Jack Yan Above: Wellington, New Zealand’s Lambton Quay, normally a main thoroughfare, during that country’s lockdown. Over the last two issues of Lucire KSA, we ran a story each on COVID-19. The first examined how companies fared after previous economic crises, looking at the past for answers. Last month, we examined what companies were doing […]
Facebook’s demise wouldn’t affect us much
Like many other publications, Lucire sends updates to Facebook, Twitter and Mastodon. Occasionally we’ll Instagram an image to a story. However, we’ve had reservations about social media, especially Facebook, for over a decade. In November 2010, we wrote on our Facebook page, ‘We have stopped the automated importing of notes to this Facebook page. […]
Demasking the torture of Julian Assange
David G. Silvers/Wikimedia Commons Above: The author, Prof Nils Melzer I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That’s exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the […]
We removed Facebook code from our pages on March 8—how Lucire has been looking out for you
On March 8, weeks before Christopher Wylie’s whistleblowing account of what happened at Cambridge Analytica, I Tweeted the following: Thinking of removing the Facebook “like box” from @Lucire. No one really cares about this any more, do they? I mean, it’s four years after peak Facebook. pic.twitter.com/7vKubtL293 — Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jackyan) March 8, 2018 […]
Social media and the “influencers”: not the evolution you might have expected
Above: Kim Kardashian West’s Instagram account. Incredible follower numbers—but what of authenticity? I’m getting a buzz seeing how little I update social media now. Around February 2016 I began updating Tumblr far less; I’ve gone from dozens of posts per month to four in December 2017 and seven in January 2018. (Here’s my Tumblr archive.) […]
Why we should be thankful for Stella McCartney
Lucire is UN Environment’s first fashion industry partner. In October, Fast Company profiled Stella McCartney in a piece that found its way to me not via Lucire, but via Medinge Group, the international think-tank on humanistic branding. Wearing that hat, we’ve long advocated corporate social responsibility, and McCartney has been “living the brand” for a […]
Why Gucci’s stance on fur is crucial for internal branding
Gucci Above: Gucci had a fur-free spring 2018 show in Milano. Recently, Marco Bizzari, chief executive and president of Gucci, announced that Gucci was banning the use of fur in its products, which he said was outdated, before adding, ‘I need to do it because [otherwise] the best talent will not come to work for […]
When corporate brands and personal brands trade places: Kate Moss was there before Kendall Jenner
Above: Brand Kate Moss was probably seen by more people when the model collaborated with Topshop. In 1999, the late Wally Olins, the famous brand consultant, sent me his book, Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies are Taking on Each Other’s Roles, a fine read published by the Foreign Policy Centre that argued that countries […]
Opinions: what we need from media beyond ‘fake news’; looking to the stars
We need independent media Paul Clarke/CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37435469 Above: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Earlier this month, Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote an open letter expressing his concerns about the evolution of his invention, the World Wide Web. (Interestingly, he writes the term all in lowercase.) It wasn’t just […]
Op–ed: Kiribati’s waking nightmare
November 27, 2015 Rt Hon John Key, MP, Prime Minister Hon Bill English, MP, Deputy Prime Minister Parliament Buildings Wellington New Zealand Dear John and Bill, I’m having a nightmare. I want to tell you guys about it—to tell you to wake me up; shake me if you have to. Scream […]
