Ged Carroll

Category: marketing | 營銷 | 마케팅 | マーケティング

According to the AMA – Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. This has contained a wide range of content as a section over the years including

  • Super Bowl advertising
  • Spanx
  • Content marketing
  • Fake product reviews on Amazon
  • Fear of finding out
  • Genesis the Korean luxury car brand
  • Guo chao – Chinese national pride
  • Harmony Korine’s creative work for 7-Eleven
  • Advertising legend Bill Bernbach
  • Japanese consumer insights
  • Chinese New Year adverts from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore
  • Doughnutism
  • Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
  • Influencer promotions
  • A media diary
  • Luxe streetwear
  • Consumerology by marketing behaviour expert Phil Graves
  • Payola
  • Dettol’s back to work advertising campaign
  • Eat Your Greens edited by Wiemer Snijders
  • Dove #washtocare advertising campaign
  • The fallacy of generations such as gen-z
  • Cultural marketing with Stüssy
  • How Brands Grow Part 2 by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp
  • Facebook’s misleading ad metrics
  • The role of salience in advertising
  • SAS – What is truly Scandinavian? advertising campaign
  • Brand winter
  • Treasure hunt as defined by NPD is the process of consumers bargain hunting
  • Lovemarks
  • How Louis Vuitton has re-engineered its business to handle the modern luxury consumer’s needs and tastes
  • Korean TV shopping celebrity Choi Hyun woo
  • qCPM
  • Planning and communications
  • The Jeremy Renner store
  • Cashierless stores
  • BMW NEXTGen
  • Creativity in data event that I spoke at
  • Beauty marketing trends
  • Kraft Mothers Day marketing
  • RESIST – counter disinformation tool
  • Facebook pivots to WeChat’s business model
  • Smartphone launches

  • Cyberpunk 2077 & other things

    E3 largely past me by, except for this trailer for forthcoming game Cyberpunk 2077.  Loving the William Gibson’s sprawl trilogy era meets synth-wave vibe to Cyberpunk 2077. Cyberpunk 2077 is being developed by the same studio that adapted The Witcher books to computer games.

    This is a few years old, but Blu e-cigarettes put together a good documentary seven-episode series on dance music and DJ culture that is well worth watching

    Think influencers can be filled with entitlement, who inflate their follower numbers and leech off marketing budgets and want an alternative? You wouldn’t be alone. Virtual personalities have been a thing for a few years in Japan thanks to  Yamaha’s Vocaloid software; you have a purely artificial ‘idol’ (popstar) who appears as a hologram. Virtual YouTube personalities have followed and it was only a matter of time for one of them to start speaking in English to increase their reach.

    I’ll let Sakura Fujima introduce herself. And here’s the kind of content we can look forward to expecting from her

    I’m a big fan of Carhartt and love this advert

    MTV are looking to get hold of some sweet streaming production money by bring back golden oldies including Daria. Expect more dry witticisms and the same monotone delivery that was very gen-X zeitgeist. This time Daria is becoming more woke, by blowing off her bestie Jane and focusing on her black friend Jodie instead.

    While its not likely to affect your post club kebab shop any time soon big food has been showing some interest in automation (like McDonald’s self-service ordering and apps). There will obviously be a trade-off between the likely returns on capital expenditure versus the ready availablility of cheap flexible labour. The number of available products for sale and their relative complexity is another consideration. This Bay Area installation is taking things to their logical conclusion.

    creator burger robot serves this gourmet diner classic for 6 dollars from designboom on Vimeo.

  • H1, 2018 most popular posts

    Happy Back to the Future Day

    I took a little bit of time to reflect on the content that I have been writing, what can I learn from it and how I can reuse these learnings? Specifically what are people finding of interest? This couldn’t happen without people actually reading the content, so thank you for reading; feel free to come back on a regular basis. Over the past six months readers like you have found the following articles of most interest. In reverse order

    Reuse, Re-edit, Remix and Recycle – if you read the industry publications we here about personalised ad creative driven by ad targeting. But often the core creative and is created unnecessarily. Instead, what’s the minimum viable creative tweak that can be used? How do we extend the smart processes of reuse, re-edit, remix and recycling into this world?

    This Wasn’t The Internet We Envisaged – in the word’s of Terry Pratchet:

    “If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.”

    So it was time for reflection in order to get a perspective as the regulators and media discovered Facebook, Google and Amazon where not models of virtuous conduct.

    The Biggest Public Relations Agencies Stuckness and Market Dynamics – The Holmes Report came out with their top 250 (biggest) PR agencies around the world in terms of billings. I decided to delve into the numbers for financial years 2014 – 2017.

    This supports a hypothesis of slowing market growth and solidifying market dynamics at a macro level. Strategic acquisitions start to make less sense compared to improving efficiences and effectiveness.

    Throwback Gadget: Bose Wave System – usually my gadget reviews tend to be some of the better performing content. The Bose Wave review was the only one that appears this time around.

    Social Networks 10 Years Ago – a reflection on what a more diverse social media eco-system looked like.

    The Advertising Industry Post – the macro effects buffeting the world’s largest marketing services conglomerates.

    Mercedes China Syndrome – Chinese netizens are jumping the Great Firewall to vilify western brands who reflect views that ‘offend the Chinese people’ – even when this content is aimed at non-Chinese audiences. Mercedes’ offence was an Instagram image with one of their cars and a quote from the exiled Dalai Lama

    Personal online brand – at a time when we’re seeing social media turning into walled gardens. David Gallagher asked the Twitterverse if he should have his own site?

    Twitterverse: @wadds says I need a proper blog. I say I can do it on LinkedIn or Facebook. What say you? Build my own?

    I weighed in on why he should and how I manage the process.

    Chinese smartphone eco-system for beginners – Winston Sterzel did a good video for the average bystander on the Chinese smartphone eco-system. I thought it was a good film to share with marketers  – with a bit more background information answering some of the ‘why’ in terms of market dynamics.

    App constellations 2018  research – I built on work that I had done in 2014 and 2016, comparing the rate of growth across different companies apps based on Fred Wilson’s definition of app constellations. This was also the post that took me the longest to research!

    SaveSave

  • Advanced engines + more things

    Troublesome advanced engines for Boeing, Airbus jets have disrupted airlines and shaken travelers | The Seattle Times – this isn’t like the new engine in your car. The advanced engines in a jet engine are exposed to more heat and pressure than you can imagine. When you’re working on advanced engines for aircraft; you’re operating at the bleeding edge of materials and engineering. New metal alloys, titanium, engineering ceramics and carbon fibre all started in advanced engines for aircraft.  What’s interesting is the way the problems have assailed multiple engine builders at the the same time. Almost as if there is a roadblock in the technium for advanced engines

    Lost Liverpool #13: The Beat of Bold Street Part 2, the Mardi Gras and G-Love – Getintothis – wow I read this and it brought back a lot of memories. G-Love was the closest thing to the legendary Shoom vibe in Liverpool. It was a different kind of crowd to what you saw at the Quadrant Park or even Garlands. G-Love at the Mardi Gras is what I’ve measured every club experience against since and most of them have been miserable failures by comparison. Early Cream felt austere and corporate with its ‘no jeans’ dress code.  G-Love was part 1960s love-in and part rave. It was Ibiza without even knowing where the Balearic islands were.

    Crown, a new app from Tinder’s parent company, turns dating into a game | TechCrunch – yet another thing for incel subculture to complain about

    Death of the landline? Why we are hanging up on the ‘home phone’ – Independent.ie – in my parents case its cheap calls to Ireland. Though its hard for them to justify the landline because of the amount of spam calls that they receive

    Encrypted Messaging Apps Have Limitations You Should Know | WIRED – these limitations are well known, yet law enforcement continues to want in the clear messaging only. The fig leaf of a magic key just indicates their deliberate techno-ignorance

    Nike scores big in Chinese KOL competition | Campaign Asia – Nike is killing it in China thanks to understanding local culture and global youth culture.

  • Hiroshi Fujiwara & things from last week

    I first knew of Hiroshi Fujiwara though his work on old school Japanese hip-hop label Major Force. He was cited as an influence in Bomb The Bass’ first album Into The Dragon. His influence has been much bigger in terms of streetwear and Harajuku culture that fuelled fashion and culture of the past two decades. He is now collaborating Moncler and did some media interviews :

    Thailand is famous for emotion-filled adverts and this Sunsilk film is no exception, dealing with family acceptance of Kathoei (กะเทย). Its a beautiful piece of work by JWT’s Bangkok office.

    I’ve never worn Doctor Martens myself but they were often seen in the school yard and during my early working life. They are as British as Marks & Spencers chicken tikka masala. I thought product had been moved offshore as part of globalisation, but it seems that there is still a small production facility in the UK. The process of how the shoes are made is fascinating.

    The application of machine learning in the criminal justice system is something of concern. The natural inclination of authority is to inflate itself with every tool that progress provides.

    Great documentary on Chinese wealthy migration away from China. The move to Vancouver was pioneered in the early 1970s with wealthy Hong Kongers preparing for its handover in the decades to come. They’ve been followed families who got rich on the mainland following the opening up of the economy.

    It reflects the reality of major cities around the world now as capital flight out of China continues. Non-domestic earnings (like that from Russia and Middle East) is a factor driving unaffordability of housing. The experience of Mau and the opening up founded a culture of ‘now’. This has manifested itself in different ways: capital flight, having a bolt hole abroad and a foreign passport in case things go suddenly bad. It also explains historic product quality issues as entrepreneurs think about the now and let the future take care of itself, preferably while you have gone abroad to live a comfortable life.

  • Three and Superdrug + more

    Three and Superdrug launch new UK MVNO | total telecom – the MVNO deal with Three and Superdrug is a natural deal. Three and Superdrug are both owned by CK Hutchinson Holdings. The interesting bit is the cross business CRM where Three and Superdrug have got together to Superdrug drive loyalty card adoption. More retail related content here.

    THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT needs THE WRONG AND THE SHIT OF IT – BBH – interesting essay. The challenge is where do you get ‘crap’ campaign data from and how well will it be documented?

    Meet Kakao: How Korea’s Largest Mobile Giant Is Embracing Blockchain – CoinDesk – some smart critical thinking

    The Canard About Falling Incomes – WSJ – not an argument that I agree with, but Kessler argues that increasing digital features (like ABS on cars) compensate for the hollowing out of the middle classes (paywall)

    Tesla Model 3 Gets CR Recommendation After Braking Update – Consumer Reports – Teslas inspire a ‘true believer’ type following. I am leery of their ‘always in beta’ car software approach because its a car. So I am more concerned rather than delighted the that company managed to bring its braking distance closer to standard using an other-the-air software update

    Right Media, Creators of the First Ad Exchange | NYMag.com – the rise and fall of Right Media

    Chinese firms pile in to sponsor World Cup 2018 amid Fifa fallout-Sino-US – “Chinese companies get two things from sponsoring the World Cup. The first is access to western audiences that they will sooner or later be trying to win over, as their companies expand. The other is a cosmopolitan veneer to their brands, which they hope will resonate with their sizeable domestic markets.” – interesting that BBK’s youth brand Vivo rather than Huawei is the smartphone sponsor

    Grace Dent: ‘The processed food debate is MSG-sprinkled class war’ | Life and style | The Guardian – I would align it more with a Neo Victorian patrician attitude towards the working class

    Cross border insights finder – handy Facebook ad tool

    ‘I make £45k a month buying clothes for other people’ – The FT catches up with diagou 15 years after everyone else. China’s changes in luxury tax, increased travel of consumers, restrictions on capital flight, clampdown on corruption and e-tailing has had its toll on diagou

    Smart bulbs turn dumb: Lights out for Philips as Hue API goes dark • The Register – I get the benefits of technology but why does heating, lighting or other smart home controls have to be mediated through the cloud?

    Holiday Rentals, Homes, Experiences & Places – Airbnb – AirBnB launches stories which seems to be a continuation of its magazines

    What is a smartphone? | ASSA – really nice essay on smartphones and consumer behaviour

    Shenzhen’s tech innovation hothouse overheats – it’s been going on for the decade or so that I have travelled there. The unaffordability, maker spaces which are a real estate ruse to suck government grants and a grinding life pace. Financial services and design have already moved in. Your in less need of maker spaces when workshops can build working prototypes for you