Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Autopilot Whopper + more things

    Burger King’s Autopilot Whopper campaign reminds me of a lot of the classic work that Crispin Porter Bogusky have done for Burger King over the years. The Autopilot Whopper is based on the insight that Tesla cars machine learning powered vision system that helps with self driving function mistakes the Burger King logo for a Stop sign.

    https://youtu.be/A0cb7wZVFf4

    Autopilot Whopper entertaining with this schadenfreude around Tesla technology. And it also lands the message that the Burger King drive through is as good a place to stop as any.

    YouTube announced the winners of its 2020 YouTube Works awards. I would strongly recommend that any brand planners bookmark this in their browser and dip in on a regular basis.

    The one that really piqued my interest the most was Hulu’s campaign for live sports that tapped into a growing consumer cynicism around influencers. The sports linkage was using NBA basketball players as the influencers.

    The iconic Zero Halliburton briefcase stuffed with cash, that more money is thrown into as ‘Hulu has live sports’ is mentioned riffs on the old McDonald’s initiative. The McDonald’s scheme that paid rappers for name checks on songs and mixtapes. It also tapped into how consumers view influencers.

    Public Enemy came back when we most need them. Flavor Flav seems to have patched up his beef with Chuck D. Public Enemy have partnered with DJ Premier to capture the zeitgeist. Black Lives Matter, COVID19 and chaotic leadership feature in State Of The Union (STFU). DJ Premier’s product references earlier Public Enemy works scratching in sounds of early Public Enemy vocals in this track. The beat is more laid back than what one would expect from the Bomb Squad production team. But the Public Enemy fire in the belly is still there.

    The step chickens are a meme driven ‘cult’ that have sprung up on TikTok. More accurately they are a directed community. Here’s the founder on how they came about. Their heat has been parleyed in a community for a new app. From a product point-of-view, this means that something like TikTok could lose chunks of its user base IF the step chickens phenomenon was widely and successfully replicated. Given that it was a mix of smarts, happenstance and pure luck it isn’t likely: sorry brands.

    German China-focused think-tank MERICS had a thoughtful presentation put together on the Hong Kong national security law. The presentation focused on the impact for the financial services sector. But there similar lessons to be drawn for professional services (accounting, management consultancy, legal firms). And only for a a slightly lesser effect on the strategy and planning functions of creative agencies, or counsel based PR functions.

    On reflection, I would be concerned about how some of the creative briefs for China-focused campaigns that I have written would have faired against the Hong Kong national security law. Probably not that well.

    What immediately becomes apparent is the implications for quality research into companies and economics won’t meet international standards. Which means more fodder for the likes of Muddy Waters Research LLC. It likely indicates a conscious effort for China to decouple from the international financial system.

    The calculus behind the Hong Kong national security law seems to be that the Chinese government think yet another (internal) market for Chinese stocks will be a better deal than the traditional gateway to and from China Hong Kong has provided. I am not sure what this bet will mean. Shenzhen already has a robust stock market by Chinese standards; would China really need Hong Kong? Without the gateway role, Hong Kong would also find it harder to be the point of capital departure from China for high net worth citizens. Dampening capital flight would definitely hold some attraction to the Xi administration.

  • Problems American style + more

    New York’s Problems Are America’s Problems Now – “Most cities are the same animal at a different scale,” Esteban Moro, a physicist who studies cities and measured New Yorkers’ interactions during the shutdown, told me. Bigger city, smaller city—it doesn’t make much of a difference, Moro says. You’ll meet about 5,000 people a year. – It makes sense if one thinks about major cities as ‘early adopters’ then their problems will spread over time.

    Apple wants your iPhone to replace your passport and driver’s license | Appleinsider – I know WeChat had similar aspirations for Chinese ID cards and drivers licence

    Opinion | How China Scammed Hong Kong – The New York Times – ignore the click bait title, it’s a nice summary of the national security law and points out how the basic law allowed this gap. More on Hong Kong here.

    American firms’ move into China over past 20 years threatens US ability to lead and compete: report | South China Morning Post – US MNEs’ reliance on China as a source of sales and a pivotal hub for global manufacturing poses a risk of solidifying dependencies for selected industries that bear on US national security. Furthermore, such reliance threatens to heighten the cost of supply chain diversification

    Pressured by China, E.U. Softens Report on Covid-19 Disinformation – The New York Times – Beijing’s efforts to curtail mentions of the virus’s origins in China, in part by blaming the United States for spreading the disease internationally. It noted that Beijing had criticized France as slow to respond to the pandemic and had pushed false accusations that French politicians used racist slurs against the head of the World Health Organization

    The Hustle on Coupang – a Korean analogue to Amazon that’s expanding their business

    LinkedIn | Baiba Matisone – 60 behavioral biases to better understand the consumers.

    US Attorney General William Barr says American businesses ‘part of problem’ in tech war with China | South China Morning Post – Barr portrayed parts of the US business community as ingrates because “they’re willing – ultimately, many of them – to sacrifice the long-term viability of their companies for short-term profit, so they can get their stock options and move into the golf resort”. – I found this a much more profound statement on so many levels

    Typography – Goldman Sachs Design – Goldman Sachs put out its own font under a fairly permissive licence

    How This Electronics Juggernaut Got Its Start in a Bombed-Out Department Store • Gear Patrol – nice intro to the history of Sony

    How a Billion Dollar Eyewear Company Started in the Back of a Honda Civic • Gear Patrol – ‘define problems, find solutions, wrap them in art’

    Facebook executive admits to ‘trust deficit’ on call with advertisers | Financial Times – stating the obvious, with Trump-related decisions is just latest in long line of trust related issues for Facebook from brand safety issues with content to analytics

    Dove Soap’s Owner Is Criticized Over Skin-Lightening Cream – WSJ – unfortunately a set of consumers want the product and if Unilever didn’t sell it other people would

    I love you. You love me. | Ad Ageds – well worth while reading as it brings commitment into focus

    Step Chickens and the Rise of TikTok ‘Cults’ – The New York Times – Cults on TikTok aren’t the ideological ones most people are familiar with. Instead, they are open fandoms revolving around a single creator. Much like the “stans” of pop figures and franchises, members of TikTok cults stream songs, buy merch, create news update accounts and fervently defend their leaders in the comment sections of posts. The biggest difference is that TikTok’s cult leaders are not independently famous. They’re upstart creators building a fan base on social media. Ms. Ong represents a relatively new kind of influencer, one who has seized a time of great isolation and idleness to capture the interest of a rapt user base. “I made this video where I was speaking into my phone camera like, ‘Hey guys I think we should start a religion,’” she said in a phone interview on Friday. “Then, I was like, ‘Let’s start a cult.’”

  • Space aliens + other things

    I didn’t want to talk about space aliens. Given that some people are currently beating up on network engineers and destroying 5G network infrastructure, this art project about space aliens and electro-magnetic radiation might be considered to be a bit close to the bone. Space Aliens are no longer visiting Earth due to an allergy to our cell phones – the storytelling neatly taps neatly into the cold war and X-Files peak of alien abduction and combines it with ambient music. Given the current conspiracies about 5G, it may get taken more literally than is good.

    Keep It Real Online is a great campaign by the New Zealand government highlighting the risk and appropriate action parents can take regarding online behaviour.

    Keep It Real Online – New Zealand government

    The online bullying themed video is really on-point, but all of them have real impact.

    YouTube channel Awkward Puppets has become active again over the past couple of months. Imagine if Sesame Street characters grew into awkward post-modern adults. The script writing on this is really on point

    Maybelline Launches ‘Spread Good Vibes’ COVID-19 Campaign in Thailand Branding in Asia | Branding Asia Magazine – a lovely bit of insight: that make-up and mutual social affirmation ‘good vibes’ will do wonders for how we feel during COVID-19. It also taps into Thai women’s love of beauty products. The execution was nicely done using augmented reality. The campaign was done by MRM for Maybelline-Thailand. Thailand has a great track record in really emotive advertising and these takes it into new mediums. More Thai-related posts.

    Maybelline-Thailand-Spread-Good-Vibes-Branding-in-Asia
    Maybelline-Thailand

    Ali Goldsworthy was on BBC Radio 4: Four Thought. She explained why campaigns which succeed by polarising people can cause long-term harm, and suggests ways we might tackle the resulting damage. Ali has written a book Poles Apart, that goes into these ideas in more depth.

  • K pop stans + more things

    Were TikTokers and K pop stans really behind Trump’s low rally turnout? | Dazed – There’s no way to prove whether the fake bookings caused genuine Trump supporters to lose seats. Many have attributed the low turnout to Trump’s failing campaign, with Bernie Sanders tweeting: “Maybe people are catching on that he is a pathological liar and a fraud.” Others have cited the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as reducing turnout, with mass gatherings still not deemed safe (six campaign staffers later tested positive for COVID-19) – the catchy story about K pop stans might be obscuring a more interesting story: that Trump just doesn’t have stadium filling power anymore. Interesting how K pop stans aren’t labelled as fanatics (yet). More Korea related stories here.

    Rocky start for Land Rover’s new Defender | Financial Times – Despite being configured online 1.6m times by enthusiasts, only 11,000 customer orders have been placed for the car so far, with a further 11,000 test-drive cars ordered by dealers, according to JLR’s annual results – fascinating insight in terms of website conversion numbers for the Land Rover

    Facts vs feelings in the BLM debate – UnHerd – so much to unpack here, not all of which I agree with wholeheartedly. But we need dialogue and debate more than slogans

    Quite apart of the inappropriateness of defining segments by ‘generations’ some of the economic data in these presentations are quite interesting. I would challenge their assumptions about attitudes over time made in the video.

    Hong Kong families prepare to flee the city, fearing a reign of terror from Beijing – The Washington Post – Their departure is so hurried that Ho has yet to assess school options for her two children. Her husband does not know what he will do in Taiwan, which lacks a financial sector comparable with Hong Kong’s. But even working at a restaurant would be acceptable. “Having my freedom of speech is worth more,” he said. – this shows pure fear in the face of evil. Its like refugees in pre-war Europe facing fascism

    How Diversifying Channels Can Help Retailers and Consumer Goods Brands Survive Covid-19 | Ogilvy – could we see a diversification beyond digital focus. Market penetration is key for marketing growth

    Solving online events — Benedict Evans – No-one has ever really managed to take a networking event and put it online. You certainly can’t just make a text chat channel for everyone watching the video stream and claim that’s as the same as a cocktail party. Equally, I can go up to a booth on the Qualcomm or Ericsson stand at MWC, wait my turn and then ask an engineer lots of questions, but how do we do that online? I could book a sales call, but that’s not the same at all.

    Mediatel: Mediatel News: Export to survive – According to Ad Association, UK advertising exports hit £7.9bn in 2018, a 15% increase on the year before. They’re growing faster than other services exports and, surprisingly to me at any rate, the growth rate has accelerated since Brexit – but the Brexit restrictions haven’t kicked in yet

    Group M forecasts 12.5% decline in UK ad market – I was expecting a greater decline

    China is setting itself up to win cold war 2.0 | Financial Times – At the height of the cold war in 1963, the US federal government spent more on research and development than the rest of the world’s public and private sectors combined, Mr Atkinson says. Today, it spends less on R&D as a proportion of gross domestic product than it did in 1955

    Indonesia says China’s ‘nine-dash line’ puts its interests at risk | Financial Times – interesting

    Instagram ‘will overtake Twitter as a news source’ – BBC News – when this happens the rationale for Twitter fades away

    Behind China’s Twitter Campaign, a Murky Supporting Chorus – The New York Times – No doubt some of these accounts are run by patriotic, tech-savvy Chinese people who get around their government’s ban on Twitter and other Western platforms. But an analysis by The New York Times found that many of the accounts behaved with a single-mindedness that could suggest a coordinated campaign of the type that nation states have carried out on Twitter in the past. Of the roughly 4,600 accounts that reposted China’s leading envoys and state-run news outlets during a recent week, many acted suspiciously, The Times found. One in six tweeted with extremely high frequency despite having few followers, as if they were being used as loudspeakers, not as sharing platforms – surprised that the bots don’t mutually follow each other as social proof

    TSMC at the head of history’s tide: two high walls and one sharp knife – China AI – translated from a Chinese article

    Nearly a third of all online ads in China invalid: report | Advertising | Campaign Asia – 31.9% of all online advertising traffic in China was invalid last year according to Miaozhen Systems. Worth RMB 28 billion. 57.5% of KOL fans are fraudulent – I thought that this could be even higher

  • Sophisticated card skimming & more

    Sophisticated card skimming in Mexico by a Romanian criminal gang was first highlighted by Brian Krebs. This documentary was produced by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and features cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs. It is amazing how audacious this sophisticated card skimming scheme was.

    Sophisticated card skimming in Mexico with Romanian criminal gang.

    Adam and Eve DDB’s effectiveness expert Les Binet on COVID-19 and recommendations on marketing. Much of it is more common sense and nuanced consideration than just simple rules by other people. The key outtakes here compared to some of the stuff that I have seen coming out of Ogilvy Asia is the differentiation between supply-side driven recession and demand-side driven recession.

    Elders Corner is a documentary that focuses on the political context that Afrobeat exists and had been played in. It tells the stories of Nigeria’s musicians who pioneered the Afrobeat sound and the role of their music in society during a time of tremendous political upheaval.

    Asian brands really seem to have taken to Animal Crossing, with a Hong Kong eatery hiring a marketer to build their Animal Crossing presence. The Global Pride festival seems to be no exception to brands and culture going into Animal Crossing. The creator tools allows creative expression that works really well for Pride month celebrations.

    In the same week that Boston Dynamics released their ‘Spot’ robot, a Thai shopping mall are doing an interesting exercise in human computer interaction featured in the Singapore media Robot dog hounds Thai shoppers to keep hands virus-free – TODAYonline. I’d love to know if they managed to gather effectiveness data around this initiative. The only thing that surprised me about this was that it was a Thai shopping mall, rather than one in Singapore. It is much less creepy than the way China has used robots to educate people on COVID-19 and demand compliance.