3 minutes estimated reading time
SITA
SITA | SITA statement about security incident – this gave limited and basic information – specifically your name, membership number and tier, seating preferences and a code corresponding to your meal preferences. – according to Cathay Pacific. It looks like this attack on SITA was more about tracking the travel of persons of interest around the world; so more likely to be a state actor rather than commercial motives. China is known to use this kind of data to track and harass its enemies
Business
If you read nothing else here, read this piece of investigative journalism. It reads like something out of a post-Smiley John LeCarre novel – British American Tobacco Fights Dirty In West Africa – OCCRP
Like China, The West Needs National Champions
China
Jack Ma personifies the contradiction of China’s ideology | Financial Times – interesting end to the article, with a question about whether Goldman Sachs, BlackRock et al will be able to convincingly align themselves “politically, intellectually and emotionally” with Xi Jingping? How will the west regard Communist party cells in their management decision structures?
China, Russia Images in U.S. Hit Historic Lows – I would imagine that this is a bigger problem for China than Russia. I think will continue to be a big issue for China and would be mirrored across other western countries across Europe. Worth reading alongside Xi Jinping turned me into a China hawk – POLITICO
The Fall of China’s Working-Class ‘Palaces’ – Sixth Tone – interesting read on ‘peoples palace’ public spaces
Luxury
Kering bets on first-mover advantage with resale | Vogue Business – pretty much all the major houses now have a resale brand of sorts
H. MOSER & CIE SWISS ALP WATCH FINAL UPGRADE | Watches News – I do like the sense of humour in the design
LOEWE | The Loewe Show Has Been Cancelled – Loewe’s approach to marketing its spring and summer collection aped a newspaper to create a cookbook.
Marketing
An Oral History of Mountain Dew’s Puppy Monkey Baby Super Bowl Ad – this feels like the creative was done before the strategy which sounds completely out of whack
Airbnb slashes spend in permanent shift from performance marketing to brand | Campaign – makes sense since AirBnB is ‘verging’ as Faris Yakob would say. And here comes the why: Why you need a strong brand to win in e-commerce: Adidas’ Simon Peel | WARC. More from Simon Peel here.
Tymbals : The Agency of the Future – I was reading this by Nigel Scott. I suspect that he’ll be right. My main concern as a marketer is the piss-poor job that the martech stack players do, supporting brand building. The fundamental problem is they only view things from a performance marketing perspective because engineers, programme managers and even the company CMOs don’t get brand. These are the people that brought us growth hacking. Their model is a secondhand car lot salesman.
Shoppertainment & Livestreaming Gain Steam in Europe’s E-Commerce | Alizila – QVC on your mobile…..
Russia
Why the Europeans Don’t Have a Russia Policy – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – the belief held by the older generation of German Social Democrats—and Christian Democrats—that Russia should not be isolated. This was the thinking behind Germany’s Ostpolitik, or Eastern policy, which was begun by the Social Democrats in the late 1960s. That policy was based not only on the idea of dialogue with Russia but also on the notion of Wandel durch Annäherung, or change through
Technology
Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound Countdown | The Science Behind the Sound | Qualcomm – I think that this sits between two stools. It isn’t hi-fi and it won’t be cheap.
Wave Goodbye, Hello MIPS as Chapter 11 Resolved | EE Times – still has a strategic focus on the RISC-based processor architectures. They are looking to support a mix of legacy MIPS technology and a new “standards-based 8th generation architecture,” based on the open source RISC-V processor standard
Can WhatsApp stop misinformation without compromising encryption? — Quartz
Don’t know how to train your dog? This device will do it for you – CNET
Tools
I have been playing with this for a few days now and could definitely see a use for it – flowchart.fun