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.

  • That Trivago poster

    If you’re a Londoner, the end of summer is marked by two things; the Notting Hill Carnival and Trivago’s annual advertising blitz on public transport. In media land there has been some complaints. We need to talk about the Trivago ad – a triumph of media planning over creative execution according to an op-ed written by a creative in Campaign. The article is timely, it taps into a wider existential crisis about the death of creativity as advertising is swallowed up and pooped all over by Google and Facebook.

    Untitled

    Her shirt changes. In some placements she wears a light blue shirt, she also wears one in red plaid. The logo moves placement too from top right to bottom right in the posters.

    A few things about the campaign, some more obvious to marketers than others:

    • Despite Trivago featuring various destinations in a search box, they don’t seem to have done any paid or organic search work around the destination names at all. They are putting advertising behind brand searches through
    • The ads seem to be all about reach and repetition. Using OOH ads as closure and amplify the TV ads. I haven’t noticed this being replicated online

    Why going hard and often? Travel is a mature sector with strong players. If Trivago isn’t top of mind, it isn’t competing. Engagement just doesn’t matter that much in this scenario, hence why the company backed off press releases at the end of May this year for the UK market.

    The absence from online brand advertising is likely down to the comparatively high cost of running this kind of saturation campaign on the likes of Facebook advertising. This is why TV, radio and out of home media haven’t depreciated in the same way as traditional print advertising media.

    The choice of campaign timing is more interesting. Traditional travel companies usually try and target a bit later in the year over the Christmas season in influence holiday shopping decisions.

    SaveSave

  • KFC China virgin mojito + more

    KFC China virgin mojito

    KFC China launched a virgin mojito drink with a 1960s feel to the ad. Its a bit of an odd product for KFC, even in China particularly with its positioning against drinking. Quite how the product development process and consumer insight worked to produce it is beyond me. Beautifully produced advert

    Great documentary on Sterns Music (of Sterns Edits fame). The vastness of Sterns Music library is astounding. Sterns Edits did to African and Brazilian music what Razor N Tape have done to disco music more recently.

    High Snobriety have done their first documentary. It looks like the kind of thing I would expect from Vice. Given High Snobriety’s streetwear literate audience I was surprised at how ‘basic’ it approaches the topic.

    Korea’s historic fashion industry, its association with replicas since the days of Daper Dan and the retail infrastructure stifled by chaebols are issues. But streetwear couldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for the Korean textile industry – Daper Dan connection.

    The market in Korea reminded me very much of the ‘snide’ garments that were popular in the UK scene through the 1980s and 1990s.

    On a secondary note the size of the YouTube video embed was restricted to 560 pixels wide. Not sure why that was. I look forward to seeing more material by High Snobriety on Korea’s fashion industry moving forwards, particularly if local brands can get on the K-pop train.

    William Gibson: ‘I Never Expected to Be Living in an American Retro-Future’ – Motherboard – William Gibson critiquing Trump administration era America. This probably also explains why Gibson’s writing has become nearer term and has an apocalyptic focus in the Jackpot Trilogy

    Cities and Memory: global collaborative sound project – Cities & Memory | Field Recordings, Sound Map, Sound Art really nice project correlating field recordings by location. It would also be useful for open source intelligence outfits like Bellingcat.

  • Cohn & Wolfe + other news

    Cohn & Wolfe China goals

    Cohn & Wolfe CEO eyes 27.3% growth in China | China Daily – huge ask for Cohn & Wolfe given the rise in domestic competitors and aggressive international competitors, just 6% growth in GDP compared to 14% in go-go years. FMCG sector numbers that are awful etc. Cohn & Wolfe would need to swap out representing western brands for local brands as Chinese consumers buy domestic in increasing numbers. Cohn & Wolfe might be thinking more about trying to capture Chinese brands going global, but Chinese companies tend to not build brands.

    Consumer behaviour

    Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic – technology demonised for behavioural disfunction. Some of the statistics are interesting, but the conclusions aren’t

    Economics

    China’s Robot Revolution May Affect the Global Economy – Bloomberg – “By turbocharging supply and depressing demand, automation risks exacerbating China’s reliance on export-driven growth – threatening hopes for a more balanced domestic and global economy” 

    Ethics

    Two China Tech Titans Wrestle Over User Data – WSJ – WeChat owner Tencent Holdings Ltd. contends that Huawei is effectively taking Tencent’s data and violating the privacy of WeChat users, according to people familiar with the situation. It has asked the Chinese government to intervene, these people say – I have to wonder what they are doing to their western customers or what might happen to AT&T subscribers ‘lucky enough’ next year to have a Huawei handset (paywall)

    Marketing

    Adidas has found that models and bloggers, not athletes, are the key to selling sportswear to women – this could have a huge impact on its sponsorship programme, which might be bad for top level women in sport

    Media

    Digital listening surges closer to 50% | Digital Radio – interesting RAJAR data

    Online

    China holds drill to shut down ‘harmful’ websites | Reuters – interesting implications beyond censorship of illegal content. Could also have implications for command-and-control servers for malware etc

    Technology

    Scrapping the combustion engine: the metals critical to success of EVs | Hoffmann Centre for Sustainable Resource Economy – surprised greater consideration article isn’t given to capacitor storage systems and other Li ion alternatives or hydrogen fuel cells

    Apple’s first academic machine learning paper won a top AI conference prize — Quartz – interesting, but I don’t think anyone is advancing as quickly as the hype promised

    UK Samsung TVs bricked after firmware update (updated) | Engadget   – “Samsung is aware of a small number of TVs in the UK (less than 200) affected by a firmware update to 2017 MU Series TVs on 17th August. Once this issue was identified, the update was switched off and we’re now working with each customer to resolve the issue. Any customers affected are encouraged to get in touch with Samsung directly (1-800 SAMSUNG). We would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused to our customers.”

    Technics SL-1200GR turntable is finally here – praise be. More on Technics here.

  • Apple services + other news

    Apple services

    Misunderstanding Apple Services – Monday Note – more clear-eyed view on Apple services than many people drinking the kool-aid. Apple services can be a relatively weak experience. The original Apple Maps did not meet what would be expected of an Apple product and that has been emblematic of Apple services in general. Part of this is down to testing, there is only so much you can do to ensure quality and consistency of experience in Apple services versus Apple products

    Business

    The China Startup Report — The Information – interesting reading (paywall)

    Consumer behaviour

    CTA – Social Media Plays Crucial Role in Chinese Consumers’ Personal – But Not Professional – Lives, Finds New CTA Study – quite surprised by this, having worked with Chinese clients and colleagues where the main channel of contact was WeChat

    Chinese tourists are everywhere, but why are foreign visitors shunning China? | South China Morning Post – would the Chinese government really want a tourist number increase? Also Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan give you everything the mainland can and more with less downsides. Finally I do think the country has an external image problem as being difficult to  travel in

    Finance

    Harrods Bank sold to digital challenger Tandem | City A.M. – I guess that’s one way to get a banking licence

    Media

    Financial Times Returns to Apple’s App Store After Six-Year Hiatus – WSJ – HTML versus native app; HTML lost

    YouTube in China is hard – Steemit may save my career — Steemit – interesting comments on the effect of the adpocalypse on YouTube creators

    Jon Ronson on bespoke porn: ‘Nothing is too weird. We consider all requests’ | The Guardian – much of it isn’t ‘porn’ but ways of working through issues

    Retailing

    The Secret Life of the City Banana – NYTimes.com – amazing complexity in the supply chain

    What the Apple store has to teach us about the miserable future of the electric car — Quartz – I don’t even think Apple’s instore customer service is a good model for Tesla

    Security

    The Kronos indictment: Is it a crime to create and sell malware? – The Washington Post – interesting analysis of the charges agains Marcus Hutchins in terms of intent and level of proof required

    Technology

    How This U.S. Tech Giant Is Backing China’s Tech Ambitions – The New York Times – the tricky path taken by Qualcomm (and Intel), what happens when China feels it can move forward without them?

    This fast robot will make Adidas shirts cheaper – and kill hundreds of jobs | The Next Web – this pulls a drawbridge up on countries looking to industrialise and move from the 3rd world into the 2nd world

    A Google employee’s viral anti-diversity memo shows America’s political divide has spread to Silicon Valley — Quartz – lack of dialogue in political and social life

    Wireless

    Fiction: Who Killed Windows Phone? – Monday Note  – Microsoft culture did it. Culture is dangerous; under our field of consciousness, it sneakily filters and shapes perceptions, it’s a system of permissions to emote, think, speak, and do.

  • Mick Jagger + more things

    It’s quite rare for someone who has had as as long a career as Mick Jagger to still do relevant material. His double A side single featuring England’s Lost is an exceptionally political track featuring Skepta. The last track from similar artist would likely be Pink Floyd’s The Wall. This Mick Jagger song wouldn’t sound out of step with The Stone Roses or The Charlatans and the video with Luke Evans performance is amazing.

    Omega seem to have spent most of the summer dwelling on the NASA Apollo programme heritage of the Omega Speedmaster with launches happening around the world including PR people in faux spacesuits for photo shoots and socialite cocktail parties.  The excuse is the 60th anniversary of the Omega Speedmaster’s launch in 1957. They’ve supported it with a scripted film using brand spokesperson George Clooney talking with Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin as ever is awesome.

    60 years of production makes the Speedmaster a design classic. At the time of the Speedmaster’s launch Omega would have been a more bankable name than Rolex. That seems surprising now given Omega’s move more towards the fashion end of the market. There is a great interview at The Peak Magazine; with Peter Chow the recently retired veteran salesman at The Hour Glass in Singapore. The Hour Glass is a famous watch retailer that has attracted the world’s richest customers.

    “You could buy a manual mechanical watch with a fine Swiss movement for S$20 plus,” Mr Chong says. The well-known brands then were Titoni, Titus, Movado and Cyma. “Omega was the best, not Rolex.” Mr Chong quit his job in 1959 and with S$6000 from savings and loans, opened a shop in Bukit Panjang. But within three years, poor sales drove him out of business.

    Omega was the best was something I heard from my parents, though I had partly put this down to both of them having had Omegas – which they bought for each other when they got married. This piece of wisdom had been passed down to my Mum from my Grandad who owned neither brand. In fact I don’t think he owned any kind of watch at all.

    Northampton’s most famous son, author Alan Moore Interviewed by Greg Wilson and Kermit – real name Paul Leveridge from the Ruthless Rap Assassins and Black Grape. Interesting dissection of modern counterculture and the general sense of ennui.

    I am addicted to videos about mesmerising manufacturing processes and vinyl records. This video combines both of them. The hipster movement has done more than drive up the cost of avocados and gentrification. We’ve seen vinyl manufacturing plants revived and thrive. Over time the machinery has needed to be modernised, this has meant modern manufacturing techniques (like SCADA controllers) have been melted to post-war industrial technology. Anyway enough of my blathering check it out.

    My week was soundtracked by this epic mix of Herbie Hancock tracks.