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When James Monsees and Adam Bowen were studying product design in Stanford University, they became friends during the smoke breaks. Their struggle to quit smoking led them to try and create a product that might help. In 2007, they founded Ploom Inc, which became Pax Labs, and began development on a line of cannabis and nicotine vaporisers. This eventually created the product now known as Juul — a slim, silvery USB-stick like device that has become a massive hit, particularly among the young. Its unusual look, approach to marketing, and product was a huge disruption that paid off. It sold 2.2 million devices in 2016 during its first full year on the market, and has made $1.26 billion during the first half of 2019. Its flavoured pods are wildly popular — accounting to 80% of its sales — and it’s become part of pop culture, spawning its own hashtags on Instagram, and even accounts that follow celebrities like Sophie Turner / Sansa of Game of Thrones using its product. The beautiful silver device could be easily hidden, could be charged via USB, and didn’t look like the weird tacky devices that its competitors used. Juul disrupted the market by looking nothing like the market, and by being aggressive in its marketing.
It’s paying for it now. Via TIME:
On Sept. 9, the Food and Drug Administration sent Juul a warning letter accusing the company of violating federal regulations by promoting its e-cigarettes as a safer option than traditional cigarettes and threatening the company with fines and product seizures if it continued. Two days later, the Trump Administration said it planned to pull from the market flavoured e-cigarettes such as Juul’s mango, creme and mint pods. […] Given the possible risks to the nation’s youth, Juul’s rapid growth has been accompanied by remarkably little oversight or regulation. And while there is a legitimate debate over whether e-cigarettes are safer for adult smokers than traditional cigarettes, and whether they can help addicts quit smoking, critics argue that Juul has assiduously followed Big Tobacco’s playbook: aggressively marketing to youth and making implied health claims a central pillar of its business plan.
Disruption isn’t always a good thing, as you can see. Laws often race to keep up with new products, and as companies move to maximise profit in a climate of late-stage capitalism, they have the potential to spread harm more quickly than overloaded courts can keep up.
We Need to Talk about Uber
When Uber first started gaining traction in Australia, I didn’t dare to use it by myself. Getting into a stranger’s car? Trusting your safety to an app? It took me several trips with a friend to download it to my phone, and when I first used it in Singapore, my parents freaked out and insisted I get a cab. Now, Uber is ubiquitous. Not even my parents question it any longer. In Singapore, Uber has been eaten by the taxis’ Grab App, but in Australia Uber is not just going strong, it’s getting more popular. I use UberEats almost exclusively, and I hardly ever use cabs here.
That being said, the last time I was in an Uber car, the driver asked me and my passenger to download Didi, another app. It was a Chinese competitor, one that gave drivers a larger share of the profits. It got me thinking. Is Uber really the great disruption that it claims to be — that people usually raise when they even talk about disruptive brands — or is it a fraud, a cancer on its drivers and an investment disaster that people don’t want to see?
Uber itself has warned that it may never make a profit. Via Wired:
Everyone knows that Uber is loss-making — something that, in Silicon Valley circles at least, has become almost a badge of honor. But the extent of its losses, slowing revenue growth, potential overvaluation, and the fact that Uber has warned it may never actually make a profit, casts serious doubt over its plans for world domination. It has turned into what Alyssa Altman, transportation lead at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient, called “the magical money burning machine.”
Less than five months after the confirmation of its US $3.1 billion acquisition of Dubai-based rival Careem — which had been one of the worst-kept secrets in Mideast tech — Uber posted the biggest loss in its history: a cool $5.24 billion in the second quarter. Little wonder that the August 8 filing prompted a selloff in Uber stock, which in mid-August hit $34 a share, 25 percent below the price set in its disappointing IPO.
So just how did the world’s largest ride-hailing app — and multiple millionaire-maker for Careem employees and investors — lose so much money? One factor was the stock-based compensation that Uber paid its employees, which cost it about $3.9 billion — yet there are multiple factors behind the higher-than-expected additional loss.
There have also been rapes and more, even in Melbourne, and the response of ridesharing companies have tended to be lukewarm. Safety and profitability aside, Uber has been effectively abusing its drivers, the people who make the app possible in the first place. Drivers are not entitled to minimum wage, sick leave, or any benefits that full-time employees get, even though some of them do work full time. In Australia, Fair Work has determined that drivers aren’t classified in as employees. In California, it’s another story:
Workers in California have just won a major victory. On 10 September, California senators voted to pass AB5 – a groundbreaking piece of legislation that permanently closes a loophole allowing companies to misclassify their workers as contractors, denying them benefits and livable wages.
As a Lyft driver, I share this victory with other gig workers: the janitors, construction workers and housekeepers. I and thousands of other misclassified workers will finally get the rights and protections that all workers deserve. What’s more, AB5 could lay the groundwork for other states and countries to stand up and protect gig workers like me.
Another disruptor, AirBnB, has created unique problems for cities:
Many cities say the short-term holiday lettings boom is contributing to soaring long-term rents, although speculation and poor social housing provision are also factors. Last year Palma de Mallorca voted to ban almost all listings after a 50% increase in tourist lets was followed by a 40% rise in residential rents.
Many are now trying to take action: in Paris, landlords face a fine if they fail to register with city hall before letting any property short-term (although many do not), while Amsterdam has tried to cut its annual limit for holiday lets to one month in 12, and last year Barcelona suspended all new short-term rental permits.
But city authorities now fear that the EU’s attempts to promote e-commerce and the “sharing economy” across the bloc are impeding their efforts to ensure that neighbourhoods remain both affordable and liveable for residents.
“The cities are not against this type of holiday rental,” they said. “Tourism provides a city with income and jobs. They do think they should be able to set rules.”
If you think about Uber as “cabs, but unregulated”, and AirBnB as “renting, but unregulated”, you can see how and why the damage caused was so widespread. Laws are often put in place to regulate industries for a reason. By finding loopholes within the system, the gig economy — while extremely useful for many — has also created a host of problems that it’s ill-equipped to address. That’s unregulated disruption for you, and we should’ve seen it coming.
Is Disruption Really That Bad
Disruptive brands become successful because they address an untouched niche in the market. Being able to summon a car to you from anywhere using an app and watch it approach on your screen is great. Being able to book an apartment for a short holiday stay instead of a hotel is fun. Having a vaping device that looks futuristic is cool. They are, in a way, a natural result of market forces. Brands hope to come up with a disruptive product because of the way it has the potential to not just create tons of profit, but also because of the way they can then manoeuvre to dominate their particular industry.
In a way, by having identified these niches in the market, these brands have opened the way for competing brands to proliferate, brands that might address the ethical problems in their progenitor apps. FairBnB, for example, is trying to become an ethical alternative to AirBnB, with a pilot launching in a handful of European cities this year:
Fairbnb is launching a pilot in five European cities in April – Amsterdam, Venice and Bologna in Italy, and Valencia and Barcelona in Spain. The company pledges to give half its profits to local projects, such as housing for neighborhood associations, nonprofit food cooperatives or community gardens.
Veracruz said members of the community, as well as travelers, would be involved in suggesting which causes to support. He added that this investment policy would not make it more expensive than Airbnb, as the company will take the hit rather than passing these costs onto renters or hosts.
The company also promises to share data with regulators to help enforce local rules, and ensure each host rents out only one home. This might not eliminate some of the issues that annoy neighbors of Airbnb guests, such as noise. But it would stop people from posting multiple houses where they don’t live and don’t have to face the neighbors the next day.
For ridesharing, there’s now Via, which is trying to position itself as a more ethical company than Uber or Lyft. Some companies also try to course-correct, conscious of their public image. Juul has had to cut out all US advertising, and its CEO has stepped down. Too late, maybe, but it’s a start. Disruption for the sake of disruption might make a brand a lot of money (or the semblance of a lot of money) in the short term, but sooner or later, legislation will catch up. Building a great brand — a great company — can’t just be a case of having a cool idea. It has to be an adaptable idea too: one that will change according to raised challenges and issues.
Have a cool idea? Need some help working out the marketing and brand kinks? Get in touch.
September 20th saw hundreds of thousands of people in Australia turn out in a massive climate strike, joining millions around the world. Speeches kicked off at 2pm and the march began around 3ish, with schoolkids supported by a variety of adults, including many businesses that signed on to the strike under Not Business As Usual. There was the usual hilarity from the climate deniers in power over in the Liberal Party, including Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who hilariously opined that “The facts are, there is no link between climate change and drought. Polar bears are increasing in number. Today’s generation is safer from extreme weather than at any time in human history.” This is a ridiculous statement in many ways, if only because there’s no logical connection between Kelly’s polar bear index, drought, and climate change. Polar bears are quickly losing their traditional habitat thanks to receding ice from climate change, bringing them into increasing conflict with people. And given that several extreme weather events happened recently — including the Category 5 Hurricane Dorian, among others — and are happening more frequently… actually, why are we even trying to logic people like Kelly? You know he’s wrong. Trust the science.
That being said, the bitter reality of having a government of climate deniers in power has played out over a host of frustrating developments, from the ongoing Adani matter and the fracking nearby to the weird matter of the controversial Great Barrier Reef fund. It’s frustrating to see the two major political parties in this country agree that coal is still necessary:
And even as Swan says Labor must risk an unpopular policy, he defends Senator Penny Wong’s response to pleas from Pacific Island nations: No, she told them, an ALP federal government would not ban new coal mines.
“Coal is not the only issue in town,” Swan told ABC radio on Thursday. While we did need a rapid transition from fossil fuels, he said: “The truth is Australia produces about 4 per cent of the world’s thermal coal. If we’re going to reduce emissions in Australia, 19 per cent of our emissions come out of the transport sector.”
Talking down the impact of Australia’s coal will not put Labor on the right side of history. Australia’s domestic and export fossil fuel emissions now account for 5 per cent of global emissions but current coal, gas and oil developments could increase that to 12 to 17 per cent by 2030, according to study by Climate Analytics.
Frustrations aside, we’ve got to do something about climate change, right?
Beyond Straws and Veganism
Boycotting plastic straws and going vegan will not save the planet. 70% of the world’s greenhouse emissions generated since 1988 have come from just 100 companies:
ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.
While companies have a huge role to play in driving climate change, says Faria, the barrier is the “absolute tension” between short-term profitability and the urgent need to reduce emissions.
There are some things you can do about that. Voting in government representatives who aren’t beholden to fossil fuel interests is a good start. Switching your energy purchase to green power companies, like Powershop’s Green Power packages, can help — and get your friends and family to switch too. Fly less: flying is probably your biggest contributor to your personal carbon footprint. Buy less fast fashion, use more public transport. Buy fewer disposables and fewer plastics. Install solar panels, if you have a roof that you own. And sure, eating less meat probably helps. These gestures are small, though, compared to what companies do and what governments decide. Pressure your governments to commit to a zero-emissions target. If they won’t, organise and protest, vote them out. Support an environmental charity. Even small things help.
There’s probably going to be another climate strike near you soon. Consider attending it.
Climate Change and Advertising
Companies can work on their own to try and help the world into a zero-emissions, low waste target. We have some thoughts here. The ad industry hasn’t been immune to pressures. Via AdNews:
Australia’s advertising industry could take a stand and lead the world, says David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific and the author of The Coal Truth (UWA Publishing, June 2018).
“Fossil fuel use is the number one driver of global warming. Any business that supplies the coal, oil and gas industry with commercial services is implicated in driving the climate emergency,” he says.
“The time has come for the advertising industry to say ‘enough’. Any advertising firm that takes work from the coal, oil or gas sectors is doing PR for the greatest threat to life on earth.
“Instead, the advertising industry in Australia could take a stand and lead the world, using all the skills of public communication to help shift us on a path to wise stewardship of our shared home.”
According to the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand study, 64% of consumers buy on belief. As environmental consciousness grows, brands — and agencies — that commit to a greener, more renewable future will emerge at the head of the pack. It isn’t just about biodegradable packaging or having a carbon offset. It’s not just about having the right kind of messaging. It’s also about committing to green initiatives, be it charities or getting involved at a political level. With many governments in the world either gridlocked at a policy level, beholden to fossil fuel interests, or just plain denying the truth, companies and people getting ahead on their own might be the best way forward. Good luck to us all.
Nezha is China’s smash hit this year, a heartwarming fantasy film that’s a contemporary interpretation of an ancient Chinese legend. Via Variety:
Chinese animation “Nezha” continues its meteoric ascent to become one of China’s top-performing titles of all time, leading the weekend box office for the third week in a row thanks to a $66.5 million haul — still more than double that of its closest competitor, despite already having been in theaters for 18 days.
Its success has been boosted by a serious lack of other contenders: Every film below the top four grossers earned less than $700,000 this weekend, not even 1% of “Nezha’s” takings. The uneven performance highlights the struggles facing China’s box office this summer, as the pipeline of popular local titles dries up because of regulatory changes and a highly sensitive political anniversary coming up in October that has sent censors into overdrive.
With a total gross so far of $503 million (RMB3.55 billion), “Nezha” is already the fifth-highest-grossing title in Chinese film history, falling just behind last year’s “Operation Red Sea,” which grossed $576 million. The Maoyan ticketing platforms projects that it will earn a cumulative $671 million (RMB4.74 billion) over the course of its run, making it the second-highest earning film ever to hit Chinese theaters, more than sci-fi epic “The Wandering Earth,” which captured the No. 2 spot, behind all-time leader “Wolf Warrior II,” earlier this year.
World Vision has a new “Chosen” campaign that flips the script, allowing children to choose their sponsors instead of the other way around.
Knives Out is an upcoming murder mystery film this year starring a huge cast, including Daniel Craig, Michael Shannon, and Chris Evans.
A 7 min Death Stranding Briefing trailer is here from Hideo Kojima. Seven minutes, in which we’re still not entirely sure what this game is about. Other than it has a lot of celebrities.
In the lead up to the trash fire that was the 2016 US elections, there was a rash of conspiracy theories about the Democrats and Hillary Clinton that were spread around by conservative media and trolls. Some were somewhat believable–like the one where she was supposedly Very Ill With Some Unnamed Illness, after footage of Hillary, a 70-year-old lady, was shown looking a little frail on film at one point. Some, you’d think, were just so batshit ridiculous that nobody could unironically believe they were real.
Or so I thought.
On October 2016, just before the election, a white supremacist Twitter account claimed that the NYPD had found a Democratic satanic paedophile ring that was being run out of a pizza parlour called Comet Ping Pong. You’d think that a conspiracy like that would be too funny to be taken as anything but a joke, yet further conservative “news” sites soon claimed, among other things, that the NYPD had raided Hillary’s home and that the raid was confirmed by the FBI. Over a million messages used #Pizzagate in 2016. The theory was soon picked up by various far-right activists and even ended up on the pro-Erdoğan government newspapers in Turkey. There were serious consequences for the restaurant: harassment and death threats. Bands tied to the restaurant were abused, as were similar restaurants in the same area, and businesses with similar names. Despite being widely debunked by news organisations, the matter came to a head early December 2016, when a man holding an AR-15 walked into the restaurant and started firing. No one was hurt. When arrested, the shooter said he’d decided to investigate Comet Ping Pong after seeing the matter brought up on Infowars, a far-right conspiracy site whose owner is currently being sued for defamation after driving harassment to the parents of children killed during the Sandy Hook mass shooting (he claimed they were just child actors). Despite people like Jones having to retract their statements and apologise to the owner of Comet Ping Pong since, a small fire was set at the back of Comet Ping Pong this year.
It’s easy to dismiss things like this as stuff that only deranged people will believe, but I’ve seen similar conspiracy theories spread by people closer to home. My college-educated corporate parents, for example, still spread the occasional fake news link over the family chat, which my brother and I have to instantly pounce on to debunk. There are also smaller conspiracies, debunked by science but still considered to be widely true by everyone (e.g. that Yakult makes any sort of real difference to your digestion). With disinformation rapidly poisoning the world and making people distrust everything they read on the news, how can we avoid getting scammed, stay true to the truth, and avoid adding to the mess?
Fake News and Advertising
Mea culpa. Advertising is sadly responsible for spreading a lot of dangerous untruths in the world, lies that ended up broadly corrected often only after lawsuits. Take the whole furor over cigarettes, for example, which ended up in tobacco advertising being banned in some countries, including Australia. The industry still doesn’t publicly accept that smoking causes lung cancer. False and misleading advertising isn’t allowed in Australia – recently, Heinz was fined $2.25 million for misleading advertising by the Federal Court of Australia:
In its initial proceeding against Heinz, the ACCC alleged the company made false and misleading representations, and engaged in conduct liable to mislead the public in relation to the nature, characteristics and suitability of its Little Kids Shredz products. These included statements claiming the product was ‘99 per cent fruit and veg’ and that the food was ‘nutritious’.
At the time, the ACCC pointed out the products contained upwards of 60 per cent sugar, a far greater ratio than an apple, for example, which is about 10 per cent sugar. Its actions followed a complaint made by the Obesity Policy Coalition about food products for toddlers that made such claims when they in fact were predominantly made from fruit juice concentrate and pastes which had much higher sugar content that raw fruit and vegetables.
Being truthful in advertising is more important than ever now, in a world where there’s usually a lot of competition in any market or industry. Brand trust is paramount. If customers stop trusting your brand for any reason — and being lied to is a huge one — they’d move on, and it’d be hard to win them back. A few tips:
- Be careful. Research any statement many times before you make it. If there’s even a possibility that it might not be accurate, don’t make it.
- Or use careful disclaimers. Have legal check your wording.
- If you do get something wrong, own up to it immediately, with a real apology. Not a non-apology.
- Commit to being as honest and as transparent with your customers as you can be. They’ll appreciate it.
- Add value to their lives. If it’s information – be accurate. For anything else – try to be respectful.
Countering Disinformation
Fake news often spreads through social media. In the Phillippines, where Facebook is free but internet isn’t, this has had consequences: the election of President Duterte:
Two years after the launch of Free Facebook, Rodrigo Duterte mounted a presidential bid, casting himself as the tough-on-crime, anti-elite Everyman ready to bring back jobs and order. Posts about Duterte, full of memes, propaganda, and outright libel (one opponent, now in prison on a dubious drug charge, saw a fake sex tape circulate on Facebook with her in it) did extremely well on Facebook, as nearly any inflammatory content does. When Duterte said he would dump the bodies of executed drug dealers “into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there,” the post immediately went “viral, viral, viral,” bragged one of his two social-media directors.
He won handily, and his rule has been brutal. At least 12,000 people have been killed during Duterte’s crackdown on drugs, and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos have been jailed, many of them opponents of Duterte himself. Meanwhile, his social-media team has actively worked to bring in social-media influencers to prop up Duterte’s regime (think Filipino versions of social-media creatures like Mike Cernovich, Laura Loomer, or Jack Posobiec) working closely with the Duterte administration — sometimes directly on the government payroll — to spread fake stories such as a deposed Supreme Court justice was caught attempting to flee the country. Meanwhile, news sources seen as unfriendly to the Duterte campaign have increasingly come under fire, including banning all reporters from an outlet from the presidential palace.
While a system-wide application of fake news like that can only be countered either at an institutional level or a paid organised level, here in Australia, where the internet is uncensored and freely available, it’s possible to safeguard yourself against fake news. A good rule of thumb is, if something feels even slightly unbelievable, Google it before spreading it. Sites like Snopes.com will help you figure things out in a pinch. Sometimes, even if it’s believable, Google it anyway. Before you spread any information, especially news, find a credible site. Read articles linked to statements before retweeting or sharing them – often, snappy 140-280 character Twitter analyses of an article sensationalise it, and key details can be misinterpreted or left out. If you get things wrong, fess up quick. Everyone falls for fake news now and then. Clickbait articles are designed to be highly readable, designed to appeal to and convince you of an idea. In other words, they’re often forms of very good advertising in their own way. Surely by now everyone knows not to completely trust what they see on TV or on social media. You’d just need to apply the same cynicism toward information in general.
We’ve become increasingly time-poor, increasingly addicted to social media, with a tendency to take our news from these platforms. I get why. Facebook’s algorithms are built to show you things that it thinks are in your interest. Information spreads so fast on Twitter that if I hear a rumour of something happening, like a rally in Melbourne CBD, I often check Twitter first because news organisations are unlikely to update anywhere as quickly. Social media can be good for spreading real news, too — I was in a recent talk by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, who said that Twitter saved his life. During the Ferguson protests, his platform gave him so much visibility and connections that it was an invaluable part of organising the movement. The Hong Kong protests are highly visible online, and are organised through Telegram.
The platforms are only part of the problem. The trolls will always be there, and as long as their methods keep working, as long as only a tiny percentage of them ever face consequences, they’d keep on churning out fake content for their own purposes. The best we can do is to either approach everything we read online with a healthy grain of salt (a fistful of it, if it’s seen on social media), or to delete everything and live off-grid somewhere in the wilderness. Some days, that’s tempting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf-STGkqFRA
Supernatural, a show that I got into when I was in college, is now in its final, fifteenth season. It’s been a long time in coming.
A Vox explainer about cosmic rays — things that hit our planet’s atmosphere at nearly the speed of light, raining down at us from afar.
The marketing for Borderlands 3, the latest cell-shaded sequel to the popular shoot-em-up franchise, is just as weird/quirky as the game.