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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘Mini’
01.01.2023
Here are January 2023âs imagesâaides-mĂ©moires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Notes
Rosa ClarĂĄ image, added as I was archiving files from the third quarter of 2021.
The Claudia Schiffer Rolling Stone cover came to mind recentlyâI believe it was commended in 1991 by the Society of Publication Designers, which I was a member of.
I looked at a few more risquĂ©, but mainstream, covers to see what is appropriate, since the Lucire issue 46 cover was one of our more revealing though most glamorous ones in years. Vanity Fair and Women’s Health were useful US cases.
Lucire 46 cover for our 25th anniversary: hotographed by Lindsay Adler, styled by Cannon, make-up by Joanne Gair, and hair by Linh Nguyen. Gown by the Danes; earrings by Erickson Beamon at Showroom Seven; and modelled by Rachel Hilbert.
Tags: 1961, 1970s, 1975, 1980s, 1989, 1990, 1990s, 2009, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023, actress, advertisement, advertising, Australia, Bertone, BL, BMW, British Leyland, Cannon, car, cartography, celebrity, China, CondĂ© Nast, Croatia, design, Elle, Ellen von Unwerth, fashion, film, Frankfurt, Germany, Giorgetto Giugiaro, Google, humour, Italy, Joanne Gair, JY&A Media, Lindsay Adler, Linh Nguyen, Lucire, magazine, magazine design, magazines, Mastodon, Mini, modelling, New York, Nissan, NY, photography, publishing, science, signage, Society of Publication Designers, Spain, supermodel, TV, UK, USA, Vogue Posted in China, design, gallery, humour, media, publishing, UK, USA | No Comments »
19.05.2021
Yesterday, I worked remotely, and I donât know what possessed me, but as OneDrive was activated on my laptop, I decided to save a word processing file there, planning to grab it from my desktop machine later in the day.
Normally I would just leave the file where it was and transfer it across the network, which is what I should have stuck with.
Heck, even transferring a file using a USB stick would have been a better idea than OneDrive.
I hadnât signed up to it on my desktop PC. I went through the motions, used the default settings where it said it would back up documents and pictures (while making it clear my files would remain exactly where they were). I grabbed the file I needâthe entire 18 kilobytes of itâand thought nothing more. I deactivated OneDrive as I saw no real use for it any more.
Bad idea, because most of my desktop icons vanished, and my Windows default documentsâ and picturesâ folders were emptied out.
After reactivating OneDrive, I found the lot in the OneDrive folder, and promptly moved them back to their original folders. The desktop filesâthe text files I had on there plus the iconsâI duplicated elsewhere. Ultimately, I made new shortcuts for everythingâthank goodness my laptopâs icon layout is identical to my desktopâsâand restored the three text files from their duplicate directory.
The above took me all of a few minutes to write but in reality I spent an hour fixing thisâsomething that Windows said would not happen.
Chalk it up to experienceâconsider this fair warning to anyone who thinks of using âthe cloudâ.

Also in the âsay one thing, do anotherâ file for yesterday: I attempted to sign in to my Flickr account, which has not been touched since around 2008. I tried a range of addresses I had in 2006, when I originally signed up, and attempted to do password resets. Flickr: âInvalid email or password.â I even tried an address that Yahoo! emailed me at in 2018 concerning Flickr, and which Flickr itself said might be the correct email (use your Yahoo! username and add â@yahoo.comâ to the end of it).
I had no other option but to email their support, and mentioned that I was a paying Smugmug customer, given that the photo site now owns Flickr.
They have responded in a timely fashion, not telling me the email I had used, but said they had sent it a password reset in there.
Surprisingly (or maybe not, considering we are talking about another big US site again), the address was indeed one of the ones I had tried (Iâm glad I kept a record). Except now it worksâwhatâs the bet that post-enquiry, they fixed things up in order to send me that reset email?
I thanked the support person for the reset email, but suggested that they had some bugs, and fixing them would mean less for him to do.
Don Marti linked an interesting article in The Drum in which he was quoted. Duck Duck Go, Firefox and Github have all opposed Googleâs new FLOC tracking method. Meanwhile, Bob Hoffman points out that only four per cent of Apple users have opted in to tracking after the Cupertino companyâs new OS opted you out by default.
Most of the time, people tell me that they find targeted ads âcreepyâ as they appear from site to site, so itâs no wonder that take-up has been so low with Apple users. So if not FLOC, then what?
Well, hereâs a radical idea: show ads on sites that have subject-matter relevant to the advertiser. Itâs what happened before Googleâs monopoly, and there were plenty of smaller ad networks that did a great job of it. The prices were still reasonable, and Google wasnât taking a big cut of the money earned. Of course Big Tech doesnât like it, because they wonât earn as much, and the old system actually required people with brains to figure out how best to target, something creepy tracking has tried to replace.
The old methods, with their personal touch, resulted in some creative advertising workâI remember we had some page takeovers on Lucireâs website where the traditional header was redesigned to show off the R55 Mini, thanks to one of our earlier ad directors, Nikola McCarthy. No tracking involved, but a great brand-builder and a fantastic way for Mini to get a fashion connection. Ads with tracking are so transactional and impersonal: âBuy this,â or, âYouâve searched for this. Buy this.â
I doubt it does the brands much good, and before you say that that doesnât matter, let me also add that it canât do the humans much good, either. The userâs purpose is reduced to clicking through and buying; so much for building a relationship with them and understanding their values. That isnât marketing: itâs straight selling. Which means the marketing departments that put these deals together are doing themselves out of a job. Theyâre also spending money with a monopoly that, as far as I have read, doesnât have independently certified metrics, which 20 years ago would have been a concern with some agencies.
I do like innovations, but every now and then, I feel the newer methods havenât done us much good. Tracking is tracking, no matter what sort of jargon you use to disguise it.
Tags: 2000s, 2021, advertising, Aotearoa, Apple, BMW, Bob Hoffman, bug, bugs, Don Marti, Flickr, Google, JY&A Media, Lucire, marketing, media, Microsoft, Mini, New Zealand, privacy, publishing, Smugmug, USA Posted in business, internet, marketing, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology, USA | No Comments »
11.10.2012
When BMW showed its Mini Rocketman concept, a lot of people applauded it: here was something that was roughly (1959) Mini-sized, rather than the larger car that it has become. In fact, the Mini Countryman gets the most criticism because it is not mini at all, but 4·1 m long (the original Mini was just over 3 m).
As I wrote elsewhere, I was a big fan of the Mini Spiritual, a show car that BMW displayed, created by Rover’s British designers. It was a smidge over 3 m (10 ft) long yet had incredible packaging, staying true to Mini creator Alec Issigonis’s aims. In fact, when Issigonis tried to replace his own Mini, it was with a design that was smaller than the Mini externally yet more space-efficient.
So I was interested when my friend, Kiwi expat Wayne Sotogi of Inspia Creative, cooked up the illustration below, wondering if a thoroughly modern Mini could be created and be around 10 ft long.
This is a concept only, and no consideration has been given to internal packaging and how that might suit modern tastes, but when a Mondeo is wider, taller and roomier than a Falcon, you have to wonder about automotive sizes. Mazda, with its current Demio, and a few other manufacturers have tried to ensure that their current models aren’t larger than their predecessors.
Personally, I like it (why else would I blog about it?). It has style, the right Mini cues, and if some buyers are OK with Japanese kei cars, then why not?

Tags: 1990s, Adobe, Australia, BMW, car design, design, designer, Mini, Wayne Sotogi Posted in cars, design, interests, New Zealand | No Comments »
02.01.2011
SAIC is doing a great job in tapping to the heritage of MG and the companies that have gone before. Hop over to the SAICâMG site and you’ll see this image to tie in to the launch of the B-class MG 3 hatchback:

The imagery tells a good deal of the story already: the Austin 7, the Morris Minor 1000, the ADO 16, the MG ZR Mk II, the MG 3 SW, and the latest MG 3. The text refers to the 80 years of expertise that MG has had in small cars (more if you begin counting the other parts of BMC), how they are beloved of the Royal Family, how such old cars are kept by their fans in Britain, and, after the company created the Mini (a particularly cheeky reference to either the 1959 or the 2000 Miniâit’s intentionally ambiguous), it’s moved on to China.
My Mandarin is non-existent but I’m guessing that the names referred to in the text are Pinyin transliterations of Morris and Cecil Kimber.
Never mind that there are probably more Britons buying new German cars these days, and that BMW might not be that happy to see MG claim that it created the Mini. Technically, there is no lying here, and gives MG a far better halo effect among Chinese buyers than it ever had with British ones in its waning days under UK ownership.
It also helps that the mainstream (state-run) media in Red China don’t go around rubbishing MG and Roewe like the British media were so keen to do with MG and Rover.
Early indications from Chinese websites such as the China Car Times is that the MG 3âs interior quality leaves something to be desired, while MG fans at Keith Adams’s AROnline site are generally negative about the styling.
This is not the MG that traditionalists know, with the TF, A or B, but then, the latest MG 3 is probably on a par with the MG Metro of the 1980s as a warmed-over hatch. The MG 6, at least, doesn’t look like the Roewe 550 on which it is basedâand that’s a step up from the MG Maestro of the same decade. This promotional message might not work perfectly in markets where MG can’t be readily mixed with Austin and Morris, but as a marketing exercise, the copy and the imagery give MG with a sense of desirability (Chinese buyers might be shifting to favouring local brands, but there’s still a bit of snobbery about foreign ones), and of proven expertise (which few of its rivals can claim).
It’s the sort of sophistication that few would give credit to a Chinese automaker for having. However, it shows that imagination and humour are not lacking in Shanghaiâand even if you don’t like the look of the 2011 MG 3, it’s at least original, unlike the Toyota clones coming from BYD. At this rate, the occident should be worried about the rise of the Chinese motor industry, because even the marketing is getting cleverer.
Tags: Autocade, BMW, branding, British, cars, China, culture, heritage, history, marketing, MG, Mini, Red China, SAIC, Shanghai, UK Posted in branding, business, cars, China, culture, design, internet, marketing, media, UK | 3 Comments »
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