Ged Carroll

Category: media | 媒體 | 미디어 | メディア

It makes sense to start this category with warning. Marshall McLuhan was most famous for his insight – The medium is the message: it isn’t just the content of a media which matters, but the medium itself which most meaningfully changes the ways humans operate.

But McLuhan wasn’t an advocate of it, he saw dangers beneath the surface as this quote from his participation in the 1976 Canadian Forum shows.

“The violence that all electric media inflict in their users is that they are instantly invaded and deprived of their physical bodies and are merged in a network of extensions of their own nervous systems. As if this were not sufficient violence or invasion of individual rights, the elimination of the physical bodies of the electric media users also deprives them of the means of relating the program experience of their private, individual selves, even as instant involvement suppresses private identity. The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.”

McLuhan was concerned with the mass media, in particular the effect of television on society. Yet the content is atemporal. I am sure the warning would have fitted in with rock and roll singles during the 1950s or social media platforms today.

I am concerned not only changes in platforms and consumer behaviour but the interaction of those platforms with societal structures.

  • Thin film electronics + more things

    Coal redefined for thin film electronics | Electronics EETimes – sounds like a graphene connection. Thin film electronics is going to be key for wearables

    Web Summit 2016 | Approach to marketing – it does beg the question why should a marketer support this and go to their conference?

    The VR idea maze — Benedict Evans – worthwhile read. I think the point made on content is particularly pertinent. We may have the hardware but it could take decades for the craft of content creation to come to full fruition

    China’s government sounds out international PR agencies about how to polish nation’s image overseas, sources say | South China Morning Post – A spokesman for WPP, which owns Hill+Knowlton declined to comment. Ketchum also declined to comment. Fleishman Hillard Inc, Ogilvy Public Relations and Edelman did not respond to messages requesting comment – Weber Shandwick attracted negative attention working for China during the run up to the 2008 Olympics and Ketchum had a similar experience working for Russia

    Microsoft’s Silver Lining Is Shrinking — The Information – not surprisingly moving a cloud model disrupts Microsoft’s margins in comparison to package software (paywall)

    Off the grid – Official site of Stephen Fry – interesting essay on the perils of social media

    China Unicom bets on turnaround as net profit plunges 85pc | SCMP – 4G network capital costs and increased marketing costs

    “Overpaid and underperforming”: An anonymous investors’ letter lashes out at Nikesh Arora — Quartz – there are other shoes to drop on this. Looking that the shareholders hold ADRs rather than SoftBank shares – this is a US led charge. It is also interesting that this happening right before the Yahoo! shoe drops. SoftBank,  and its Yahoo! Japan joint venture are a key part of Yahoo! Inc’s value

    Korean TV Dramas Are the Best Export Since ‘Gangnam Style’ | Digital – AdAge

    Pirate Bay Founder: Streaming Model Could Ignite New Piracy War – TorrentFreak – really interesting essay. I had a similar experience with Apple’s iBooks. I bought James Michener’s Mexico for a long flight and trip, tried to download it a week later and it was no longer available. I now buy mostly paper books

    Brands rip up media plan in the face of disruption – it decided last September, in consultation with MediaCom, to take more radical action. Tesco slashed its media budget for newspapers to practically zero and shifted most of the money into online and social media. TV and other traditional media have also been heavily cut (reg wall)

    Can audio go viral on Facebook? Here’s what happened when NPR ran an experiment for a month » Nieman Journalism Lab – Sharing audio on social media is hard to do. Stan Alcorn documented many of the struggles two years ago in a widely cited Digg story

    Elisabeth Murdoch’s Vertical Networks creating ‘Brother’ Snapchat Discover channel – Business Insider

    IRIN | Spies Sans Frontières? – the ethical conundrums around this are particularly interesting. More security related posts here.

    Is Programmatic Expertise Moving In-House? – EContent Magazine

  • WeChat payments + more things

    WeChat payments and wallet function brought to the international version of WeChat with its last version update, but I only noticed it this week. Does this mean that WeChat is now putting all the pieces in place before they get serious about an international market push? They are already trying to get foreign credit card merchants on board accepting WeChat payments to  provide extra convenience for Chinese consumers travelling abroad.
    WeChat wallet now for louwai
    TfL brought back its experiment for having people stand on both sides of the escalators. For those of us who live in London this is quite a change to our usual routine. We are used to standing on the right or moving along the escalator on the left. It caught me out the first time that I visited London.

    But TfL research found that you net out moving people more efficiently by encouraging everyone to stand. This allows a ‘denser’ escalator and better times clearing people off platforms.
    Stand on both sides - people living outside London won't realise what a paradigm shift this is
    A comparable shift would be say, New Yorkers suddenly becoming unfailingly polite and accommodating. I do quite like the ‘blue pill’ footprints that TfL use for signage on the escalators.

    Japanese producer TOYOMU reimagined Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo based on reviews and a list of the samples used. Japan hasn’t embraced streaming music unlike western lemmings music buyers. I think what he came up with is far better, see for yourself.

    Forthcoming Russian superhero film Guardians looks even more intense than the Night Watch and Day Watch films. Apparently the bear packs a chain cannon a la Jesse Venture in Predator.

    Luxxury releases Greg Wilson remixes of the their track on yellow vinyl, have a preview of it here. I am a huge fan of Luxxury and the lush nu-disco products that he manages to come up with.  More Luxxury sounds here.

  • Integrated agency wins

    I started thinking about integrated agency wins when I read that Asda appointed Publicis after a short pitch process this week.
    ASDA
    What was notable about the win was that it covered both creative and media briefs. Notable enough to become a conversation topic when I met up with industry friends for coffee. Integrated wins are not that common.

    WPP has managed to win global single agency accounts:

    • Ford Motor Company
    • HSBC
    • Colgate-Palmolive
    • News International
    • Bank of America
    • Miller Coors
    • Ford Motor Company
    • Mazda
    • Huawei

    Then there was Enfatico for Dell.  Enfatico struggled with personnel changes at the client and client culture.

    The Publicis deal is is more modest in one respect, it only affects Walmart’s UK business, but is still £95m.

    On the face of it, integrated appointments have a lot to offer, so why aren’t they more common?

    Let’s first look at the pros of an arrangement:

    • Better chance of not getting silo-ed thinking from the agency. Both creative and media can be part of the ideation process. One of the big parts of WPP’s early success was a focus on media investment management. This broke the symbiotic creative relationship between media and creative. It worked well for a number of years, but with integrated agency wins, the pendulum seems to be swinging back the other way
    • New ways of audience targeting as part of the creative process. The concern is the combined profitability of the account. Rather than a focus on media profitability

    Barriers to adoption:

    • Current contractual timings don’t allow for pitching media and creative business together. It seems so obvious, but there may not be a convenient break clause in place
    • Pitches are often driven by procurement teams; who look at better value in continuity, rather than a more holistic approach

    Weakness of a combined media and creative agency arrangement:

    • The marketing group may not have strength in all areas. I worked for a large marketing group which held the global account of an FMCG company. Despite being part of a global marketing group, we couldn’t execute in two markets for the client. This affected the social media marketing work we did for them and they weren’t happy
    • Dependent on the marketing team, they may not want to work with a media agency that:
      • Operates an arbitrage model. Having bought the ad space from the media, they then sell it on to clients with targeting data
      • Operates a model that isn’t media neutral to meet wider internal goals
    • Clients often think of the arrangement only as a way of cost reduction

    There are also weaknesses with the single client agency model as WPP has done it:

    • Set-up costs are usually shared across clients, but where there is dedicated infrastructure. This cost will have to be borne by the client, upfront or salted in the fees
    • From a client perspective there is moral pressure to maintain the agency relationship. This complicates the client’s ability to ensure cost-competitive rates
    • Less opportunities to cross-pollinate ideas across categories. This is because the agency is focused on one client only

    While Asda have taken an interesting first step, hiring an integrated offering. The hard work is only now starting:

    • Putting in place the right working practices client and agency-side
    • Changing the creative process to take advantage of integration
    • Have a proven positive effect on Asda’s sales figures in the face of competition from Lidl and Aldi

    More posts on WPP here, and Publicis here.

    More information
    Asda hands £95m media and creative to Publicis Groupe in double coup | Marketing Magazine
    WPP Folds Ill-Fated Dell Agency Enfatico Into Y&R Brands | Advertising Age

  • Facebook Live + more things

    Facebook live

    A Facebook live streaming service (a la U-Stream and YouTube) was newly launched this week. You can stream on your page or in-group. There is a map to discover streams going on in realtime. I already  found one seminar by Nu-Skin a multi-level marketer of wellness and beauty products in Hong Kong as an example of where Facebook Live was being used from a commercial perspective.

    The Stanton Warriors embraced the new Facebook live streaming service to promote further fan interaction whilst they were in the studio. It will be interesting to see the best and worst that brands do with this medium. From a piracy point-of-view I would imagine that it is likely to be used for streaming live sports coverage – expect the Premier League to be very unhappy.

    RUN and RUN

    Not exactly the same sound but J-Pop act lyrical school’s debut track RUN and RUN has a really clever smartphone optimised video with amazing breaks of the fourth wall.

    UPDATE: Our James pointed me in the direction of an even better link for the RUN and RUN video on Vimeo that I hope works here

    RUN and RUN / lyrical school 【MV for Smartphone】 from RUNandRUN_lyrisch on Vimeo.

    If you can’t see anything point your browser here.

    Godzilla

    Japan’s king of all monsters, Godzilla returns from chilling out on Monster Island for his 31st outing in the Japanese cinema. This new trailer is interesting as the visuals evoke Fukushima Daiichi  nuclear disaster and the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. Check out the Cloverfield-esque shots in the 30 second trailer below. There is a longer trailer where Godzilla appears fully in shot leaving no mystery to how bad ass he is this time. This means that the film is likely to go beyond his usual mayhem and might touch on contemporary issues.

    Vintage CGI

    Last, but not least; a vintage show reel by 1980s CGI shop MAGI Synthavision in its full neon wireframe magnificence and southern country rock soundtrack. More similar visual stuff here.