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.

  • Louis Vuitton personalisation + more things

    Louis Vuitton Personalisation

    Louis Vuitton personalisation feature is really interesting. It brings NikeID magic to their retail experience. Customisation makes even more sense in a luxury context like the Louis Vuitton personalisation feature. I think that it will also impact secondhand sales – flair is much more of a personal decision, which will impact secondhand sales.

    If the Louis Vuitton personalisation could be done as an after-market, then that gives Louis Vuitton additional incremental retail revenue.

    Digital catnip

    Scott Galloway manages to get his academic colleague Adam Alter to highlight some of the techniques used to make apps as digital catnip. B.J. Fogg pretty much wrote the book on captology literally: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.

    Nir Eyal took Fogg’s work and simplified it even further in his book Hooked. Adam Alter and Scott Galloway provide a good primer to the principles involved and the likely outcomes.

    Jennifer Cardini

    The soundtrack of my week has been this mix by Jennifer Cardini of Correspondent Records. Cardini has a background in DJing, music and sound design which explains some of the atmospheres.

    Instagram lead generation

    This is probably old news, but it was the first time that I noticed it in my feed. Instagram has an email collection facility that reminded me of Twitter cards. Its a great idea that can help tie Instagram engagement closer to e-commerce sales

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    Flickr search

    Flickr has been tweaking its design and has improved its search. These changes have largely happened under the radar. In my experience, the biggest move was that the ‘camera roll’ has been depreciated in menu positions so that you no longer click on it by accident. It’s good to see the continual improvements in a time of substantial change at Yahoo! / Oath or whatever Verizon calls it. Flickr talked about the changes it made to the user’s profile page on its blog.

    SaveSave

  • Smartphone addiction + more

    Smartphone addiction

    Smartphone addiction gets the Scott Galloway treatment. Childhood smartphone addiction has been a social and government issue in China for years as part of wider concerns over online and mobile gaming. So in some respects Galloway on smartphone addiction feels behind the curve. What is more interesting is how smartphone addiction goes beyond gaming into areas like airline loyalty schemes.

    40 years of hip hop

    The Hood Internet have done an amazing four minute edit of forty years of hip hop. It’s razor sharp precision. I have a pretty good knowledge of old school hip hop and couldn’t name all the tracks. The cuts are so short, Shazam isn’t likely to help either.

    Chinese dream

    BBH Shanghai have created a beautiful ad for Audi China which features science fiction author Hao Jing Fang. This feels like a mix of Wong Kar-wai and cyberpunk fiction. In some ways it isn’t that far from the aesthetic in present day Chinese tier one cities central business districts. It represents a brighter techno-utopian future than I would expect in an advert for American or European consumers.

    In some ways what was the American dream is now the Chinese dream. This implies a Chinese golden age of sorts, but there a number of headwinds to this dream from demographics to the authoritarian nature of the party.

    Louis Vuitton

    Louis Vuitton have been doing a lot of forward thinking content and events. Whilst this video is beautifully shot, it feels retro by comparison to other things that they’ve done. I went to the Louis Vuitton series exhibition was far more forward looking than this video.

    Work in Progress

    Carhartt Work In Progress created this great skate video in Italy.

    AZZURRO from Carhartt Work In Progress on Vimeo. Work In Progress have been consistently doing a great job commissioning content. In this respect, I would put them right up there on Red Bull in terms of quality, if not quantity of content. The alignment with skateboarding in this film is perfect.

  • Pipes + more news

    Pipes

    Pipes – Yahoo! Pipes analogue, lets just hope that they haven’t captured the ‘flakey’ experience. I often remember hearing Yahoo! Pipes being compared to owning a British sports car. Instead I would prefer that Pipes provide the Mazda MX5 (Miata) experience where you get the experience but none of the broken ass crap of owning an MGB

    Business

    Is 2017 the beginning of the end for the app economy? TheNextWeb – not exactly the beginning of the end. More like a new normal – one thing that’s missing is the importance of building inside existing app eco-systems such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger etc. Whilst WeChat have made headway with mini-apps it will be interesting to see if Facebook can duplicate their success.

    Korea

    Why young South Koreans are turning away from religion | Arts & Culture | Al Jazeera – a certain amount of this turning away is geography. Korea had a mix of buddhism and Shamanism historically. Buddhist monasteries and temples were often in the mountains close to nature. Shamanism depended on closeness with nature – so again being out in the middle of nowhere. You throw in the move to cities, the break down of familial connections through distance and time poverty. More on Korean related topics here.

    Luxury

    Luxury Brands Leave Youku in Favor of China’s Younger Video Platforms | L2

    Marketing

    Ambition: Exploring the digital marketing revolution – interview with Philip Kotler

    Ambition: Mastering mobile internet strategy in China by Winston Ma – nice white paper that looks at cinema’s role in reaching customers as part of an omnichannel approach

    Media

    Why the Chinese Will Pay for Content That Americans Won’t – Bloomberg – De Dao and other paid media. Part of the reason is that the quality of much free media is lacklustre due to pleasing the state ranking above delighting the audience.

    Security

    Russian Hackers Are Using Google’s Own Infrastructure to Hack Gmail Users | Motherboard

    Does Slack allow your boss to spy on you? — Quartz – yes, but only with output rather than outcome-focused measures on productivity. It will reinforce the practices of poor managers rather than help make good managers

    Web of no web

    Russian internet giant Yandex shows off its self-driving car | Engadget

    The Surprising Repercussions of Making AI Assistants Sound Human | WIRED – interesting nuances of voice interface design

  • Brand blogs + more news

    Brand blogs

    Are Brand Blogs Worth the Effort? | The Daily | L2 – I am surprised at the findings on brand blogs especially in terms of best practices not being adhered to. Blogging is the platform which the marketing profession understands best, because it has been using it the longest, brand blogs are also one of the few platforms that the luxury brand can truly own. I think the research on brand blogs reflects that marketing functions aren’t learning organisation. More related content here.

    FMCG

    Starbucks is testing out ice cubes made of coffee | Quartz – makes total sense

    Media

    Rubicon Project’s Barrett: Tackle Transparency Or Ad Tech Could Face Regulation 05/18/2017 – stating the obvious, but interesting that this came out the same time that they are countersuing The Guardian

    Spotify’s Loss Widens Despite Big Jump in Revenue — The Information – investor sentiment seems to be more about hope rather than reality

    Online

    Introducing Similarity Search at Flickr | Yahoo Research – really cool image search

    Retailing

    Telegram now lets users buy things from chatbots in its messaging app | TechCrunch – very WeChat-esque

    Security

    How Google reinvented security and eliminated the need for firewalls | Network World – interesting read (reg wall)

    Theresa May to create new internet that would be controlled and regulated by government | The Independent – Facebook and Google should just block the UK and see how that goes down, otherwise the precedent it offers internationally is quite worrisome for them

    The Threat | Edge.org – interesting perspective on computer security research over time

    Software

    Huawei Loses Ex-Apple Designer Hired to Revamp Smartphone Software — The Information – usual aspects of challenge: distance from headquarters, Chinese language skills, desire for a big step change are all barriers

    What’s Happening with Me – Biz Stone – Medium – Biz Stone heads back to Twitter

    “MP3 is dead” missed the real, much better story – Marco.org

    China Hit Hard by Hacking Attack as Asia Assesses Damage | New York Times – not terribly surprised by this

  • Paula’s Loewe collar + more

    Loewe x Paula’s

    Spanish luxury brand Loewe x Paula’s rolled out its collaboration with Ibiza boutique Paula’s. Paula’s reflects a move of Ibiza away from sweaty EDM fans to a more elite stylish visitor more used to Pykes and Hunters. In many respects Loewe x Paula’s is about taking Ibiza back the original Balearic vibes where it was populated by the international jet set, before football casuals and clubland discovered the white isle in the mid-1980s. More related content here.

    Generation Z

    Meet Generation Z in our latest film | JWT Intelligence – downloadable and handy for provoking thoughts on planning in terms of data point. I have broader issues with the concept of generations and find life stages generally much more valuable as a concept. Generations hide data which should have use asking broader questions. Their generalisations aren’t that helpful either.

    Fred Wilson

    Venture capitalist Fred Wilson speaking at MIT Sloan School of Management. Fred Wilson used to run a technology VC operation with Andy Kessler. He then went on to found his own VC business – Union Square Ventures, based out of New York.

    Wilson talks about the VC role in terms of coaching entrepreneurs as much as investing them. In some respects this feels at odds with the usual VC approach of investing in the team. He talks about the demise of the investor letter, but also the importance of writing as ‘thinking out loud’.

    Product design by algorithm

    The Lowly Folding Chair, Reimagined With Algorithms | WIRED – classical material and computer aided design came up with something special. Its a fantastical piece of design. The question of intellectual property with regards the chair is a problem that can be solved another day

    UNISON

    UNISON campaigns to get voters on board with more of a focus on public services as the UK election got under way seems to have failed completely judging by the opinion polls. This disturbing video was made with Claire Sweeney – which breaks the uncomfortable ground between daytime TV programming and satire. At worst, this could be used as an excuse for the government to clamp down on the ‘interference’ of trade unions in parliamentary elections.