I learned the sad news that Norman Macrae, CBE, ææ„ç« , passed away on June 11, just shy of his 87th birthday.
Norman was one of the great visionaries and forecasters of the 20th century, and served as deputy chief editor of The Economist till his retirement in 1988.
Among his forecasts was the fall of the Berlin Wall, the advent of the internet, the move toward teleworking, and the pressing concerns of sustainability and the global income gap.
His work included a series of âretrospectivesâ written from a future date, which continued Normanâs trade-mark analysis on current and emerging trends in the global economy. With his son, and my friend, Chris, Norman authored The 2024 Report, whose predictions of broadband internet and its implications, made in 1984, only began coming true over the last decade. At the time, critics said Macrae and son were too optimisticâalthough history has proved them right.
I sent my condolences to Chris earlier today. The world has lost one of its foremost business editors, a great socioeconomic expert, and visionary.
Without Chris I would not have joined the Medinge Group, and it was through him that I realized so many of the Economist forecasts that I had read over the years were the work of his father.
I understand The Economist will publish an obit this week.
Posts tagged ‘UK’
Norman Macrae, RIP
17.06.2010Tags: Chris Macrae, economics, editor, forecasting, globalization, internet, media, Norman Macrae, obituary, society, technology, The Economist, UK
Posted in UK, business, culture, internet, media, politics, publishing, technology | No Comments »
Let the Outrageous Fortune come
15.06.2010Almost any New Zealander will recognize this image: a cast photograph from the long-running TV series Outrageous Fortune.
When I first heard of this show from Antonia Prebble, before she started filming, I have to admit I didnât think the premise would see it last five years (and counting). But for New Zealand television and the folks this show employs, I am glad it has.
Like all good shows (Life on Mars, State of Play, Cracker)âand a few bad ones (Pop Idol)âit was eyed up for a remake.
The British, who have never been that great at remaking shows usually (remember the Russ Abbot sitcom Married for Life, based on Married with Children? Or the remake of Whoâs the Boss?, called The Upper Hand?), decided it would see how well West Auckland transplanted to London. Cue Amanda Redman instead of Robyn Malcolm, and a rebrand to Honest for ITV:
No, it didnât work. According to some expat Kiwis whose comments I read, the pilot was virtually a shot-by-shot remake that added nothing to the original. I do not know about the remainder of the series, but the fact that it was not renewed by ITV says something.
The Americans, who have never been that great at remaking shows usually (Sanford & Son, Life on Mars, Coupling, Cosby, Ugly Betty, Threeâs a Crowd, Eleventh Hour, Too Close for Comfort, The Office, Viva Laughlin, Kath & Kim, Payne, Amandaâs, The Prisoner, In Treatment, Worst Week, All in the Family, State of Play, etc.; Shameless and Gavin & Stacey are on the cards), decided to give this a shot. Getting in the chap who made Veronica Mars and Catherine OâHara (the Home Alone Mum, after Rene Russo turned it down), Cheryl West became Jackie West and the show was renamed Good Behavior.
Only the pilot was made. I never saw it, but indications were that it was not good.
Still, you have to admire the Americans for not giving up. The showâs been retooled, Virginia Madsen and David James Elliott (whom I know you ladies like) have been hired, and, as Scoundrels, it dĂ©buts on ABC on June 20. A series has been commissioned.
The publicity touts this as an âoriginalâ ABC series (yeah, right), but I actually hope it goes well for them. Why? Because the Kiwis who created Outrageous Fortune, I believe, will earn royalties on each episode. We might pooh-pooh it because we are purists, but Iâd rather the money flowed inwards. While we havenât exactly exported Kiwi culture in a Flight of the Conchords wayâbecause the show has been AmericanizedâIâd still rather a decent Kiwi concept got there and, in its small way, reverse the tide of the reality TV junk that so often comes westward across the Pacific.
Like Scorseseâs The Departed, a remake that sparked interest in the original Infernal Affairs (çĄéé), we might see Americans track down the original Outrageous Fortune on DVD. That, too, can only be a good thing.
Tags: ABC, Amanda Redman, culture, export, intellectual property, ITV, New Zealand, remakes, royalties, TV, TV3, UK, USA
Posted in New Zealand, TV, UK, USA, business, culture, humour | No Comments »
On Wellywood, Murdoch and English accents
31.03.2010The good news today is that Wellington Airport is officially in two minds about what type of sign it will put up on the Miramar cutting, which means that the âWellywoodâ sign protest has had a victory of sorts.
Iâm thrilled at the news because it shows people powerâespecially people like Anthony Lander who set up the largest of the anti-sign Facebook groups, and the 15,000-plus who joined thereâcame through.
The issue was always, and still is, transparency: how the council was prepared to say, âThis is not our problem. Itâs on airport land,â without giving a toss about how the rest of us felt.
The speed with which resource consent was granted was also questionable.
But the people of Wellington showed that we still have what it takes to make politicians back down, even if it is to cement their own power base.
This year, weâre discovering our own power and that we can keep politicians honest.
Hopefully in the election this year Wellingtonians will decide that it should not be âpolitics as usualâ. The important thing is that we vote, so we donât have the usually pathetic 30-something per cent turnout. And letâs start talking about even bigger issues.
Of some interest this week is the media giving a tad more coverage to the Murdoch Pressâs desire to charge for access in the UK. Websites for The Times, The Sun and News of the World will charge from June, something which was raised today on Radio New Zealand National.
This is not new: I spoke out against it back in November during an address I gave at CPIT, because I could not see how it could be workable.
According to the discussion on Afternoons with Jim Mora, the Murdoch Press is banking on its UK newspaper competitors following suit.
No one doubts that a lot of the work being done by the press is valuable and deserves compensation. But this doesnât ring true to me as a workable model.
What it will initially do is drive people to non-Murdoch websites for UK news.
Assuming other qualities and national tabloids follow suit, then we can watch the UKâs influence on global dialogue disappear. No one will care what the British people think on any issue, if their media are inaccessible.
It wonât get that bad, because I believe The Daily Telegraph will always be around in a free format, since it was one of the internet pioneersâit celebrated its 15th anniversary online last year. Thanks to the website, its international influence has grown.
The Murdoch plan also provides a wonderful opportunity for regional newspapers to become the national digital media of record if they are willing to provide their information freely.
I am quite happy to pay for some news services. But it does not come from charging for the raw articles. It might come from a value-added service: who will be the first to lay out a PDFed newspaper that is automatically generated from international sources that I can read, whether on screen or on an Ipad? In 2010, there has to be something beyond the words and a low-res pic, because a lot of news has, predictably, become commodified. (An internal newsletter we had here in the early 1990s predicted as much; meanwhile, this is a good academic paper on the issues.)
Some American publishers are getting the idea, and I have heard from an Australian company that is planning to do something similarly innovative. Therefore, I think Murdochs may have misread this one (as it has on climate change, according to one group): it is not akin to the BSkyB set-top box or other media it has encountered in the past.
Speaking of Brits, I have had three people this week say I have an English accent. One of them is Irish. Feel free to take a look at this old clip on Sunrise. I canât hear it. I sound nothing like Leslie Grantham or Michael Parkinson.
Tags: Facebook, humour, internet, Jack Yan, mayoralty, media, Murdoch Press, New Zealand, news, politics, Radio New Zealand, TV3, UK, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in New Zealand, UK, Wellington, business, internet, media, politics, publishing, technology | 1 Comment »
Funny how the war keeps coming up
05.03.2010I could guess the entire storyline but my goodness, I still think this is hilarious. (Courtesy Chris Young at C7 Design in New Plymouth.)
Tags: 2010, advertising, commercial, FIFA, football, Germany, humour, marketing, South Africa, TV, TVC, UK, World Cup
Posted in TV, UK, humour, marketing | 2 Comments »
Trading identities in the personal branding space
05.03.2010
The day the current mayor, Kerry Prendergast, announced her intention to stand for a fourth term, I was asked by a few media colleagues what I thought. The wittiest reply I gave to Salient, as it was an email interview, and I seem to be cheekier in writing than I am in speaking. I wonât spoil it yet, but letâs just say one learns an awful lot from television.
This morning was a very good start to the day, giving a guest lecture at my Alma Mater, Victoria University, thanks to my friend Helen Baxter, who has begun teaching there. In fact, I taught out of the same building in 2000 when the campus was shared with Massey University, and the A on the front was not mounted backwards (typography students must have taken note by now).
One thing I hit upon, and I donât think I have shared with readers, is the concept of personal branding taking on corporate behaviours. We know that corporations and countries have been swapping roles a bit in the 1990s (Wally Olins wrote a book on it, called Trading Identities), but I donât think it has been properly addressed at the personal sphere (corrections welcome).
We have corporations trying to look mean and responsive, and speak with a personal voiceâthe One principles that Stefan Engeseth has talked about, and the idea of one-to-one from Christian Grönroos. They are trying to look like individuals, so the person in charge of the Tweetstream is the âvoiceâ of the organization.
Meanwhile, people are becoming aware of branding themselves, of differentiating who they are, and finding the right things to align with in order to make themselves employable. Of course, such efforts must still remain authentic, as we can see through the spin, but it would not surprise me if the nascent ideas of personal branding in the 1990s become formalized in to whole courses on personal brand management.
I refer not just to styling, of course, but making sure embarrassing stuff is taken off Facebook (I believe my words were along the lines of, âBy all means, party and show youâre human. But photos of you doing a powerchuck: maybe notâ), of figuring out what your vision is from a very early stage, of engaging with your audiences, and, if I may be so bold, living your brand as part of living your life.
The cynic in me recognizes that last phrase sounds dodgy because it cheapens the whole experience of life into a brand event, which is not precisely what I mean. But it is important to have some idea of a personal direction in mind and doing things that are compatible with that. This is, in some respects, no different to some of the self-help claptrap out there, explained in corporate branding language as opposed to spiritual fulfilment.
However, itâs not altogether a bad way to think. Iâm willing to bet some of us have done exactly this, perhaps unconsciously or informally. We all have some purpose, some raison dâĂȘtre, and whether we like thinking about it in branding terms or some other method is up to us. Brand, at least, provides a framework and some boxes to tick, and if they help people get a personal advantage and get the job of their dreams, then why not?
Note to self: Keeley Hawes jokes work a lot better with heaps of Brits or Anglophiles in the room.
PS.: I got one post-lecture question, to which the answer is: yes, I am the guy opposing the liquor ban.âJY
Tags: 2010, academia, Aotearoa, branding, Christian Grönroos, Helen Baxter, humour, Jack Yan, mayoralty, New Zealand, personal branding, politics, Stefan Engeseth, Sweden, TV, UK, Victoria University of Wellington, Wally Olins, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in New Zealand, Sweden, UK, Wellington, branding, business, humour, marketing, politics | No Comments »
A reminder to the British Government: Hong Kong Chinese have died for you
16.01.2010Remember the issue I had last year with getting a new Permanent Identity Card for Hong Kong and finding that the British Governmentâwhich I have accused of apartheid over the situation surrounding British Overseas Nationalsâwould not do its job via the Foreign & Commonwealth Office?
No, it hasnât been solved, but I thought it might be rather nice to remind the FCO that, whenever Britain needed help, we Hong Kong Chinese were there. And we were prepared to die in the name of HM the Queen:
Most Britons I have spoken to agree: a British subject is a British subject is a British subject.
If only we had a celebrity like Joanna Lumley, who campaigned on behalf of those brave and loyal Gurkhas.
Never had this problem when John Majorâs Tories were in power.
Tags: 1982, apartheid, British, history, Hong Kong, nationality, politics, UK
Posted in Hong Kong, UK, politics | 3 Comments »
The Investigator: one that didn’t take off
03.01.2010Not hard to see why this series, conceived by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, never took off. According to the YouTube description, The Investigator was a pilot from c. 1973, and no series was ever commissioned. The combination of live action and puppetry do not work nearly as well as in UFO, and the idea of miniaturized teenagers seem a bit preposterous. (I know there was a miniaturized character in The Secret Service, but at least it didnât rely on him exclusively; and he could get back to normal size when the job was done.)
At least we know the hairstyles of the Supermarionation puppets went â1970sâ to match the times.
I believe it is Shane Rimmer (whom Lewis Gilbert called the âstandard American actorâ) as John.
Tags: 1970s, Gerry Anderson, humour, retro, TV, UK
Posted in TV, UK, humour, interests | No Comments »
Some more rare cars hit Autocade
01.01.2010Tim Cottingham of the Aston Martin Heritage Trust kindly gave me permission to use one of his photographs on Autocade, for a very rare Aston. The 1972 Vantage was a six-cylinder model, of which only 70 were made. The Autocade entry gives a credit to Tim, and we can begin tracing the lineage of some of the old DB models.
That, and several other rare cars for which thereâs very little information online, went on last week.
Aston Martin Vantage. 1972â3 (prod. 70). 2-door saloon. F/R, 3995 cmÂł (6 cyl. DOHC). Last of the six-cylinder DBs till DB7 dĂ©buted in the 1990s, and post-David Brown (released when Aston Martin was under Company Developmentsâ ownership). Odd amalgam of the new two-headlamp front end and the outgoing DBS, complete with wire wheels. Engine essentially identical to that of DB5 in Vantage tune. Despite the name, less powerful than the other Aston Martin on offer at the time, the V8, and was, in fact, the entry-level model in the range at the time. Very rare.
BMW 1804/BMW 2004. 1973â4 (prod. 1,404). 4-door saloon. F/R, 1767, 1990 cmÂł (4 cyl. OHC). Successor to Glas 1700-based SA saloons, but with a more modern design, styled again by Frua. Essentially a major facelift done for budgetary reasons, with the BMW corporate grille and naming to bring the cars into line with the 1602 and 2002 (the 4 was for four doors, in this case). Improved trim and dashboard. Rear lights from the BMW 5er-Reihe, which later succeeded the range in South Africa.
Ford Meteor (GA/GB). 1981â5 (prod. unknown). 4-door sedan. F/F, 1490 cmÂł (4 cyl. OHC). Australian name for booted first-generation Ford Laser, with slightly different grille, which could be found on some Japanese-market Mazda Familias. Intended as a temporary Cortina replacement before the Ford Telstar (GC) was launched. Never really filled the niche as two 1·5-litre engine options were offered (standard and twin carburettor), rather than the two-litre starting point of the Australian Cortina. Identical to Laser mechanically.
Ranger B. 1972â6 (prod. unknown). 2- and 4-door saloon, 2-door coupĂ©. F/R, 1698, 1897 cmÂł (4 cyl. CIH), 2490, 2784 cmÂł (6 cyl. CIH). GM Continental continues its exercise in building Opel Rekords, this time updated to the D model. Small engine (1·7) added, but with the exception of the quad round headlamps (shared with South African Chevrolet 3800 and 4100), a facsimile of the Opel. Production ended in 1976, as tariffs ended within the EEC, and there was no point maintaining a separate marque.
Tags: Aston Martin, Autocade, cars, UK
Posted in cars, internet, media, technology | No Comments »
