Luck and paying the right celebrities for endorsements? Also using sweatshops in the global south to extract superprofits [1]?
More and more I'm starting see branding as a way for big companies to slowly condition people to relate emotionally to some spectacle [2] (e.g. an exciting celebrity spokesperson in an advert), distracting them from an often exploitative and unsustainable production process.
How many people know about Rana Plaza? [3]
It's exciting to see new initiatives like 'Fixing Fashion' though (Alicia Minnaard and Dave Hakkens)[4].
1) I think that Nike is a brand that got endorsements right. Adidas was slow to jump on the big shoe deal and they have way fewer deals than Nike.
2) Adidas is a brand that I look to for more classic styles while Nike seems to always be pushing boundaries. Adidas did have a pretty good run with some modern takes(NMDs I liked a lot) but in general I dont like the new styles. Sometimes I like the new styles, but most of the time its just too much for me.
3) Nike was the first that Im aware of to do the user customized versions of their shoes. I think Adidas is doing it now, but IIRC it was less dynamic than Nike allowed.
4) Limited supplies- while this seems counterintuitive limiting the supply of the premium shoes encouraged the collectors to step in. Now instead of hoping the public accepts a $300 dollar sneaker, they jump out and buy as many as they can so they can list them on StockX.
Well, Reebok was just an underperforming subsidiary of Adidas, a company that's currently worth ~$70bn. So I don't think it's fair to just compare the 2.
What Nike did right, though, is fully embrace the influencer culture, I think. That, and actually having some cool and unique designs.
Reebok always felt like "just another shoewear brand" and their clothing lines were completely generic and uninspired.
"Where did Reebok go wrong" goes back long before Adidas bought them in the first place. Nike had won that battle before many influencers were even born.
Nike is the innovation leader. They have actual scientists and engineers on staff. The other companies mainly wait to see what Nike comes up with and then copy it. Or they just forego performance all together and just make lifestyle products.
Product.... Nike is just innovating all the other legacy product makers, Rebook, Puma, and even Adidas. Especially in the soccer gear department, Nike is just outcompeting them.
Adidas, should have been first, since it is a European company, but they just slacked and their product line stagnated. They thought it was just a marketing problem, which it was not. Just changing their logo to something cooler, didn't make their products any better.
I was an Adidas fan, since they were the 'product of the west', of all the kids that were born under communism. They, and together with Puma made the best soccer shoes and gear. But over time, Nike started innovating hard, and releasing better engineered soccer shoes, and wear. (their Drifit Nikefit shirts are great).
Top soccer cleats cost $250+. At that price point user expect some innovation (material wise), and not just simple sneakers.
Nike has been outcompeting Adidas/Reebok/Puma and others.
Ps. You can buy cheap soccer cleats at $40-50 price point. They are good just for casual users, but for semi-serious players, they just don't cut it as they tend to have inferior materials, and tend to be heavy and not good for people that want some edge.
Especially if you are an older player (35+ yo), the lighter shoes make a huge difference.
no, it is product. Adidas soccer shoes have been underperforming because they honestly suck. Even their shirts are pretty bad compared to Nike's drifit.
Their classical Samba and Copa mundial, are just too heavy for modern use, and their new fabric/material lightweight shoes are just not as good as Nike's.
Nike has innovated material wise, while Adidas hasn't, and it just has only been catching up with inferior me to products.
Well we are "pivoting" to asia. Apparently, that's the new battlefront. Funding unrest in myanmar now that the hong kong fiasco failed. Also a few black presidents/leaders died in the last few months. No doubt isis will magically show up all over africa and we'll need to set up more bases there in the near future. God knows the people who want iran and venezuela taken out are still around. Who knows these people will do to get us to destroy iran and venezuela.
Considering that the "defense" budget has increased, I doubt the empire is ending anytime soon. More wars. You have to justify your budget. My guess is that we will be "defending" ourselves all over asia, africa, south america, etc. Now that iraq, syria, libya, afganistan, etc were turned to rubble ( mission accomplished ), we'll need to spread "democracy" all over the world.
We're like the borg. We have to assimilate them all. It's amazing how long we've been able to get away with being so evil and cruel.
The title reminded me of an intro to one of packt's books.
"At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy."
They want their readers to be the their personal snitches online. What a crazy world we are headed towards.
The selling point of IoT is the data. It's the reason for the heavy investment in big data/neural networks/nvidia/etc. Preparing for the IoT world where there isn't much privacy but lots and lots of data.
Writing about productivity seems like a nice racket.
What's with the excessive productivity propaganda the past few years. Is that what humans are? What humans exist to be/do? Be products that produce as much as possible? So much time/resources/etc wasted to be more productivity. What's the end goal here?
The end goal is value. And value changes from community to community. I don't get this skepticism against productivity. It really doesn't have to be work stuff. After work I play piano, chess etc and any improvement done to these are "productive" too because I'm increasing my value to my community by making music, playing chess etc. It's infinitesimally tiny, but there is an objective difference between that and e.g. sleep which is an activity we're bound to do that is not productive. Not all of this stuff needs to be corporate propaganda, take what works for you.
I'd agree if only less people confused productivity with work / time efficiency and then get annoyed when the quality declines. As an old German proverb says, Gut Ding will Weile haben, which roughly means good things take time.
> The end goal is value. And value changes from community to community.
From one overstated and meaningless self-help word to another. Is that what a human exists to do? Provide "value" to the community?
> After work I play piano, chess etc and any improvement done to these are "productive" too because I'm increasing my value to my community by making music, playing chess etc.
How does that provide value to the "community"? Did you ask anyone if you playing the piano or chess provided value to them?
Funny, I play the piano, chess, etc for my own personal enjoyment. Didn't realize I had to play it for the community 's benefit. What else do I owe the community? So as I can better attune my productivity?
Well, you are part of the community. If you get value from playing piano or chess then you've provided value to the community.
I think there are two reasons to have chosen community here. Firstly you could chose to do thinks for the benefit of someone else, if that's what you want. Secondly it gets you to think about the externalities that exist.
I guess the person you are replying to thought it was obvious that a person is a member of the groups that they are a member of.
The same goal as anything else that floats to the top of the social media zeitgeist: making money. Anything that can be employed in the service of selling products or ads for those products can and will be "monetized".
> The science on this is clear, please update your stance.
You are conflating science with "stats".
> Natural immunity is not as protective as vaccine induced immunity.
If that is true and if the science is clear, then why is that the case? What is the biological mechanism behind that? Shouldn't natural immunity be better in most cases since your body is actually fighting the real disease? Since you say the "science is clear", can you explain the science behind it?
> It is in fact 2.3x more likely that you will get reinfected while unvaccinated, and a stronger immune response from the vaccine means fewer people end up hospitalized. See:
From your link...
"Finally, this is a retrospective study design using data from a single state during a 2-month period; therefore, these findings cannot be used to infer causation. Additional prospective studies with larger populations are warranted to support these findings."
So you say the science is clear and then you link to a study that explicitly says not to infer any causation?
You literally spread FUD and misinformation. As seems to be the case of so many invested in this covid narrative on both sides.
Vaccines produce a different and sometimes stronger response than the disease that they mimic, as they are literally designed to do.
In answer to your question: no, there is no "should" about it at all. it could go either way. And when it goes the wrong way, people try to redesign the vaccines until it goes the other way.
There is some evidence that COVID vaccines produce stronger responses. Links upthread.
> You literally spread FUD and misinformation
Please check yourself before flinging that accusation.
> Side note: Why do we constantly cry about recommendations from the 1970s being different from today's recommendations?
Because hardly anything in nutrition "science" has proven to be predictive. It's all junk. Most of it intentional junk pushed by political and business interests.
For example, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." is just nonsense based on junk "science" funded by vegan/vegetarian aligned interest groups. I'm guessing with major multinational corporations peddling veganism, we'll get more junk nutrition science.
Considering life expectancy, health and development has increased with more meat consumption. This is true of the countries with the highest life expectancy - japan, switzerland, spain, etc.
Since we are omnivores, perhaps we should eat a variety of everything in moderation.
Didn't say you were vegan. Just like mothers telling their children "eat your veggies" makes them vegan. But the prevalence of that saying today is due to the vegan lobby.
> That's what the quote means?
Nope. A balanced diet perhaps, but certainly not your quote. Your quote part of vegan propaganda. Sneakily get the naive to accept "mostly vegetables" and then "why not only vegetables".
You see it everywhere on social media. It's a propaganda campaign funded by the largest corporations in the world and the vegan fanatics teaching kids/people a toxic and unnatural diet to humans.
> Since we are omnivores, perhaps we should eat a variety of everything in moderation.
That's even worse. Moderation is meaningless except in retrospect - in this context it just means the correct amount. It's not even the moderation fallacy - if I eat from 1-3 hamburgers every day, moderation doesn't tell me that I should be eating 2 because it's in the middle.
At least the "mostly plants" part of the yuppie diet cliché takes some sort of falsifiable stand. I can know for sure that I eat mostly plants, I can never know when I'm eating "moderately," or "not too much."
Everyone has to be vaccinated and we must all prove it to exist in society ( even people who had covid )? So, it isn't about herd immunity anymore? It isn't about stopping covid, but getting everyone the vaccine and forcing them to carry identification everywhere?
"It’s time for people to see vaccination as necessary to living a good and full and healthy life,” de Blasio said during his daily press briefing."
That's what people were saying was going to happen more than a year ago and they were attacked for being conspiracy theorists...
Whatever happened to needing 60 or 70% of the people vaccinated to gain herd immunity and stop this pandemic?
So 100% vaccination, even for those who had covid and you must carry documentation/id at all times? Why now? Why for this disease? Especially considering the mortality rate is far lower than what was originally projected.
When the projections were 5%+, I can understand erring on the side of caution, but the mortality rate is lower than 1% last I checked. So odd.
Delta variant necessitates a higher level of herd immunity because it's so much more transmissible.
> Everyone has to be vaccinated and we must all prove it to exist in society ( even people who had covid )? So, it isn't about herd immunity anymore? It isn't about stopping covid, but getting everyone the vaccine and forcing them to carry identification everywhere?
No, it's very obviously about stopping covid. Don't be obtuse.
Delta appears to have about a 2x R_o over the original Covid strain. So, yes, that requires a much higher herd immunity to get transmission rates below 1.0
> I hope that one day you'll experience an actual tyranny for comparison. Something like Belarus or North Korea.
Cool. We should submit to any and all amounts of government overreach and abuse of power until our rulers decide to go full Pol-Pot. Then we can say "Hey, wait a minute."
