Ged Carroll

Category: business | 商業 | 상업 | ビジネス

My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.

At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.

I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.

Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.

I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.

Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.

  • Instagram and Facebook

    I started posts on the Facebook acquisition of Instagram a number of times but got nowhere, so I thought I would collect up some of them thoughts and put them here. So here are some of those random thoughts:

    • Instagram and Facebook are very different types of social network. Instagram seems to tape into a latent passion for us to be creators, it came up with an application that flatters us into thinking that we may have a good eye for photography. Facebook is much more about gathering and sharing humint with their loose network, a poorly designed address book and an event organisation platform
    • Instagram and Facebook have very different design philosophies. Instagram is much more of a traditional web 2.0 firm. It’s product does one thing very well and makes the complex simpler for the consumer. Facebook’s user experience is well shit. This is probably for a number of reasons:
    1. Facebook has a culture were engineering trumps design rather than the two disciplines been seen as equal partners like say Apple
    2. Competition – Facebook has evolved from its original mission adding additional features as it was threatened by different platforms: notably Twitter. But the user experience hasn’t scaled as well
    3. Monetisation – Facebook has been working hard to monetise its business with its advertising units, but you need content to advertise against. Much of the design is about wringing content out of consumers (and then having the opportunity to sell inventory against it)
    4. Privacy – In order to get the humint to share with audiences, Facebook needs to strike a balance keeping the law and privacy advocates at bay whilst making it sufficiently difficult that consumers don’t lock down their data and consequently constrict advertising opportunities
    • An extension of the design difference between Instagram and Facebook makes me wonder about how long the Instagram talent will actually stay at Facebook beyond any lock-in period? I am making assumption that the deal was at least partly motivated by the Instagram’s team expertise in mobile service development and that would be dependent on retaining the talent.
    • Talent retention is also critical if Facebook acquired Instagram as a defensive play like it did with Octazen. In this case Facebook would be looking to lock up talent for as long as they could.
    • 1 billion dollars in shares isn’t as expensive as 1 billion dollars in cash; consequently the cost is probably relatively cheap for Zuckerberg. Think of it this way – how real is the money that you make when the value of your house goes up or down until you actually come to sell the house? Cisco was a past master at large share-only purchases when it was a hot stock. This hasn’t impacted Facebook’s cash-flow, but it has shaken the institutional investors looking at Facebook’s IPO. Again this doesn’t really matter to Zuckerberg because Facebook shares will sell anyway because of the heat around the company. Zuckerberg has less to lose than the Cisco team did because of the way that Facebook’s voting stock is structured allowing its CEO to retain power
    • It used to be that there were a number of start-ups whose business model was to sell themselves on to a large dominant industry player. Over time the industry player changed: Cisco, Microsoft, Google but the business model remained constant. I expect the new target acquirer to be Facebook as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists dream of a quick buck rather than building something great
    • 10 years from now, I still don’t know whether we will be looking back on the Instagram acquisition as being a similar folly to Yahoo!’s purchase of Broadcast.com now looks in hindsight. On one hand I feel confident because of the deal structure being in Facebook shares, and the price being small in comparison to the current notional value of the Facebook business. But for the reasons I have outlined above I am less convinced in terms of long-term fit with the business and relative importance of Instagram
    • Instagram were right to say yes. The timing couldn’t have been better, on the one hand in the short term Instagram is growing fast; its move on to the Android platform previously being an iOS-only application. In retrospect, this looks like Instagram moving from early adopter usage to early majority service users. At the same time a number of services are now integrating Instagram-type filters into their mobile applications, one of the examples I use is Tencent’s Weixin (WeChat) application, so it could be rapidly becoming a feature rather than a reason for purchase

    More related content can be found here.

  • The Great Reset by Richard Florida

    The Great Reset is a North American financial crisis tinged refresh of Richard Florida’s earlier work Who is your city? which looks at the way the knowledge economy and the creative classes who work within it tend to cluster in certain cities. Florida sets the scene by looking at the way two different financial recessions had affected the American landscape. Changes in 1870, saw emigration from the countryside to the cities to participate in the US version of the industrial revolution.

    The 1930s with the rise of the motor car was the start of the suburb as an easier commute to work and a more pleasant environment than the inner city.

    The financial crisis Florida posits will herald a reinvention of the city. Young people in the creative classes no longer own a car and have different aspirations including a lower propensity to buy luxury goods; they want to live closer to work and amenities. In an energy poor future local will become much more important, so high density urban living will happen in city clusters where the knowledge economies congregate.

    Whilst interesting The Great Reset felt as if Richard Florida was phoning this book in rather than shaking the tree. Whilst his ideas were interesting there wasn’t the sense of discovery there. Secondly the book much more more North American centric than before. If you’ve read Who is your city? leave this one on the shelf and walk on by.

  • Korean customer service

    Coming from the UK, Korean customer service experience is amazing. Korea has a lower minimum wage than the UK, like China, when you pull into a filling station your fuel is pumped for you by an attendant. This means that Korean customer service often has a personal touch. However this doesn’t mean that you get table service in a coffee shop. Instead you buy your drinks and food, find a table and when your order is ready to collect a wi-fi pager usually shaped like a hockey puck starts flashing letting you know that you can collect your order. 

    Here’s an example of one of these Korean customer service pucks from A Twosome Place. 
    wifi puck - The Coffee Bean, Seoul, Korea
    This relies on a certain amount of social trust as you will have already put your bag down at your table may not want to take it with you to collect your order.

    This would be a major flaw here in the UK where petty thieves and pickpockets are depressingly commonplace. I would imagine that that both bags and wi-fi pagers would disappear.

    Generally, Korea is much safer in the UK so this isn’t too much of an issue. It an example of how technology has mediated a semi-table service experience.
    A Twosome Place wifi puck

    More technology related content here.

  • Chain coffee shops

    I had been in Korea less than 24 hours and already the number and diversity of chain coffee shops had surprised me. Whilst some people may call Seattle the home of the coffee shop, Seoul seems to have far more at least in terms of independent coffee shops and chain coffee shops.

    The quality of chain coffee shops seem to vary enormously and they seem to be very segmented in terms of their offering. Whilst Starbucks is in the Korean market with a substantial footprint – it hasn’t managed to achieve total market dominance in the way it has in the UK.

    From the small mom-and-pop shop feel of Mr Coffee to the mega-chain to Tom Tom Coffee there is something for everyone:

    • Coffee Bean – Korea’s oldest successful coffee shop brand isn’t as trendy as Caffé Bene. It has a mix of coffee and tea drink alternatives similar to Starbucks. It uses  wi-fi enabled buzzer to let you know when your order is ready. Coffee Bean is much better quality coffee than many of its competitors including Caffé Bene
    • Caffé Bene – the shop aims for a third-space type feel similar to Starbucks – but with a Korean modern design aesthetic.  The restaurant has a range of coffees on its menu including Ethiopian blend. Generally the coffee is milder than Starbucks. It also is known for its food; which is a grade above Starbucks.  Caffé Bene uses wi-fi enabled buzzers to let you know when your order is available to pick up from the counter.  Drip coffee is about two and a half times the price of the UK. Despite weak coffee, Caffé Bene has grown to 700 branches throughout Korea
    • Angel-in-us – aimed more at female customers, apart from the cute mug designs is is very similar in terms of its product and feel to Caffé Bene
    • Mr Coffee is a kiosk operation found at local mass transit stations – it makes a passable cup of coffee
    • Tom n Toms: ubiquitous chain, not known for the quality of its coffee. Inside it is very similar to an American style family restaurant like Dennys
    • Twosome Place – aimed at women.  It has a selection of beautifully presented cakes as an indulgence. . Advertised with a good-looking male celebrity selling a fantasy experience. It is also the chain with the best coffee. if you can handle the smooth marketing alongside The Coffee Bean, A Twosome Place is probably the best major chain to frequent

    Things to watch out for:

    • Prices are generally a third more expensive than Starbucks in other countries such as the UK, Hong Kong and US
    • Forget the flat white, the trendy coffee to order here is the ‘hand drip’ served in a lot of the independent coffee shops
    • People generally don’t understand what a black coffee is; they call it an americano even when its a filter coffee
    • Paid for wi-fi – this maybe due to the ubiquity of LTE | 4G networks and wi-fi bundled into domestic cellular deals. There is one variety of milk available – diary | full-fat. If you don’t have Internet Explorer | PC chances are that you won’t be able to sign up for a temporary account due to Korean reliance on ActiveX for online security – insane, but true
    • Milk – if you are on a diet or lactose intolerant go for black coffee, as milk generally doesn’t have any choices that you can make to customize your drink

    More Korea related posts here.

  • Mobile and TV integration

    Social, search, mobile and TV is the first in a series of posts of observations and thoughts from my recent trip to Korea.

    I was stuck by how mobile and TV advertising integration is achieved through QRcodes, search social and e-commerce. The consumer is surrounded in a brand membrane whilst at home in front of the TV.

    Korea is known for being advanced in social networks and search engines. Twitter has a vibrant community there, but Me2Day gives it a good run for its money.

    KakaoTalk is like a multi-platform version of BBM that brands are using to engage with fans and mature platforms like Cafe Daum, Naver and CyWorld can still school Silicon Valley on all things social.

    The country also has a diverse and vibrant eco-system of television stations with a lot of content based around K-pop stars and celebrity participation. TV is available on mobile devices and is one of the main engines of popular culture. TV enjoys a viewership that you don’t see in the UK or Europe any more.

    Given these two vibrant media eco-systems; advertisers and television commerce operations seek to do multichannel marketing. Here are some examples I took pictures of during a five-minute period during a mid-morning commercial break.


    Daum Mobile search is suggested as Daum is known as a site that provides content of interest for women. Encouraging mobile use allows for an immediate call to action.

    Han Hea Youn is a Korean fashion designer who sells her range of clothing via TV shopping channel. The QRcode at the top of the screen allows for the audience to get more information online and make a purchase.

    Where the product isn’t specifically aimed at a female audience the commercials recommended a search term for Naver Mobile.

    These commercial sections were not best-practice but indicated how true integrated multichannel has become a hygiene factor in Korean advertising campaigns. More related content here.