Netflix are doubling down on The Witcher franchise with their Witcher: Nightmare of The Wolf anime. The approach is very similar to the approach that Netflix took with Altered Carbon. Looking at how well that anime turned out, I have high hopes that Nightmare of the Wolf will live up to the trailer that Netflix has dropped.
The Witcher: Nightmare of The Wolf
OpenAI Codex demo
OpenAI demo-ed the use of AI to code from normal human language a web interface design. It’s a smaller move forward than you would think it is, but it has programmers worried. Secondly, its hard enough to work out what something does if it is coded by a human who doesn’t document as it goes. A machine learning based coder represents an even greater level of opaqueness, which poses challenges for when code would need to be updated. You can learn more about OpenAI Codex here.
Mercedes Benz 300SL
The 1950s saw Germany rebuilding after the war and its companies coming back after the war. Before the space race, there was the jet age and there was motor racing. Mercedes Benz looked to make a statement about its position in the motor industry and the way to do that was through motor racing. Stirling Moss driving a Mercedes 300SLR put the company back on the map. Two years later Mercedes released a two door version of Moss’ car to the public called the 300SL. It was light, expensive, exciting and had jet age vibes with its aerodynamic styling and gull wing doors. Something that still looked futuristic almost 30 years later on the DeLorean.
But the 300SL could also kill the unwary driver due to its rear swing axles. The car could go into sudden oversteer mid-corner if you stabbed the brakes or take the foot off the throttle in the bend. I know this, not because I had driven one, but because I was an avid reader of Car magazine from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s.
Car magazine was in a golden age, when motor journalism was as much literature as product information. Journalists wrote up to the intellect that they wanted their readers to have rather than writing to a lowest common denominator. Something that I have tried to do with this blog over time, but not nearly as well. Back to the killer handling: and the expensive coupe.
Mercedes replaced the gull wing coupe with a roadster body shape and took the opportunity to change the handling.
Tyler Hoover of Hoovies Garage had a chance to drive one of the roaders.
Tyler Cowen interview
I have been following Tyler Cowen’s economics blog Marginal Revolution for years and posted links to it here. Ashish Kulkarni interviewed Cowen about some of his blog posts, the philosophy of economics and the challenges facing universities and their students. Cowen’s day job is a professor at George Mason University in Washington DC.
Fake reviews on products including Amazon Prime items (image via quote catalog
Shenzhen to support Amazon merchants | Trivium China – 50,000 merchants were banned from Amazon for astroturfing false reviews. The ban was worth up to 100 billion yuan in sales to these merchants. Half of the merchants affected are based in Shenzhen. Now the Chinese government is looking at what it can do to help the merchants practicing false reviews. Yet it wouldn’t tolerate false reviews if it was exposed in in the domestic market. One of the options being looked at is a platform to rival Amazon Marketplace, that would allow fake reviews
Study: Companies Aren’t Living Up To Chinese Consumers’ Expectations – Three in four (75%) informed Chinese consumers (defined as consumers interested or involved in one of 20 industries studied in the research) said CEOs should speak up on issues that “may not have a significant impact on the business but have a significant impact on society,” with particular focus on diversity and diverse representation within a workforce and its leadership. Yet just 35% of respondents in China feel companies in China can do more to make the workplace better. Similarly, 80% agree that CEOs should have a voice on the environmental policy debate, and three quarters (75%) say business leaders should have a role shaping health policy, the research found. Respondents ranked value and innovation as the top two drivers of brand perceptions in China. Only 35% of companies, however, are meeting expectations in those areas – the key term is ‘informed consumers’, I am sure that the Chinese government might not view things in quite the same way
The Hong Kong National Security Law: The Shifted Grundnorm of Hong Kong’s Legal Order and Its Implications by Han Zhu :: SSRN – the application of mainland laws in Hong Kong, the interpretation of the NSL, cross-border criminal jurisdiction, national security institutional infrastructure, and the legal language. To some extent, the enactment of the NSL is like a silent constitutional reform that has reshaped, and will continue to reshape, a wide range of aspects of Hong Kong law as well as the Basic Law. Due to the dualistic nature of the NSL as a national law which applies to both the mainland and Hong Kong, it has also expanded and deepened the interaction and conflict between legal systems in the two regions, highlighting the inherent tension of maintaining the unity of a heterogeneous legal order under one country, two systems
Influencers want to be paid more than ever. Blame the pandemic | Marketing | Campaign Asia – no one is asking the question in this article, are influencers overpriced, or even worth it compared to other “Industry can also factor in, with some influencer niches starting at a higher price point than others,” says Heather Rottner, director of social media at Coyne PR. For instance, she says the firm generally sees higher rates in high-end fashion and beauty, food and DIY. While there is no shortage of influencers looking for brand partnerships in these categories, “many influencers pride themselves on being selective and authentic which means they don’t jump on every partnership offer they receive or use just any product.”
Media
‘Spreading like a virus’: inside the EU’s struggle to debunk Covid lies | World news | The Guardian – Until the pandemic, there was no monitoring of fake stories originating from within EU countries or linked to countries other than Russia. While China Global Television Network (CGTN), an English-language cable news channel controlled by the Chinese Communist party, is considering a Brussels expansion StratCom until recently had just two people working on Chinese disinformation. Several former EU analysts said multiple state-backed disinformation campaigns, not just Russian, had taken advantage of Covid and Richter believed the EU’s limited focus on Russia “affected the legitimacy of the project.”
Security
The threat of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” is a red herring — Quartz – the damage of cyberattacks comes from a series of piecemeal hacks that are often hidden from public view and don’t always lead to immediate, tangible harm. The actual threat looks less like a barrage of bombs and more like a spy slipping a gloved hand into a filing cabinet or a mobster strolling into a shop to collect a “protection” payment
Who is being monitored? Tutanota – interesting data points, I would imagine that other western countries would have a similar split in use of monitoring
Huawei Accused in Suit of Installing Data ‘Back Door’ in Pakistan Project – WSJ – Another day, another dodgy security story involving Huawei – BES, says in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in California district court that Huawei required it to set up a system in China that gives Huawei access to sensitive information about citizens and government officials from a safe-cities surveillance project in Pakistan’s second-largest city of Lahore. Muhammad Kamran Khan, chief operating officer of the Punjab Safe Cities Authority, which oversees the Lahore project, said the authority has begun looking into BES’s allegations.
Haidt is a social psychologist by training and currently serves as professor of ethical leadership at New York University Stern School of Business. I heard an interview with Haidt on the the dark psychology of social networks and this book came up which was the key reason why I bought it.
Greg Lukianoff
Lukianoff is a lawyer by training and president of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a US based group that free speech rights on college campuses. If it was Lukianoff on his own I would likely dismiss this book as partisan.
Premise of The Coddling of the American Minds
In The Coddling of the American Mind Haidt and Lukianoff discuss factors that are affecting the resilience of young people emerging from colleges in the US.
They suggest a number of factors for the increasing intolerance and threats to American life from the left and the right.
Intimidation and violence on campus – the book highlights examples on both the left and right of the political spectrum. Violence by left wing protestors at Berkeley was particularly disturbing due to the lack of action by law enforcement
Witch hunts against academics
Self reinforcing cycle of political polarisation
Paranoid parenting compared to the latch-key parenting that older people would have been used to growing up
The decline of outdoor play
Safetyism – the move of safety culture from improving physical safety promoted by the likes of Ralph Nader (safer workplaces, no lead paint on toys etc) to encompass mental and emotional safety as a priority
The quest for justice. The complexity of how you define justice is important
Haidt and Lukianoff are of the opinion that you need to prepare people for life and to be resilient. That this approach doesn’t detract from the desire to change the world seems to be ignored by advocates of the status quo.
How the book has been received?
The Financial Times generally praised the book and it ended up on the New York Times bestsellers list.
The book was perceived as an attack on progressive liberal values by some reviewers, whereas I think it wasn’t attack on those values, but the means by which they are being pursued. It confronts the hard truth that there is intolerance at both ends of the political spectrum and a lack of dialogue.
Audi launched its latest concept car the Audi Skysphere. It’s electrically powered as you’d expect. Massive screens for displays and sustainable materials used in the interior. It has autonomous driving when its in a ‘grand touring’ mode. It allows for the owner to drive in a ‘sports car’ mode. All pretty normal stuff so far.
But sports car mode means that the vehicle length shrinks. That’s right the Audi Skysphere changes shape rather than just changing functions up via electronics.
In terms of styling, Audi calls calls jazz age Horsh tourers the influence for the Audi Skysphere. Audi is descended from Auto Union AG. Auto Union AG was formed in 1932, with the merger of Horch, DKW, Wanderer and the original Audi Automobilwerke. That’s why the Audi logo has four circles and why Horsh is the influence.
Its long, wide and low bonnet brings to mind the Dodge Viper. The sides reminded me of Ford’s ‘Edge’ design language, if it was done by Zaha Hadid Architects. Lots of the details such as the lights use a mass of small triangles, reminding me of Hadid’s Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion. It also serves a reminder that computerised shapes are usually made up of lots of small polygons. Triangles must be a thing in car design at the moment, not only does the Audi Skysphere feature them, but so does the new Hyundai Santa Cruz throughout its design.
Audi talks about the Audi Skysphere in terms of progressive luxury, which seems to be about experience and not making a huge environmental impact. They talk about vegan leather (that could be anything from fungi derived proteins to a PVC style plastic) and microfibre (finely spun and woven (usually) polyester / nylon fibre mix).
The problems are likely to be in the system that the car would go into.
How is insurance handled for an autonomous vehicle?
Who is the insured party? Vehicle manufacturers would like for it to be the owner who might be responsible for any autonomous vehicle decisions. Putting software product liability out of their hands and on the buyer.
Who would be the defendant in the case of someone being run over?
How would vehicle inspection tests like Germany’s TUV or the UK’s MOT handle a collapsable chassis?
I am a bit disappointed to see that Audi isn’t thinking seriously about a post Lithium world sodium ion batteries or hydrogen powered vehicles
Los Angeles Olympics 1984
The Los Angeles Olympics was the last olympic event that made a profit. This was down to the city being able to use existing venues for all the competitions and a less onerous demand on resources than games ran since then.
Los Angeles didn’t have the reputation for design that Munich or the 1964 games in Tokyo had. So this video by the Olympics gave me new insight into the experience. I remembered the logo and the mascot, but since I watched only a small amount of the LA Games. This was because I was working on the family farm at the time. The bits that I did see were on an old black and white TV, so I missed a lot of the design details shared.
Home-made silicon foundry
I’d not heard of Sam Zeloof before. Over the past few years he has managed to fabricate integrated circuits ‘chips’ in his own home. Admittedly when we say home, we are talking about a big American multi-car garage. The results is impressive. One obvious thing to point out is that he is not putting in dust suppression techniques like you would see in a commercial fab.
Solid Logic Technology
IBM came up with an interesting ceramic hybrid technology that powered the Apollo missions and IBM’s System 360 computers. They were engineered for a robustness that even silicon micro-processors couldn’t match.
Fear of finding out was how Paul Holmes characterised marketing as a discipline and its approach to return on investment. This was an article that was originally published in 2019, but was going around in circles that I keep an eye on online recently.
The article characterised marketing in this way:
Marketing and public relations continue to focus on reach and awareness. Is that because they’re afraid of finding out whether they really make a difference?
The PR Industry’s FOFO Problem | Provoke Media
What do marketers actually focus on?
According to Nielsen:
Please rank each of the following marketing objectives for your business from most important to least important. Chart shows the percentage of respondents who picked that objective as their No. 1 priority. Source: 2021 Nielsen Marketing Report: Era of Adaptation.
Looking at those marketing objectives ROI and business impact are a key consideration embodied in both customer acquisition and brand awareness.
Long and short term goals
In order to understand marketing one has to understand that marketing provides short term benefits and long term benefits. Certain techniques skew towards a short term delivery and others deliver over the long term. The approach mentioned in Fear of Finding Out was very skewed to short term techniques.
That means that the return on investment timeframes could be very different. The longer the time frame that you are measuring the full return on investment, the harder it is prove it.
But surely you want things to work fast? True. But what if there are marketing techniques that keep on giving? Think about advertising jingles that stick in your head. They have mental availability decades after you’ve heard them.
In How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp, he distills down the findings from decades of empirical research into marketing. Two of the most important factors are mental availability and brand salience.
Mental availability is the probability that a buyer will notice, recognize and/or think of a brand in buying situations. It depends on the quality and quantity of memory structures related to the brand.
It is different from brand awareness or brand recall because it is situational in nature and thus hard to measure, a notable exception would be through observational research in retail environments. Brand awareness and consideration are two relatively indicative proxy measures for mental availability.
Here’s what research firm Nielsen had to say about those proxy measures:
Nielsen research shows that a 1-point gain in brand metrics (e.g., awareness and consideration) drives a 1% increase in sales. Importantly, upper-funnel efforts also generate an array of ancillary benefits that can drive more effective sales activations—and not just for consumables. For example, Nielsen recently measured how effective a financial services company’s marketing efforts were at driving sales across approximately 20 markets and found that the correlation between the upper funnel brand metrics and marketing efficiency was exceptionally strong (0.73).
Long-Term Business Vitality Should Outweigh Short-Term Sales Gains by By Cara Kantrowitz, Vice President of Solutions Consulting, Nielsen Research
A second aspect is brand salience which is how distinctive a brand is. This again helps with the memory structures that relate to a brand.
You might remember TikTok memes for a few months?
Go News India
What is the mental availability created by all but the most persistent Facebook ads? What’s the mental availability of a Google ad?
How are you measuring and driving brand salience for your company? Because that will affect sales further down the funnel.
For business to business audiences, which are covered in Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk’s How Brands Grow part two – the results are very similar.
The now bias
The now bias can be seen in the finding of the research cited by Holmes. The responses (and probably the question design that elicited them) are very focused on the bottom part of the marketing funnel / sales support.
Among the other troubling findings of Proof’s research, which included more than 400 senior business leaders in 160 key Fortune 1000 C-suites:
94% reported that they had little or no reliable understanding of the quantifiable business value actually delivered by marketing;
97% said they had little or no idea how much money they should be investing in marketing and PR;
72% said that they expected that 2019 marketing budgets would be cut by 10% or more.
Says Mark Stouse, Proof founder and a veteran of marketing and communications roles at BMC Software, Honeywell, and HP: “Many of the C-suite respondents went out of their way to say that their frustration did not stem from a lack of belief in marketing’s impact, but rather the failure of their marketing teams to embrace full accountability for ROI and business value.”
This doesn’t ring true based on research I have seen from Nielsen:
Please rate the importance of each of the following metrics / measurement capabilities to your organization. Chart shows to p-2 (very important and extremely important) on a 5-point scale. Source: 2021 Nielsen Marketing Report: Era of Adaptation
Research by Ebquity suggests the marketers are focused on ROI. You can get the full research here.
Marketers also have a now bias, that’s due to astonishing levels of CMO turnover in many organisations that’s only increasing over time.
The now bias creates revenue opportunities for agencies, with a temptation to do what’s right for them rather than their clients. ‘The quantifiable business value’ are likely to be getting worse. While client budgets are stagnant, media buying agencies are taking more of the money on online advertising (7 – 10 per cent commission, compared to 3 per cent on other media channels).
So there is a natural business incentive for them to lean into ‘business transformation’ / ‘digital disruption’ narratives popular in board rooms. Digital has its place, but it might not be the panacea that you’re looking for. I say that not as a digital cynic, but as a seasoned digital focused strategist, which means doing the research and recommending the right media for the right job.
Depending how you look at media channels some are better than others.
So how is the now bias exhibited by the C-suite? In business value they don’t think about brand building. Yet businesses are quite happy to factor in brand value when thinking about the value of goodwill on the balance sheet of their accounts.
The PR Industry’s FOFO Problem – Marketing and public relations continue to focus on reach and awareness. Is that because they’re afraid of finding out whether they really make a difference?
