get in there my son!

My new favourite sport

has to be diving. I want to go back!

Blocked YouTube/2

A few days back I commented on an Economist article. I wanted to know more about how internet censorship works. Nick left a very nice comment to that post. So nice I thought it should be an entry in its own right. Still, it leaves me with a desire to understand how censorship works in the west.

Thanks Nick, good luck at LBS next year.
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(guest writer: Nick)

I'm a US/UK citizen living in China (actually, I'll be starting my MBA at LBS this August...)

Anyway, I thought I'd share a little about the whole government censorship thingy. Living here in China, I'm subjected to it a lot and have to resort to various tricks to get around it.

Sites that are permanently blocked here (and no matter what tricks I try to get around the censor, I can't):

The US Democratic or Republican Party's webpages. Absolutely impossible to get to. Also, BBC News. No way, no how, I cannot read it.

CNN.com surprisingly almost always works, however when certain stories about China or democracy in the US are posted, the links are broken.

This past week with the riots in Tibet and the protesters that were shot, the central government has tightened restrictions more that usual. Two months ago a law was passed here that said any website showing streaming video had to be government controlled or owned, essentially shutting down YouTube and Chinese versions of it. This ban however had yet to be implimented... until this week. The government wants to make sure that there is not way that anyone living in Tibet can send photos or video out to the rest of the world (foreign media is banned from Tibet and Xinjiang Provinces due to "unrest"). There are some protest groups that if I were even to google their names, the government would take immediate note of my IP address and I would not be surprised if I had a knock at my door in the middle of the night from some special police. I'd be wary of even typing them here because I don't know what their ability is to read blog comments automatically.

Blogger's publishing tool is not banned here, but most of the time the actual blogs are. I have to use a tool called Anonymouse.org in order to view your blog or even my own.

You were wondering about the mechanism they use...

There are 4 levels.

Beijing central government has a list of banned sites. This is where the US political parties pages are blocked. Because Beijing is doing it, you'd have to have some serious hacking skills to get around it.

Next down, Provinces. Each capital city has an office dedicated to "cleaning" up the content of the internet before it reaches the masses. They have staff who search the internet all day long. If they find a webpage with "objectionable" content, they simply put it on the black list and anyone in China that tries to access it will not be able to (and will have their IP address noted by authories).

Then we come down to the city level. Same as the Provincial level. What the people in the city can see on the internet is up to a few people sitting in a office somewhere in the city. One week blogger and other blog sites may be blocked. The next week, one of the filter administrator's sons starts a blog so Daddy unblocks blogger for one week. Its arbitrary.

Then it comes down to a district level. I live 15km away from my office, but I can view different things in my house (different district). The powers that be in the district where I work will often block hotmail... as they have the power to read all email sent within China, if they read something that doesn't match the Communist Party lines, they will just shut down the email system for a week.

At each of the levels above, a select few have control over what millions of people are able to access. They can even control the content on Chinese forums and message boards. If a Chinese student writes something pro-democracy, their posting will be taken down within seconds and they will receive a warning. If they do it again, it is VERY likely that they will have a surprise visit in the middle of the night and be carried off to the police station were they may be kept for a few days.

I love this country... I love living here, I love the people, I love the food... but in order to live here and maintain your sanity you have to ignore the oppression by the government. If I thought about it as much as I have to write this comment to you, I'd spend my waking hours being furious on behalf of the Chinese populace.

Animoto

I am testing this animoto.com thingy. It lets you create animated slideshows with music and nice transitions. Simple to use. I like. Thanks Gianni for finding it.

Sneakers (superficial impressions)

I am researching sneakers these days. Fascinating stuff.

I Bought this book off Amazon ... it's a bit of a crap book (it costs a lot, it is not particularly well edited and I am not sure how reliable it is in terms of dates), but it gives one very interesting insight: all major sneaker brands are very old and have bags of heritage. For example:

- The sneaker was so-called for its noiseless quality when it was first made with elastic rubber soles. In 1892 GoodYear manufactures Keds, the first sneaker (I think) with a vulcanized rubber sole.




















- Converse is really old. It was founded in 1908 by Marquis M Converse. The Converse All Star was designed in 1917 (although somewhere else in the book it says 1915). In 1918 (end of WW1!) it was endorsed by basketball player Charles "Chuck" Taylor, who later joins the Company. His signature is added to the star patch on the shoe in 1923. In 1935 Converse releases the Jack Purcell (badminton world champion). It's a wonderful shoe.




















- Adidas was founded in 1920 by Adi Dassler. In 1948 Adi falls off with his brother Rudolf, who goes on to found Puma.

- In 1962, Phil Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman start Blue Ribbon Sport (BRS). Initially they import Onitsuka Tiger to the US, later they start manufacturing their own shoes. Nike is established in the early 70's. In 1971 the Nike swoosh logo is purchased for US$35 from an Oregon University design student (she will later be rewarded with an undisclosed amount of Nike shares). In 1972 Bill Bowerman pours rubber into his wife's waffle iron, creating the basis for the popular Nike Waffle Racer. She must have been pissed off!











Having read the book, I was curios to find out what these brands are up to today. Particularly, I was interested in finding out how this wealth of brand heritage is managed nowadays. I took a trip down to central London. Without pretending to give a thorough analysis, here are a few random thoughts:

- Nike Town is in Oxford Street, just opposite the tube entrance. It can't be missed. Needless to say it is a masterpiece of brand display. Several sports showcased in different sections of the store: rugby, running, tennis, golf and there is a whole section dedicated to female athletes.

- Very interesting to see how Nike might perhaps be abandoning their exclusive focus on sport to enter the territory of style (I don't dare call it fashion) with two major sections of the store: the Sports Culture Section (which revisits the historical Nike products such as the AF1 in a modern key) and the Nike ID studio. I would love to discuss this with a Nike brand manager.




















- Nike ID studio is just brilliant. It's multi-level glass environment in the middle of the store, in which you can design your own shoe. It's essentially the same concept of the online Nike ID, with the benefit of having a personal design consultant helping you through the motions and showing you samples of the materials you can work with. This is my creation. It retails for £80.00. The white bit is fake snake!
















- Round the corner from Oxford Street, in Carnaby Street, you'll find a small Onitsuka Tiger shop and a larger Puma shop. The recurring elements are: 1) Colour and style over sport (particularly with Onitsuka Tiger) and 2) Very explicit references to the brands' heritage (with historic models on display under glass cabinets for Onitsuka). I leave thinking that the tree brands are blurring into the same space. Again, would love to discuss it with the above brand manager.
















- Converse stands out. I found a small branded shop next to a multi-brand retailer. Like the other shops, there are plenty of references to the brand's heritage: vintage pictures around the shop, historic models like the All Star, One Star and the beautiful Purcell (I am tempted to attribute all this to the new Nike ownership). However, whereas the other three brands are all somehow blurring into the same sort of 70's-80's retro-colorful style, Converse style is somehow Punk-rocking. You may like it or not, but the Converse brand is definitely the undisputed master in its own space. I resist the temptation to part with £40 for a 90-years-old shoe.

nice ride

Nice ride through the countryside yesterday with Gavin from LBS. Got lost a couple of times, rode 75km, never made it to destination, eventually stopped for lunch, then jumped on a train to head back to London, the legs incredibly stiff. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

blocked youtube (the economist)

Bit of a shitty article on the economist. Interesting but incomplete: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10754988&subjectID=348963&fsrc=nwl

here the integral text:
WHAT you see—or rather, what you don't see—on the internet may be determined by your government. The attitude of officialdom varies when it comes to filtering content of a social nature. In many places agreements are set with service providers to block nasty stuff such as child pornography. In a few countries intervention is stronger, up to the level of pervasive censorship. This week Pakistan's block on YouTube accidentally caused an international outage for that website. Iran and Saudi Arabia have also prevented their citizens from accessing the video-sharing site.

That's it. I would be intrigued to know more about it. For example: what kind of content is blocked in th UK? in Europe? in the US? why? who blocks it? how?

cheesy but good

Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Described as the commencement speech she would give if ever asked to deliver one, this charming, whimsical music video found its origins in a 1997 Chicago Tribune column by Mary Schmich. Two years later, Australian film director Baz Luhrmann (who would go on to direct the Academy Award-winning Moulin Rouge) set Schmich's musings, virtually word for word, to music. Rumored--falsely--to have been an MIT commencement address given by the author Kurt Vonnegut, the Luhrmann production reached #1 in the UK and Ireland, and became a cult hit in the United States.

Soled Out

fascinating stuff

Brands: a big, bold and exciting perspective.

So, I've been one of the lucky guests of Wolff Olins last night, for their Brand Next event. It has been an incredibly inspiring and intellectually stimulating evening, like it hadn't happened to me for a long time.























They have come up with a whole new way to see brands, which I find fascinating. I suspect I am only beginning to elaborate it in my head, and it will probably take a little while before I can really understand it in all its depth and complexity. Anyways, here is my attempt to explain it(*):

The fundamental premise is the following:





So far it may sound a bit naive, but then they expand upon it, in three points ... and the whole thing becomes very relevant:

1. brand = platform
This is for me by far the most interesting point:

"Brands started as a stamp on a product, and became a gadget designed to get people to buy, an emotional lever. Now they’re becoming something bigger and different. Brands are becoming platforms. More and more, customers are invited not just to buy things but to do things. On the platforms of eBay, Wikipedia, flickr and YouTube, people sell things, share knowledge, broadcast visual ideas. Through Zopa, people lend to and borrow from each other. On Sellaband, you can launch your favourite unknown band, and then share in the profits. [...] Across the developed world, consumers are becoming active, even activists, and brands their platform. [...] As consumers are invited not to buy but to work".

In my brand management class at LBS I learned that brands deliver value to the consumer in four ways: (1) they create familiarity, (2) they reduce search costs, (3) they provide a guarantee of performance and (4) they provide meaning. I guess that what the folks at Wolff Olins are saying here is that there is a fifth way: brands provide a platform for consumers to act and express themselves. That way they create value for the consumer, and in return they receive value.

For example, last night I pledged to visit two locations in London and write an opinionated review for World66. By doing so, I will contribute to making the brand more interesting and relevant, and in return the brand will give me an opportunity to perform an action, express myself. No payment involved, a lot of value created.

The 'free beer' they were serving last night really took the concept to it's extreme consequences. It's an open source beer licensed under a Creative Commons license. Basically anyone is free to chance the receipe and the branding elements, and to make money from it:



2. brand = link
Yet, there is another way in which brands create value:

"It’s not just individual customers who use these platforms. Other organisations do too, and brands increasingly link organisations together. [...] Amazon may seem like a bookselling corporation, but actually it’s a constellation of retailers of electronics, homewares, toys and more – plus the wider constellation of people who review and recommend. Creative people increasingly work in consortia, forming communities through conferences like TED or websites like worldchanging.com. Cities like New York are creating a city brand to connect and multiply the impact of the myriad of agencies who promote the city. [...] As brands become less the property of an organisation and more the banner of a movement, ownership will become even looser. Logos will be things other organisations, and individuals, can borrow and adapt".

I love it.

3. brand = theme
Finally:

"As brands become platforms and links, they get used and abused. People want to make them their own – which means they may no longer be the same everywhere. Brand becomes not one tune, but a theme with variations. As ideologies compete, as cultures become more multi, organisations are getting much more sensitive to context, to localness. Even Starbucks – the great exponent of a repeated formula – now believes in ‘identity, not identical’. The BBC has moved from uniformity to create distinctive channel brands. Mandarin Oriental thinks of its hotels as a family, not a chain, so that San Francisco looks and feels different from London and Hong Kong, though there’s a unifying oriental sensibility. [...] The new brands have many ways of doing things, many ways of speaking. They experiment and change over time. The brand is not a perfect blueprint, and brand creators are less architects and more inventors, learning by adapting. What unites the organisation (or constellation) isn’t the surface logo but the underlying idea".

I am wondering whether they had a bit of this in mind when they created the London 2012 logo.

--

(*) and here is how they explain it ... perhaps a bit better.