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Life Bread homage by craft beer brand
Life Bread is a brand icon. For Hong Kongers the blue or red checked wrappers mean western style bread. Life Bread is as Hong Kong as the Lion Rock – a granite peak that overlooks the city. Life Bread became an emotive icon used in the 2019 Hong Kong protests as an celebration of Hong Kong identity. It has even been celebrated in art. So when a local craft brewer FoamBeerBrewery was launching a bread based IPA it made sense that it would go with packaging that linked back to the Hong Konger lingua franca for bread.
FoamBeerBrewery Bread IPA is available from local high-end supermarket citysuper.
Everybody’s business
I came across this cold war era animated film that explains capitalism and extols its virtues. Nowadays there isn’t the same efforts to promote capitalism in the face of millennial socialism. As these things go, it’s not a bad explainer for economics neophytes.
Immersive billboards
A number of Asian cities have fitted high definition digital billboards that go around the corner of a building. The latest one overlooks Tokyo’s Shibuya crossing.
The content has varied by market, including a golden bull to celebrate lunar new year in Kuala Lumpur. The Tokyo board taps into the Japanese love of cats. Here’s what the animation looks like. It appears sporadically to encourage bystanders to keep watching the adverts that stream on the billboard.
There is a live stream of the billboard available.
Brand China
The communist party of China had its 100 year anniversary celebration to focus on past accomplishments and project its current strength. TL;DR China wants to smash your head into a wall of steel that has been made by 1.4 billion or so Chinese people.
Meanwhile Pew Research was looking at ‘Brand China’
- Most Americans Have ‘Cold’ Views of China. Here’s What They Think About China, In Their Own Words | Pew Research Center
- How people in 17 advanced economies view the U.S. and China | Pew Research Center
While Xi Jingping might not care, it makes trade harder to do with more developed economy.
The one segment where China does seem to have unwavering support is from the progressive left, particularly in American politics. This advocacy seems to be based more on their wishful thinking than any messages delivered by China as Noah Smith discusses in their newsletter.