Ged Carroll

Blog

  • 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!

  • Qualcomm licensing + more

    Judge Koh: Qualcomms Licensing Practices Destroyed Competition, Harmed Consumers – Disruptive Competition Project – as best as I can understand this, the analogy of Intel and AMD comes to mind in terms of the kind of case Judge Koh has described her thoughts. But the case is different which is what makes this a bit odd. Especially odd given that there is so much more to criticise on Qualcomms licensing practices. In particular the coercive cross licensing conditions that are part of Qualcomms licensing practices. More on Qualcomm here.

    Blockchain officially confirmed as slower and more expensive | FT Alphaville – Oracle et al should be showing this to clients

    Field Notes: Highlights from Huawei – Andreessen Horowitz – My family uses Apple’s phones; Apple’s ecology is very good. When family members travel abroad, I would gift them an Apple computer. One can’t narrow-mindedly believe that if you love Huawei then you must only use Huawei mobile phones. – Chairman Ren says that when he and his family are looking for premium smartphones they use an Apple

    TV makers to reduce display panel stocks, says IHS Markit | EE Times – expectation of economic contraction

    China’s robot censors crank up as Tiananmen anniversary nears – Reuters – there’s a definite tension between western media fake news and Chinese censorship coverage. Not that there’s moral equivalence, but a lack of awareness about the thread connecting the subject areas

    Dunkin Donuts Refuses to Get Woke: ‘We Are Not Starbucks’ – Sometimes the brand purpose is what it says on the tin

    Uber introduces quiet mode for premium customers | Canvas8 – you need an app to mediate a simple request FFS

    Global Competition and Brexit | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core – highlights the importance of globalisation in driving populism in post-industrial economies. This is probably why Trump and American politicians are in the trade cold war for the long haul and likely to see similar in the EU – its only a matter of time

    Nigel Farage seeks to establish a viable far right UK party — Quartz – If you don’t read anything else about Brexit and think that the current populism will peak and subside with Brexit ponder “Anyone who is not the governing party is going to benefit from the governing party inflicting food shortages. Medicine shortages will be very immediate. All of which he will be able to blame on Brexit not being done properly, and at least some people will be receptive to that message.”

    China showing signs similar to Japanese housing bubble that led to its ‘lost decades’, expert warns | South China Morning Post – I’ve heard this more than once, though there are two things to consider: 1/ the Bank of Japan was much more hands off than Chinese monetary policy 2/ China has opacity of data and more levers to pull in its favour in property market. Bigger issue is corporate and government debt

    Exclusive: Behind Grindr’s doomed hookup in China, a data misstep and scramble to make up – Reuters – While it is known that data privacy concerns prompted the crackdown on Kunlun, interviews with over a dozen sources with knowledge of Grindr’s operations, including the former employees, for the first time shed light on what the company actually did to draw U.S. ire and how it then tried to save its deal. Reuters found no evidence that the app’s database was misused. Nevertheless, the decision to give its engineers in Beijing access to Grindr’s database proved to be a misstep for Kunlun, one of the largest Chinese mobile gaming companies

    Mediatel: Newsline: Sex sells, right? – So, with that in mind, can sex still have the selling power for advertisers that it once did? 
    “Ultimately? Yes and no,” Jem Fawcus, CEO of brand strategy partner and insight agency Firefish, tells Mediatel. 
    “Every well observed element of human life can sell if used in the right way. But if used just for titillation and as an attention grabber, absolutely not.”

  • Gundam into Space + more stuff

    Japan Wants to Launch Gundam Into Space for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics – I am looking forward to the next Tokyo Olympics. Not for the athletics but everything else that the Japanese organising committee wraps around it. I mean if a Gundam goes into space, what’s next? Godzilla takes part in the olympic torch relay and hands off to Shotaro Kenada on his iconic bike?

    Challenging stereotypes has become a key trend in advertising recently. Part of it is down to the movements supporting diversity and LGBTQ communities. GS Caltex have chosen to challenge the stereotypes surrounding stepmothers in Korean society with this advert. These  were run on YouTube and distributed via online fairy tale platform “Iwing” and on Naver, a leading portal in Korea. You don’t need to speak Korean to understand the gist of where campaign was going.

    A bit of oil history for you. GS Caltex is a joint venture business between what was then GoldStar (now LG) and Caltex. Caltex was an joint international joint venture between Chevron (Standard Oil of California or SOCal) and Texaco. Both of which were part of the Seven Sisters of western oil companies who dominated exploration, production and refining until the 1970s.

    We’re starting to see an increased focus on craft in advertising after a decade of obsession with performance marketing to the detriment of brand. So now is as good time as any to revisit London agency CDP (Collett Dickenson Pearce) work on Hamlet cigars during the 1970s.

    I love this cheeky send-off and backhanded tribute that BMW gave Dieter Zetsche when he retired as CEO of Mercedes-Benz. In reality Mercedes-Benz and BMW have different brand attributes and strengths.

    IDEO has commissioned an oral history of itself as a corporate video. It covers their move from industrial design to the design of ideas.

  • Beauty trends

    Beauty trends is a bit tricky – there are generational and cultural aspects to beauty and standards. I’ve tried to tease out elements that will ripple around the world.

    Digital Beauty

    Chinese women use Meitu and other beauty apps to present the best versions of themselves with a virtual makeover. This goes from skin quality, skin tone and make-up to a full virtual plastic surgery style makeover.

    Meitu has 63 apps and 2 mobile websites as it expands internationally.

    Meitu beauty cam

    Meitu has collaborated with over 100 make-up brands including L’Oreal, Guerlain, Lancôme, Estée Lauder, and Shiseido.

    Meitu is only the tip of the spear. Smartphone manufacturer Huawei has provided a simple beauty mode in its default camera app. Chinese video streaming software provides a similar functionality for performers. Even Skype had trialed a digital make-up service in association with Shiseido.

    Authenticity

    There is a tension between the trends in authenticity and some of the developments that we’ve seen in beauty.

    On the one hand there are the clean and effortless beauty movements that taped into a wider consumer trend around natural.

    On the other hand you have the Korean ten-step beauty process popularised over the last decade and digital beauty apps – particularly from China and Korea.

    In the case of digital beauty and instagram filters critics claim that a new form of dysmorphia seems to be emerging. Its the difference between what they see in the mirror and on their smartphones.

    That dysmorphia is one of the things that has driven a move towards authenticity. In the West, wider moves around everything from trans rights to the body positive movement has redefined what make-up does.

    Punk

    Whilst most people think of punk and associate it with tourists taking pictures in Camden, the Sex Pistols and Vivienne Westwood. But the biggest impact of punk was the rise of independent media from fanzines to record labels. We’re seeing a similar DIY approach in the beauty industry. Big beauty companies are being challenged by independent companies with a narrow or even singular product focus. There are a number of perceived advantages to these independent brands:

    • Perception that niche brands spend less on advertising and more on research and development; these products can be considered more specialised and effective
    • Niche beauty brands can have greater social currency in terms of being an element of self expression and part of friend-to-friend recommendations

    In China, you see a greater interest in these independent niche brands from men than female consumers.

    Diversity

    Traditionally make-up has been an additive process to conceal and cover up blemishes, flaws and signs of ageing. Modern make up is about celebrating quirks and even flaws. This goes beyond beauty spots to female baldness and skin conditions. Effortless make-up is often an artfully constructed look where the person rolled straight out of bed.

    Beauty from the inside

    Beauty from the inside has a mix of socio-cultural aspects to it. In China it includes focusing on quality sleep to reflect in beauty regimes. The key thing for most brands is the ingestion of ingredients. Where are the lines drawn between make-up and the health-like claims of functional foods? Could we see licensed pharmaceutical products as cosmetic aids like currently happens in China? Here’s that the Hong Kong Trade and Development had to say about ‘cosmeceuticals’ in their report on China’s Cosmetics Market:

    Cosmeceuticals, especially Chinese herbal cosmetics, are opening up a new territory in the cosmetics market. It is understood that more than 170 enterprises have tapped into China’s cosmeceuticals market to date, many of them renowned pharmaceutical companies in China, such as Tongrentang and Yunnan Baiyao. Cosmeceuticals only have a market share of about 20% in the mainland at present. In Europe, the US and Japan, cosmeceuticals have a 50-60% share. It is believed that China’s cosmeceuticals market has much room for development. As young consumers begin to concern themselves with the ingredients and quality of products, consumption of cosmeceuticals tends to start at increasingly early ages. While cosmeceuticals have medical properties, they are classified as cosmetics since there is still no official definition for the term ‘cosmeceuticals’ on the mainland.

    China’s Cosmetics Market – HKTDC Research

    Natural

    Natural has affected the food industry and this has extended to beauty trends Younger consumers are interested in products that don’t contain ingredients that sound synthetic. The lack of artificial ingredients a key selling point. Instead they expect natural and botanical ingredients.

    A natural output of this trend has been a rise in home manufactured cosmetics supported by an eco-system of how-to videos on YouTube.

    Ageing

    The population of the developed world in both the west and east is aging. This means that gen-y and gen-z obsessed beauty marketers are having to adapt to an ageing audience. They have the disposable income and the demand for beauty products.

    Brands are adapting their

    • Products and formulations
    • Packaging
    • Language – you know longer see ‘anti-aging’ used on many product descriptors, despite that being essentially what the products ‘do’

    More information

    Digital Watch: How Chinese Millennials & Gen Zers are Re-connecting with Their Elders | Jing Daily

    App Annie data on Meitu

    Shiseido’s New “TeleBeauty” App , A Virtual Makeup Solution for Online Meetings | Shiseido News Releases

    China’s selfie obsession | The New Yorker

    China’s Cosmetics Market – HKTDC Research

    92% of Chinese males prefer niche beauty brands: report | Campaign Asia

    The future of skincare – Spencer Schrage, Ogilvy Consulting

  • Toxic masculinity with P&G + more

    Toxic masculinity P&G exec behind viral Gillette ad interview — Quartzy – I’d argue that some of this work shows poor judgement in the way its executed that damaged rather than helped toxic masculinity

    Reputation Inflation | National Bureau of Economic Research – A solution to marketplace information asymmetries is to have trading partners publicly rate each other post-transaction. Many have shown that these ratings are effective; we show that their effectiveness deteriorates over time. The problem is that ratings are prone to inflation, with raters feeling pressure to leave “above average” ratings, which in turn pushes the average higher. This pressure stems from raters’ desire to not harm the rated seller. As the potential to harm is what makes ratings effective, reputation systems, as currently designed, sow the seeds of their own irrelevance. Or in plain language how ratings programmes fail over time as they get bigger.

    Toyota Already Has Upgrades for the New Supra • Gear Patrol – really interesting tension in the Supra – leave space for tuning – which is where the passion for the car grew out of whilst not gouging customers with a shonky value proposition versus rivals

    Streetwear Global Market Research | Hypebeast – this was done in association with PWC’s consulting arm

    How Streetwear Brands and Consumers are Toppling Previously Understood Notions of Luxury and Exclusivity — The Fashion Law – great 101 guide to streetwear from the perspective of people working in luxury brands. I’d also recommend this piece I wrote that would provide a lot of context around the two

    My Way or the Huawei – Peter Zeihan – I’m not a blinkered fan of Huawei, but even I’ll admit that there’s not a great deal of balance in this article

    To Many Chinese, America Was Like ‘Heaven.’ Now They’re Not So Sure. – The New York Times – “…the perspective of young Chinese is different. They don’t respect you. Nor are they afraid of you.”