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.

  • The dream garage

    My friend Adam came up with the dream garage. By some quirk of fate you are wealthy. No fucks given kind of wealthy. You have a garage and it has 10 spaces. What would you put in this dream garage and why?

    Assuming that you aren’t legislated out of using the collection in the dream garage; I thought about this in terms of use cases.

    I’d want at least a couple of vehicles that would be useful. A couple that would be fun and the rest would be kept for my appreciation of some part of their design. I’ve not given any thought to maintenance or depreciation and have assumed that any challenges can be handled with enough money.

    Useful

    BMW M535i (E28)

    1986 BMW M535i (E28) (preferably in a dark colour where the original owner opted for the debadged option. In its day it was a car that hid its performance with mediocre looks. Now its still a respectable performer that won’t turn heads. So ideal for nipping to the local supermarket for the weekly grocery shop. Its also mercifully free of computerised user experience.

    Mercedes G550 4×4 Squared

    Mercedes G550 4×4 Squared (not a US market car though). The Mercedes G-Wagen is a capable off-roader already. But re-engineering it to handle portal differentials from the Mercedes Unimog made it even more capable. The portal differential means that there are is less to catch underneath the car. This allows the vehicle to have a ludicrous ground clearance. You could have got away with a relatively modest diesel engine. But Mercedes wants to sell this to plutocrats and professional footballers. So you get a twin turbo V8 petrol engine and a luxurious interior. If I had the chance I’d have it refitted with a diesel, waterproofed electrics, a heavy duty winch, a truck like exhaust and air snorkel to aid fording water off-road. I figure that if you have a ten car garage, you probably also have a good deal of land to go with it that requires good off-road capability.

    Fun

    Fun is immensely subjective and this makes anything that I put in this use case open to debate.

    Mazda Familia GT-Ae

    Mazda Familia GT-Ae. In the mid-1980s the FIA shut down Group B rally cars because of some high profile accidents. They replaced them with cars that were much closer to production cars called Group A. Manufacturers like Lancia, Toyota and Mazda saw and opportunity further burnish their reputations through motorsports. Outside of Japan the Familia was known as the 323. The GT version was their entry into Group A. It featured a 1.6 litre engine. It had four valves per cylinder and used turbocharging to force air into the cylinders for more power. It saw some success in world championship rallying when it was introduced in 1985. The GT-Ae was released in Japan three years later. It had a number of enhancements including a rear viscous coupling differential and a little more power.

    The GT-Ae is less famous than peers like the Lancia Delta Integrale or the Toyota Celica GT4. But that means its relatively discreet by comparison, the average car buff wouldn’t realise what you had.

    I also like the idea of small, lightweight capable hatchback that isn’t festooned with electronics. The Familia GT-Ae is sufficiently rare that it is hard to find material about it on YouTube.

    Ford RS200

    Ford RS 200 was an attempt to claim back honour. The early 1980s saw Ford of Europe humbled by manufacturers like Audi and Peugeot. Ford had historically put a halo around its car line-up through motorsport and warmed up versions of its own road cars. That formula had been up-ended by the arrival of the VW Golf GTi in showrooms across Europe. Worse still, its rally cars, notably the Ford RS 2000 was rendered obsolete by the move to Group B and the Audi Quattro.

    Ford eventually addressed this with the RS 200. The formula doesn’t sound that promising. A small dumpy looking coupe, assembled by the Reliant Motor Company. The engine was a warmed over design from the 1960s which had originally been put in a failed project to build the Ford Escort RS1700T. The engine suffered terribly from turbo lag at low revs, which was part of the reason why the Escort RS1700T never got off the ground. But this is only half the story.

    Short and dumpy has benefits in handling like the Lancia Stratos. What owners bought was a lightweight Ghia of Turin designed couple, with handling developed by a designer who had cut his teeth in formula one. It had a low driving position and sure footed grip with Ferguson Formula derived four wheel drive.

    Yes Reliant cars were made so bad Ford had to have them reassembled. But Reliant did make lightweight composite plastic based cars. The interior had parts predominantly taken from the Fiesta and Sierra product lines. But that lack of luxury, also meant easier to replace parts and less weight than luxury switchgear. An article published by Autocar outlined the potential of the Ford RS200 if Group B rallying had continued.

    I wouldn’t want a highly tuned version because I am not a skilled professional driver, but I would like the high travel suspension. Again there is a lack of technology to distract from the driving experience.

    What looks like publicity footage shot by Ford to demonstrate their new car. It rides a bit high as the suspension is set up for rallying. The YouTuber claims that the driver is the late great Bjorn Waldegard. It is more likely to be fellow Swede Stig Blomqvist, it is definitely Blomqvist in the last bit of the montage as he is clearly recognisable behind the wheel.

    Art

    Honda S800 coupe

    I love small cars. For my sins the best and worst car that I’ve ever owned was a Fiat 126. The engine was terrible, as was the drum brakes and it was tiresome to drive anywhere for anything more than an hour. But it also put a smile on my face more times than any other car that I owned. It handled really well. You could go sideways around corners and still stay in lane. You had a ludicrously low seating position and an exceptionally direct gear change. But the Fiat 126 looks uglier than the previous Fiat 500 and wasn’t well made. But it made me like the idea of small cars. The first car that I chose was the Honda S800. This beat out cars like the Abarth Fiat 500, the various one-off Bialberos and the Alpine A110. I love the way the Honda engineers took motorcycle engineering to formula one and then to a small sports car for the road. And to top it all off they then made it look very pretty. Japanese car companies have continued to make sporty looking kei cars, but the S500 and subsequent S800 were the originals.

    Actor Daniel Wu has the version that I want. He built it and it was displayed by Honda at SEMA. Its a mix of gorgeous period details and warmed over specification and flared wheel arches. I’d like it in white in tribute to Honda’s 1960s era racing cars rather than low level gangsters.

    Via Hoonigan AutoFocus

    Porsche 911S

    The Porsche 911 needs no introduction. I particularly like the 1973 version. The Porsche 911S is the most advanced version of the car, that kept the purity of the original design. You get a moderately powerful fuel injected engine, the alloy wheels by Otto Fuchs KG, a five-speed manual gearbox and seats with head rests which provides a degree of comfort on longer drives. So why 1973? Later the design became adulterated and added to with detail elements like the US safety bumpers. The current models of Porsche 911 look too elongated compared to the 1973 model. So even though my bedroom wall used to have a Keith Harmer airbrushed painting of a wide body late 1970s Porsche 911, I actually preferred the clean lines and smaller stance of the ‘narrow body’ 1973 car.

    https://youtu.be/JN0DWXlhSZg

    Toyota 2000 GT coupe

    Most westerners know the Toyota 2000GT as the ‘E-type’ like sports car in You Only Live Twice. That’s the Sean Connery Bond film set in Japan with the ninjas and a paper mâché mountain as villains lair. The resemblance to the E-Type Jaguar is no accident. Body stylist Satoru Nozaki was inspired by European grand tourers including the E-Type.

    Yamaha did the engineering of the car. They offered it to Nissan first, who turned it down. They then took it to Toyota with low expectations and Toyota said yes. Yamaha took the engine from Toyota’s Crown saloon car and turned it into a sporty 2 litre inline 6 cylinder. When sold they cost more than Porsche and Jaguars of the day. Only a few hundred got made to provide a halo product for the Toyota vehicle range. Toyota reputedly lost money on each vehicle built. It’s just a gorgeous looking car and hence has a place in the dream garage.

    BMW M1

    During the late 1970s through to 1981, BMW built a stunning looking mid-engined sports cars called the BMW M1. The original idea what the Lamborghini would build them on behalf of BMW for production car racing. Lamborghini did engineering work on the car, but then went bust. James May alleged that BMW had to break into the closed Lamborghini facilities and steal back the M1 body moulds. Given Lamborghini’s reputation for temperamental cars around this time it was probably for the best.

    The body was glass fibre reinforced plastic, for light weight. It was styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro. This gave it a clean, futuristic, aggressive straight-lined design. Giugiaro then did designs in a similar vein for the Lotus Espirit. You can see the heritage of the BMW M1 design in the BMW i8. Giugiaro’s styling alone would get into the dream garage.

    The beauty of the BMW M1 was more than skin deep. The body panels were hung on a tubular steel monocoque frame. It had a 3.5 litre straight six cylinder engine. A version of which later appeared in the E28 BMW M5 and the E24 BMW M635CSI.

    It had a comfortable but basic interior and air conditioning. What you end up with is all the best qualities of an Italian and German sports car.

    Nissan (C110) Skyline GT-R (Kenmeri)

    The Nissan Skyline GT-R became famous in the early and mid-1990s. But the Skyline GT-R has heritage that stretches back much further. I chose the 1973 Nissan (C110) Skyline GT-R (Kenmeri) vintage car over later more capable models due to its styling which is why it sits in the ‘art’ section of my dream garage. The slope back, spoiler give it an amazing look. But it also had great technology for its vintage, notably disc brakes all around.

    The C110 Skyline GT-R was made for less than 12 months due to the 1973 OPEC oil crisis. It featured an in-line 6 cylinder engine designed by the Prince Motor Company, whom Nissan bought out in 1966. It had four valves per cylinder which was very rare at the time. This engine would also appear in the Nissan Fairlady Z 432R – a faster limited edition version of the Fairlady Z developed for production car racing.

    Nissan Autech Zagato Stelvio

    Boom-era Japan saw manufacturers like Nissan doing all kinds of interesting things, none more so than the Nissan Autech Zagato Stelvio. This was back when the land of the imperial palace was based on in Tokyo was worth more than the entire state of California. This also explains why Nissan tried to sell a car that cost 18 million yen new. Or more than a Honda NSX.

    Autech was Nissan’s equivalent of Mercedes’ AMG at the time. They had to improve on the Nissan Leopard coupe. Fortunately the Nissan Leopard coupe shared its floor pan with the equivalent Nissan Skyline. Autech put in a good effort working on performance, handling and braking.

    Autech reached out to an Italian design house to give the car a distinctive yet classy look. Interestingly, they chose Zagato. In the end you ended up with a distinctive Italian car with Japanese build quality – which sounds quite appealing. The interior reminded me a bit of the pre-Fiat Maseratis Biturbo models, particularly in the use of walnut wood veneer and leather.

    As well as the boom times of the 1980s property bubble, Japan also had a huge cultural surge. Anime from original manga like Akira and Ghost In The Shell coming out with their own take on cyber punk. I think its partly this time of creativity and cultural relevance that makes the Nissan Autech Zagato Stelvio dream garage material. It definitely looks as if it has come off the screen from the original Ghost In The Shell anime film

    A second reason is the way Zagato always seem to go off in their own direction from a styling point of view. Some of it might be ugly but it is highly distinctive. I know what you’re thinking, it weird as hell. And you’d be right, but it has some interesting ideas. Those front arches have the wing mirrors built into them to reduce drag.

    The wheels are specially designed to funnel air into the disc brakes for cooling and at the same minimise aerodynamic drag.

    The oddness of the car meant that only about 100 or so were produced in the end and hopefully one of them would make their way to my dream garage.

    I’ve talked through my ten choices. What would be the ten cars you your dream garage?

  • What consumers need + more

    What Consumers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis – Harvard Business School Working Knowledge – “NEARLY A QUARTER OF BRANDS HAVE GONE DARK, PAUSING ALL OF THEIR PAID MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE FIRST AND SECOND QUARTER OF THE YEAR.” – their emphasis not mine. On the face of it that article is a good guide on what consumers need to hear most times; but I would have preferred to see that there was empirical research behind this. It relies on ‘common sense’ and smart people’s guess work / opinion to try and figure out what consumers need to hear from brands. What is undeniable is not that what consumers need to hear, but that consumers need to hear something. Media without advertising support will go under. Brands going silent are losing salience and brand consideration. Consumption still goes on. We communicate now, to influence post-COVID markets, that isn’t about what consumers need, but what brands need. More on related topics here.

    In the Battle Against the Machines, She’s Holding Her Ground – The New York Times – machine learning stuggles with things like multiple voices

    Chinese factories go to extremes to fend off second wave of coronavirus cases – The Washington Post – paywall. Interesting the kind of precautions Foxconn et al are taking to stop re-infection from decimating its workforce and shutting down their manufacturing lines

    Coronavirus Surveillance Helps, But the Programs Are Hard to Stop – Bloomberg – Two people taunted on social media for having an affair because the data showed they were at the same hotel at the same time turned out to have been there for a church gathering.

    UN’s partnership with Tencent at odds with its push for global unity – this is very dark, particularly when you take into account the hand China has played with compromising the WHO

    Thevintageknob.org • View topic – The web of japanese contractors – fascinating investigation into the complex web of sub contractors who supported the Japanese hi-fi industry

    TikTok Told Moderators: Suppress Posts by the “Ugly” and Poor – I presume this helped change the algorithms as well? It is a mirror of wider society

    Zoom admits user data ‘mistakenly’ routed through China | Financial Times – security has become a hot mess for Zoom

    What is Gen Z spending its money on? — Quartz – is it really that different?

    US prez Trump’s administration reportedly nears new rules banning ‘dual-use’ tech sales to China • The Register – ok this is going to get interesting

    Suspense – Single Episodes : Old Time Radio Researchers Group : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive – “On September 30, 1962 a major milestone in radio drama came to an end with the final episode of the long running series, SUSPENSE. Ironically, the episode was titled “Devil Stone” and was the last dramatic radio play from a series that had its roots in the golden age of radio. What began as a “new series frankly dedicated to your horrification and entertainment” took on a life of its own mostly due to the talents of some outstanding producers and adaptations and original stories from the cream of mystery writers of the time. The golden age of radio was truly the golden age of SUSPENSE as show after show broadcast outstanding plays which were “calculated to intrigue…stir [the] nerves.” 911 radio plays from the 40s, 50s and 60s! SO MUCH STYLE! Honestly, I’ve listened to a few of these now and they are wonderful; great stories, great acting, and proper time travel – wonderful, and a perfect bedtime story if you’re in the market for such a thing. – via Matt Muir

    The life and timepieces of Ralph Lauren | How To Spend It – I love Lauren’s attitude to watches

    Gen Z. The Myth. The Reality. | Geometry – I sometimes read out a excerpt from an article in Time Magazine to my colleagues when discussing Gen Z:“Deeply committed to the redemption of social imperfections, they have taken on a vast commitment towards a kinder, more equitable society; they are markedly saner and more unselfish than their elders.”Everyone nods respectfully, seeing images of Greta Thunberg in their mind.There’s One Phrase for the Aspirations of Gen Z that I Think is Oracular in an Interesting Way. The twist: it’s from a 1965 issue of the magazine. And they’re actually talking about Baby Boomers.

    Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising? | WIRED – The most interesting thing is what this article misses – the questionable effectiveness of targeted advertising as opposed to smart mass advertising in the marketing mix a la Byron Sharp

    Porn platform poses as a snack delivery app on iOS – Porn is illegal in China, so one porn platform is hiding in plain sight | Abacus – interesting, how did this get through testing? Did they have a working snack delivery service up and running for testing; to get this through iOS testing in particular?

    Michel Lamunière: “Print is going to thrive in luxury and fashion” | Luxury Society – I agree that print is being challenged in categories like news and general women’s lifestyle ­– I don’t see much of a future for those kinds of media. But with luxury, I think that, and I believe, that there will be less players in the future, and that the ones who do it right will really be able to continue to grow. So the product itself needs to be absolutely beautiful. There’s no room for average layouts and content. The content needs to be exclusive, unique, and super engaging

    Axios China – China’s v-shaped coronavirus recovery looks too good to be true – interesting PMI data that looks ‘too perfect’

    Can Taiwan Benefit From China’s Ouster of US Journalists? | The Diplomat – great opportunity for Taiwan

    Coronavirus gives China more reason to employ biometric tech – Nikkei Asian Review – (paywall)

    The Karen meme — TikTok escapism in a time of crisis | Financial Times – Karens are moms — pushy ones. They share corny inspirational quotes on Facebook, buy merchandise inscribed with “Live Laugh Love” and love to ruin teenage fun. What really marks out a Karen, however, is their capacity to complain and get their own way. If you ever worked in a shop or restaurant when you were younger, you will remember who the Karens were — they were the ones who asked to speak to your manager. – I must admit I am with the kids on this

  • Nordic Choice Hotels + more things

    Really interesting extension by Nordic Choice Hotels. How do you build loyalty and revenue from customers when they aren’t at their hotels? Nordic Choice Hotels, is building on a concept pilot project it has named Hotellkänslan (Hotel Feeling).

    The project, launched in October 2019, has seen two dozen members of the hotel’s Nordic Choice Club loyalty programme who live nearby to the Clarion Hotel Amaranten in Stockholm presented with housekeeping services in their homes. The hotel chain has two million members in total.

    Christian Lundén, director of future business at Nordic Choice Hotels, has stated in the campaign video that the brand is thinking about what would be best for its guests in relation to loyalty. ‘If our most frequent guests are visiting us maybe 60 days a year,’ he says, ‘That’s a great frequent guest – what happens with the other 305 days? How can we become a bigger part of our guest’s life in their own town and not just when they are travelling?’

    Contagious

    An overly emotional but stepwise analysis of where Microsoft’s Xbox went wrong versus Sony’s PlayStation.

    Gene Kelly was usually associated with the golden age of Hollywood. With amazing song and dance routine. Kelly also had a seldom seen serious actor side to his work. His best performance came during the second world war. Kelly was the main protagonist in a film on PTSD.

    Apple has spent over 30 years doing product placement in film and television. Apple Japan put together a film showing Apple laptops in anime. This takes a different slant on product placement programmes that Apple used, but didn’t go public on. More Japan-related posts here.

    https://youtu.be/V85CQzsyvj4

    Knix aims to celebrate the bodies of women over the age of 50. With this film they make Dove’s work seem crass and money grasping. Dove didn’t embrace race as part of body positivism in the same way that Knix have.

  • Arbys + more news

    Arbys trolls McDonald’s over Filet-O-Fish | US Today – you realise how important christianity is in the US when this is going on for the Lenten fish sandwich market. (As far as I can tell, Arbys is like Subway, but serves at least some of their sandwiches in a bap rather than a roll. And has a sides menu closer to say Pizza Hut.) Prayer meetings in the White House and creationism given equal time to evolution on NPR is one thing. Conscious christian consumerism is quite another for your average secular marketer to consider, which is why Arbys vs McDonald’s seem unusual. Given the rise of ‘nones‘ in the American population, particularly young people, Arbys may put off more customers over the long term than it attracts

    Brand New: New Logo for BMW – looks a lot flatter, better for glanceable app icons, printing, possibly printed or vinyl car badges rather than the traditional car badge. More branding and marketing related items here.

    Keep clean and carry on: the new etiquette of Paris Fashion Week | Financial Times – seems to be much more pragmatic than many events

    Chinese teens are shying away from posting about their lives on WeChat to avoid prying parents | South China Morning Post – WeChat is where Facebook was in terms of ubiquity

    Apple now allows iOS developers to send ads using push notifications – Developer Tech – this is going to be annoying

    Repl.it – CLUI: Building a Graphical Command Line – interesting overlap with conversational interfaces

    Didi Chuxing – State of play. – Radio Free Mobile – interesting analysis on Chinese government’s interference

    The Dark Side of China’s Idol Economies | Jing Daily – enraged by Xiao fans’ censorship plot, millions of free speech activists began boycotting Xiao Zhan and the dozens of brands he campaigns for, including Estée Lauder, Piaget, and Qeelin. But they’ve gone further than the usual boycott by promoting competitors of Xiao-promoted brands, crashing Xiao-sponsored brands’ customer service lines, and pressuring those brands to end their collaborations with Xiao. So far, the Weibo hashtag #BoycottXiaoZhan# has exceeded 3450,000 posts and 260 million views.

    Streetwear still hot, influencers not | Financial Review – Forty percent of North American and European respondents said that “community” had been key to their interest in streetwear; only 12% of Asian respondents said the same. (But 41% of Chinese and Japanese respondents said that wearing streetwear was a political act, something that only 11% of North Americans and Europeans reported.)

    Biometric Recognition White Paper 2019 – Google Docs – good translation of an interesting Chinese biometrics whitepaper. Biometrics in China circa 2006 – presentation – and if you compare with this you’ll see the progress made over the past decade or so

    Is Social Selling China’s Next Big Marketing Trend? | Jing Daily – actually being going on for a while with influencers like Mr Bags

    Innovation of the Day | Panera – Panera launched its MyPanera+ Coffee subscription program, offering customers unlimited coffee for USD 8.99 a month. Burger King apparently did a similar scheme it would be interesting to hear how they got on

    For a Whole Month, Pornhub Is Streaming Acclaimed Documentary ‘Shakedown’ for Free – interesting that documentary is running on PornHub

    Mediatel News: How to make, break and shape consumer habits – But when Febreze added a nice smell and advertised the product as a spray to use at the end of cleaning – using the tagline ‘two sprays & we’re clean’ – it became very successful. This is because it created a new habit. It was able to do this because it created a consistent trigger and reward for use. The trigger was when someone finished cleaning. The reward was the added nice smell, which customers came to associate with a cleaning job well done. By having a consistent trigger (people often finish cleaning – or at least people who aren’t me often finish cleaning) and reward, the product shifted from failing launch to a billion dollar brand.

    Catch the news in a glimpse with the new NewsBlur Today View widget on iOS – The NewsBlur Blog – if you aren’t using NewsBlur already, get on it. Like Google Reader, but alive and much better

  • Corona brand + more news

    Mark Ritson: Coronavirus won’t hurt Corona, it will actually boost sales – differentiation, particularly at the symbolic level, was overstated. Any evidence that people perceived Brand A as vastly different from Brand B could be largely explained by its size and prior purchase experiences. Purchase caused brand image, not vice versa. Ergo building a brand image was waste of marketing effort. The big job of brand was to create salience, so a brand came to mind in buying situations. – Great discussion on the brand salience of Corona beer during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the flipside Corona probably won’t get a brand lift from the corona discussions around a solar eclipse either

    Pandemic brands – Wunderman Thompson Intelligence – nice counter-cyclical brand building and CSR during the corona virus outbreak

    Terabytes Of Stolen Adult Content From OnlyFans Have Leaked – There are communities on Reddit and Telegram dedicated to cracking performers’ accounts and sharing the content without their consent. Many of those videos eventually make their way to various tube sites. A similarly large, though different, OnlyFans leak was posted last Saturday to forums dedicated to cracking and leaking pirated content – that is one of the bleakest things that I’ve read in a good while. Especially given the amount of people who are turning to DIY porn on OnlyFans due to the corona virus disrupting employment for low paid services jobs and the entertainment sector

    Nando’s-inspired sex slang used by girls as young as 10 | Technology | The Guardian – you’ve got to wonder about what other level of monitoring and censorship is going on. I find this monitoring of kids distasteful.

    Second-hand clothes sales: fashion forward | Financial Times – vintage all over again. I wonder how the corona virus will impact the desire for pre-owned clothing?

    porsche to print giant fingerprints of customers onto hood of 911 sport cars | Designboom – not sure I think its smart to post a copy of a biometric data on the bonnet of your car. These are the kind of people rich enough to personal safes and secure rooms with finger print locks. I’ve got visions of hackers working out how to take advantage of this

    IBM and Microsoft sign Vatican pledge for ethical AI | Financial Times – the pledge, called the “Rome Call for AI Ethics”, will be presented on Friday morning to Pope Francis by Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, and John Kelly, IBM’s executive vice-president, as well as Vatican officials and Qu Dongyu, the Chinese director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation – so it wasn’t a Vatican driven initiative after all but a public affairs exercise

    Baidu/tech groups: traffic warning | Financial Times – But higher traffic does not equate to higher income for search platforms. The contrast is with gaming, where more time playing means surging in-game purchases. For Baidu, which makes about three-quarters of total revenue from advertising, that is bad news. Even before the outbreak, a slowdown in China had trimmed the advertising budgets of clients. Marketing campaigns have now been cut further. Cancelled events and concerts contribute to the malaise. Baidu’s biggest clients, which include online gaming companies, real estate developers and plastic surgery clinics, have little incentive to advertise. A surge in new sign-ups for online games means fewer game ads are needed. Demand for homes has plunged and some cities have banned home sales altogether. Plastic surgery clinics, a lucrative source of core ad revenues, are taking a hit.

    Twitter is testing new ways to fight misinformation — including a community-based points system – sounds curiously like Cory Doctorow’s concept of whuffie

    How to deliver the personalization consumers want while respecting the privacy they expect | Think with Google – I am not convinced by the focus on mass personalisation. What about brand, culture etc?

    Ogilvy brings on global executive creative directors for Instagram | Campaign Asia – God help us

    Volvo Trucks – The Tower By Forsman & Bodenfors, Sweden – THEINSPIRATION.COM – interesting that they got the head of their business directly involved

    Did America Forget How to Make the H-Bomb? – Mother Jones – and things are probably worse with processes reliant on electronic records

    Chinese navy accused of using laser on US military aircraft | Financial Times – This reads like something from a William Gibson novel

    Otl Aicher: The Olympic Designer Who Shaped Your Journey To The Toilet – Flashbak – Like a paperclip, we don’t think of Aicher’s pictograms as designed objects per se, but rather as the objects themselves. The chairs we own are someone’s take on a chair. That’s not the case with the average, everyday paperclip. It is what it is, a paperclip. That’s it. Objects at this level of comprehension are simply there. They feel as though they have always been there, and did so from the moment they were presented to the masses. In every country, in every city, they are simply there. In the case of Aicher’s icons they’ve become shorthand that everyone can understand, a set of simple shapes that successfully tells us where to go when we need to use a bathroom. – pretty much sums it up

    Google tops Facebook, Instagram in e-commerce activity, study finds | Mobile Marketer – context wins, but guessing that this may vary by category

    LinkedIn | Balenciaga Summer 2020 collection video – Jay Owens – This is a genius bit of media buying for a collection themed around power and power dressing. The catwalk show saw private equity associates, architects & engineers stalk an EU-blue stage set like a parliamentary building. Advertising on LinkedIn now is just 👌– nails context

    Featured Customer – Oscar the Grouch – Squarespace – I used to hate writing case studies for technology companies at the start of my career, but I do like this one that Squarespace did for Oscar the Grouch

    How Japan’s family businesses use sons-in-law to bring in new blood | Financial Times – For hundreds of years, owners of Japanese companies have been adopting their sons-in-law as a way to recruit talent — a practice known as mukoyoshi — giving rise to the saying “You can’t choose your sons, but you can choose your sons-in-law”. The histories of zaibatsu (conglomerate) families such as Sumitomo, Mitsui and Iwasaki (of the Mitsubishi group) are studded with adopted relatives and sons-in-law

    The Sun posts £68m loss as it pays out £27m in legal costs over phone-hacking scandal – However, revenue at News Group Newspapers for the 52 weeks ending 30 June 2019 were up, with total turnover growing to £420m in 2019 from £401.4m in 2018. Circulation of The Sun was down to 1.38 million last year from 1.51 million in 2018, and fell to 1.16 million from 1.28 million for The Sun on Sunday. – so despite revenue increasing losses were up. You also have to wonder how sustainable revenue increases can be with a declining audience

    Smartphone startups take on Google, Apple and put privacy first | DW – I just can’t see these taking off. Interesting data on Google and consumer attitudes

    How Adidas is using WhatsApp as a direct marketing channel – Digiday – The most recent example of the strategy was the “100% Unfair Predator” campaign. Earlier this month, Adidas opened up a hotline on WhatsApp for people in need of a footballer to cover for unreliable teammates on their team. Adidas-sponsored players were made available for games last week once fans had shared some basic information with the hotline such as the game they need the player for. The company’s marketers would notify fans on the morning of their game if their request was successful. The rented players turned up dressed in Adidas’ new Predator20 Mutator footwear. “We know our audience use it to share fixture info, team selection — and team-mates messaging to find last-minute replacements,” said Coveney. “WhatsApp was perfect for the more functional elements of the ‘Rent-a-Pred’ hotline as it allowed consumers to share private information one-to-one with us for review, before being allocated a Predator player near them.”

    Unilever kicks off strategic review of personal-care brands | Campaign Live – this could get interesting