Ged Carroll

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  • Chain coffee shops

    I had been in Korea less than 24 hours and already the number and diversity of chain coffee shops had surprised me. Whilst some people may call Seattle the home of the coffee shop, Seoul seems to have far more at least in terms of independent coffee shops and chain coffee shops.

    The quality of chain coffee shops seem to vary enormously and they seem to be very segmented in terms of their offering. Whilst Starbucks is in the Korean market with a substantial footprint – it hasn’t managed to achieve total market dominance in the way it has in the UK.

    From the small mom-and-pop shop feel of Mr Coffee to the mega-chain to Tom Tom Coffee there is something for everyone:

    • Coffee Bean – Korea’s oldest successful coffee shop brand isn’t as trendy as Caffé Bene. It has a mix of coffee and tea drink alternatives similar to Starbucks. It uses  wi-fi enabled buzzer to let you know when your order is ready. Coffee Bean is much better quality coffee than many of its competitors including Caffé Bene
    • Caffé Bene – the shop aims for a third-space type feel similar to Starbucks – but with a Korean modern design aesthetic.  The restaurant has a range of coffees on its menu including Ethiopian blend. Generally the coffee is milder than Starbucks. It also is known for its food; which is a grade above Starbucks.  Caffé Bene uses wi-fi enabled buzzers to let you know when your order is available to pick up from the counter.  Drip coffee is about two and a half times the price of the UK. Despite weak coffee, Caffé Bene has grown to 700 branches throughout Korea
    • Angel-in-us – aimed more at female customers, apart from the cute mug designs is is very similar in terms of its product and feel to Caffé Bene
    • Mr Coffee is a kiosk operation found at local mass transit stations – it makes a passable cup of coffee
    • Tom n Toms: ubiquitous chain, not known for the quality of its coffee. Inside it is very similar to an American style family restaurant like Dennys
    • Twosome Place – aimed at women.  It has a selection of beautifully presented cakes as an indulgence. . Advertised with a good-looking male celebrity selling a fantasy experience. It is also the chain with the best coffee. if you can handle the smooth marketing alongside The Coffee Bean, A Twosome Place is probably the best major chain to frequent

    Things to watch out for:

    • Prices are generally a third more expensive than Starbucks in other countries such as the UK, Hong Kong and US
    • Forget the flat white, the trendy coffee to order here is the ‘hand drip’ served in a lot of the independent coffee shops
    • People generally don’t understand what a black coffee is; they call it an americano even when its a filter coffee
    • Paid for wi-fi – this maybe due to the ubiquity of LTE | 4G networks and wi-fi bundled into domestic cellular deals. There is one variety of milk available – diary | full-fat. If you don’t have Internet Explorer | PC chances are that you won’t be able to sign up for a temporary account due to Korean reliance on ActiveX for online security – insane, but true
    • Milk – if you are on a diet or lactose intolerant go for black coffee, as milk generally doesn’t have any choices that you can make to customize your drink

    More Korea related posts here.

  • The Greatest Trade Ever

    The Greatest Trade Ever fitted my agenda really well. I had wanted some light reading as I traveled and Zuckerman’s account of how John Paulson bet against the US housing market seemed as good a read as any. As a non-financial person I found some if it very illuminating:

    • Like innovations such as the the light bulb there were a number of people trying to make this trade work, some of them like Michael Burry had the trade messed up by his own investors who were withdrawing funds as he was making money killing the trade in the water. Quite why Burry was a zero and Paulson was a hero in The Greatest Trade Ever wasn’t clearly articulated
    • The banks not only packed toxic investments that drove the market but also developed the interests that could hedge against it in a cost-effective manner, with many of them screwing themselves
    • Banks actively screwed their customers, even when they were being paid for advice. If I did that as an agency person I would leave myself open legally and would also likely get censured by a number of professional bodies
    • There was generally a lack of critical thinking and what-if scenario planning at the banks involved. On the one hand some of the most numerate people I have known come from an investment banking background. On the other hand investment models are often kludged together with massive Excel spreadsheets and macros – which I imagine plays hell with trying to get a helicopter view of an institution’s financial position
    • The key problem was one of timing, with investors essentially continually betting on black until the roulette wheel swung in their favour. They had no sense of the when beyond a vague ‘soon’

    Zuckerman managed to make the subject matter accessible and understandable. One gets the sense that Paulson was fortunate rather than immensely talented as there didn’t seem to be a lot separating him from other people making the same bet until he rolled the dice one last time. More book reviews can be found here.

  • LTE in Korea

    Whilst the UK government flights with the major carriers including Vodafone over 4G whilst simultaneously wanting universal broadband for rural communities, Korea has a real-life working LTE eco-system.

    So what’s it like?

    The handsets come with a spare battery and desk charger as realistic battery life is somewhere south of an iPhone 4S.

    The devices sport big screens and other features like a built-in mobile television receiver that allows you to watch the five main TV channels – so its hard to just blame the network.

    Call quality was an issue, primarily because of the way the calls are handled, the Korean careers were using 3G networks to carry voice calls. This means that calls are affected by network handover issues and the complexity of the chip architectures needed to do this.

    Network coverage is patchy, which is why the 4G networks have bolstered their offerings with wi-fi roaming. You can’t go into a coffee shop or a department store and not find a paid for wi-fi service.

    The key thing for me was that there wasn’t a key application that demonstrated the real-world superiority of LTE over 3G services. And this means that its hard to drive sales beyond the early adopter community unless carriers use bundle-based price promotions and subsidised handsets. One thing that did strike me whilst on the road was that laptop users didn’t bother using 3-or-4G dongles at all – which is where I thought LTE would be able to demonstrate superiority. More wireless related content here.

  • Android differentiation

    I decided to write on my story  onAndroid differentiation after careful consideration. On one hand I didn’t want the companies involved to suffer because one executive had a loud mouth. On the other hand it raised interesting questions about the state of the Android eco-system. So I decided at the time to thinly veil the identities of the different parties.

    March 14: I was sat down in the main dining room of the JW Marriott in Seoul having breakfast and minding my own business when I found myself sitting the next table along from a rather loud discussion of a proposal that a US start-up (Flipboard) wanted to make to a major Korean Android handset (Samsung) and tablet manufacturer in a meeting scheduled that day for 2pm.

    The crux of the pitch was around Android differentiation opportunities. The major Korean manufacturer (Samsung) has a need for something to provide a clear space. The start-up can help the Korean company sell more devices if they pay for the start-up to develop their software. The  software currently is a prominent RSS and social network aggregation as magazine-type reader on iPhone and iPad.  The startup wanted funds to develop it specifically for the Korean company’s Android devices.

    Samsung should also spend a bit more to offer on a new phone or tablet –   a three-month free subscription to a publication like The New York Times, Vanity Fair or People magazine – given the media connections that the start-up partnership development person had: they could broker the deal to make this happen. Would the glorified subscription model be

    I also gathered that a similar pitch had already been made to a Taiwanese handset manufacturer (HTC); but not much progress had happened, though this may change as they had a good idea that the start-up was in discussions with Samsung. HTC were apparently keen to talk to Flipboard again.

    Now ignoring the lack of common sense in having this discussion in a public place with colleagues when your voice carries across the room I was struck by two things regarding Android differentiation:

    • The economics of major applications on Android seem to require major financial incentives if this guy had flown half-way around the world to pitch this offer at the same time that SXSWi was on in Austin
    • Android device differentiation / hyper-competition is becoming an issue, if the head of marketing at a large corporate would spend time to do this meeting and seriously consider the start-up’s proposal. The market must be seriously commoditised and there must be little ‘value-add’ benefits between devices

    Now I don’t think that a free three-month subscription is going to move the needle that much, particularly if one looks at how Nokia’s Comes With Music initiative failed to arrest the decline of the world’s largest phone maker. And the implication about the economics of high-quality Android application development was something that concerned me, particularly when I look at the increasing demand for mobile work from clients. More related content here.

  • Mobile and TV integration

    Social, search, mobile and TV is the first in a series of posts of observations and thoughts from my recent trip to Korea.

    I was stuck by how mobile and TV advertising integration is achieved through QRcodes, search social and e-commerce. The consumer is surrounded in a brand membrane whilst at home in front of the TV.

    Korea is known for being advanced in social networks and search engines. Twitter has a vibrant community there, but Me2Day gives it a good run for its money.

    KakaoTalk is like a multi-platform version of BBM that brands are using to engage with fans and mature platforms like Cafe Daum, Naver and CyWorld can still school Silicon Valley on all things social.

    The country also has a diverse and vibrant eco-system of television stations with a lot of content based around K-pop stars and celebrity participation. TV is available on mobile devices and is one of the main engines of popular culture. TV enjoys a viewership that you don’t see in the UK or Europe any more.

    Given these two vibrant media eco-systems; advertisers and television commerce operations seek to do multichannel marketing. Here are some examples I took pictures of during a five-minute period during a mid-morning commercial break.


    Daum Mobile search is suggested as Daum is known as a site that provides content of interest for women. Encouraging mobile use allows for an immediate call to action.

    Han Hea Youn is a Korean fashion designer who sells her range of clothing via TV shopping channel. The QRcode at the top of the screen allows for the audience to get more information online and make a purchase.

    Where the product isn’t specifically aimed at a female audience the commercials recommended a search term for Naver Mobile.

    These commercial sections were not best-practice but indicated how true integrated multichannel has become a hygiene factor in Korean advertising campaigns. More related content here.