Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Amazon returns + more things

    Hidden cameras and secret trackers reveal where Amazon returns end up | CBC News – interesting aspect of Amazon’s business model. It does make me wonder how much of a drag is returns on Amazon’s business? Retail returns are usually running at 10 percent of products bought. With e-tailing; this rate is thought to be as high as 40 percent according to the programme. That sounds like an extremely high rate of returns. Back when I was in college 25 percent was quoted as a returns rate for catalogue businesses.

    Inside Palantir, Silicon Valley’s Most Secretive Unicorn – “Where you get into trouble is when the software gets so complicated that you have to send people in to manage it,” said one former CIA official who is complimentary of Palantir. “The moment you introduce an expensive IT engineer into the process, you’ve cut your profits.” Palantir, it turns out, has run headlong into the problem plaguing many tech firms engaged in the quest for total information awareness: Real-world data is often too messy and complex for computers to translate without lots of help from humans – to be fair enterprise software companies have always sold a good deal of smoke and mirrors in terms of over-exaggerated claims – sounds a lot like IBM’s Watson in this respect

    Apple’s New 5G IPhones May Be Left on the Shelf | Yahoo! Finance – 5G lacks a killer app for consumers

    Exposure to TV ads up 15% during height of lockdown – Even children were watching more broadcast TV and exposed to a greater volume of advertising in the weeks following the lockdown in March.

    Alibaba Group – investors day presentations – some interesting insight into Chinese e-tailing, retailing and internationalisation of these models

    Blockbuster Chinese games said to boycott Huawei and Xiaomi app stores over revenue tax | South China Morning Post – two Chinese gaming startups, Lilith Games and miHoYo, said they won’t sell their would-be autumn hits via app stores pre-installed on smartphones made by Huawei and Xiaomi. Instead, they’ve opted for stores charging smaller fees or none at all—including Apple’s App Store, which levies the same 30% charge in China as it does everywhere else. While the duo didn’t say outright they were unhappy about the 50% rule set by the Chinese Android stores, many gamers and developers see them as the good guys stepping up against tech’s behemoths

    How to Monitor Facebook Pages – Meltwater Help Center – now allows users to monitor Facebook pages that they’re in charge of. The limit is 50 specific Facebook pages. It pulls out the Facebook analytics data into a Meltwater interface

    European Semiconductor Sales Drop, Global Sales Rise – EE Times Europe – not surprising given the disruptions to manufacturing

    Google Chrome remains China’s most popular web browser, even with Google search and other apps blocked | South China Morning Post – consumer backlash against some domestic browsers can be attributed to their aggressive user acquisition tactics, such as being deliberately difficult to uninstall. But he said that a shift in consumer tastes might also play a role. When Chinese internet companies first started designing websites and applications in the late 90s, the minimalist aesthetic was unpopular, he said a friend told him at the time. “Chinese consumers wanted stores where all the merchandise was crammed onto the shelves at maximum capacity, with narrow aisles where people were just bumping into one another,” he said. “It felt like plenitude.” “Those early design preferences endured for a surprisingly long time online, and I think there’s still a much higher tolerance for it than we’d see in the US or other Western countries,” he added. “I think as consumers get more sophisticated, though, they’re looking for a retail experience that doesn’t feel like a fire sale all the time.”

    Opinion: How Can Luxury Brands Successfully Price In The Post-COVID World? – In these challenging times of lockdowns and demand contraction, luxury brands have increased – even more than usual – the prices of their bestselling products to offset part of the compression of margins due to the pandemic. Take for instance, Chanel which earlier this year confirmed it had brought the prices up of its iconic handbags (11.12, 2.55, Boy, Gabrielle) ranging between 5 and 17 percent in euros and Louis Vuitton which also raised the prices of some of its products in March and May. It is not a surprise that brands like Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Dior, whose handbags are products that are considered iconic and perceived by consumers as investment pieces, can be more bold in increasing prices to protect their margin. But not all companies have such strong brand positioning and therefore cannot raise their prices so easily.

    Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin: “Millennials Don’t Want Formal Luxury.” | Luxury Society – I suspect that this is across age cohorts but the blend of streetwear and luxury is a key sign of it

    Is online advertising subprime? Contagious – interesting thought experiment

    South Korean Activists Accuse China of Using Huawei to Hack Their Election | Daily Beast – of course Samsung is looking to pick up 5G smartphone and infrastructure sales from Huawei….

    New info about Facebook-Instagram deal delays antitrust report: source | CNBC – it will be interesting to see what comes out

    Axios China – Top German official hushed up report on China’s influence – not terribly surprising when you read books like Hidden Hand. More China related posts here.

    The end of the American internet — Benedict Evans – more precisely. The end of Americans being the dominant users and culture on the internet

    Brussels drafts rules to force Big Tech to share data | Financial Times – grab the popcorn

    State of AI Report 2020 – interesting report on the hype

    The great uncoupling: one supply chain for China, one for everywhere else | Financial Times – Untangling supply chains that have built up over a generation is a complex and difficult task and the multinational companies which sell into the Chinese market will stay and even expand. But if companies that once used the mainland to make goods for export do decide to depart in significant numbers, it will represent a major reversal of five decades of economic integration between the US and China

  • Troll communicators

    Troll communicators

    When I started my agency life; PR people tried not to be the story. The idea was to let the client be the story, whether you were inhouse or agency side. An exception to this would be agency leaders trying to raise the brand profile of their agency and senior political advisers.

    Troll communicators
    Andy Stone’s oddly passive aggressive post on the conclusion of ICO investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

    The modern era of troll communicators finds its roots in social.

    Product blogs

    After the dot com boom blogging started to flourish in Silicon Valley. Companies like Google and Microsoft to develop product blogs over the next few years. These would often take the place of a press release to announce the launch of a new product or feature. Part of the reason for this was the speed of product launches versus approvals.

    A product blog post had to comply with the social media guidelines, but didn’t go through the legal overview like a press release would. It was essentially a ‘hack’ of the existing marketing infrastructure for a lot of businesses.

    On social

    Some communicators like Wadds and Frank X Shaw embraced the new format for professional reasons. Frank had started his blog around the same time as he moved from agency-side to work for client Microsoft in an inhouse role. Previously it had been a blog on the website of the agency where he worked.

    Over time, Shaw used his Glasshouse blog and Twitter to articulate his own opinions. He bleeds Microsoft so his views aren’t too far from the corporate line. While he might put together a forceful argument; I’ve always found him to be unfailingly polite. So far away from the troll communicators of today.

    Going around the media

    At some point, conventional media relations at the corporate headquarters of many firms became less important. Announcements just came out on the blog posts unmediated by the media.

    Thought leadership activities also changed. Rather than doing interviews or op-eds*; corporate leaders would do essays on their blogs. Speaking to senior technology leaders; you often hear Marc Andreessen’s essay Why Software Is Eating The World cited as an example of what they want. (They often forget that it actually appeared first in the Wall Street Journal and was republished on the Andreessen Horowitz blog the same day.)

    Media are awkward, they hold you to account and ask questions that you’re not that interesting in answering. It doesn’t fit in with their self image being an Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias type character.

    Where the media writes something about the company that they haven’t cooperated with and don’t agree with – owned media channels provide the platform for response. And the last word.

    It’s from this that you get the strangely passive-aggressive troll communicators. More PR related posts here.

    Op-ed is a shortened version of the American term opinion editorial or opinion piece in European English*

  • Folding phones + other things

    CNET took a look at the mechanics behind Motorola’s new folding phone. Other vendors have launched folding phones. Some of which have folded with the screen on the outside to not have too tight a kink on the screen. Motorola’s folding phones have their screen fold inwards, this is down the space provided by a cam mechanism and supporting metal plates that keep the screen in place and unstressed.

    Its good old-fashioned mechanical engineering rather than software that is facilitating mobile phones and it is a joy to behold. More design related posts here.

    watts towers
    Watts Towers by Paul Narvaez

    Before Ferguson, black lives matter or the Rodney King beating there was the Watts riots. Wattstax was a festival that addressed the underlying issues that kicked off the riots. It was put on by Stax Records. The accompanying documentary is amazing. Richard Pryor provides a narrative, beautiful photography and brilliant performances.

    More from Open Culture here: Wattstax Documents the “Black Woodstock” Concert Held 7 Years After the Watts Riots (1973)

    My computer monitor packed up. I couldn’t get it repaired through my usual suppliers so I got a refurbished monitor through Secondbyte Micro. I am getting rid of my dead monitor on eBay here.

    Tim Hwang has written a book comparing online advertising to the 2007-08 financial crash. Subprime Attention Crisis and I’ve pre-ordered a copy. Hoang reckons that there will be a big crash when marketers at large work up to two things:

    • Micro-targeting doesn’t work
    • Online ads were taking credit for sales that would have happened anyway through the ‘selection effect’. Basically the reason why performance marketing has fallen out of balance with brand marketing

    I am not convinced that there will be a big crash. I don’t think that anyone would be surprised that: tech companies don’t get marketing and don’t tell the truth. Previous generations would have sold shonky enterprise software and vapourware.

    I think budgets will try to be adjusted by marketers more towards brands. But at the rate that boards seem to go through marketing leaders; you first have to convince the C-suite to think about marketing strategically. Which ain’t going to happen thanks to the pervasiveness of Jack Welch’s blinkered perception of shareholder value.

    Finally, I think that this is the first time I have seen a manufacturer teardown its own product pre-launch for consumer audiences. I love that its done by one of Sony’s own engineers.

    The user serviceable dust traps were a particularly interesting touch to the device.

  • Weight lightening + more things

    Midgards Messer Shop – interesting weight lightening techniques in their product designs. It reminds me of the weight lightening techniques racing cars used to use. Drilling out metal on parts like bonnet hinges to retain strength but not the weight. More design related content here.

    In U.S. and UK, Globalization Leaves Some Feeling ‘Left Behind’ or ‘Swept Up’ | Pew Research Center – which gives a good idea of where populism came from

    Rolex Panerai 3646 Service Invoice from 1955 – Vintage Panerai and other iconic timepieces under the loupe at Perezcope – interesting implications on brand provenance and heritage

    Mulberry warns on sales after falling to £14m loss | FT – the comments on online shopping by the CEO in my opinion don’t ring true.

    Facebook to defy new Turkish social media law | Financial Times – Facebook must feel that the Turkish market isn’t worth taking negative PR in the US and EU. It must have relatively meagre advertising revenues for them to make this decision. Why put their foot down in Turkey and not in other markets like Hong Kong or Russia?

    People love products with rituals – Ariyh – the role of rituals in product consumption can drive sales, interesting research. Examples would be:

    • The different ways one would eat a Cadbury’s Creme Egg
    • Twisting to separate the biscuit from the filling on an Oreo
    • Waiting for the head to settle on a pint of Guinness
    • Cadbury’s Flake bath adverts the emphasised enjoying the bar in private ‘me time’ moment

    Facebook Says Government Breakup of Instagram, WhatsApp Would Be ‘Complete Nonstarter’ – WSJ – interesting that the 14-page briefing document was leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Tim Wu’s takes on the claim are interesting ‘A government antitrust case against the company would likely rely on the argument that Facebook made serial acquisitions to reduce competition, a question that wasn’t considered when the Federal Trade Commission originally chose not to oppose the Instagram and WhatsApp deals‘

    Reebok teams up with fashion brand Yoshiokubo for traditional-culture-inspired sneakers | SoraNews24 -Japan News – interesting how they’re incorporating Japanese culture motifs

    Winston Privacy – ad blocker as hardware appliance

  • The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

    Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk is marketed as a Trump presidency book.

    The Fifth Risk
    The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis mass paperback cover.

    The Donald

    The Fifth Risk starts off by telling the story of Chris Christie. How he helped the future Trump administration organise a government in waiting. Christie and the team are let go. Trump was worried about spending money.

    Given the revelations about Donald Trump’s finances in the New York Times; I can understand his desire to control cash flow. This goes some way to explaining the problems filling senior government places.

    A second thing comes out in the first part of the book; Trump’s instinct to value personal loyalty. Which is fine; but doesn’t scale that well. That meant that people were often unsuitable for the jobs that they were given.

    A final trait that came through was a massive root-and-branch concern against climate change.

    So Lewis doesn’t say that much about the Trump administration that we didn’t already know. But that is only 30 percent of the book.

    What the government does

    The remaining 70 percent of the book tells the stories of different departments of the US government. The vital, complex roles that they play. He peels back the complex relationships between the federal government and the states. That interface builds in a lot of waste and inefficiency – to meet state political goals.

    Lewis gets experts to explain how welfare payments work and why they’re needed. Or how departments like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy benefit the country.

    Lewis also covers what motivated some of the government service. TL;DR – from the new deal to the Kennedy administration young Americans felt that they could make a real difference. They felt inspired in a way that probably only clergy or military service personnel feel now.

    Finally, touches on risks. The fifth risk that the Department of Energy expert talked about was programme management. This is where the name of the book comes from. How is programme management a risk?

    • If a department is managed by someone who doesn’t understand the area involved.
    • Realpolitik – NASA was for years a victim of pork barrel politics and the o-ring failure that happened on the Challenger disaster was a function of it
    • If an administration takes a short terms, or small government world view.

    In praise of Keynesian economics

    The examples in the book tear away at the popular narrative around big government. Of inefficiencies and long queues of rapacious welfare queens.

    It shows all the things that the government does for the collective good. Things that the market wouldn’t be able to address. It also shows the hucksters involved in the markets. In particular calling out Accuweather’s founders Barry and Joel Myers. That Lewis hasn’t been sued by Myers adds to the veracity of his claims.

    This is essentially a criticism of the economic orthodoxy that has governed both of America’s political parties for the past 40 years, since the Carter administration. In this respect, the educated reader would appreciate that it fires a shot across the bow of all parties. From Sanders and Biden to Trump.

    Style

    I was introduced to Michael Lewis as a writer, when I read Liar’s Poker in college. It is a deeply personal book, full of humour and self examination. In it, he provides the ley reader an insight into the financial services system. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to have much impact as the financial recessions following the dot com boom and the housing crisis proved.

    He then wrote a slew of books that owe a good deal to the new journalism style of Tom Wolfe. His writing covered sports, financial crises and politics. Some of the books were very of their time, such as The Future Just Happened, Boomerang and Panic!. Others like Liars Poker, are ageless. A couple of his books were made into films of the same name: Moneyball and The Big Short.

    The Fifth Risk still feels like the classic Michael Lewis new journalism style. But it also feels like it has an eye on a documentary adaptation. In this respect he reminds me a lot of Ben Mezrich in term of his cinematic approach to writing.