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Tag Archives: Apple

Life, lines, logos & the all-consuming art of consumption

15 Monday May 2017

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Apple, Consumption, Credit card Bills, Dreams, E.U., facebook, Hiscox, Instagram, kentucky fried Chicken, Nike, prosperity, reality, Rice Crispies, Sainsburys, Skittles, Snapchat, Subway, Sustainability, Tesla, twitter, Uber, Walter Mitty

 

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I’m on fire

I’ve Unboxed my phone. And I believe in better. Just do it. Tick.  Just did it.

But wait, can’t get my breath because I am – of – so – very – ON.

I’m a consumer consuming, a dumb man walking with a smart phone talking back at me.

I’m hyper consumptive and coughing up bloody Mary firmly goosed with Grey.

I’m For Living and licking the fingers of good with a chicken from Kentucky or any other such United State you care to mention, and I’m hanging with people who are As Good As Our Word, absurd but fiercely true.

My Snap Crack Popple Pipe went off in my face but I don’t care Cos I’m the ‘Eating Fresh’ Prince of Been There Done That but same-old, same-old doesn’t cut it anymore so I’m Thinking Different because I’m worth it, so Earth calling the Spaceman, Yes We Can.

And I’m feeling the Magic BUT am I Tasting the Rainbow? I may go to customer service and COMPLAIN because it definitely ain’t raining technicolour on me anytime now.

But I’m doing a lot so Every Little Helps and I’ve got welts from whipping myself senseless with spring greens sustainably sourced of course.

Smash. Boom. Crash.

Whatever works for you in the clattering noise of consumption land but don’t shirk on your Durch Technic mate or your spring will remain Vorsprung.

Pick a language any language I’m with the worlds local bank so I’m fluent in Yoplait yodelay hee hoo exotica and inter-continental catch phrases so I stay firmly ‘flame on’ across the channel to the E.U.nited States of Holiday with the sparkling surge of Orangina fo-fina at my lips Naturally

But shucks I’m brunching and crunching and I’m Living Well with kitchen dancing and prancing in pimpy pumps that pumppumppump me UP and the car in front, well, it’s behind the times ‘cos its hybrid and my bid’s for Accelerating the Future in an eco-super-green Mung-ready dream that I can snapchat attack about because Life’s more fun when you live in the moment, apparently – and my 2facedbook feed reads like Walter Mitty, more’s the pity if the truth ever got in the way of ME – but that’s why I have FRIENDS with a capital F*%# so I don’t get the bends when I de-acclimatise from my threads of marvellous invention.

The tension is killing me – might I pop out a truth just to see if anyone’s following me? – let’s see – stalk stalk – I can totally talk the walk if I just snort an Instagram of my glorious self.

Let’s face it, I’m preposterously prosperous and shining my crown but, wait – why am I feeling so down?

Quick boys quick check the follower rating – that does the trick cos joy stats are waiting – I’ve tweeted a storm and its thrown up a swarm of murmuring twitteratti, look who’s following my vapour and skyping my party of one, hell, I’m coming out windswept with twenty new following.

So all is good and calm and I’ll chance my arm with a hashtag blowback and fill my lungs with the honey sun of my digitally consuming gloriously connected self.

Phew. Who knew that eating so much life would make me phat. Isn’t a life well lived negatively calorific and cheap at half the price? (as smaller credit card bills would be nice).

Truth be told I’m choking on broke and my dreams are currently staying in a hotel so far beyond my means that it comes with a free car because, my friend, bullshit just can’t walk that far.

Time to do a runner. Needs must.

Tech, Social networks and & the rise of Inconvenient Desire

19 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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21st Century Consumer, Adaptive Governance, Apple, Caring about what people care about, Communications, Consumer Activist, desire, ecosystems, Foxconn, Human Rights, Identity, Incandescent Identity, Institutional Investors, Labour Conflicts, NPS, reputation Studies, resilience, social networks, Supply Chains, technology, Value Chains

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You’d be hard pushed to find a more powerful source of human incandescence than that of Desire.

Most humans once seized upon by a fierce Desire, (quenchable, drenchable or otherwise) would struggle to not glow like embers or light up like a Christmas Tree.

But equally, incandescence is a volatile and unstable thing in its base form. It is as likely to illuminate a life as it is to burn down a house, so must always be treated with the greatest caution and respect.

A powerful and singular Desire, initially so exquisitely turned out: seductive, rich, complex and compelling, can quickly lose its form, focus and potency, becoming fleeting, deceptive, destabilising, and in some ways almost manipulative – one moment all consuming, profound substantial and irresistible: a twisted echo or hollow memory the next, whispering in our ear.

It is one of the cruel polarities of life that Desire, especially when ignored, demeaned, spoiled or thwarted, can become a very destructive force –  one of the most turbulent, psyche-ripping, heart-trouncing, confidence-destroying, life-diminishing experiences in our human condition.

We do not take it well! And it makes us act in irrational, random and unexpected ways.

So Desire. Powerful, yes; BUT its got form. Tricky. Volatile. Fluid. Uncontrollable. Fragile.

A singular Desire is of course not the only model. Desire has many forms, natures and universes. Not all Desire is so singular, egocentric, unfettered and prone to flip-flopping and flailing all over the place, at the drop of a rather existential hat. Some Desires are quiet; considered; evolving over expansive periods of time and frames of context. Others are a dynamic shifting mass: loose ecosystems of smaller desires, likes, preferences, needs and wants; splintered, fractured, fractual. A brilliant constellation with fluid and adaptive qualities.

But for now let’s concentrate on one very particular nature of Desire and the context in which it exists: that of human consumption and the systems and organisations that meet its rapacious and accelerating demands.

Desire in its 20th Century Consumer form was well served by multiple businesses and the brands they created. Most importantly the Desire was one dimensional: of a linear and modal kind. A singular Desire, in the form of an unmet consumer demand for a particular product or service, was either revealed or identified through intuition, experience, market research or in the absence of anything else, confected out of thin air in a marketing consumer insight department and then seeded in the mind of the unsuspecting consumer.

Once identified, every atom of the business was put in service to meet the needs of that one Desire. The whole operational infrastructure and systemic nature and capability of the brand and business was set into motion to against it. The sentiment and sensibility of every other person in the chain other than that of the Consumer – the font of all revenue opportunity – was set aside, ignored, or suppressed; viewed as at best, secondary, or at worst, irrelevant.

The Desires (and disappointments) of any individual or group dwelling in the Supply Chain that provided the material, resource, operational systems and manufacturing tools were also secondary – and someone else’s problem.

The Value Chains that developed around the Supply Chain to extract clear measures of additional value in every link in the chain, were focused wholly on controlling and securing in absolute terms the direct cost of resources (human and material), the executive overhead, operational running costs, the logistics of distribution and the indirect fixed contracting of supplier partners, especially when operating across multiple sites and geographies across myriad countries and cultures.

The ability to secure the base cost of delivering increasing value in every link of the chain was the way by which a company both improved its productivity and profitability. And it did it by controlling everything. Even the desires and the voices of those that worked within it.

The insular unconnected and disparate nature of the old world was highly convenient for those who wished to quash any form of desire that might destabilise that link in the chain’s ability to deliver itself at a projected and secured cost amenable to the larger commercial target and deliverable margin.

The very fact that these various sites and sources of production were localised, isolated and unconnected to every other stakeholder in the chain by anything other than their place in that chain meant that the desires of the workforce and the local communities in which they lived could be considered incidental. They remained for the most part invisible, unheard and often unmet. It is fairly telling that the managerial department allocated solely to ensuring and upholding the wellbeing of people required to populate and sustain any Value Chain were identified as a Support Activity in Value Chain models.

But those Desires cannot be ignored anymore. In the 21st century, the consumer’s Desire is not the only one that must be respected, elevated and pored over.

Technology and the social networks have unchained the value chain, giving voice and a podium to every Desire of every person (or stakeholder if you prefer) along the chain, Supply, Value or Otherwise. And they cannot be simply ignored anymore.

Now, Desire has got a smart phone, 6 email accounts, a facebook page, a twitter, instagram and youtube account. And Desire is getting busy.

Desires, individual and collective, in every corner of the globe are now connected. They’ve got access. They’ve got volume. And they are using the social networks to act with fierce purpose against brands and businesses they feel demonstrate an arrogant lack of respect for the human rights and dignities of their customers, employees, suppliers or partners. Once fired up, these consumer activists will harry and pursue the perpetrators regardless of emollient PR releases and promises – as the likes of Apple and Foxconn found out in no uncertain terms. These massed, noisy and high profile actions are now proven to have a direct impact on the measures of integrity held in high esteem by brands and businesses – NPS, The Reputation Study – and more importantly by the investors who fund their ambitions.

So the volatility, flux and turbulence of kaleidoscopic Desire is now at work in the world along very link of the Chain. And they are testing the resilience of those chains, and buffeting the previously tightly controlled and secured value and margin each link in the chain delivers. Adaptive governance must now include the ability to absorb the turbulence these points of social flux and volatility present.

In this way, the 21st Century world of accessible, affordable tech and the social networks they fuel are giving rise to a new chain – the Desire Chain – a value chain populated by individuals with dreams, expectations and rights as important and potent and ultimately as capable of creating value and growth as the old singular desire of the Consumer in the 20th Century.

So here’s to brands embracing a new chain model – the Desire Chain – one that is made incandescent and more resilient by respecting and elevating the desires of every stakeholder in its chain, to mutual benefit and a more secure future for all.

Screen Shot 2014-10-18 at 22.25.15

The essay upon which this blog is based, ‘The Value Chained Unchained‘, explores the nature and impact of technology and the social networks on the old Value Chain models and sets out the need for a new model based upon ever-evolving highly adaptive points of Mutual Desire and Shared Resilience.

The Value Chain Unchained by J Borra is to be published by Shared Value Chain Consultancy as part of a compendium of essays on Sustainable Value Chains. Editor: Michael D’heur

www.sharedvaluechain.com

Swapsies, sharesies, half eaten Apples & the joy of the digital yard sale.

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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1970s, Adam Werbach, Apple, Collaborative Consumption, Consumer Insight, Consumption Behaviours, Cradle to Cradle, Great American Songbook, Hoagy Carmichael, i-phones, i-tunes, Life Cycle design, Shared Economy, Swapsies & Sharesies, Trends, Vinyl LP Sleeve Notes, Waste Not Want Not, Yerdle

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To be fair the first time I ever heard the phrases Collaborative Consumption and Shared Economy used to explain the new consumption trends of collective barter and re-use I was no more enlightened.

One painted the picture of a co-operative of tubercular poets and the other sounded like a euphemism for a low effort-short-duration-hi reward act of coitus.

Not that I don’t find the concepts they represent amazing and inspiring.

I am in awe of the platforms that are conflating the social culture of sharing and swapping stuff for free, great distribution and logistics providers, a higher purpose of light touch collective action and the target of substantially reducing the purchase of consumer durables by doing so.

The likes of Adam Werbach and the people at yerdle are blazing it.

The whole social marketplace of give and get for free reminds me of the sheer excitement and pleasure of swapsies and sharesies, with everything from player cards to lego pieces to Action Man accessories furiously exchanged  – the smart thrift of a great trade and the thrill of an unexpected treasure.

I just wish more brands figured out how to build this kind of community-making, life-affirming idea seamlessly into their systemic selves.

I am especially irritated with the brands who know full well that a whole load of their junk is in someone else’s trunk (and I don’t mean that as a euphemism)

I have already mentioned in a previous blog the fractual tech landfill of the Man Drawer. Drawers filled to brimming old tech kit, some barely used. The orphanage of every tech fling we’ve ever had.

The other junked up trunk in my life is sitting on my lap top right here and somewhere in the ether out there.

i-tunes. Or should I say specifically the deselected i-tunes in my library.

Now I love Hoagy Carmichael. A honky-tonk swoony blues songwriting band leading pianist of the finest order. His Hong Kong Shuffle, Riverboat Blues, Georgia On My Mind and Old Buttermilk Sky are basically liquid golden pools of genius soaking through the pages of the Great American Popular Songbook.

You cannot fail to love a man who when asked to describe his own voice referred to it as sounding “the way a shaggy dog looked”.

And there is nothing one dimensional about Hoagy. Hoagy is not easily set aside. Hoagy is loaded. With him comes the daisy chain memories of that period in the early seventies where everyone from fashion designers, to musicians, artists and filmmakers just couldn’t resist the cultural signatures of the Great American Era from the 1890s to the 1930s – especially the speakeasy chops of the old joanna.

Enshrined in Films such as Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kind, Bonnie & Clyde, The Great Gatsby, The Sting and The Man With The Golden Gun, the jaunty jazz keys chimed through everything. Even popular music stole a march from the zeitgeist with Bowie drawing in the haunting chops of the good old days into his anthemic tracks Time and Aladdin Sane (accompanied by jazz pianist Mike Garson) and in the fashion of his Man Who Stole The World Zoot Suit come Speakeasy look.

So Hoagy, Genius. But the purchase decision on my part was badly planned. I wanted a download with the 9 or 10 tracks I really liked. What I got was a download of forensic depth and scope. The download included interviews, 7 separate recordings of Riverboat Shuffle alone, and much more.

In the absence of a retro vinyl moment of in-depth sleeve note reading accompanied by the sharp petro-tang of print varnish and PVC this download is old school in its detail. An enthusiast would adore it.

But it’s wasted on me. Which brings me back to the point with our grandparents words ringing in our ears:  Waste Not Want Not

So to that end, Apple, if you’re listening, all I want is a button on my i-tune genius panel marked Yard Sale. And all I want that button to do is allow me to select all the deselected tracks in my library and put them into a special open market.  Where I can either swap and share them for others, or sell them at tuppeny prices and donate the cash to the cause of my choice.

BOOM happiness – and all in the spirit of Yerdle et al.

I am sure that there are many ways of passing around music whose stealth tactics and moves teeter on being a martial art. But I am taking the simpleton tack here. And I am pointing to a Brand’s responsiblity for cleaning up their own back yard, laying waste to waste and leading by example

I want a massive brand like Apple to do it for me – in fact, especially a brand like Apple, with all of its ‘we’re a Purpose Driven Business’ Love Me Love My 4th Upgrade i-phone schtick’.

Workout the IP issues with the artists and publishers – I am certain that the idea of sharing deselected, de-listened and de-loved tracks in some second-hand music platform form of barter is not so satanic an idea or impossible a task.

The criteria that the user only sells the quantity that you have (no multiple sales of individual tracks) and that once sold it’s gone forever seems wholly reasonable.

Now, if there ALREADY IS is a device/trigger/button/easter egg somewhere on my machine or in the software that does allow me to do this, PLEASE SHOW ME WHERE IT IS, along with the other half billion users on the i-tunes system.

Counting down to the one billionth download is all well and good BUT I would be a lot more excited if i-tunes started counting up to celebrating a billion deselected tunes shared and a petaflop of cash raised.

The guys at Yerdle are aiming for a 25% reduction in consumer durables purchases.

My challenge to Apple is to commit to reducing the number of dormant tunes sitting in libraries by the same percentage – by introducing a swopsies and sharesies meets yard sale mechanism into i-tunes.

(That would of course require them to be arsed to do it in the first place. And not just um and ahh their way out of it by distracting themselves and us by counting up to their billionth pointless upgrade I-phone sold.)

I want the spiritual zeitgeist to be carried at scale and across oceans by someone of Apple’s reach and influence. Its a role model thing.

Speaking of zeitgeists, one of the most powerful things about the Yerdle kind lies ironically (given how NOW it is) in the shape of things to come.

As platforms like Yerdle develop, they will become an increasingly valuable partner for any one in the consumer durables markets because they will have first hand insight and data regarding the post purchase behaviour and utility of those consumer products – far richer than any service programme report. The broadened view of the landscape of use would give real meaning to Consumption Insight as it would reach far far beyond the increasingly one dimensional framing of consumption and what it means to consume a product or service over time.

They would have an independent viewpoint of which products leave the home (or favour) as quickly as they enter it, lose their cache, or simply fall redundant. They would know which items travel where, where the sharesie hotspots are and when swopsie communities are most active. They will know what types of profile user gravitate to which type of ‘thing’ – data to cross refer against the company eye view of their segmentation and dynamic customer behaviour.

That kind of knowledge could reshape the nature of the consumer companies’ distribution partnerships and networks as well as their models of Customer Relationship and Service Management.

What’s more it could start to change the shape of Cradle-To-Cradle design in a number of sectors – even to the point where consumer durable manufacturers start to build the share swap barter life stage in the cradle to cradle life cycle design and planning.

Not that any of that helps me – or Hoagy, who is currently sitting mostly deselected and dejected in my library.

So here’s to Swopsies and Sharesies, digital yard sales and Hoagy Rides Again

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