Ged Carroll

Search results for: “samsung”

  • Client conflict

    The US Council of PR is about to talk about the thorny issue of client conflict according to Tim Dyson soon, and Edelman a PR company that has a number of conflicted clients under its roof had decided not to renew its membership. Connection? Some six years ago when I worked at Edelman we used to say that two was a conflict but three was a specialism. This was particularly true with regards to the roster of management consultancies that the technology team had on its books: Arthur D Little, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and DiamondCluster International. I worked on both Cap Gemini and DiamondCluster at the same time.

    It is interesting that Tim Dyson of NextFiveteen mentions Edelman’s expertise in conflicts yet fails to mention his own agency Bite, who in London have Samsung, Toshiba and Apple all in the same building.

    Indeed I write this not to be critical of Edelman’s approach. Instead I just wish there were some clear standards on what was deemed an acceptable way of managing conflicting clients.

    Is the expertise of Bite’s London office not making it around the network despite Clive Armitage and Judy Wilks moving Stateside over the years? And could this targeting of Edelman have anything to do with Richard spurring some cheque book driven growth with the purchase of A+R Partners? ;-)

    As an industry, PR spends a lot of time talking about the value of brand to our clients, but what about our own agency’s brand? I had an interesting experience on Thursday evening at the T3 birthday party; ran into a PR person who was reluctant to admit where they worked.

    Not the usual banter about being reluctant to admit that they were a paid shill in the company of journalists. Not that they tried to hide the fact that they were an in-house PR person so that I didn’t try and beat them into signing a three-year rolling agency-of-record contract with my employer. They were concerned by the reaction of their peers (ok me and my team mate Alex) if they revealed the agency where they worked.

    That’s pretty poor, how can we as an industry expect to be the brand guardians of our clients when we are reluctant to admit where we work?

    UPDATE

    I am going to close out further comments on this post now as both sides have made their point and there is no point in having a flame war by proxy. Understandably if you feel that I’m curtailing the conversation email me at the address listed in the header and I promise to post the best views for and against editiorial censorship on blogs. More on marketing here.

  • Veoh and misc. tech stuff

    Veoh Networks is a great company, though I haven’t worked out yet whether it is sailing too close to the wind or not. The company is funded by media conglomerate Time-Warner and Michael Eisner (the former ruler of planet Disney). The website looks like YouTube, but with some important differences:

    • Veoh lets you submit full-sized streaming videos
    • YouTube limits its users to 100 MB files.
    • Veoh can do 2 GB files distributed via a P2P-client available for Mac and that other platform

    I’ve been enjoying a selection of ‘so-bad-they’re-good’ 1970s martial arts movies off there. The Mac client is really easy to use. My main concern is how will the company make money in the longer term. I can see someone like TimeWarner using Veoh as a guinea pig to further is experiment with AOL and online TV. On second thoughts just enjoy it while you can! More media related posts here.


    I’m with Stupid    Apple has apparently moved away from using a PortalPlayer media processor in all its iPods and instead moved to Samsung for the next-generation of MP3 players. PortalPlayer is very exposed to the Apple business, with iPods counting for about 70 per cent of its sales according to a Reuters report that I’ve read. Its not healthy for PortalPlayer, hopefully the company will diversify its client base to become more independent.

    However Samsung as a supplier was also a dumb move for Apple. This is not a commodity product like flash memory where Apple can use multiplie suppliers and change at will, the media chip is central to the iPod functionality and experience.

    Does it sound like a smart move to work closely with (and educate in the art of engineering a killer MP3 player) a large ambitious, hyper-aggressive company that wants to eat Apple for lunch? It has been alleged that Samsung had meetings with creative agencies in London where the central theme was Kill iPod.

    You can chart the fall of the iPod empire from this moment on…

  • Chinese eyes on Korea

    From romantic Korean drams to hard boiled films like Old Boy and Silmido are making waves amongst arthouse cinema fans and movie industry talent-spotters throughout the western world. It now seems that its not only Hollywood that is turning its eyes eastwards to follow the latest cultural carrying-ons in Korea, but Chinese eyes are too.

    The New York Times China’s Youth Look to Seoul for Inspiration by Norimitsu Onishi (January 2, 2006) has an interesting article on how young Chinese eyes Korea as tastemakers in fashion, beauty and  popular culture.

    The country’s cultural exports are cutting-edge tempered with the Confucian-based culture familiar to Chinese audiences. American culture is too ‘post-modern’ to be absorbed directly. At least some of the time, China sees Japan in a way reminiscent of Basil Fawlty and  is still beyond the pale because of the War. Although the Chinese consistent appetite for Japanese AV content is well documented elsewhere. Taste making goes beyond pop singers and movies to hip brands such the must-have mobile phone from Samsung and Hyundai cars.

    Rather like Eric Clapton adapting the blues for white audiences in the UK; so Korea is adapting western idioms from hip-hop culture and sit-coms like Sex in the City. It is then making them palatable for East Asian audiences. Free trade and intellectual property protection is likely to not be as beneficial to Hollywood in tapping the Chinese market as the media moguls had hoped. More Korea related posts here.

  • Hold onto your old cell phone

    Hold on to your old cell phone for at least another six months. New Nokia phones should be due out in the next six months or so and they look half decent. Nokia software and build quality in an LG/Samsung style case has got to be a surefire winner. Read more at Gizmodo (mainly because they have lots of pretty pictures).

    Clamshell designs to replace old cell phone

    Nokia has doubled down since hitting turbulence in its plans for world wireless domination. Part of Nokia’s problems was attributed to the fact that it had no foldable in their old cell phone range currently on the market.

    To remedy the situation they have come up with three foldable handsets for poor, well-off and rich people. The stinking rich still have to put up with a Vertu ‘chocolate bar’ handset instead.

    Nokia Bluetooth keyboard

    They have also announced a Bluetooth keyboard that at first glance looks like a Think Outside design. More gadget related content here.

    Blogging and PR industry

    OK, I lied, my ex-colleague Stephen Waddington has written a down-to-earth paper on blogging and its implications for the PR industry. His advice on PRing to bloggers seems to be similar to trying to influence a Usenet group, is to do so CAREFULLY!

    Give the article a quick read, its worth it. The main thing they missed out is the use of employees or interest group members personal blogs to raise a search engine position. This has been used in recent Googlebombs attacking George Bush.

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