Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Barcode turns 30

    The Boston Globe online has a mildly interesting article about the UPC (universal product code) or barcode that graces all our groceries. They give a potted history of the code and mention the various urban myths that rose around it including:

    • Some considered that the barcode represented the Anti-Christ
    • Others considered that the barcode was a corporate plot against consumers (though the lack of technology before the bar code had not stopped collusion).

    The article goes on about the inventory savings items, but neglects to mention other add-ons that came out of it including:

    • Near-real time sales data, which could be datamined for purchase paterns, this allowed Walmart to famously increase beer sales by putting a six pack and nappies (US Eng: diapers) together for stressed fathers
    • Increasing the power of retailers who can provide research companies and suppliers with data on product sales faster, fattening the coffers of AC Neilsen
    • Dramatically altered store design by being able to trial changes in layout or promotion and see the results through the tills, this was as dramatic as the spreadsheet allowing senior business folk to run what if scenarios
    • Loyalty cards, when you can analyse purchase patterns and inventories, match them both together to decide how to influence consumer behaviour

    A less documented feature of the barcode is that it revolutionised kick-backs for music shop workers. Record labels have been hot beds of interesting accounting practices at the best of times, which is why these practices could happen. When I DJ’ed far more (and had more time); I used to hang with a number of record shop assistants who worked in ‘chart shops’.

    Being a DJ meant tapping into a number of sources. I was signed up to promo agencies for white labels, but that wasn’t that great and a lot of the quality was pretty awful.

    I was also connected to the specialist shops for my imports, promos that I didn’t have access to and underground vinyl.

    The small chart shops was where I got some of the best British dance music cuts. The smaller independent chart shops got a lot of support from the major labels:

    • Cheaper records to sell on to the public
    • Items often arrived in their stores first, before the big chains
    • Exclusive access to limited edition remix records
    • Instore band signings (again often at the expense of big chains like HMV)
    • Promotional record label items: jackets, bags, gig tickets, artwork
    • One high selling record for free with every two hype items they put through the scanner (note that I did not say sell)

    I used to occasionally drive with friends to Fox’s Records in Doncaster, one of the largest chart shores. Closer to home I had a good relationship with Jez and Tony who used to run Penny Lane Birkenhead. Tony had been with the firm for time and had risen to be the store manager at this branch. Tony was a seasoned ligger. His assistant, Jez was a quiet dreadlocked skater kid who used to work in a secondhand dance vinyl shop in the Palace – at that time a trendy shopping complex on Wood Street in central Liverpool.

    This barcode revolution did not happen overnight, I still remember being in primary school in Liverpool and seeing sticky price tags and the guns being used in the local Tesco and Asda supermarkets. Bargain bucket department story chain TJ Hughes, only implemented a stock management system utilising bar codes less than five years ago after new owners discovered stock in their warehouses that may have been over ten years old. The local supermarket to my Uncle living in rural Western Ireland still uses sticky price labels with no barcode scanner in sight, a nod to our modern times came when the labels changed colour from white to fluorescent yellow. More related content can be found here.

  • Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich

    My book of the moment is Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich. Ben previously wrote Bringing Down the House; a book about a group of maths geeks who take on the Las Vegas casinos by team playing with a gambling system and making a killing at poker.

    In Ugly Americans, Ben turns his attention to hedge funds exploiting the economic collapse of Japan in the 1990s. There are many similarities with the books:

    • They both are written in the same style, paced with a future film adaptation in mind
    • They both alternate chapters of action with ‘expert testimony
    • They both claim to be true, however I have my doubts (names have been changed to protect the innocent et cetera)
    • Both are a ripping read 

    But the polished nature of the read makes me think that its fiction masquerading as truth. And thats why Ugly Americans feels a bit dirty and hard to recommend, despite my enjoying reading it.

    Mezrich feels as if he’s hit his stride with style and format rather like Lee Childs or James Patterson. The idea isn’t the important thing, the truth probably doesn’t matter. Instead Mezrich has a pattern. The key difference to Childs and Patterson is that Mezrich is thinking about the film or TV adaptation from the beginning. It feels cynical. And that’s why the book Ugly Americans feels a bit ugly and dirty for me as a reader. More related content here.

  • Social Networking

    Fantastic overview on the overhyped technology trend of the moment social networking. Don’t get me wrong I am a member of some of them, its just that the net is not paved with gold and there are only a finite number of opportunities. By the time you get around to organise a high-level conference about them or Wired do an eight-page spread to explore the issues it’s over.

    Ged Carroll’s guide to the new-new thing:

    Info-imaging: digital is the new film, but there still hasn’t been a truly easy way to manipulate and store pictures online that is as easy as a photo album, why? Also people like Fuji, Kodak etc are used to having continuing revenue from film sales, how do they adapt for the 21st century when the market for cameras that are good enough for you and I saturates in the next few years, whats the sticky app. How can business take advantage of this technological change in a risk-free, cost effective manner and still take home the benjamins

    Communities for broadband: Question why was AOL so successful? Not because of its content, nor its direct marketing technique learned from the Luftwaffe. It was two things ease-of-use and communities. With broadband network providers are obsessing about content, in reality they don’t have too much of a clue they are using a fast failure model to try and find out what works. I know because I promoted a survey done at the end of 2000 by Capgemini with Ernst & Young that reached out to about 100 CEOs in telecoms and media. The survey concluded that everyone knew that broadband was needed but not the why. If we look at what has driven net adoption so far is communication and being a part of a community. Email was the killer app. The question to be answered is how can a community be enhanced and made more engaging to sell broadband services and differentate the next AOL from just another pipe-merchant. VoIP won’t do it because its a commodity product and need to be ‘open’ in order to allow it to become useful through gaining ubiquity.

    I’ll leave it to David Hornik to put the hype in prospective with a summary of a Churchill Club event Social Networking Who Cares?

    “Welcome blah blah blah relationship capital blah blah blah social contracts blah blah blah media businesses blah blah blah identify the rabid fans of the iPod blah blah blah utility media blah blah blah this is the future of the web blah blah blah RSS blah blah blah Spam blah blah blah killer app blah blah blah social networking is blogging dumbed down for the masses blah blah blah tribecaster blah blah blah widget blah blah blah what is the connection between social networks and blogs blah blah blah the most efficient media platform ever blah blah blah read-write, not read-only blah blah blah all software is about people blah blah blah put this stuff in context blah blah blah monetizing relationships blah blah blah a new dimension to the web blah blah blah I met my wife on Match.com blah blah blah wiki-based community blah blah blah collective action, common good … blah blah blah I’ve been monetizing my social relationships since my bar mitzvah blah blah blah blah blah it’s group voice blah blah blah social context blah blah blah the entire web is a social network blah blah blah join me in thanking tonight’s moderators blah blah blah goodnight.”

    More related posts here.

  • V and A

    On Saturday, I continued my sporadic tour of London’s cultural highpoints: Fabric, Smith of Smithfields, The End, Flying Records, Phonica, The Science Museum and now the Victoria & Albert Museum known informally as the V and A.

    The museum is very disorientating despite the map that they provide you with on the way in. In fact the map was an offence against design to my co-explorer Steve, a design agency owner who came along. The exhibits on Japan were very interesting and made Europe look like a bunch of savages. The Victorian silverware looked crass and tasteless, the plunder of robber barons from an empire that spanned a third of the world (sort of like Kenneth Noye on a grand scale).

    There were lots of activity areas and it should get a high rating for being child friendly. It was way cool and both Steve and myself took some time out for learning activities. The café wasn’t as swish as I had thought that it would be, however it is still very good. My expectations of the V and A had been distorted by the ‘V&A café with museum attached’ descriptions of it in the media. (Their 1 1/2 cup pot of coffee is actually good for two cups).

    In addition, they had The Other Flower Show art exhibition and Tracy Emin’s work in particular had a very dark sense of humour in it with a ouija board and knife in the centre of a children’s wendy house.

    One of the things I found out was that it was Architecture Week, judging by their materials and handouts both RIBA and the Arts Council had invested heavily in it. However beyond mentions in the design press about activity in Clerkenwell to celebrate the event we had not seen any press coverage. If you were involved in Architecture Week and want to get more publicity give me a call :-))

    The V&A area suffered from a dearth of fast food suppliers so Steve and myself had to decamp by foot to Leicester Square in order to support a heinous global corporation that tears down the rainforest and provides gainful employment to sociology graduates in the fast-food industry. More posts about getting out and about here.

  • Gates on spam

    Gates on spam

    Bill Gates wrote to me regarding the latest thinking by Microsoft (ok so its a Microsoft marketing ploy to make me think that Chairman Bill cares even for heretics like me) and some of their partners to curb spam. The mail is interesting, however I have a few concerns on the content of the email by Gates on spam:

    • the industry initative lacked networking manufacturers like Nokia, Juniper or Extreme Networks
    • no computing powerhouses like Sun Microsystems, Oracle, IBM, Apple
    • there was no reference to non-windows PC users (Mac, Unix, Linux, Symbian smartphones, PalmOS etc)
    • there is no independent experts on the panel like Phil Zimmerman

    From: billgates at chairman.microsoft.com

    Subject: Preserving and Enhancing the Benefits of Email – A Progress Report

    Date: 28 June 2004 21:47:34 BST

    To: *********** at ***.com

    During the past year, Microsoft has taken a number of important steps to help curb the epidemic of junk email, which is a major headache for computer users worldwide. We’ve made significant progress, including blocking more than 95 per cent of all incoming junk email – an average of 3 billion messages a day – on Hotmail. But more work remains to be done. We’re committed to finding additional ways to counter this costly nuisance.

    Over the next 12 months, we will begin to introduce several additional innovative technologies and processes that should further reduce the volume of junk email reaching customers’ inboxes. Because you’ve subscribed to receive executive emails from us, I’d like to update you on what we’re doing in this area. On the Web at www.microsoft.com/execmail, I’ve posted an in-depth explanation of Microsoft’s technology vision and strategy for ending the junk email epidemic as a major problem. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it.

    Thank you.

    Bill Gates

    More posts related to Gates on spam here.