Cool is hard to define. But in the simplest sense, I think it's an attitude centred around the overt self expression of your uniqueness, done in a knowingly stylish way. Even when it's anti stylish. One of the things I've noticed since my first trip to Shanghai is the rise of self-expression and the search for cool. Perhaps it was always there but now it's more obvious, in the way people dress, what they do, talk about etc. It's less obvious in the bars because that's where money talks and money & cool rarely work together. Despite what the Armani wearing tossers think. Check this out.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Difference
Much of what I've read since I got here is about how different things are. Not just between China and everywhere else. But even within China. Now to some extent I'm sure that's true. But perhaps that confuses our role with that of an academic, for we are not academics, we live in the commercial world and commercial demands are our master.
Difference can be served by commercial interests but only a certain amount of difference. Difference, within commerce, is the territory of sales. When companies were smaller, they could rely on their sales people or proxy sales people like stall holders and shop keepers to influence end buyers. But companies can not stop there: they must push on, get bigger, convert more people into buyers. So they have to spread their wings, they have to increase their footprint. So much so that they can no longer talk to each and every end buyer. As they do this, the competition becomes fiercer as other strong companies seek to both defend their existing territory and grow it elsewhere. Sales alone can not deal with this challenge but marketing can. Marketing becomes much more important. Marketing finds the common threads, building on the similarities. But then marketing, driven especially by research departments and agency planners, with their over excitement in data and not seeing the wood from the trees, begins to obsess about difference. Marketing budget can barely struggle to do their job when everything is similar. They will fail completely if they seek to address all of this difference. Perhaps there's something dangerous about a discipline forgetting about what made it so special in the first place? Our job is to find clarity and seek opportunity. If we can't afford it, it isn't our opportunity, it's someone elses.
Difference can be served by commercial interests but only a certain amount of difference. Difference, within commerce, is the territory of sales. When companies were smaller, they could rely on their sales people or proxy sales people like stall holders and shop keepers to influence end buyers. But companies can not stop there: they must push on, get bigger, convert more people into buyers. So they have to spread their wings, they have to increase their footprint. So much so that they can no longer talk to each and every end buyer. As they do this, the competition becomes fiercer as other strong companies seek to both defend their existing territory and grow it elsewhere. Sales alone can not deal with this challenge but marketing can. Marketing becomes much more important. Marketing finds the common threads, building on the similarities. But then marketing, driven especially by research departments and agency planners, with their over excitement in data and not seeing the wood from the trees, begins to obsess about difference. Marketing budget can barely struggle to do their job when everything is similar. They will fail completely if they seek to address all of this difference. Perhaps there's something dangerous about a discipline forgetting about what made it so special in the first place? Our job is to find clarity and seek opportunity. If we can't afford it, it isn't our opportunity, it's someone elses.
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