Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Battle for open platforms + more stuff

    Epic’s battle for open platforms ignores consoles’ massive closed market | Ars Technica – and the majority of games played on Fortnite are played on consoles. Epic’s battle for open platforms rings hollow. More gaming posts here. More on other (more legitimate) battles for open platforms here. Epic’s battle for open platforms is about extra revenue not consumer benefit. They’ve deliberately picked a fight for some reason that won’t become apparent yet. One also has to view Epic’s battle for open platforms through its Chinese ownership as well

    Why marketers should embrace Share of Search as a metric | WARC – “The SoS calculation itself is simple. Calculate a rolling 12-month average of the various brands to be analysed, including your own. Total this. Divide each individual brand’s 12-month rolling average by the total and turn into a %. This is Share of Search, using Google Trends data.” More here in an interview for Contagious by Les Binet. Why share of search is a vital marketing metric | Contagious – The internet has made it almost impossible to accurately measure brands’ share of voice and the world seems perfectly content with that trade-off, so marketers have been forced to look for a replacement metric fit for the digital age. Share of search, it seems, might just fill the void…. Binet however is tentative on the tantalising prospect that share of search can give marketers an almost immediate insight into how a brand-building ad will perform over the long term. ‘Kind of,’ he says, when asked if share of search could show brands the value of emotional advertising in days instead of years. ‘You can to some extent use it to get a prediction of the long-term effects in the short term,’ he says, ‘but it may not work in every category. It tends to work best in categories with considered purchases.’ What most excites Binet about his research, though, is that when he looked at the effects of advertising on share of search he saw – consistently across all categories – that around 40% of the impact was felt in the short term (the first month) and around 60% of the uplift was delivered over the long term (the following two years). ‘That 60/40 ratio is one I’ve seen before,’ he jokes, alluding to his earlier work with Peter Field, The Long and the Short of It, which established a 60/40 rule for brands looking to divvy up their marketing spend between long term brand building ads and short term activations. ‘So the share of search analysis provides a further piece of independent, empirical evidence for the hypothesis we have about how advertising works.

    Brand is a strategy | WARC – Gartner recently announced that, partially at least, in response to the pandemic and its associated uncertainties, CMOs now rank ‘brand strategy’ as their top priority. As with any survey, we should consider the research skeptically — but since CMOs largely direct how they spend their budgets, it’s worth the industry that serves them considering what they might be looking for assistance with.  The survey was interesting beyond the headlines. Last year the same group considered analytics their most vital marketing capability, which highlights both the increased scrutiny that marketing faces to be accountable and the endless pendulum that swings in the industry, between brand and performance. And they are going into prioritisation of brand just at the time when the board will squeeze them on performance

    Google ends direct cooperation with Hong Kong on data requests over national security law – The Washington Post – Google is blocked in mainland China, but accessible in Hong Kong. By refusing to review Hong Kong government requests for data through its normal process, Google seems to be acknowledging the broad reach the law gave China into Hong Kong. – Contrasts with the kind of dance that HSBC and Swire seem to be doing

    Strategist’s Digest: the gulf between corporate values and company culture | Contagious – Over 80% of large companies publish on their websites the values they profess to live by, according to research. Integrity was the most often listed value, claimed by 65% of all companies. Collaboration came second, with 53%, and customer focus was third at 48%. But do these values make a difference to the companies’ culture and how they behave? The researchers used Glassdoor reviews, posted by employees, to find out. After analysing 1.2 million reviews for more than 500 large companies, they found no significant correlation. In some cases there was even a negative relationship between core values and the company culture as reported by employees. And more at the Sloane Review – | When It Comes to Culture, Does Your Company Walk the Talk? | Sloane Review 

    Jimmy Lai/Hong Kong: buy orders on democracy | Financial Times – Next Digital is a benchmark for resistance to Chinese authoritarianism in other ways. Views on its digital platform double when there are protests, to an average of 80m a day. Next Digital has survived constant mainland pressure, including the withdrawal of its underwriter just before its listing and advertising boycotts by Chinese companies. The shares trade at a just over 0.3 times book value. Investors with ethical policies may have awkward questions for HSBC and Standard Chartered. These UK-listed banks have expressed support for the law under which Mr Lai was detained. The arrest of a chief executive warns foreign multinationals to locate elsewhere.

    How Car Companies Engineer the Sounds of Their Doors to Imply Safety – engineering to design every aspect of the experience

    Anti-mask group in Tokyo slammed for “cluster festival” | SoraNews24 -Japan News – thankfully only a fringe behaviour but interesting that it gloms on to similar patterns as UK protestors, such as concerns about 5G

    Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Collapsed – The New York Times – For years, Sternberg had been saying that the fashion industry was a giant bubble heading toward collapse. Now the pandemic was just speeding up the inevitable. In fact, it had already begun. An incredible surplus of clothing was presently sitting in warehouses and in stores, some of which might never reopen. “That whole channel is dead,” Sternberg said. “And there’s no sign of when it’s turning on again.” – well worth reading particular the section about novelties. Novelties is when fashion houses put on additional zips or features just to get into department stores

    Movable wealth｜Ngan Shun-kau – Chinese UHNW (ultra high net worth) individuals (100 of them or so) have 78 trillion yuan offshores in Switzerland

    Why share of search is a vital marketing metric | Contagious – share of voice for the digital era

  • Mamahuhu + more things

    Scarlett, Shanghai and Me is a short film by comedy troupe Mamahuhu. They describe it as a film about coming to the end of your life as an expat in China. But I thought it was interesting as an examination of our lives with technology. Major Chinese cities now routinely use facial recognition as a biometric ‘key’ for things like entry access and voice services. Mamahuhu then ply a good deal of creative licence on top. The technology drives a ‘programmed’ world around you, what I’ve called in the past, the web-of-no-web.

    Action Bronson’s latest single Latin Grammys taps into Bronson’s long held love of bodybuilding and powerlifting. The video is like a sophisticated version of JibJab’s Elf Yourself with the sheen of VHS tinged nostalgia.

    Sam Chui got a behind the scenes tour with United Airlines to see how they were preparing for passenger flights in a COVID-world. Its fascinating to see how they’re re-engineered the passenger experience and back-end pre-flight processes such as cleaning the plane. It’s fascinating to watch, I am curious to see how much of this will stay when the COVID crisis is over?

    If you have ever watched Reservoir Dogs; or listened to the soundtrack you will know the ‘boss radio’ sound. (The Reservoir Dogs soundtrack was very popular in its own rights; in a similar way to The Guardians of The Galaxy mixtape of a few years go). ‘Boss radio’ was started in Los Angeles in the 1960s. You had a rise in teenage culture, surf culture. So KHJ decided to compete by devoting more of their air time to music. It was also famous for the ‘sound’ of their DJs. You can here this sound in this sales presentation recordings, presumably for brands and advertising agencies at the time.

  • Facial recognition + more things

    This tool could protect your photos from facial recognition – TODAYonline – this kind of prevention of facial recognition from photographs is interesting. Presumably it can also be done to make sure facial recognition works for a ‘person’, even when their passport photo has subtle differences. This kind of facial recognition manipulation technology is probably something similar to what Mossad may have used in the killing of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai. Otherwise it would have lost the ‘effectiveness’ of 30-odd operatives. More on biometrics here.

    Waiting for Cyberpunk 2077? Here’s Cyberpunk 101 | Phoenix New Times – great list of material here

    Neal Stephenson Explains Silicon Valley’s Latest Obsession | Vanity Fair – interesting comments on the absorption of mobile devices, the way uncanny valley might have shifted and AR versus VR

    Brand Strategy 101 – Google Slides 

    Goldie is the latest contributor to the International Stüssy Tribe (IST) radio series. He has done two mixes, a light mix and a dark mix. This is the light mix.

    Chinese Hackers Have Pillaged Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry | WIRED – interesting persistent hacking techniques. More on hacking here.

    Pepper robots can now call you out for not wearing a mask in public | Input Magazine – I love this

    The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free ❧ Current Affairs – the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, New York, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and the London Times all have paywalls. Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, InfoWars: free!

    Casual dining chains have ‘no future’, says former PizzaExpress entrepreneur | Financial Times – Hugh Osmond, who with fellow entrepreneur Luke Johnson took PizzaExpress public and expanded the chain to more than 200 sites during the 1990s, said private equity firms buying casual dining businesses at risk of bankruptcy because of the Covid-19 crisis “fail to understand the business they are acquiring”. The model for midmarket branded restaurants was “absolutely broken”, he added, because of massive oversupply in the sector, high overhead costs and a decline in visitor numbers even before the pandemic.

  • Frank Miller – Ronin

    Frank Miller – Ronin (often called Frank Miller’s Ronin) was a graphic novel written in the early 1990s. In the story Miller looks to combine is love of myth and legend a la 300, with cyberpunk.

    The story leaps across time from medieval Japan to the distant future of New York. The Ronin of the title is looking to revenge his master against a demon. The New York that they fall into owes a lot to the dystopian vision of Mega City One in Judge Dredd. All the money has flowed to capital and most people are living at the edges of society.

    Frank Miller’s Ronin

    Miller explores links between mysticism and technology as it relates to artificial intelligence.

    Frank Miller has a grand vision in Ronin; full of interesting ideas, but it feels half-baked. The potential in the story isn’t fulfilled. The worlds that Miller has built in the book feel very one dimensional in nature. That means that the foundation that the story builds on feels insubstantial. Miller tries to paper over the cracks by moving the reader quickly from one ‘cell’ to another.

    I think that Ronin isn’t something that fits neatly into a short comic run and a trade paperback, but needs its own franchise to breath and develop further. There is a richness in there waiting to be tapped.

    The artwork isn’t as rich as other Frank Miller works such as 300, The Dark Knight Returns or Sin City. Instead it feels like concept sketches rather than a complete work, even the colour panels feel that way. Ronin feels like something it would be worthwhile for the author to revisit and develop further. But at the present time I can only recommend Frank Miller – Ronin for completists, who are fans of Miller’s other works and will overlook this story’s limitations. More book related posts here.

  • Anti China + more things

    This was the last place I expected to see anti-China sentiment addressed. I like Steve Guttenberg’s writing in the past for CNet on all things hi-fi and now follow his videos. What he does in in video makes up in enthusiasm, what he lacks in production skills. It was interesting to see him shoot a video that directly addressed a desire in his audience to not buy Chinese hi-fi products. Whilst some of this is about protecting well loved brands, I think some of it reflects a real turn in consumer sentiment towards an anti-China tone. Guttenberg manages to address the topic in an even-handed manner and tries to take some of the vitriol out of the discussion. More China related content here.

    The New York Times wrote a great feature on the rise of statist intellectuals in China who are influencing government policy. Providing an intellectual justification for Xi era policies. What’s interesting is that they draw on German intellectual thinking used to support Nazi ideals of authoritarianism: ‘Clean Up This Mess’: The Chinese Thinkers Behind Xi’s Hard Line – The New York Times 

    Ambient music to work by. There is an internet community who are re-editing selected pieces of sci-fi soundtrack to provide an epic ambient audio background. Here’s edits that have been done featuring Blade Runner and Ghost In The Shell.

    This TV series provided one of the best backgrounds of Irish history. I remember seeing one or two of the episodes that my Dad had managed to capture on video tape. I can also recommend Robert Kee’s book Ireland which accompanied the series. It stops during the Troubles. Given the quality of the series and the mainstream audience that it received at the time, the UK is still astonishingly ignorant of Irish history. This has become especially apparent the Brexit process. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have been moved on to Blu-Ray, DVD or legitimate streaming services. More Irish-related topics here.