Ged Carroll

Blog

  • High production values & things from last week

    If there was one theme that ran through most of the things in this week’s post its high production values in content creation

    The thing that blew me about this advert is how old school it feels and I mean it in a good way. High production values, great copywriting and beautifully shot. Pretty much everything that modern day adverts tend not to be with production being commoditised with the constant focus on how it can be used on Istagram / Facebook / Snap / Twitter Video – good enough rather than doing things well. These changes are symptomatic of all the forces affecting the ad industry at the moment. More on quality related issues here.

    While we’re talking about ad making, I also love this ad done for McDonalds Hong Kong in the early 1990s. Such a simple idea really well executed – you don’t need to speak Cantonese to get it. It is apparently based on this advert screened during the Super Bowl in the US. The creative was done during Leo Burnett’s 35-year run as creative agency for the fast food chain.

    Scott Galloway tends to polarise opinions, so I’d ask you to put aside any feelings you have and listen to this interview with Mr Bags – one of the biggest influencers in the luxury sector for Chinese netizens at the moment.

    Amazing photos and insight into the Yakuza life: Behind the Yakuza: documenting the women of Japan’s mafia | Dazed Digital

    Currently reading City of Devils : A Shanghai Noir by Paul French. It is a true crime story about Shanghai during the Warlord period prior to World War Two. I’m only a little bit into the book but it’s very obvious why the young Chinese Communist Party would have held a passionate dislike for western powers interfering in their country.

  • Pegatron + more things

    Apple reportedly shifting more iPhone XR orders to Foxconn from Pegatron, says paper  – Pegatron’s production has been affected by a lower-than-expected yield rate and shortages of workers at its plants in China – the manpower issue at Pegatron is very interesting and implies a possible rift between the factories and local government. Historically local governments have gone out of their way to facilitate large Taiwanese employers China has just begun to see a decline in worker numbers overall in its population. Pegatron used to be part of ASUSTek. When that business reorganised its OEM manufacturing business became what we now know as Pegatron.

    Brands throwing cash at sponsorship with little idea of return, report finds – Mumbrella Asia – not terribly surprising

    Deepfakes web α | Generate your own Deepfakes – Japanese currency denominated service to create your own deep fakes. This service looks as if its designed for the curious, rather than virtual revenge porn creators, the accessibility of this capability brings with it a variety of issues

    Smart cities — too clever by half? | Financial Times – hell is other people’s technology. Smart cities don’t have the attendant ethical considerations because that would dull their ‘smartness’. In addition law enforcement would prefer to have maximum choices on data. It was interesting that China Mobile’s key use case for 5G was urban crime fighting in the first adverts that they ran.

    Life insurance company John Hancock wants to track your Fitbit data – Vox – very sinister. What demands will the insurance company put on the insured? How will it be using the data?

    Software disenchantment @ tonsky.me – innovation entropy

    Adobe Changes Its Marketing Cloud Trajectory With Marketo Acquisition – this going to be a very different marketing / sale model for Adobe

    Alexa, Blow My Mind | Gartner L2 – Apple’s recent iPhone and Apple Watch launch lacked buzz in comparison to previous launches.

  • In praise of the DSLR camera

    If you still use a DSLR camera nowadays given the usefulness of smartphones, the phrase mirrorless has become de rigueur.

    Photography like most other things in life have become progressively more digital. Technology is increasingly mediating every aspect of our experiences, a screen comes with everything.

    Digital retouching and filters have dramatically changed the reality of modern photography. It has also made photography even more ephemeral. I have an online photo library that holds thousands of pictures, compared to the hundreds of photos that my parents have in an old album and envelopes from film processing labs stuffed in a chest of draws.

    Viewfinder

    I still like ‘mirrored’ or single lens reflex cameras.

    The digital single lens reflex or DSLR camera free the photographer from the tyranny of film; but still allows the photographer to frame up a shot in advance before using the battery life of the camera.

    Looking through the view finder of an SLR gives you a temporary isolation from peripheral visuals allowing you to focus mentally as well as physically on the subject in question.  It allows you to slow down and take your time in the moment. It changes the way you see the world. The experience using a mirrorless camera is rather different. There isn’t the ‘focus’ in the experience and it blends post production with taking the picture in the same time and space.

    Of course, as with most technology experiences, the human experience is viewed in a very one dimension manner. An object to be overcome in the least minimum viable way possible. It’s a very regressive approach to design, cost is put before simplification. The increased focus on software engineering leaves a rough unsatisfactory digital experience.

    The products lack the ability to spark joy as Mari Kondo would say. That makes the whole obsolescence and replacement cycle so much easier. More related content here.

  • Knowledge podcasts + more things

    FOMO in China is a $7 billion industry | Marketplace – the Chinese payment for knowledge Podcast business dwarves ad funding and Patreon-like services. Many of knowledge podcasts are like bank analyst type reports as audio books. There is also a demand for knowledge podcasts looking at foreign affairs and current affairs. More related content here.

    Luxury Daily Rimowa seeks to offer more than suitcases to its ‘purposeful travelers’ – marketing and design is going to rely on community and collaboration – sounds like Stüssy’s playbook for the past four decades

    European Union has a plan for Asian infrastructure but will it collide with China’s belt and road? | South China Morning Post – this could get interesting

    Google Announces That its Data Studio Tool is Now Available to All Users | Social Media Today – Interesting low end attack on Qlik and Tableau

    Poundland To Open Stores At Up To 20 Former Poundworld Locations | Poundland Press Room – Jacks about to get hammered by Poundland with new stores. The stock inflating dream that Jacks is supposed to sell to Tesco shareholders may come unstuck very fast

    Aldi and Lidl won’t be scared by Tesco’s new discount Jack’s | The Guardian – visually it might be an Aldi analogue, pricing strategy wise it seems closer to Poundstretcher with a bakery. It’s probably what all post-Brexit UK supermarkets will look like

    Yom Kippur, a children’s bike festival on Israel’s deserted roads | Reuters – interesting evolution in consumer behaviour

    Amazon Announces Echo Link, Echo Link Amp and Echo Sub • Gear Patrol – the (US only at the moment) Echo Link Amp looks lovely but you’d be better off with Schiit instead

    Scott Galloway on the state of retailing at Recode Conference

    This data viz maps Facebook connections across the country | Fast Company – well that’s another Facebook myth disproved

    How to nail the Q&A portion of your presentation – good bits of advice

    Apple-owned software company FileMaker does an ad that take aim at innovation hype

    https://youtu.be/89T51PLL__o

    EU Starts Preliminary Probe into Amazon’s Treatment of Merchants | WSJ City  – the EU has economic reasons to do this as well

    CTS – conserve the sound – a German project that preserves what would have been familiar sounds of now obsolete technology. Most are interesting, though the Krups coffee grinder sounds exactly the same as my more modern model

  • Through a storm with Big Bird

    Just when you think that Sesame Street can’t get any more awesome, you find out that they’re putting out content like this on how the characters of Sesame Street get through a storm

    Jaguar Land Rover’s ‘Googly Eyes’ isn’t just a gimmick but a classic bit of human computer interaction thinking. The cars gaze passes important information to pedestrians in its ‘line-of-sight’

    Hypebeast founder Kevin Ma plays blinder; offering to pick up the tab for every ticket to Hypefest.

    Culture and learning shouldn’t have a price attached to it.

    I will personally cover the cost of tickets to make Hypefest a free experience for all.

    Over a decade ago, I began a website documenting the things we love. Next month we will be holding our very first festival @hypefest which will bring our culture to life. To celebrate this moment, I will be personally covering the cost of tickets to provide free tickets for everyone. All are welcome to come share this moment with use. Tickets available tomorrow 12PM tomorrow on hypefest.com

    CHiPs ‘roller disco’ – the most Seventies bit of television ever. I’ve heard this being used as the intro track on some of Luxxury‘s mixes. It helps you get through a storm of a day with feelgood disco

    Sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

    Hollywood studios had to get through a storm. Television had led to declining cinema audiences. Cinemas hadn’t moved to the kind of multiplex higher comfort experience that we know now, so were closing in large amounts. Some fleapits in major cities were kept open screening badly dubbed martial arts films and pornography. It was around this time that Deep Throat, The Opening of Misty Beethoven and Behind The Green Door developed mainstream popularity.

    At the time you had film stars making guest appearances on television; this gave them an invaluable boost to incomes that had dried up. The movie studio system hadn’t glommed on to blockbusters yet and was in the thrall of directors of the American New Wave. There wasn’t a lot of roles at the time for stars of the 1960s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s George Peppard. Others like Lee Van Cleef and Richard Harrison went to work in the Italian and Asian film industries.

    They probably didn’t know that change was just around the corner the launch of the over budget and under-appreciated Heaven’s Gate put an end to the American New Wave.

    Steven Spielberg and others brought in the rise of the blockbuster and the studio system was saved. But George Peppard never made another cinematic film; instead he lives on in the minds of many people as Hannibal Smith from the A-Team.

    Finally a 1970 concert film of Miles Davis performing the title track from Bitches Brew