from creating amoral shareholder value

  • Reader service card

    I was looking at old tech magazines online and came across the reader service card. It was a proverbial blast from the past. Occasionally I come across them, usually in my books where a card was used as an impromptu bookmark. In the same way that my Dad still uses old AOL discs as a coffee coaster on his work bench.

    reader service card
    Reader service card from Byte magazine circa 1988

    How did it work?

    The principle behind the reader service card was really simple. Email and messaging was only used in academic circles or within a company, with no external connection. For external communications there were:

    • Letters
    • Telephone
    • Fax machines
    • Telex machines

    All of these cost money and took time. Back then your company might have had a strictly enforced telephone usage policy. So ticking a box for each advert that you’re interested in seems easy. An ad opting into the scheme would have text at the bottom would go something like ‘circle 93 on inquiry card.’ That explains why reader service cards were often nicknamed bingo cards.

    The cards would be collated by the publisher who would send a list of addresses and relevant information to the advertiser. The advertiser would then send you a brochure and keep you on their mailing list.

    My Dad had files full of product sheets from card requests and brochures that he would reference on a regular basis alongside parts catalogues. He knew them folders inside out.

    This was the web, before the web. Hewlett Packard were moving to printing brochures on demand in the mid-1990s in parallel to them building out their first website pages with relevant product information.

    More related content here.

  • Brazilian data breach + more things

    Massive Brazilian Data Breach – Schneier on Security – some 220 million people affected in the Brazilian data breach. So it is one of the biggest data breaches to date. I do wonder why the Brazilian data breach has not a lot of coverage outside of Portuguese language media? More related content here.

    Why Ericsson took on its own government to defend rival Huawei | Financial Times – China’s support of Huawei, through cheap funding and much else, is well known, and has led to a commercial advantage that Ericsson and Nokia can find hard to counter on their own. Will Europe, for which 5G is a rare technological sector where it enjoys a clear lead over the US, stand up for its homegrown talent?

    Intel reveals ‘hacked’ earnings release was on guessable URL | Financial Times – that isn’t a hack, its good journalism

    North Korea hackers use social media to target security researchers | Financial Times – this is good espionage practice and similar to the Chinese MSS in mode and method

    Facebook sparks anger after shutting socialist pages | Financial Times – it makes sense that an algorithm would see far right and far left organisations as similar

    Should Universities Try to Capture More Value from Their Research? – Knowledge@Wharton – university research has produced pathbreaking innovations across many disciplines, many of which have been commercialized successfully. Yet, on average, universities capture 16% of the value they help create through licensing revenues or equity stakes in the startups their research spawns. Furthermore, some researchers and universities are much better able to commercialize their discoveries compared to others, even holding constant the discovery itself

    How China’s delivery apps are putting riders at risk | Financial Times – in legal disputes, a high level of management by the platform can be taken as evidence that it has a labour relationship with the driver. In 2018, a Shansong courier who had been injured while driving won a court ruling on this basis. One might place some of the responsibility on the engineers who maintain the apps. But they too are victims of labour exploitation, working the infamous “996” shift of 9am-9pm, six days a week. Like delivery drivers, they have decided such an occupation is, so far, their best option. But a country that prides itself on its tech innovation and its booming economy should be able to provide better choices

  • Ahistoric technology & things that caught my eye this week

    Wired magazine had an interesting article on revisiting old technology magazines. The idea was that while in some ways technology has progressed. In other ways, good ideas got bypassed. There are a number of Good ideas that might have more currency now. There is a contrasting ahistoric technology view held by some Silicon Valley luminaries.

    The ahistoric technology viewpoint ignores things that are right in front of us. Fuzzy logic and early machine learning (based on software neural networks) desktop software do much the same things (with less computing power and network bandwidth) that Google and Apple do now.

    Bret Victor gave a presentation ‘from 1973’, showing the fallacy of the ahistoric technology viewpoint. These ideas will be of more relevance to the audience of programmers, but you can grasp the gist of what’s going on.

    One of the reasons I stuck with the Mac platform was that small development houses and lone programmers built useful software based on similarly niche concepts.

    Now these software applications, alongside web services that have been developed in a similar way, like Newsblur and Pinboard are a key part of my workflow.

    McDonalds Japan have a reputation for doing localised products to appeal to Japanese consumers. The flavours and the marketing are grounded in Japanese culture. They have tapped a well loved manga Touch (published during the 1980s) for an advert to promote the 30th anniversary of the chicken Tatsuda burger.

    https://youtu.be/vFJE_7atc30
    McDonalds Japan

    More on Touch here.

    The Oxford Union is trying to keep its programme of speakers going via online sessions. Including Hong Kong exiled dissident Nathan Law.

    Oxford Union

    Finally Asian Boss appealed to viewers for donations as they are struggling financially and are likely to shut down soon without money. This raises questions about the effectiveness of monetisation on YouTube, even with a lightweight structure media organisation like Asian Boss.

    Should you wish to do so, you can donate directly to Asian Boss here.