We’re past the sort of digital marketing that some seek: the mid-’20s are about integrated marcom again

When I first started working, there was a profession called corporate identity. It wasn’t called branding. I noticed the vernacular change in the 1990s, more so in the early 2000s when even Wally Olins started using it more to describe what Wolff Olins did. You just have to follow the market. We’re at a point […]

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On Cantonese, for Te Papa’s Chinese Languages in Aotearoa project

  What a real honour to promote my reo! Thank you, Dr Grace Gassin and Te Papa for spearheading the Chinese Languages in Aotearoa project and for this incredible third instalment, where I get to speak and promote Cantonese!    Obviously I couldn’t say anything earlier, especially during Chinese Language Week, but I am extremely […]

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Was it six networks or only five? In all this excitement, they’re ‘Still the One’

I’m sure there are many, many more examples of this tune being used to promote TV networks, but it seems to be a standard in at least three countries I know, and probably far more besides.    It is, of course, ‘Still the One’, which ABC used in the US to celebrate being the top-rated […]

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Alone again, naturally

Looking back over the years And whatever else that appears, I remember I cried when my mother died Never wishing to hide the tears. And at fifty-nine years old, My father, God rest his soul, Couldn’t understand why the only lass He had ever loved had been taken, Leaving him to start With a heart […]

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How a car accident makes you grateful

The trouble with all the yellow-peril reporting that’s far more prevalent than it should be in Aotearoa is when something happens to you that may get people thinking about a stereotype.    Back in March, of course, we had one writer justifying racism toward (east) Asian tourist drivers in the Fairfax Press, when the facts […]

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Did Facebook really mean it when it apologized to the drag community for freezing their accounts?

I’m getting quite used to the hypocrisy behind the likes of Google and Facebook. Remember last year, when Facebook received criticism for freezing accounts because users did not use their real names? It’s not dissimilar to the furore that came up when Google brought in the same policy a few years ago, affecting the people […]

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What’s wrong with our values now?

Alistair Kwun always finds great articles on personal identity. The latest is from Wesley Yang in New York, discussing the Asian-American experience, and why, despite having such good grades at school, are there so few Asian-American leaders in the US? (Incidentally, this is a strange term: what do Americans call non-oriental Asians?)    I applaud […]

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Surely something all Chinese can agree on

It’s 2011, which, by my calculations, is the centenary of China kicking out the corrupt Ching dynasty.    It’s the one event that both Republicans and Communists can agree on as being positive. It’s why Dr Sun Yat-sen is such a uniting figure for all Chinese, as the father of the nation.    I can’t […]

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