Ged Carroll

Category: luxury | 奢華 | 사치 | 贅沢

Over the space of 20 years, luxury changed enormously. The Japanese had been a set of new consumers for luxury, but in terms of numbers they hadn’t eclipsed the US as the biggest market for luxury.

China’s ascent into the WTO (World Trade Organisation) made a lot of business people and politicians a lot richer. China challenged the US in terms of luxury market size. On their rise, Chinese consumers changed a lot in their sophistication as they educated themselves on luxury consumption.

These new consumers picked up new traits such as wine drinking. This also meant that luxury goods became new asset classes as Chinese money looked to acquire only the best. Chinese culture in turn impacted luxury design. Chinese new year became more important than Christmas.

Then there was the second generation money. Young rather than old consumers. Consumers who were looking for something less formal, either because they didn’t wear anything but streetwear or they worked in the creative classes rather than the traditional professions and high finance.

The industry had traditionally avoided rap artists and R&B singers, now Jay Z and Beyonce are the face of Tiffanys and Fendi had collaborated with Rihanna.

They no longer wanted to have to wear a jacket and tie to have afternoon tea at the Mandarin. They took an eclectic look more attuned to the Buffalo Collective than Vogue Italia.

You had hybridisation with the street to create a new category of luxe streetwear in a way that also owes a debt to football casual terrace wear and the pain.

Now you have Zegna badge engineering approach shoes from alpine brand La Sportiva and Prada has done a similar thing with adidas’ iconic Stan Smith tennis shoes. Balenciaga with their Speed Sock looks like a mix between Nike’s flyknit football boots and the Nike Footscape sole.

As I have written elsewhere on this blog:

Luxury has traditionally reflected status. Goods of a superior nature that the ‘wrong sort’ of people would never be able to afford. Luxury then became a symbol that you’d made it. In Asian markets, particularly China, luxury became a tool. People gifted luxury products to make relationships work better. It also signified that you are the kind of successful business person that partners could trust. You started to see factory managers with Gucci man bags and premium golfwear to signal their success. Then when the scions of these business people and figures in authority were adults, luxury has become about premium self expression.

  • Audi Skysphere & other things

    Audi Skysphere

    Audi launched its latest concept car the Audi Skysphere. It’s electrically powered as you’d expect. Massive screens for displays and sustainable materials used in the interior. It has autonomous driving when its in a ‘grand touring’ mode. It allows for the owner to drive in a ‘sports car’ mode. All pretty normal stuff so far.

    But sports car mode means that the vehicle length shrinks. That’s right the Audi Skysphere changes shape rather than just changing functions up via electronics.

    In terms of styling, Audi calls calls jazz age Horsh tourers the influence for the Audi Skysphere. Audi is descended from Auto Union AG. Auto Union AG was formed in 1932, with the merger of Horch, DKW, Wanderer and the original Audi Automobilwerke. That’s why the Audi logo has four circles and why Horsh is the influence.

    Its long, wide and low bonnet brings to mind the Dodge Viper. The sides reminded me of Ford’s ‘Edge’ design language, if it was done by Zaha Hadid Architects. Lots of the details such as the lights use a mass of small triangles, reminding me of Hadid’s Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion. It also serves a reminder that computerised shapes are usually made up of lots of small polygons. Triangles must be a thing in car design at the moment, not only does the Audi Skysphere feature them, but so does the new Hyundai Santa Cruz throughout its design.

    Audi talks about the Audi Skysphere in terms of progressive luxury, which seems to be about experience and not making a huge environmental impact. They talk about vegan leather (that could be anything from fungi derived proteins to a PVC style plastic) and microfibre (finely spun and woven (usually) polyester / nylon fibre mix).

    The problems are likely to be in the system that the car would go into.

    • How is insurance handled for an autonomous vehicle?
    • Who is the insured party? Vehicle manufacturers would like for it to be the owner who might be responsible for any autonomous vehicle decisions. Putting software product liability out of their hands and on the buyer.
    • Who would be the defendant in the case of someone being run over?
    • How would vehicle inspection tests like Germany’s TUV or the UK’s MOT handle a collapsable chassis?

    I am a bit disappointed to see that Audi isn’t thinking seriously about a post Lithium world sodium ion batteries or hydrogen powered vehicles

    Los Angeles Olympics 1984

    The Los Angeles Olympics was the last olympic event that made a profit. This was down to the city being able to use existing venues for all the competitions and a less onerous demand on resources than games ran since then.

    Los Angeles didn’t have the reputation for design that Munich or the 1964 games in Tokyo had. So this video by the Olympics gave me new insight into the experience. I remembered the logo and the mascot, but since I watched only a small amount of the LA Games. This was because I was working on the family farm at the time. The bits that I did see were on an old black and white TV, so I missed a lot of the design details shared.

    Home-made silicon foundry

    I’d not heard of Sam Zeloof before. Over the past few years he has managed to fabricate integrated circuits ‘chips’ in his own home. Admittedly when we say home, we are talking about a big American multi-car garage. The results is impressive. One obvious thing to point out is that he is not putting in dust suppression techniques like you would see in a commercial fab.

    Solid Logic Technology

    IBM came up with an interesting ceramic hybrid technology that powered the Apollo missions and IBM’s System 360 computers. They were engineered for a robustness that even silicon micro-processors couldn’t match.

  • Photo hashing & other news

    Apple photo hashing

    Report: Apple to announce client-side photo hashing system to detect child abuse images in user’s photos libraries – 9to5Mac – photo hashing its not foolproof. Once the proof of concept exists, Apple won’t be able to withstand the pressure authoritarian government could use it to track other materials. Tencent’s WeChat is already collecting memes that the Chinese government wouldn’t like from foreign WeChat accounts so that it can train its algorithms to locate similar content with domestic users. The risk for Apple’s customers in other markets like Russia, China and the middle east is real. Apple’s development of photo hashing has garnered a lot of coverage

    Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery | Financial Times 

    Apple led the market on encryption, but other players like WhatsApp have made it clear that they won’t follow Apple on photo hashing.

    Apple has been trying to ignore the voices complaining against its photo hashing initiative. The problem is that those voices are the early adopters and developers who have made Apple what it is today. I think that this could end very badly for Apple in the long term. Particularly when viewed in context of questionable ethical choices despite its progressive positioning on issues in western markets

    Apple Discusses “Screeching Voices of the Minority” in Internal Memos – It’s difficult to even write a piece like this, pointing out that a feature ostensibly created for good could have bad implications. Again: What happens when a country like China uses this feature to find people with images critical of the government? Why wouldn’t the industry want to start searching for pirated content on iPhones in a few years?

    Apple Privacy Letter: An Open Letter Against Apple’s Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology – a legion of the great and the good of the technorati from around the world on the photo hashing

    One Bad Apple – The Hacker Factor Blog 

    Even the FT weighed in.

    Business

    The China risk factor continues to reverberate: China’s Corporate Crackdown Is Just Getting Started. Signs Point to More Tumult Ahead. – WSJ

    Chinese music group pulls $1bn Hong Kong IPO after tech crackdown | Financial Times – interesting move, especially given Netease’s exposure to the edutech sector

    ‘If Masa said yes, who am I to object?’: SoftBank deals unleash internal compliance tensions | Financial Times – sounds like desperate measures

    China

    Is Pax Sinica possible? – China will need to start upholding democratic values and norms, and cultivating peaceful relationships with other countries. Pax Americana has survived for so long, because many countries, including China’s neighbours, rely heavily on the US for trade, finance, technology, and security. They will be reluctant to accept Pax Sinica, unless China offers them something better. And that must begin with pax – I suspect that Premier Xi would be thinking more along the lines of mercantilistic trade relationships and vassal statehood, which would be more in keeping with pre-revolutionary China

    Consumer behaviour

    Everybody needs to get vaccinated, says Tilman Fertitta – Fertitta’s comments about employees admitting that they had fake vaccines cards is pretty disturbing. It isn’t like vaccines are in short supply in the markets that has restaurants in like New York. The counterfeit vaccine cards must be more about avoiding vaccines all together

    Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades | PNAS – Individuals with depression are prone to maladaptive patterns of thinking, known as cognitive distortions, whereby they think about themselves, the world, and the future in overly negative and inaccurate ways. These distortions are associated with marked changes in an individual’s mood, behavior, and language. We hypothesize that societies can undergo similar changes in their collective psychology that are reflected in historical records of language use. Here, we investigate the prevalence of textual markers of cognitive distortions in over 14 million books for the past 125 y and observe a surge of their prevalence since the 1980s, to levels exceeding those of the Great Depression and both World Wars. This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample. Our results suggest a recent societal shift toward language associated with cognitive distortions and internalizing disorders. – literally society is sick

    The xenophobic chicken and the propaganda egg: disentangling official and popular nationalism in China – by Kevin Carrico – NSL can’t cancel me – you could not make some of this up. But then, you also couldn’t make up the QAnon community if you tried either.

    ‘Sales funnels’ and high-value men: the rise of strategic dating | Dating | The Guardian – I suspect this is an edge case but its interesting

    Where have all the pre-teens gone? – The Face 

    Design

    ongoing by Tim Bray · Apps Getting Worse – Every high-tech company has people called “Product Managers” (PMs) whose job it is to work with customers and management and engineers to define what products should do. No PM in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold. That’s not visionary. That doesn’t get you promoted. – This also explains why Skype got designed into irrelevancy

    FMCG

    Unilever installs a detergent refill machine in Mumbai | Trendwatching – this all feels like things have gone full circle. My Mum and Dad growing up as children in rural Ireland talked about how many dry goods products were sold by weight in the village store. My Granny used to keep spices and flavourings for baking in a bucket sized tin that she’d been gifted decades before by the village store owner. Used packaging was a community asset rather than a liability. The biscuits were sold by the dozen in a paper bag by the shopkeeper. I can just about remember the village store and its long time owner Mrs Paddy Kelly, (Mr Kelly had died decades ago but I have no idea what Mrs Kelly’s name was). By the time I was born, it was more like a modern convenience store, with a farm supplies store attached. Electricity had come to the farm when I was three or four, so we had a fridge and an icebox – ideal for a block of HB vanilla ice cream that came back from the shop wrapped in newsprint to try and keep it cold.

    Secondly, by having a vending machine in store; Unilever are still managing to keep control of their brand.

    Japan

    Japan’s fractured polity exposed by COVID-19 crisis – Nikkei Asia – Whatever the intention, the public sees hypocrisy, inconsistency and incompetence. The vaccination rollout has been a mess. The public was asked to practice “self-restraint” and stay at home for the fourth state of emergency as the country opened its doors to tens of thousands of athletes and officials for the 2020 Olympics. 

    This dismal state of affairs clashes with the image of competence and professionalism that Japan has enjoyed for decades, and for which it is admired around the world. 

    Japan looks good in international COVID comparisons, but by its own standards, the situation is perceived as chaotic and a failure of leadership. The public has lost faith. Cynicism has spread as people blame a sclerotic government that does not seem to understand the many recent transformations of Japanese society

    Legal

    South Africa grants patent to an AI system known as DABUS — Quartz Africa – The patent application listing DABUS as the inventor was filed in patent offices around the world, including the US, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. But only South Africa granted the patent (Australia followed suit a few days later after a court judgment gave the go-ahead). South Africa’s decision has received widespread backlash from intellectual property experts. Some have labelled it a mistake, or an oversight by the patent office. However, as a patent and AI scholar whose PhD aims to address the gaps in patent law created by AI inventorship, I suggest that the decision is supported by the government’s policy environment in recent years. This has aimed to increase innovation, and views technology as a way to achieve this – back when I worked for DSM before I went to college, a lot of of our patented products were developed using software that tested and then gave us optimal formulas – yet the patents went to the doctor who was the nominal head of the lab

    Luxury

    LVMH’s Deal With Google Is Groundbreaking. Here’s Why. – develop business solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI), it raised many questions about how brands are embracing the use of digital technologies to reshape the luxury experience. Google said they would join forces to empower LVMH’s individual luxury brands to create new, personalised customer experiences that fostered long-term growth, through functions like demand forecasting, inventory optimisation, as well as develop new business use cases at scale and explore co-innovation opportunities by launching a data and AI Academy in Paris

    Luxury Daily | Have China’s ‘trafific stars’ become toxic for beauty brands? – Chinese versions of K-pop stars are becoming embroiled in scandals that affect their brand partners

    Retailing

    Crocs, Ralph Lauren, LV All Get More Expensive As Apparel Prices Soar – Apparel prices across US retailers rose nearly 5% in June, the biggest leap in a decade.

    Software

    ongoing by Tim Bray · Apps Getting Worse – Every high-tech company has people called “Product Managers” (PMs) whose job it is to work with customers and management and engineers to define what products should do. No PM in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold. That’s not visionary. That doesn’t get you promoted. – this explains why Skype got designed into irrelevancy

    Sports

    Why Puma cancelled a $2.7 million deal with Nigeria — Quartz Africa – Nigeria’s current sports administrators are delighted. The athletics federation said Nigeria’s sports minister had successfully stopped athletes from receiving Puma bags containing about 40 items each in Tokyo through the Nigerian embassy. To this set of administrators, the 2019 deal was not properly agreed between Puma and previous leaders of Nigeria’s athletics body

    Wireless

    General Dynamics Mission Systems Introduces Badger Software-Defined Radio – Soldier Systems Daily – interesting decline in size, but much slower than would be likely to happen in the commercial space

    Samsung flagships can no longer compete with the Chinese smartphones – The current flagship Galaxy S21 series has never managed to win worldwide love. Judging by the information from South Korean publications, the flagships, which were supposed to destroy competitors, failed miserably in sales. Based on the report of Counterpoint analysts, it can be concluded that the Galaxy S21 series has not been able to repeat the success of any of its predecessors, starting with the Galaxy S5 – this looks like PC sales when ‘white box manufacturers’ disrupted Winter brands such as IBM and Compaq

    Research Alliances Grow to Learn How 6G Will Play Out – EE Times Europe

    Thailand

    Jack “dekfarang” Brown is having a tantrum – by Andrew MacGregor Marshall – Secret Siam – foreign influencers enjoyed by Thais were a thing I didn’t even know about

  • Genesis luxury car brand

    In the space of a few decades Hyundai Motors have gone from building cars based on western and Japanese car manufacturers to having its own luxury marque: Genesis, that challenges Lexus and Mercedes-Benz.

    Genesis
    Genesis advert from the FT magazine

    Genesis origins

    The Hyundai Grandeur was an executive saloon that they started making in 1986. It was basically a rebadged version of the Mitsubishi Debonair. The Debonair was a competitor to the Nissan Cedric and Toyota Crown. It was noticeable for having the same body style from 1964 to 1986. Hyundai built the a licensed version of the mark II Debonair.

    Hyundai needed a domestic luxury car to ferry officials around in for the Seoul olympics in 1988. The focus on the Olympics was because Hyundai Motors had become an official sponsor. The Seoul olympics was put on to showcase how Korea had become a developed nation over the previous four decades.

    The early Grandeur was a world away from Hyundai’s previous range topper, a rebadged version of the Ford Granada mark II.

    Successive models of the Grandeur were the top of the range vehicles in the Hyundai Motors range until the arrival of the Hyundai Equus and Genesis. When the Genesis brand range was founded the Hyundai Grandeur reduced the number of markets were it was available to  South Korea, China, the Middle East, Latin and South America (except Mexico).

    Hyundai Genesis -> Genesis G80

    The Genesis was originally designed as an interpretation of the modern rear-wheel drive sports saloon. It was evenly balanced and lighter than the BMW 5 series and Mercedes E class. It under performed in the US and Canadian market.

    So when the mark II Hyundai Genesis was due to come to market; the company set up a new brand built around the car which became the Genesis G80 launched alongside the related but bigger G90.

    Equus -> G90

    Hyundai needed a car for its politicians and captains of industry so in 1999 it built its own version of the Mitsubishi Dignity. The Dignity is a lesser known known competitor to the Toyota Century. It was a Japan market only car that was only available for 15 months.

    By comparison Hyundai’s Equus was made from 1999 to 2008 and sold in Korea, China and the Middle East. The second generation car took its cues more from Mercedes Benz. It became rear wheel drive, got air suspension and a variety of handling technologies.

    The mark III became the G90, a competitor to Mercedes S-class. A high performance limousine with four wheel drive like a fully specced Mercedes limousine.

    G70

    Hyundai extended the product line downwards with a sporting compact luxury saloon and hatchback. All wheel drive is offered as an option, indicating that Mercedes and Audi buyers are their target market.

    GV70 and GV80

    Finally they’ve rounded out the range with two SUVs. The GV70 is about the size of the Range Rover Velar and the GV80 is roughly the same size as a Range Rover Sport.

    Differentiating a luxury car brand

    It was 25 years since a luxury car brand had been successfully launched before Genesis. The comparisons with Lexus are obvious. Genesis has focused on getting a really high JD Power rating like Lexus did decades before.

    The kind of high technology Hyundai has used to differentiate in other categories is a hygiene factor in the luxury space. Instead Genesis is focusing on the ownership experience. Its differentiator is that you get a leasing type experience even if you buy a new Genesis.

  • Michael Malone & things this week

    Michael Malone

    Michael Malone was famous to me as a writer on the San Jose Mercury News online site. Michael Malone had been a long time writer on the paper and chronicled all the happenings in Silicon Valley. Michael Malone is now the co-host of The Silicon Insider podcast. In the past he has written numerous books covering different parts of the history of Silicon Valley. So he has a unique perspective on the place and the technology sector.

    Michael Malone was interviewed by NBC reporter Scott Budman on behalf of the Computer History Museum based in Silicon Valley.

    Dune trailer

    Denis Villenueve is the director that Hollywood seems to trust with difficult to tell films like the Blade Runner sequel. He is also the director who is likely to get closest Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to film Dune in the mid-1970s. Green screen and digital cinema offer Villenueve tools that Jodorowsky could only have dreamed of four decades earlier.

    Junk sleep

    US speciality retailer Mattress Firm is doing a couple of new things with its adverts featuring Lev Schreiber. First of all was the concept in the creative of ‘junk sleep’ that reminded me of J Walter Thompson’s early work for Odorono, an early anti-perspirant that invented the concept of ‘body odor’ from a marketing perspective. People had always been smelly, but it was JWT that broached the subject in the adverts.

    https://youtu.be/WudcydXGWLI

    Junk sleep feels like a similar type of concept. As a strategist, I like the concept. The second aspect is the trippy nature of the ads which captures the feeling of sleep deprivation really well.

    Apple watch

    Apple put together a fun ad for health tracking on the Apple Watch. It gets over many of the activities that the Apple Watch can track.

    https://youtu.be/RkRQ_aykXw8

    It reminded me (unintentionally) of The Court of King Caractacus, made famous by Australian entertainer Rolf Harris. Harris had a five decade career in show business that ended in ignominy when he was convicted for 12 indecent assaults on against four girls.

    Emirates and Qatar Airways

    COVID-19 disrupted the airline industry since people weren’t flying. The asymmetry of opening up seems to be hammering the Middle East airline ‘super hub’ model according to this video by Sam Chui. Chui posits that super hubs offer the opportunity for a super spreading event and there is likely to be an uptake in customers wanting to fly direct in the immediate aftermath of COVID-19.

    If this is true, then there will be a knock on effect for duty free retailing and luxury sales as well.

  • Kris Wu and other news

    Kris Wu

    Canadian Chinese performer Kris Wu was in a Korean group before going out on a solo career in China as a rap artist. He has become a TV star as a judge on Rap of China – a TV talent show. Kris Wu has also appeared in some Chinese films, mostly wushu films that look and feel more like a computer game. The scandal that Kris Wu finds himself would be a career finisher in the west, but it will be interesting to see what happens in China.

    Actor Kris Wu Accused of Predatory Behavior | HYPEBAE – Kris Wu has endorsement deals in place with Louis Vuitton, BVLGARI, Porsche, Lancôme, L’Oreal and Kans in China, along with other companies like Master Kong Ice Tea, Tuborg Brewery and more. Kans, a Shanghai-based beauty brand owned by C-beauty giant Chicmax, was the first to cut ties with Wu, announcing on July 18 that it has “terminated Wu’s endorsement contract. Meanwhile, Porsche, Master Kong Ice Tea, Vatti and King of Glory have deleted all their posts of Wu on Weibo. Louis Vuitton temporarily archived its Weibo posts of Wu but put them back on its feed not long after

    Kris Wu: Brands Drop Pop Star Amid China Misconduct Allegations – Variety – the interesting thing is that Chinese brands dropped Kris Wu first, before western brands. This is despite western brands being exposed to the #metoo movement. Note: the Chinese police have since found Wu did avail of the casting couch and the accuser went public to gain fame – make of it what you will

    China

    The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins | Vanity Fair – Wuhan is also home to China’s foremost coronavirus research laboratory, housing one of the world’s largest collections of bat samples and bat-virus strains. The Wuhan Institute of Virology’s lead coronavirus researcher, Shi Zhengli, was among the first to identify horseshoe bats as the natural reservoirs for SARS-CoV, the virus that sparked an outbreak in 2002, killing 774 people and sickening more than 8,000 globally. After SARS, bats became a major subject of study for virologists around the world, and Shi became known in China as “Bat Woman” for her fearless exploration of their caves to collect samples. More recently, Shi and her colleagues at the WIV have performed high-profile experiments that made pathogens more infectious. Such research, known as “gain-of-function,” has generated heated controversy among virologists. – this shows you how bolloxed China soft power is

    What if America Delists Chinese Firms? by Shang-Jin Wei – Project Syndicate – Chinese firms’ most egregious accounting frauds tend to be discovered by professional short-sellers using techniques – such as undercover company visits – that auditing firms do not employ.

    Consumer behaviour

    The New-Style Family Values Underpinning the ‘China Dream’ – the emergence of a new kind of “familism” — an ideology in which family interests take precedence over individual ones. Yan, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, sees this “neo-familism” as distinct from traditional Chinese familism, which revolved around ancestor worship and the perpetuation of one’s lineage. Success under neo-familism is defined in material terms such as wealth and consumption. 

    This year, Yan edited “Chinese Families Upside Down,” a collection of essays from academics that seeks to go beyond the conventional focus on filial piety to examine the new dynamics of intergenerational relations under neo-familism. Speaking with Sixth Tone over the phone, Yan talked about how and why family structures have received an unprecedented degree of high-level policy attention in recent years, the changes taking place in Chinese families, and the growing anxiety felt by parents and children in an increasingly risk-laden society

    We’re All Teenage Girls Now | EE Times – During the early days of mobile telephony, I was living in Tokyo, where I observed schoolgirls glued to their clunky DoCoMos, learning the obligations and pitfalls of 24-hour texting, taking proto-selfies with their primitive photo apps and flocking — like moths to a streetlight — to Harajuku and Akihabara to blow their allowance on the latest advanced purveyor of girl gab. 

    Fast forward to this month, in Paris. I was on the suburban train from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the heart of the city. I looked up from the book I was reading…  

    …and I looked around. There were perhaps forty people in the car, including a busker rendering “Au Ciel de Paris” on a battered accordion. My trainmates represented all shapes, sizes and colors of adulthood between the ages of 25 and 70-plus. Of this random cadre, not including the accordionist, three-quarters were clutching slim rectangles of metal and glass, gazing raptly downward into a tiny screen at words, photos, videos, news, games, mail, etc. One woman in her thirties, impeccable in hair, clothing and makeup, never once — as I observed — raised her eyes from her phone through the entire 45-minute haul from airport to place St. Michel. Her thumbs, when she set them to messaging, were a blur

    The first Olympic gold medal in skateboarding went to Japan — Quartz – big issue for skateboarding as a sport is how the Olympics might affect its culture and related categories. Despite its aspirations, the Olympics isn’t the X-Games.

    Design

    Humble Utility Poles Have a Long-Term Infrastructure Maintenance Plan | EE Times

    After 3D printing now comes 4D printing | Smart2Zero 

    Economics

    EDA, IC Manufacturing Gear Sales Hit Records | EE Times 

    Why Biden Seems Worse to China Than Trump – The New York Times

    In defense of sanctions – by Kevin Carrico – NSL can’t cancel me 

    China is keeping its borders closed, and turning inward | The Economist 

    Will China Retaliate Against U.S. Chip Sanctions? – Lawfare 

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam shrugs off scenes of residents leaving at airport, says city has ‘prosperous future’ ahead | South China Morning Post – Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam shrugs off scenes of residents leaving at airport, says city has best time and ‘prosperous future’ ahead. Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday brushed off recent scenes at the airport suggesting an exodus of residents, adding that she would tell anyone considering leaving that the city would continue to prosper with Beijing’s support and the help of the national security law – this is quite shocking. I don’t think that I have seen a country allow a wilful brain drain in this way. Medical staff, teachers and the middle classes are the the people slipping away to supermarket jobs in the UK

    Now News exec. resigns, cites ‘turbulent times’ for Hong Kong media – reports – Now News is a cable news channel

    ‘Hong Kong Tram Green’ now a recognised colour | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – great to see the ‘dingding’ having its iconic nature be recognised

    Over 90% of Hong Kong industrial estate tenants facing eviction oppose redevelopment plan | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP 

    Explainer: From ‘violent attack’ to ‘gang fight’ – How the official account of the Yuen Long mob attack changed | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – to be fair other governments spin as well. But this shattered the illusion of Hong Kong being a place where rule of law happened and the Hong Kong Police were no longer ‘Asia’s finest’ but instead seen as Hong Kong’s biggest gang who were tight with the triads like the bad old days of the 1960s and early 1970s and then you have the wolves and sheep book prosecution National security law: Hong Kong police arrest 5 for allegedly conspiring to distribute seditious children’s books | South China Morning Post 

    Interview: London Mayor Sadiq Khan rolls out welcome mat for Hongkongers, HK$9.6m fund to help visa holders settle

    Billionaires and a Hong Kong bank chief handed seats on powerful new election body | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – the HSBC appointee is retiring from HSBC

    Ideas

    How cryptocurrency empowered the far-right – The Face 

    Outrage reaching boiling point as virus rages out of control – by Andrew MacGregor Marshall – Secret Siam – just wow, interesting article about COVID in Thailand. I imagine that this picture has played out to varying degrees around the world

    The Year Modern Sport Watches Were Born | Gear Patrol – its interesting that all these iconic watch designs appeared in one year 1953. Every idea has its time that builds on previous innovations – an empirical proof of Kevin Kelly’s idea of the ‘technium’

    The Work of Culture – Made in China Journal – the commercialisation and bureaucratisation of academia have led to a shift from ‘poetic technologies’ to ‘bureaucratic technologies’, which is one of the reasons why today we do not go around on those flying cars promised in the science fiction of the past century. As universities are bloated with ‘bullshit jobs’ and run by a managerial class that pits researchers against each other through countless rankings and evaluations, the very idea of academia as a place for pursuing groundbreaking ideas dies (Graeber 2015: 135; 2018). As conformity and predictability come to be extolled as cardinal virtues, the purpose of the university increasingly becomes simply to confirm the obvious, develop technologies and knowledge of immediate relevance for the market, and exact astronomically high fees from students under the pretence of providing them with vocational training

    Luxury

    Coach CEO talks China: From digital-first to staff as KOLs | Vogue Business – “About two years ago, even before the virus, we developed a very extensive programme to train each of our sales into KOLs so that we can leverage not only professional KOLs but also have hundreds of our own brand ambassadors,” explains Bozec.

    Jackson Wang and Palm Angels’s Ragazzi on their new collab, making celebrity lines work | Vogue Business 

    Marketing

    Subway Tuna Is 100% REAL Wild-Caught Tuna – Subway launches response site to debate on ‘is their tuna real tuna?’

    Marketing imperatives for a cookieless world | WARC – Sophisticated marketers will attempt a shift to contextual and moment-based communication – a bit of time travel by brand custodians to the pre-internet era, where passion group targeting and focus on context might resurrect. There will likely be a pivot from the “bottom of the funnel” performance optimization to “top of the funnel” preference strategies. As the levers at the lower funnel weaken, it will become imperative to move the needle to build brand salience and affinity. Bringing the right audience to their owned website, capturing first-party data, building a strong CRM capability, and recalibrating emphasis on performance media to performance creative. The emergence of a third-party cookieless world presents an opportunity for brand marketers to truly own the consumer journey via meaningful and relevant communication strategies.

    Long-Term Business Vitality Should Outweigh Short-Term Sales Gains – Nielsen – great essay and research on long termism versus short termism in marketing

    Ehrenberg-Bass: 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market for your products

    Male advertisers win sex discrimination case | Financial Times – unfortunate use of the world ‘obliterate’ in Jo Wallace’s presentation. WPP have got to hope to hell that Mark Read’s comments on older staff aren’t brought up

    Media

    Official Secrets Act reform could see journalists treated like spies | Press Gazette

    Online

    Why do people on Tinder list their Instagram? | British GQ – not terribly surprising when you think about the dynamics of Tinder. This has implications for Tinder’s business model of friends and dating based on buying premium services (visibility, bundles of super likes, ability to rewind and reexamine a profile)

    How to be an Instagram influencer | British GQ | British GQ 

    How Neopets Paved the Road to the Metaverse – by Rex Woodbury – Digital Native 

    Security

    US accuses China of masterminding cyber attacks worldwide | Financial Times 

    Who is Mr Gu? – Intrusion Truth – interesting investigation into Gu Jian a former PLA member who is an information security academic and associated with Hainan Xiandun which is one of a network of front companies for APT activity

    Operation Fox Hunt: How China Exports Repression Using a Network of Spies Hidden in Plain Sight — ProPublica 

    The Huawei Moment – Center for Security and Emerging Technology

    Technology

    AI tool cuts 3nm chip design times 

    ABB to buy Spanish autonomous robotics group | EENews Europe – I wouldn’t have set up the factory in China

    ARM shows first plastic M0+ microcontroller 

    Web of no web

    Robotaxis: have Google and Amazon backed the wrong technology? | Financial Times

    Wireless

    What the Orange Dot on Your iPhone Means | Gear Patrol