Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog

Leadership comes from the grass roots, not institutions

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:22:00 +0000

Sometimes I surprise myself on what comes up in blog comments. In a thread about the Iraq war and the short memories of nations over on Vox, I wrote the following. And as I wrote, I believed this to be a possible truth.

To go forth in the future we need to discover our past, a hard thing in an age of short memories as you say. … Leadership might not come from size but from those nations that have steadfastly refused to give in to the prevailing decline in so many places. Switzerland, for all its refusal to join the EU, has managed to maintain one of the greatest gun ownership rates in the world yet not have a single gun-related murder attributable to its own in most years; Singapore, retaining its Confucian philosophies, manages a city-state with limited natural resources.
Their example needs to be communicated to the world, as well as the positive aspects of certain parts of the US or China—they exist, but they are hidden.
This is one reason to like blogs because they can cut through the shield of the MSM and government propaganda. I do not think that we have reached any critical mass among netizens, networking citizens together in a form of moral leadership. … [T]here are pockets of good people everywhere as you and I have witnessed, just that we are not necessarily visible.
But that critical mass can come—and if warfare now is at a terrorist, guerrilla level in so many places, I suspect moral leadership itself will come from a grass-roots base.
The system needs idealists like us, reminding people of their short memories, and maybe change will be effected not through top–down governmental, propagandist methods or the MSM, but through one-on-few communications from each of us.
I would rather hope that the next superpower, therefore, is not a nation or even an ideology, but a collective of humankind cutting through the BS and revealing the truth. Who says the ’net cannot be a force for good once more? If it can propagate hate and porn, it can just as easily propagate hope and truth.

I get reminded of this every now and then by others who feel the same way: Chris, at the Edutainment & Convergence blog, wrote to me privately and inspired me. And when I think back to books like Beyond Branding and Typography & Branding, I think there was a great deal of post-9-11 optimism and the desire to build a better, more understanding world. I ﬁnd passages of my Typography & Branding inspiring, if an author is allowed to be inspired by his own work, and I can’t have been this cynical back then.
It’s a good zone to be in and I haven’t felt this hopeful about the potential of the ’net in about a year.
Last year, I was bemoaning the decline of the blogosphere as it began looking more and more like the darker parts of society, with gossipmongers and rude, anonymous commenters ﬁnding their way on to it. Where were, I asked, the globally minded idealists of the 1990s?
On the other hand, their entry into this world surely puts them closer to the hands of the idealists who can now shape agenda, creating more hopeful sites and messages.
And maybe channelling or ﬁnding the above message from my subconscious helped me put things into perspective more. If indeed the state nation is less relevant and change is better effected by people helping people directly, because technology has now made that possible, then the moral vacuum caused by various changes in society can be ﬁlled.
All it needs are willing participants prepared to get together to make the world a better place, regardless of their political, cultural or religious stripes.
That’s really why I got into media.
If we agree on this target, then the rest must follow.

Dressing up for the General Election: a new logo for the Alliance

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:10:00 +0000

This has been ofﬁcial for a while (or so I think—not that I ever heard what the Electoral Commission thought, but I did see it on its website). However, I wanted the party to approve the news ﬁrst before sharing it with you all. The following is the overseas release which was rewritten from the one sent to domestic newsmedia.

JY&A Consulting revamps logo for New Zealand’s Alliance Party

Wellington, May 9 (JY&A Media) New Zealand political party, the Alliance, is looking more modern and relevant, thanks to its new logo by JY&A Consulting (http://jya.net/consulting).
Devised by JY&A Consulting’s Jack Yan, the new logo signiﬁes a new beginning for the democratic socialist political party.
Mr Yan says that he has been a keen observer of general elections in the UK, US and New Zealand since the 1980s and that played a part in his team’s design.
He says the Conservatives in 1983, Labour in the UK in 1997 and 2002 and Labour in New Zealand in 1999 and 2003 had certain commonalties in their campaigns, centring around typography.
He also said that in those years, the party’s name was important, not the symbol—hence the traditional Labour rose was not present on that party’s election materials in 1997 and 2002.
By abandoning the old A symbol of the Alliance and concentrating on the word, Mr Yan says that the party looks more professional and ready.
The Alliance has contested every General Election in New Zealand since 1993. However, due to party changes it is trying to rebuild itself for the country’s General Election later this year.
‘We have two major parties in New Zealand that vote pretty much the same on all issues,’ says Mr Yan, ‘and minor parties that get ignored because of a lack of visibility. I wanted to change that. Why should minor parties be laboured with second-rate brands?’
The logo is based around the Frutiger typeface and its lettering is predominantly in red, with a red dot over the i in Alliance to signify its environmental awareness.
He says the letter i also shows the humanizing aspect of the party.
‘As a piece of design I think it looks more cohesive than the committee-led logos of National and Labour,’ he says, criticizing the major two parties in New Zealand.
‘I was given a lot of freedom, which is a good sign of how the party leadership handles matters. It clearly believes in trusting the right people.’
As well as heading JY&A Consulting’s parent, Jack Yan & Associates, Mr Yan co-wrote Beyond Branding in 2003 and is a director of the Medinge Group, a branding think-tank based in Sweden.
In October 2007 he was a keynote speaker for the Alliance Party at its annual conference.

David Horowitz: remembering the reason for the Iraq war

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Thu, 08 May 2008 10:31:00 +0000

Whether you support the war in Iraq or you don’t—and here in New Zealand we have the luxury to criticize the United States—David Horowitz’s recollection of why the US went in correlates with my own. It’s why I have always held back attacking President George W. Bush, because faced with what he had in front of him, I cannot honestly say I would not have done the same thing. As Horowitz reveals, neither would Al Gore, who supported Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech in 2002.
The end of this video (cut short) goes into the rationale for war surrounding UN Security Council resolution 1441, which UK PM Tony Blair managed to sell to Parliament—but which, I always felt, the US was less successful at doing.
This is one of the problems I tend to have with the US Democratic Party, for all my own leftist tendencies. Right now, for example, constituents are begging the super-delegates that they should not select who will best beat Sen. John McCain and the Republicans, but who represents their position. The fact this question has even arisen is disturbing: as representatives of the people of course one should represent the citizens. The minute you do not, you do not have a democracy: it is a quest for power among élites ignoring the citizenry, the sort of thing people were getting away from when the US was founded.
I say if one opposes the war, then there are ways to do it without resorting to revisionism. I might not agree with our PM, Helen Clark, on many of her courses of action, but at least she took a position based on the facts before her and said ‘No’ to going in to Iraq. She has never gone and revised history, and simply held ﬁrm on her principles. She has good support for it because most New Zealanders opposed the war and carried out her job (on that occasion) as a servant and representative of the people.
The consequences of resolution 1441 were always clear but the means of acting upon them were less so because of the way the UN Charter is written, and that ambiguity effectively gave some countries a chance of opting out. Our PM took it, as did the leaders of many other nations. They believed that an extra resolution was needed before war; the US, UK, Australia and others did not.
The Democratic Party and the anti-war movement probably think that this is all too tough to sell to the public, so they engage in other tactics, shaming US troops or the administration and pressuring those who have short memories to join their cause. I am not saying that what they have uncovered is all untrue—of course I accept there are dodgy dealings surrounding the war and I even accept some misconduct—but they’d earn my respect if they didn’t ﬂip-ﬂop or cover up the truth. Sen. Clinton, who voted for the war, who voted for the increase in expenditure alongside Sen. John Kerry, is one of those very high-proﬁle politicians who has changed depending on the trade winds of public opinion.
Of course a senator or a future president must be representative but she must also stand on truth. ‘I was wrong to have supported the war because …’ would have been a good start. ‘Now the American people are telling me that it is time to withdraw our troops.
‘My support was founded on the belief that resolution 1441 was inviolable. It was not, and we have carried out the due punishment needed on Saddam Hussein’s régime.’
There are millions of ways to spin it, especially ways to do it without demoralizing the young men and women serving in Iraq—and I am not even a politician.
This would also mean she’d have to go against her husband’s attacks on Kosovo, which also did not have that additional Security Council resolution but was a preemptive strike by the US. George W. Bush is not alone, just that the media give him more grief over it.
But a mea culpa is not ﬂip-ﬂopping and it is not pandering. It is being honest, something the Beltway sees very rarely.
What concerns me, however, is that the road to war is a serious matter. It should not be so easily bent because the decision should be founded on principle—and if those principles existed after resolution 1441 was broken then they exist today. Congress voted for the war, with bipartisan support. There needs to be a far bigger shift for any US representative to say no to the war now—so what is it?
A poor entry strategy, a poor exit strategy, the belief that the US’s only task was to oust Saddam Hussein, the belief that the parameters of the original declaration of war have been fulﬁlled—what?
Sen. Clinton has said that she would not have voted for the war if she knew there were no WMDs. But as Horowitz points out, the existence of WMDs was not the basis for war. Did Sen. Clinton “misspeak” again?
There is a popular notion that that was what resolution 1441 was all about and we all remember Sec. Powell’s Powerpoint presentations to the UN.
But unless Sen. Clinton has misremembered this incident as well, resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002 was about Iraq’s non-compliance with conditions laid down by the international community over disarmament, which included WMDs, but they were not the core issue.
When Iraq lied about what it did with its WMDs, which the international community conﬁrmed it had as late as 1998, the US took a hard line.
Iraq itself never offered an explanation on the discrepancy between its claims and tests by the inspectors.
That was one legal justiﬁcation for the US and the UK, and, skipping over a few issues, the war began.
I sure wish the US politicians would just tell the truth about the vote at that time because they should have a better understanding of it, having been there—rather than let people like me catch them out.
For if a leader bends based on the trade winds, then will she bend based on pressure from other sovereign nations? If Saudi Arabia put pressure to bear on the US, would Sen. Clinton cave in? If a communist nation put pressure on Sen. Obama, would he? Or, for that matter, how far will Sen. McCain bend to foreign pressure?
We cannot turn back the clock now and see how the message could have been better communicated to the US. We should know, from the Horowitz video, why the US went in and understand who is now lying to the American public: that is important. I realize there is a conservative bias in the video and the anti-UN comments play to a more right-wing audience. But the core issues Horowitz cover are valuable reminders.
The next presidential election is a chance to address some failings. The economy can be ﬁxed but what is in dire need of repair are the values to which not only Americans want moral leadership, but most of us in the western world. Get the values right, get the truth right, and the rest will follow.
At the end of the day I care not if the president is a Democrat or a Republican, and I have no say in it anyway, as long as our common values are restored and preserved, and the leader is truthful. And that the decision for staying the course or withdrawing is also founded on truth put before the American people.

Buy and get gas

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Chrysler is getting a bit of ﬂak over its petrol incentive: by buying a Chrysler, the company will lock in a price of US$2·99 per gallon of petrol for the next three years. Conditions apply.
The very valid criticism is that Chrysler does not have many fuel-efﬁcient cars. They are, really, not that well made, their interiors look cheap and the Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Caliber aren’t the prettiest. In fact, Chrysler’s smaller cars look out of step, which is a far cry from how the Sebring and Dodge Stratus looked at the turn of the century.
But this isn’t due to the fault of the Americans, but from the previous German owners, Daimler-Benz AG. As I have said for nearly a decade, that company never understood the Chrysler brands, and Plymouth is no longer around for the price-leading consumers.
Daimler missed the massive opportunity of using the Smart ForFour and Mitsubishi Colt platform and turning it into the Chrysler Java; it had no idea how to manage a portfolio of passenger-car brands. The marketing-led tactic alone cost Mercedes-Benz itself terribly.
Lutz and Eaton had Chrysler lean and mean prior to the takeover, with US-record development times, coordinated R&D teams (has this competence been lost?) and an appealing product line—even the compacts. The Swabians came in and all the heads of department left, Plymouth was canned, and both Chrysler and Dodge ignored the lower end of the market. It was the Mercedesing of Chrysler cars, and the most positive legacy, apart from some old Mercedes platforms, is the Sprinter van. Hardly enough to build a success story on—when the DaimlerChrysler group had access to plenty of lower-end technology through tie-ups with Hyundai and Mitsubishi.
I have doubts that those in strategy could not have foreseen the oil crunch during the late 1990s, not examining sociopolitical trends, but simple cycles. Maybe I am showing off, because I did foresee it. I also said in 2000 that Chrysler urgently needed a compact line. It was a sure sign that Detroit hadn’t learned from the 1970s, but the Japanese were primed with the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius, not to mention the Scion brand.
On the other hand, things were strong for trucks, SUVs and big cars. It would have been equally silly for those sectors to not be ﬁelded as American consumers went for the politically incorrect Dodge Durangos, Ford Excursions and Chrysler 300s. The US got efﬁcient on most measures—except fuel consumption, which went backwards over the last 20 years of the 20th century. But another cycle was that even in the 1970s, big cars were selling, even if their market share was down.
If that earlier wisdom holds, then there will be enough buyers who’ll say: we still want to buy a large car or truck, for whatever reason. Of course Chrysler sales are down across every division. But for those who might have to consider a large car for practical or egotistical reasons, then a $2·99 per gallon cap is not as bad an idea as the motoring and business press are making out.
Short of rebadging some Mitsubishis as it had done in the 1970s and 1980s—and which remains an appealing idea given Mitsubishi’s subcompact line not sold in the US—Chrysler is product-poor down the bottom end. It says it has a hybrid truck coming for 2010, but at the end of the day, that’s just another big, politically incorrect vehicle.
Yes, Chrysler needs to develop compacts, quickly. It should do it via captive imports for now. The Chinese deal cannot come soon enough. But in the meantime, the petrol incentive idea will help it—and it’s the only logical tactical place to run to right now.

Defending Rhonda Grant: the rationale behind the release

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:13:00 +0000

[Cross-posted] I ﬁnally came across the full text of the press release attacking Massey University over its story on its alum Rhonda Grant, Miss Universe New Zealand’s second runner-up.
You can read the statement from the Association of University Staff’s president, Assoc Prof Maureen Montgomery, via Scoop. I think she was pretty persistent, sending it out to the NZPA as well as other news sources—she really disliked the story.
It’s a shame Dr Montgomery has received anonymous hate mail over this today, when her release is ﬁlled with good targets for debate.
I respect her right to hold an opinion and I think she was right to circulate it, but I wonder just how it might beneﬁt the Association of University Staff, or any institution promoting tertiary issues.
A lot of the arguments are addressed in our own release, which pageant director Val Lott asked me to write. I was more than happy to put the record straight, something that Dr Montgomery gave me a good opportunity to do.
You can tell Dr Montgomery failed to do what I thought academics should do ﬁrst and foremost: get sufﬁcient evidence and maintain an open mind.
The story on Rhonda Grant was no better and no worse in quality terms than the puff pieces about alumni on the Massey University website, so we know she has been singled out.
Dr Montgomery writes, ‘Massey’s story reads like the formulaic sort of thing that aspiring beauty queens are expected to say when interviewed on the catwalk.’
As I said in our release, the reality is the interviews are tough—and there are no expectations of formulaic answers at Miss New Zealand.
I defend the pageant because I know how tough the judging got: Rhonda was allowed to talk about nutrition, and other contestants were quizzed about everything from the moral repugnancy of bank charges to genetics versus socialization, depending on their university specialization.
‘One might expect a university public relations ofﬁce to do more than piggy-back off what comes across as a publicity statement produced by the Miss Universe organisation,’ she said.
Publicity statements from the Miss Universe Organization seldom focus on second runners-up but, whether we like it or not, Massey has engaged in journalism. We might argue over the quality.
I share some of her concerns over objectiﬁcation but I believe that was sufﬁciently addressed when Rhonda’s bikini-clad photograph was removed from the Massey University website in favour of something more conservative.
Once that was done, then the complaint really is a case of the lady protesting too much, unless all alum puff pieces are equally, to use Dr Montgomery’s word, ‘banal’.
And as deep journalism, maybe that’s not unfair—but it should apply fairly to all puff pieces, not just Rhonda’s.
If it were couched in such terms, I would gladly stand by her.
Dr Montgomery’s complaint on Rhonda’s piece speciﬁcally might be better directed at government educational policy that has supposedly bred a generation of sex-obsessed high school graduates who might ﬁnd Rhonda Grant’s ﬁgure the reason to join Massey University.
Actually, on the sexualization of youth, I would also gladly stand by her.
But for now, as a colleague here at Lucire said to me today, ‘You have to ask yourself: what does Maureen Montgomery get out of it? It’s none of her business. Why has she been allowed to be involved?’
I suppose the answer comes, rightly or wrongly, from the anti-American stances of liberal universities around the world, and Dr Montgomery’s own informs them. It helps the proﬁle of the University of Canterbury, where she works, and cements its liberal position.
My own father equated Dr Montgomery’s release to Rosie O’Donnell’s outburst on The View against Miss Nevada 2006 and Donald Trump: ill-considered, narrow-minded, poorly investigated and founded on opinion.
Where Dr Montgomery and I do share some basic views is how images can shape agenda. I know this. I publish fashion magazines. Let’s not kid ourselves.
She wrote, ‘Massey University has provided an excellent example of how the desperation to market universities as “attractive” places to gain knowledge and transferable skills intersects with the use of the sexualized female body as a site of desire.’
There is an element of truth to such statements, but I question if university choices are made based on attractive alumni—even with my rant yesterday on sexualization.
When I went to university, I had far more pressing concerns such as degree programmes and career prospects.
Vitally, we are talking about a story that is hard to ﬁnd on the Massey University site—a site that had proxy errors in the small hours of this morning that rendered it inaccessible. If it were not for her own strong and widely disseminated disapproval, it would have been seen probably by a few dozen people—perhaps one prospective student.
I’d personally have saved the energy for when universities started putting out alumni swimsuit calendars.
By all means, speak out—I do on even lesser issues. But consider the effect of the publicity: right now, it seems Rhonda Grant is going to be promoted to national stardom on Close-up and Campbell Live, and the pageant will get prime-time coverage on the same day Miss New Zealand Samantha Powell did her Good Morning interview on TV One. Earlier today, Paul Holmes promoted this as a major item on his radio show in Auckland.
We couldn’t have dreamed of this proﬁle.
This has played into the hands of the pageant exceptionally well and, as a judge, I thank Dr Montgomery, even if I do so somewhat selﬁshly.

The sex-obsessed world of the Miley Cyrus photographs

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:51:00 +0000

[Cross-posted] It’s not that we haven’t kept up with the row over the Miley Cyrus photographs taken by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair, which sexualize the teenage star, but I have to draw the line somewhere when it comes to news coverage.
There are quarters in fashion publishing which would deem these photographs appropriate and artistic, just as Leibovitz claimed, and we ourselves have featured teens in and even on the cover of Lucire, looking probably older than they really are.
But if a subject comes to me and tells me that she is embarrassed by a series of photographs, and for a cover decision she may well be in the know, then that’s good enough reason for me to have a meeting or a big ofﬁce poll about it.
And that’s just what Cyrus, star of the beloved Hannah Montana series, has said of her half-naked bedroom shot.
In normal circumstances, this matter would be worked out privately between the Cyrus family and Vanity Fair’s publishers.
Which makes this all rather odd: has the crisis surrounding these images been manufactured? One commenter on a Murdoch Press website seems to think so and, knowing how cover decisions are made, especially those that are potentially controversial, I am seriously tempted to agree.
Reports suggest that Cyrus’s father, singer Billy Ray Cyrus, was present through most of the shoot.
What I do know is that the modelling agencies we would work with are protective of their talent and we agree on many aspects of the shoot prior to starting when it involves a young girl—and that means overt sexualization is out.

For once many of the press have taken a moral high ground and that is, at least, pleasing to see, even if I have questions on their consistency. The Fairfax Press noted:

Every artist wants to subvert hypocrisy and artiﬁce. And childhood, after all, is the ultimate artiﬁcial construction. It exists only because responsible adults deliberately set out to protect children from predators and situations their young brains are not yet wired to deal with.
But in an era in which all taboos must be broken, the reigning philosophy is that every truth must be told, every emotion liberated, no matter how destructive, or unreasonable, because there is nothing worse than repression.
Well—news ﬂash—yes, there are worse things: child neglect, sexual abuse, childhoods cut short, depression, eating disorders, academic failure, violence against women, and all other manifestations of the premature sexualisation and objectiﬁcation of girls in our culture.

Interestingly, the op-ed in the Fairfax Press touches on similar subjects to a blog comment that I wrote in discussion with William Shepherd, a marketing expert based in California—one of those smart netizens who reminds me of the days in the 1990s when most people on the ’net were of a certain intellectual level.
He wrote, on the topic of pornography in Brazil:

However, I ﬁnd it hard to imagine that Brazil has an issue with porn. They should have a concern with AIDS, the cheap sex and underage labor that Brazil offers to Sex Industry. …
[W]ill blocking wordpress sites stop white slavery, sexual abuse towards young children, men from going to Brazil to engage in power driven sex events that hurt the ﬁber of global culture, and humanity? …
Sex is what it has always been. Yet, the online media has tried to make porn a staple of global culture and economics.

When I think about these words today, it’s not just the online media, as Vanity Fair and others have shown us.
I do, after all, see the irony of citing the Murdoch Press when it popularized the page-three girl and sensationalist stories founded in sex.
At the risk of offending fans of certain TV shows, I responded:

The sex economy, the ﬁxation on sex, are not good things for us to be so focused on, yet I don’t like it being constantly propagated even through prime-time shows such as the old Friends or Desperate Housewives.
I do not regard myself a prude but you are right: there are more pressing things to be concerned about, and I’m far too busy to ﬁnd double-entendres in every sitcom appealing.

While sex is as woven in to Desperate Housewives as it was into Benny Hill, and those watching it at its late hour (past the watershed?) know what to expect, it gets an awful lot of publicity in TV promos with their share of suggestive imagery at other times. OK, it wasn’t the best example of a TV show (which I watched at one point), but the old Friends certainly was. I think it’s difﬁcult to disagree that we have become too obsessed with sex in our society and those early seasons of Friends depended less on characterization and more on innuendo, not often that subtle.
At the idealistic level there is nothing wrong with this when it comes to showing behaviour between consenting adults—it’s less objectionable than seeing the extreme violence that has now made it on to prime-time television—but we now face the danger of it going further and further into promoting promiscuity among the young. Expand sex’s reach, and you arouse greater curiosity in our youngest citizens at an earlier age. It’s like lowering the drinking age to 18, as had happened in New Zealand: now it’s not 17-year-olds sneaking in three years before they are legal, but 14-year-olds with fake IDs.
That curiosity around sex has always been there with those who are 11 or 12, as any of you reading this will know, but the signals are telling us that as adults we need to give more guidance, and we need to take a stand against marketing that encourages sex at a time when mentally, young people are not prepared for the consequences.
And it was interesting to read that I am not alone in my assessment; in fact mine seems ill-educated alongside that of an author who has devoted a book to the subject. Fairfax again:

[Melbourne child psychologist, Michael Carr-Gregg] said internet porn, with hardcore sites available to children at a mouseclick, “has completely changed the sexual behaviour of young women, [particularly] the obsession with oral sex.” Young girls, he said, have been encouraged to behave “almost as predators, as if [a boy] is some sort of game animal they want to bag”.
Again, he blamed parents for creating “a culture of entitlement and indulgence [in which they] are hesitant to set limits around sleep or internet use. Democracy doesn’t work in families. You have to have a benign dictatorship.”
In a new book, Prude: How The Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls, Carol Platt Liebau writes that “an incremental but aggressive sexualising of [our] culture … [has created] a status quo in which almost everything seems focused on what’s going on ‘below the waist’.”

As long as we sit back, tut-tut when the items make the news but fall back on not caring at other times, then we have lost yet another value. Add that to a huge list in the west—and the east—since the end of World War II.
If certain institutions are being so aggressive as Liebau writes, then adults need to be as aggressive. ‘Benign dictatorship’, in the words of Carr-Gregg, probably describes the families many of us had—and we turned out all right.
It was a sort-of democracy in my household because my parents involved me in every family-affecting major decision and I earned their trust so I never had a curfew. But that was earned—and I was probably lucky I had a good conscience or spirit guide, or something directing me.
Not everyone is so fortunate, and in this day and age, it’s not a bad idea to be strongly involved in our children’s lives because that moral compass no longer comes from those cohesive, homogeneous communities of old, nor does it come from the media, at least not regularly or consistently. We, the regular people, are the last and possibly only resort in our respective families.

ANZ loses the plot: everyday Kiwis targeted to boost proﬁts

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:42:00 +0000

I closed the last Jack Yan & Associates account at the ANZ today. If you’ve followed my Vox blog, you’ll know that I am now a happy client of the Taranaki Savings Bank. The last straw was when ANZ insisted on charging $5 per foreign cheque deposit, effective March 1.
My attitude is this: a deposit is a customer loan to the bank. Unless I can start charging the bank for making a loan to me (call it the ‘Loaning to Jack Privilege Charge’), then they cannot charge me for loaning to them.
Not that Sir Johnny Anderson and his fellow directors really understand banking from the regular Joe’s viewpoint. I think they have been fat cats for too long that they don’t remember. I remember leaving the National Bank when Sir Spencer Russell retired, Sir John took over, and almost instantly put in some ridiculous bank charges.
Fact: banks are already making enough money on commercial transactions.
By changing to TSB I already save over $200 per annum on base charges alone. And my foreign currency accounts now are interest-bearing.
The bank ofﬁcer who closed my account maintains that it costs the bank money to retrieve foreign funds and the charges must be passed on to the customer.
I said, ‘Cobblers.’
There was even a direct debit for a bank credit card set up since 1995 (!), not that I would be so dumb as to get a credit card from a bank.
I am happy for banks to make money the way they always did: on reinvesting, on gaining interest on the days they cheat us by saying that the cheques have not cleared (it takes 24 hours in New Zealand, according to when I studied banking law, and I doubt the process has slowed since then), and on actual commercial transactions such as opening letters of credit and telegraphic transfers.
But for everyday transactions, I don’t buy that there are suddenly these huge charges at banks. Neither should you. Because it is a lie.
I can accept that this is how management cons its staff, especially the bank-fee-hungry people like Sir John (who, I understand, is actually a very nice man on a personal level).
We are not idiots. We know that banks have sacked staff left, right and centre, trimming operations. We know entire branches have disappeared, replaced by Starbucks cafés. We know that banks have computerized and automated more of their operations, including ATMs that take the personalization out of the brand. We know that most banks have removed direct-dial access to employees and even whole branches, centralizing telephone operations to save costs. We know that they have done this across the board, globally.
So their costs have come down, big time, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
As these customer charges go up, of course their proﬁts improve. They need to rob from us.
That daylight robbery, which we legally contract them to do, has netted banks $3·23 billion in proﬁts in 2007. Eighty-nine per cent of that is accounted for by Australian-owned operations: ANZ National, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (which owns ASB, the Auckland Savings Bank) and National Australia Bank (owners of BNZ).
That’s just over 10 per cent up on 2006’s ﬁgure, which was itself 11 per cent up on 2005’s.
And our economy isn’t exactly booming to fuel these, so where are the proﬁts coming from?
That’s right: ordinary people like you and me.
I urge New Zealanders to re-examine their banking. Do 89 per cent of you really want all these proﬁts and bank fees to go to a bunch of Australians anyway?
Even at the Bank of New Zealand, that is where they are going.
We only have a select few domestically owned choices left, such as TSB, Kiwibank and some building and investment societies, that will keep the money onshore and invest prudently—as banks are supposed to do.
They know they are answerable to us in the same country and they don’t put in ridiculous charges.
That’s not the case for a bunch of foreigners who don’t, in my book, deserve our charity, who seem to go all too regularly, ‘Oops, you are right. We weren’t meant to charge you that. Let me reverse it.’
I hear that story all too often, from over four parties now. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I think it’s bank policy to make “accidental” charges. Therefore, I’m happy to trust my money to a bunch of folks from the Taranaki—who know I can easily ﬂy to the chairman’s house if the bank pisses me off. Yes, I take banking way too seriously, but I earned those dollars, and I need to be able to look the bloke in the eye if I ever need to.

OGC logo brief sounds like a bunch of wank—so the result is appropriate

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:57:00 +0000

After saying there was less to blog because I had the principles down pat, here’s one that deserves an airing.
The Ofﬁce of Government Commerce, part of HM Treasury in the UK, unveiled its new logo, which cost British taxpayers £14,000.

And it didn’t take long after the unveiling for employees to see the problem:

I am sure it is possible for all of us to be caught out from time to time, because we didn’t study all the angles (ahem) to a problem.
But one principle I do abide by in logo development is internal review—not just to see if the client can identify problems, but to cover our own rear ends.
The Daily Telegraph reports that staff have removed items with the logo and expects a rush on to Ebay.
It states, ‘The logo … was intended to signify a bold commitment to the body’s aim of “improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement”.’
That sounds like a bunch of wank, even if I didn’t see the logo—though one branding professional thinks, as quoted in the Telegraph, ‘They’re going to get more column inches than they could ever have expected before. If I were them, I would be pretty pleased.’
Please, let’s not bring inches into this.

Samantha Powell best expresses the Miss New Zealand brand

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:35:00 +0000

Above: Samantha Powell (Miss New Zealand 2008), Rebecca Connor (Miss Wellington), Rhonda Grant (second runner-up) and Kylie Anderson (sponsored by C. R. Johnson Ltd., and second runner-up to Miss New Zealand 2006).

I suppose judging Miss Universe New Zealand was technically work. My last trip to Auckland was a full-on one, with clients during the day and, on most nights, spending time with the contestants. Saturday and Sunday were almost spent entirely with the 12 young ladies vying for the Miss New Zealand title, with the latter attending rehearsals. I do not envy pageant organizer Val Lott in coordinating every aspect of the event.
Some of the reports are at the Lucire blog, but what I didn’t discuss here this year—which I did in 2007—were the principles behind selecting Samantha Powell, Miss Horowhenua, as the winner.
It was a case of repeating the ideas I had last time around, with ﬁnding someone who could represent the New Zealand nation brand successfully. Laural Barrett won in 2007 partly because of her cosmopolitanism. When it came to ‘the Laural Barrett brand’, she had that, and her musical talent, as her differentiating factors.
What about a year where we had not only cosmopolitan girls who were well travelled (e.g. Pamela Day, for instance, was in Oyster Bay, New York right after 9-11; Michelle Kleinsmith found herself emigrating from Africa) but a bunch who was career-minded (Rhonda Grant is a nutritionist, and two contestants are pursuing legal studies)? If Laural was in this group she would have had a harder ﬁght.
Speciﬁcally, however, Sam was not only a fresh-faced Kiwi girl-next-door born in Paraparaumu, but she showed leadership skills from her work at the Auckland Savings Bank. I believe that helped her tremendously even on her ﬁrst night of judging, coupled with ﬂuent answers. (I had to bite my tongue a little when I raised a question about bank charges being immoral.) Throughout she had an infectious X-factor: on the ﬁnal night, I think few could argue that during the Lucie Boshier fashion parade segment, she raised the mood of the audience the minute she came out on stage.
There is a less clear ‘Samantha Powell brand’: Laural’s had already been partially set pre-pageant last year through her musical work. However, Samantha Powell ﬁts in to what we want Miss New Zealand to express this year at Miss Universe in Vietnam: an infectious, positive mood on top of a ﬁrm grasp of fair dinkum Kiwi values.
It’s like picking an actor to be James Bond: you don’t know what it is going in to the casting process, but you know once the decision is made. It is not post-rationalization, but during the hours you are there, you begin to see what qualities each contestant presents, and just which ones will hold ﬁrm and be strong to a grander audience.
Now I know just how hard each year is—and for the two judges who have been there for longer than me (Yvonne Brownlie and May Davis), I take my hat off to them for consistency when it comes to standards, and ﬂexibility when it comes to considering what the whole group of contestants offers. It additionally conﬁrms that returning contestants have no inside edge.
Sam has had largely positive press so far—we have not had Australian-owned newspapers do a tabloid hatchet job—and that is a relief for Val and for Sam herself. I’ll be interested to see how she does in Vietnam and whether that X-factor will wow the judges there. I believe she is steadfast enough to remain “being Sam” and keeping it real.

The postman might knock twice, but this blogger does not

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:18:00 +0000

I was discussing blogging with Natalie Ferguson a few nights ago, and how I haven’t kept up the frequency here. I remember hitting the 600 mark in 2006, but these days, it’s down to roughly weekly, at least here.
As those who follow my blogging know, I began as a quarterly blogger in 2003 with Beyond Branding (Google Blogger never ﬁxed our blog’s home page despite numerous complaints over the last year), and it was really Johnnie Moore who led the charge on that site. I did the template, and then Johnnie really took it to a strong position.
By 2005 I began heading there weekly, then almost daily, before branching off to this blog in 2006.
When Vox invited me to beta-test its service in 2006, I began by dividing my blogging. Initially, I put the TV-related stuff on Vox and kept the rest here, but as 2007 unfolded it became clear that this was my work blog and Vox was my personal one. All the trivia winds up at Vox, all the Lucire stuff winds up there (where the ‘Insider’ blog has really taken off), and the brand work here.
For the last three years, I’ve blogged about my business theories, rather than my daily business practices. Clients, for example, shouldn’t expect me to blog about them without their permission, for example. And those theories, really, haven’t changed: I still hold the same ideas about branding and marketing strategy as I did in 2003, albeit evolved slightly.
I don’t want to sound like a rerun so I don’t reblog my principles, when this site (and Beyond Branding) are good records of them.
There are some new things under the sun, here and there—my next paper for the Medinge Group summit in August, for example, might be previewed here in draft form. So I won’t stop blogging because I do have a few new things—but the fundamentals shouldn’t change.

Vista Group April ’08: remember when it was sunny?

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:08:00 +0000

Last week’s Vista Group lunch was brought ahead a week because of my commitments to the Miss (Universe) New Zealand pageant this week, and I was saddened to learn it was the ﬁnal (for now) that we’ll have with Jim Donovan. Jim’s off to Great Britain in about three weeks’ time, and by the time the Vista Group reconvenes he’ll be enjoying ever-longer days and the bright grey of the British summer sky rather than the dark grey of the winter one. (Yes, I am taking the mick.)
Jim and I arrived early and chatted about the pageant, and after the arrival of Mark Di Somma (who relayed a comment his Italian father had about immigrants) and Natalie Ferguson (to whom we stared each time we made a comment that we chauvinistically felt could only be addressed by a woman) we did get down to discussing the trade mark opposition about the proposed graphic New York City—you know, the Big Apple—wants to use. The opposition came from Apple Computer, and older readers in Wellington might now think that the old Apple Driving School is now in serious trouble. (Are they still around? You used to see that green ’79 Corolla scooting about.) Jim summarizes our points on his blog.
We also covered recession-prooﬁng and pricing, as I discussed how the recent New Zealand Post price rises have affected us. Magazines such as Lucire used to cost 90¢ to post. Then last year it went up to $1. On March 28 it went up 100 per cent to $2. I believe that we have to eventually pass that extra dollar on to the consumer as we can’t realistically absorb it. One blog says we should blame TradeMe for the added demand on NZ Post parcel services. I will blame away, as I have neither sold anything nor bought anything via the Australian-owned company.
Pricing issues are important for the brand thinker and it is probably time we re-examined our latest reader stats to see where we should be positioning Lucire in the market-place. In my mind, with rising inﬂation in New Zealand (3·4 per cent) the artiﬁcial $10 barrier to the price of a magazine probably no longer exists.
I must apologize to regular readers for blogging a tad less here. I’m afraid Blogger has been harder to use in comparison to Wordpress and Vox, and a few of my recent posts have been a bit more fashion-speciﬁc, hence they appeared at Lucire. I am still alive, I assure you! (I even was a “special guest appearance” on Natalie’s blog.)

A free Lucire supplement, downloadable now

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:56:00 +0000

[Cross-posted] Each time we put out a Lucire in print, regardless of country, I wonder: do the folks in the countries (such as the UK) where the magazine is not available know what some of the layouts look like?
This time around, Laura and I decided we would do a 52 pp. downloadable PDF, containing some of the pages, for those who can’t get Lucire where they are. And for those who can, such as in New Zealand, the downloadable PDF contains some extra pages, and even an article that we’ve earmarked for issue 26. There are two more pages for a shoot; in fact, there’s one shoot in there by Hannah Richards that you won’t have seen at all.
It’s almost full circle: I remember putting together a 52 pp. PDF in 2003 as a L’Oréal New Zealand Fashion Week special in the pre-print days. It was hugely successful, and was used extensively by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise to market Kiwi designers offshore.
Readers unaccustomed to the print Lucire might know we have pretty outstanding journalists among our team based on the longer articles that appear online. But you don’t get to see the fun we have with the look, and the PDF addresses that.
We also thought we’d champion some of our advertisers as an extra thank-you.
Since the book is 200 dpi and 13 Mbyte, it was better stored on a free service. Head over to Rapidshare, where you can download the issue 25 supplement, as we call it, free. There may be a small delay for the free service but we think it’s well worth it.

‘So these two hermaphrodites walk into a gym …’

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 04:38:00 +0000

I wish that was a joke, but it isn’t.
I went to preview a New Dowse exhibition on transsexuality, intersexuality and the transgender community with its communications’ ofﬁcer Mandy Herrick and coincidentally, was told by a friend last night about a situation at a gym in New Zealand.
They had two intersexual (‘hermaphrodite’) clients. Other patrons petitioned the owner to remove them, otherwise they would not pay their fees.
Shame on us as New Zealanders.
We go around saying how open-minded we are, scoff at other nations, point out how we had the world’s ﬁrst transsexual MP—but no, when we confront intersexual people in our own neighbourhood, we do exactly what pre-US Civil Rights racists did when they hung out ‘Whites Only’ signs.
For crying out loud, these two clients were born this way—and you’ll be even more shocked to learn that the gym opened itself to a human rights’ violation by cancelling the two people’s memberships.
Imagine if they were taken to court and how much business they would have lost if word got out.
Wouldn’t it have been better to have pointed out to the prejudiced clients that if they couldn’t accept the situation, then they could take their business elsewhere?
Or go so far as to build an extra changing room and encourage more open-minded clients all round?
But it’s easy money to maintain the binary approach to life, pretending that everyone on the planet is male and female.
I think it would actually have been better business—and the gym could have marketed itself to the hilt, if it did the right thing. Milk it—why not? If you are providing members of society who are unfairly picked on a safe place, then you might get more business.
After all, gyms lack differentiation. I know there are a couple of women’s gyms here in Wellington, and the rest are all the same.
How about a gym that creates a humanistic, open-minded brand and actually got support from other members of society who might never go—just because they are ready to stand by your belief in human rights?
It was an opportunity missed—and the gym owner plain got lucky. He could have been sued to the hilt, the media could have smelled a great story and the public, even those who are intersex-phobic, would have jumped on the bandwagon and tut-tutted the business.

Rebranding Britney: it can be done

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 01:55:00 +0000

[Cross-posted] With all the negative attention that Britney Spears gets, is it a good time to be marketing her Believe fragrance? It’s what we’ve alluded to in Lucire’s beauty article online today.

Britney Spears in happier times, as covered in Lucire in 2002.

We hope Ms Spears will get well—and that the paparazzi lay off her a little. Unfortunately, the Britney economy is worth hundreds of millions of dollars per annum, thanks to an appetite out there for negative news on the pop star.
There’s a valid argument to say she brought a lot of this on to herself: driving without restraining her child properly in her car, or going out on the town with an absence of underwear.
Her family is wise to rein in some of this behaviour: her father, Jamie, for example, is selling some of her seven cars and trying to bring Britney back down to earth.
It’s a double-edged sword. The quirky, inexplicable behaviours she has engaged in have helped up her proﬁle, and that, in some way, drives the Britney economy. The quieter she gets, the less likely that she stays in the public consciousness.
The best thing to do is probably to lie low and come out with a comeback single or album, having reinvented herself and ﬁnding an image that ties in more accurately to how the public is feeling. History might give hints on where Britney Spears can position herself by the turn of the decade. She can brand herself out of her troubles—and she might just have enough clout with the record labels to do so.
But, if she lies too low, what happens to products such as Britney Spears Believe, bearing her name?
Answer: they might be able to maximize their investment through authenticity. Rather than say that a certain product has been inspired by Britney, go inside her home and show that she is actively working on it during her recuperation.
‘Britney gets her act together,’ the headlines might read—and she can slowly begin showing that she is not a victimized pop star but someone prepared to take charge and deal with her problems. Get agreement with her family to do this.
Make it real—and feed the Britney economy, paparazzi, licensees and the public. By the time she’s ready with her new image and new music, she’ll have based it on two years of more positive press. Her core fans, then older, more sensible themselves, will appreciate a more inspirational Britney.
In fact, her recent downfall is a good catalyst to this new direction: if there’s one thing the public loves more than a feel-bad story, it’s the turn-your-life-around story.
Ask Oprah Winfrey. You can do exceptionally well with them.

Is Vogue’s April 2008 cover racist?

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:12:00 +0000

[Cross-posted] Vogue’s April 2008 cover with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James and Gisèle Bündchen has been branded by some as being racist. As noted by the Plain Dealer over in Cleveland, Ohio:

LeBron shares the April cover of Vogue magazine with supermodel Gisele Bundchen. It’s been noted by some that his open-mouthed screaming face and the way he is cradling a blond woman in his left hand has racial overtones in its resemblance to an old movie poster of King Kong and captive Fay Wray. Vogue says it chose the photo because it’s “expressive, fun and upbeat.”

Once I got over the bad typography, I had to wonder if this cover furthers stereotypes. Being a minority, I personally didn’t make the connection that Margaret Bernstein and Sarah Crump reported on above. If I imagined the races switched, I also didn’t get much of a reaction—except to note that it would have been unusual for Vogue to feature a woman of colour on its cover, let alone a man of any colour.
However, I wondered: would a black man who isn’t a basketball player have made it? Or one who isn’t dressed as such?
I don’t think it’s necessarily the pose, but whether there is a stereotype at play here. While Mr James has his own line of clothes—which he is modelling in the cover photograph—would a cover showing him in more conservative attire have been chosen?
One blogger gave other examples, and reacted to the photograph:

A tuxedoed LeBron James out on the town with a stylish Gisele photo shoot would do. A Lebron on a couch with a magazine full of him and Gisele on the same couch with a magazine full of her; signiﬁers that they are man and woman at the top of their professions photo shoot would do. Or, the two in full nightclub gear with him watching her trying to dribble in the low light of an empty Quicken Arena. The possibilities are endless.
And yet LeBron James allowed himself to be captured interminably not as the King James of his profession and rising player in the business world, but as a human King Kong, The Great Nigger whose fame is inextricably tied to how proﬁciently he puts a leather ball through an iron hoop.

Others rebutted:

Calling it a modern-day interpretation of King Kong and Fay Wray, Feministe website writer Ali Eteraz referred to the image by Annie Leibovitz as “King James Turned Into King Kong.” She also said the cover “fulﬁlls every racist stereotype in the world: primal screaming, white-girl carrying, black beast.”
Are they seeing something that has escaped the rest of us? It’s the “Shape Issue,” remember? The contrast of the 6-foot-9 James and 5-foot-11 Bundchen seems like nothing more than an innocent pop culture poke at celebrity. Do we really need to read more into it?
As for the comparison to poor Fay Wray, does anyone see Bundchen looking remotely stressed in this shot?

James is the third man to appear on a cover of Vogue (after Richard Gere and George Clooney), and the publisher has defended its choice because it is an issue devoted to size and shape. From the Associated Press:

“Nobody says more about fashion size and shape than Gisele and LeBron,” Vogue spokesman Patrick O’Connell said. “LeBron is an amazing star and athlete that has crossed over into a cultural phenomena.”

To me (being neither black nor white), the King Kong connection, isn’t obvious—but the idea of “the black American good only on the basketball court” seems to be cemented here. Sad, in a year where Americans could be voting in their ﬁrst black president.
Whatever the case, Vogue seems to have beneﬁted hugely from the publicity, from the blogosphere and sports’ fans who might never have commented on the magazine.

Vista Group March ’08: welcome Natalie

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 04:03:00 +0000

The lads of the Vista Group got a much-needed dose of sanity from fellow blogger Natalie Ferguson of Decisive Flow today, but that is only because we have not yet converted her. It was a good lunch this month and we were joined by Mark Di Somma’s son, Harry. Jim Donovan talked about his Ford Anglia and a weasel, Mark wondered if combining a weasel with a horse would result in a worse, and I ate chorizo sausage.
The substance, other than discussing the Black Swan theory in regards to Bear Stearns and whether Jim knew anything in advance about it, was dissing banks and poor service. None of us needs to put up with it: banks are under the impression that once they have you, they have you for life. Cobblers: an hour out of your life, and you can be at a new bank.
I believe we all concluded that ANZ sucked.

Autocade: a new car wiki, in beta

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:39:00 +0000

Some of the best websites have started as hobbies. One that springs most to mind is Austin Rover Online, formerly the Unofﬁcial Austin Rover Resource.
It’s now the most comprehensive destination for the history of BMC, BL, Austin Rover and MG cars, and it continues to cover Jaguar and Land Rover, as well as Tata.
Another angle to this story: in 1983, the father of a classmate gave me a copy of Classic and Sportscar, which I have kept to this day. Inside was the serialization of Michael C. Sedgwick’s guide to every car sold in Great Britain between 1945 and 1970.
Sedgwick died that year but there is no doubt that if he lived beyond his 50s, he would have continued authoring articles and books.
What intrigued me were the pithy summaries of each model and how it was a nice way to present automotive history. Wikipedia, Edmunds, The Red Book and even Austin Rover Online are excellent for their purposes in giving comprehensive histories, but what of those of us who want something quick and brief, and to trace the lineage of any particular model? What about cubic centimetre ratings and whether an engine is OHV or OHC?
I never lost that interest. When Your Classic started in the UK, I bought it largely because it had similar Sedgwick-style guides.
Michael Sedgwick was blessed with a photographic memory and instant recall, and his papers and work continue to have inﬂuence today. There is the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust, for instance, which funds automotive research and publishing, and some of his papers are with the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust.
In 2008, what if someone with a similar love of cars could further Sedgwick’s encyclopædia? The best tool is the internet, and Wikipedia has already shown that it is possible to have specialists in each area contribute.
As some of you have read earlier, I am not a big Wikipedia fan. (My fellow directors at the Medinge Group may know my feelings on that, too!) The few times I have been on it, I found it to be amateur night. But the car pages have merit thanks to those specialists who have contributed to it: what they really need is some professional editing to be a useful research tool. Presently it is not there.
I am not perfect nor am I even consistent in the pages I have put up on Autocade so far, but I think I can do slightly better than Wikipedia—simply because there is less to go wrong with the short summaries I envisage for Autocade.
I don’t think it is inaccurate to say that the only way we can match Mr Sedgwick’s memory is to use technology and the help of volunteer editors. Together we might be able to assemble something like his fascinating guides.
I’ve wanted to do this for a long time and ﬁnally I bit the bullet on Saturday and started a website called Autocade (www.autocade.net). It’s the name of one of my magazine columns, and I have been using it since mid-2006.
The site is in beta, built around Mediawiki. I do need it to pay its own way, hence the advertising, as I envisage it could up our hosting costs. And there is only a small handful of cars on it, but perhaps other car nuts will see ﬁt to contribute?
Autocade is a global guide, but aimed at historians and hobbyists. It is not Wikipedia, Global Auto Index or any of the others that are established. I’ll be interested to see how it develops and whether my dislike of Wikipedia will change!
I welcome fellow enthusiasts and their opinions to autocade.net.

Imagine if ‘Dear John’ didn’t have a Dear John

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:15:00 +0000

I didn’t do as much witness work for my legal clients during 2005–6 and I was interested to see from a former client a letter from a large New Zealand law ﬁrm’s partner. I won’t reveal any speciﬁc information, of course, but let’s say it’s from a ﬁrm I did have some dealings against in the 1990s and I considered their statement of defence pretty amateur. I have considered their marketing to be very amateur, too—all style and no substance.
Or perhaps their brand or marketing consultant actually did a perfect job—they expressed the ﬁrm honestly and accurately.
The letter, with all the Our refs and jargon, lacks a salutation. There is no Dear or even an Attention: it launches straight in to the correspondence.
This may be very nice for text messaging but it has no place in what is considered acceptable commercial correspondence.
Perhaps once texting, or some evolution of it, becomes the dominant form of communication—which places us roughly between grunting and Morse code—then business correspondence may evolve toward the demise of the salutation.
Until then, this merely illustrates the arrogance of the legal profession and how it has fallen even further out of step with its clientèle.
Lawyers need to remember they represent certain parties and that those parties—the ones that pay their bills—have brands that need to be protected, not destroyed through callousness.
The effects on culture are wide-reaching. Imagine singing the song ‘Dear John’ without the words Dear John. It kind of sucks with the lyric-free bits in the verses.
How about answering a phone without a ‘Hello’?
When I relayed this to one regular client, a practising attorney who is around my age, he was surprised. He has received such letters, too, but he agrees with me on this topic.
There is what some people call a simpliﬁed letter, where there may be no salutation and the words Attention: Dispatch Department (for instance) may take its place. These are acceptable—just—when the recipient is unlikely to be known by the writer, but I have always adopted a Ladies and Gentlemen in such cases.
I realize that the niceties of I remain or even Your loyal and humble servant have disappeared in New Zealand but this development of the missing salutation is worrisome.
At best it is disrespectful to the recipient, which may be what the law ﬁrm wanted to convey—but disrespecting others is merely a sign of an absence of self-respect, showing that the ﬁrm itself is without merit.
Yet the writer of this letter has not forgotten his valediction—I imagine he has retained it because that way he can put his own name down the bottom and see it in print.
After all, with no salutation, surely there is no need for a valediction? My most casual emails, where I am ﬁring off an internal memo or a quick response to some people, do lack both. I simply end the text with an em dash and my initials and I encourage some members of my team to do the same.
Commerce does not function with people acting selﬁshly. It only works with mutual respect—and that includes people who may disagree with one another.
So, for all those who have forgotten the components of an acceptable letter in modern business practice, here is a link. It is not geared to a general audience, nor do I agree with all of it, but following its components will certainly present a letter which hides how years of law school and legal practice have failed various members of the profession.

Motoring writer Jeff Daniels passes away

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:57:00 +0000

[Cross-posted] Sad news for car nuts: automotive and technical writer Jeff Daniels has passed away, according to Keith Adams’ Austin Rover Online website. There’s a longer piece at Just-auto.com.
There probably isn’t anyone of my generation who doesn’t recall the greats like L. J. K. Setright, Jeff Daniels, George Bishop, Phil Hill and Paul Frère.
Jeff wrote a column called ‘Danspeak’ in Autocar for many years, and it is probably his style, more than anyone else’s, that informed me when I started my columns.
I found him one of the more knowledgeable car writers out there and it is sad that much of this old style of journalism has given way to the Jeremy Clarksons of this world. Just as in television presenting, where the William Woollards gave way to the Jeremy Clarksons on Top Gear.
While I love Clarkson’s style (since he could never get away with it without some actual research) and can be said to adopt elements myself, there is still room for the more technical, educated approach of Daniels et al.
Jeff Daniels was 68 and continued working up to his death. He will be sorely missed.

Angelina Jolie writes eyewitness account from Iraq

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:49:00 +0000

[Cross-posted] Late last week, Angelina Jolie, UNHCR ambassadrice and actress, wrote an open letter published in The Washington Post, reporting her observations in Iraq.
I am always keen to hear ﬁrst-hand reports rather than things ﬁltered through some editorial agenda. This publication is no exception: I make it no secret that we support environmental causes—and have done so long before they were trendy. (We probably made them trendy, or played a part in that, which was my stated aim when UN Radio asked me why Lucire would help them promote the environmental movement in the early 2000s.)
I also make it no secret that we support animal welfare and humanistic business practices.
When Michael Yon telephoned me a while back I wanted to hear directly from him about his experiences being embedded with US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Too many media, sadly, function on sensationalism and sales ﬁrst, the personal aggrandizement of the journalist second, and the truth somewhere further down the line. On that we differ. We see reporting as a cherished duty and it is Job No. 1.
Over the weekend I told three of my cousins, who are in their late teens to early 20s, the same thing and they agreed. They are obviously very perceptive but it is worrying we have already given our young people that cynicism.
Thus when I read Ms Jolie’s letter, I thought we ﬁnally read something fair with the only agenda being pushed those of the UNHCR. There are no politics in there, or the taking of an anti-war or pro-war position. It certainly made better reading than some of the Hollywood rants over the last (almost) ﬁve years.
Some highlights include:

Here is what we do know: More than 2 million people are refugees inside their own country—without homes, jobs and, to a terrible degree, without medicine, food or clean water. Ethnic cleansing and other acts of unspeakable violence have driven them into a vast and very dangerous no-man’s land. …
An additional 2.5 million Iraqis have sought refuge outside Iraq, mainly in Syria and Jordan. …
I’m not a security expert, but it doesn’t take one to see that Syria and Jordan are carrying an unsustainable burden.

Ms Jolie met with Gen David Petraeus, the commander who is leading the surge against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups within Iraq. She also met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
She continues:

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.
Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq—and the potential consequences for our national security—are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won’t explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder? …
As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. …
It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.

Ms Jolie believes that spending on humanitarian crises makes sense, and the expenditure to help the people of Iraq is a lot less than on the war itself.
Through their return and the rebuilding of their lives, they will be able to stand up against the terrorists.
What would be fatal is leaving the Iraqi people to fend for themselves, and it is up to the international community to show its goodwill in helping another nation.
Pro-war or anti-war, I believe most of us share the view that we humans are capable of helping one another and should when the occasion arises. The UNHCR appeal amount is US$261 million for this year, which Ms Jolie is set to help bring in.

Yes we can: Barack Obama stays on message

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:54:00 +0000

Sen. Barack Obama is doing well in his bid for the US Democratic nomination because he has a consistent brand. You didn’t need me to tell you that. He has consistent visuals and a message that hasn’t wavered much. He hasn’t needed to go into depth, as his nearest opponent is saying, because it’s not part of the Obama brand. And he’s not about to change his tune, showing Americans that his visions can be depended upon.
I see the word Change consistently at Obama rallies, not just spoken by him but plastered on banners and other material. It’s consistently in the same typeface. In fact, his campaign has been clever enough not even to show his name prominently, which might look a little foreign—Change is what appears in bigger letters, Obama taking a back seat. In Texas this week, we normally see Change and Texas on the banners. Not Obama.
It is a very good political technique and one I highlighted at my keynote for the Alliance Party last October. There, I referred to Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign, similarly about change, along with ‘New Labour, new Britain’. He was light on speciﬁcs. John Major, rightly, called Blair a political kleptomaniac. It’s a sentiment echoed last week by one accusation thrown Obama’s way by Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In the words of Sir Robert Muldoon, when discussing his party’s 1990 campaign against a Labour supporter, ‘How can you say we have bad policies if you say we have no policies?’
But after years of one type of administration—it could be argued there’s not much difference between the Bush years, the Clinton years, and the Bush years from the point of view of big business—Obama’s catch-cry is a tempting, appealing one.
Change is something the American people want, so why not vote in someone who doesn’t look like he has played the Beltway game, even if he has been in elected ofﬁce for longer than Hillary Clinton?
By being light on the details, audiences ﬁll in their own dreams. The Obama camp, no doubt, argues that a president must inspire and propel an audience to get involved. In the 2000s, this might well be part of the Zeitgeist: participative politics, just as we talk about brands that have the involvement of their audience in shaping their destinies. Obama has stayed on message—and that’s why he chalks up victories.
In such an atmosphere, McCain and Clinton seem like yesterday’s news, viewﬁnders on where Americans have been, not the future they feel Obama will allow them to determine on voting day, and in the term to come. Whether or not the future unfolds that way is another subject altogether.

Note: this post is not an endorsement for any candidate.

The Vista Group comes to order

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Yan) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 04:46:00 +0000

I had a great lunch (to which I was on time) with Wellington bloggers Jim Donovan and Mark Di Somma at Vista, which now seems to be a monthly gig, discussing business and branding. Funnily enough, the Trelise Cooper brand did come up (just blogged about it, guys), but we also talked about the theory of the Nod: that two consumers of the same niche product would recognize each other as belonging to an exclusive club, whether that club existed in fact or not. Two Harley–Davidson riders might nod at each other, knowing they have some form of brotherhood.
I wonder if this is a male phenomenon. Would two women with a Hermès Kelly bag do the same, or would they believe the other to be a rival, sparking a conversation and underlining the importance of the brand?
We also discussed lingerie, Lovemarks (God help us) and That Time Mark Endorsed Dan Herman’s New Book (which is excellent, incidentally—review soon).
You can read Jim’s and Mark’s takes on lunch at their respective blogs.