Willkommen – welcome to the Germany category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to Germany, business issues, the German people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Berghain launched a new brand collaboration with Volkswagen. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Germany.
So far, I haven’t had too much German related content here at the moment. That’s just the way things work out sometimes.
Where I have talked about Germany much of my discussions have focused around innovation or design due to German history and reliance on its manufacturing sector. It hasn’t deindustrialised to the same extent as the UK did during the 1980s.
However it hasn’t been all good. A classic example is how German car manufacturers. They had been behind the curve on both electric and hydrogen powered vehicles compared to China, the US and Korea. While German strength is in traditional engineering areas such as software have been much more hit and miss.
I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.
If there are German related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.
Interesting interview with author Steve Saxty on how BMW as a modern car brand came into being as the ultimate driving machine and a discussion on what eventually became the 1-series. The brand value of it being the ultimate driving machine actually came from a review by US magazine Road & Track in the early 1970s.
This seems to have parlayed itself into an internal insight at the company and was then manifested in advertising by the 1980s. I remember seeing an interview with an ad exec at the UK agency claiming that it was an insight they had come up with. The truth can be a pesky thing.
The phrase itself worked really well from the small lightweight sporty saloons that Road and Track loved to the large executive models of the 7-series. Whatever your criteria was, BMW positioned itself as the ultimate driving machine.
Bob Hoffman is a long-time ad man and long-time commentator who points out the foibles of technology-driven marketing. His book 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising is a good read for anyone jumping on a plane. Hoffman has recently given away two books in electronic format Inside the black box focuses on the online advertising industrial complex, MKTG STINX takes a broader brush to things.
BBC coverage of GAA All-Ireland hurling final
For a long time BBC Northern Ireland have covered the key GAA matches. But this was the first time that the main BBC network carried the GAA All Ireland hurling final. 3pm I sat down in front the television to watch the BBC with volume down and my Mac playing the RTE Radio 1 commentary through its speakers. This is the same way as I have listened to the game all my life and I wasn’t going to change now. But it was refreshing that I didn’t have to trek out to a pub or fiddle with a VPN to secure video of the game. Cork vs. Clare gave hurling neophytes a great introduction with the winning score done during the last play of extra time.
Thamesmead time’s up
I have a soft spot for brutalism as an architecture style. I put this down to the clinic I was taken to as a small child which was part of a bigger civic centre including a library. It had massive concrete features and overhangs. It was quiet inside, great to climb and play on outside and the overhangs kept the hottest sun away from the massive round windows.
Brutalism felt comforting and futuristic, which was probably why Stanley Kubrick shot key parts of A Clockwork Orange in Thamesmead. But the Peabody Trust are well on their way to demolishing Thamesmead’s iconic buildings.
The IT director is seeing a return to power and its thanks to the power of hackers and AI. The smartphone, the resurgence of Apple and SaaS saw IT decisions become more organic thanks to increased access to online services that provided better features than traditional enterprise software companies and the rise of knowledge working. IT teams found management of mobile devices onerous and faced hostile users.
Michiko Fukahori of the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology at ITU TSB – 8th Chief Technology Officers (CTO) Meeting
This meant that the IT director became less important in software marketing. A decade ago marketing had pivoted to a bottom up approach of ‘land and expand’. This drove the sales of Slack, Monday.com and MongoDB.
Two things impacted this bottom up approach to enterprise innovation:
Cybercrime: ransomware and supply chain attacks. Both are not new, ransomware can be traced back to 1989, with malware known as the AIDS trojan (this had much cultural resonance back then as a name). Supply chain attacks started happening in the 2010s with the Target data breach and by 2011, US politicians were considering it a security issue. Over COVID with the rise of remote working, the attacks increased. The risk put the IT director back in the firing line.
AI governance: generative AI systems learn from their training models and from user inputs, this led to a wide range of concerns from company intellectual property leaving via the AI system, or AI outputs based on intellectual property theft.
The most immediate impact of this is that the IT director is becoming a prized target on more technology marketers agendas again. This takes IT director focused marketing from back in the 1980s and the early 2000s with a top-down c-suite focus including the IT director. This implies that established brands like Microsoft and IBM will do better than buzzier startups. It also means I am less likely to see adverts for Monday.com in my YouTube feed over time.
This doesn’t mean that the IT director won’t be disrupted in other parts of his role as machine learning facilitates process automation in ways that are continuing to evolve.
Brands plan for a quiet Pride Month | News | Campaign Asia – The hesitation around Pride may also be related to executives’ increasing reluctance to speak out on social issues more broadly. Wolff pointed to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, which found that 87% of executives think taking a public stance on a social issue is riskier than staying silent. “Essentially, nine out of every 10 executives believe that the return on investment for their careers is not worth the support during this turbulent time,” said (Kate) Wolff. “This is clearly problematic for both the community and the progress we have made in recent years.”
Chinese Firms Are Investing Heavily in Whisky Market | Yicai Global – Although international liquor giants have developed the local whisky consumption market for many years, the market penetration rate of overseas spirits in China, including whisky, is only about 3 percent. This means domestic whisky producers will need to develop new consumption scenarios, Yang said. Whisky consumption in China centers mainly around nightclubs, gift-giving and tasting events held by affluent consumers, Yang noted, but in these scenarios, imported whisky brands with a long history tend to be more popularly accepted,, so it will be difficult for domestic rivals to compete. According to the latest report from alcohol market analysts IWSR, China’s whisky market was worth CNY5.5 billion (USD758 million) last year, having grown more than fourfold over the past 10 years. It is expected to reach CNY50 billion (USD6.9 billion) in the next five to 10 years.
Yoox Net-a-Porter exits China to focus on more profitable markets – Multi-brand luxury clothing sales platform Yoox Net-a-Porter is closing its China operations, this against a backdrop of other brands also pulling out of Chinese e-commerce including Marc Jacobs fragrances. The corporate line from Richemont was “in the context of a global Yoox Net-a-Porter plan aimed at focusing investments and resources on its core and more profitable geographies”.
Ignite the Scent: The Effectiveness of Implied Explosion in Perfume Ads | the Journal of Advertising Research – Scent is an important product attribute and an integral component of the consumption experience as consumers often want to perceive a product’s smell to make a well-informed purchase decision. It is difficult, however, to communicate the properties of a scent without the physical presence of odorants. Through five experiments conducted in a perfume-advertising context, our research shows that implied explosion, whether visually (e.g., a spritz blast) or semantically created, can increase perceived scent intensity, subsequently enhancing perceived scent persistence. It also found a positive effect of perceived scent persistence on purchase intention. In conclusion, the research suggests that implied explosion can be a powerful tool for advertisers to enhance scent perception, consequently boosting purchase intention.
Mat Baxter’s Huge turnaround job | Contagious – interesting perspective on his time at Huge. What I can’t square it all with is what we know about marketing science and declining effectiveness across digital media
On my LinkedIn, I couldn’t escape from the Cannes festival of advertising. Partly because one of the projects I had been involved in was a shortlisted entry. One of the most prominent films was Dramamine’s ‘The Last Barf Bag: A Tribute to a Cultural Icon’. It was notable because of its humour, which was part of this years theme across categories.
震災復興から生まれた刺し子プロジェクトをブランドに！ 15人のお母さんの挑戦！ – CAMPFIRE (キャンプファイヤー) – ancient Japanese craft – KUON and Sashiko Gals are part of a new generation of designers keeping the traditional Japanese technique of sashiko alive. And together, they are bringing the decorative style of stitching to our favorite sneakers (including techy Salomons!). Sashiko is a type of simple running stitch used in Japan for over a thousand years to reinforce fabrics. It’s typically done with a thick white thread on indigo fabric and made into intricate patterns.
Nationalism in Online Games During War by Eren Bilen, Nino Doghonadze, Robizon Khubulashvili, David Smerdon :: SSRN – We investigate how international conflicts impact the behavior of hostile nationals in online games. Utilizing data from the largest online chess platform, where players can see their opponents’ country flags, we observed behavioral responses based on the opponents’ nationality. Specifically, there is a notable decrease in the share of games played against hostile nationals, indicating a reluctance to engage. Additionally, players show different strategic adjustments: they opt for safer opening moves and exhibit higher persistence in games, evidenced by longer game durations and fewer resignations. This study provides unique insights into the impact of geopolitical conflicts on strategic interactions in an online setting, offering contributions to further understanding human behavior during international conflicts.
The West Coast’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico | WIRED – “Not so long ago, bike theft was a crime of opportunity—a snatch-and-grab, or someone applying a screwdriver to a flimsy lock. Those quaint days are over. Thieves now are more talented and brazen and prolific. They wield portable angle grinders and high-powered cordless screwdrivers. They scope neighborhoods in trucks equipped with ladders, to pluck fine bikes from second-story balconies. They’ll use your Strava feed to shadow you and your nice bike back to your home.” – not terribly surprising, you’ve seen the professionalisation and industrialisation in theft across sectors from shoplifting, car theft and watch thefts so this is continuing the trend.
OpenAI Just Gave Away the Entire Game – The Atlantic – The Scarlett Johansson debacle is a microcosm of AI’s raw deal: It’s happening, and you can’t stop it. This is important not from a technology point of view, but from the mindset of systemic sociopathy that now pervades Silicon Valley.
Apple Intelligence is Right On Time – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – Apple’s orientation towards prioritizing users over developers aligns nicely with its brand promise of privacy and security: Apple would prefer to deliver new features in an integrated fashion as a matter of course; making AI not just compelling but societally acceptable may require exactly that, which means that Apple is arriving on the AI scene just in time.
‘Rare, vintage, Y2K’: Online thrifters are flipping fast fashion. How long can it last? | Vogue Business – as secondhand shopping becomes increasingly commonplace, this latest outburst brings to light the subjectivity of resale. What determines an item’s worth, especially in an age of viral micro-trends and heavy nostalgia? Is it ethically moral to set an item that’s the product of fast fashion — long criticised for not paying workers fairly — at such a steep upcharge, and making profit from it? If someone is willing to pay, does any of it matter?
As a trend omakase has expanded geographically with Japanese cuisine. But it has also expanded in terms of categories covered.
Koreans have taken omakase and pushed it into other areas:
Coffee
Dessert tasting
Barbecue restaurants which are normally a local neighbourhood staple
Wine and champagne-tasting
So how can omakase and luxury come together in the future?
In order to understand how omakase and luxury in the future it is worthwhile paying a good deal of attention to the pressures that the luxury industry is currently under.
Luxury is under pressure
Undoing the mistakes of the past
Luxury has expanded to be the size of industry it currently is due to ‘massification’ by most of the maisons. The exceptions to this would be the likes of Hermés.
Massification
Massification means lowering quality, using globalisation in the supply chain as well as the retail network to manufacture products cheaper. Massification occurred over a three decade period and was covered extensively by former fashion editor Dana Thomas in her book Deluxe.
Around about 2014, Gucci led the way for luxury brands to do streetwear, leading to a more accessible luxury product. Louis Vuitton did the archetypical collection with its 2017 Supreme collaboration.
Contrary to what most people believe luxury is aimed at the middle classes rather than the wealthy. But targeting middle class customers rather than the wealthy poses a number of problems:
Increased capital outlay due to the scale required.
Scale brings challenges in terms of supply chain management and consistency of customer experience. Greater control can be obtained by vertical integration within the supply chain and owning the retail channels. But all of this requires greater expertise and management oversight.
Increased economic sensitivity to shocks such as interest rate and cost of living rises.
Increased risk of devalued stock during an economic downturn. Gucci earnings were down 20 percent alone in Q1, 2024.
Bigger might not always be better over a longer view.
Secondary markets
Secondary markets have been both a boon and a bane for the luxury sector. At one time pre-owned was seen as an ‘entry-level’ product. I bought my first nice watch secondhand once it had depreciated. It was often said that the best entry-level Porsche was a secondhand one.
But gone are the days when you may buy a pre-owned Louis Vuitton purse on a second hand market stall in Paris. Now that will be on Vinted, Vestaire or some other platform.
Secondary market inflated pricing affected luxury businesses in a number of ways
You would be interviewed to go on the waiting list for a Porsche or a Rolex.
Authorised dealers became order takers and dealer customer service slipped.
Your purchasing history would acquire you the rights to buy a Hermés bag over time.
Luxury groups extended their businesses into the pre-owned market. LVMH owned part of secondhand watch retailer Hodinkee. Richemont owned Watchfinder and Yoox-Net-a-Porter who sold a mix of new lines and vintage preowned items. Rolex rolled out its ‘CPO’ programme selling inspected pre-owned Rolex watches through its authorised dealer network.
Things looked really good for the luxury industry, they managed to managed to scale, to a point that LVMH is one of the largest companies in the world:
Massification through global manufacturing supply chains.
Keeping margins high, while letting quality go low.
Address a rising middle class in China, Korea, Japan, the Gulf countries and Russia to counteract the hollowing out of the middle class in the US and western Europe.
Maximising margins through controlling costs via vertical integration up and down the supply chain, from raw materials to retail.
Market change
A few things underpinned the craziness of COVID:
Money was put in consumer pockets, for which they had few outlets.
Supply chains were disrupted as factories closed down or pivoted to manufacturing essential products. For instances Perfums Christian Dior made hand sanitiser for hospitals for free.
A Forrester effect (also known as a bull whip effect) resulted, driving inflation that the world’s economies are coming to terms with now. Secondary effects of this event were the increased interest rates used to reduce demand driven inflation.
Other secondary effects include increased crime levels. London has gone from a luxury shoppers paradise, to having a global reputation amongst elites of being plagued by violent watch and bag robberies. COVID-19 isn’t the only driver of this crime wave, but is a contributing factor.
It has also had a catalysing effect on reducing globalisation to increase national resilience.
Consumers know that a good deal of luxury goods don’t match up with the European artisan heritage story that brands try to sell them. Experts like William Lasry has made public which brands make what kind of products where. Luxury brands often make in places like China due to capability and scale – similar reasons to why Apple products are designed in California and assembled in China. (Seriously, check out William Lasry’s channels, I love some of his visits to high-end Japanese manufacturers).
China
China has been a key focus for luxury brand, but it has changed in a number of different ways:
Chinese consumers have changed in their confidence of native brands and have a lower opinion of many foreign brands. This is partly down to a change in attitudes called guo chao. Guo chao can be traced back to the increased confidence in the run up to the 2008 olympics in Beijing. This was partly fuelled by a series of essays published in 1996 by the likes of academic Wang Xiaodong called China Can Say Now which advocated a modern robust form of Chinese nationalism, which was in stark contrast to the Deng-era vision of globalisation and biding one’s time. In the April before the olympics Chinese consumers boycotted French supermarket brand Carrefour. Over time the negativity of these boycotts have become more-and-more performative and extra-territorial in nature. The current Xi administration has seen fit to weaponise this nationalist sentiment by directing (wrangling is a more accurate term, like cowboys with a cattle train in the Old West) public opinion to further its own ends. A more positive aspect of it has been a more open market for domestic ateliers and brands than had been seen previously. Since before 2019, there have been Chinese efforts to build a rival luxury groups to LVMH and Kering and this fits in with Xi’s distaste for irrational worship of the west.
Xi-era growth. China under Xi Jinping faces multiple challenges around growth. The population is aging and in decline which has implications for declining consumption. Secondly economic growth has slowed compared to the double digit annual economic growth of the Deng, Jiang and Hu administrations. Foreign direct investment in China has declined for a mix of reasons including unattractive Chinese government policies, decline in China’s country brand and long term economic growth forecasts.
Regulatory change
I know what you’re thinking ok, this is very well Ged, but what does it have to do with omakase and luxury futures? Give me a little bit more time and all will be revealed.
While China is an economic superpower with a desire to export its world view and the United States is a hard and soft power super power; the European Union’s super power is legislative in nature.
European regulation drove the globalisation of the GSM mobile telephony standards during the 1990s and 2000s. They have also driven increasing internet privacy standards on web services, much to the chagrin of Alphabet, Meta and Twitter.
Now they are driving environmental standards across a range of areas including:
A carbon tax to take into account the use of fossil fuels in extraction of raw materials, transportation, energy as an input to manufacturing and processing materials.
Product passports from raw materials to product end-of-life encouraging a circular economy and sustainable manufacturing.
This means that the luxury sector has new restrictions on how it operates in the future.
In summary:
We’ve likely reached peak massification due to economic and trade changes.
Market share in China looks uncertain due to changes in consumer sentiment and tastes, meaning, a more local approach might be required or a strategic withdrawal.
Secondary markets show that consumers are open to ownership beyond pristine new products.
Product passports and European legislation means re-examining the whole supply chain and the data to better control it through an entire product life.
Finally, omakase and luxury futures!
Omakase and luxury look like a happy meeting in the future. Think about the tenets of omakase.
An expert provides a personalised experience that is about quality, ceremony and theatre.
The expert decides what you will have and prepares it for you. You are there from selection to the provision of the item.
The ingredients are of fine quality (and often locally sourced).
Going back to go forward.
The future of luxury is about looking back. Tailors who suited generations of families and made alterations to Grandfather’s suit that the son is now wearing. The shirt maker replacing the collars and cuffs. The shoe-maker who refurbishes your shoes and has a set of lasts with your name on, for when he has to make a new set. Getting measured, having your foot cast for a last or getting your watch could be memorable events once again. So there this a precedence for expertise and service levels. But it implies a retail experience that will change dramatically.
New techniques and questions.
Previously with the exception of measuring sessions, these processes were largely concealed from the consumer and were difficult to scale. So it’s worthwhile thinking about how luxury’s omakase future could be extended with modern technology? We have some experiments that might give us some ideas. First up, L’Oreal has showcased bespoke make-up manufacture for a while.
How could high-end perfume makers adapt for products beyond make-up? Improved analysis equipment from the likes of Oxford Nanopore could facilitate individually formulated fragrance products based on skin chemistry.
Adidas experimented with its Speedfactory concept that blended the retail and shoe assembly together.
Technologically there is a lot of promising ideas. Adidas have worked with up-cycled plastics retrieved from the debris brought together by an ocean gyre made into 3d printed soles and fibres. (Look for the Parley label, who Adidas partnered with on this.)
How can additive or automated manufacturing and other processes feel luxe? In what way could they add to the theatre?
This hybridisation of retail and manufacturing changes the nature of both offline and online retail completely. Would even the largest concession in Selfridges or a shopping mall be big enough, or would fashion houses need a single purpose brand experience?
Given that there is likely to be a bit more time between manufacture and presentation of the product than there would be in a sashimi restaurant, what else would go into the maison experience? LVMH is already investing in hotels and resorts like Cheval Blanc which gives it a better understanding of more areas in luxury experience and service.
Localisation would likely to be needed to handle omakase and luxury due to culture and the need for local materials. This might include new materials, such as fungus-derived leather. Of course, this might have negative implications for luxury house supply chains, whether it’s Louis Vuitton’s iconic plastic coated leather, or the Hermés crocodile farm.
Which means that product line-ups could no longer be global in nature. So luxury companies may revisit that the creative process looks like. Should there be a single global vision anymore? Luxury maisons instincts would be to say yes, but could this be an opportunity to own local ateliers in markets like China or the US?
Will there be more local brands instead?
What will a maison’s heritage mean in the future? A luxury maison is about what remains the same as much as what changes. What will happen to long-standing motifs?
Will there be a greater opportunity for more auteurs who are closer to the customers?
How to bridge the tension in terms of choosing for the customer and creativity as well as quality?
We’re talking a very different profile of creative in terms of thinking, attitudes and skills compared to the present.
Service, repair and reuse could learn a lot lessons from traditional tailors and the service networks of watchmakers like Rolex or luggage maker Rimowa.
I could not think of a more exciting or scary time to be setting the brand direction for a luxury maison, let alone the overall direction or the likes of LVMH. But by wrapping local materials, expertise, ritual and a bit of theatre the future could look like a fusion of omakase and luxury.
My mind cast back to one of the first modules I studied at college. There was a lecture on the role of complaint resolution as part of customer services. The idea was that effective complaint resolution engendered trust in a customer service function and was more likely to increase brand loyalty and recommendation to other people. In reality Ehrensberg-Bass Institute have explored this area in more depth and found that customer penetration is more important than customer loyalty.
US National Archives: Approaching Logan Airport. 05/1973 by Michael Manheim
I suspect that the benefit in complaint resolution is more around a premium brand positioning rather than the business benefits of loyalty. This is an interesting frame to consider AirHelp’s global airline ranking. Unlike SkyTrax that focuses on experience, AirHelp weighs its ranking heavily on complaint resolution.
British Airways came 82nd out of 83 airlines assessed, which won’t be a surprise to anyone who has flown with them over the past four years.
Many airlines that would have a high SkyTrax service ranking, didn’t perform as well on complaint resolution.
So there wasn’t a clear correlation between experience resolving lots of customer complaints or a highly evolved service offering.
Emerging car brands scrutinised by Bloomberg and Grant Thornton | Manufacturer – “Chinese brands are dominating the scene with good products, big screens, and impressive interfaces.” However, the challenge arises when considering pricing, as Chinese EVs like the XPeng’s G9 SUV was 72,000 euros competing against the likes of BMW and Mercedes. So they’re going to find it very, difficult and it’s going to come down to price.” Dean pointed out MG’s success in the UK market was achieved by hitting exactly the right sweet spot in terms of pricing. The MG ZS, the second-best-selling battery electric vehicle in the UK, is priced at an average of £31,000, making it compelling in terms of competitive pricing especially in a country where consumers are not fiercely loyal to specific brands. – interesting reading. The way for Chinese vendors to win would be to have Chinese incentivised lease financing, particularly in a time of higher interest rates a la Huawei in the telecoms markets.
American men are dying younger. – by Richard V Reeves – I just don’t think this can be addressed in the current climate of othering and privilege. It would be like trying to hold a meaningful discussion on immigration a few decades ago.
Xi in Nanning; Shanghai and Beijing real estate tweaks; More Hong Kong bounties; Sim Love | Sinocism – the Hong Kong puts bounty on the head of US citizen who has criticised the Hong Kong government in the US. They are all ethic Chinese. So China and the Hong Kong government think that ethnic Chinese wherever they are should be loyal to their respective administrations – in essence their face is their passport. Not even Israel does something similar with the the world’s Jewish community, or Ireland with our diaspora.
Innovation
Quantum Breakthrough: Caltech Scientists Unveil New Way To Erase Quantum Computer Errors – Researchers from Caltech have developed a quantum eraser to correct “erasure” errors in quantum computing systems. This technique, which involves manipulating alkaline-earth neutral atoms in laser light “tweezers,” allows for the detection and correction of errors through fluorescence. The innovation leads to a tenfold improvement in entanglement rates in Rydberg neutral atom systems, representing a crucial step forward in making quantum computers more reliable and scalable.
I had used SCART for a long time. The large parallel port plugs and stiff coaxial cables that looked as if they were limbs that had fallen of a cyberpunk twisted oak, were just part of the living room. Even if you hadn’t looked behind the TV cabinet, you maybe seen them as part of the flight cased TV and laser disc combo back when karaoke first took off as an activity in your local pub. Or the connection between a pub’s TV for Sky Sports and the set-top box held up high on the pub wall for punters to enjoy the game with their drink.
That was up until their replacement by HDMI cables, TOSLINK and ethernet cables in my home TV set-up over the past ten years. SCART was actually the name of the French radio and television makers association who developed the standard back in the mid-1970s. SCART came along as TVs were becoming more reliable and one started to see the decline of the TV rental market.
My parents first TV that they bought in the UK was a HMV-branded set with glowing vacuum tubes in the back despite a relatively modern looking TV case with push buttons similar to this one. SCART came along just a few years later.
A lot of the SCART features assumed that consumers would move to larger TVs with better displays and sound that would come to dominate the living room of European homes. And they were right, though through much of the 1980s many homes still had a 13″ colour portable TV.
SCART became compulsory for televisions sold in France from 1980 onwards. The standard was sufficiently robust and scalable for it to be used in transmitting 1080p high definition video as HDMI came to prominence. France eventually revoked their compulsory adoption of SCART in 2015.
Things that we take as standard on HDMI like using the VCR, set-top box or disc player to turn on the TV, were also standard on SCART from the late 1970s. You could daisy chain equipment together, which was important for people who were early adopters of satellite receivers, cable TV boxes and laser disc players.
SCART came at a time when globalisation moved the gravity of consumer electronics further east. First to Japan, then Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia and eventually China. Brands like Philips, Grundig, Nokia, Nordmende, Thomson and Ferguson were swept to the side by likes of Sony, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Sharp, LG and Samsung.
The SCART socket and plug were clever designs. You could only put them in the right way around and for something with 21 pins in they were not only robust but easy to plug and plug out again. Though once you had a SCART connection set up, you left it well alone.
China’s property crisis is stirring protests across the country – Nikkei Asia – Around 50 to 70 demonstrations are now occurring monthly, though August saw about 100 worker-led protests, three times as many as the same month a year earlier. Since June 2022, demonstrations have occurred in 276 cities nationwide. The protests have been somewhat concentrated in wealthier cities, particularly Shenzhen, Xi’an and Zhengzhou, and together have involved tens of thousands of people.
How Liverpool’s legendary Club 051 was brought back from the brink of demolition – Features – Mixmag – “The nightclub in itself is a thing of the past,” he continues. “Most of the stuff people class as nightclubs now are bars or bar-restaraunts that have DJs playing in there and it’s booze culture. There is industrial clubs, especially in London – but in Liverpool, there isn’t really any.” It’s difficult to disagree with Lee, being in this space with its pillars and it’s expansive-yet-intimate atmosphere feels markedly different to being in the kind of modern venues that tend to be of a similar capacity in the UK — converted warehouses and industrial spaces, with a routine approach of sticking decks and the end of the room alongside the soundsystem and a bar at the back
Design
Language Log » Eddie Bauer – young people either can’t read or don’t want cursive fonts according to this Eddie Bauer rebrand
Case Study | Fashion’s New Rules For Sports Marketing | BoF – When the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games kick off in July 2024, the millions of global fans watching will see far more than just athletes. LVMH brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Berluti will provide uniforms for select teams, while the medals will be the work of its high jewellery label, Chaumet. For the first time ever, the games will feature LVMH-sponsored athletes, including world-champion swimmer Léon Marchand, European champion in artistic gymnastics Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos and Olympic gold-medalist fencer Ezno Lefort. The “premium” partnership between LVMH and the Olympics marks the biggest indication to date of sport’s newfound importance to fashion. Until recently, sport was one of the remaining cultural arenas in which fashion, with a few exceptions, had failed to forge long-lasting and meaningful relationships. That has changed. Fashion brands are waking up to the commercial value of sports like basketball, football, tennis and Formula 1 as they look to be part of the booming sports-sponsorship market, which is projected to grow from $63.1 billion in 2021 to $109.1 billion by 2030, according to PwC.
Survey reveals surprising age trend among paid subscribers of electronic comics in Japan | SoraNews24 – an Internet survey conducted by Oricon ME between May 17 and June 7 of this year revealed. According to 10,438 e-comic reader respondents between the ages of 15-79 who read e-comics at least once per week, the age demographic that subscribed most frequently for these services, at 50.5 percent, was those in their 50s. Conversely, the age group that subscribed least frequently, at 6.2 percent, was those between 10 to 19 years old.
Israel Arms the World’s Autocrats—With Weapons Tested on Palestinians | The New Republic – “It’s either the civil rights in some country or Israel’s right to exist,” said Eli Pinko, the former head of Israel’s Defense Export Control Agency, in 2021. “I would like to see each of you face this dilemma and say: ‘No, we will champion human rights in the other country.’” Under this ethos, the Israeli economy quickly “abandoned oranges for hand grenades,” as one critic memorably quipped. After the Six-Day War in 1967, when the 19-year-old nation launched a preemptive strike on its neighbors—taking over the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights—a new era in Israeli politics began
The Russian Way of War | Foreign Affairs – Russia has long been home to creative thinking in both conventional and nonconventional warfare. In the conventional arena, during the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet military thinkers generated novel ideas such as the concept of deep battle—breaking through enemy lines and creating a continuous moving front. These ideas shaped, and continue to shape, NATO thinking. In the unconventional space, Soviet influence was even more profound. From its founding days, Soviet leaders developed a body of ideas and practices about subversive conflict, including forging documents, co-opting agents abroad, and establishing disinformation campaigns. An early example was the groundbreaking Operation Trest. Carried out in the 1920s, Trest operatives established fictitious underground political cells in Europe in the 1920s to infiltrate anti-Bolshevik groups and lure their members back to the Soviet Union.
Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records | WIRED – The DAS program, formerly known as Hemisphere, is run in coordination with the telecom giant AT&T, which captures and conducts analysis of US call records for law enforcement agencies, from local police and sheriffs’ departments to US customs offices and postal inspectors across the country, according to a White House memo reviewed by WIRED. Records show that the White House has provided more than $6 million to the program, which allows the targeting of the records of any calls that use AT&T’s infrastructure—a maze of routers and switches that crisscross the United States. In a letter to US attorney general Merrick Garland on Sunday, Wyden wrote that he had “serious concerns about the legality” of the DAS program, adding that “troubling information” he’d received “would justifiably outrage many Americans and other members of Congress.” That information, which Wyden says the DOJ confidentially provided to him, is considered “sensitive but unclassified”
