Remember when Apple was the world’s most valuable company? (Two months ago) Or when it became the first trillion dollar American public company? (Five months ago.) Well as of this morning, Apple sits in the No. 4 spot on the valuation charts ($675 billion), having fallen yesterday past Alphabet ($710 billion) and Amazon ($734 billion). Microsoft, at $748 billion, retains top honors.
Marriott International said on Friday that the biggest hacking of personal information in history was not quite as big as first feared, but for the first time conceded that its Starwood hotel unit did not encrypt the passport numbers for roughly five million guests. Those passport numbers were lost in an attack that many outside experts believe was carried out by Chinese intelligence agencies.When the attack was first revealed by Marriott at the end of November, it said that information on upward of 500 million guests may have been stolen, all from the reservations database of Starwood, a major hotel chain Marriot had acquired. But at the time, the company said that the figure was a worst-case scenario because it included millions of duplicate records.On Friday the firm said that teams of forensic and data analysts had identified “approximately 383 million records as the upper limit” for the total number of guest reservations records lost, though the company still says it has no idea who carried out the attack, and it suggested the figure would decline over time as more duplicate records are identified. The revised figure is still the largest loss in history, greater than the attack on Equifax, the consumer credit-reporting agency, which lost the driver’s license and Social Security numbers of roughly 145.5 million Americans in 2017, leading to the ouster of its chief executive and a huge loss of confidence in the firm.What made the Starwood attack different was the presence of passport numbers, which could make it far easier for an intelligence service to track people who cross borders. That is particularly important in this case: In December, The New York Times reported that the attack was part of a Chinese intelligence gathering effort that, reaching back to 2014, also hacked American health insurers and the Office of Personnel Management, which keeps security clearance files on millions of Americans.
Beyond commerce, Dr. Martens is doing a number of things to “give back to consumers” so it is not just about the transaction, which can set shoppers back by as much as £170 for a pair of boots.This includes in-store gigs – its flagship store in Camden has an annex called the Boot Room which often puts on free shows for around 60 people – as well as bringing barbers into the shop to offer free hair cuts.While it hasn’t gone down the route of tattooing yet – Campbell says that might be “one step too far” – it does have tattooists come in to personalise people’s shoes and boots.“Nowadays, commerce is a by-product of engagement,” Campbell says. “The consumer need might not necessarily be about buying a pair of shoes, it might be about a favourite band that hasn’t played for two years playing in a Dr. Martens store and they need to get there. It’s about giving them that opportunity so then they buy into the brand while not necessarily having to buy into the product.”As much as Dr. Martens wants the brand to mean the same thing across the globe, there are regional nuances that have to be taken into consideration.In Asia, for example, Campbell says the rebellious nature of the consumer is perhaps not as overt as it is in Europe and the US, so marketing teams will tweak global campaigns – which come from the global brand team in Camden – to make sure they are relevant to the market they are in.“I liken it to the fact we all have the same vocabulary, but we may have a slightly different accent,” he adds.While he can’t give much away about Dr. Martens’s next campaign for autumn/winter 2019, Campbell says it will “hero the resilience of consumers” and act as a platform for them to share stories about themselves and the part the brand has played in their lives. It has been devised to have longevity beyond the season, something that Dr. Martens will build on into 2020 when it has its 60th anniversary.“The days of brands telling consumers what the brand wants to tell has changed,” Campbell says.“For us, marketing is more about the common ground between the brand and consumer and making sure you are able to meet in the middle. Everyone has a story about Docs and their first pair. I’m really conscious of the fact we need to celebrate those who have made us the brand we are today and that goes back to consumer obsession.”Brian Walker has 243 pairs of Docs (photo: Dr. Martens)Dr. Martens wants its employees to be obsessed with the brand too. When hiring new talent, Campbell says he is less concerned with technical ability, which can be learned, and more interested in whether they have an emotional connection with the brand.“Businesses underplay the importance of culture and fit,” he says. “In the olden days you could’ve gone from FMCG into branded goods and into pharmaceuticals because it was all the same, you were just trying to make a product and sell it. But now, having a true understanding of the brand and consumer is even more prevalent now as consumers get more educated and have stronger points of view on what brands stand for.“In doing so you need to bring people into the business who truly understand the consumer obsession piece. When you’re hiring, it’s what is the emotional connection that the candidate has to the brand and to the consumer that we’re going after?”Because of this, Campbell says everyone in the business – whether in finance, HR, design or working in a cobbling factory – “thinks they’re the brand manager” because they have such a strong point of view on what the brand stands for.“This means you’ve got everyone in the boat and you’re rowing in the same direction with wanting to be consumer obsessed, drive a focus on product, operate as efficiently as we can and drive sustainable global growth,” he says.“If they don’t have the cultural fit and that passion for the brand, they’re probably not going to enjoy the experience or add the value that they need to add.”Going forward, Dr. Martens is looking to Asia for inspiration. It is especially interested in how social platforms can be used to create a “one-stop shop” destination for marketing, social and commerce, like Asia’s hugely popular apps WeChat and Weibo.“But in a balanced way where the social platform isn’t just seen as a second ecommerce site,” Campbell says. “Consumers will call brands out of they think they are driving them to a social platform just to transact.”
For chief brand officer Dany Atkins, the ambition is for people to know and love the Kodak brand like they did in the past. While the business is currently 80% focused on commercial print technologies, a key part of her role over the past three years has been to bring the consumer brand back in a “big way”.“Kodak had almost forgotten that it was a massive consumer brand,” she explains.“We sell technologies into the print industry and that’s the lion’s share of the business, but we’ve been focusing a lot of energy on rebuilding the consumer business by creating our own products and licensing the brand with a very clear strategy for those products to be within the image economy.”During the 1990s the camera giant, which had once claimed 90% of film and 85% of camera sales in the US, was regularly in the list of the world’s top five most valuable brands. In 1996 Kodak’s revenues peaked at $16bn, clocking up profits of $2.5bn by 1999.Despite having invented the first digital camera in 1975, the rise of digital and smartphones sparked a difficult two decades for Kodak as mass consumer demand for film cameras crumbled. Between 2003 and 2012 the company closed 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing laboratories, slashing its workforce by 47,000 and filing for bankruptcy protection in the US.Now Kodak is in far better shape, with a thriving brand licensing business worth $3m and a consumer division which generated $48m in revenue during the third quarter of 2018.Whether they are working on the B2B or consumer side of the business, Atkins and her team want to find pockets of space where the Kodak brand can shine, either through new tech, in-house digital businesses or licensee agreements. The future strategy will see Kodak look for more brand relevant categories within which it can develop new startup businesses.“Essentially its about leveraging the brand and our marketing muscle to create completely new businesses. That’s something that my team and I are quite focused on at the moment,” Atkins explains.“So building business plans rather than being a traditional marketing team. We’re much more of a business development team using the brand as the core asset and then developing businesses off the strength of the brand, finding partners to do it with or investors.”One such emerging digital business is Kodakit, a platform used by brands like Uber and Deliveroo to commission photographers for shoots. Photographers register on the platform and then once selected businesses send over the specs for the photoshoot they wish to commission. Once the bespoke shoot is finished the photographer edits the images and uploads them to the Kodakit platform, from where the client downloads the photos.Kodak manages and processes all the payments and licensing on behalf of the photographer, who has the fee paid straight into their account. The platform also has a back-end AI system which checks all the images before they pass to the client to ensure they are up to standard.Developed entirely in-house, the platform was launched two years ago in Singapore and has to-date commissioned more than 20,000 individual jobs and shared 300,000 images across 30 countries globally. Kodakit is run as a startup separate to the rest of the company but still wholly owned by Kodak.
Bird Box may have become Netflix’s newest success story — Netflix says the Sandra Bullock vehicle became the streaming service's best first-seven-day showing for a Netflix film — but the thriller has also become a somewhat dangerous opportunity to garner internet fame.In Bird Box, Bullock and other characters are forced to go about their lives blindfolded to avoid seeing mysterious forces causing people to commit suicide. In honor of their sacrifice, people are taking on the #BirdBoxChallenge, which involves blindfolding oneself and performing mundane tasks such as riding a scooter, climbing an escalator and ordering at the drive-thru. However, the results have proven to be mostly unsuccessful, as many videos include eventual so-called "epic fails."The challenge has even caught the attention of Netflix itself, with the online streaming service tweeting a warning to those hoping to participate in the viral meme. "Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE. We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love," Netflix tweeted to its users Wednesday. Also poking fun at the film’s child stars, Netflix further tweeted, "Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes."
Cyril Paglino est un serial entrepreneur. Aujourd’hui CEO et co-fondateur de Starchain Capital, un fonds d’investissement dédié aux projets Blockchain, il se développe entre San Francisco, Vancouver et Paris. Il est également le fondateur de Tribe, un système de messagerie qui a pris fin en 2017. Cette aventure a amené Cyril Paglino à remettre en question le pouvoir des grands groupes et notamment des GAFA. Et il a par la suite décidé de développer Starchain Capital, afin de promouvoir notamment les systèmes décentralisés. Une des applications de la Blockchain, largement reconnue, serait de tokeniser chaque produit afin de nous donner des informations concernant son origine. La Blockchain va t-elle entraîner un monde plus transparent et donc à terme, plus éthique ? Cyril Paglino : oui. Que ce soit dans l’agroalimentaire, le luxe, le transport maritime ou l’industrie pharmaceutique, elle va entre autre permettre de garantir l’intégrité des produits et d’éviter la contrefaçon. Elle va aussi permettre de savoir par qui est réellement assemblé un produit, quel a été son mode de transport, dans quelles conditions et quel prix a été pratiqué par chaque intermédiaire. Cela va mécaniquement profiter à ceux pour qui les promesses sont les plus éthiques (relocalisations, fin du travail des enfants, meilleur traitement des animaux, etc.). La transparence amène souvent à plus d’éthique et la Blockchain va pour la première fois rendre possible l’intégrité de la transparence. Pensez-vous que la Blockchain va signer l’arrêt de mort des GAFA ? En développant la Blockchain, vous vous battez surtout contre ces grands groupes. Seulement, on voit qu’eux-mêmes investissent déjà dans cette technologie, notamment Amazon, mais aussi Alibaba, Microsoft, etc. C.P. : je ne pense pas que ce soit si binaire. A mon sens, le leitmotiv d’un entrepreneur reste l’innovation, ou le fait de trouver de nouvelles solutions, plus efficaces, à un problème existant. La technologie de la Blockchain ouvre de nouvelles perspectives, et on peut du coup regarder les challenges et problèmes d’aujourd’hui sous un nouvel angle en tentant d’y apporter des solutions plus adaptées. Certains vont faire évoluer leur produit et leur philosophie, comme par exemple Airbnb qui, lors de sa préparation d’IPO, demande à la SEC de trouver un moyen légal de donner des actions de la boîte à ses meilleurs hosts, ou encore Uber qui étudie le même modèle afin de rétribuer ses meilleurs conducteurs en Equity. D’autres vont investir, comme Yahoo! a pu le faire, il y a 10 ans, en investissant dans AliBaba. Quelques années plus tard, Yahoo! n’allant plus très bien, les parts d’Alibaba détenues par Yahoo! valaient plus cher que Yahoo!… En 1990, des centaines d’entrepreneurs et d’ingénieurs ont commencé à voir l’internet comme LA nouvelle plateforme, en imaginant d’abord l’accessibilité à l’information que cela allait créer (Encarta/Wikipédia vs la bibliothèque municipale). Puis de nouveaux segments de notre économie se sont peu à peu digitalisés pour remplacer, simplifier, fluidifier, améliorer des dizaines de services existants. Aujourd’hui, les 5 plus grosses market cap mondiales sont des boites technologiques/internet. La Blockchain est une nouvelle plateforme. Comme l’internet l’a été il y a 30 ans. On est sur le point d’assister à un gros changement de paradigme, où seules les sociétés les plus agiles survivront et s’adapteront. À une autre échelle on observe une sous-estimation de l’importance de la Blockchain. Son développement parait plutôt lent. On voit par exemple que les cryptomonnaies comme le bitcoin servent surtout à la spéculation financière… Qu’en pensez-vous ? C.P. : on assiste à la naissance d’une technologie, depuis sa découverte (2008) jusqu’à la création des premiers protocoles, il y a eu déjà beaucoup, beaucoup de travail accompli par la communauté des développeurs. Il faut garder en tête un point essentiel : tout cela repose sur des problèmes mathématiques compliqués et très peu d’ingénieurs sont capable de coder à bas niveau ; quelques milliers, voire quelques centaines pour les sujets les plus techniques. Même si la cryptographie et les bases de données décentralisées sont des concepts anciens, cela va prendre du temps pour arriver à des produits évolutifs. Encore une fois, on a mis 20 ans pour passer du 56k à la 4G, avec pour règle simple que la vitesse de connexion allait croitre de 50% par an, tous les ans. On a donc encore du chemin à faire ici. Soyons patients. Pour ce qui est de la partie spéculation, ce n’est pas nouveau. Dès que vous avez un marché non-régulé, il y a toujours de la spéculation autour. C’est un phénomène assez facilement explicable : on entend des histoires de proches qui ont gagné de l’argent, on s’y essaye puis on relaie à notre tour. Le bruit court, le nombre d’ utilisateurs/acheteurs augmentent, tout comme la valorisation , jusqu’au jour où l’actif principal est totalement dépassé par la spéculation qui l’entoure, et que la « bulle » éclate. S’ensuit une phase de reconstruction où l’actif en question prouve ou non son utilité/valeur grand public. C’est celle dans laquelle nous sommes en ce moment. Quelles sont aujourd’hui les applications de la Blockchain ? Quand les entreprises pourront-elles concrètement l’implanter dans leur activité ? C.P. : les premières applications sont autour de la finance, mais aussi de l’assurance ou encore du filehosting/filehosting. On parle aujourd’hui des « applications » de la Blockchain, mais à long terme, je fais partie de ceux qui pense que l’internet, ou du moins une majeure partie, sera basé sur la Blockchain. Si la spéculation est la plus médiatisée, elle représente en fait la partie émergée de l’iceberg. De plus en plus de projets, comme Augur ou Aragon, arrivent à des stades de développement relativement avancés et sont déjà utilisés. Une multitudes d’autres projets open source ou privés sont déjà à l’étude ou en développement au sein de grandes entreprises du CAC 40. Comme toute révolution technologique, la Blockchain doit passer par trois stades avant son adoption par les masses : elle parait d’abord risible, elle est ensuite perçue comme un danger par les pouvoirs en place, puis elle est vue comme une évidence et adoptée par tous. Nous sommes actuellement au début de la deuxième étape.
Près d'une voiture neuve sur trois vendue l'an dernier en Norvège était entièrement électrique, un record mondial pour ce pays désireux d'interdire dès 2025 la commercialisation de véhicules équipés d'un moteur à combustion.Afin de lutter contre les émissions de dioxyde de carbone et la pollution atmosphérique, la Norvège a supprimé la plupart des taxes sur les voitures électriques et propose d'autres incitations telles que le stationnement gratuit et la mise à disposition de bornes de recharge.L'organisme indépendant spécialisé OFV a annoncé mercredi que les voitures électriques avaient représenté 31,2% de l'ensemble des ventes automobiles dans le pays l'an dernier, contre 20,8% en 2017 et seulement 5,5% en 2013, parallèlement à une baisse des ventes de voitures à essence et diesel."C'est un petit pas supplémentaire vers l'objectif de 2025", a déclaré Øyvind Solberg Thorsen, directeur de l'OFV, lors d'une conférence de presse."LONG CHEMIN À PARCOURIR"Il a néanmoins estimé qu'il restait encore un long chemin à parcourir puisque deux tiers des près de 148.000 voitures vendues en 2018 en Norvège étaient des modèles fonctionnant avec du carburant fossile ou des hybrides, c'est-à-dire équipées à la fois d'une batterie électrique et d'un moteur à combustion.Selon l'Agence internationale de l'énergie (AIE), la Norvège est le premier pays au monde en termes de part de marché cumulée des véhicules électriques et hybrides rechargeables, à 39% en 2017, très loin devant l'Islande, deuxième de ce classement avec 12%, et la Suède, troisième avec 6%.Cette part est de 1,7% en France, de 2,2% en Chine, premier marché automobile mondial qui met désormais fortement l'accent sur les véhicules dits à énergie nouvelle, et de 1,2% aux Etats-Unis, toujours selon l'AIE.La nouvelle Leaf électrique de Nissan a été la plus voiture la plus vendue en Norvège l'an dernier tandis que les petits modèles de BMW et de Volkswagen et les grosses berlines et les SUV de Tesla figurent aussi parmi les meilleures ventes.Sur l'année 2018, les ventes de voitures 100% électriques ont augmenté de 40% à 46.092, tandis que celles des modèles diesel ont chuté de 28% et les essence de 17%. Les ventes des véhicules hybrides non rechargeables ont reculé de 20%.Pour l'Institut de l'économie des transports, l'objectif 2025 sera cependant difficile à atteindre."À proprement parler, je ne pense pas que ce soit possible, essentiellement parce que bon nombre de personnes ne disposent pas d'une place de stationnement privée et ne veulent pas acheter une voiture rechargeable si elles ne peuvent pas créer de point de recharge à la maison", dit Lasse Fridstrøm, économiste au sein de cet institut."Nous pourrons peut-être atteindre 75% (de part de marché), à condition que les dispositifs fiscaux soient maintenus", ajoute-t-il.
Walmart could overtake Amazon as the largest digital grocery player in the US by the end of 2018 and account for 17% of sales by 2025, a Deutsche Bank Securities report from October suggested.That would be an impressive feat in just one year. In 2017, Amazon made up 12.5% of US digital grocery sales, compared with Walmart's 11.1%, according to the report.More evidence that Walmart could surpass Amazon comes from a September survey by The Retail Feedback Group, which showed that 33% of US digital grocery shoppers made their most recent purchase on Walmart's site, ahead of Amazon (31%). In 2017, Amazon was ahead of Walmart by 10%.Walmart's rise in digital grocery sales is due partly to its investments in curbside pickup, which is currently available in more than 2,000 stores. Amazon also has curbside pickup options at Whole Foods locations in 22 US cities, but it's available only to Prime members.Curbside pickup and other click-and-collect models make sense for groceries because it gives shoppers a chance to review their order for quality and freshness before completing a transaction. Concerns over not receiving the highest-quality items have been a barrier to digital grocery adoption in general.Speaking about digital grocery buyers in France, Mudit Jaju, global head of ecommerce at Wavemaker, said curbside pickup also allows shoppers to "pick up their orders at their own leisure" and "not be locked into a 2-hour delivery window."Thanks mainly to a service called Drive, click-and-collect is the primary fulfillment method for digital grocery orders in France.In the US, it's also picking up speed. According to Market Force Information, 14.9% of US grocery buyers had bought groceries online and picked up in-store as of June 2018, up more than 10 percentage points from 2016.
TikTok is the international version of Douyin, a popular short-form video app in China. Users can upload short, quirky videos of themselves to the app and share them with followers. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns both apps, acquired US short-video app Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it with TikTok in August.TikTok has been on a growth tear around the world, but its US performance has been especially notable. TikTok's US monthly active user audience grew by 30 million in the three months since the merger, and downloads were up 25% in the US and 20% worldwide, according to app tracker Apptopia.Tracking by App Annie found that TikTok was the second most-downloaded app in the Apple App Store and Google Play as of November, among social, communication, photo and video apps. In June it ranked No. 7.Some of the uptick seen in the Apptopia and App Annie data can be attributed to the fact that Musical.ly users were automatically switched over to TikTok once that app shut down. But there are other factors, such as a promotional push by late-night host Jimmy Fallon, who used TikTok for a series of viewer challenges, including one where users could make a video of themselves rolling like a tumbleweed and then upload the video to the app.Worldwide, TikTok rose to the No. 2 spot in app downloads in November 2018, according to SensorTower, behind WhatsApp and ahead of Messenger, Facebook and Instagram.
You can tell an altcoin is close to death when its price soars. That may sound like a contradiction in terms, but that’s what can happen to crypto assets when they’re in the throes of death. With low liquidity and thin volume, exchange-listed altcoins are prey to manipulators who will send them skyward one final time for a quick profit.Pump and Dumps Are the Swansong of Dying AltcoinsHolders of paragon (PRG) woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning: their coin was up 6,800% overnight. The project has effectively been dead for months, with the SEC ruling in November that Paragon must refund investors who participated in its token sale. News that the worthless token had mooned overnight was thus greeted with astonishment by PRG holders. At 7 a.m. EST on Jan. 1, paragon was trading for over $10, having been changing hands for just $0.30 the day before.Paragon reached a peak of $10 on Yobit on Jan. 1 before crashing back to near its former level.On closer inspection, however, it became clear that the Paragon project wasn’t enjoying a new lease on life. It had not been let off the hook by the SEC, nor had it announced a major partnership that had set the coin’s price rocketing. Rather, paragon had become the latest moribund coin to be subjected to a pump and dump. It had taken just $27,000 of trading volume on a single exchange, Yobit, to propel PRG to double-digit dollar prices, and then back down almost to where it began hours earlier.The final indignity of dying coins, it appears, is to be fraudulently manipulated to enrich insiders one more time. As other tokens that launched during 2017’s ICO mania die off like paragon, they risk succumbing to the same fate. As for Proof of Work coins that are also in the process of dying quietly, there’s another means of manipulation – the 51 percent attack. In a blog post published on Jan. 1, prominent bitcoiner Nic Carter performed a post-mortem on 15 cryptocurrencies whose demise he’d predicted at the start of 2018.Of the projects he successfully called out, two had their demise hastened by 51 percent attacks – Verge and Bitcoin Gold. As Carter acknowledged, it is virtually impossible for a cryptocurrency project to die out entirely, as there will always be residual trading volume and someone willing to pay a rock-bottom price in the hope that the asset will return to its former glories, just as paragon fleetingly did today. Even for those coins that are artificially coaxed back into life, however, the movement merely reaffirms that they are on the way out and destined for an entry on Deadcoins.com. Paragon is already there.
