OrCam Read – Transform the Way You Read – YouTube – I watched this video and wondered if this was a sign of failure in the education sector in terms of literacy. As far as I can tell, OrCam is a dedicated OCR appliance that reads back the text to you. In essence it is playing the same role as a scribe to a medieval lord. I suspect that OrCam is a product looking for a market and this is a skewed pitch
Are some personalities just better? – All-blues might really be happier and healthier. If so, it could a result of late modernity, or it might have always been true. Still, that doesn’t mean that evolution will favor all-blues, or that all-blues are “more successful”
How the U.S. Government Can Learn to See the Future – Lawfare – Research over the past decade funded by the U.S. government demonstrates that “keeping score” by quantifying the probability that a potential event will or will not happen leads to improved forecasting accuracy. This is especially true when that scorekeeping is paired with training to reduce cognitive biases, as well as tools that combine the forecasts of many people together, harnessing the “wisdom of crowds.” These methods are not just for carnival games and stock trading. They can provide clearer insight on national security questions – it looks like prediction markets might be getting their time in the sun again
Security
Sweden drops Russian hacking investigation due to legal complications | The Record by Recorded Future – Swedish government dropped today its investigation into the 2017 hack of its sports authority, citing the legal constraints that would have prevented prosecutors from charging the Russian hackers responsible for the intrusion, which officials claimed were mere pawns operating on behalf of a “foreign power.”
Advertising pioneer Bill Bernbach in conversation with Helmut Krone talk about advertising with some interesting examples of what we’d now call challenger marketing. I have been reading Bill Bernbach Said this week. Its a book of quotes from Bernbach that advertising DDB compiled over his time as a leader. The Avis ads were famous to me as they were cited by my lecturers in college.
I want my MTV
George Lois talks about ‘I want my MTV’ and Lee Clow talks about working on Apple‘s advertising in the 1980s in a panel at the 2013 Cannes Lions. Interesting lines about the courage to fight for your work, which is much harder to do now. I want my MTV is an example of creating demand pull from consumers through the cable TV companies.
Steve Jobs apparently referenced Bill Bernbach in meetings with Lee Clow, which is unusual for 25 year old non-marketer, even today. From the beginning Jobs was citing the Sony brand as an influence.
Skate birds
RTÉ News made a short film on how Irish women are taking up skateboarding and making the sport more inclusive by nature. The skate park looks like one of the original concrete ones from the first era of skateboarding popularity during the late 1970s. Skateboarding had a small but dedicated following, probably less so than the UK.
Storytelling in County Clare
Great archive footage of Irish storytelling in 1979, shot in a pub in Co. Clare. Seanchaí (shan-a-key) were Irish storytellers, they entertained crowds in pubs and local households before television. With recordings devices, researchers travelled around the countryside capturing oral history, songs and stories for National Folklore Archive, now kept at University College Dublin. In the 1960s at tourism picked up in Ireland, there was increased interest in their craft.
Standard Chartered to cut branch network in half – Standard Chartered is to reduce its global branch network by half to around 400 to cut long-term costs after the UK bank reported a stronger than expected first quarter profit. The Asia, Africa and Middle East-focused lender, which had as many as 1,200 branches worldwide in 2014, said today it will shrink the network to a third of that total as it also gives up office space worldwide – this move by Standard Chartered seems to be a short term move to try and please investors
Consumer behaviour
Sex sells: China farm region becomes ‘lingerie capital’ | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – around 2013, volumes soared as younger Chinese consumers began discovering their sensuality, Lei said. Most buyers are now between 22 and 25. Initially, loose-fitting, not-too-revealing designs were favoured in China. Today, semi-transparent, “body-hugging” numbers dominate
Why are South Korea’s young men turning against Moon Jae-in and his ruling party? | South China Morning Post – Unpopular housing policies and a backlash against Moon’s perceived ‘feminist’ agenda has seen support for his Democratic Party administration collapse among Korean men in their 20s and 30s. Not so among young women, however – meaning victory for the opposition is far from guaranteed at the next presidential elections set for March 2022
Glancing at your phone quickly prompts other people to do the same | New Scientist – Such a rapid, automatic response is probably due to people mimicking each other without realising it – what scientists call the “chameleon effect”. While such mimicry is thought to have evolved in human societies to help people bond with each other, mimicking mobile phone use might have the opposite effect, says Elisabetta Palagi at the University of Pisa, Italy. “We have a need to follow the norms imposed on us by people around us, to [match] our actions with theirs in this automatic way,” she says. “But smartphones can increase social isolation through interference and disruption with real-life, ongoing activities.” – digital yawning
Economics
The panopticon of Germany’s foreign trade: New facts on the first globalisation, 1880–1913 | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal – The history of globalisation is usually told in two parts, separated not only by two world wars but also by changes in technology, institutions, and economic logic. This column reconsiders that narrative. Using detailed new evidence on Germany’s foreign trading practices from 1800 to 1913 (the ‘first’ globalisation), it finds that most growth took place along the extensive margin, while 25–30% of trade was intra-industry. If the first globalisation saw substantial heterogeneity within countries and industries, it may be time to re-think the ‘classical’ versus ‘new’ trade paradigm
Pandemic propels Thai mom with ‘nothing to lose’ into internet pornstar | Coconuts Bangkok – And when the internet sees a woman posting sexy nudes, it usually assumes she does porn. At first Fernie hated those insinuations. She felt insulted and would block anyone called her a “porn star.” But it eventually wore her down and, in the way of internet grooming, became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy as the messages kept pouring in. “When I got them that frequently, I started to think of them as compliments,” she said with a giggle. “Then the thought of, ‘If I sell nude pics, I might as well sell porn,’ came to my mind, because they’re similar anyway.” More content related to adult entertainment here.
Toyota will showcase its hydrogen-powered Corolla at Super Taikyu event – Toyota is definitely thinking about a hydrogen future due to the limitations of lithium ion battery cars. Motorsport is where a lot of research and development happens for car and commercial vehicle manufacturers
Yes the Porsche 911 GT3 is a car faster than most people can drive. Yes they all look very similar unless you are a truly devoted petrol head. But I was struck by this review of the Porsche 911 GT3 by Chris Harris. In the early part of his review, he ran the car in to put 1,000 miles on the engine. During that time he focused on the simple joy of driving, which gave me a real hankering to get behind the wheel of a car again. What really struck me was the comments Harris makes about that primally magic time for driving as the light goes down in the evening or the sun comes up in a morning.
Some of my most visceral early memories are of being in the back seat of the family car (unencumbered by a back seat seat belt) during this time. The magic of the early dawn light on winter clouds and wisps of smoke from rural houses as we drove back to the family farmstead in Ireland. Harris’ Porsche 911 GT3 review brought it all rushing back to me.
Media ideas
Thought provoking interview on the future of media, ‘lazy-endism’, balancing hyper-personalisation with wider insight and empathy, and the power of context in media. You won’t necessarily agree with all of it, but it took my thoughts on marketing to interesting places for exploration. Jerry Daykin heads up media for GSK’s consumer business across EMEA.
C-suite’s diminishing appreciation of brand
The Financial Times and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising put together research on the c-suite’s lack of appreciation of marketing. The decline has been taking place over decades.
China’s telecommunications ambitions
Interesting roundtable on information technology and communications which provides great power advantage. Interesting perspective around standards and technology advantages looking at past case studies. China explicitly talks about its desire to project power through the ICT industry basic inputs, supply chain, standards and applications. It looks to build leverage internationally and independence domestically. They want to lock-in their power. It isn’t just about spying but international coercive control.
Hands free airline toilet door
ANA the Japanese airline have rolled out a kit that turns airplane toilet doors into hands free operation. It’s a brilliant piece of design. The work was done by JAMCO – a Japanese company that specialises in the design and manufacture of aircraft interiors.
Revealed: residency loophole in Malta’s cash-for-passports scheme | Malta | The Guardian – Henley’s files reveal that in the early years of the scheme, many applicants told the government upfront that they planned to develop only the most superficial links to the country, with most disclosing that they planned to spend just a few weeks in Malta during the supposed 12-month residency period
US Sanctions Help Crack Malaysian Crime Ring — Radio Free Asia – “This continues a pattern of overseas Chinese actors trying to paper over illegal criminal activities by framing their actions in terms of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the China Dream, or other major initiatives of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party],” the government agency said, referring to China’s ambitious program of building a modern-day Silk Road through a network of infrastructure projects stretching through Southeast Asia, South Asia and elsewhere.
Hong Kong
Wells Fargo plans to shift Asian hub from Hong Kong to Singapore | Financial Times – The plan would involve slowly building up Singapore as Wells Fargo’s Asian hub through a mixture of new hires and redundancies in Hong Kong, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. It would still maintain a presence in the territory. One former employee said the plan was dubbed internally “project sun”.
The mystery mansion near Calgary that has everyone talking – Macleans.ca – Class is something polite Canadians avoid discussing. We think of our country as comparatively classless, and we manage the cognitive dissonance presented by the haves and have-nots of housing by requiring our rich people to keep quiet. They should wear clothes that are well-cut and well-designed, but not flash. Buy the multi-millionaire’s car, but paint it in a sedate hue. Wealthy neighbourhoods should feature winding streets with mature trees and large lots, the better to conceal the true size of the homes built upon them
Inside the ‘digital cleanse’ companies taking on cancel culture | Financial Times – Former Sainsbury’s boss Justin King, one of The Marque’s clients, tells me that part of the appeal of having an SEO-optimised profile was that he was sick of people looking him up on Wikipedia and emailing him to ask if he was the guy who took away the Christmas bonus. “Forever, my Wikipedia profile will tell you that I’m Scrooge,” he says. “The idea that you could keep a single source of truth in one place – my truth about me and what I do – was very appealing.” – the idea of SEO as a ‘luxury’ good is interesting. More related content here.
Marketing
Facebook advertising chief worried about whether it overstated reach | Financial Times – “We are going to get really criticized for that (and justifiably so),” she said. “If we overstated how many actual real people we have in certain demos, there is no question that impacted budget allocations. We have to prepare for the worst here.” Two months ago, other documents in the case revealed that the Facebook product manager in charge of the reach metric said in an internal email that the company had made “revenue we should have never made given the fact [the metric is] based on wrong data”
