browse:
play now:
Owned by: Jack Yan & Associates
Last Updated: 11/21/2008 @ 10:54 AM CT
Update Now

General Actions

Add To My Favorites

Digg This Add To Digg

RSS Link RSS For This Feed

Permalink - UrlURL For This Page

More About This Feed

Feed owner
Jack Yan & Associates
Website
Author
Jack Yan & Associates
Copyright
Copyright ©2006 by Jack Yan & Associates. All rights reserved.
Feed Details
Feed Frequency
Type: Unknown
Podcast Feed Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog

Jack Yan—branding consultant, typeface designer, author, speaker, media owner—blogs his thoughts on his fields, and on trends, globalization, policy, business and social responsibility.

Episodes in this podcast
Most recent   Past month(21)   Past year(163)   Forever(270)  
Type: Unknown
WED
NOV
19
2008
That was one of the more entertaining Vista Group gatherings for a while, with the entire ‘A’ Team there (minus our equivalent of B. A. Baracus).
   In summary, about the US automakerbailout, the views were the following:

• Jim: Chapter 7;
• Mark: Chapter 11;
• Natalie: the good thing is that the Hummer brand will die;
• Jack: loan guarantees but with harsh conditions.

   As usual, some of the more interesting things came up off the agenda. An important one, which no doubt affects most readers, is the value of social networking and similar services.
   Natalie cannot see much merit in certain sites such as Digg, Twitter and Facebook beyond their core raisons d’être, and Facebook, in particular, was good to keep in touch with old friends, for instance for a get-together. Jim and Mark felt that sites such as LinkedIn did their networking task far better.
   I have to agree in most respects. Last night, Campbell Live interviewed my friend Helen Baxter, who commented about Facebook. In its quest to find the most connected New Zealander, it noted that John Key had 5,000—the programme neglected to mention that 5,000 is the upper friend limit on the service—while Helen Clark remained in the high 2,000s. DJ Pauline Gillespie had between 3,000 and 4,000.
   If politicians have Facebook pages—as they have had for some time—then we can say that the cool factor has worn off. If a prime-time TV programme does a segment on friend numbers on Facebook, then we can definitely say the cool factor has worn off (albeit Campbell Live is still cooler than Close up).
   Before you say that there is no way that these sites will lose patronage, remember that no one said that of Yahoo! or AltaVista as the last decade ended. Yahoo! stock has been heading south (to the point where Reuter and others no longer put the exclamation mark at the end of the name), while most people under a certain age have not even heard of AltaVista. Once upon a time, both sites behaved as though they would be around forever: the thought of Yahoo! being acquired was about as likely as that new upstart singer Britney Spears announcing she had lost her virginity.
   Their downfall began happening around 1998 when they began adding non-search services and moved away from what they did best: maintaining a directory and search services respectively. Then some new site called Google started up. The rest is history.
   I personally loved AltaVista and thought the site did the portal thing better than most. The AltaVista Entertainment Zone was a good place to get more in-depth, well written content in the early 2000s. But the model was not sustainable: Entertainment Zone was killed off, and there was one less reason to go to AV. Especially as those folks at that Google site began growing the index.
   So we know that success as a dot com can be fleeting. Facebook has shown itself to be one of the most arrogant sites out there. Statistics show that we still get a bit of traffic through the service on our sites, but I wonder if Natalie is right when she predicts that people will move away from such networks in favour of specific content sites once more.
   While I am around 18 friends away from the 1,000 mark—with around one in seven not known to me, who are most likely my customers—I no longer go in to Facebook regularly. I have the feeds from this blog plugged in, and it keeps my contacts in touch with what I have Dugg or posted. About a year ago I would say I was a daily or twice-daily visitor. Or worse: some of my team say they remember my having one laptop open just on Facebook. (Hey, that counted as one visit. Just a really long visit.)
   For many of the less well known social networks out there, I say they need to be profession- or interest-specific in order to survive.
   I’d rather concentrate on developing our own media properties then, write the occasional blog post so Mark can link to my experiences about ‘Asian banking’, and do what I did at the beginning of the century when it came to the ’net: increase our search engine visibility with solid articles.
   As to LinkedIn, I wonder if its heyday has passed, too. However, it has survived all these newer social networks and it has remained a viable business one. Never mind that it has a few things to answer for with its corporate behaviour, we might be in an era when people want to take away some of their lives’ complexities, focus a bit more on the real things (real-life friendships are more fun than Facebook-only ones), and see what we can do to give our existence some meaning.
   Fun time with Facebook, just as with AltaVista, might be over.
Type: Unknown
WED
NOV
19
2008
I’m not sure if you can do this sign in the US, but in New Zealand, you can with our sense of humour: it’s at the New Orleans bar (formerly Paris), on Lambton Quay, Wellington. Two of the staff are Frenchmen so we chatted more about the fact that Orléans is a French town. You can even do a President Bush impersonation and say, ‘I see the reconstruction’s fine, and you don’t need my help,’ and not get nasty glances.

   This one at Get Funk’d might be more universal though:

We never found out if she did get fired.
   However, I did not know what to do with this one at the National Bank on Manners Street, Wellington:

The first time I was not sure about this. I thought it was some modern form of segregation. I went to the regular queue with them white and brown folk. When I got to the teller, I asked him if the bank expected Kazakhs, Iranians, Indians and Asiatic Russians to go with the ‘Asian Banking’ sign. He was a bit humourless and it went over his head. But he did tell me that the staff were multilingual or spoke different dialects as I noted I did not speak Mandarin. I was welcome to go there next time.
   The second time I put this to the test. I figured that if the National Bank wanted all Asians—if you are one of the group descended from or related to the 3·7 billion from Asia—to turn right and not left, and segregate us, I would go along with it. Plus the teller from the time before said the staff were multilingual. I went to ask if any of the Chinese staff (I did not see any Japanese, Kazakhs, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis or any others) if they spoke Cantonese. They did not. Therefore, I went to queue up with the regular folk.
   The Mandarin-speaking woman working there did come to ask if she could help me. I said I wanted a cheque cashed. She said I was in the right queue. I remarked that I was just following the signs about segregation because I didn’t want to go all Rosa Parks-on-the-bus on them. (And the last time whites pulled this stunt with Chinese we got so pissed off that we brought down the Ching Dynasty in 1911, so bringing down a single bank is not too hard.)
   This time, my teller was (probably locally born) Chinese and could appreciate the nuances. She, like me, thought it was inappropriate for Chinese to be grouped with 3·7 billion people on the Asian continent. And we had very little in common with, say, the fictional Borat, who is from Asia. Or Emperor Hirohito. Or Gandhi. Or my friend Merrill Fernando who sells tea on TV.
   She said I was the first customer to have interpreted the sign as requesting Asians go to a separate part of the bank but she would raise it with the manager. I said that even the Chinese writing said ‘Asian banking’. But I still do not know what the sign means: clearly all ‘Asians’ cannot be assisted because there are only Mandarin-speaking staff in that section of the bank. Clearly there, the services are specialized and regular banking is still with the regular tellers. This was deceptive advertising.
   I am so glad I have closed the majority of our ANZ–National–Post Office Savings Bank–Countrywide–whatever-else-was-merged accounts. I don’t understand this lack of logic and it shows a poignant lack of cultural awareness. (As a non-customer it is a stupid thing to have a laugh about and I hope they will leave it up as a relic!)
   So they want Asians in another part of the bank but they don’t. And they can’t serve any Asians anyway unless you speak Mandarin, which is about 28 per cent of all Asians, but it’s pretty sweeping and arrogant to say all Asians should go that way. I do not know of any Chinese who would not find this sign either insulting, humorous, or stupid (count me in for the last two), which are probably three qualities that the National Bank wishes to convey. And I bet every other Asian, say folks from Tajikistan or Azerbaijan or Vietnam or India, are wondering why they can’t get served in that section or why their languages aren’t included on the sign or by the Chinese staff.
   The sign should read, in Chinese, ‘Specialized services for Mandarin-speaking customers’ which, believe it or not, would fit into the space they have anyway, and is probably what the bank means.
   Congratulations, National Bank, you’re stupid in two languages. Which is better than being stupid in three:

PS.: Since when was Monotype Garamond a permitted typeface based on the National Bank’s corporate identity or graphic standards’ manual? I know I haven’t been a customer for a while, but I remember when it was Plantin and then Foundry Oldstyle. The website is in Foundry Sans. Maybe I missed something along the way. Or the bank has a problem communicating with its signmakers. (It clearly has a problem communicating with Asians.)
Type: Unknown
WED
NOV
19
2008
Today at the Vista Group luncheon, we’ll be discussing the USauto industry’s desire for a government bailout. My view: of course it’ll be great to protect US manufacturingjobs, since the situation is not of the plant workers’ doing. As mentioned in one of my papers, ‘Saving Detroit’, the troubles are self-made: brand mismanagement by the Germans when Chrysler was part of DaimlerChrysler, which I have documented elsewhere; and internal politics within Ford, which is the stuff of legend. GM isn’t totally in the clear but it has done more to attempt to integrate an unwieldy structure (just not quickly enough, with hindsight), coordinate automotive platforms, spread its risk with small cars than its other US rivals, and even engage with consumers via its blog. It’s also taking a useful innovative chance with the Chevrolet Volt, reversing the failures of the EV-1 electric car project.
   Rationalization of any of these groups will only lead to repeating what happened in the UK when British Leyland began imploding after it was effectively nationalized in 1975. But a major restructuring of all car firms in the US is needed, whether they get taxpayer money or not. And if they do, then restructuring becomes all the more urgent because it’s the US taxpayers’ money they’re spending.
   Chrysler has a terrible product line other than minivans and Jeeps, for the most part—Daimler left it in such a state that it has a poor product line in passenger cars, and the 300 is becoming increasingly dated. Ford’s political structure is so ingrained and so biased against its German and Australian outposts—which design and make far better passenger cars than Dearborn—that it keeps shooting itself in the foot by actually creating flops when they are sold Stateside. I wonder if Alan Mulally can change it. Lee Iacocca couldn’t. And GM has such a poor record of taking steps backwards over the last 20 years—but at least it accepts that it has centres of excellence around the world that can potentially create the cars that people want.
   As the firms run out of money, the options are not great. Renault failed to acquire Chrysler, so a merger with GM might be the only path to take—which means job losses anyway and the end of the Chrysler and Dodge marques. Ford should federalize some of its overseas models and stop sabotaging itself. General Motors itself probably needs to simplify its product ranges—it’s easier to understand Toyota and Honda’s ranges—and use Saturn as its Opel-importing arm, which is happening anyway (bring in the Brazilian Chevrolet Vectra, for example, for sedan-loving Americans, and the Opel Corsa D to beef up the supermini end of the range to fight Honda’s Fit). And all three need to trim the number of retail outlets if their support costs are too high.
   We’re also talking major cultural changes that I can’t see Chrysler and Ford accepting that quickly, but strangely, Chrysler has a better chance: it was well integrated prior to Daimler-Benz buying it, and that was just over 10 years ago. There should be enough people around who can turn back the clock. GM has started and it needs to pick up the pace, and certainly it needs to define its individual brands.
   I say the US Government could provide some guarantees and certainty for the sake of jobs, but the conditions need to go well beyond salary caps and executive compensations. We are talking serious rebranding (and I mean the vision-, culture- and process-changing definition and not slapping on a new logo) here—something that large US corporations tend to have a problem understanding, executing and absorbing. Or, they get caught up in the rhetoric of branding thanks to the way some of the consultancies work.
   It’s through such a process that they can see the forest for the trees, understand their businesses at a global level, connect better to the future needs of their customers, and avoid this happening again. They even need to learn to listen to their own. It’s this failure to learn that is making the current crisis smell like the 1970s for the US car industry—except this time the problems have been worsened by the arrogance that has come with years of easy credit. And if you do search around the ’net, you’ll find that some of us saw this coming years ago—which begs the question, why were the car industry’s best and brightest within these firms shut up? They need to be heard.
   The automakers will survive, but it will be a slimmer industry than what we have known for most of our lives. And the French and Japanese will continue to employ US workers to assemble Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans and other brands Stateside. It just won’t be the same as foreign companies will look after their own bottom line—which means profits heading to Paris or Tokyo.
Type: Unknown
THU
NOV
13
2008
As I call in around the country to different companies, I have noticed a few things. First, the General Election has made no real difference to the way people feel. It’s no surprise: John Key voted the same way as Helen Clark on many of the least popular pieces of legislation, and fewer people trusted him yet wanted him in office. I also wonder if the US presidential election, having had such a grand effect on people around the world, caused our own to be such an anticlimax.
   Secondly, people are still hurting out there economically. Every day the media tell them that things are bad. And as a result consumer confidence gets driven down. Yet I wonder how much of this is real.
   The usual indicators of petrol prices and interest rates are good. Granted, our petrol prices have not fallen as much as in the US: Stanley Moss, CEO of the Medinge Group, notes that it has dropped US$1. Ours have dropped between 50 and 60 cents. So why are we feeling the pinch this badly?
   Our exposure to world markets has been limited. We have been simply lucky that even our banks have not had a tough time relative to the US. The links between them have not been that strong, so their exposure to the sub-prime mortgage mess there has not been that great.
   Even our Australian-owned banks have had relatively minimal exposure. It would have been worse had Lloyds TSB held on to the National Bank, but it didn’t. They only say they’re hurting because they haven’t been able to screw as much out of us as we go to TSB (no relation to the UK one!) and Kiwibank.
   Under Labour, there has been more of an emphasis on culture over the technocracy, at least in its first term. In many respects, we have been shielded, more by accident than design.
   House prices are on the rise again, too.
   The troublesome industries are tourism, which is no surprise and never has been to me, but that will likely readjust as our Australian neighbours might consider New Zealand again; and automotive, as people hang on to their cars for a little longer.
   Exporters are hurting, too, and I am one of them. But I think many of us were prudent, too, about whom we dealt with, and while the Labour government embraced Red China with open arms, hopefully enough of us have held back on depending on a communist nation going through its share of troubles.
   What is hurting consumer confidence is the failure to communicate the positive elements of the economy—because many in the mainstream media are technocrats who are not fans of a strong New Zealand. And bad news makes some people feel important.
   They would rather we be weakened so our companies can continue to be acquired by foreign interests that see New Zealanders as units of production to be exploited.
   So if it’s doom and gloom for their way of life, we are told that it’s doom and gloom for ours.
   Cobblers.
   We’ll pull through this because we haven’t pursued technocratic, monetarist policies with the fervour that we did in the 1980s under the reforms of the Architect of Doom, Roger Douglas.
   The last nine years have not been great under a government that failed to generate real growth in innovation or support small businesses that had potential to create national champions.
   However they have also been less technocratic than the nine years before that.
   National did some things in the 1990–9 term that interestingly paved the way for foreign direct investment that buoyed the start of the 21st century, admittedly going against what I have been saying is healthy for us. Yet the other indicators have been less optimistic, such as our failure to pay for free education, rising crime and a growing gap between rich and poor—things that Labour has failed to repair but at least it was aware of the problems. National was less aware back then.
   Consequently, we have not been as exposed to foreign financial woes as greatly as we could have been.
   All we need to do now is wake up to these basic facts. Among ourselves, we can keep trade moving. And I know we can do it. After all, we haven’t had much support from government for a while anyway, so we’re used to fixing our own problems.
Type: Unknown
WED
NOV
12
2008
A prank edition of The New York Times, published by the Yes Men, had me going a bit earlier today.
   After receiving a realistic looking release and knowing that 1·2 million copies had gone out in print, it was a heck of an expensive prank from the liberal group. But it worked.
   My first reaction on downloading the newspaper was: ‘Wishful thinking or a total departure from reality? Have the editors seen one too many Early Editions? Whatever the case, it’s an interesting marketing ploy and bound to generate discussions about the confirmation of media bias, optimism for the Obama administration, the accusation that the new President is a quitter, that Jayson Blair was not the only journalist in a culture of creating fiction, that Republicans are humourless, and more.’
   Until, of course, I realize one of life’s little ironies: as I have been on my high horse about believing stuff over the internet, a pretty realistic prank got me pretty good as I got phished on to the spoof site.
   Here’s what the Yes Men had to say: ‘Hundreds of independent writers, artists, and activists are claiming credit for an elaborate project, 6 months in the making, in which 1.2 million copies of a “special edition” of the New York Times were distributed in cities across the U.S. by thousands of volunteers. …
   ‘The people behind the project are involved in a diverse range of groups, including The Yes Men, the Anti-Advertising Agency, CODEPINK, United for Peace and Justice, Not An Alternative, May First/People Link, Improv Everywhere, Evil Twin, and Cultures of Resistance.’
   With hindsight, it’s all 20-20: the email even says it came from the Yes Men and on closer inspection, the typefaces aren’t even The New York Times’, though they come darned close. Close enough for a non-NYT reader to be fooled.
   This edition goes on for 14 pp. including full-page advertisements.
   I take my hat off to the Yes Men: an expensive exercise, great exposure for their point of view, and a fantastic (albeit short-lived) way to get blogosphere discussions going.

Tags On This Feed login to add/edit tags