Ged Carroll

Category: howto | 怎麼做 | 방법 | 実行する方法

Howto as a category morphed out of a few things. I learned about the power of helpful content from Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. A second aspect of it was my natural inclination to share useful hacks.

I started writing this blog to explore the media so that I could advise clients so its roots were in the howto mentality. Over time, I built up a certain amount of authority based on the content that I shared here. This resulted in work for Econsultancy, teaching MBA students at a private Spanish university and a number of agency jobs.

Howto content tends to come when I am sharing skills and I have been developing AND that these skills can be easily codified into an article or two. I have also shared my personal workflow that I use to try and make sense of the world through online resources.

Many of the skills that I developed doing that came from a pre-social platform dominated world. Before Instagram told us how to look and TikTok told us what to think. And back when Google was actually useful, well more useful than it seems to be now.

I even wrote a couple of guides on how to get the most out of Google, but most of the advice won’t work any more as the platform did away with many shortcuts in favour of telling you which is the nearest coffee shop with free wifi.

The reason why howto ended up being one word rather than how to was down to the early version of Wordpress that I started to blog on and my lack of expertise more than anything else.

  • Michelin Snow Sock + more things

    Michelin Snow Sock

    The Michelin Snow Sock or to give it its proper name SOS GRIP(R) Evolution does a similar job to studded tyres or snow chains (often called RUD Chains after the German company RUD Ketten – a famous manufacturer of snow chains).

    snow sock

    The Michelin Snow Sock looks much easier to store and fit than snow chains and is likely to be less damaging to road surfaces. This new Michelin Snow Sock seems to rely on the black bands across the face of the tyre.

    A key difference is that snow chains can also be used in really muddy conditions and can be used to protect the tyres in hard surfaces such as quarries and mines – although this is usually the domain of a specialist product. You can’t doe these things with the Michelin Snow Sock.

    Inspecting a car before purchase

    Interesting tips on inspecting a car that you are interested in buying. Its interesting how democratised specialist tools have become.

    Twitter

    Professor Scott Galloway talks to Christiane Amanpour about the current economy and the rollercoaster moves at Twitter. My favourite quote from this, describing the recession as a ‘Patagonia vest’ recession affecting knowledge workers the most so far.

    Junya Watanabe Menswear Fall/Winter 2022

    I am about 10 months late to this, but Junya Watanabe did a menswear collaboration with Jay Kaye from Jamiroquai mirroring his mid-to-late 1990s style. Its a mix of indigenous wear that was popular from gap year students (or people who wanted that boho look), rave culture and Goa trance, sports wear and technical outdoor clothing.

    Here is the mini video look book that Junya Watanable made for the menswear collection.

    Here is the original video for Virtual Insanity

    Behind the scenes on how the Virtual Insanity video was made. How the effect was achieved was quite surprising.

    Shakatak

    I didn’t realise how popular jazz fusion group Shakatak was in Japan. To me there where pre-house UK dance music. I found this Japanese festival performance by them.

    The Tokyo Crossover Festival was was originally organised by the Kyoto Jazz Massive member Shuya Okino.

    It was April 2002. I was invited to the Future Jazz Festival held at Zagreb, Croatia. The well select lineup for this 3-days event was Victor Davies, Jessica Lauren, Rainer Truby, Azymuth, Zero dB and many more. The huge success all owed to Eddy & Duss and their incredible local support attracted 1500 enthusiastic people each day! Frankly, and forgive my ignorance, I was quite shocked. This was Zagreb, Croatia. The media that I was exposed to depict the negative image of an on-going civil war for all what I remember. Needless to say, I was inspired and at the same time wondered why Japan never had such festivals. Sure we have money-flowing mainstream Rock Festivals and Techno Festivals but nothing such as Deep House or Future Jazz festivals – which is surprising especially when Japan holds the biggest market share for such music. What is more depressing is that the “traditional” Jazz summer festival seems to be loosing its energy every year… I waited. I thought someone would eventually do the future-jazz festival here in Japan. There were few attempts but did not leave strong impact. Waited few more years…and thought it was time for me to take some action. I called it “Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival”! This is the first year and I am treating it as an introduction or presentation for the successful year to come. Therefore, it will not be a gigantic outside “typical” festival but the main purpose for this first festival is to cause Crossover Jazz awareness and for artists who have same music vision to gather together. Of course, I am aiming for the fan-pleasing exciting showcases. We have a good “crossover” jazz scene in Japan and I want the fans, all over the world, to know. In the future, the festival will feature artists from Jazz, Techno, Hip- Hop, House and the music will cross all over – the ideal festival that I keep visioning and working hard for! At the end though, all I want for everyone and myself is to…have a good time!

    Shuya Okino (Kyoto Jazz Massive)

    Internet explained in five levels of difficulty

    I showed this to my Dad and he loved it. So I thought I would share it here too.

  • Errolson Hugh + more stuff

    Errolson Hugh

    Acronym Designer Errolson Hugh Sees the Future | GQ – “People often use the word ‘dystopia’ or the phrase ‘cyberpunk’ in relation to us,” Errolson says. “But really, our whole thing is, Acronym is really about agency. It’s about enabling somebody to do something they couldn’t otherwise. It’s inherently optimistic.” – Errolson Hugh and the design team at Acronym cross a number of different areas or disciplines. You could look backwards and see Hugh and Co. as materials innovators with martial influences walking in the footsteps of Massimo Osti who founded C.P. Company and Stone Island.

    Errolson Hugh
    Errolson Hugh via Bicycle magazine Japan

    There is also a clear connective thread in terms of style between Errolson Hugh’s Acronym, Yoon Ahn & Verbal (Ryu Yeong-gi) of Ambush and also Paul Nicholson of Number 3.

    Consumer behaviour

    Despite Long Odds, Rural Chinese Continue to Bet on Education | The Sixth Tone – part of this is down to the Confucian system where centuries of civil service exams allowed families to elevate themselves if there was a bright kid in the family

    Economics

    Challenging the narrative about China’s rise. As with most things the truth is decidedly more complex in nature.

    China’s coronavirus test providers hit by payments crunch | Financial Times – I heard that COVID kits accounted for about 1.5 per cent of GDP, the collapse in the housing market meant that the local government finances have been battered

    How will the world pay to support its aging population? – economic growth will falter, since working-age populations will shrink. In the US, real potential GDP growth is projected to drop from 2.4% currently to 1.5% in 2043. Some of this can be offset. “If inflation starts eating into savings, people will want to come back to work,” Pradhan said—something that’s happening even now in the US. Any official move to raise the retirement age will not go down well with people who have been used to thinking of stopping work at 60 or thereabouts, Pradhan said. “Even in Russia, at a time when Vladimir Putin had a lot of popularity, he found it hard to push the retirement age up,” he said. But even if, de facto, people retire later, Pradhan is unsure of “how much this can be juiced. Already, by reducing pension benefits, we’ve made people aware of this.” In the EU, for instance, the labor force participation rate for people between the ages of 55-64 rose from around 43% in 2005 to around 64% in 2019. “I’m not sure how much higher we can drag that,” Pradhan said. – in some economies this can blunted through women’s increased participation in the workplace.

    Finance

    China circles El Salvador’s economy as country edges toward crypto plunge | The Guardian 

    Hong Kong

    MPs and peers urge Sunak to sanction pro-Beijing Hong Kong officials 

    Covid-19: Hong Kong eases curbs for visitors, but keeps cinemas and ice rinks on restricted list in late change

    Criminal records checks of lion dance performers necessary, Hong Kong security chief says – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – “Given the unique nature of lion dance activities and attendant martial arts displays, it is necessary for the Government to ensure that public order is not disturbed and that public safety is not affected when such sport activities are conducted in public places,” he said. As of last month, the Hong Kong Chinese Martial Arts Dragon and Lion Dance Association had around 190 organisation members. In the year of 2018-2019, the association organised five dragon and lion dance competitions with funding from the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The competition saw more than 200 participating teams and more than 2,100 participants in total. – National security implications given the lion dance’s close association with kung fu practitioners? There is also the subversive history of the lion dance.

    Lion dancing gained its greatest fame during the Ching Dynasty. The Manchu reign at that time was an oppressive, inhumane government. Thousands of Chinese were massacres without any known cause until, it is said, “their blood literally reddened the rivers.” Ming loyalists attempting to foment rebellion against the Manchu warlords, expressed their hatred by inventing the green-faced lion. With brows made of twin steel swords, each measuring 1 foot 6 inches in length, the green lion represented the Manchu Government during the Ching Dynasty. Fighting the lion meant combating the Manchus. 

    Since lion dancing was performed in villages all over the country for the purpose of celebrations, the rebels would use the opportunity to exchange information and to collect money for the revolution. As part of the dance, the lion would eat lettuce — which is where the money would be hidden. The lead dancer would cry, “Choi ching!” (“get the Ching!”) to signal that he was a fellow revolutionary and, therefore, it was safe to pass information to him. However, informers soon figured out the battlecry. So, since chiang (meaning “green”) sounds very much like ching, the revolutionary passcode was changed to “Choi chiang!” (“get the green”). To this day, this revolutionary cry is used when the lion “eats” the symbolic lettuce and good luck money. 

    Qin, S. Lion Dancing. Ancient Worlds (Orient)

    How to

    3 things you need to do now, before Revue gets shut down | AWeber – shutting down at the end of the year. Its a casualty of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

    Innovation

    China’s semiconductor output posts biggest ever monthly decline in October amid weak demand, fresh US tech export controls | South China Morning Post 

    Luxury

    Estée Lauder acquires Tom Ford in $2.8 billion deal | Vogue Business – Estée Lauder has confirmed it is the new owner of Tom Ford, bringing its successful beauty licence in-house. Ermenegildo Zegna Group will produce the brand’s fashion.

    2023 Porsche 911 Dakar: Lifted Rally Car Right From the Factory | Jalopnik 

    Media

    Nearly two thirds of full-time UK creatives are worried about job security, WeTransfer says | It’s Nice That 

    Search Ad Spends Declined by 20% in Q3 2022 

    Media, marketing, communications and PR list of Mastodon users – Google Sheets 

    Game over for Warcraft in China, as NetEase and Blizzard end their 14-year deal from January 2023 | South China Morning Post  – part of a wider decoupling of media and entertainment between the west and China

    Online

    Tencent to ‘distribute’ most of its $22bn Meituan stake in dividend | Financial Times 

    Retailing

    Fashion firm Joules falls into administration putting 1,600 jobs at risk | The Guardian 

    Hong Kong Customs seize over 100,000 suspected fake jerseys ahead of Qatar World Cup | Hong Kong Free Press 

    Security

    U.S. FBI director says TikTok poses national security concerns | Reuters 

    US court sentences Chinese spy to 20 years for stealing trade secrets | The Guardian 

    Hostile states are targeting you, Speaker warns MPs – BBC News 

    China playing ‘long game’ as it co-opts UK assets, warns MI5 chief | Financial Times 

    Taiwan

    ASML expands in Taiwan and Korea to capture opportunities | DigiTimes 

  • Brand proposition

    The brand proposition is what fires creative thinking in advertising and the bane of junior planners. In fact, the brand proposition is a topic of conversation for advertising planners, in the same way that the weather is for British and Irish people. It is a source of endless debate and discussion.

    Firstly, let’s discuss what’s a brand?

    Kit-Kat Japanese packaging

    How you define brand would likely come down to two camps. Those that broadly agree with either of two statements that branding:

    • Is the act of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product or service from others
    • Is the art of aligning what you want people to think about your company, with what people actually think about your company

    The second option is closer to where my viewpoint would be, but neither are completely right or wrong. Brands have various attributes including:

    • Brand / customer relationships
    • Brand personality
    • Country of origin
    • Emotional benefits
    • Organisational associations
    • Self-expressive benefits
    • Symbols
    • User imagery

    Product specific attributes that affect brand

    • Scope
    • Attributes
    • Uses
    • Quality / value
    • Functional benefits

    JWT London’s seminal planning guide said that a brand’s appeal is built up over time by three different sorts of appeal

    • Appealing to the senses: feel, smell, tastes, sounds or looks
    • Appeals to reason: function, when would you use it, what does it contain, how does it perform
    • Appeals to the emotions: the brand style or nature, brand associations, what mood it evokes or satisfies, any psychological rewards for usage

    How does planning come into it?

    What’s a brand planner?

    “The account planner is that member of the agency’s team who is the expert, through background, training, experience, and attitudes, at working with information and getting it used – not just marketing research but all the information available to help solve a client’s advertising problems.” 

    Stanley Pollitt

    The JWT Planning Guide, which can be considered to be the stone tablets of account planning as a profession were handed down written in 1974.

    The planning guide said

    … any systemic approach to planning advertising has to do more than simply provide controls and disciplines. It must actively stimulate imagination and creativity too.

    PLANNING GUIDE (March 1974). United Kingdom: J Walter Thompson (JWT) London.

    Ok, that’s quite a big ask. But it didn’t stop there. The ideal advertising planning methods had to also fulfil four criteria

    • Realistic – based on ‘best practice’ and must be capable of being optimised and evolved.
    • Pragmatic – They must work to help people create advertising that is relevant and creative. Simple in nature, memorable and easy to follow
    • Fundamental – based on ‘coherent theories’ of how advertising benefits marketing, how communications works, how people collaborate productively and create new ideas
    • Structured – set a sand pit that imagination can work in. Chunking complexity down to simple elements and providing regular evaluation of work done
    Kit-Kat Japanese packaging

    Brand proposition

    Realistic, pragmatic, fundamental and structured dictate the shape and form of a planner’s tools and outputs. And sometimes we lose sight of this, which is very much the case with the brand proposition.

    A definition

    A brand proposition could be considered to be the foundational concept that highlights the unique identifying features of your brand.

    Attributes of a good brand proposition

    A good brand proposition will be:

    • Single-minded in purpose and being succinct – which can be a pain the 🍑
    • Almost, but not quite an endline
    • Interesting / thought provoking
    • An ongoing investment
    • Occasionally multiple – creative briefs are as much a dialogue with your creative director as they are the product of the heroic lone planner. Having multiple ways in is a good way of doing that, and there might be multiple insights that don’t easily reconcile with each other
    • Open to evolution – its more important to be interesting than correct, it is unlikely that you will get it right first time

    Rich nuggets, stimuli, creative brief delivery and post-brief discussion

    The brand proposition is a small part of the overall account planners contribution to the creative process. You could consider it a sub-set of the insightful ‘rich nuggets’ – the behavioural observations in a creative brief, which is about a quarter of the strategists contribution. Every bit of a brief that a planner writes should have these rich nuggets in it. Examples of rich nuggets that I have had in my career as a planner

    • Even in a digital world, people get annoyed and can be spurred into action when they find their mail has been opened
    • After mental health, consumers care most about having a healthy immune system. It came to fore during COVID and seems to have remained with us
    • Glow, the look of healthy skin due to a moist top layer of the skin can sell products in many markets. But it doesn’t work well in high-humidity tropical, and sub-tropical clients
    • A majority of Hong Kong beauty consumers would prefer not to interact with concession staff, they consider them to be closer to over-pushy sales people than trusted advisors
    • A majority of primary care practitioners (GPs) feel a degree of disgust when they see an obese patient
    • Chinese luxury hotel guests are likely to be younger and less formally dressed than the older western and Japanese clientele – with a dress sense that somewhat harks back to the mix-and-match approach of the Buffalo Collective

    The other three quarters are:

    • The quality of stimulus that the planner provides – Stimulus for consumer brands might be much more visual than say prescription medicines where science facts and sandboxes of regulatory restrictions could be much more important. There is usually a good deal of discussion that goes into help writing this brief that helps filter which stimulus makes the cut and the emphasis placed on it.
    • Quality of delivery on the creative brief
    • Post-brief discussion

    So the amount of ‘pain’ that junior planners have on the brand proposition is out of proportion to the brand proposition’s role in the planning process.

    Criticisms of the brand proposition

    Perceived solutions orientation

    The brand proposition puts the emphasis on a potential answer; rather than the initial problem. And I can understand how this occurs. Going back to the JWT London Planning Guide:

    Advertising involves producing a long series of unique solutions. Each piece of work requires innovation. Every script, every layout, every recommendation is Ian some way different from any that has gone before. Each client operates in a different market, and each brand in a market has different needs.

    I would argue that yes the brand proposition can be perceived to be solution focused, but I’d also argue innovation means reframing and looking at a problem in a different way – this is much of the success behind Eno & Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies.

    Brand proposition locks the planner in to a certain perspective

    The idea is that the very act of writing a brand proposition locks the planner in to a certain perspective and consequently starts making the process of developing ideas territorial and creates unhelpful barriers.

    I can see where the ‘lone heroic planner’ mode might kick in. I found it happened when I was freelancing in a team made up of freelance creative talent and there wasn’t any ‘connective tissue’ in the team.

    I think that a planner needs to be humble enough to recognise that:

    • They don’t have a monopoly on good ideas
    • They are humble enough to recognise better ideas were ever they may come from
    • They are constantly in searching mode

    Perceived traditional media focus

    Propositions are considered by some to encourage to think in ‘traditional media’ by asking what should we say rather than

    • What might we do?
    • What experience might we create
    • What interaction might we host

    My argument against this point-of-view is that its a very literal interpretation of ‘say’. If we think about person to person communication about 70 percent is non verbal cues. And I would argue that more experiential aspects fall into what we say.

    Secondly, it depends on where you are in the process. For instance in many of the assignments I worked on as a freelancer, the channel had already been defined by the client and or the media agency partner who was further upstream in the decision making process.

    A brief for Unilever’s Dove specified that they wanted a 30-second TV spot and online video clip. It has to contain an end ‘pour and pack shot’ which took another 5 seconds at the end of the video. For the online video clip you had to have the brand logo up front. This is very common when you are working on creating marketing assets for international markets.

    OK, why Japanese KitKats?

    They have one uniform brand proposition behind them, but a whole variant of different ways of solving it from a product and packaging design perspective. And, they’re really, really tasty. Japanese KitKats have the crispness I remember from my childhood eating Irish-made KitKats from the old Rowntree-Macintosh factory that was in Kilmainham, Dublin.

  • EUV lithography + more news

    EUV lithography

    ASML fire hits EUV lithography production | EE News Europe – EUV lithography is used to provide the latest semiconductor manufacturing processes. ASML is world’s only provider of EUV lithography equipment, so the fire is of concern. EUV or extreme ultra violet light is important to provide ever smaller silicon chips. YouTuber Asianometry provides a few good video explanations of EUV lithography and its importance for the technology industry.

    China

    Evergrande shares suspended after report it was told to destroy buildings | Financial Times

    Star China investor Boyu seeks to navigate Xi Jinping’s tech crackdown | Financial Times – Liu Tianran, son of vice-premier Liu He, a confidante of Xi Jinping, established Skycus Capital in late 2016. Skycus has invested in units of Chinese technology giants Tencent and JD.com, which are Ant and Alibaba’s biggest rivals. Wen Yunsong, the son of former premier Wen Jiabao, founded the New Horizon investment fund in 2005, when his father was in power.

    Consumer behaviour

    The White Vote and Educational Polarization – Split Ticket 

    Economics

    Japan pays a high price as it goes down market – Asia Times 

    China’s business crackdown threatens growth and innovation | Financial Times – It would not be a surprise if China returned to a version of the joint private-state ownership model adopted under the leadership of Mao Zedong in the 1950s. This would amount to a de facto nationalisation of private companies — at least those in sectors such as data collection, national cyber security and financial services

    Finance

    The EU vs the City of London: a slow puncture | Financial Times

    Apple Should Develop Checking Accounts, Debit Card, Stock Trading Tools – Bloomberg

    How Signal is playing with fire – by Casey Newton  – concern about Signal idea to build anonymous private payments

    Hong Kong

    SCMP | Hong Kong chief executive election 2022: why this year’s leadership race is unusual – the narrowed political spectrum which he said would prevent any non-pro-establishment hopeful from entering the arena. “Whoever is running, they will hold very similar political visions … There won’t be much to fight over. The competition will be just like Omicron versus Delta,” he said, referring to variants of the coronavirus.

    How to

    How a super reader gets through 52 books a year | Financial Times – Skim non-fiction. Fiction demands a close, word-for-word reading. But it’s more important to understand, not read most non-fiction, says US author and consultant, Peter Bregman. This can mostly be done by confining yourself to the table of contents, introduction, conclusion, and a few pages of each chapter.

    Ideas

    The best and the brightest | Financial Times – well worth reading. This is so much of this happening in the digitisation of marketing

    The WELL: State of the World 2022 – well worth reading this

    Is your dog bilingual? New study suggests their brains can tell languages apart : NPR

    Innovation

    Intel’s technology trends | EE Times 

    Master planner | Science magazine – interesting how China is using systems planning

    Japan developing railguns as neighbors test hypersonic missiles – The Mainichi

    Luxury

    What 2022 holds in store for luxury | Financial Times 

    Myanmar

    Telenor to divest Wave Money, exit Myanmar mobile banking – Nikkei Asia 

    Retailing

    Nike and Adidas’ China Growth Stalls as Native Footwear Brands Grow – Footwear News – interesting as the data seems to be a variant of data reported by the FT, the big exception being the impact on New Balance which Footwear News views in a far more favourable light

    Security

    China tech: those who control the algorithms control the future | Financial Times 

    Swiss army backs home-grown IM service amid privacy concerns | AP News 

    Taiwan

    Taiwan should destroy chip infrastructure if China invades: paper – Nikkei Asia – seems to forget that Taiwan has symbolic experience for the Chinese communist party

    Web of no web

    Facebook Hosted Three Huge Concerts in the Metaverse and They Seriously Flopped

    Toyota to launch own operating system, vying with Tesla and VW – Nikkei Asia 

    Metaverse gets touch of reality at CES | RTÉ – interesting use of haptics that has been tried unsuccessfully before

  • 8964 museum + more news

    8964 museum

    六四記憶‧人權博物館 8964 Museum – 8964 Museum is a site ran from outside Hong Kong that acts a memorial for events running up to the June 4th 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The 8964 museum site was originally built predominantly for a local Chinese audience in Hong Kong. The reason why its 8964 is because Chinese language is quite logical about structure. You go big to small, hence June 4th, 1989 is 4/6/89 in the UK and 8964 in Chinese. The 8964 Museum is a really nice piece of web design. The 8964 Museum goes back and shows the history of China from the founding of the People’ Republic through the 1989 student and worker’s protests and beyond. The 8964 museum is now blocked in Hong Kong.

    Beauty

    Unilever invites startups to partner through Positive Beauty Growth Platform | Unilever global company website – interesting Unilever Foundry concept aligned around ‘positive beauty’

    Business

    China’s Supreme People’s Court has Ruled against Apple, allowing a lawsuit to Proceed on Antitrust Grounds – Patently Apple – the decision by China’s top court to allow the lawsuit to be considered by the Shanghai court could signal more trouble ahead for Apple in China, which now accounts for a fifth of its iPhone sales. Wang Qiongfei, Jin’s attorney, told the South China Morning Post in a telephone interview that a hearing is expected to take place in Shanghai next January. You Yunting, a senior partner at Shanghai Debund Law Firm, said that the top court’s ruling could have a far-reaching impact. “I think this case has established a new principle namely that antitrust cases are also rights infringement cases and thus can be adjudicated by local courts.”

    China Wields New Legal Weapon to Fight Claims of Intellectual Property Theft – WSJ – Chinese courts granted so-called anti-suit injunctions blocking foreign companies from taking legal action anywhere in the world to protect their trade secrets…At Xiaomi’s request, a Chinese court in Wuhan issued an injunction barring InterDigital from pursuing its case against Xiaomi—in China or anywhere else. If InterDigital persisted, the Chinese court said, it would face fines equivalent to roughly $1 million a week.To trade lawyers and others who have tangled with Chinese companies over intellectual property, the InterDigital case is the latest sign of how China disregards the patents, copyrights and trade secrets of foreign companies

    Revealed: Bribery in advertising pitches is pervasive in APAC | Campaign Asia – I wonder if this is skewed to certain markets?

    China to block ‘core’ industrial, telecoms data from leaving the country | South China Morning Post – interesting, this could decouple everything from supply chains to billing systems and also make stocks even more opaque

    Global supply chains at risk of collapse, warn business leaders | Financial Times – the disparity between UK and US trucking problems is striking

    China

    Why China Is Alienating the World | Foreign Affairs – even more striking than the backlash against China has been the country’s inability to recalibrate. Beijing’s response to the rapid deterioration in ties with Canberra was to confront Australia with a list of demands that it said were prerequisites for improving relations. China’s leaders have also repeatedly stressed that any improvement in relations with the United States must begin with concessions from Washington and issued Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman a similar list of demands when she visited Tianjin in July. Officials in Washington have begun to see Beijing’s inability to shift course as an advantage in the emerging competition between the two countries – less an inability than no desire, this is more about culture. I was reminded of Huawei’s ‘shut up‘ incident a number of years ago

    Goldman Sachs was poised to triumph in China. What happened? | Financial Times 

    Consumer behaviour

    Conscientious Korean consumers demand the full package | Campaign Asia – “Now more than ever, consumers are evaluating brands across multiple dimensions of functionality, personal relevance and collective contribution,” Mali Wuestenhagen, senior media director at Essence Korea, told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “The term ‘meaningful brands’ is gaining increasing importance. Consumers are looking for unique brand experiences, and not just product and service excellence. To connect with consumers on a deeper emotional level, brands’ values need to resonate strongly with consumers. Brand authenticity and brand responsibility are equally important factors in driving positive consumer sentiment.” – COVID affected brand relevance

    Project MUSE – Perceptual Divided Leviathan and the Modes of Political Participation in China – citizens’ varying degrees of participation across a range of political activities. It considers the perceived Chinese divided leviathan as a crucial cognitive shortcut for ordinary citizens to assess the uncertain activism environment, estimate the relative costs and benefits of different political activities, and strategize their participation portfolios. Using nationally representative survey data, the article exploits latent class analysis to uncover four distinct mass participatory modes—outsiders, conventionals, agitators, and activists—and examines the impact of perceptual government trustworthiness and integrity on modal transition. The empirical results reveal that citizens’ perceptions of a division between the central and local government affect their choice of participatory activities but not their overall participation levels: people who perceive a greater integrity division tend to engage the state in an agitative and contentious mode, and are less likely to do so in an institutionalized, conventional mode

    Gender and Sexuality – CHINESE RELIGIOUS LIFE – really interesting article for anyone looking at China consumer behaviour in terms of foundations

    Did Communism Smash the Patriarchy? – In China, the government has maintained a monopoly of violence, rule of law and public trust. Men needn’t present as thuggish. But progress towards gender equality is still held back through the suppression of civil society. Taiwan and South Korea demonstrate what women can achieve when economic development is combined with democratisation and feminist activism. As Taiwanese women amassed wealth, status, and networks, they organised politically. Feminist lobbying secured gender quotas. Twice-elected Tsai Ing-wen now presides over a legislature that is 42% female. With strong female representation, the Government of Taiwan has strongly entrenched protections for women’s rights, criminalising sexual harassment. In South Korea independent civil society and religious groups were never fully suppressed under the military dictatorship. Anti-government coalitions of workers, students, priests, intellectuals, and farmers gained strength over the 1970s and 80s. South Koreans have now consolidated democratisation, on par with the UK!!  South Korea’s strong civil society laid the foundations for today’s feminist activism. 340 women’s organisations, labour unions and NGOs launched ‘Citizens’ Action with MeToo & campaigned ‘With You’. Recognising their collective strength and successes, women increasingly agitate for accountability. In 2018, 20,000 women marched against spy-cams (up-skirt and hidden cameras in loos) and revenge porn (which is then circulated online). This led to more government attention, a ministerial committee, and more police investigations. China lags behind, with the weakest protections against gender based violence. – things will get worse when the government has to come up with inventive ways to make the 3 child policy work

    Design

    BA06 – G-Class Governmental Business – I could totally see this screwing with the Ineos Grenadier

    Open Architecture: The husband-and-wife design duo redefining China’s cultural landscape – CNN Style – Beijing-based practice Open Architecture, are responsible for some of the last decade’s most thought-provoking Chinese arts destinations. Best known for transforming a series of aviation fuel tanks into a popular riverside gallery in Shanghai, the pair’s understated theaters and performance spaces offer a welcome dose of subtlety in a country with skylines all too often blighted by bold statements. “It’s about making a dialogue between us, as humanity, and nature,” Li said in a video interview.

    Economics

    Harper’s Magazine – Unmade in America — Open Markets Institute – America’s manufacturers spent those same happy years shifting many basic operations right off their factory floors. And by this I don’t mean simply offshore but right out of the company, along with the responsibility to make sure their world-spanning assembly lines always run right. Like Enron, our manufacturers did so largely to pump up the value of their stocks. And, like Enron, they will probably get to watch one day as their empty edifices collapse. Unlike Enron, however, this crash may bring down a lot more with it than one or a few companies. The global assembly lines that manufacturers such as Dell, Ford, Motorola, and Intel have so expertly engineered these last few years—in which, say, a single semiconductor might be cut from a wafer in Taiwan, assembled in the Philippines, tested in China, fit into a subcomponent in Malaysia, plugged into a component in Brazil, and loaded with a program designed in India—are just as audaciously complicated as any of Enron’s financial schemes. Yet because manufactured goods are so much less fungible than money, these systems are vastly more vulnerable to the mysterious mutterings of God or the deliberate hand of man and state – this was written back in 2002

    Hidden Performance: Salary History Bans and Gender Pay Gap by Jesse Davis, Paige Ouimet, Xinxin Wang :: SSRN – As of 2019, salary history bans have been enacted by 17 states and Puerto Rico with the stated purpose of reducing the gender pay gap. We argue that salary history bans may negatively affect wages as employers lose an informative signal of worker productivity. We empirically evaluate these laws using a large panel dataset of disaggregated wages covering all public sector employees in 36 states and find, on average, salary history bans lead to a 3% decrease in new hire wages. We find no decrease in the gender pay gap in the full sample and a modest 1.5% increase in the relative wages of women, as compared to men, among new hires most likely to have experienced gender discrimination historically.

    Ethics

    Apple’s fortress of secrecy is crumbling from the inside – The Verge – on Apple’s culture – executives make decisions about how the company will function, and employees either fall in line or leave. What choice do they have? Apple is currently worth $2 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world, as well as one of the most powerful. Over the past few months, however, that culture has started to erode. As workers across the tech industry advocate for more power, Apple’s top-down management seems more out of touch than ever before. Now, a growing number of employees are organizing internally for change and speaking out about working conditions on Twitter.  “There’s a shift in the balance of power going on here,” says Jason Snell, the former editor of Macworld, who’s been covering Apple since the 1990s. “Not everyone is afraid that their boss at Apple is going to fire them. They’re saying, ‘I’m going to say some bad things about Apple, and if you move against me, it’s going to look bad for you.’”

    Murky waters: What next for the AUKUS nations and their allies? — 9DASHLINE – The development of global financial architecture in recent decades has transformed the transnational arena such that the old rules don’t necessarily apply. As the AUKUS announcement was being made, Russia’s political opposition was being undermined by groups including Google and Apple, who removed tactical voting apps for the country’s election. As attention in the US turns to the implications of growing Chinese power, the Chinese Embassy there can depend on Squire Patton Boggs, a lobbying firm in its pay. Included on the firm’s roster is the retired speaker of the House and one of the best-connected politicians in the US, John Boehner. Chinese leaders themselves are supported by a cast of western enablers who help secure their substantial fortunes offshore, most frequently in the British Virgin Islands

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong schools lose 81 Primary One classes as wave of emigration saps student population | South China Morning Post 

    Hong Kong faces worst quarter for stock listings since pandemic | Financial Times – interesting that financial institutions bet that HK would be the new favoured market for IPOs hasn’t paid off

    How to

    Kibbles & Bytes #1171:The Plug Is Mightier Than the Puck: Wireless Charging Is Wildly Inefficient, Need to Share Files Securely? Try Password-Protected ZIP Archives – great points on wireless charging versus plug-in charging

    Ideas

    Regime Change #2: A plea to Silicon Valley – start a project NOW to write the plan for the next GOP candidate – by Dominic Cummings – this looks like Domnic Cummings is writing himself a job description and hopes that someone will employ him to do it.

    Innovation

    Dry Ice Detailing Cleans Car Back to Factory Condition Without Water | Business Insider – this was a very specialist thing used on classic and supercars, interesting to see it be mainstreamed

    Luxury

    LinkedIn Global Head of Luxury: “Audiences Are Looking For More Storytelling From Brands.” – ‘In the five years since Tatiana Dupond joined LinkedIn, the social media platform has become a key destination for luxury brands to communicate their messaging to its highly engaged audience. She speaks to Luxury Society about how brands can further the experience for their followers through richer storytelling and more meaningful content.’

    The Deep-Dive: The Luxury Market Is Rebounding. Will It Last? | Luxury Society – Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Cartier and Hermès, to name but a few, have all seen a rise in brand desirability, according to data compiled by DLG, which found that Google searches for the brands have grown by 15 percent, 11 percent, 39 percent and 21 percent respectively, from January 2021 to June 2021, compared to a year earlier.

    TELFAR.TV – rather than write my take here’s Matt Muir’s: – this is an interesting bit of marketing from them, which is in part MEDIA EMPIRE stuff and in part a smart way of stopping bots from snapping up new stock for the resale market. Telfar TV is an online stream of…stuff, the gimmick being that it’s like public access cable insofar as anyone can submit video to be featured on the platform. Among the UGC stuff (I have only seen a couple of things and they are…I mean, look, let’s just say there was a STRONG AESTHETIC and if I were more inclined to look at video art then maybe I would have appreciated it more) will be scattered occasional QR codes which act as gateways to buy limited merch drops, in smart, bot-proof style. This is a super-interesting idea, which will almost certainly die a death based on a lack of people submitting content – I would add that they could also raid the internet archive for filler video content….

    Media

    New Bond Can’t Take On Beijing’s Supervillains | Foreign Policy 

    Adam Curtis: Social media is a scam | Idler – I’ve always thought John Le Carré did spies a great service because he made it seem as if there were endless depths of mystery and darkness when in fact, if you’ve ever researched the spies, they are (a) boring and (b) useless. I mean really, really useless. I researched MI5 once and they hardly ever manage to capture any traitors… it’s usually someone else who points them in the right direction. And in a way I think that’s true of this. The tech companies are powerful in the sense that they’ve got hold of the internet, which people like me think could be a really powerful thing for changing the world and disseminating new ideas, and they’ve got it in this rigid headlock. To do that, they’ve conned everyone into thinking that their advertising is worth it. And in the process, they’re destroying journalism – I would disagree with some of Curtis’ assertions but this feels right in terms of how they’re seen in terms of policy wonks now

    Facebook Views Preteens as ‘Untapped’ Wealth, Documents Show | Gizmodo – actually says valuable audience. Interesting that they were focusing on playdates as a possible media moment

    Retailing

    Shein exemplifies a new style of Chinese multinational | The Economist – Xu Yangtian had none of their tailoring experience when he founded Shein (pronounced she-in) in 2008. Instead, the creator of the fashion world’s latest sensation was a specialist in search-engine optimisation. This expertise helped Mr Xu gain an understanding of how to draw shoppers’ attention in the digital world. And he has understood this very well indeed, bringing to an audience of rapt Western fashionistas a Chinese style of “social commerce”, which combines social media with online shopping. Add in a revolutionary approach to manufacturing and the results have been spectacular. In 2019 Shein’s gross merchandise volume (GMV), e-commerce groups’ preferred measure of total sales on their platforms, was $2.3bn, estimates to Zheshang Securities, a Chinese broker. This year it is forecast to surpass $20bn. By 2022 analysts expect Shein’s GMV to overtake Zara’s revenues. In May Shein was the most downloaded shopping app in America, overtaking Amazon

    Security

    C.I.A. Admits to Losing Informants – The New York Times – blames over optimism about their own abilities, under-estimating opponent intelligence services and over-optimism. What’s in the back of my mind is how much their electronic networks are compromised and how many are now double agents

    US has already lost AI fight to China, says ex-Pentagon software chief | Financial Times – blamed the reluctance of Google to work with the US defence department on AI, and extensive debates over AI ethics for slowing the US down. By contrast, he said Chinese companies are obliged to work with Beijing, and were making “massive investment” into AI without regard to ethics. Chaillan said he plans to testify to Congress about the Chinese cyber threat to US supremacy, including in classified briefings, over the coming weeks. He acknowledged the US still outspends China by three times on defence, but said the extra cash was immaterial because US procurement costs were so high and spent in the wrong areas, while bureaucracy and overregulation stood in the way of much-needed change at the Pentagon

    The entirety of Twitch has reportedly been leaked | VGC 

    GCHQ chief: Facebook is a worry but China is the real internet danger 

    The west sees China as a ‘threat’, not as a real place, with real people | The Guardian – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were both real places with real people

    Technology

    Study: Despite uptick in telehealth use, patient satisfaction sags – News – MM+M – Medical Marketing and Media – Learning more about unsatisfied patients can help healthcare marketers tailor efforts to reach them more effectively. To that end, the survey found that the industry provided uneven care to patients, with those deemed higher-risk – ones who self-reported their health as fair or poor – having lower satisfaction with telehealth offerings than people who self-reported their health as excellent.In addition, patients in better health were more likely to better understand information conveyed during telehealth visits and characterize these visits as more personalized.“The onus is on the telehealth industry to understand the analytics behind who these members are, and what sort of level of services they need that can be tailored to their healthcare conditions,” Beem said. – I wonder how this compares to in-person visits?

    The Impending Chinese NAND Apocalypse – YMTC 128 Layer NAND Is The First Semiconductor Where China Is Technologically Competitive – by Dylan Patel – SemiAnalysis 

    Wireless

    iPhone 13 Customers Sold On Longer Battery Life | Investor’s Business Daily – “Desire for a better battery life is the most popular reason for upgrading,” Daryanani said. “5G was not a popular reason for upgrading this year likely because 5G excitement in the U.S. remains well below the levels in China.” and working from home with your handset on wifi won’t help that sentiment