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.
Old money style has been a pre-occupation behind the recent fascination with quiet luxury a la Zegna and Loro Piana.
Loro Piana advertising
The fascination with old money style isn’t new. Streetwear brands and hip-hop culture borrowed from preppy style over the years. Brands like Stüssy, A Bathing Ape, Phat Farm and Sean Jean had pieces that aped preppiness – a second old money style. Prior to Phat Farm, Ralph Lauren had trodden the same path and it inspired ‘Dad style’ in Japan.
Barbour jackets moved off the grouse moors and on to the backs of yuppies in the 1980s and 1990s UK – an urban preoccupation that is still maintained today.
Normcore is the practice of wearing great fashion basics that aren’t heavily branded. More related content can be found here and here.
Harry Farrell and Abraham Newman on the weaponisation of the global financial and trade system highlighted in their book Underground Empire. If I had one criticism it would be viewing this purely as an American trait. A classic example would be Chinese policies (cyber-sovereignty, shadow trade sanctions, coerced technology transfer), Russian food terrorism or EU sanctions on Russia.
Bill Gates feels Generative AI has plateaued, says GPT-5 will not be any better | Technology News – The Indian Express – Gates also predicted that in the next two to five years, the accuracy of AI software will witness a considerable increase along with a reduction in cost. This will lead to the creation of new and reliable applications. Interestingly, he also said that he anticipates a stagnation in development initially. The billionaire said that, with GPT-4, the company has reached a limit, and he does not feel that GPT-5 will be better than its predecessor.
I started thinking about Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption when I read this article: Canon looks to nanoimprint tech for 2nm lithography | EE News Europe. Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption looked on the horizon with the announcement of its nano imprint technology. Nano imprint approach is something that has been explored for a a couple of decades, but had so far been rejected due to challenges of implementation.
Future Ventures on Moore’s Law
Canon now claims that they have it ready for production on middle edge processes with a potential address current leading edge processes. Canon has stuck with nano imprint as a development approach because it is adjacent to Canon’s core technology expertise in inkjet printing.
Canon semiconductor disruption depends on whether it can change the technology roadmaps of memory chip makers and other fabs. This is going to be unlikely, but Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption could disrupt the outlook for other vendors, notably Dutch equipment maker ASML.
Canon semiconductor disruption seems to be part of a wider movement to rethink how semiconductors and adjacent products are manufactured to better facilitate further scaling at reduced capital costs, but few if any will be successful: Dracula plans Europe’s largest OPV plant with inkjet printing | EE News Europe
A New Age Of Genderless Brands? – Branding Strategy Insider – Mikimoto pearls managing to attract men. I see this as an extension of century’s old ‘dandy’ culture from the pearly kings and queens, to 1970s African American style in Detroit and some of Dapper Dan’s work that looked to come up with ostentatious looks.
Chinese Bloggers Might Soon Be Required to Display Their Real Names on Social Media Platforms – the government already knows who they are, this seems to be an effort to expose them more to the general public – which can be volatile and vindictive. And so, this is likely to be an effort to use crowd pressure to reduce divergent or innovative opinions, so the party becomes the originator.
Amazon is thinking about quantumcomputing | Patent Drop – Amazon’s tech essentially acts as a middleman between a quantum computer and the user interface. First, a user makes a request with this service through an “edge computing device” — their own device that isn’t connected to the quantum computer itself. Then the system will “automatically translate the quantum task, quantum algorithm, or quantum circuit” into a representation that a quantum computer can understand. This system will then pick the right quantum computer for a certain job, and work with it on the back end to complete the request
You’re still reading? Great! Welcome to my November 2023 newsletter which marks my 4th issue.
I am not excessively superstitious – but living in Hong Kong rubbed off a bit on me.
I developed a love of milk tea, found the ‘hit women’ cathartic and am still leery of the number 4.
The number 4 is considered unlucky. In Hong Kong buildings, there is no fourth floor – in a similar way to their being no 13th floor in the UK high rise and office blocks. So I hope that this fourth issue doesn’t bring misfortune.
The clocks have gone back and the sun rises reluctantly over the horizon every morning, disappearing earlier each afternoon, but that doesn’t mean that inspiration stops. And it will be Christmas before you know it.
New reader?
If is your first time reading, welcome to my November 2023 newsletter! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
Dimensions of Luxury based on a mix of stuff that I have read from Sense Worldwide, Horizon Catalyst and books on luxury trends.
Every wondered why its dot com rather than full-stop com? So did I.
Analysis on IPSOS research on the value to brands of reputation.
MCN – multi-channel networks. A business type popular in China and Japan is taking a record label approach to a stable of influencers.
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway. Prior to working in advertising, I had a background in manufacturing and consider myself reasonably well read, but some of the material in Conway’s book was completely new to me. Its narrative approach reminds me of the vintage TV documentary series Connections presented by James Burke, that can be found on YouTube.
Beyond Disruption by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. This book looked at non-disruptive innovation. This is diametrically opposed to the way innovation is discussed in Silicon Valley and the mainstream media. More on my view of it here.
The New Working Class by Claire Ainsley. In the advertising industry, we have an acute perception that we might not understand life outside the M25 as we think we do. I thankfully have friends and family in the North to keep me somewhat grounded from the metropolitan elite lifestyle that I lead. Until I read this book, I didn’t realise how grounded the advertising industry was compared to our counterparts in national politics. That this book had to be written is a damning indictment of how out of touch politicos actually are.
Things I have been inspired by.
Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook project – Microsoft, and MIT have worked together to create thousands of free and open audiobooks using text-to-speech technology and Project Gutenberg’s open-access collection of e-books. Via Matt’s Webcurios newsletter.
IPSOS research video seminar on Unlocking The Value of Reputation. This is the closest I have seen to making the case for earned media activities. The full whitepaper is available here. Thanks to Stuart Bruce for the link!
My friend Ian recommended the Honest Brokernewsletter to me and I have found it to be a great read alongside my long time subscription to Bill Bishop’s Sinocism.
DDB Remedy’s meta analysis of marketing science work and academic scientific research on how emotion work for effective campaigns. How The Unexpected and Emotion Work to Influence Behaviour Change – focuses on how surprise when paired with emotion led creative had an increased impact. It all makes sense when you think about the power of salience and distinctiveness in communications; but it’s great to see that someone has drawn the multi-disciplinary research together in a cogent argument.
SEMRush have published a report for 2024 trends in social media platforms: The Vision in a Social Era that is worth downloading and pillaging for ideas that can be sold into clients.
I don’t know if inspired was the right term to use but I noticed 2023 Girlguiding Girl’s Attitudes survey thanks to a former colleague of mine from the start of my agency career. This is a survey that the Girlguiding movement has run over 15 years. Having freelanced on Dove’s ‘Real Beauty‘ campaign back in the day, this one statistic stood out to me.
DeBeers is returning to its ‘A Diamond Is Forever’ campaign. The print campaign image is beautiful with a great use of negative space. DeBeers is spending 20 million dollars on media in the US in China. In the US, I think this makes total sense.
DeBeers
I don’t know how well it will work in China? There isn’t the mental model built up in west over decades around the campaign theme. While the wealthy in China realise that diamonds are recognised as a store of wealth – the guo chao mindset may see gold (and possibly jade) jewellery favoured by at least some younger consumers.
This has been exacerbated by a decline in the number of marriages by just under 11% and a trend to prefer gold has an 18% reduction in diamonds sold in China over the past 12 months. In the meantime the sale of gold has risen by 12%.
I look forward to seeing how the campaign goes.
According to Numerator, online retail platforms will be the big winners from Christmas shopping. The news for the food and beverage services sector isn’t so great.
Finally ‘Knowledge is Power with Kidney Disease took me back to 1988. Rob Base has remade It Takes Two for Bohringer Ingelheim in the US to highlight the linkage between kidney disease and type two diabetes. The message is poignant as Base’s creative partner DJ EZ Rock died in 2014 and suffered from diabetes.
Producer DJ EZ Rock was responsible for the hype backing track based around Lynn Collins ‘Think (about it)’ and backing vocals from Rhonda Parris. (Parris has a short-lived recording career, releasing just one solo single No, No Love – a bit of a proto-House banger heavily influenced by freestyle if you like that kind of thing). Those that knew also had the Derek B remix of It Takes Two, with a heavy kick drum underpinning from a Roland TR-808 drum machine.
Things I have watched.
It’s cold and dark and I make no apology for my films being unapologetically escapist and and entertaining to try and counterweight the drab conditions. I do have some standards through and got material for this November 2023 newsletter.
Zerozerozero – follows a single drug deal between the Mexican cartel and the ’Ndrangheta. However things don’t go according to plan, so as the conspiracy unfolds we get a walk through the international drug trafficking trade across Latin America, Africa and Europe. This was done as a limited series, but I watched it as a boxset. It is directed by Stefano Sollima who did the Sicariofilms and Subarra.
Novembre – A French fictional dramatisation of the government response to coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris at Stade de France and the Bataclan concert venue through to the Saint Dennis raid that resulted in the death of police dog Diesel, which trended on social media with the #jesuisdiesel hashtag. Jean Dujardin shows the range of his ability as an actor from the comedy of his OSS117film series, to the deadly seriousness of this film.
Diva – I originally watched Diva as part of the Moviedrome series of curated films introduced by Alex Cox. At the time Cox personally disliked the film due to it being ‘a film of style’ rather than narrative. I loved it and revisited it on Blu-Ray. It was sharper and I got to appreciate the Vladimir Cosma soundtrack with its mix of opera, classical music and avant-garde compositions.
Alex Cox’s introduction to Diva for the much missed Moviedrome film seasons that used to run on BBC 2.
The Continental – Amazon Prime Video has some great tentpole content and The Continental adds to this. It’s a prequel of sorts to the John Wick universe and starts with a beautifully made feature length pilot. The action would find it hard to live up to the John Wick films, but the impeccable soundtrack manages to surpass them. The alternative past New York of the film has similar vibes to shows like Pennyworth and Gotham.
Useful tools
Better Miro, Mural or Figjam alternative
I have started using Milanote as an alternative to Miro for personal projects. Like Miro it has a mix of templates to get you started. There is an iPhone app and a native Mac app, so you don’t have to rely on running resource hungry pages in your internet browser of choice. It might even replace Omnigraffle in my personal software stack for some of the tasks that I do.
The sales pitch.
It was great to collaborate this month with my Hong Kong and Shanghai-based friends at Craft Associates on a prospective exciting new project. Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
The End.
Ok this is the end of my November 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
Western fast fashion brands have managed to spread around the world, despite concerns over working conditions, product quality and impact on the environment. But things have gone into reverse for western fashion brands in China. Just over a decade ago saw China as a potential growth market. But over the past five years things have gone badly for them.
Looking at western fast fashion brand H&M’s presence in China, there has been a consistent decline since a 2017 peak of 507 stores in China.
Data via Daxue Consulting and South China Morning Post
The reasons cited by Chinese consumers online include:
Western fast fashion brands aren’t cut / styled for ‘Asian body types’. This sounds like a need for extended sizing
Local trends: the clothing doesn’t fit with local trends in design in the same way that local rivals can. Brands to keep an eye out for include Urban Revivo and JNBY
Other foreign brands meet the needs of young Chinese consumers better. These include Brandy Melville, and its “Malibu beach babe” look, while Chuu, is a Korean brand with K-pop aesthetics
Dentsu warns brands over tech ‘battling’ to increase ad revenue – The Media Leader – Global media buyer Dentsu’s forward-looking report said there had been an “explosion of the ad-supported segment” and that next year will see “an intensification of competition between ad platforms” with more lookalike apps, data partnership possibilities, premium subscriptions and a further proliferation of advertising formats and offerings. “Brands will have to balance these opportunities with risks to alienate audiences”, the report said. Especially given the fact digital adspend is forecast to hit $450.6bn in 2024, but its year-on-year growth is slowing to 6.2%. This means tech platforms are “battling” to increase their advertising revenue by launching new formats and carrying more placements. Some examples the report highlighted included: developments in adoption of search advertising on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the rise of retail media on commerce sites, ticketing platforms and delivery apps, forecasted “spectacular growth” in advertising on connected TV (CTV), advertising video on-demand players launching new formats like YouTube’s unskippable 30-second ads, and major streaming players (and Amazon’s Audible) trialling or launching ad-supported plans
Gulnara Karimova Accused of Running Criminal Organization in New Swiss Indictment – The Diplomat – Swiss federal prosecutors filed an indictment against Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s first president Islam Karimov, and an unnamed former general director of the Uzbek subsidiary of a Russian telecommunications company for alleged involvement in a criminal organization, money laundering, bribe taking, and forgery. The charges extend over a period of time running from 2005 to 2013 and mark the latest expansion and extension of criminal proceedings against Karimova and her associates. Karimova, once envisioned as a possible successor to her father, lived large and fell hard.
Power drives SK Telecom to AI pyramid strategy | EE News Europe – The AI Infrastructure plan consists of data centre, AI semiconductor, and multiple large language models (LLM) will serve as a technology platform. This will introduce energy-saving technologies including immersion cooling system and hydrogen fuel cells, and expand into the AI hosting business that generates higher margins by bundling these energy-saving solutions with Sapeon’s neural processing unit (NPU) and SK Hynix’s high bandwidth memory (HBM). – I am surprised that we haven’t seen similar ventures from Oracle, IBM and Fujitsu so far
The Humane AI pin has been hyped for a while. Now it’s been launched as a product with what seems to be a small initial batch based on a waiting list and drop type distribution model. I thought I would wait a bit to post on the Humane AI pin and let the dust settle.
The Humane AI pin is an interesting take on a personal device. particularly with its ‘AI experience’ switching – picking the right smarts for the right task. This seem to fulfil the kind of vision that the likes of Kevin Kelly have outlined in the past. It also seems to access communications services like messaging services and the audio design in the product seems interesting. There is also a projected interface of sorts on the Humane AI pin. It’s an interesting alternative direction to the spatial computing vision of Apple’s Vision Pro.
The Humane AI device falls down in being such a network-centric device. Although it has onboard machine learning technology, its reliance on a relationship with T-Mobile US’ cellular network is problematic. Cellular connectivity is not ubiquitous. It is one of several device visions that have been articulated over the years, but what I still don’t understand is the ‘why?’
What’s going to be more interesting is what the Humane AI pin does next?
US law firms rethink China future amid economic woes, data crackdown | Reuters – Of the 73 largest U.S. law firms with a presence in China, 32 shrank their attorney presence in the last decade, according to a Reuters review of data from Leopard Solutions, which tracks law firm hiring. In Beijing, 26 of the 48 largest U.S. law firms drew down their presence since 2018. Worthwhile reading with: US consultancy Gallup withdraws from China | FT – market research was sensitive when I worked in China. Gallup’s business was closer to consulting than a pollster to get around these challenges. Interesting that they can no longer thread the needle in China
China’s family-run businesses face succession challenges – Nikkei Asia – more than 80% of China’s 1 billion private enterprises are family-owned, with about 29% of these businesses in traditional manufacturing. From 2017 to 2022, around three-quarters of China’s family businesses are in the midst of a generational leadership transition
Post-pandemic party’s over as Americans shun cognac | FT – Half of all cognac in the US is drunk by African Americans, a demographic that has been disproportionately affected by the cost of living crisis, according to analysis by Bernstein. The skew to African American consumers is in part due to the fact that French spirits producers ignored the segregation mandated by America’s Jim Crow laws and “cultivated the African American market segment in ways that other producers did not,” said David Crockett, professor of marketing at the University of Illinois Chicago. French spirits producers at the time marketed to Black-owned and targeted publications. As early as the 1970s the advertisements conveyed a message of upward socio-economic mobility, said Naa Oyo Kwate, a sociologist at Rutgers University
Wong wanted to enter the U.S. consulate. The diplomats told him that only the rooms in the St. John’s Building were on offer, and that the office tower did not offer the protection of a diplomatic compound. In Washington, Ngo took the matter up with one of Hawley’s policy advisers, reasoning that the ultra-Trumpian senator might have the president’s ear. Responding at 1 a.m., Hawley’s staffer promised to pass the message on to his boss, but nothing changed. On July 1, the national-security law passed. The diplomats’ positions were the same: Wong couldn’t enter the consulate and couldn’t apply for asylum from outside the United States. Wong and Ngo knew the rules. But they were asking for the same pathway to haven that had been granted to Fang and Chen…
The focus in Washington has moved on from Hong Kong to Taiwan. The island is under constant military threat from Beijing, which claims the territory as its own, even though the Chinese Communist Party has never controlled it. But for those in Taiwan who cherish their democracy, Hong Kong’s story offers a cautionary tale. The United States gave Hong Kong’s cause its vocal backing, then abandoned the city in its time of greatest need.
Asia is much more important to U.S. interests than the Middle East | Noahpinion – East Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and until recently, Hong Kong are arguably the world’s most magnificent — hyper-dense and efficient and bustling with life and creativity and personal freedom, but also extremely safe. East Asia is a wealthy region with high quality of life across the board, rivaled only by North Europe and parts of the Anglosphere. Maciej Cegłowski called them “Zeroth World”, and I think that is an apt description. – the burn for Hong Kong on this is real
Ideas
The challenges of sustainable societies and solar punk.
The one where Chandler Bing’s impenetrable job defined a generation | FT – André Spicer, Executive Dean of Bayes Business School, suggests a new category altogether: a “Chandler Bing job”, one indifferent to finding meaning, “low on existential rewards but relatively high on extrinsic rewards, like pay and promotion”. Chandler’s stoicism more broadly reflects Gen X’s tacit acceptance of their lot: the forgotten latchkey kids squished between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. Jennifer Dunn, author of Friends: A Cultural History, says he “showed that we might not all find fulfilment in the first, or even the longest lasting job we will ever have.” Compared to today’s employers who are increasingly concerned about making their younger colleagues happy, few cared about Gen X’s work-life balance.
