Ged Carroll

Category: ireland | 愛爾蘭| 아일랜드 | アイルランド

Céad míle fáilte – welcome to the Ireland category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to the Republic of Ireland, business issues relating to Ireland, the Irish people, or Irish culture.

Given that I am Irish, a number of these posts are more personal in nature and based on observation when taking time out to see the family. If I am honest about it, there is less of these posts than there should be. Life gets in the way and I don’t get to the home country as much as I would like.

Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Aer Lingus launched a new advert that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in branding as well as Ireland. It is a small market of seven million or so and doesn’t have that many distinct brands.

Or if there was a new white paper from UCD (University College Dublin), that might appear in ideas and Ireland. If there is Irish 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.

  • Jeremy Renner store + more stuff

    The Jeremy Renner store – this must be the 21st century equivalent of the celebrity infomercial on cable TV: @ Amazon.com. The Jeremy Renner store is interesting because it’s an odd choice of celebrity. More on Amazon here.

    Amazon UK 2

    Nike China with Weiden + Kennedy did these great basketball-themed adverts

    Laundry Musical. Procter & Gamble invented the soap opera back during the great depression as sponsored radio serials. They were instrumental in building P&G as a brand powerhouse. Riffing on the theme P&G Philippines launched the first ‘laundry musical’ with Broadway star Lea Salonga.

    It is hard to explain how musical Filipino culture is. Wherever Flipinos are as a community, there is music. In Hong Kong they do group singing and dance routines. Music has been a huge export for the Philippines. You go to bars around the world and there will be a Filipino band who can pivot from hard rock to soulful R&B standards.

    Filipinos make up most of the bands on cruise ships too, which isn’t surprising given the amount of recruitment for the shipping industry that goes in the Philippines from sailors to engineers.

    TBWA\Chiat\Day’s Lee Clow on the making of Apple’s Think Different campaign. Chiat\Day still have this campaign as their calling card a quarter of a century later. The opening statement that technology is not a substitute for an idea is something that feels more relevant now. It is also interesting seeing the creatives working on MacOS Classic.

    Apple used the creative process as a way to showcase the creative hardware and software used on the campaign

    • Microsoft Word
    • Quark Xpress
    • Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat
    • AVID non-linear professional video editing
    • Claris eMailer – which was an email client similar to mail.app on macOS now. I had never used it, as I was using Netscape Communicator at the time

    Irish department store Brown Thomas launches its first brand anthem film

  • Netflix DVD service + more things

    Why 2.7 million Americans still get Netflix DVD service in the mail – CNN – Netflix also has plenty of DVD customers in urban areas who prefer the service for its convenience and selection of movies, spokeswoman Annie Jung says. “People assume that our customers must either be super seniors or folks that live in the boonies with no internet access,” she says. “Actually, our biggest hot spots are the coasts, like the Bay Area and New York.” – Netflix DVD service in the US covers the long tail like arthouse cinema and cult classics that the streaming service doesn’t address. They are two differentiated offerings rather than substitutes now. It is interesting that Blu-Ray hasn’t displace Netflix DVD service. More on Netflix here.

    Audi’s New Electric Car Factory Goes Green | Wired – Electric vehicles consume more energy than gasoline-powered rides during manufacturing and manufacture is 70% of a gasoline powered car’s carbon footprint. Something to think about when you drive a Tesla rather than a classic vintage Land Rover or diesel Mercedes

    Luxury Daily | Jean-Paul Gaultier is the latest brand to collaborate on streetwear – with Supreme. I think the outsider reputation of JPG fits streetwear really well, in its heyday it really got culture (paywall)

    How Rolex Is Revamping Its Digital Channels: 3 Marketing Innovations Not To Miss | Luxury Society – interesting how they are melding brand purpose and product messages

    How US went from telecoms leader to 5G also-ran without challenger to China’s Huawei | South China Morning Post – Interesting how Qualcomm is implicitly being blamed in this op-ed. There is no consideration of the implosion of new telcos following the dot.com bust for instance which took out fixed line equipment etc – Verizon and Sprint chose the CDMA mobile standard, developed by US firm Qualcomm, which operated on different frequencies than GSM, adopted by Europe. After the initial boom in the mobile industry following deregulation, the US telecommunications industry began to decline from 2001

    The Quietus | News | RBMA And Red Bull Radio To Shut Down – “Red Bull will be moving away from a strongly centralized approach, will gradually phase out the existing structure and will implement a new setup which empowers existing Red Bull country teams and utilizes local expertise. Red Bull will continue to explore new ways to support promising and cutting-edge artists wherever they may be.” – major move

    New Huawei phone has a 5x optical zoom, thanks to a periscope lens | Ars Technica – reminds me a lot of Konica Minolta’s pocket digital cameras (the first standalone digital camera that I owned), everything old is new again

    Irish government concludes there is no viable plan B | total telecom – “We still don’t have universal 4G coverage so it’s a bit of a pipe dream to suggest we are going to have universal 5G coverage to deliver the national broadband plan,” the country’s communications minister, Richard Bruton, said. – To be fair, London doesn’t have universal mobile coverage, let alone 4G coverage.

    Google’s work in China benefiting China’s military: U.S. general | Reuters – “The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military,” Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China knowing that there is that indirect benefit,” he said. “Frankly, ‘indirect’ may be not a full characterization of the way it really is, it is more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.”

    Increasing The Effectiveness of PR Agency Partnerships in China | Holmes Report – Insight from R3’s China PR Scope Report reveals that though PR agencies are highly regarded in content (23.7%) and media management (17.8%), they are not particularly strong in KOL and celebrity engagement (3.9% and 1.3%) – if I were an international agency I’d be really concerned about this. It shows a failure to adapt that is probably more spectacular than in the west

    U.K. Pub Chain Bans Mobile Phone Use in Bid to Encourage Talking – Bloomberg – our pubs are for social conversation person to person – actually no they’re for drinking

    BrandZ says Huawei is strongest Chinese brand outside China, but why? | Marketing | Campaign Asia – despite lots of documented geopolitical issues, the year was still very good for Huawei in terms of branding, driven by focus on 5G and R&D leading to chip-level AI capabilities, foldable phones and other innovations, said Doreen Wang, global head of BrandZ at Kantar. – for an index that’s looking at marketing and advertising being converted to brand equity this isn’t good news

    KFC Bought a Time Slot on Ultra Music Festival’s Main Stage | Music News | Consequence of Sound – you can see how this would all happen in a William Gibson book plot about the bankruptcy of culture in the near future. A client hungry of innovation and a desire to resonate with millennials and gen-Z. A jaded creative director who liked DeadMau5 and the agency’s news sponsorship and cultural partnerships team. I’m just surprised that there wasn’t a SnapChat tie in somewhere

    Facebook’s most shared story of 2019 is a 119-word local crime brief from Central Texas. | Slate – interesting insight into how Facebook’s algorithms drove this

    What Finally Killed AirPower | iFixit – Apple boxed themselves into an electromagnetic corner. What they wanted to do was physically possible—and they surely had it working in the lab—but they couldn’t consistently meet the rigorous transmission requirements that are designed to keep us safe from our gadgets.

    Report: Huawei Riddled With ‘Long Term Security Risks’ – ExtremeTech – In short, Huawei isn’t trying to riddle its software or hardware with secret back doors, but it’s also really, really bad at security. That’s not a conclusion that’s hard to fathom, particularly given how many companies have been hit by security breaches or had their own poor practices exposed – Huawei aren’t Machiavellian, they’re just incompetent and unwilling or unable to fulfil their infosec commitments?

    T-Mobile Introduces Private Phone Booths for Making Calls, Surfing the Web, Taking Selfies | Frequent Business Traveler – so in the same business as WeWork then

    The Apple Card is great (playing devil’s advocate) | Boarding Area – the money quote in this article ‘Here’s the part where I pretend to love the card and argue why it really is cool and revolutionary.’

    Chupa Chups logo, designed by Salvador Dali | Logo Design Love – Salvador Dali designed the logo, just wow

    Appl Still Hasn’t Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm | WSJ – this is quite shocking (paywall)

  • T-WOG $ & things that made last week

    Things that made my day this week, apart from spending time with family, introducing my Mum to T-WOG $. T-WOG $ is the Terry Wogan secret pirate radio shows. We also ended up eating surprisingly little Christmas food; none of us really wanted the heaviness of seasonal fare that introduces food coma.

    For those who haven’t heard it, T-WOG $ is Peter Serfinowicz channels Terry Wogan; IF he hosted a show on rinse.fm. He gets the light, deft responses that Wogan perfected for his fan base during his heyday on BBC Radio 2 or TOGs as they were called. TOGs stood for Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals. Serfinowicz then marries this with the call out culture from pirate radio since the late 1980s.

    Terry was unfortunately taken from us going on for two years ago, but his cultural impact lives on.

    To complete the illusion; I just need to find an impressionist who can do a passable impression of Daniel O’Donnell spitting lyrics over drill tracks.

    RuPaul’s tic-tac diet from circa 1993… RuPaul had refined her persona by this time. This was done about the same time that RuPaul had her first album and mainstream success with Tommy Boy Records.

    A more serious interview with RuPaul Charles courtesy of Houston PBS

    Ireland, Brexit and the future of Transatlantic Relations

    An Irish perspective on Brexit. Daithi O’Ceallaigh is a former Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom, so is likely to have an informed opinion with regards how the Irish government views Brexit.

    Three stories on video game addiction told in I Was A Winner. Its a great bit of film making about an issue that could be the tobacco industry of our time.

    And one last thing as a seasonal bonus

  • Loose networks & social connections

    I went to a family funeral and got to think about loose networks and social connections.

    In Ireland the tradition for a funeral is:

    • As soon as possible after death, the body goes to the funeral home. A coroner will have had to sign off on it
    • The body is put on exhibition in the coffin at the funeral home and family greet visitors from the deceased close and loose network who come and pay tribute to the deceased. The coffin is then closed and taken to the church in a procession, which slows as it passes the deceased’s home
    • The following day a funeral mass is held, followed by a procession to the cemetery and then the burial

    This all happens really fast; usually three days from time of death to grave. Those of the family that can make it home try to, but there isn’t much time. So those who are a long haul flight away generally are excused from coming back home.

    In the rural west of Ireland word goes out through a number of channels

    • Local radio – Galway Bay FM lists deaths and funeral information at regular times throughout the day
    • Local newspapers – the deaths feature on their web sites and in their print editiions (depending on publications and the timings of the death). The print edition of the Connacht Tribune comes out on a Thursday; which means that you might miss a mid-week funeral. When I was a kid it would be picked up from the local general store on a Thursday afternoon for the Connacht Tribune
    • RIP.ie – a web service that people can consult to see what funerals are going on in their vicinity
    • Word of mouth then does the rest. Whether its gossip between neighbours, across the counter at a local shop or announced from the pulpit at mass. We would be back in the local general store would on Sunday on the way home from mass for the national Sunday newspaper and a copy of The Irish Farmer’s Journal. But a secondary reason for that visit was to hear of any local deaths in case you’d have to go to pay your respects. Shop owners were perennial gossips and this was a vital role for the community

    Local media and traditions have carved out a distinctive niche that doesn’t involve Facebook or other social media platform

    The people that come along include a mix of closely connected contacts and threads of loose networks including:

    • Family
    • Relatives (second and third cousins, families who are connected via marriage)
    • Close friends
    • People who you knew but may have lost touch with like school friends
    • People you’ve done business with. In my relatives case it was agricultural  contractors and the local hardware store – which has a much wider range of stock than your average ToolStation or Home Depot to deal with the requirements of farms
    • Business relatives and friends of the bereaved

    For the bereaved, the process does as good a job as you can helping the family deal with grief. In the case of my relative who had a sudden heart attack and died it provided closure. The person was eulogised and then sent on the next part of their journey onward.

    For a rural community, made up of small towns and farms it presents an opportunity to reinforce loose networks and business connections. In our family’s case the farm as a business is passed down from generation-to-generation.

    It becomes important for for business people to attend these events to cement business relationships. In our family’s case some of the visitors were business connections of one of my Uncle’s (who is still living) rather than the deceased.

    Attending these events requires commitment. You had attendees travelling over an hour to pay their respects.

    I was a bit surprised by how robust these loose connections were with relatively little reinforcement. It seems the habit of the funeral process plays its part.

  • Family funeral & things from last week

    I spent the weekend travelling back to Ireland for a family funeral. Despite the fact that it was a family funeral it was good to see some members of the family whom I haven’t seen since I was a teenager. It also cause me to reflect on some things, it inspired my post ‘Ramblings on consumption‘ and you might see similarly inspired future posts. I thought back to my childhood playing cards with my uncle and I have been been getting online practice of the card game Twenty Five. Twenty five had the same impact in rural Irish society that mahjong has for Chinese communities. If any of you want a game let me know.

    I came across an interesting case study on Chevrolet’s celebration of Children’s Day in China. I have put the video below so that you  can see the project, its a nice piece of work. Secondly it is worth reflecting on how this project fits into the changing media landscape. This exemplifies the cross over between brand advertising and corporate communications work that is now happening around the world. Brand advertising is leading this charge into PR’s heartland and taking some of PR’s largest budgets. In a separate note The Holmes Report found that the industry’s top inhouse PR leaders have had their budgets halved over the past six years.

    Enjoy the case study

    Winston Sterzel on shooting with China Central Television (CCTV) – think of it as PBS or the domestic BBC television service with Chinese characteristics.

    Heathrow Express’ advert featuring The Krankies was an interesting choice of creative. It’s very consistent with their brand and mildly subversive.

    GUCCI – Why are you scared of me WeChat campaign features a robot built by Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University clad from head to toe in Gucci. When is the last time you saw a Chanel talking about:

    • What it means to be human
    • Ray Kurzweil’s concept of the singularity, where machine intelligence exceeds human intelligence?

    It then reflects on the benefits that technology have brought to date:

    Because of technology, we have turned fairy tales into animations and created memories of countless human childhoods.Because of technology, home entertainment equipment brings joy to the family, which has inspired many children’s future dreams and aspirations. Even two strangers, when they talk about the common memories they used to have because of the popularity of technology, can seem to understand each other in an instant.

    The implication being that new forms of shared memories may bond robotics in spite of negative factors like the ‘uncanny valley’.