marketing | culture | media | east asia
The display advertising market has moved on from where it was 20 years ago in terms of poor ad placement. Conference speakers and trainers still trot out the same story about knives and suitcase sets advertised next to to the story of a murder. The murderer had apparently stabbed their victim with a knife and put the body in a suitcase for disposal.
However you still get less extreme examples of unfortunate ad placement like this one from Under Armour.
China Hit Hard by Hacking Attack as Asia Assesses Damage | New York Times – not terribly surprised by this
Are Brand Blogs Worth the Effort? | The Daily | L2 – I am surprised at the findings especially in terms of best practices not being adhered to
The Threat | Edge.org – interesting perspective on computer security research over time
I work in an agency whose mandate is digital transformation and innovation, but it’s important to bear in mind the context
Focusing on the human truth, focuses on the use case and receptivity of the product.
EU could legislate to make it easier to move data between cloud providers – this makes things interesting
Microsoft Is Surprisingly Comfy With Its New Place In A Mobile, Apple, And Android World | Fast Company – interesting move
We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #351 – We Are Social UK – interesting ARPU numbers for Facebook
Mac Pro: Failure and Future – Monday Note – interesting breakdown of Microsoft Surface numbers
50 Years Of Colin Curtis – The UK’s Mancuso? – great piece by Greg Wilson
The Dangerous Mission To Undermine North Korea With Flash Drives | Fast Company – interesting, if optimistic article
Liberty Global Sees European Operating Income Down 18% in Q1 | Variety – yet another reason why Vodafone was right not to do a deal with them
How Deadheads Sped Ahead – WSJ – really interesting read by Andy Kessler that hits on a number of factors. How their show on May 8, 1977 at Cornell University was their best concert. How the Grateful Dead developed a new music model and the sharing economy, when bootlegging is still frowned upon by the rest of the industry. How countercultural Dead heads became the establishment (Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Steve Bannon). (paywall)
How To Catch Lightning In A Bottle – Wieden+Kennedy – Medium – I think part of the battle here is performance versus brand advertising
NTT Docomo Develops Flying Spherical Display Using Drone – Nikkei Technology Online – proper Blade Runner type feel to this technology – love it
How A Small Group Of Pro-Corbyn Websites Built Enormous Audiences On Facebook – alt left UK media – what’s to stop them having the effect of the US alt right? Interesting read
★ Apple’s China Problem: WeChat | Daring Fireball – ‘no easy fix’
Digital Advertising Takes a Hit – MIT Technology Review – a good read
Analyst Predicts Dish, T-Mobile & Amazon Super Union | DSLReports, ISP Information – not sure why?
Oculus Story Studio: Facebook Is Closing Its VR Storytelling Unit | Variety – its hard but not in the technical way that Facebook is used to dealing with
How Cloudflare Helps Serve Up Hate on the Web – ProPublica – complaints filed against the site go to Cloudflare, and Cloudflare then sends me an email telling me someone said I was doing something bad and that it is my responsibility to figure out if I am doing that. – Is it just me finding anonymous complaints would also be worrying?
Here are the things that stood out for me this week:
Whosampled.com’s crowdsourced ‘trainspotters’ across the music presenting a history of sampling
I get that Brexit is about identity politics rather than about economics but the impact of supply chains is something that still hasn’t registered. Falling out of the customs union will challenge assumptions consumers have made on British brands. This segment from Newsnight simplifies it for the average member of the public – I’d argue it was the wrong programme to run it on due to its relative lack of reach.
The Exclusive North American Premiere of the BMW i8 MemphisStyle at Frieze Art Fair New York. BMW presents two Art and Design Talks in partnership with SoHo House. – BMW’s art car project has been running for decades, the i8 pattern – brings you back to the 1980s when Memphis was at its height. The i8 itself harks back to the iconic M1.
This Polish dub influenced drum and bass track was on repeat with the iPod.
Alex Turnbull (@alexturnbull23) • first international Stussy Tribe meet-up – back in the pre-internet history of 1987 you had the first meet up of Stussy’s collection of friends and tastemakers on Southbank in London. Back then is was a haven for skateboard culture. If you’re a Londoner and you participate in Charlie Dark’s ‘Run Dem’ club the inspiration was right here. Fashion, luxury and drinks brands have tried to repeat this – usually without the authenticity.
Having been a client and an agency bod this advice from a postcard set by Mullen Lowe is advice to live by
I won’t pretend that herding all this opinions is easy – it isn’t.
Digital Economy Act: Illegal Kodi streams could now land users in prison for 10 years | The Independent – people could now face ten-year prison sentences for illegally streaming copyrighted content. Not exactly proportionate
Jam The Russians: Army Electronic Warfare Kit Comes To Europe « Breaking Defense
IBM Accidentally Shipped Malware to its Business Customers – ExtremeTech – face palm
Forrester Sees Advertiser Revolt as Beginning of the End | Digital – AdAge – interesting analysis, even if I don’t entirely agree with the outcomes
Major apps abandoning Apple Watch, including Google Maps, Amazon & eBay [u] – adds weight to the problem of use cases for wearables
How was #JunckerDinner broke for a UK audience:
Today’s FAZ report on May’s disastrous dinner with Juncker – briefed by senior Commission sources – is absolutely damning.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) April 30, 2017
Social media firms must face heavy fines over extremist content – MPs | Media | The Guardian – expect mass censorship soon
Facebook ads targeting Australian teenagers: Predatory advertising sparks outrage | news.com.au – not that surprising or horrifying to me. Brands tend to look for emotional voids
One of Macau’s biggest casinos is expanding into West Africa | Quartz
Things that made my day this week
Spanish luxury brand Loewe rolled out its collaboration with Ibiza boutique Paula’s. It reflects a move of Ibiza away from sweaty EDM fans to a more elite stylish visitor more used to Pykes and Hunters. In many respects taking Ibiza back to where it was before football casuals and clubland discovered the white isle in the mid-1980s.
Meet Generation Z in our latest film | JWT Intelligence – downloadable and handy for provoking thoughts on planning.
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson speaking at MIT Sloan School of Management.
The Lowly Folding Chair, Reimagined With Algorithms | WIRED – classical material and computer aided design came up with something special.
UNISON campaigns to get voters on board with more of a focus on public services as the UK election got under way seems to have failed completely. This disturbing video was made with Claire Sweeney – which breaks the uncomfortable ground between daytime TV programming and satire.
Two and half minute video on Richard Feynman by Bill Gates – worth the time.
Information operations and Facebook – Facebook research paper (PDF)
Just delete the internet – pr0n-blocking legislation receives Royal Assent • The Register – its unworkable and the precedent of widespread censorship is exceptionally worrying – at what point do you say there is a balance between individual freedom and protection from ‘organised crime’ paedophiles or children seeing something they shouldn’t (pick any two for a typical politician’s justification)
Protecting IP from bloggers and tweeters | Raconteur – hashtag trademarks
Rave Happily Ever After at Disneyland Paris’s New EDM Festival – Thump – never thought I would see the day. It’s a great fit, but Disney are tough conservative brand guardians
Tizen Developer Conference 2017 Set to Inspire IoT Innovation | Samsung – interesting that they think it’s lightweight enough to pitch at IoT. They’ll need to beef up the security, it does seem more promising than Android if smartwatches are anything to go by in terms of squeezing performance out of hardware whilst conserving battery life
Things that made my day this week:
A Japanese TV vignette from 1997 featuring the dons of Japanese streetwear Jun Watanabe and Nigo.
A classic example of progress not being better. Tobias Van Schneider revisited Dieter Rams ten principles of good design and bastardise it with current digital design practices
Dieter Rams 10 Principles of Design
*Updated Edition 2017 pic.twitter.com/iWdJBDJiUR
— Tobias Van Schneider (@vanschneider) 18 April 2017
A half hour edit of George Michael’s Fast Love. It reminded me of the way DJs and producers used to make extended edits of disco records to keep the dance floors moving. That was the origin of the 12″ single. It’s truly epic check it out
Louis Vuitton have been on fire recently. Their Master collaboration with Jeff Koons pokes fun at classic art. And then there is the collab collection with Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Fragment Design
Really nice piece of augmented reality marketing with a virtual cosmetics app to sell make-up
Nicky Siano on disco, drugs and DJing at Studio 54 | The Vinyl Factory
ESPN cuts familiar faces in major layoff – CNN – I wonder when this will trickle down to sports rights payments
Government ‘blocked’ from accessing Twitter data to help spot terrorist plots | Telegraph – Twitter pushed back against the surveillance state
Xiaomi phones won’t be heading towards the US anytime soon | Gizchina – not terribly surprising due to not having a patent fence to play rough with other vendors and the difficulties of adapting complex service offerings for US market from Chinese market
Andy Lau teams up with Tencent and Fox for Chinese financial drama | Marketing Interactive – interesting evolution of the Hong Kong TV and film industry
adidas and LPD Are Still Battling Over Failed Collaboration | The Fashion Law – this looks like an interesting collab gone bad
Why has the ubiquity of tech turned us all into divas? | Canvas8 – impatience, desire of immediate gratification
LVMH to Buy Christian Dior in $13 Billion Deal | BoF – raising the money through an expanded public offering….
China wants to restrict WTO rules on dumping, unfair subsidies | SCMP – I am sure they do, as they are most often on the receiving end of penalties
Now you can buy TV ads through Google’s DoubleClick | TechCrunch – this could sting agencies (cough cough WPP) who invested in an ad tech technology stack
Three kingdoms, two empires: China’s internet giants go global | The Economist – with the exception of political censorship, the internet sector in China is lightly regulated. Facebook, Apple and Google, in contrast, face increasing scrutiny. Chinese internet firms can achieve market domination of a sort that would attract close attention in other markets
Why is Foxconn Pushing Sharp back into the Smartphone Market so Aggressively? – Patently Apple – it would put a lot of pressure on Huawei
Barnzley Armitage and the bootleg Chanel tees – DisneyRollerGirl – snide t-shirts that accessorised the whole Buffalo feel of i-D magazine’s famous ‘Happy’ issue
Pathway into Cyber Crime | UK National Crime Agency Intelligence Assessment – more about kudos and moral / political issues (secrecy etc etc). Interesting that its being pulled into Prevent programme
Nothing new in UK Govt cyber security survey – Enterprise Times – in a blow for the government only 4% referred to Government and public sector sources. This is disappointing given the effort the UK Government has spent promoting cyber security
Barnzley Armitage and the Lost Art of Streetwear — the culture crush – great interview with the legendary stylist
I’ve been a bit quiet due to work and life intervening. Alongside my work in looking at strategy through a data-centric lens I have also taken on a content strategy role on a project. This isn’t about:
But a much wider approach that takes a systems approach to content. What it is, where should it be and how it should be refreshed. With this in in mind I can thoroughly recommend The Content Strategy Toolkit: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right by Meghan Casey.
Meghan also provides a set of downloadable template to make your life even easier. I found the book relatively easy to digest but still have it about as a reference book on my current project.
I can also recommend the current British Museum exhibition: The American Dream – pop to the present. I really liked the works from the NASA art programme by Robert Rauschenberg that celebrated the Apollo programme.
The evidence is piling up — Silicon Valley is being destroyed – Business Insider – go east young man, Shenzhen rather than San Jose
Adidas Just Lost One of its 3-Stripe Trademarks in the European Union | The Fashion Law – huge
ZTE Q1 profit surges on network, smartphone sales | total telecom – contrasts with Huawei’s performance
Microsoft’s Wunderlist successor, To-Do, hits public preview | ZDNet – gutted that Wunderlist is being sunset as part of a plan to upsell users to Office365
Big Bother Is Watching | The Baffler – an anti-Slack polemic
WSJ City – Back to the Chinese Boom Years in Luxury? Not Likely – new normal not boom times
Margarine sales: investors can’t believe they’re not better | The Economist – a few things: trans fats tend not to be in consumer margarines now, but otherwise interesting data
Ogilvy Celebrates ‘Real Moms’ for Dove Baby | AdWeek – interesting step into P&G territory by Unilever