Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Digital is having a midlife crisis + more

    DIGITAL IS HAVING A MIDLIFE CRISIS. THE WAY FORWARD IS EXPERIMENTATION. | BBH Labs – nice diagnosis but shouty headline. Ironically the problem is the ad industry dashing headlong into technology and expecting it to work. Yet between 70 and 95 percent of technology projects don’t perform as expected. I don’t think digital is having a midlife crisis – instead I think agencies need to develop maturity. More related content here

    Why You Might Build Your Start-up in China over Silicon Valley | Hacker Noon – or Silicon Roundabout / Silicon Fen for that matter

    Invisible Hand Behind WPP Wednesday: Transparency Takes Toll | Agency News – AdAge – Holding company revenue in North America has been flat to down in recent quarters, running well below increases in U.S. gross domestic product and media spending. It’s a trend that started the third quarter of last year, just after the Association of National Advertisers issued its report from investigations firm K2 on media transparency.”There is at minimum a coincidence between the timing of the release of the K2 report and the sudden deceleration in U.S./North America organic revenue growth for the holding companies, which began in the third quarter of last year,” says Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser. “It’s hard to believe that it hasn’t had some impact in terms of clients looking to tighten up contract language. This is reinforced by my conversations with marketers who have only recently learned about how their contracts have allowed for agencies to generate authorized but undisclosed markups. But I also think that a slowdown in spending on media from large marketers is at play, as is zero-based budgeting.”

    Hong Kong police launch investigations into suspicious China UnionPay withdrawals amid capital flight concerns – surprised that crypto currency isn’t being used in this more

    Ignorance of Pricing is Ruining Ad Agencies | Trinity P3 – it sounds more like ignorance of product marketing

    Apple iCloud Keychain easily slurped by cops, ElcomSoft claims • The Register – ElcomSoft’s Phone Breaker 7.0 has gained the ability to access and decrypt iCloud Keychain data, under certain circumstances.

    China’s outbound investment to further grow after the party congress, says PwC | South China Morning Post – pure speculation. M&A would need to be balanced against increased resistance from the likes of the EU and ASEAN countries

    Hugo: The IT Bot – done by Digitas LBi for HPE

    Advertising Philosopher: An Interview with Faris Yakob (Part Three) | Annenberg Innovation Lab – Worth reading on content

    Ad Age Wake-Up Call: News about Google, Walmart and WPP | News – AdAge  – WPP cut its full-year revenue forecast, predicting revenue growth between zero and 1% this year. Previously, it had predicted 2% growth. WPP’s share price fell up to 12% after the company released its first-half earnings, and Bloomberg News said it was their biggest drop in 17 years. Agency holding companies have been hurting as some clients trim advertising budgets. UK-based WPP, the biggest agency company by revenue, singled out “pressure on client spending in the second quarter, particularly in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) or packaged goods sector.”

    London Calling for Brexit Fix | Agency News – AdAge – “Brexit threatens to diminish the U.K.’s international standing, and arguably has done so already,” says WPP CEO Martin Sorrell, who has been an outspoken critic of Brexit. “One of the reasons we have doubled down on investment in western continental Europe is to maintain our influence in critical markets such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain—four of our top 10 markets worldwide—and Brussels, where our international competitors are already seeking to use Brexit against us.”

    The Cult of the Costco Surfboard | The New Yorker – paywall

    Will Artificial Intelligence Be Illegal in Europe Next Year? | Entrepreneur – data portability and an explanation for automated decision pose interesting challenges

    SOS Alerts – Andy Kinsella – Google now competing with the Facebook alerts system

    UK Supermarket May Have Accidentally Infected Thousands With Hep E Virus | LADbible – protecting the supermarket like this will damage trust across the food supply chain

    DEA: ‘There Is No Silver Bullet’ for Going Dark – Motherboard

  • Shoreditch and other things

    I’ve been a bit quiet on here this week, I was freelancing in Shoreditch, living the Nathan Barley dream with smoked salmon coffee. Here’s the things that made my day this week. It is strange that a whole area can become cliche in the way that Shoreditch has. The truth is Shoreditch isn’t even that great a location. There is no central proposition to the Shoreditch area. It just become important by default because it’s relatively cheap.

    乐播报丨七夕节，乐高积木X搜狗输入法送“独家”惊喜啦！ – Nice collab between Sogou and Lego on digital assets including stickers and a keyboard. Lego faces some high quality clone products so is trying to build strong brand preference. The challenge is that Lego is no longer made in Denmark, but China – so arguments about safety and Danish brand values are harder to argue.

    Naomi Wu shared this cyberpunk themed maker festival video by Tao Bao – the Alibaba-owned mainland China marketplace. I quite like it, it has a 1980s post-Blade Runner vibe to the visuals – but through the lens of Hong Kong comedy director Stephen Chow. Sit back and enjoy the short film.

    Students Nicci Yin and Nan Hung Tsai  from the ArtCenter College of Design gave this interesting talk on making locative art more social. Like the ARKit stuff, these explorations feel fresh like the computer graphics in the early 1990s and Macromedia (pre-Adobe) Flash. The idea of scanning items with a hand controller into virtual reality and it becoming a virtual social asset is was interesting. There are interesting implications handing off across realities in storytelling. This is a fascinating a talk to take in during your lunch hour.

    Great interview with Action Bronson – I let him speak for himself

    ARKit reminds me of back in the day with start of Macromedia Flash; developers and artists being creative and playful. Check out this brief animation from a Japanese developer

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

  • Logic gates + more things

    Logic Gates Under (Air) Pressure | Hackaday – I remember seeing fluidic logic on a packaging production line for motor oil back when I was a teenager. By this time the line was reasonably old, micro-processor controls were becoming the norm, and it broke down on a regular basis. The Palmers who owned the factory knew my Dad, which is how I got to see it. They used to pack small volume SKUs for Shell at their own factory; when the oil company pulled the contract their business closed. Logic gates whether they are electronic or pneumatic are the basic aspects of computing. In this case the pneumatic logic gates would be used for automation. Though pneumatic logic gates have been increasingly replaced by simple embedded electronics to complex industrial computers

    Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) Firmware Decrypted | Hackaday – “Imagine the Secure Enclave as a vault. Apple hung a big, dark curtain over it to prevent anyone from even seeing the vault. Now, that curtain has been opened and people can see the vault. The vault, however, is still locked as securely as ever.” However we don’t know who else has got this far already, and we certainly don’t know if other actors have managed to find vulnerabilities in the code. More security related content here.

    China Tech Workers Wanted: Women Need Not Apply – WSJ – Parents often tell their daughters they won’t be good at math or physics or coding. And just like in the U.S., some Chinese companies are reluctant to hire or promote women because of concerns about pregnancy and child rearing, employee advocates say. About 20% of engineers in China’s internet and telecommunications industries are women, according to Boss Zhipin, a Beijing-based online recruiting company. And there’s a pay gap as well. Women were paid 30% less than men in China’s internet industry last year, ranking among the most discriminatory lines of work with medicine, media and entertainment, according to Boss Zhipin, which surveyed more than 365,000 pay samples nationwide – (paywall)

    Interim Report Q2 2017 (OMX:MAERSKA) – In the last week of the quarter we were hit by a cyber-attack, which mainly impacted Maersk Line, APM Terminals and Damco. Business volumes were negatively affected for a couple of weeks in July and as a consequence, our Q3 results will be impacted. We expect that the cyber-attack will impact results negatively by USD 200-300m.” – shipping titan Maersk talks about how malware has affected its business

    The First True Multi-User Holographic Table Has Been Built – ExtremeTech – cool as fuck

    Producers, Songwriters on How Pop Songs Got So Slow – Rolling Stone – Paul Oakenfold et al who tried unsuccessfully to slow acid house down to 98bpm was just 3 decades too early

  • Global head of PR on Japan + more

    Booking.com’s global PR head on Japan, data, and the fallacy of awards | PR Week – For Cafferty, no outside party can understand a business as well as the people who work in it. Indeed, she sees the key attribute of an in-house PR person as knowing every facet, from “fun stuff” like brand and product to tax laws. She sees the value of PR agencies as being strong media contacts and local understanding, and less about strategy or creativity – a very traditional view of PR as media relations and a disconcerting read for agencies given the lack of receptiveness to higher value service aspects. Booking.com’s global PR head on Japan was not exactly insightful comments either. More Japan related content here.

    McSuicide? Twitter hoax affects McDonald’s Hong Kong | PR Week – probably because Twitter doesn’t have traction in Hong Kong

    What Brands Are Actually Behind Trader Joe’s Snacks? – Eater – it reminds me student jobs that I had in factories making breakfast cereals, frozen cakes and frozen meals respectively – we would change brand boxes on the line but the product remained the same

    iOS 10 Quietly Deprecated A Crucial API For VoIP and Communication Apps – Slashdot – what’s not apparent is why Apple is deciding to depreciate this API, especially given the amount of phone use that happens on wi-fi rather than cellular networks

    Ships fooled in GPS spoofing attack suggest Russian cyberweapon | New Scientist – what would have seemed like a straight-up Bond villain pot, now seems to be the new normal. GPS spoofing has also been done by the North Koreans and China. They key question is how the GPS network achieves ‘cut through’ whilst being jammed. There is only so much transmitting power that can be put on satellites. It would also mean that ‘old’ skills like astral navigation and map reading are still tremendously important.

  • Function and form

    Form and function of Black Flag

    You can see the nature of function and form everywhere you look I took it out of this great interview with Henry Rollins with BBC Hard Talk from January 2016. The interesting bit after 6:00 is how Rollins talks about his stage image that evolved from the rudimentary circumstances of being on the road with American punk band Black Flag.

    The origin of this function and form derived look of gym shorts and torso look was to cut down on the washing he needed to do in restaurant sinks post-concert. Rollins continues a variant of this form and function approach to his wardrobe, which focuses on limited basics, even now after his sustained success as musician, spoken word artist, poet, comedian, podcaster and actor.

    Dieter Rams

    Dieter Rams was one of the most important industrial designers of our modern world. His view was around form following function. He is also a big proponent of less and more in terms of product design.

    This approach is exemplified by Braun’s product design over the years, from hi-fis to shavers and and kitchen equipment. This look remained timeless with half century designs still being followed today. Rams extended this philosophy to furniture design company Vistoe.

    Whiskas

    Function and form doesn’t end with stage outfits. While doing my weekly shop I noticed that Whiskas had upped its packaging game. When I was a child Whiskas came in a tin that was indistinguishable from other tins. If the paper wrapper fell off, you wouldn’t know what was in the tin. It was also inconvenient to use and required a can opener. They like other pet food manufacturers moved to a plastic container with a foil lid that was lighter, an important consideration for supply chains. Now they have added a bit of personality to the container design with ears. It cut through the tins, oval plastic trays and aluminium trays usual in cat food packaging. It acts as great brand signage and also helps the human to open foil lid in order to feed their canine overlords.

    Whiskas packaging

    More related content to function and form can be found on my blog here.