The key themes for me from the 2017 internet trends report were:
Continued slowing in internet growth showing that the previous years decline in growth wasn’t a one off. In the 2017 internet trends report we also saw a decline in smartphone growth as well
All of these trends don’t apply with India where the market is still growing for internet access and smartphone growth. In India the 2017 internet trends isn’t ‘2017’ but 2010
Lean forward media is beloved of internet entrepreneurs. Interactive gaming is becoming mainstream around the world, with 2.6 billion gamers in 2017 versus 100 million in 1995. Gaming revenue is estimated to be around $100 billion in 2016, and China is now the largest market for gaming.
In the US at least wearables are becoming mainstreamed. 25 percent of Americans owning one, up 12 percent from 2016. Back when I was in Hong Kong, Chinese manufacturers were cranking out low cost health monitors to monitor your exercise activity
The Reflex remixes Gil Scott Heron. Nicolas was one of the few remixers who can make a production that’s better than the original.
Ultraman theme tune
Scatman Ultraman – Ultraman is a famous suited super hero. It is part of the Japanese TV and movie ‘special filming or tokusatsu genre. It is the grandfather of the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. One of Ultraman’s powers was the ability to grow really large, which spawned other giant hero or Kyodai Hero characters.
Pipes – Yahoo! Pipes analogue, lets just hope that they haven’t captured the ‘flakey’ experience. I often remember hearing Yahoo! Pipes being compared to owning a British sports car. Instead I would prefer that Pipes provide the Mazda MX5 (Miata) experience where you get the experience but none of the broken ass crap of owning an MGB
Business
Is 2017 the beginning of the end for the app economy? TheNextWeb – not exactly the beginning of the end. More like a new normal – one thing that’s missing is the importance of building inside existing app eco-systems such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger etc. Whilst WeChat have made headway with mini-apps it will be interesting to see if Facebook can duplicate their success.
Korea
Why young South Koreans are turning away from religion | Arts & Culture | Al Jazeera – a certain amount of this turning away is geography. Korea had a mix of buddhism and Shamanism historically. Buddhist monasteries and temples were often in the mountains close to nature. Shamanism depended on closeness with nature – so again being out in the middle of nowhere. You throw in the move to cities, the break down of familial connections through distance and time poverty. More on Korean related topics here.
Does Slack allow your boss to spy on you? — Quartz – yes, but only with output rather than outcome-focused measures on productivity. It will reinforce the practices of poor managers rather than help make good managers
An all-compassing phrase that I’ve heard being used by Chinese friends Hēi kējì in Pinyin or black technology. It’s been around for a couple of years but recently gained more currency among people that I know.
It is used as a catchall for disruptive / cool innovative products. What constitutes ‘black technology’ is subjective in nature but generally Chinese would agree on some examples such as:
Magic Leap
Microsoft Holo Lens
Bleeding edge silicon chips with an extraordinary amount of memory or machine learning functionality built in
Tesla self-driving cars
Magical quality
The key aspect is that the product as ‘magical quality’ in the eyes of the user. Technology companies have tried to use it in marketing to describe the latest smartphone and app features like NFC, gesture sensitive cameras and video filters. Your average Chinese consumer would see this as cynical marketing hype. Xiaomi had been guilty of this over the past couple of years. Chinese netizens aren’t afraid to flay the brands for abusing the term black technology.
As technology develops, the bar for what represents black technology will be raised higher.
Manga origins
According to Baidu Baike (a Quora-like Q&A service / Wikipedia analogue) it is derived from the Japanese manga Full Metal Panic! (フルメタル·パニック! |Furumetaru Panikku!).
In the manga black technology is technology far more advanced than the real world. An example of this would be ‘Electronic Conceal System’ – active optical camouflage used on military helicopters and planes in the manga. It is created by the ‘Whispered’ – people who are extremely gifted polymaths who each specialise in a particular black technology.
In the manga they are frequently abducted and have their abilities tested by ‘bad organisations’ who support terrorism. Whispered also have a telepathic ability to communicate with each other. If they stay connected for too long there can be a risk of their personalities coalescing together. Similar content can be found here.
I got invited to The Holmes Report‘s In2 Innovation summit. This happened earlier in the day than The Sabre EMEA awards.
Here were my takeouts from the In2 Innovation summit in no particular order:
Brad Staples presentation on reputation in a fake news environment gave me deja vu. It reminded me of corporate communications thinking when social media came to prominence. In many respects the symptoms are the same. The agenda running out-of-control like a force of nature. Yet, it is only the momentum has changed, core principles to address reputation are the same. There was an increased emphasis on monitoring. Monitoring and response became even more important than with social media’s rise
The age-old tension between specialist and generalist continues to roll onwards. Alan Vandermolen saw medium-sized agencies as sitting in a ‘Goldilocks’ position. Small enough for your business to matter and being able to move fast. Large enough to have the right expertise and scale in place. The challenge to his argument is global agencies consolidating a one-stop shop offering. Vandermolen didn’t address the move away from being a ‘PR agency’. The Holmes Report had highlighted their concern in a recent opinion piece. Vandermolen was also concerned with the disappearance of PR professionals on the client side. He cited United Airways customer problems from broken guitars to dragging passengers off planes. The discussion didn’t cover how the airline’s focus on shareholder value had corrupted customer-centricity
Matt Battersby and Dan Berry looked at public relations and behavioural economics. What I found interesting is how this provided a direct linkage to return on investment. Yet the audience didn’t pick up on this in questions. It also represented a content challenge to agencies. It flips the typical messages that they would look deliver (driven by what’s news)
There was a tension between what agencies could do and what clients wanted. Abby Guthkelch wanted a more agile approach to content that was also more cost effective. This meant that she often worked with inhouse staff and content development agencies. There was a strong sense that creative ideas and concepts were not worth paying for. This puts little value in communications agencies. Content marketing poses an existential threat to PR agencies margins. It was interesting that marketing automation didn’t come up in discussions. Inhouse panelists preferred to move capability inhouse rather than relying on offshoring work
Finally, there was the evergreen theme of marketers and PRs speaking different languages. PRs need to get comfortable with data and charts. They need to think about testing. This needs to happen whilst budgets are static or in decline. A way forward is to move down the marketing funnel to be closer to the sale in e-commerce and via social channels. I found the continued faith in influencers of interest. I was surprised at the lack of concern shown on the agency side for zero-based budgeting at clients
Apple has finally found someone to support HomeKit • The Register – there have been smart home standards before HomeKit. I can also understand why there is a wider leeriness around Internet of Things due to the privacy implications, built in obsolescence and dependence on the cloud. But HomeKit does provide a more secure solution that seems to be less dependent on the cloud than Google and Amazon options out there. More related content here.
Magellan’s Hamish Douglass says Uber is a ‘Ponzi scheme’ | Sydney Morning Herald – I can see the point that Mr Douglass is making. More rose tinted observations might point to the similarity with Amazon; however even Amazon is relying on constant investment of profits from mature units in international and service expansion – Uber seems to be nowhere near breakeven
Chinese companies are working hard to overcome the copycat stigma | Quartz – actually this isn’t an overnight thing but has been going on for the best part of ten years. It is also worthwhile giving a shoutout to Naomi Wu who has been educating Chinese businesses on GPL licences and helping get compliance from companies in Shenzhen.
How He Used Facebook to Win | by Sue Halpern | The New York Review of Books – Facebook did turn out to be essential to Trump’s victory, but not in the way Grassegger, Krogerus, and Schwartz suggest. Though there is little doubt that Cambridge Analytica exploited members of the social network, Facebook’s real influence came from the campaign’s strategic and perfectly legal use of Facebook’s suite of marketing tools
Apple Begs Android Users to Switch to iPhone | Makeuseof – beg is the wrong word, but this looks like the start of an effort to promote platform switching which is another indicator of smartphone market maturity and saturation
– Amazon