Keeping the Victoria in Victoria University of Wellington

  A letter I penned today to Prof Grant Guilford, Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University of Wellington. I support the official adoption of a Māori name (I thought it had one?) but removing Victoria is daft, for numerous reasons, not least the University’s flawed research, dealt with elsewhere. Wellington, August 8, 2018 Prof Grant Guilford Vice-Chancellor […]

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If FCA kills Chrysler today, then it’s another chapter of a company weakening its brands

There’s a rumour circulating that Fiat (specifically, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, or FCA) will kill the Chrysler marque today.    The range currently consists of two models: the ageing 300 and the relatively fresh Pacifica.    It seems to be another step in the mismanagement of car marques, especially US ones, something I wrote about many […]

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Ford to stop selling passenger cars in the US and Canada, save for Mustang and Focus Active

The Ford Focus Active: by the turn of the decade, this will be the only four-door passenger car Ford will sell in the US and Canada   In a surprise move, Ford has announced that it will cease selling passenger cars in the US and Canada by the early 2020s, excepting the Mustang and the […]

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Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: the signs were there for years, if one only looked

Facebook’s woes over Cambridge Analytica have only prompted one reaction from me: I told you so. While I never seized upon this example, bravely revealed to us by whistleblower Christopher Wylie and reported by Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison of The Guardian, Facebook has shown itself to be callous about private data, mining preferences even […]

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Social media: not the evolution you might have expected

I’m getting a buzz seeing how little I update social media now. Around February 2016 I began updating Tumblr far less; I’ve gone from dozens of posts per month to four in December 2017 and seven in January 2018. (Here’s my Tumblr archive.) Facebook, as many of you know, is a thing of the past […]

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Zuckerberg wants to fix Facebook: too little, too late

WTF: welcome to Facebook. (Creative Commons photograph.) Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to fix Facebook in 2018 is, in my opinion, too little, too late.    However, since I ceased updating my Facebook profile last month, I’ve come across many people who tell me the only reason they stay on it is to keep in touch with […]

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Being an optimist for a better post-Google, post-Facebook era

Interesting to get this perspective on ‘Big Tech’ from The Guardian, on how it’s 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 […]

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New Zealand slips to 17th in latest Good Country Index

Above: Simon Anholt, giving a talk at TEDSalon Berlin. Out today: my friend Simon Anholt’s Good Country Index, with the Netherlands taking the top spot from Sweden, which drops to sixth. New Zealand is in 17th, failing in prosperity and equality, and in cultural contribution (previously we had been 5th and 12th). On the plus […]

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Trading identities in the 2010s: when corporate branding and personal branding adopt each other’s methods

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 Other’s Roles, a fine read published by the Foreign Policy Centre that argued that countries were trying to look […]

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