I was reading Karl Rove’s commentary on Sarah Palin today and he hit upon a few things I agree with (you read that correctly).

McCain–Palin must deepen those doubts by pounding away on questions about Obama’s character, judgment and values. Drawing on Obama’s own record and statements, they need to paint him as a big spender, class warrior and cultural elitist; they need to say he’s never worked across party lines or gotten his hands dirty solving big issues. But the duo must also give voters reasons to support them. They must crystallize a positive, forward-looking vision so people who see Obama as unqualified have something to hang on to. It can’t be a laundry list of positions. McCain–Palin must offer a narrative about what they will do to help America see better days, especially on kitchen-table concerns.

   This is a lesson that comes up in branding, a lot.
   One of the necessary things we branding consultants always talk about is story-telling. There have to be legends in the company, things that become company folklore. The Murdoch Press has plenty of stories to tell, for example, about how one of its newspapers ran a piece about Elvis, coincidentally on the story of the King’s death. I still talk about the way the Lucire name came up, which probably paints to the way serendipity works inside an organization. TV3 probably has one on John Campbell’s tie.
   Stories unite people, and Rove’s belief that the McCain campaign must give a ‘forward-looking vision’ and a ‘narrative’ come straight out of a branding book. Maybe one of mine.
   Vision is important, and there have been other posts on that. But an easily grasped narrative goes beyond slogans. While the stories I refer to above come from the past, in an election campaign, candidates need to paint one about the future. We know the McCain legend of being a POW; we know Palin paints herself as a hockey mom. These form the background, but people need to buy into the sequel.
   Especially when one campaign is less well off than another. The Republicans are being outspent by the Democrats, so a consistent, continuous story about how the McCain–Palin principles will, in short soundbites, rescue America can have a great effect against their opponents.
   Big spending allows for promotions around the cult of personality; small spending needs cleverer ideas and stories are one of the better techniques open to supporting a brand. Posted by Jack Yan, 07:58  permalink

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It looks like the American Big Three are doing pretty much what I warned them against in my ‘Saving Detroit’ piece presented to the Medinge Group in August.
   GM and Chrysler have had exploratory merger talks, while Ford may sell its controlling stake in Mazda.
   They have cited dropping sales, caused in part by their reliance on trucks and SUVs in years past.
   I can only say, ‘I told you so,’ when I warned of this exposure a decade ago.
   The sad thing is that GM and Ford make excellent small cars—just that they don’t let Americans buy them. In the meantime, they get trounced by the Japanese and Koreans in their home market—even though they’ve paid for the R&D of models that Americans would love.
   They needed to look at motoring commentators, examine the globalized tastes in small cars and learn to listen to their customers.
   But this was all too hard given the arrogance of at least the Big Two, GM and Ford, which have managed to weather hard times in the past.
   Their US operations have usually been mired in politicking and Ford, in particular, has often rejected the work of its Köln subsidiary for decades.
   Chrysler, meanwhile, fell victim to German brand mismanagement under Daimler-Benz AG. As a US company, the lean Chrysler of the 1990s was a business darling because of its rapid R&D processes and its market orientation. It even understood its three brands very well.
   Add to that the Americans’ obsession with short-term results—the problems that Medinge warned about many years ago, and which are also to blame for its financial crisis today, and there are serious systemic issues to work out before things can come right for the Big Three. If they ever do.
   Folks, it’s time to look more seriously at delivering the cars people want. Rehashing the 1999 Ford Focus isn’t a bright idea when the new (2005 and on) model’s available in México and most other countries on the planet. Savvy car buyers, feeling cheated out of the latest technology, are going to buy an import.
   The fact is, Detroit can make good cars. It just needs to make more of the good cars that people are going to buy.
   Chrysler becoming a GM brand—which is what a merger will result in—makes about as much sense as putting the British Motor Corporation and Leyland together.
   Economies of scale will be lost over decades and the typical American corporate behaviour in merged automakers is to cut model lines. Chrysler itself knows this: it’s how AMC disappeared. And AMC itself was an amalgam of Rambler, Nash, Willys and Hudson (have I missed anyone?).
   In the British case, the company collapsed in 2005, its remnants now the property of Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. in Red China. Which means it’s a part of a communist state.
   And Ford without Mazda might mean a return to a company losing some of its competences in platform engineering. This scenario is less likely, but Ford has enough trouble acting like a global company. Removing a Japanese arm—inevitable given NHK, another Mazda shareholder, wishes to sell its shares in the automaker—could only encourage Ford’s already infamous reputation of geocentrism.
   Last month I said that the current E241 Ford Falcon will be the company’s last, with its Australian R&D centre likely to be responsible for becoming Ford’s post in the western Pacific—effectively replacing the function of Mazda.
   Responsibilities would include developing models specifically for the Asian market and, with less money to play with, the Falcon, smaller than the Mondeo in key dimensions anyway, will die.
   It will allow for greater economies of scale with existing Ford platforms though, and if managed carefully, it might be the best thing to happen to the company—if it could get over internal politics.
   Ford’s rapid departures of its Australian CEOs (two in seven months) suggest that politicking is alive and well.
   The prognosis isn’t good for either GM, Ford or Chrysler.
   Gradual, long-term visions were needed, and the examples were always there before us: Toyota and Honda.
   Toyota makes unremarkable cars and GM and Ford have delivered better products. But the Japanese are on the pulse more in the US. Mention ‘hybrid’ and an American buyer is likely to think Japanese—never mind that the Honda Accord Hybrid could manage only 1 mpg better than its petrol counterpart.
   Comparing product with product, it makes no sense that GM and Ford are behind Toyota—but looking at the philosophies, it is no surprise.
   Henry Ford II’s decision to go public has come back to haunt the company, as it cannot implement a long-term solution without greedy investors demanding better and better returns achieved through greater and greater rationalization, to the point where the company would no longer exist.
   GM isn’t immune from this, either.
   It’s time to discuss things with not only the UAW, but shareholders, and say: we’re in this together, and the usual methodology as taught by the business-as-usual American MBA school isn’t going to cut it. Japan, Inc. 2; Detroit Whiz Kids 0. Posted by Jack Yan, 11:07  permalink

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I now think Biden, McCain, Obama and Palin have had me direct a joke at them. I am an equal opportunity critic.
   I like to think, therefore, that I can comment on certain US issues in a bipartisan fashion.
   On a friend’s blog, I noticed she had republished, with permission, an article about whether Sen. Barack Obama’s possible dual nationality excludes him from the presidency.
   I attempted to answer this myself in her comments because I believed the original writer may have confused domicile with nationality as concepts.
   I am neither Cheshire nor North and it was 13 years since I studied private international law, which covers some of these ideas, so please take what I write below with a grain of salt.

Article II, section 1 has never properly been tested.
   A person is born with a domicile of origin and it is usually that of his father, so Barack Obama is British from that perspective by virtue of pre-independence Kenya. But domicile and nationality are different concepts and I wonder if the blogger … has them mixed up. Your Constitution looks at nationality and not domicile, and there are a number of situations in the nineteenth century supporting that. I think we can probably omit the Kenyan or British connection as having significance under these rules, but we should look at the Indonesian one.
   As you’ve detailed above, we simply do not know what nationality Barack Obama held when he was in Indonesia. Was he there as a visitor, resident or national?
   To be fair, we need to inquire briefly into John McCain as well. He was born on a US base in the Panama Canal Zone to US parents. There is no question his domicile of origin is American. It is generally accepted that a US base is as good as US soil, though under public international law, I am not so sure. Regardless of that, it is likely he acquired an American nationality at the earliest possibility through his parents’ actions (e.g. registration at a consulate) and he has only ever sworn allegiance to the United States.
   The words in the Constitution are ‘natural born citizen’. This was not a common term and still isn’t. [The Founding Fathers] never defined it but because nationality was important to them, there is some strength for saying that they wished to exclude dual nationals. The problem back in those days was that countries did want to claim subjects as their own for two things: military draft, and for money (whatever they earned, countries wanted to tax) and it may have been preferable for a nation to have certainty over the allegiance of its subjects. …
   But if they were silent, is there a clue in the Constitution itself? Can we say that because they didn’t say anything, they didn’t want this requirement to be stuck in 1787? I believe this is the case: that while the Constitution should be subject to very strict interpretations, what is not codified into it is meant to be regarded as living and moving with the times. These were smart guys, so if they wanted something to be strictly considered, they would have written it in. That is the beauty of this document: it is tight (on some things such as the separation of powers) and loose (on other things like how laws themselves work) at the same time.
   If we go to Art. I, s. 8, Congress is empowered to establish naturalization rules, i.e. setting rules on what it takes to be an American national, and I believe the Founding Fathers expected these rules to change over time. It’s why they were not put into the Constitution itself.
   That means we need to look at your immigration laws. Also, the idea of the birthright citizenship is well established in the US, and your Fourteenth Amendment is pretty clear in codifying that into your Constitution.
   So in that real round-about way, we can conclude that Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States. We can conclude that John McCain is a natural-born citizen of the United States.
   We’re only left with your original question of dual nationality, which we must return to your legislation with. Your Immigration and Nationality Act accepts dual nationals, and your Supreme Court has permitted them, too. So, after all that analysis, I personally would have to conclude that Barack Obama is eligible for the presidency even if he were a dual national [with connections to Indonesia]. Posted by Jack Yan, 09:44  permalink

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It’s been a while (a year?) since I gave a TV interview—the al-Jazeera spots don’t count because the question is prepared long beforehand and I have had a day (or days) to get ready.
   Yesterday, Nick Wang fired a few good questions my way, not just on the Republic of China’s anniversary but about my political candidacy, for both Sky TV and state television over in Taiwan.
   Folks, I must have done a few Sarah Palins: providing a single answer without taking intermediate breaths.
   It’s funny what happens when the camera goes on. And you feel compelled to give an answer because you have been taught that it’s courteous.
   I have to say that was the first time I was interviewed with my political hat on, and it was a bit weird.
   I think the last time I talked politics on TV I was making fun of Sen. John McCain in 2006. (Who knew he’d get the nomination?)
   I can talk all I like about publishing, branding and typography (with or without breathing) but these were new waters for me. I know my patch, I know most of my party’s policies, I know what some voters are thinking in wanting a change from the one party called Labour–National, but I can’t tell you who the top 25 of each party’s list are.
   Eeriely, I am campaigning on being an outsider, a reformer, and not part of the Wellington establishment.
   And you know, I actually do have a record of being a maverick. Posted by Jack Yan, 05:39  permalink

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Today, a professor at the University of Auckland requested some images Lucire had on file (Jack Yan: the academic’s friend). I found them among email attachments from the third quarter of 1999, a period during which I received 60 attachments. That is not a typo: 60 attachments for the entire quarter.
   Not including joke messages, the number for me personally was 1,349 attachments during the third quarter of 2008.
   It isn’t rose-coloured glasses: life was simpler then. Posted by Jack Yan, 10:47  permalink

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Above: The cast of the US remake of Life on Mars in their 1973 gear. From left, Jonathan Murphy as Det Chris Skelton, Harvey Keitel as Lt Gene Hunt, Jason O’Mara as Det Sam Tyler, Michael Imperioli as Det Ray Carling, and Gretchen Mol as Officer Annie Norris. (Promotional photograph courtesy ABC.)

[Excerpted from Lucire] The American remake of Life on Mars airs on Thursday, the only new dramatic series ABC has this fall in the US.
   I’ve been charting this remake for a long time on my personal blog.
   Jason O’Mara, the American Sam Tyler, has refused to go 1970s with his hairstyle, while co-stars Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli and Jonathan Murphy (playing the American versions of Gene Hunt, Ray Carling and Chris Skelton) have donned more 1970s’ styles.
   But does it matter that O’Mara didn’t go ’70s with his hair? Because it doesn’t look out of place.
   Head out into the trendy parts of a lot of western cities, and you see hair that could have come forward in time from 1973.
   Rhoda Morgenstern-style skullcaps appear a lot of places off the catwalk and in everyday wear.
   Life on Mars won’t spark a ’70s revival in hairstyles or fashion, because much of it is already in vogue, and has been for a while.
   What it might spark is social commentary, one thing that the BBC series was good at doing. New producers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec have been careful at preserving this element in the American remake.
   While the 2006 original pointed out the differences in Manchester over the last 33 years, the American version might unwittingly point out the similarities.
   There is an economic crisis, people are more paranoid, and the post-9-11 era has parallels with the post-Vietnam one.
   The grittiness of 1970s’ cop movies aren’t out of place with the modern climate.
   While Son of Sam isn’t probing the streets of New York looking for victims in 2008, the downbeat feel of 1973 might connect with the modern American audience more than the original did with British audiences.
   Never mind those critics saying that a lot of the audience wasn’t alive in 1973: the social messages and mood may come across as very contemporary.
   And just like in Britain, Americans might just see Gene Hunt as a more appropriate, no-nonsense type of cop than what the law would permit today. (Full post at Lucire.) Posted by Jack Yan, 12:04  permalink

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The Reader’s Digest has revealed that of 17 countries polled about the US elections, 16 would like to see Sen. Barack Obama win. It polled 17,000 people.
   Only the US was divided between Sens. Obama and McCain.
   At the office today: ‘Maybe these countries should get a say. America keeps poking its nose in where it’s not wanted.’
   While I know we don’t have one-world government and national constitutions would prevent that, this point isn’t unique. I have heard it often enough, regardless of whether the president is Democratic or Republican.
   Just as Great Britain has been forced to become a collaborative partner in European affairs since the decline of the Empire, perhaps the decline of the US’s soft power will mean a more even-handed approach to international relations in the next term, regardless of who is elected president.
   We’ve seen the US rank very poorly in such scales as the Anholt Nation Brands’ Index, notably the cultural heritage measure, where it was at the bottom in 2005. In the 2008 summary of the top 50 nations, the USA does not even appear. (New Zealand should not be smug: it is 25th, one up from Belgium.)
   By being more collaborative—which is happening, anyway, thanks to technology, and the diasporas in the US—the country could well improve its cultural measure.
   The US’s weak culture, which its style-over-substance image propagates, especially through its television programmes and media, is perceived to be at odds with its hard power, including its military might.
   The perception is not due solely to the Republicans, George W. Bush or Sarah Palin, contrary to what Democratic supporters are keen to point out. This takes years to earn and it has come through the abuse of globalization outside the political sphere as much as anything that successive White Houses have done or failed to do.
   It may be crudely grouped with concepts of nation envy under the banner of anti-Americanism, which spurred everything from the terrorist attacks on the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000, during the Clinton administration, to 9-11 itself during the Bush years.
   It is then no wonder the candidate who has best claimed the area of ‘Change’ so well captures the imaginations of nations outside the US.
   The son of a Kenyan immigrant is perceived to be far closer in mindset to the citizens of 16 nations, some of whom might see themselves emigrate to the United States. The Reader’s Digest survey indeed reveals that many people still view the American Dream favourably, expressing a desire to emigrate to the US. This includes a majority of Indians and French surveyed.
   They see the potential for an immigrant’s son to enrich a nation so that its might will be used for moral purposes rather than for its institutions—including oil companies. Sen. Obama may have been charged with lacking experience in foreign policy, but he is a man of mixed race, born in Hawai’i (itself a multicultural place), raised in part in Indonesia, and with close ties to his father’s homeland in Kenya.
   The Reader’s Digest also points to largely liberal media—considerably more so than in the US—that have supported Sen. Obama consistently during his campaign. I can confirm this positive spin from the countries where we have a presence, the US aside.
   I wonder about how much we, as non-Americans, know. There are a lot of bad things about the US, as we have seen from the financial crisis, that are systemic. The everyday American is victimized by corrupt institutions. Even those who have pursued the mantra of greed that Wall Street is stereotypically known for may have played their part unquestioningly, even without malice.
   Can a president truly change that? Certainly, the 16 of 17 nations see Sen. Obama as an agent of change as far as US foreign policy is concerned. He has been marketed that way by many nations’ media. But of its questionable corporate behaviours (‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ as then-Gov. Clinton said on his campaign trail), is one better senator than the other sitting in the Oval Office, never mind less than stellar choices for running-mates? Or is it going to be up to everyday citizens reaching out themselves, solving the world’s problems in spite of their political leaders? Posted by Jack Yan, 08:19  permalink

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That was great graffiti on the corner of the Terrace and Salamanca Road in Wellington today.
   Despite National’s fuzzy explanations saying that the party will not sell Kiwibank should it get into office, I reckon most Kiwis don’t believe them.
   Nor should they have reason to.
   For some of us, National’s obsession with privatization in selling off Kiwi interests to foreigners exceeded Labour’s during the 1980s in pursuit of creating a chasm between rich and poor in this nation.
   It’s a pretty standard part of the Labour–National playbook.
   And with this global credit crisis, it’s important to have banks in this country that are investing in the interests of New Zealand, not the whims of foreign shareholders. That’s why we need some banks that are domestically owned, trying to make a return for New Zealand interests.
   The Kiwibank advertising on New Zealand TV screens at the moment, while corny, plays to patriotism, but the underlying message is far more important.
   Foreign-owned banks in New Zealand such as the ANZ have made $3·23 billion off Kiwis last year, run so that their Johnny Foreigner shareholders can make money. Their investments are made to help foreign interests, not to help our own.
   While I am a globalist at heart, recessions are no time to be wasting money abroad when we need to look after ourselves first.
   For one of the very few times in the last nine years, I agree with Dr Michael Cullen, the Finance Minister, when he says that savings do need to be built up domestically. I also agree with Australian PM Kevin Rudd when he says our current woes can be traced to a cycle of greed and the short-term vision of the American financial system.
   The latter has been a consistent theme at Medinge since its founding.
   Meanwhile, I see that the Dow Jones has dipped below 10,000. A few years ago, I said that if the Dow ever got over 10,000, we’d be waiting for a market correction. For most of this decade I have felt like a complete moron making that call. But when the crap hits the fan, maybe I wasn’t wrong, or maybe I was plain lucky.
   I don’t profess to know all the ins and outs of the stock market, but I do comment from my little corner and at some of the underlying forces.
   In an age when rhetoric and style have become valued over substance and performance—something I have tried to redress through our companies and through the Medinge Group—creating growth from hot air couldn’t be a continuous venture. Posted by Jack Yan, 07:43  permalink

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Now that Mozilla has finally fixed Firefox’s ligature glitch (present since version 1) after four years, I have a good reason to switch.
   The problem has been around since Netscape finished its 4·7 browser, which was the original reason I switched to Internet Explorer 5. It was quite odd: IE had not been very good typographically up to that point, and I stuck with the Netscape series between version 1·1 and 4·7. It seemed Microsoft picked up the baton as far as good type was concerned, and I went over.
   As IE grew clunkier, I discovered Maxthon, a Chinese-developed browser that had the engine of IE, but a sleeker, more compact front end. It proved far more reliable than IE, and I also felt some kinship that I was supporting Chinese behind the Bamboo Curtain. (The program was developed, in part, to stop Communist authorities tracing what it might deem as counter-revolutionary browsing back to citizens.)
   Maxthon also gives me the choice of using the IE kernel or the Gecko one in Firefox, which is clever.
   I haven’t tried that and I still support the Maxthon ethos, but I am switching over to Firefox on a trial basis to see how it goes.
   One big reason was the repair of the glitch—where Firefox could not display ligatures or even quotation marks in the same typeface as the rest of the text.
   The second reason was Digg. Digg seems to be very slow, for some reason, on the IE kernel. On Firefox, it is normal.
   There are pages that claim that Firefox has automatic ligature support for certain fonts as well as kerning. I look forward to seeing how true those claims are or even how well they work (Ralf Herrmann indicates they’re still buggy). Up till now we have been programming in basic kerning via stylesheets at the Lucire site.
   I may go back to Maxthon and run it with Gecko but I generally loathe changing program settings too much. It gives the boffins a chance to wriggle out of their responsibilities of delivering good programs by blaming things on user modifications.
   I have made one concession to IE, however: I have installed a plug-in which gives me that reassuring sound each time I click on a link. I know a lot of people hate it and I was initially taken aback when I switched to IE5, but after so many years I have become accustomed to it.
   I’ll likely stick to this browser for a while, at least until they mess up the typography. Posted by Jack Yan, 23:08  permalink

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It was my turn to perform a Wordpress upgrade on the Lucire ‘Insider’ blog today. It was amazing: it worked.
   Normally I can break any computer program, just by following instructions. In fact, I did try an automatic upgrade plug-in for Wordpress which did not work (getting different results on the two trials), so I bit the bullet and did it the hard way—which turned out to be the easy way.
   For once, the documentation was virtually perfect, apart from one thing which I was able to figure out.
   More computer software and application developers should take a lesson from Wordpress on delivering decent programs and plain-English instruction manuals.
   The only part that was slightly wrong on the page linked above was step 13 as it refers to Wordpress 2·5, rather than 2·6 (where there are three secret key lines). But when I investigated it, I easily found the lines I had to put in to config.php.
   Admittedly, it took longer than I thought in deleting and uploading files but at least I didn’t delete the wrong ones. On that, the documentation was very clear, too.
   If an idiot like me can upgrade Wordpress without calling a boffin, then a lot of people should be able to. Posted by Jack Yan, 07:16  permalink

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I received an email from my friend Luke Nicholson, who is a Medinge Group member. Without going into the details, the Wallace & Gromit Children’s Foundation needs help. Ideally, the help of a large corporate sponsor who sees the potential of not only doing a good deed, but sees the benefit of aligning itself with the internationally recognized and beloved duo of Wallace and Gromit.
   On the Foundation: ‘Wallace & Gromit’s Children’s Foundation is the only national charity supporting children’s hospitals and hospices across the UK. Established in 2003 it has raised over £1 million spearheaded by the famous duo Wallace & Gromit, with annual events such as Wallace & Gromit’s Wrong Trousers Day and Wallace & Gromit’s Great British Tea Party. A partnership with Wallace & Gromit’s Children’s Foundation is a unique opportunity to work with an internationally acclaimed brand whilst making a real difference to the lives of sick children and their families.’
   If anyone can help, please contact me through this site and I will make the connections. Posted by Jack Yan, 11:50  permalink

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Courtesy of Johnnie Moore, a referral to a 2007 episode of the The South Bank Show, featuring the two Johns, Bird and Fortune. The second part addresses the sub-prime mortgage crisis with a great deal of truth among the humour.

Posted by Jack Yan, 09:26  permalink

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