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.

  • The insiders guide to smartphone launches

    MWC is one of the key dates in the diary for smartphone launches by manufacturers. Apple marches to the beat of its own drum, but Android manufacturers try and go close to MWC:

    • Samsung has gone out the week before with its foldable smartphones
    • Huawei starts off at MWC as one of a series of launch events for their products
    • Sony Mobile launched there, as well as other minor Android manufacturers


    The reason why they go to MWC is that it has a critical mass of journalists in Barcelona covering bigger impact stories.

    Mobile World Congress 2014

    Expect all kinds of hype on 5G that the smartphone vendors can then ride on.

    Why are smartphone launches news?

    So we know that smartphones are the most personal technology for consumers. For many of us it accompanies everywhere from waking us up in the morning, to work and back again. Some people even take it to the toilet. By definition the devices that we’ll be using through the next year or two will be news.

    But its a miracle that the launches make news since the details of the phones are often leaked. Specifications usually come out through sources in the supply chain. This usually affects both iOS and Android devices.

    Where Android device manufacturers differ is in later leaks. Handsets are often photographed during testing revealing the industrial design. There is often video giving an idea of device real world performance.
    These leaks aren’t accidental, but is often down to egotism or hubris of senior executives. This is very different to the discipline and self-control shown by Apple executives.

    This is often post-rationalised as building buzz. This is counter-intuitive to PR and marketing perceived knowledge. It would make it very hard to justify the kind of large scale dog-and-pony show used to showcase a new phone.

    So far, no phone launch has been seriously hurt by the ego-leak. But now things might change. We’re at a stage were smartphones are a mature sector. Total global unit sales are down year-on-year, this will impact media coverage of smartphone launches over time.

    The launch isn’t the end of the beginning

    The launch event is just the start of activity. Next comes the review programme. This means putting phones in the hands of media journalists and increasingly in the hands of influencers.
    Influencers are more important for a few reasons:

    • They flood social channels in particular YouTube with positive content
    • They’re naturally more likely to react positively as access and devices are still novelties for them compared to journalists
    • Influencers provide reach of marketing messages. Many manufacturers don’t advertise as much as they should relying too much on PR in their marketing mix

  • Brick and mortar retail + more

    Forrester: Why Brick-And-Mortar Is Failing Luxury 02/25/2019 – the failure is department stores rather than ‘owned’ brick-and-mortar stores. You could also argue that department stores are primarily aimed at the mid market part of luxury which is being crushed

    The Kraft Heinz experiment in radical cost-cutting has failed. | LinkedIn – imagine if 3G Capital had succeeded in their hostile bid Unilever as well? 3G Capital deployed zero budgeting the wrong way. Focusing on cost cutting rather than budget optimisation. They haven’t supported their brands and now its coming home to roost

    Number of ‘McRefugees’ increasing, study finds | HKEJ Insight – a seven fold increase over 6 years. More on the background on McRefugees

    Luxury Brands Learn How to Speak Streetwear Their Own Way | High Snobriety – High Snobriety on the luxury fashion hybridisation. If you like that article you’ll love Louis Vuitton, Supreme and the tangled relationship between streetwear and luxury brands

    Explaining p-values with puppies – Hacker Noon – best bit of content that I’ve read all week

    LG’s Dual Screen foldable phone breaks apart – BBC News – probably much smarter approach. I still don’t get what the use case is

    Malaysia Airlines pitch called off – agencies get apology from CEO and compensation – Mumbrella Asia – be a client organisation like this

    Chinese Whispers: Tourists Spend Less on Luxury Goods When Traveling in Japan and Hong Kong, and More | Jing Daily – the massive size of China’s e-tailing sector is insane

    Why Meituan Dianping is one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies – recommendation of services a bit like Amazon’s product recommendations

    CYC – Technology overview – one of the best critiques of machine learning that I’ve seen. Cyc have spent decades building rules to move towards artificial intelligence. They now have products that do narrow jobs in certain verticals (PDF)

    ‘Huawei Mate X’ foldable phone leaks ahead of unveiling – 9to5Google – where’s the screen from; I thought this was Samsung exclusive technology. Why would they help Huawei?

    U.K. cites big se­cu­rity is­sues with Huawei (The Washington Post), 21 Feb 2019 – Huawei shockingly slow at fixing Infosec issues

  • PR trends and Edelman’s recent results

    David Brain has written a good PR trends piece over at his blog on Edelman’s recent results. In particular, David focuses on the PR industry’s reaction to those results (some find it amusing to see the class swot get a B-grade). There is a temporary amnesia of other agency group problems. Go and have a read of David’s piece here.

    struggles

    PR Week ran a piece asking if Edelman’s problems were down to the agency focus on creative talent? This quote from Fleishman Hillard’s Jim Donaldson digs into some of the perceived challenges:

    “We have a slightly different approach based in part on the fact I’m not aware of a huge amount of success coming from bringing traditional ad creatives into PR agencies,” Donaldson (below, with deputy CEO Ali Gee) tells PRWeek. “That doesn’t mean this particular hire [Judy John] won’t work; maybe they’ll crack the formula. But it’s not necessarily the way we’re looking to pursue it.”

    “Partly it’s a financial thing. They can be enormously expensive. But also we haven’t seen it work elsewhere, so we look for a different sort of person that approaches things from a slightly different way.”

    Fleishman’s approach is to drive creativity throughout all parts of the agency from the bottom up, rather than bringing in crack teams of creatives.

    PR Week – Edelman’s ‘earned creative’ is noble, but does it work?

    Now you’re all caught up here’s my thoughts on David’s piece:

    • Richard’s approach isn’t right for every PR business; but that that doesn’t dispute the validity of his approach at Edelman. I still speak with corporate agencies who are still trying to ‘work out digital’. And these are successful businesses; who have had good growth and peer respect. We have PR agencies at all stages on the adoption curve . Secondly, if you are in a large marketing combine, there is a strong incentive to either integrate a la Ogilvy or hand it across the silos

    There are reasons why Fleishman Hillard et al are more conservative in there approach. PR Week covered some of the reasons. Some of the industry commentary in PR Week I viewed with a certain amount of skepticism. Here are some others to consider:

    • Having brought both digital and ‘ad agency style’ strategy to PR agencies, I know that can be hard to implement and make it stick. It’s even harder to bring it to management teams who don’t really want it. The C-suite of a global agency say one thing, but getting to regional and country level is very different. It’s a miracle we have any pioneer thinking in the PR sector at all. As an owner-manager Richard has more power than most
    • The wrong lessons were learned from the digitisation of political campaigning during the Obama elections. Some agencies thought they could replicate it as they were political wonks and roll into consumer marketing. They messed up and are now gun shy in creative and digital. I was in meetings watching agency execs talk on the benefits of democracy and political campaigning. This was in China. It was after the 2008 crisis diminished the western system’s legitimacy in the eyes of Chinese people. There are some specialists like Blue State Digital who have been much smarter

    Richard is probably having a diminished reward for his change at a time when marketing functions are changing dramatically:

    • Inhoused advertising and creative teams are now doing major strategy work. In addition to the original rapid response, tactical content. Organisations like Oliver are providing the flexibility of agenciey style staffing to inhousing operations. So brands get the best of both worlds. Its part of the uberisation of services. Oliver does run the risk of disruption by the likes of Adecco or Manpower
    • Vendors such as Adobe have stripped out some of the pockets of agency value pricing out of digital build and measurement work. Once configured automated marketer friendly reports are a lot easier and automatically distributed. You can put up local / brand specific websites much faster than legacy systems in use like Vignette / Open Text. (I don’t mean to pick on Open Text, but they are an iconic player). Having gone through the painful process being the client on the build of a global web template, I can appreciate the gains made. The template is then rolled out to local country websites via the company-wide CMS. You could have teams doing this process across tens of brands at a time around the world
    • There is a changing media agenda to a more media neutral media approach is healthier for brands than digital at all costs. Anything that promotes more critical thinking around paid and earned digital is good for the industry in the longer term. It is important to remember that thought leaders like disruption commentary has an implicit agenda. McKinsey and Deloitte look to have a series of ongoing projects in a client, rather than solving a problem. The digital disruption meme has meant that businesses have taken their eye off long term brand value. Until recently, the digital disruption meme prevented critical evalution of channels. This has changed. But with CMOs staying in their roles for short tenures, brand building may not be secure in its place on the agenda

  • Shut down digital marketing + more

    Mark Ritson: It’s time to shut down digital marketing teams for good | Marketing Week – return to media neutral and evidence based marketing? It also reminded me of a debate that I had back in 2008 with James Warren about when were we likely to see the end of the digital strategist. It hasn’t happened yet, because there are plenty of businesses selling ‘digital transformation’. Basically the old enterprise IT sales process in a new design thinking bottle. I suspect that the time to shut down digital marketing teams might be a while away yet, though I agree with Ritson’s sentiment.

    Carmakers quitting Britain won’t blame Brexit – it’s not in their interest | The Guardian – classic reputation management; I don’t blame the Japanese for taking this approach. I imagine that Mini, Bentley and Rolls Royce might take this approach too, if the brands survive electrification. Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover may go further showcasing India or China as a premium vehicle powerhouse.

    Europe lagging on 5G? Don’t be so sure, says Ericsson | total telecom – Ericsson believe that the move to speed up 5G rollout in Europe will come from Industrial, rather than consumer focused use cases. European government’s and operators are looking to fast track their 5G rollout programmes, dispelling the myth that Europe will be ‘late to the 5G party’, according to an industry expert

    WSJ City | Key investors unhappy with SoftBank Tech-Investment Fund – not terribly surprised

    Gender and box office performance: Applied Economics Letters: Vol 26, No 9 – having a male star in a film generated a premium in the neighbourhood of 12%, while female star had no statistical impact on a movie’s performance – is this down to the way that they are marketed or the way that male stars are perceived versus female stars? I also tend to follow directors because of the sense of style that they bring to a story. Their name is a mark of quality

  • 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)