Month: February 2019

  • Legend of Old McLanden & things from last week

    BMW’s X7 advert about the Legend of Old McLanden has been cited as a piece of feminist advertising. I won’t spoil it for you watch the clip and you’ll see why.

    I think that its part of something different which has been less heralded: a return to craft in advertising. We’re starting to see a refocusing of marketing. Away from the shiny toys of ad tech and influencer networks back to advertising craft.

    The Legend of Old McLanden would fit comfortably with the golden age of TV adverts and I think that’s a good thing for brand building. Especially when we usually only see this kind of thing during the Super Bowl.

    I am a big fan of Visual Politik’s videos, but was unimpressed by this video on crypto currency. I get the attractiveness of a more decentralised internet, BUT I don’t buy into the cryptocurrency hype and believe that blockchain is at best a solution for niche problems.

    The video reminds me a lot about the techno-utopian opinions of the early web, P2P technologies etc. It has value, but it isn’t likely to be transformative in the way its implied.

    SK-II has a new instalment in its #changedestiny themed campaigns called ‘Meet Me Halfway’. This time they focused on the pressure that single Chinese women face during family gatherings for lunar new year.

    It follows on the SK-II marriage market makeover campaign done in 2016. More beauty related content here.

    Whilst many consumer brands have dashed into the influencer marketing space, it interesting that adidas have developed a contra-influencer content. It does

    Diesel’s ‘Be A Follower’ campaign took a similar line to this latest Adidas campaign.

  • Aeron chair + more things

    Why the Aeron Is Still the Most Coveted Seat in the Office | WIRED – love my Aeron chair. The Herman Miller Aeron was an icon during the dot com era. When Enron and at lot of internet startups went bust thousands came on the secondhand market. I picked up my own Aeron on the tail end of the dot com bust from a German reseller. More design related content here

    China’s social credit system shows its teeth, banning millions from taking flights, trains | South China Morning Post – Over 3.59 million Chinese enterprises were added to the official creditworthiness blacklist last year, banning them from a series of activities, including bidding on projects, accessing security markets, taking part in land auctions, issuing corporate bonds, according to the 2018 annual report released by the National Public Credit Information Centre.

    Return of the audio format wars and other money-making scams • The Register – I’d also put it down to dissatisfaction with Spotify et al

    Salesforce’s Marc Benioff speaks about sexual harassment and equal pay – Business Insider – this isn’t about being good but being smart – the value in the business would walk out the door otherwise

    China’s most popular app is a propaganda tool teaching Xi Jinping Thought | South China Morning Post – I wonder if it has been optimised for learning the content?

    AAAS: Machine learning ‘causing science crisis’ – BBC News – high propensity of bullshit results

    Spintronics by ‘straintronics’ | Electroniq – possibility of new hybrid ferro-magnetic semiconductor composite devices

    Amazon HQ2: Leaving New York proves all of Amazon’s critics right – Recode – interesting analysis of Amazon going beyond HQ2. Big tech can now expect a can of whoop-ass to come its way as the Amazon New York debacle showed its vulnerability. When Amazon threw in the towel on the New York City HQ2, it showed the rest of the world how to beat Silicon Valley (AMZN)

    Inside China’s crackdown on young Marxists | Financial Times – Interesting article that posits China’s governmental changes are due to potential societal disruption due to very high Gini score. The Gini score is a measure of inequality. With rising inequality goes potential questions around the Communist Party’s exclusive legitimacy. The 1989 protests where workers joined students came out of inflation, growing inequality, corruption and inflation. This year marks sensitive anniversaries – 30 years since 1989 and 100 years since the founding of the republic.

    China is worried that left leaning student activists will further inflame this. An academic research paper by Yuyu Chen et al at Peking University indicates social mobility fell in the post-Mao era of economic reforms to pre-civil war levels, as measured by the dependence of children’s educational attainment on their fathers’. The money quote: “China is now sufficiently capitalist to make Marxist categories perfectly suited to social analysis,” from Rebecca Karl, professor of Chinese history at New York University. – (paywall)

  • Chinas Disruptors by Edward Tse

    Reading Chinas Disruptors by Edward Tse is a great primer on how China’s enterprises are structured differently to foreign companies. The government / private relationship is a complex one. Tse does a good job at explaining it well. This alone is a good reason to read the book.

    Tse’s background as China based management consultant and academic provides him with a greater understanding of how the China’s entrepreneurs work, which he channels into Chinas Disruptors.

    Innovation

    His points about the equal but different status in Chinese versus Western innovation are well made and not given sufficient consideration in non-Chinese analysis of the country.

    reading

    At the time of publication of Chinas Disruptors, Premier Xi’s changes were only starting to take root and so one has to take Tse’s writing in that lens. He identifies some of the main reasons why Chinese companies have managed to grow, even where they haven’t had explicit government protection: notably eBay versus Alibaba. It is also noticeable that eBay failed in Japan as well.

    Tse didn’t cover how Baidu’s battle with Google in the same depth. Even before Google was banned; Baidu had become the market leader. Google didn’t do as good a job as it should have done indexing the Chinese web. The Chinese web was growing at a faster rate than even Google could have imagined. Google also struggled in other ideogram based language markets like Korea and Japan. This implies a weakness in their core search offering. Baidu has had only limited success outside Chinese language speaking markets.

    Optimistic viewpoint

    The author takes an optimistic view on the future of Chinese companies abroad. He thinks that Chinese approaches applied to foreign markets will win out. Yet one of the key aspects of Haier’s past success has been extreme localisation.

    As an outsider I detect a certain hubris and arrogance in some Chinese companies going abroad.

    Wolf culture

    Tse doesn’t explore the wolf culture at all. The wolf culture that has been fostered inside some of China’s most notable companies has toxic side-effects on employees and partners. Even within the company it can create a ‘them and us’ division that splits Chinese workers from their non-Chinese colleagues. This is much greater than the grain of sand in a shoe type irritation that you get between US and other western management structures. It’s even greater than the insiders / outsiders friction working in a Korean or Japanese firm.

    China acquiring abroad

    One of Tse’s examples: Chinese company Sany acquiring German concrete pump company Putzmeister now looks like a high water mark for Chinese acquisition of German technology and knowhow. Tencent buying into Reddit has seen a community pushback that is designed to push the buttons of an increasing assertive Chinese government.

    The complex amorphous nature of Chinese company structures, the directive nature of their relationships with the Chinese government and strategic nature of their products has created an equal and opposites reaction in foreign markets. Chinese state companies have had variable success in Belt and Road initiative projects. The service sector growth desired hasn’t kicked in yet as Chinese consumers still prefer to save in preparation for whatever future change throws at them.

    Western tire of Chinese tactics and populism rises

    There has also been an attitude change in western businesses who have had enough. They’re tired of the regulatory environment and non-tariff barriers being stacked against them. You also see a backlash against globalisation spreading across the western world which will adversely affect China going global.

    In conclusion, Tse’s work is an excellent primer, just bear in mind when you read it:

    • Edward Tse has a got a glass half-full perspective
    • The one constant in China is economic and social change

    More related content can be found here.

  • Delete your direct messages + more things

    Even years later, Twitter doesnt delete your direct messages | TechCrunch – interesting possible GDPR risk for Twitter. I have cleaned out my public tweet feed as what you share is ephemeral. I could imagine people doing foolish things, but Twitter doesnt delete your direct messages and they could conceivably gathered by court order

    HSBC forex trading costs cut sharply by blockchain – executive | Reuters – low transaction rate, less than 4,000 transactions a day. This looks more like a niche case for blockchain rather than a panacea for fintech

    Why I’m Deleting All My Old Tweets | WIRED – I do it because the content is of a time and loses something out of context and the content is ephemeral. Who cares about my Merry Christmas into the ether of late 2007? I don’t.

    Angry over campus speech by Uighur activist, Chinese students in Canada contact their consulate, film presentation – The Washington PostPeople participating in the chat expressed disbelief that their government operated mass detention centers, saying they had not seen Chinese news reports about them. (The centers have been widely covered in international media, but many of these reports are censored in China.) (paywall) – Interesting for the mirror that it offers up to our own media eco-system and our reality

    Madison Avenue Makeover Insights | Holding Companies at a Tipping Point – interesting take on the advertising holding companies

    EU Elections: Will Populists Win or Have They Peaked? Bloomberg – great use of graphics in this reporting. More design related content here.

    Mastercard’s new “sonic logo” will play every time you make a purchase | Quartz – will this become annoying or will the branding lose its meaning in our world of point of sale beeps particularly in supermarkets and big chain stores?

    Nato Straps – 031CWZ011621w | OMEGA® – Omega have made a strap of synthetic spider silk which is calls BioSteel which is made by AMSilk – a German textile company

  • Pioneer Axe + more things

    Pioneer Axe was an old-time US manufacturing company. The company used skilled labour and machine tools to manufacture axes. The Pioneer Axe plant didn’t seem to have been invested in during the 20th century and globalisation was starting to make itself felt in light industrial areas. This documentary film about their manufacturing process was made just prior to the the business closing. I’m a sucker for these kind of films that show case processes. There is something poetic about them. The processes have likely evolved from an initial plan over time organically to enhance productivity.

    This is one of a series of ads done for RACV Pet Insurance in Australia. It’s the kind of work you’d be proud of doing. I love some of the customised rigs that the disabled dogs have been given to enable to keep being good dogs.

    Naomi Wu demonstrates a bin that heat seals its bags. At first I thought it was frivolous; but then thinking about the kind of summer we had last year I can understand the appeal to reduce smells and the opportunities for insects to take up home in your bin content. The bin is positioned as a smart device; but it isn’t really.

    Water Margin Podcast: Outlaws of the Marsh – my favourite general interest podcast to fill the gap after Cocaine and Rhinestones. It is a podcast that explains in relatable terms the Chinese classic. This makes a lot of sense as the number of characters starts to expand a lot.

    I ended up working out of Somerset House for some of this week and shot this Thameside time lapse video. It is amazing how much river traffic there is on the Thames in central London. Despite the congestion charge and outrageous parking charges, the car is still very popular. More London related content here.