This week is biggest night in advertising around the Super Bowl. I understand that this the 56th match, for as the Americans like to call it Super Bowl LVI. While Super Bowl LVI is an important sports event attracting an audience across North America.
Some of the more interesting adverts from my perspective
Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com has a brand anthem featuring Matthew McConaughey. What’s interesting about this is how Salesforce defines its elf in terms of being ‘anti-big tech’. It contains digs at Facebook, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk – you don’t need to work very hard to join the dots.
https://youtu.be/tIp251KCz6k
Kia Motors
Kia’s ad is one with more longevity. It’s packed with emotion and a fluent device of a robot dog at the centre of it. If Kia were smart they would build on the dog further in future campaigns as I think that have something here.
https://youtu.be/HoNMz_OV_dI
Choose life
The final one that grabbed me was Expedia’s ad spot with Ewan McGregor which seemed to borrow heavily from his Renton persona in Trainspotting & T2.
Here’s Ewan for Expedia with the Today programme having a preview of it.
Here’s the original ‘Choose Life’ monologue from Trainspotting. Note that Mr McGregor even sports Renton’s crew cut.
Here’s the ‘Choose Life’ monologue revisited in T2. Outside of the creative classes I don’t think most people watching NBC’s coverage in the US will understand the linkage between Expedia, Trainspotting and T2.
As a bonus here’s how the NFL was formed and how the teams got their names.
And before you ask, I think that the Rams will beat the Bengals in Super Bowl LVI.
Shiba Inu
NHK Worldwide did an amazing documentary on the Shiba Inu. The Shiba Inu is one of only 16 ‘basal breeds’. That means a closer genetic link to the source of what makes a dog a dog than newer breeds. By comparison breeds like the labrador have evolved much further. This shows up in the Shiba Inu behaviour such as the lack of relative physical closeness to their owners, despite having a deep bond.
Audrey Tang, digital minister, government of Taiwan, Republic of China
Audrey Tang is a legendary technologist and has developed some the best work combatting misinformation anywhere in the world. It is a great interview to listen to during your lunch hour. The lessons of her work have never been so important. I also love what she says about the importance of the commons, living the open source spirit and broadband as a human right.
Recycling glass
I am fascinated by manufacturing processes and the nature of materials. This video on how glass is recycled into loft insulation by Owen Corning is fascinating. Its a bit of a long video but worthwhile watching.
Yemen
I never thought I would be writing about Yemen. This video on the Caspian Report discusses how Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are using the cover the Yemeni civil war to build bases that would allow them to project force into major shipping routes.
Project Apollo
Amazing NASA film that outlined the ambition for the Apollo missions.
Why brands are burning NFTs | Vogue Business – Burning NFTs, which are tokens stored on a blockchain, is the process of permanently removing a token from circulation. This can be done to eliminate unsold or problematic inventory from an NFT drop, or it can be used to engage collectors and fans through “upgrades” that replace an original NFT with something else. For fashion and beauty brands, burning NFTs could offer a way to manipulate scarcity, and therefore price. It could also lead to more intriguing NFT projects, in which consumers must weigh risk and reward by burning an NFT in exchange for something else. These scenarios, among others, are already playing out among artists and gaming startups, paving the way for fashion. Already, Adidas is using a burn mechanism to change the state of its NFTs when NFT owners make a purchase. Apparel brand Champion recently partnered with Daz 3D’s NFT collection, Non-Fungible People, and will use burning to enable peoples’ profile picture NFTs to digitally dress in Champion gear, while Unisocks invites NFT owners to burn them in exchange for physical products. – burning NFTs sounds like a dangerous precedent
Environment | Gallup Historical Trends – interesting longitudinal data set. Environmental messaging effectiveness is proportional to consumer disposable income and financial security at the time
When will the music stop? | Financial Times – bill being called due on financialisation and post-industrialisation of western economies and a move from globalisation to regionalisation
US embassy warns TU Dublin about risks of ties with Chinese university | Ireland | The Sunday Times – China wants Ireland to host international campus of Harbin University. Ireland should be looking at the experience of Hungary who were made to foot the bill for a campus that only benefit Chinese students – In 2020 HIT was added to an “entity list” by the US Department of Commerce, which identifies people or organisations that it believes are involved in activities contrary to US security or foreign policy interests. Last week the American embassy in Dublin said it was still concerned about HIT’s ties with the People’s Liberation Army and its efforts to acquire foreign technology in support of its defence aims
British research ‘could help China build superweapons’ | News | The Times – The number of research collaborations between scientists in the UK and Chinese institutes with deep connections to the country’s defence forces has tripled to more than 1,000 in six years, a figure that lays bare the scale of cooperation with the hostile state. The university funding includes £60 million from sources now sanctioned by the US government for supplying the Chinese military with fighter jets, communications technology and missiles. The article was published with this opinion piece: Is getting into bed with President Xi for science . . . or just sleazy? | News | The Times – It is 1914 and our scientists, encouraged by government and big business, have been co-operating with their German opposites on machine-gun technology, ballistics and aeroplane design — all in the name of exciting new technology and with a rising country with an important market and close ties with the UK. Now return to the present, but with an eye to the future. As The Times reveals today, UK scientists are working closely with Chinese scientists from institutes intimately associated with weapons development
Why gamers hate crypto, and music fans don’t – gamers feel that they are being ripped off, music fans look at NFTs like as if they are souvenirs or trading cards. This has important implications for mechanisms governing the metaverse
I have been going back through the content on this website as part of a site revamp. I conducted the content aspect of the site revamp while I created new content, did work and general life stuff. So it took a while as the content went as far back as March 2004.
I ended up paring the number of blog posts down from almost six thousand posts to just under eighteen hundred. I deleted a few posts because in retrospect I didn’t have much to say.
But the bulk of the posts that I deleted was where I was consolidating posts that focused on curating content from around the web, similar to this one.
The primary reason why I was consolidating these posts together was link rot. Links that went out to dead sites and the pages hadn’t managed to be indexed in the Wayback Machine.
So what did I learn from this content site revamp process?
Ephemera
While the maxim that ‘everything stays somewhere online forever’ is useful life advice, it doesn’t accurately reflect the ephemeral nature of online content. Even many of the largest media companies seem to prune their older content on a regular basis. The exceptions to this seem to be the FT and the New York Times.
Companies are usually really bad at handling their redirects from the now dead pages of old content. With zero consideration being given to context. Of course, memes and revenge porn tend not to be as ephemeral unfortunately.
2014
2014 seems to have been a cataclysmic year for personal website content. Prior this year there were all kinds of interesting professional and corporate blogs being run. But in 2014, things seem to have changed dramatically. This seems to have occurred across sectors and specialisms. Companies seem to have given up on their content strategies.
My current working hypothesis is that part of this was probably due to the rise of social media and a secondary aspect of this must have been the declining returns of on network and off network search engine optimisation. I also think that at least some personal bloggers grew out of their sites. They probably found that their interests had changed, or no longer had time to write. I managed to avoid that fate for a number of reasons:
Writing helped me work out ideas
I don’t think that I am a good writer, but writing became a habit, one that was so engrained it survived when I moved to live in Hong Kong and back again
I deliberately never put this blog in a box, in terms of what I wanted to write about beyond what caught my interest. Part of this came down to my belief in the connected post-modern nature of the world. Previously I have talked about how understanding the dynamics of social media can be traced back to the rituals and structures of ancient Rome. People like Jed Hallam had since articulated this idea much better in his discussions about marketing existing inside culture and acting on culture
Between 2003 and 2012, there seemed to be more events and conferences that I got to go to during and after work that provided inspiration for content. This seems to have tailed off somewhat now
I thought the process of curation was as important as the process of creation. I never had to create content completely in a vacuum. Using social bookmarking tools and newsreader services helped enormously in this process.
The pattern of my writing has evolved. I publish less frequently, but tend to do longer posts now. At one stage I was developing two posts a day for this site, content for a blog on PR Week that was regularly featured in their print edition, the corporate blog of the agency that I worked for at the time and contributing a few posts to Econsultancy on marketing related issues. I also provided some content to political site Left Foot Forward at the behest of a policy wonk colleague of mine, this content focused on the intersection of technology, media and regulation. My writing had been driving a good deal of my career progression from 2005 through to 2014
Finally, I think that there has been a decline in the spirit of generosity in the exchange of ideas. I am not sure if this is an increase in ‘meaness’ – though more and more content is now behind a paywall, or a larger decline in ideas.
Missing link
I don’t think that Medium and LinkedIn have managed to plug the gap on brands and consumers looking to publish quality long form content for various reasons. Secondly, email newsletters while looking like the new blogs are likely to be equally ephemeral and may be a step backward in time; though I am still subscribed to listservs that I originally looked at in college.
As I write this, even Facebook looks as if it has finally started on its downward slope to irrelevance , where it will eventually join former online titans like Geocities, Friendster, MySpace and Bebo. Facebook content is already largely hidden from the open web behinds its wall garden. The way things are going, It is likely to disappear completely in the next decade or so.
The content site revamp brought home to me, the importance of having your own personal website, to have control over your content. Looking back strengthened my belief in the advice that I gave Omincom’s David Gallagher four years ago
Why have a website as part of your personal online brand?
LinkedIn and Facebook don’t have the same agenda as you. Your content becomes a hostage to their business whims It is hard for users to discover your content, Facebook and Google make it so Even on Medium you no longer really own your content. It can’t be easily exported like content on the Blogger platform Even in the world of Facebook, Google is still a reputation engine
The content process that I went through on the site revamp taught me that I need to make better notes about the significance of a particular piece of content because years later I won’t have any idea why I’d saved it. I have been getting better at this over years, but I still need to do better.
Alexa whistleblower demands Amazon apology after being jailed and tortured | Amazon | The Guardian – A whistleblower who exposed illegal working conditions in a factory making Amazon’s Alexa devices sayshe was tortured before being jailed by Chinese authorities. Tang Mingfang, 43, was jailed after he revealed how the Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese city of Hengyang used schoolchildren working illegally long hours to manufacture Amazon’s popular Echo, Echo Dot and Kindle devices. Now, after spending two years in prison, he is appealing to the higher courts to clear his name. He has taken the difficult decision to talk publicly, despite being aware of the risks of reprisals, because he believes Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, have a responsibility to support his appeal and that the Observer also has a responsibility to highlight his case – the Alexa whistleblower didn’t only expose labour issues in its Chinese factories. By implication, the Alexa whistleblower also exposed the inhuman nature of Amazon’s calculations in making the Alexa. Taking an Alexa apart you can see how Amazon skimped on parts like an on / off switch on the Alexa microphone, but the Alexa whistleblower exposed so much more.
The Age of the Unique Baby Name – The Atlantic – I would see the internet accelerating this trend in order to stop their kid from having an identity like JoeSmith928765354@icloud.com which in turn feeds into salience and distinctiveness – individual as brand
How to deal with farmers’ love of plastic | Financial Times – I too grew up on a farm in the 1970s and 1980s. Spare baling twine was gathered up to create fake electric fencing, hold things together and even support gates. Fertiliser bags were reused to carry turf or waterproof equipment. Silage covers were used to waterproof equipment and any small tear off pieces found went into the range (a solid fuel heating stove).
The above video is based on CBInsights State of Venture 2021 report. An increase in venture funding would in general be a good thing, if it was being spent on the right kind of innovation to solve the right problems. It isn’t. And if there were enough good entrepreneurs and ideas to take advantage of it. There aren’t. Instead this looks like the dotcom bubble and the subprime mortgage sector pre bust together, at once. And that’s likely to be part of your pension funds. Why Is Silicon Valley Still Waiting for the Next Big Thing? – The New York Times
Experts Warn of “Quantum Apocalypse” – its like the plot of the hacking movie Sneakers. The plot centres around trying to gain possession of a black box called ‘Setec Astronomy’which is an anagram of ‘too many secrets’ is able to crack all current cryptographic schemes. The crypto that secures your credit card transactions or my computer laptop hard drive. Quantum Apocalypse is when someone gets quantum computing to a point were it can complete the same feat
Innovation
99% of common chemicals aren’t sustainable – Futurity – people think that oil is just about petrol and diesel and will have a rude shock. Oil companies and the petrochemical sector still have a future ahead of them. As do mines and quarries.
China sets the pace in adoption of AI in healthcare technology | Financial Times – interesting points on a shortage of different specialists in an ageing society already. The rural | city living split is also raising difficulties – China’s demographic bomb has already gone off. This means a declining China rather than a strong China
1969 vintage ad for General Mills Lucky Charms and Cheerios show the power of a character figure. Use of characters in advertising is declining, and is yet one of the most powerful creative devices available to advertising creatives. More on this on Look Out by Orlando Wood
Media
Japanese Olympic sponsors avoid spotlight fearing backlash – Nikkei Asia – so far they have not run any Olympics-linked TV advertisements in Japan. As of Friday, there has been no Olympic-themed ads, including ones using the logo, according to CM Soken Consulting. This compares with ads by about 30 companies that ran roughly 2,650 times from late January through February during the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics in South Korea. The Olympics has not provided the usual boost to TV sales this time. Japanese sales of TVs since mid-January have been down 5-6% on the year, according to BCN, reflecting the lack of excitement among consumers. The U.S., the U.K., and Australia decided on diplomatic boycotts of the Games by refusing to send government representatives, citing the alleged detention of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and other concerns. Sponsor companies are worried that aggressively supporting the Games could affect their business in those countries. Only a limited number of corporate representatives, including Panasonic Chairman Kazuhiro Tsuga, attended the opening ceremony.”We have no choice but to tone down our PR activity,” said a source at one sponsor company. “This was totally unexpected.” This comes after last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics, during which sponsor companies dialed down their advertising out of consideration for public opinion critical of holding the Games amid a pandemic – apparently viewing numbers on NBC is down 43% across TV and streaming compared to the 2018 winter olympics hosted in Korea (paywall)
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp hit by cyber attack | Financial Times – Chinese hacking project. How things have come from Murdoch being seriously invested in Star Asian satellite broadcasting targeting China and based out of Hong Kong to being an ‘enemy’ of China
The rise and fall of Esprit, SF’s coolest clothing brand – Esprit appealed to the youth with a message of lefty, post-racial harmony. Wild prints, bright colors and baggy silhouettes reigned. Their tote bags and T-shirts hung from all the coolest shoulders, adorning fashion plates with the legendary Esprit logo. With the logo’s omnipresence at the time, it may as well have been Supreme for the teens of the late ’80s and early ’90s. – the article skips over some of the awful things that Esprit did to its Chinese emigrant workers in San Francisco.
Esprit Store in Gentings Casino, Malaysia by Ryan Lackey
The success of Esprit was down to its ‘Europeaness’. It had a Benetton kind of vibe, because they shared the same advertising creative and a similar approach to interior retail space design and bright colours. Esprit eventually listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange but never got its mojo back. The clean logo was designed by John Casado, who had worked for Apple on the Macintosh icons and New Line Cinema
China
Chinese documentary prompts rare criticism of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign | Financial Times – Analysts said the negative reaction to Zero Tolerance suggests the decade-long campaign has not sealed public confidence in the party’s ability to investigate itself for graft, which remains widespread….“Getting caught doesn’t mean you are more corrupt than others,” said a former official at the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the highest government agency responsible for investigation and prosecution of criminal cases. “It just means you have bad luck.” – such a good read and reaffirms much of what I saw in China, prior to and during the early Xi premiership. The way it falls is arbitrary in nature and usually linked to power struggles
For Olympic Sponsors, ‘China Is an Exception’ – The New York Times – At the bottom of the slope where snowboarders will compete in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, an electronic sign cycles through ads for companies like Samsung and Audi. Coca-Cola’s cans are adorned with Olympic rings. Procter & Gamble has opened a beauty salon in the Olympic Village. Visa is the event’s official credit card. President Biden and a handful of other Western leaders may have declared a “diplomatic boycott” of the Winter Games, which begin next week, but some of the world’s most famous brands will still be there. The prominence of these multinational companies, many of them American, has taken the political sting out of the efforts by Mr. Biden and other leaders to punish China for its human rights abuses, including a campaign of repression in the western region of Xinjiang that the State Department has declared a genocide. – at the end of the day, brands are more afraid of Chinese consumers and the Chinese government than they are of western governments and activist consumers
Implications of Revenue Models and Technology for Content Moderation Strategies by Yi Liu, Pinar Yildirim , Z. John Zhang :: SSRN – We show that a self-interested platform can use content moderation as an effective marketing tool to expand its installed user base, to increase the utility of its users, and to achieve its positioning as a moderate or extreme content platform. For the purpose of maximizing its own profit, a platform will balance pruning some extreme content, thus losing some users, with gaining new users because of a more moderate content on the platform. This balancing act will play out differently depending on whether users will have to pay to join (subscription vs advertising revenue models) and on whether the technology for content moderation is perfect.
We show that when conducting content moderation optimally, a platform under advertising is more likely to moderate its content than one under subscription, but does it less aggressively compared to the latter when it does. This is because a platform under advertising is more concerned about expanding its user base, while a platform under subscription is also concerned with users’ willingness-to-pay. We also show a platform’s optimal content moderation strategy depends on its technical sophistication. Because of imperfect technology, a platform may optimally throw away the moderate content more than the extreme content. Therefore, one cannot judge how extreme a platform is by just looking at its content moderation strategy. Furthermore, we show that a platform under advertising does not necessarily benefit from a better technology for content moderation, but one under subscription does, as the latter can always internalize the benefits of a better technology. This means that platforms under different revenue models can have different incentives to improve their content moderation technology.
What China thinks of possible war in Ukraine | The Economist – Both see a world order being reshaped by American weariness and self-doubt, creating chances to test and divide the democratic West. Chinese and Russian diplomats and propaganda organs relay and amplify parallel narratives about the benefits of iron-fisted order over American-style dysfunction. Joint military exercises demonstrate growing trust – but China will be very cautious and nationalists want the Russian Far East back where it belongs as part of China
