Cohn & Wolfe + other news

2 minutes estimated reading time

Cohn & Wolfe China goals

Cohn & Wolfe CEO eyes 27.3% growth in China | China Daily – huge ask for Cohn & Wolfe given the rise in domestic competitors and aggressive international competitors, just 6% growth in GDP compared to 14% in go-go years. FMCG sector numbers that are awful etc. Cohn & Wolfe would need to swap out representing western brands for local brands as Chinese consumers buy domestic in increasing numbers. Cohn & Wolfe might be thinking more about trying to capture Chinese brands going global, but Chinese companies tend to not build brands.

Consumer behaviour

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic – technology demonised for behavioural disfunction. Some of the statistics are interesting, but the conclusions aren’t

Economics

China’s Robot Revolution May Affect the Global Economy – Bloomberg – “By turbocharging supply and depressing demand, automation risks exacerbating China’s reliance on export-driven growth – threatening hopes for a more balanced domestic and global economy” 

Ethics

Two China Tech Titans Wrestle Over User Data – WSJ – WeChat owner Tencent Holdings Ltd. contends that Huawei is effectively taking Tencent’s data and violating the privacy of WeChat users, according to people familiar with the situation. It has asked the Chinese government to intervene, these people say – I have to wonder what they are doing to their western customers or what might happen to AT&T subscribers ‘lucky enough’ next year to have a Huawei handset (paywall)

Marketing

Adidas has found that models and bloggers, not athletes, are the key to selling sportswear to women – this could have a huge impact on its sponsorship programme, which might be bad for top level women in sport

Media

Digital listening surges closer to 50% | Digital Radio – interesting RAJAR data

Online

China holds drill to shut down ‘harmful’ websites | Reuters – interesting implications beyond censorship of illegal content. Could also have implications for command-and-control servers for malware etc

Technology

Scrapping the combustion engine: the metals critical to success of EVs | Hoffmann Centre for Sustainable Resource Economy – surprised greater consideration article isn’t given to capacitor storage systems and other Li ion alternatives or hydrogen fuel cells

Apple’s first academic machine learning paper won a top AI conference prize — Quartz – interesting, but I don’t think anyone is advancing as quickly as the hype promised

UK Samsung TVs bricked after firmware update (updated) | Engadget   – “Samsung is aware of a small number of TVs in the UK (less than 200) affected by a firmware update to 2017 MU Series TVs on 17th August. Once this issue was identified, the update was switched off and we’re now working with each customer to resolve the issue. Any customers affected are encouraged to get in touch with Samsung directly (1-800 SAMSUNG). We would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused to our customers.”

Technics SL-1200GR turntable is finally here – praise be. More on Technics here.