Interesting to get this perspective on âBig Techâ from The Guardian, on how itâs become tempting to blame the big Silicon Valley players for some of the problems we have today. The angle Moira Weigel takes is that there needs to be more democracy in the system, where workers need to unite and respecting those who shape the technologies that are being used.
I want to add a few far simpler thoughts.
At the turn of the century, our branding profession was under assault from No Logo and others, showing that certain brands were not what they were cracked up to be. Medinge Group was formed in part because we, as practitioners, saw nothing wrong with branding per se, and that the tools could be used for good. Not everyone was Enron or Nike. There are Patagonia and Dilmah. That led to the original brand manifesto, on what branding should accomplish. (I was generously given credit for authoring this at one point, but I was simply the person who put the thoughts of my colleagues into eight points. In fact, we collectively gathered our ideas into eight groups, so I canât even take credit for the fact there are eight points.)
In 2017, we may look at Ăberâs sexism or Facebookâs willingness to accept and distribute malware-laden ads, and charge tech with damaging the fabric of society. Those who dislike President Trump in the US want someone to blame, and Facebookâs and Googleâs contributions to their election in 2016 are a matter of record. But itâs not that online advertising is a bad thing. Or that social media are bad things. The issue is that the players arenât socially responsible: none of them exist for any other purpose than to make their owners and shareholders rich, and the odd concession to not doing evil doesnât really make up for the list of misdeeds that these firms add to. Many of them have been recorded over the years on this very blog.
Much of what we have been working toward at Medinge is showing that socially responsible organizations actually do better, because they find accord with their consumers, who want to do business or engage with those who share their values; and, as Nicholas Ind has been showing in his latest book, Branding Inside Out, these players are more harmonious internally. In the case of Stella McCartney, sticking to socially responsible values earns her brand a premiumâand sheâs one of the wealthiest fashion designers in the world.
I just canât see some of the big tech players acting the same way. Google doesnât pay much tax, for instance, and the misuse of Adwords aside, there are allegations that it hasnât done enough to combat child exploitation and it has not been a fair player when it comes to rewarding and acknowledging media outlets that break the news, instead siding with corporate media. Google may have open-source projects out there, but its behaviour is old-school corporatism these days, a far cry from its first five years when even I would have said they were one of the good guys.
Facebookâs problems are too numerous to list, though I attempted to do so here, but it can be summed up as: a company that will do nothing unless it faces embarrassment from enough people in a position of power. Weâve seen it tolerate kiddie porn and sexual harassment, giving both a âpassâ when reported.
Yet, for all that they make, it would be reasonable to expect that they put more people on the job in places where it mattered. The notion that three volunteers monitor complaints of child exploitation videos at YouTube is ridiculous but, for anyone who has complained about removing offensive content online, instantly believable; why there were not more is open to question. Anyone who has ventured on to a Google forum to complain about a Google product will also know that inaction is the norm there, unless you happen to get to someone senior and caring enough. Similarly, increasing resources toward monitoring advertising, and ensuring that complaints are properly dealt with would be helpful.
Googleâs failure to remove content mills from its News is contributing to âfake newsâ, yet its method of combatting that appears to be taking people away from legitimate media and ranking corporate players more highly.
None of these are the actions of companies that want to do right by netizens.
As Weigel notes, thereâs a cost to abandoning Facebook and Google. But equally there are opportunities if these firms cannot provide the sort of moral, socially responsible leadership modern audiences demand. In my opinion, they do not actually command brand loyaltyâa key ingredient of brand equityâif true alternatives existed.
Duck Duck Go might only have a fraction of the traffic Google gets in search, but despite a good mission its results arenât always as good, and its search index is smaller. But we probably should look to it as a real alternative to search, knowing that our support can help it grow and attract more investment. There is room for a rival to Google News that allows legitimate media and takes reports of fake news sites more seriously. If social media are democratizingâand there are signs that they are, certainly with some of the writings by Doc Searls and Richard MacManusâthen there is room for people to form their own social networks that are decentralized, and where we hold the keys to our identity, able to take them wherever we please (Hubzilla is a prime example; you can read more about its protocol here). The internet can be a place which serves society.
It might all come back to education; in fact, we might even say Confucius was right. If youâre smart enough, youâll see a positive resource and decide that it would not be in the best interests of society to debase it. Civility and respect should be the order of the day. If these tools hadnât been used by the privileged few to line their pockets at the expense of the manyâor, for that matter, the democratic processes of their nationsâwouldnât we be in a better place? They capitalized on divisions in society (and even deepened them), when there is far more for all of us to gain if we looked to unity. Why should we allow the concentration of power (and wealth) to rest at the top of tech’s food chain? Right now, all I see of Google and Facebookâs brands are faceless, impersonal and detached giants, with no human accountability, humming on algorithms that are broken, and in Facebookâs case, potentially having databases that have been built on so much, that it doesnât function properly any more. Yet they could have been so much more to society.
Not possible to unseat such big players? We might have thought once that Altavista would remain the world’s biggest website; who knew Google would topple it in such a short time? But closer to home, and speaking for myself, I see The Spinoff and Newsroom as two news media brands that engender far greater trust than Fairfax’s Stuff or The New Zealand Herald. I am more likely to click on a link on Twitter if I see it is to one of the newer sites. They, too, have challenged the status quo in a short space of time, something which I didn’t believe would be possible a decade ago when a couple of people proposed that I create a locally owned alternative.
We donât say email is bad because there is spam. We accept that the good outweighs the bad and, for the most part, we have succeeded in building filters that get rid of the unwanted. We donât say the web is bad because it has allowed piracy or pornography; its legitimate uses far outweigh its shady ones. But we should be supporting, or trying to find, new ways to advertise, innovate and network (socially or otherwise). Right now, Iâm willing to bet that the next big thing (and it might not even be one player, but a multitude of individuals working in unison) is one where its values are so clear and transparent that they inspire us to live our full potential. I remain an optimist when it comes to human potential, if we set our sights on making something better.
Posts tagged ‘book’
Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics out in China with a new edition
11.12.2017
My good friend Stefan Engesethâs Sharkonomics hit China a year ago, and itâs been so successful that the second edition is now out. It looks smarter, too, with its red cover, and Iâm sure Chinese readers will get a decent taste of Stefanâs writing style, humour and thinking.
I even hope this will pave the way for translations of his earlier works, especially Detective Marketing and One: a Consumer Revolution for Business (the latter still remains my favourite of his marketing titles).
Iâve written a brief quote for Sharkonomics and the publisher (with some nudging from Stefan) has taken the time to make sure my Chinese name is accurately recorded, rather than a phonetic translation of my Anglo transliteration, which, of course, then wouldnât be my name.
Stefanâs inventive and innovative thinking might seem left-field sometimes, till some years pass and people realize he was right all along. Take, for example, Google wanting to build a high-tech neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, announced in October. Notwithstanding the hassles Google has created on its own turf in Silicon Valley, itâs the sort of project we might expect from the giant now. But would we have expected it in 2007? Probably not, except Stefan did.
In 2007 (though he actually first floated the idea a year earlier), Stefan blogged about his idea for Google Downtownâwhy not make real what Google Earth does virtually? Why not shop at places that already know all your personal preferences, if thatâs where things are heading? The town would have free wifi and youâd be paying for it with âyour selfâ (the space, Iâm sure, was intentional). In 2008, 500 people heard his plans at a conference and laughed. The following year, he met Eric Schmidt and mentioned it to him. Eric paused and didnât laughâand maybe the idea sunk in.
Itâs not the first time Stefan has hatched an idea and it gained legs, from Coca-Cola delivering its product through taps to Ikea making flat-pack fashionâboth have wound up being done, though the latter not quite in the way Stefan envisaged.
Tags: 2000s, 2016, 2017, author, book, Canada, China, Coca-Cola, Eric Schmidt, Finland, Google, Ikea, innovation, language, Ontario, publishing, Stefan Engeseth, Stockholm, Sweden, Toronto
Posted in business, China, marketing, Sweden | 1 Comment »
Trading identities in the 2010s: when corporate branding and personal branding adopt each other’s methods
14.10.2017
Above: Brand Kate Moss was probably seen by more people when the model collaborated with Topshop.
In 1999, the late Wally Olins sent me his book, Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies are Taking on Each Otherâs Roles, a fine read published by the Foreign Policy Centre that argued that countries were trying to look more corporate, adopting the practices of corporate branding. Conversely, as corporations gained more power and their need to practise social responsibility increased, they were adopting the ideas from nation branding. There was an increasing amount of this swapping taking place, and the 21st century has seen the trend continue: more countries have finely tuned nation brands and guidelines on how to use them, while many corporations are trying to look like good corporate citizensâDilmah and Patagonia come to mind with their work in building communities and advocacy.
Weâve been discussing at our firm another area where a similar switch has been taking place: that of corporate brands and personal brands. Personal branding is a relatively new development, with (in my opinion) Managing Brand Me the best work on the subject, authored by the late Thomas Gad with his wife Annette Rosencreutz, dating from 2002. (Thomas, of course, founded Medinge Group.) Managing Brand Me features an excellent break-down of the four dimensions involved (functional, social, mental, spiritual) in any good personal brand that still hold true today. They were well ahead of their time given that they had written their book long before selfies became the norm, and before people were being hired by companies as ambassadors based on their Instagram or Twitter followings.
Those spokespeople are practising their brands almost haphazardly, where some are getting to the point that they cannot be sustained. Others are balancing authenticity with commercial demands: we know that Kendall Jenner probably doesnât drink Pepsi, and no one wants to be seen to sell out their values. Nevertheless, there is a group of people mindful about their personal brand, and itâs only a matter of time before more begin taking on the trappings of corporate brands: inter alia, guidelines on how theirs is to be used; what products can be endorsed by that brand; how it can be differentiated against othersâ. Kate Moss may well be one example with a recognizable logotype that appears on products that have her seal of approval. (If I can be slightly macabre, the estates of Elvis Presley, Steve McQueen and Audrey Hepburn all think carefully on how each celebrity can be used to endorse products today; while lacking symbols or logotypes, their faces themselves are more than a substitute. With technology democratizing, it is no surprise that living and less iconic people might adopt similar ideas.)
What of companies? Many now find themselves on an equal footing, or even a disadvantage, to personal accounts. The biggest companies have to fight for attention on social networks just like some of the top personal accounts in the world, and they cannot succeed without speaking to the audience in a personal fashion. A corporate account that reposts publicity photographs would gain little traction except from fans who are already sold on the brand through non-social media; and there is some wisdom in assuming that millennials do not possess the same level of brand loyalty as earlier generations. Theyâre on the hunt for the best product or service for the price and adopt a more meritorious approach, and among the things that will draw them in will be the values and societal roles of the company. Therefore, there has to be a âpersonalityâ behind the account, aware of each of Thomas and Annetteâs Brand Me dimensions.
It has not escaped me that both Lucireâs fashion editor Sopheak Seng and I do better than the magazine when it comes to social media interactionâgetting likes and commentsâbecause weâre prepared to put our personalities on the line. The automated way Lucire shares articles on Twitter, for instance, hasnât helped build its brand there, something which weâre remedying by having team members around the world post to Instagram for starters, giving people a glimpse of our individual experiences. The images might not all look polished as a result, but it is a step toward fulfilling the four dimensions. It is a quest to find a personal voice.
In the wider media game, this is now more vital as news has become commodified, a trend that was first expressed in the 1990s, too. Perhaps those authors saw that most media outlets would be getting their news from a more concentrated base of sources, and demand on journalists to be first and fastestâsomething not helped by a society where speed is valued over accuracyâmeant that whomever controlled the sources could determine what the world talked about. Global companies want everyone to see when theyâre involved in an event that a good chunk of the planet is likely to see; in LâOréal Parisâs case itâs the Festival de Cannes. If every fashion publication has its eyes on Cannes, then what differentiates that coverage? What stamp does the media outletâs brand place on that coverage? Is there a voice, a commentary, something that relates to the outletâs role in society? Should it communicate with its best supporters on social networks?
Lucire does reasonably well each year at Cannes with its coverage, probably because it does communicate with fans on social networks and alerts them to exclusive content. The rest of the time, it doesnât do as well because as a smaller publication, itâs relying on those same sources. In 1998 we would have been the only English-language online publication specializing in fashion that talked about each H&M launch; in 2017 many fashion publications are doing it and our share of the pie is that much smaller. Individuals themselves are sharing on their social networks, too. This is not a bad thing: others should have the means to express themselves and indulge their passion of writing and communicating. Exclusivity means traffic, which is why we do better when we cover something few others do.
However, I recently blogged that Google News has shifted to favouring larger media players, disincentivizing the independents from breaking news. It comes back to needing a distinctive voice, a personal brand, and while we still need to rely on Google News to a degree, that voice could help build up new surfing habits. The most successful bloggers of the last decade, such as Elin Kling, have done this.
These are the thoughts milling around as Lucire heads into its 20th anniversary this month, and we reevaluate just what made us special when the publication launched in 1997. Those values need to be adapted and brought into 2017 and beyond. But there are wider lessons, too, on just where corporate branding and personal branding are heading; this post did not set out to discuss fashion media. Itâs not a bad place to start our inquiry, since fashion (and automobiles) are where a lot of brand competition takes place.
Indeed, it signals to me that in the late 2010s, companies need to do well as corporate citizens and have a personal voice on social media, ideas that build on my 2013 paper for the dĂ©but issue of Journal of Digital and Social Media Marketing (where I discussed brands in the age of social media and put forward a model of how to manage them) as well as Thomas and Annetteâs earlier research. Itâs the next stage of where branding practice could goâJY&A Consulting is primed, and weâre prepared to let those thoughts loose on Lucire and our other projects. The book of the blog, meanwhile, is the next target. What a pity Iâm not in Frankfurt right now.
Tags: 2010s, 2017, academia, Annette Rosencreutz, blogosphere, book, branding, celebrity, corporate branding, corporate social responsibility, Festival de Cannes, France, Google, Hennes & Mauritz, Instagram, Jack Yan, journalism, JY&A Consulting, Kate Moss, Lucire, LâOrĂ©al, media, Medinge Group, nation branding, personal branding, research, social media, social networking, Sopheak Seng, Sweden, Thomas Gad, Twitter, Wally Olins, Web 2·0
Posted in branding, culture, France, globalization, internet, marketing, media, publishing, Sweden | No Comments »
Fun for car anoraksâtill you get to the factual errors
08.07.2017
I bought Steven Parissienâs The Life of the Automobile: a New History of the Motor Car, which started off as a good history. Iâm 300-odd pages in now and the mistakes are really worrying. Thereâs also a shocking lack of editing (one part repeated, albeit in different language, and spelling and grammatical mistakes) in the parts I’ve got to now; it’s as though the editor got tired after the first 10 chapters and stopped caring. But the biggest errors are factual.
I am astonished to learn, for instance, that Harley Earl was responsible for the concept of the Ford Thunderbird (p. 255), that Triumph TR7 production was transferred to Speke in 1982 (p. 293, though Parissien later contradicts himself with the correct fact), and that John Z. de Lorean was a protĂ©gĂ© of Lee Iacocca (p. 309). I really have no idea how, but as far as I know, de Lorean was never at Ford, and he had a Chrysler stint long before Iacocca got there. I also never knew that âIn 1968 the Toyota Corolla became the first Japanese car to be manufactured in the USâ (p. 314; that was the year it went on sale there, and from memory the Corolla didn’t get built there till the NUMMI deal in the 1980s) or that the Opel Ascona C was also sold as the Opel Vectra (p. 337). The Italian Job was released in 1969, not 1967 (p. 224).
I am frustrated with this bookâand now it makes me wonder if the stuff earlier on, which I know less about, was accurate.
I can understand an editor not grasping the subject as well as the author but there is less excuse in professional publishing for the other problems. Maybe there are few professional proofreaders left, now that spellchecks have been around for a generation or more. I was prepared to recommend this book even a week ago and tolerated the spelling and grammar, but these factual mistakes are worse than what can be found in Wikipedia, and I often label parts of that site as fiction.
PS. (September 17): How much worse can it get, as I continued through? A lot.
On p. 320, we get an admission that Parissien was wrong on p. 314: the Honda Accord was the first Japanese-branded car to be made Stateside. At least an earlier error was corrected. But they begin again on p. 321: Parissien claims the V30 Toyota Camry dominated the US mid-size car market (it was never sold outside Japan; he’s thinking of the XV10, or the Japanese-market Scepter, which was badged Camry). Correcting his error on p. 322, the Camry was not specifically targeted at the US; it was Toyota’s attempt to create an efficient car from the ground up, and it was not done in 1980, but 1982 (the 1980 Celica Camry was not sold outside Japan). The Paykan deal was cemented long before George Turnbull got to Iran (p. 324), though local content rose in the 1970s for it to be truly Iranian-made and Parissien might mean the shifting of the engine tooling there, if I’m being generous. There is only one world, not multiple ones (also p. 324), unless Parissien knows something about parallel universes that the rest of us don’t. Surely Chrysler managed to launch its T-115 minivan (Dodge Caravan, Plymouth Voyager) before Renault launched the Espace (p. 330), and the Triumph Acclaim was never called the ‘Ronda’ (p. 334), though its successor was.
On p. 360, in a single paragraph, Parissien makes several errors. The MG 6 launched as a five-door car, not his claimed four. There is no such thing as the Roewe 150, in China or elsewhere. The MG 3 has five doors and is not a three-door counterpart to the 6. The five-door MG 6 launched not in 2011, but in 2010, and the Magnette name was only used in the UK for the four-door. The founder of Chrysler was Walter Chrysler, not Walther (p. 364). The Lancia Delta only became a Chrysler in the UK and Ăire, as far as I know (p. 365), and remained a Lancia in most countries. The Belgian designer is Dirk van Braeckel, not van Braeckl (p. 368); Mercedes-Benz never bought an 18·53 per cent stake in Volkswagen (p. 369); and CitroĂ«n’s BX was not the last car in that range to have ‘pneumatic suspension’ (p. 372). The Malibu was not a Saturn, but a Chevrolet (p. 375), and Buick was never sold off (p. 376). The Ford Mondeo did not replace the Telstar in all Asian markets (p. 377), and it shared far more than the ‘windscreen, front doors and rear’ with the Contour and Mystique (in fact, the rear was not shared, though there were common engines, platform, and plenty more). It’s not entirely certain that the US market judged the Contour to be too small (p. 378), but there was a lack of marketing (which would have made an even better story than the one Parissien writes about). Ford subsequently filled the Contour’s niche with the smaller Focus Stateside. The CD338 Fusion was never sold in Australia (also p. 378). Ford never resurrected the Taunus in Germany under Alan Mulally (p. 381)âthis invention is incredible. VAZ did follow up the 2101 with something similar after it ended production in 1983 (not 1984, p. 382), viz. the 2105, which was about as similar as one could get to the 2101.
On p. 384, Parissien claims Acura’s Legend sales were ‘disappointing’, after saying they were ‘beginning to sell rather well’ 50 pp. before. The Hindustan Ambassador was not based on the 1954 Morris Oxford (p. 389): that car was actually the Hindusthan Landmaster. The Ambassador was based on the 1957 Morris Oxford III, and was in production from 1959, not 1958. The Red Flag (or Hongqi) marque was not reborn on an Audi A6 (p. 391), but the marque had been used on a version of the Audi 100 C3 from 1988, and no Hongqi bore an AudiâChryslerâHongqi brand name. The Chinese company is Dongfeng, not Dongfen (p. 391), and Parissien’s claim that the Everus was sold in the west (p. 392) is news to me, as I am sure it is to its own management. I’ll stop there for now.
P.PS. (September 18): Some bedtime reading, or should I say error-finding, last night. On p. 394, Toyota and Aston Martin did not jointly develop the Cygnet: Toyota developed the IQ in 2008, and Aston Martin converted that car to become its Cygnet, and ‘hot hatch’ is a very optimistic description for a city car. Toyota did not launch the Cygnet in 2008 as Parissien claims, nor did it have a say in what customers were expected to purchase the Cygnet: it was aimed specifically at existing Aston Martin owners, not ‘Toyota and Aston expected initial demand to be limited to those who already owned an Aston Martin sports car.’ It was certainly no ‘eccentric experiment’ of Toyota, but of Aston Martin. Volvo never made a model called the A40 (p. 395), and I bet Nissan is surprised to find that the original Qashqai was designed ‘at the firm’s Milan design centre’ (p. 397) when it was designed in London. Maserati never launched a Jeep-based SUV called the Kubang (p. 397), but it did have a concept of that name, and the Levante appeared in 2016 after the book was published. There is no such car as the Porsche Cajun, and if Parissien refers to the smaller Porsche crossover, then that is called the Macan, and it has five doors, not the claimed three (p. 397). The Volkswagen New Beetle was not on a Polo platform (p. 399), but a Golf one, as was its successor (though a newer Golf); and Ford would dispute that its Mustang is a sedan (p. 401). If J Mays’s first name is J (as footnoted), then there is no need to refer to him as ‘J. Mays’ (p. 401). The Ford Ka’s name is not derived from StreetKa (p. 402): that was a model spun off from the Ka in 2002; and some would regard the Mk II model was being superior to the Fiat 500 on which it is based (especially as Fiat adopted some of the changes for its own model). I have yet to see a Smart with a Mercedes-Benz three-pointed star or marque anywhere, unlike Parissien who seems to think they are badged Mercedes (p. 403), and a Smart SUV does not exist unless Parissien is reporting again from his parallel universe (p. 403). There is also no such car as the Kia Exclusive (p. 410).
Tags: 1950s, 1980s, 2010s, 2013, BL, book, car, car design, car industry, cars, errors, Ford, GM, Harley Earl, history, John Z. de Lorean, Lee Iacocca, Opel, publishing, UK, USA
Posted in cars, design, interests, publishing, UK, USA | 1 Comment »
A year of random thoughts: 2014 in review
29.12.2014For the last few years, Iâve looked back at the events of the year in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. (In fact, in 2009, I looked back at the decade.) Tumblrâs the place I look at these days for these summaries, since it tends to have my random thoughts, ones complemented by very little critical thinking. They tell me what piqued my interest over the year.
These days, Iâve been posting more about the TV show I watch the most regularly, the German Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei. A good part of my Tumblr, at least, and of Danielle Careyâs, whom I first connected with via this blog, features screen shots and other photographs from it. But Cobra 11 asideâand for those âculturedâ Germans who tell me itâs the worst show on their telly, may I remind you that you still make Das Traumschiff?âI still will be influenced by everyday events.
So what do I spy?
Sadly, despite my intent in wanting to blog humorously, it turns out that 2014 doesnât necessarily give us a lot to laugh about. And weâve had over a year after that Mayan calendar gag, and 13 years after Y2K. Itâs still not time to laugh yet.
January
I made a spoof English Hustle poster given all the hype about American Hustle, which seems to have, prima facie, the same idea. It meets with Adrian Lesterâs approval (well, he said, âHa,â which I gather is positive).
I post about Idris Elba giving a response about the James Bond character. (Slightly ahead of my time, as it turns out.)
Robert Catto wrote of Justin Bieberâs arrest: âSo, J. Biebs is arrested for racing a rented Lamborghini in a residential neighbourhood while under the influence (of drugs and alcohol) while on an expired license, resisting arrest, and a bunch of previous stuff including egging a neighbourâs house. With that many accusations being thrown at him, this can only mean one thing.
âThe race for Mayor of Toronto just got interesting.â
I wrote to a friend, âIf there was a Facebook New Zealand Ltd. registered here then it might make more sense ensuring that there were fewer loopholes for that company to minimize its tax obligations, but the fact is there isnât. Either major party would be better off encouraging New Zealand to be the head office for global corporations, or encourage good New Zealand businesses to become global players, if this was an issue (and I believe that it is). There is this thing called the internet that they may have heard of, but both parties have seen it as the enemy (e.g. the whole furore over s. 92A, first proposed by Labour, enacted by National).
âRight now, we have some policy and procedural problems preventing us from becoming more effective exporters.
âItâs no coincidence that I took an innovation tack in my two mayoral campaigns. If central government was too slow in acting to capture or create these players, then I was going to do it at a local level.â
And there are $700 trillion (I imagine that means $700 billion, if you used the old definitionsâ12 zeroes after the 700) worth of derivatives yet to implode, according to I Acknowledge. Global GDP is $69·4 (American) trillion a year. âThis means that (primarily) Wall Street and the City of London have run up phantom paper debts of more than ten times of the annual earnings of the entire planet.â
February
The Sochi Olympics: in Soviet Russia, Olympics watch you! Dmitry Kozak, the deputy PM, says that westerners are deliberately sabotaging things there. How does he know? âWe have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day.â
Sports Illustrated does an Air New Zealand safety video.
This was the month I first saw the graphic containing a version of these words: âJesus was a guy who was a peaceful, radical, nonviolent revolutionary, who hung around with lepers, hookers, and criminals, who never spoke English, was not an American citizen, a man who was anti-capitalism, anti-wealth, anti-public prayer (yes he was Matthew 6:5), anti-death penalty but never once remotely anti-gay, didnât mention abortion, didnât mention premarital sex, a man who never justified torture, who never called the poor âlazyâ, who never asked a leper for a co-pay, who never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, who was a long haired, brown skinned (thatâs in revelations), homeless, middle eastern Jew? Of course, thatâs only if you believe whatâs actually in the Bibleâ (sic). For those who want a response, this blog post answers the points from a Catholic point of view, but the original quoteâs not completely off-base.
March
My friend Dmitry protests in Moskva against Russiaâs actions in the Crimea. This was posted on this blog at the time. He reports things arenât all rosy in Russia when it comes to free speech.
Another friend, Carolyn Enting, gets her mug in the Upper Hutt Leader after writing her first fictional book, The Medallion of Auratus.
MH370 goes missing.
And this great cartoon, called âIf Breaking Bad Had Been Set in the UKâ:
April
I call Lupita Nyongâo âWoman of the Year 2014â.
A post featuring Robin Williams (before that horrible moment in August), where he talks about the influence of Peter Sellers and Dr Strangelove on him. I seem to have posted a lot of Robin that month, from his CBS TV show, The Crazy Ones.
A Lancastrian reader, Gerald Vinestock, writes to The Times: âSir, Wednesdayâs paper did not have a photograph of the Duchess of Cambridge. I do hope she is all right.â
A first post on those CBS TV attempts to create a show about Sherlock Holmes set in the modern day in the US, partnered with a woman: on 1987âs The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
The fiftieth anniversary of the on-sale date of the Ford Mustang (April 17).
The death of Bob Hoskins. Of course I had to post his last speech in The Long Good Friday, as well as the clip from Top Gear where Richard Hammond mistook Ray Winstone for Hoskins. They all look the same to me.
May
Judith Collinsâ story about what she was doing in China with Oravida collapses.
Someone points out there is a resemblance between Benedict Cumberbatch and Butthead from Beavis and Butthead.
Jean Pisani Ferryâs view on the origins of the euro crisis in The Economist: âSuppose that the crisis had begun, as it might easily have done, in Ireland? It would then have been obvious that fiscal irresponsibility was not the culprit: Ireland had a budget surplus and very low debt. More to blame were economic imbalances, inflated property prices and dodgy bank loans. The priority should not have been tax rises and spending cuts, but reforms to improve competitiveness and a swift resolution of troubled banks, including German and French ones, that lent so irresponsibly.â
June
British-born Tony Abbott says he doesnât like immigration, or some such.
This humorous graphic, made before the launch of the five-door Mini, on how the company could extend its range:
Sir Ian McKellen says, âDid I want to go and live in New Zealand for a year? As it turns out, I was very happy that I did. I canât recommend New Zealand strongly enough. Itâs a wonderful, wonderful place, quite unlike [the] western world. Itâs in the southern hemisphere and itâs far, far away and although they speak English, donât be fooled. Theyâre not like us. Theyâre something better than us.â
Lots of Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11 posts.
July
Sopheak Sengâs first Lucire cover, photographed by Dave Richards, and with a fantastic crew: hair by Michael Beel, make-up by Hil Cook, modelled by ChloĂ© Graham, and with some layout and graphic design by Tanya Sooksombatisatian and typography by me.
Liam Fitzpatrick writes of Hong Kong, before the Occupy protests, âHong Kongersâsober, decent, pragmatic and hardworkingâare mostly not the sort of people who gravitate to the barricades and the streets. Neither do they need to be made aware of the political realities of having China as a sovereign power, for the simple fact that postwar Hong Kong has only ever existed with Chinaâs permission. In the 1960s, the local joke was that Mao Zedong could send the British packing with a mere phone call.
âWith that vast, brooding power lying just over the Kowloon hills, tiny Hong Kongâs style has always been to play China cleverlyâto push where it can (in matters such as education and national-security legislation, where it has won important battles) and to back off where it cannot.â
It didnât seem completely prescient.
August
The General Election campaign: National billboards are edited.
Doctor Who goes on tour prior to Peter Capaldiâs first season in the lead role.
The suicide of Robin Williams.
Michael Brown is killed. Greg Howard writes, âThere was Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., and Oscar Grant in Oakland, Calif., and so many more. Michael Brownâs death wasnât shocking at all. All over the country, unarmed black men are being killed by the very people who have sworn to protect them, as has been going on for a very long time now âŠ
âThere are reasons why white gunâs rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying childrenâs toys.â
Like so many things, such a statement of fact became politicized in months to come.
Darren Watson releases âUp Here on Planet Keyâ, only to have it banned by the Electoral Commission. With his permission, I did a spoken-word version.
Journalist Nicky Hager, who those of us old enough will remember was a right-wing conspiracy theorist, is branded a left-wing conspiracy theorist by the PM because this time, he wrote about National and not Labour. The Deputy PM, Bill English, who commended Hagerâs work 12 years ago over Seeds of Distrust, and even quoted from it, remained fairly quiet.
It wasnât atypical. I wrote in one post, âIn 2011, Warren Tucker said three times in one letter that he told PM John Key about the SIS release. Now he says he only told his office but not the PM personallyâafter an investigation was announced (when the correct protocol would be to let the investigation proceed) âŠ
âKey did not know about GCSB director Ian Fletcherâs appointment (week one of that saga) before he knew about it (week two).
âKey cannot remember how many TranzRail shares he owned.
âKey cannot remember if and when he was briefed by the GCSB over Kim Dotcom.
âKey did not know about Kim Dotcomâs name before he did not know about Kim Dotcom at all.
âKey cannot remember if he was for or against the 1981 Springbok tour.â
Some folks on YouTube did a wonderful series of satirical videos lampooning the PM. Kiwi satire was back. This was the first:
Matt Crawford recalled, âAt this point in the last election campaign, the police were threatening to order search warrants for TV3, The Herald on Sunday, RadioNZ et alâover a complaint by the Prime Minister. Over a digital recording inadvertently made in a public space literally during a media stunt put on for the pressâa figurative media circus.â
Quoting Robert Muldoon in 1977âs Muldoon by Muldoon: âNew Zealand does not have a colour bar, it has a behaviour bar, and throughout the length and breadth of this country we have always been prepared to accept each other on the basis of behaviour and regardless of colour, creed, origin or wealth. That is the most valuable feature of New Zealand society and the reason why I have time and again stuck my neck out to challenge those who would try to destroy this harmony and set people against people inside our country.â
And my reaction to the Conservative Partyâs latest publicity, which was recorded on this blog, and repeated for good measure on Tumblr: âEssentially what they are saying is: our policy is that race doesnât matter. Except when it comes to vilifying a group, it does. Letâs ignore the real culprits, because: âThe Chineseâ.â
September
The passing of Richard âJawsâ Kiel.
John Barnett of South Pacific Pictures sums up Nicky Hager: âHager is a gadfly who often causes us to examine our society. He has attacked both the right and the left before. Itâs too easy to dismiss it as a left wing loony conspiracy. We tend to shoot the messengers rather than examine the messages.â
New Zealanders begin vilifying Kim Dotcom: I respond.
I blog about Occupy Central in Hong Kongâwhich led to a television appearance on Breakfast in early October.
October
Iâm not sure where this quotation comes from, but I reposted it: âA white man is promoted: He does good work, he deserved it.
âA white woman is promoted: Whose dick did she suck?
âA man of color is promoted: Oh, great, I guess we have to âfill quotasâ now.
âA woman of color is promoted: j/k. That never happens.â
Facebook gets overrun by bots: I manage to encounter 277 in a single day. (I eventually reach someone at Facebook New Zealand, who is trying to solicit business for one of the fan pages we have, and point this out. I never hear back from him.) The trouble is Facebook limits you to reporting 40 a day, effectively tolerating the bots. It definitely tolerates the click farms: I know of dozens of accounts that the company has left untouched, despite reports.
Kim Dotcomâs lawyers file a motion to dismiss in Virginia in United States v. Dotcom and others, and summarize the case so far: âNearly three years ago, the United States Government effectively wiped out Megaupload Limited, a cloud storage provider, along with related businesses, based on novel theories of criminal copyright infringement that were offered by the Government ex parte and have yet to be subjected to adversarial testing. Thus, the Government has already seized the criminal defendantsâ websites, destroyed their business, and frozen their assets around the worldâall without benefit of an evidentiary hearing or any semblance of due process.
âWithout even attempting to serve the corporate defendants per the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Government has exercised all its might in a concerted, calculated effort to foreclose any opportunity for the defendants to challenge the allegations against them and also to deprive them of the funds and other tools (including exculpatory evidence residing on servers, counsel of choice, and ability to appear) that would equip robust defense in the criminal proceedings.
âBut all that, for the Government, was not enough. Now it seeks to pile on against ostensibly defenseless targets with a parallel civil action, seeking civil forfeiture, based on the same alleged copyright crimes that, when scrutinized, turn out to be figments of the Governmentâs boundless imagination. In fact, the crimes for which the Government seeks to punish the Megaupload defendants (now within the civil as well as the criminal realm) do not exist. Although there is no such crime as secondary criminal copyright infringement, that is the crime on which the Governmentâs Superseding Indictment and instant Complaint are predicated. That is the nonexistent crime for which Megaupload was destroyed and all of its innocent users were denied their rightful property. That is the nonexistent crime for which individual defendants were arrested, in their homes and at gunpoint, back in January 2012. And that is the nonexistent crime for which the Government would now strip the criminal defendants, and their families, of all their assets.â
Stuart Heritage thinks The Apprentice UK has run its course, and writes in The Guardian: âThe Apprentice has had its day. Itâs running on fumes. Itâs time to replace it with something more exciting, such as a 40-part retrospective on the history of the milk carton, or a static shot of someone trying to dislodge some food from between their teeth with the corner of an envelope.â
November
Doctor Who takes a selfie and photobombs himself.
Andrew Little becomes Labour leader, and is quoted in the Fairfax Press (who, according to one caption, says his motherâs name is Cecil): âIâm not going to resile from being passionate about working men and women being looked after, having a voice, and being able to go to work safe and earn well. Thatâs what I stand for.
âThe National party have continued to run what I think is a very 1970s prejudice about unions ⊠We have [in New Zealand] accepted a culture that if you are big, bold and brassy you will stand up for yourself. But [this] Government is even stripping away protections [from] those who are bold enough to do so.
âI think New Zealanders are ready for someone who will talk bluntly about those who are being left behind. Thatâs what Iâll be doing.â
Iâm not a Labour voter but I was impressed.
I advise my friend Keith Adams in Britain, who laments the driving standards there, that in order to have the road toll we have, theyâd need to kill another 2,000 per annum. âThe British driver is a well honed, precision pilot compared to oneâs Kiwi counterpart.â
December
Julian Assange on Google, and confirmation that the company has handed over personal data to the US Government. He calls Eric Schmidt âGoogleâs secretary of state, a Henry Kissinger-like figure whose job it is to go out and meet with foreign leaders and their opponents and position Google in the world.â
The Sydney siege and the tragic deaths of Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson.
The killing of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. The NYPD doesnât look very white to me, but a murderer used the death of Eric Garner as an excuse to murder a Dad and a newlywed.
My second post on those CBS TV attempts to create a show about Sherlock Holmes set in the modern day in the US, partnered with a woman: on 1993âs 1994 Baker Street.
Craig Ferguson hosts his last Late Late Show. And moreâs the pity: heâs one of the old school, never bitter, and never jumped on the bandwagon attacking celebrities.
Tags: 2014, actors, actresses, Air New Zealand, Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, Aotearoa, Australia, BBC, book, Canada, Carolyn Enting, CBS, celebrity, China, culture, Danielle Carey, Doctor Who, fashion, fashion magazine, finance, Germany, Google, Hong Kong, humour, Jack Yan, Jesus Christ, JY&A Media, Keith Adams, Kim Dotcom, Lucire, media, musician, New Zealand, news, Nicky Hager, Olympics, politics, publishing, racism, religion, Robert Catto, RTL, Russia, Sopheak Seng, Sports Illustrated, The Economist, TV, USA, YouTube
Posted in business, China, culture, Hong Kong, humour, interests, internet, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing, TV, typography, UK, USA | 2 Comments »
What Is a Brand? Well, there is one we’ve relaunched âŠ
05.03.2013
My good friend and colleague Stanley Moss has written a new book, What Is a Brand?, which provokes some thought on the question in the title.
Those who know Stanley and have followed his work know that each year, he issues a Brand Letter, which closes with various definitions of branding.
If there’s one thing brand experts agree on, it’s the fact that no two brand experts will ever agree on the definition of a brand. What Is a Brand? turns this into its primary advantage, getting definitions from some of the top people in the profession, and somehow I managed to slip in there.
Ian Ryder, Nicholas Ind, the late Colin Morley, Thomas Gad, Ava Hakim, Simon Paterson, Pierre d’Huy, Malcolm Allan, Patrick Harris, Tony Quinlan, Manas Fuloria, Steven Considine, Sascha Lötscher, George Rush, JoĂŁo Freire, Virginia James, Filippo Dellosso, the great Fritz Gottschalk, and others all contribute definitions, on which readers can ruminate.
As Stanley notes in his introduction:
The aim of this book is to render brand thinking more accessible, to share with you the ideas of theorists and practitioners who bear witness to the evolution of policy and governance, especially in light of societyâs drift towards overconsumption and environmental damage.
It is now available as an e-book and as a paperback via Amazon.com, priced at US$5 and US$10 respectively.
Keep calm and wear a tiara: I’m now also general counsel for Miss Universe New Zealand, on top of everything else. The news announcement went out yesterdayâthe Lucire article is here, while we have a new website at nextmissnz.com. The highlight is reducing the entry fee from NZ$3,500 to NZ$10 (plus a workshop, if selected, at NZ$199). We’ve had some great feedback over the website, which I am thrilled about, since I designed it and made sure all the requirements of the licence agreement were complied with.
The year’s going to be a very exciting one with the competition, which will be far more transparent than it ever has been, with the possibility of its return to network television after a two-decade absence. We’re bringing integrity back into the process. From my point of view, the idea is one of business transformation, to take something that has languished and turn it into something that’s exciting, relevant, and 21st-century.
With this development, I’m relieved I never published a word on the scandal last year and never went to the media over it (even if others didâoften to their detriment). It makes it a lot easier to move forward with the future if you don’t keep dwelling on the pastâand with the great programme we have, why should we look back?
I’m looking forward to bringing you more with national director Evana Patterson and executive producer Nigel Godfrey. We’ve created something dynamic that the New Zealand public, and the Miss Universe family, can all get behind. Keep an eye on nextmissnz.com where we’ll post more announcementsâand if you think the T-shirts (right) are as cheeky as I do, then they are available for sale online, too.
Tags: 2013, Amazon, Ava Hakim, beauty pageant, book, branding, business, business transformation, Colin Morley, design, entrepreneurship, Evana Patterson, Fritz Gottschalk, Ian Ryder, Jack Yan, Lucire, Malcolm Allan, Manas Fuloria, Medinge Group, Miss New Zealand, Miss Universe New Zealand, Nicholas Ind, Nigel Godfrey, Patrick Harris, Pierre d'Huy, rebranding, Sascha Lötscher, Simon Paterson, Stanley Moss, Thomas Gad, Tony Quinlan, website
Posted in branding, business, marketing, media, New Zealand, publishing, USA | 1 Comment »
A farewell to Sir Paul Callaghan, and the next step for our innovators
24.03.2012When I attended Sir Paul Callaghan’s talk at the Wellington Town Hall last September, I felt vindicated. Here was a man who was much better qualified than me to talk about economic development, effectively endorsing the policies I ran on in 2010. But not being political, he was a great deal more persuasive. Since then, I’ve noticed more New Zealanders become convinced by Sir Paul’s passionâand wake us up to the potential that we have in this nation.
This great communicator, this wonderful patriot, this sharpest of minds, passed away today after a battle with colon cancer.
I wrote on Facebook when I heard the news that the best thing we can do to honour Sir Paul was to carry on his legacy, and to carry out the dream he had for making New Zealand a better, more innovative nation.
Sir Paul wasn’t afraid of tall poppies. He knew Kiwis punched above their weight, and wanted to see more of that happen.
All those tributes today saying his passing is a great loss to the nation are so very accurateâand I hope we’ll continue to see his dream realized.
Sir Paul Callaghan had a vision, but at the more micro level, it’s important to get a grasp on what the market will bear. There is a fine line, of course, between testing a market and relying too much on a rear-view mirror, and Jenny DouchĂ©’s new book, Fool Proof, addresses that, with case studies featuring some very successful New Zealand businesses, including No. 8 Ventures, Phil & Ted’s, Cultureflow and Xero. She stresses dialogue and engagement as useful tools in market validation, and she’s so passionate about the importance of her work that she’s donated copies to 200 organizations, including business incubators, economic development agencies, business schools and chambers of commerce nationally. Find out more at foolproofbook.com.
A Reuter story today talks about Sweden’s growing inequality in the last 15 yearsâsomething I’ve certainly noticed first-hand in the eight-year period between 2002 and 2010.
We often aspire to be like Sweden, but much of that aspiration was based on a nation image of equality and social stability. Certainly since the mid-2000s, that hasn’t been true, as Sweden embarked on reforms that we had done in the 1980s, with selling state assets and cutting taxes.
Inequality, according to the think-tank quoted in the article, has risen at a rate four times greater than that of the US.
The other sobering statistic that came out earlier this year was that Sweden has the worst-performing economy in Scandinavia.
None of this is particularly aspirational any more, and perhaps it brings me back to the opening of this blog entry: Sir Paul Callaghan.
Given that we had the 1980s’ economic reforms, but we have scarcely seen the level playing-field promised us by the Labour government of that era, our best hope is to innovate in order to create high-value jobs. On that Sir Paul and I were in accord. Let’s play in those niches and beat the establishment with smart, clever New Zealand-owned businessesâand steadily achieve that that level playing field that we’re meant to have.
It’s about cities creating environments that foster innovation and understand the climate needed for it to grow, which includes formally recognizing clusters, identifying and funding them, and having mechanisms that can ensure ideas don’t get lost beyond a mere discussion stageâincluding incubator and educational programmes. The best ideas need to be grown and taken to a global level.
Ah, I hear, many of these agencies already existâand that’s great. Now for the next step.
It’s also about cities not letting politics get in their way and understanding that the growth of a region is healthyâwhich means cooperation between civic leaders and an ability to move rapidly, seizing innovation opportunities. It means a reduction in bureaucracy and the realization that much of the technology exists so that time spent on admin can be kept to a minimum (and plenty of case studies exist in states more advanced than us). Right-brained people thrive when they create, not when they are filling in forms. The streamlining of the Igovt websites by the New Zealand Government is move in the right direction.
We know what has to be doneâespecially given how far down we are based on the following graph from the New Zealand Institute:
As the Institute points out, many of the right moves are being made, and have been made, at the national level. But it is also aware that an internationalization strategy is part of the mixâthe very sort of policy I have lived by in my own businesses. And this begs the question of why there have not been policies that help those who desire to go global and commercialize their ideas at a greater level. That’s the one area where we need to champion those Kiwis who have made itâMassey’s Hall of Fame dinners over the last two years celebrate such New Zealanders in a small wayâand to let those who are at school now know that, when they get into the workforce, that it’s OK to think globally.
If we’re wondering where the gap is, especially in a nation of very clever thinkers, it’s right there: we need to create a means for the best to go global, and make use of our million-strong diaspora, in very high positions, that Sir Paul pointed out in his address. Engagement with those who have made it, and having internationalization experts in our agencies who can call on their own entrepreneurial experiences, would be a perfect start.
Tags: Aotearoa, book, business, commerce, diaspora, export, globalization, innovation, internationalization, Jack Yan, market research, Massey University, mayoralty, New Zealand, New Zealand Institute, OECD, Paul Callaghan, politics, publishing, Sweden, think tank, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in business, leadership, marketing, New Zealand, politics, publishing, Sweden, technology, Wellington | No Comments »
Stefan Engeseth’s next book, Sharkonomics: in business, what can we learn from sharks and their survival?
22.02.2012
When I talked about Nicholas Ind’s book, Meaning at Work, a few weeks ago, I said there were two titles that I wanted to mention.
The second is by my friend Stefan Engeseth, who has followed up some very innovative titlesâDetective Marketing, One and The Fall of PR and the Rise of Advertisingâwith Sharkonomics.
The premise is simple: how have sharks survived millions of years, and can we learn any lessons from them for business?
I’ve been involved with Sharkonomics since Stefan pitched the idea, and I’ve had word of him heading down to South Africa to dive with the beasts.
I’ve dived with them, too, many years ago, except mine weren’t as treacherous as the ones he confronted.
A few of us, in endorsing his book, couldn’t help but use a bunch of shark puns. Don’t let them put you off.
He wants to get further word out and the first 100 people to do so will get the book for free (details here). You can read a brief summary about it here. It’s published by Marshall Cavendish, the people who published One. Also head to Sharkonomicsâ Facebook pageâthere’ll be more information on the upcoming launches and some of the great ideas Stefan has planned for them.
Tags: Amazon, book, business, Facebook, marketing, Marshall Cavendish, publishing, South Africa, Stefan Engeseth, Stockholm, Sweden
Posted in business, marketing, Sweden | 3 Comments »
Nicholas Ind’s Meaning at Work: ïŹnding fulïŹlment in the early 2010s
06.02.2012
Two of my friends have books coming out. I’ll discuss one for now, as it’s been a long long weekend.
The first is my Medinge Group colleague Nicholas Ind’s Meaning at Work, which has now made it on to Amazon, and is getting wider distribution.
You can get an idea of what Meaning at Work is about from Nicholas’s own article at the RSA’s (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) website. But if you’ve followed Nicholas’s work over the years, it’s a logical continuation of his inquiry into making businesses more human and engaged.
Living the Brand, for example, was an early look into organizations that had successfully implemented their brand at every level. The concepts are familiar to most branding practitioners, but Nicholas brought them to life with real-world examples and analyses of those successful organizations. Fast forward to Branding Governance, and there are useful discussions about corporate citizenship and corporate participation. Meaning at Work looks at what attitudes people need to find fulfilment in their work, with engagement and challenge being the keys.
I’ve managed to secure chapter one from Nicholas, who in turn got it from the publisher, minus the illustrations (omitted due to copyright reasons), so you can get a better idea of what it entails. In this first chapter, Nicholas discusses what meaning is, and brings to live numerous examples from literature, art and film. If you’ve ever wondered about some of those works you have heard of but not inquired in toâVirginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse or the real meaning behind RĂ©nĂ© Magritte’s La trahison des imagesâNicholas draws out the necessary meanings for his book in a very accessible fashion.
It’s interesting that Nicholas discusses the depth of meaning in this first chapter, because if you take his works over the course of the 21st century, they are getting deeper and deeper into what makes usâand successful organizationsâtick. Each can be read independently, of courseâNicholas isn’t out to sell us a series of booksâbut there is a natural progression that he has as an author. As someone who has only written one book solelyâthe rest were joint worksâit’s a record I admire. Download chapter one of Meaning at Work here, and order it from the publisher or Amazon UK.
Tags: Amazon, art, book, engagement, humanism, management, Medinge Group, motivation, Nicholas Ind, Norway, organizational behaviour, preview, publishing
Posted in business, culture, leadership, publishing | 1 Comment »