Ged Carroll

Category: hong kong | 香港 | 홍콩 | 香港

哈囉 – here you’ll find posts related to Hong Kong. That includes the territory, the culture, business, creativity and history. I lived and travelled to Hong Kong a number of times, so sometimes the content can be quite random.

In addition, I have long loved Cantonese culture and cuisine, so these might make more appearances on this category. I am saddened by the decline in the film and music production sectors.

I tend to avoid discussing local politics, and the external influence of China’s interference in said politics beyond how it relates to business and consumer behaviour in its broadest context.

Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Apple Daily launched a new ad format that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in branding as well as Hong Kong.

If there are subjects that you think would fit with this category of the blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • Rival device makers on Amazon + more

    Amazon Restricts How Rival Device Makers Buy Ads on Its Site – WSJ – interesting that his is confirmed by both according to Amazon employees and executives at rival companies and advertising firms. Would rival device makers have an antitrust case? It would be harder for Amazon to argue that it doesn’t have a monopoly position in retail. More on Amazon here.

    China’s Sina Agrees to Go Private in Deal Valued at $2.6 Billion – Bloomberg – will probably list on a home stock market like Shanghai, Shenzhen or Hong Kong

    Oxford moves to protect students from China’s Hong Kong security law | The Guardian – one can see this is a direct reaction to Hong Kong’s national security law and also as a reaction to Chinese influence operations on campuses across the western world

    Will The Chinese-Owned French Luxury Brand Baccarat Survive? | Jing Daily – combination of bad management and circumstances. It is interesting that the owner Coco Chu has disappeared

    Mark Riston: It’s time for ‘share of search’ to replace ‘share of voice’ – Peckham’s Formula posits that when you launch a brand you should set its advertising budget based on your desired share of market. Specifically, your initial share of voice should be 1.5 times the desired market share you want to achieve by the end of the brand’s second year.

    Older People Have Become Younger – Neuroscience News – in terms of their mental faculties

    Netflix called out for “Three-Body” author Liu Cixin’s Xinjiang remark — Quartz – Mulan seems to have become a verb in US media in a similar way to ‘it’s all gone Pete Tong’ in late 1980s vernacular English. Although originally ‘gone Pete Tong’ meant that something had gone commercial and mainstream – in effect a sellout, which was a bad thing in the 1990s, when credibility was everything. Netflix might be able to see dramas into China a la the BBC and Sherlock; but I can’t see it being allowed to be a platform. China already has QQVideo iQiyi and PPTV

  • Things that caught my eye this week

    Wieden + Kennedy put together this impressive tribute to Kobe Bryant and riffs on their pivot to individual sports performance rather than elite performers.

    The craft in the video is self-evident. There are bigger questions to be asked about addressing legacy and what we tolerate in greatness. The tribute to Kobe Bryant is a difficult one to reconcile with his legacy. On the one side, he was a great basketball player. On the other side the legacy of Kobe Bryant is also a messy sexual assault claim that he managed to pay his way out of.

    Is a tribute to Kobe Bryant appropriate in a ‘me-too’ world? Is it the right message for Nike to send? Having worked both agency-side and in-house, I would have balked at it.

    https://youtu.be/C9I-W1eTCbk

    Silicon Valley icon Carver Mead talks about the history of semiconductors and the related science behind it. Mead has a unique perspective given the role that he played in the development of Silicon Valley. He did foundational science that contributed to semiconductor development and a lot of the conceptual work on VLSI (very large scale integration). VLSI is the process of creating an integrated circuit by combining large numbers of transistors on a single chip. Over time this has gone from thousands, to millions and then billions of transistors. Mead co-wrote ‘the book’ Introduction to VLSI Systems. Although technology has moved past Meads work on VLSI; there couldn’t have been a smartphone without Mead.

    The Oxford Union hosted a couple of interesting web chats on Hong Kong that shared the perspectives of some of the pro-democracy camp and a former US diplomat and American businessman.

    Interviewees: Nathan Law: Hong Kong politician and activist. A student leader during the 2014 Umbrella Movement, he served on the Hong Kong Legislative Council until his disqualification in 2017. Eddie Chu Hoi-Dick: Social activist and politician. He founded the Land Justice League, a conservationist, pro-democracy group and was elected to the Legislative council of Hong Kong in 2016.

    Both provide a bit more context. What is missing is the Chinese government perspective delivered in a calm logical way rather than a shrill dogmatic manner. More Hong Kong related content here.

    Interviewee: Kurt Tong: American diplomat, serving as Consul General of the United States of America to Hong Kong and Macau between 2016 and 2019. He previously served as U.S. Ambassador for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

    The Avalanches have produced a track with the International Space Orchestra. The International Space Orchestra are musicians who happen to work for NASA or SETI as engineers. The whole things was filmed in lock down which is obvious from the Zoom-like theme in the video.

    The Avalanches – Wherever you go featuring the International Space Orchestra (live in Lockdown)

  • US bankruptcies + more things

    Pandemic triggers wave of billion-dollar US bankruptcies – really interesting data points and charts on large US bankruptcies in this FT article. The bigger question are these billion dollar US bankruptcies like ripping a band-aid off as their demise was inevitable, or are good businesses going to the wall in extreme times? (paywall)

    The Effects of Hong Kong’s National-Security Law Are Already Clear | 新聞 – Yahoo雅虎香港 – Just a few weeks after China’s imposition of a new “national-security law” on Hong Kong, we can already see the law’s effects: It has emboldened the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to suppress dissent, punish activism, and create fear within the city’s democracy movement. In 1997, the United Kingdom returned Hong Kong, which it had governed for 99 years under a lease extorted from the Qing Dynasty, back to the People’s Republic of China. At the time, the PRC promised to preserve the political autonomy and freedoms the city had enjoyed under the British until 2047. The national-security law and the crackdown it initiated marked the breaking of that promise.

    An Oral History of ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’ – The Ringer – the bit about motion capture purely for marketing, rather than improving game play was gold

    Gen Zer men think feminism has ‘gone too far’ | Canvas8 – ok dodgy headline. The interesting thing about this is that it questions the blanket progressiveness wrapped around gen-z. Which is also an indicator of how useless generations can be as shorthand. It would be interesting to see how they compared to previous cohorts of 18 – 29 year olds. Not terribly surprising though. More consumer behaviour related posts here.

    Here’s Why Jackie Chan Is Really Unpopular in Hong Kong | Vice – accurate, but neglects to mention a number of relevant points. That the fate of Chan’s son (arrested on drug use) rests with the Chinese government. So there was at least one point of leverage that the party has over Chan. Adding to the complex relation of Chan’s relationship to the Chinese Communist Party is is own family history. Chan’s father was a Koumintang intelligence officer hounded by the communists. After successive assassination attempts on his life; Chan’s father eventually ran away to Hong Kong and eventually Australia where he worked as a cook. Chan’s mother had smuggled opium in her past. Meanwhile his brothers who were left in China lived a life of hardship full of communist punishments because of who their father was.

    The Case of the Top Secret iPod – TidBITS – interesting article about an impressive device hack to repurpose it for other things

    DigiTimes: HiSilicon engineers abandon ship – Huawei is apparently looking to build a 45nm silicon chip fabrication plant without US tech, which DigiTimes claims is ‘mission impossible’. Kind of related form the FT: Huawei employees worry about lay-offs after tougher US sanctions. Not surprised that the global marketing team seems to be taking the cuts. It was often quoted to me that ‘the best advertising for Huawei was its employees’ and attributed to Mr Ren. This was when the company was reluctant to do co-marketing deals and advertising for handsets

  • Things that caught my eye this week

    Burger King King of Stream campaign conducted in conjunction with Ogilvy agency DAVID based in Madrid, Spain. The King of Stream makes sense when you look only at the data. Target young people who do gaming. Presumably there is some group cohesion data or insight that shows a propensity to eat fast food with gaming.

    However what would have been an interesting half-formed idea in a brainstorm seems to have had a negative impact in real life. Often what makes sense on Excel isn’t that smart when it meets the real world.

    It reminded me of the introduction to Robert X. Cringely’s insiders story of the PC industry, Accidental Empires written in the 1991:

    … PCs killed the office typewriter, made most secretaries obsolete, and made it possible for a 27-year-old M.B.A. with a PC, a spreadsheet program, and three pieces of questionable data to talk his bosses into looting the company pension plan and doing a leveraged buy-out.

    Robert X. Cringely – Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date

    Spreadsheets and the data models inside them can be extremely powerful business tools and also weapons of mass destruction. And King of Stream seems to be the advertising equivalent.

    The use of bot powered donations to Twitch with the donation sizes related to Burger King special deals had an adverse effect on the gaming community on Twitch for a few reasons.

    • Burger King is a big brand, yet isn’t engaging with the community in a respectful way. It was culturally tone deaf.
    • This was the bit that surprised me the most given Ogilvy’s reputation around its use of behavioural economics or behavioural science in campaigns. The ‘donations’ are miserly. There is a lot of psychology around the value of donations or gifts. If it really want to engage with the gamers, why not sponsor them?
    • The execution was intrusive and felt like spam

    More on this can be found on the King of Stream by reading this thread here. More on other Burger King campaigns here.

    https://youtu.be/236KSswX7v4

    Celebrating Hong Kong style milk tea. According to the descriptor on this video is made by the Cui Brothers in Hong Kong; though I suspect it might be carefully edited from other films. It features classic Hong Kong dishes including French toast and pineapple bun with butter.

    Indigo Gaming have put together this guide to cyberpunk culture. It is called part one, was done months ago and there doesn’t seem to be a part two yet. Part one of this guide to cyberpunk culture is worthwhile watching on its own.

    The best of dance music over the past 30 years or so in a Soundcloud account – The Classic Mix CD Series | Free Listening on SoundCloud – mix CDs were time capsules of what was hot in different clubs at the time. They owe their origins to the mix (cassette) tape packs that club promoters used to sell of their nights. Mixmag took that concept and came up with the first properly licensed recordings.

    The original ones were done as one track per DJ mix. At the time CD players would in a space between each track recorded on a CD. Even early versions of iTunes used to do the same thing with both mix CDs and recordings ripped of mix CDs.

    At their height, they were an amazing money maker for record labels. They received steady royalty payments from licensing their tracks to appear on these mix CDs. For example Gat Decor, who had a break out single called Passion – appeared on 191 compilations and mix CDs.

  • Influencer endorsements + more stuff

    Influencer endorsements fail to influence purchase decisions | WARC – Influencer endorsements play only a small role in affecting the purchase decisions of their followers, according to research from influencer endorsements platform Influencer and GlobalWebIndex. In their survey of consumers in the UK and US who follow influencers on social media, just 15% said influencer endorsements motivates them to make a purchase – the tenth most common response. In comparison, more than half of consumers who follow influencers say free delivery (57%) and offers/promotions (52%) would motivate them to make a purchase. – Interesting in light of the high amount of spend put around influencer endorsements by the likes of Unilever personal care and beauty products. Is this a lack of ‘influence’ or being more budget conscious that is the driver? There might need to be a readjustment of charges for influencer endorsements. Also as WARC notes, a long term test is required.

    Jailed WeChat User Says Chinese Police Monitor Overseas Accounts Too – Jin Chun, a former big data engineer at Huawei’s Nanjing Research Institute, meanwhile recently told reporters that all Chinese communications companies and internet service providers companies are required to monitor users on behalf of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Faced with an official request for data, no company will resist, because they would cease to operate, he said. More on China here.

    Will Blaize Trailblaze Edge AI Market?   | EE Times – what people tend to miss about this is the pushback against the cloud, even with 5G connectivity

    Puncturing the paradox: group cohesion and the generational myth – BBH Labs – yet more evidence against generations

    Google giving far-right users’ data to law enforcement, documents reveal | Technology | The Guardian – Saira Hussein, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, said in a phone conversation that EFF was concerned about the “vast amounts of user data” Google appeared to be voluntarily passing on to law enforcement, but questioned Google’s goal in doing so. “Are they expecting law enforcement to do something, or is this just a way of covering themselves? Does Google see its responsibility as simply reporting this to law enforcement and moving on?”

    Automated assistants – Wunderman Thompson Intelligence – limited but coming

    China drought, heavy rains spark concern over grain supply as Xi Jinping launches campaign against food waste | South China Morning Post – interesting when one reflects on this in conjunction with the Chinese government ‘clean plate’ initiative in the news last week

    She Helped Wreck the News Business. Here’s Her Plan to Fix It | WIRED – TL;DR brand safety is destroying online advertising in news and current affairs

    New Cold War With China Demands Radical Industrial Rethink for United States – Since March alone, China has threatened to withhold medical equipment from the United States and Europe during the coronavirus pandemic; launched the biggest cyberattack against Australia in the country’s history; hacked U.S. firms to acquire secrets related to the coronavirus vaccine; and engaged in massive disinformation campaigns on a global scale. China even hacked the Vatican. These incidents reflect the power China wields through its control of supply chains and information hardware. They show the peril of ceding control of vast swaths of the world’s manufacturing to a regime that builds at home, and exports abroad, a model of governance that is fundamentally in conflict with American values and democracies everywhere. And they pale in comparison to what China will have the capacity to do as its confrontation with the United States sharpens

    Miss M: Guarding the City We Call Home | We Are HKers – Like many of our forefathers, Mainland Chinese flee to Hong Kong and even overseas for obvious reasons.Among the younger students in my school, 80% have Mainland Chinese backgrounds (they are either from China or they speak Mandarin at home). Many treat learning English with disdain and fantasise that China will rule the world in the near future and foreigners will have to learn Mandarin to please the Chinese. This is a tragedy. Their parents send them to Hong Kong to study despite all the hardship, but the kids fail to forego their conservative Chinese mindset. This happens not only in Hong Kong, but also in Canada. The CCP have already gotten their hands on Chinese language newspapers such as Mingpao and Sing Tao Daily. Lennon Walls in Canadian universities are destroyed within days by Mainland Chinese students and their physical attacks on Hong Kong students are common – the degree of population change is quite phenomenal

    Why marketers should embrace Share of Search as a metric | WARC – “The SoS calculation itself is simple. Calculate a rolling 12-month average of the various brands to be analysed, including your own. Total this. Divide each individual brand’s 12-month rolling average by the total and turn into a %. This is Share of Search, using Google Trends data.”