Ni hao – this category features any blog posts that relate to the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese communist party, Chinese citizens, consumer behaviour, business, and Chinese business abroad.
It is likely the post will also in other categories too. For example a post about Tong Ren Tang might end up in the business section as well. Inevitably everything is inherently political in nature. At the moment, I don’t take suggestions for subject areas or comments on content for this category, it just isn’t worth the hassle.
Why have posts on China? I have been involved in projects there and had Chinese clients. China has some interesting things happening in art, advertising, architecture, design and manufacturing. I have managed to experience some great and not so great aspects of the country and its businesses.
Opinions have been managed by the omnipresent party and this has affected consumer behaviour. Lotte was boycotted and harassed out of the country. Toyota and Honda cars occasionally go through damage by consumer action during particularly high tensions with Japan.
I put stuff here to allow readers to make up their own minds about the PRC. The size of the place makes things complicated and the only constants are change, death, taxes and the party. Things get even more complicated on the global stage.
The unique nature of the Chinese internet and sheltered business sectors means that interesting Galapagos syndrome type things happen.
I have separate sections for Taiwan and Hong Kong, for posts that are specific to them.
Return of reel-to-reel as musicians reject digital for better sound of dated technology – reel-to-reel tape recorders never really went away. They provide a super saturated effect to everything that they record. The bigger issue is perishable spare parts, servicing and future manufacturing of reel-to-reel tape machines. Ballfinger have attempted to make new machines, but existing manufacturers like Studer, Denon, Revox and Otari have long stopped making machines.
TODAYonline | Exclusive: Tesla expects global shortage of electric vehicle battery minerals -sources – what about the environment? One of the reasons why I’ve been skeptical of Tesla’s approach to power for years. Its the reason why the likes of BMW and Toyota have looked at super-capacitors and hydrogen power – both internal combustion engines and fuel cells. It is interesting that Hyundai have been looking at hydrogen fuel cells for lorries. Toyota has hydrogen fuel cell powered cars.
Nike’s Beijing 99 basketball tournament – It is hard to explain how popular basketball in China as a sport. Interest in the game is way beyond Europe. Basketball courts suit built up cities with a smaller area required than for a football pitch. The NBA has a large following in China. The local league has an extensive following as well.
Chinese players that make the NBA draft are celebrated in China as well, even if they aren’t Chinese citizens, like American Taiwanese star Jeremy Lin.
Chinese players like based on an ancient military ranking system with 99 shirts individually designed to be claimed. Nike cleverly melds Chinese interest and pride in their culture with their love of basketball.
Peepy and Mother Lee take influence to the next level. These Thai influencers are on point with style that crosses gender boundaries and is atemporal in nature. I am surprised the Peepy and Mother Lee don’t get more publicity outside Thailand. I am also surprised that they haven’t become the muse of a prominent fashion house or two.
They look like precisely the kind of people someone like Vivienne Westwood would embrace as a muse. More on luxury here.
Yet another way of landing the same Burger King message: Burger King’s flame-grilled glasses are too hot to handle | Creativepool. Having worked on FMCG brand, I know how hard it is to continually land the same messages in different ways that won’t generate groans from the client base. These are brands that people have known for decades, it’s hard to say the same thing in different ways that don’t jade audiences.
This Adobe marketing gimmick was going around a lot of the people that I know – Creative Types – the characters are nicely drawn, but I don’t know how accurate they are. I suspect something even less accurate than the MBTI. This was clever because people want to find out more about themselves, its an itch that they can’t help but scratch. In return Adobe builds their marketing email list.
Great economic analysis on China from the DLD Conference earlier this year
Tristan Harris is getting a lot of traction for his message in wonkish circles and I don’t see big technology firms having their ducks in a row to deal with the outcome. I suspect that some of the problem might be what I describe as a wilful autism. 20 years ago, Silicon Valley was a place with utopian outlook, the unforeseen outcomes happened when the internet reached a societal critical mass.
The Spy craft Revolution – Foreign Policy – really interesting to read from a privacy perspective, spy craft affected as much as general public. Intelligence agencies are apparently just like the rest of us and spy craft reflects this. More security related posts here.
Algocurios – this is what happens when you plug Matt Muir into a machine learning algorithm. I’m just thankful SkyNet didn’t evolve. It doesn’t capture the desperation, profane language and ennui prevalent in Matt’s real posts
Opinion | Is China the World’s Loan Shark? – The New York Times – academics who have studied China’s practices in detail have found scant evidence of a pattern indicating that Chinese banks, acting at the government’s behest, are deliberately over-lending or funding loss-making projects to secure strategic advantages for China.
Ralph Lauren Unveils The Super Woke Polo Shirt | Luxury Insider – a debut line of polo shirts made from recycled plastic bottles and dyed using a waterless production process. Besides being environmentally woke, the initiative has the noble aim of eradicating 170 million plastic bottles from landfills and oceans by 2025
RESIST – counter disinformation tool – published by UK government. There needs to be more done beyond this document however. Secondly, much of the disinformation in the UK is from within the country supporting anti-vaccination, Islamic fundementalism, Islamophobia, the far left and the far right. RESIST feels like a start rather than a solution. This brings up a whole range of issues from security to wider societal ethics. (PDF)
15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook | WIRED – interesting read on the cultural issues and business decisions inside Facebook as it faced criticism externally. The world has changed, Facebook’s culture hasn’t. The comparison between Facebook and Microsoft under Gates and Ballmer is a valid one. This time the stakes are much higher (paywall). More on Facebook here.
I was gobsmacked when Leica dropped The Hunt. Chinese netizens are notoriously nationalistic, taking offence at any perceived slight. Chinese consumers are a big market for Leica and this was way beyond what even Dolce & Gabbana did in China. Like the NBA, Leica will still have diehard fans amongst the camera community in China. It also screws their partner Huawei who make a big deal of their top-of-the-range smartphones using ‘Leica’ cameras. But that maybe the idea given how toxic the Huawei brand is becoming.
More on The Hunt reaction in China from the South China Morning Post.
Gen Z doesn’t want to buy your brand, they want to join it | AdAge – This group isn’t waiting for brands to lead on issues. Instead, they’re leading. Since movements rarely come with a business case or cost-benefit analysis, marketers must consider how they can partner with Gen Z to become more involved and deliver on the promise of purpose (paywall)
Easter Week has mean’t that I’ve been exceptionally busy closing things before taking the long weekend break. Easter isn’t a huge holiday in the Carroll household, but its the first break that we get since the Christmas holiday, so always welcome. For many students in Europe Easter signals a hard push on revision in advance of exams. If you are studying or relaxing Happy Easter and Passover.
Kerri Chandler went through one of his Dad’s record boxes, that he hadn’t previously opened. His Dad had been a DJ and inspired Chandler to get behind the turntables himself.
Chandler Senior’s box is an eclectic collection of songs but also had impeccable taste.
Cerrone – Love in C Minor (1976)
Kerri Chandler – Get It Off (1990)
Kerri Chandler – Super Lover (1990)
Kerri Chandler – Drink On Me (1990)
Ronnie Laws – Always There (1975)
The John Coltrane Quartet – Greensleeves (1961)
Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes – Summer Nights (1975)
The Impressions – People Get Ready (1965)
The Delfonics - Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time) (1969)
Crown Heights Affair – Dreaming a Dream (Goes Dancin) (1976)
Crown Heights Affair – Dancin (Special Disco Mix) (1976)
The Dells – Always Together (1968)
The Dells – I Want My Momma (1968)
The Dells – Agatha Van Thurgood (1968)
Bob James – One Mint Julep (1976)
Bob James – Westchester Lady (1976)
Roy Ayers – Searching (1976)
Teena Marie – Portuguese Love (1981)
Jakki – Sun…Sun…Sun.. (1976)
Donald Byrd – Lansana’s Priestess (1973)
Roy Ayers – Running Away (1977)
Kerri Chandler – Atmosphere E.P. – Track 1 (1993)
Martin Circus – ‘Disco Circus (Disco Version) (1979)
Beats in Space put together yet another amazing mix
Amazon leaving China. Amazon bought into an e-commerce business which at the time had just over 10% of the country’s e-commerce market. At the time I had colleagues in Hong Kong who worked on promoting the newly acquired business. A number of years ago I spent an inordinate amount of time creating a three-page document pitch for the Amazon China business. At that time Amazon’s market share was between 1.5 and 2% of the Chinese e-commerce market place. Five years later and its down to 0.6%.
What’s going on? Like most things there are a wealth of factors impacting foreign competitors in China. But one big one that people probably don’t want to admit is that Silicon Valley isn’t insurmountable. For decades the US technology has managed to concentrate wealth and talent in a small place and then benefited from market scale. Europe has been unable to replicate this success. It’s home market is an aggregation of markets that aren’t as integrated or coalesce as well as the US. And US companies exploit the European single market treating as divisible international components illegally.
When US companies like Google, Uber and Amazon hit China they come up against:
Smart people – Chinese universities churn out huge amounts of developers, engineers, designers and business managers
Huge home market scale
Equally well motivated entrepreneurs who know their home market better than the foreigners. They are also willing to work very hard with a 996 culture
Local market conditions that are divergent from their own. For instance, Google failed to predict how fast it needed to grow its search indexing to match the Chinese web. Baidu kept throwing in the boxes needed. Google had lost when it suddenly changed its mind on censorship
Government regulation (but that isn’t as important as they’d have you believe in most cases)
Amazon thinks that its cross border business where Chinese consumers buy abroad from online will grow. Consumers do this to get products that they can trust. Domestic platforms have made big gains in this market sector too though.
I wouldn’t buy a Range Rover Evogue, even if I was richer than Bill Gates. But I did love this advert.
And this old video of Jim Carroll talking about ideas as they relate to account planning.
