johnny won - human

(via Hyeonseo Lee: My escape from North Korea | Video on...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 22:07:00 -0400

(via Hyeonseo Lee: My escape from North Korea | Video on TED.com)

This is North Korea. It’s not about a nuclear armament or Dennis Rodman, it’s simply about millions of people starving to death because a dictator does nothing and the world lets it continue. This is spreading the truth and demanding the world take action.

Rooting for the Underdog

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:05:00 -0500

If you hate your iPhone/Android data plan, you should read this WSJ profile on Masayoshi Son, the dude who just bought Sprint, and cross your fingers.

I can’t come up with a good comparison for Masayoshi Son and maybe it’s just since he might be entirely in his own league so he certainly makes it easy to root for him. Just look at what you’re paying for text messages and you have to imagine he’s thinking it’s a huge opportunity.

"Apple and Samsung appear to be almost the only companies that matter in mobile."

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 21:21:07 -0400

“Apple and Samsung appear to be almost the only companies that matter in mobile.”

- Samsung shipped a stunning 57M smartphones in Q3 — twice as many as Apple | VentureBeat (via fred-wilson)

Regardless of how you feel about Samsung’s products vs. Apple’s, Samsung’s ability to pull out of a multi-horse race and make it Samsung vs. Apple is a staggering achievement.

It’s unclear how much longer this status quo will hold but right now, it’s all eyes on Apple and Samsung. Also, Samsung’s all out advertising assault currently dominating every medium easily eclipses the first Droid Does campaign and is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Have you seen anyone unaware of a Galaxy S3?

Never settle. Keep looking. Be hungry.

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 13:49:00 -0400

Last week, I resigned to go co-found a startup that tackles local search. We believe that it’s done badly and we intend to do better. We will bootstrap, live on savings for a bit and build prototypes that hopefully can attract angel investors while treading above a real and striking possibility that we will fail.

About a year and half ago, I was asked to lead two things at Hill Holliday; the mobile practice and the emerging media practice in gaming. Last week, we won Adweek’s 2012 Media Plan of the Year for Branded Entertainment (a social gaming integration) and it spectacularly complemented our win last year for Adweek’s 2011 Media Plan of the Year for Mobile. While winning one national award is tough, the same team winning back-to-back across different categories is unprecedented.

But despite winning a second Media Plan of the Year, I also couldn’t get promoted and I now realize that even if I did, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I wouldn’t be richer, or smarter or better off, I just would have continued the same course for another round.

We are in the middle of a revolution with how we work, how we think, how we communicate and in a few years, what we did in the past will be unrecognizable. Like what the first telephone or the first television set meant to society; social media, the iPad, cloud computing, big-data and smartphones are all just the beginning. I am wildly optimistic about this future and I have always believed that the future was filled with opportunities to do things that might have seemed impossible in the past.

Our time is limited and my bitter disappointment has been a moment of clairvoyance that I have the best opportunity to escape from the known possibilities like the next promotion, the bigger office and more awards for something infinite and unknown. Jumping straight into the unforeseen let’s you dream that not only anything is potentially possible but literally you believe in your soul that anything can be possible. At this point you start sprinting into the unknown because it’s all you want to taste, breathe and smell and nothing you’ve ever been familiar with in your life feels important at all.

I do not know whether I will succeed or fail but I intend on obsessing on never settling since the possibilities are spectacularly unlimited. If you’re reading this and you feel unsettled with your finite possibilities, I suggest shaking things up.

Addendum 8/21

It was not my intention to get press for what I wrote (BI, MediaPost) nor was it my intention to embarrass anyone. I write things here to clarify my thoughts and express with conviction for the things I personally believe in. When I share my personal disappointments here, it’s because I think being candid is helpful and maybe someone in a similar situation can do better.

Fun facts:

— When I meant I was leading the mobile practice & emerging media practice in gaming at Hill Holliday and that it was unprecedented for a team to win back to back, I left out that I was a team of one. I was fortunate to work across lots of talented different groups within the agency but my equation was based on national prestige in proportion to resources. Without a doubt, it was an incredibly entrepreneurial experience.

— I’m thrilled Business Insider, the proud publication behind 50 sexiest ad-execs (I’m not on this list?!), could put together a story using the very best of what I’ve published on social media over the years. I am reminded that I have not had any Hello Kitty candy in years.

— After I resigned & gave my two week notice, and well before I had written anything that the press could even read, I was immediately cut off. This has compounded my disappointment but I know now exactly what kind of culture matters to build a great & interesting company.

— I’ve gotten dozens and dozens of incredibly supportive and inspiring emails, tweets, calls, messages, txts and more. I’ll say it again, if you feel like you’re dying a little everyday then you have a responsibility to yourself to shake it up. Hit me up anytime and I’ll convince you. Or be docile with your happiness and let me know how that goes.

"Luckily for people who live outside the bubble of Silicon Valley, there is a wonderful group of..."

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 21:43:35 -0400

“Luckily for people who live outside the bubble of Silicon Valley, there is a wonderful group of creators here who believe that everything is broken and that technology, creativity and guts can actually fix it.”

- Disruptions: Looking Beyond Silicon Valley’s Bubble - NYTimes.com

"Focus on high-leverage activities."

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:24:31 -0400

““Focus on high-leverage activities.””

- What’s the single most valuable lesson you’ve learned in your professional life? - Quora

Quite an insightful answer.

The next 18 months.

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:58:00 -0400

In the advertising world, June means thinking about what will happen in the future. Our clients (big brands) essentially pay my salary to think about what’s coming next and come up with a strategy for what to do about it. So I was asked to come up with my vision of what will happen in the next 18 months and where we’ll be at the end of 2013. The strategy part is different for all our clients and confidential so that won’t be very public.

Instead of coming up with quotes and stats projecting where the numbers are predicted to go, I made more of a qualitative POV to facilitate a bit more of a thought provking discussion and place my own personal bets as to where I think things will be. I think it’s absolutely necessary to declare what you believe or else you stand for nothing.

If I were a VC this is what I would bet on, if I were a CEO or CMO this is where I would sprint towards and if I were making a startup then this is exactly where I’d focus on.

This is also mostly a list since this is how I sort my thoughts before I make this into a shiny presentation. The presentation of course would be backed up with dozens of stats but that’s the easier part. I’d love any feedback too: @johnnywon.

—

Media consumption that used to be thick will become very, very wide

There will no longer be tent-pole TV shows (the thick audience) or the must have newspaper subscription
There will only be more consumption across a broader spectrum of distributed media (the wide audience)
The thick audience is gone forever; spend accordingly.

Personal computing is changing from everything we’ve ever experienced

PC Desktop & Laptop sales are down as an industry and will never come back
Smartphones & tablets are in triple digit growth. iPad, Windows 8 Surface, Amazon Fire & the Google Nexus Tablet are for the masses
Owning multiple devices to suit a lifestyle will be the new normal across all incomes & demographics

A Dramatic Disruption is Inevitable

A rumored Apple powered TV set would instantly & permanently change how TV shows are made & how TV ads are bought/sold
An iPhone with a built in NFC (near field communication) chip for walleting would forever change how we think & spend money
Nearly everything we buy, do or spend time on will be in the cloud as a photo, check-in, re-blog, share, Tweet, reference. iCloud, Google Drive, Windows SkyDrive

Cars are essentially becoming a Smartphone Accessory

Voice command navigation, music, social media apps all through smartphones (Siri Eyes-Free for iPhone)
Personalized health reports & diagnostics on car maintenance
Cars don’t just have navigation systems, they’re literally search engines on four wheels. BMW calls theirs “BMW Search”; Mercedes has an app called mbrace and integrates nearly 20 security, destination planning and convenience services; Audi connect® turns an Audi into a WiFi hotspot passengers to retrieve information on the internet conveniently

The Mobile Wallet will explode in usage

Dozens of different apps for boarding passes, movie tickets, retail coupons, loyalty cards, and more will be a part of everything we do
Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Google, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, Apple, Paypal, Walmart+Target all have competing initiatives for the mobile wallet
If you think Apple’s TV set would be disruptive (cracking a $20 billion market), Apple cracking the Visa/Mastercard duopoly would be worth significantly more (a $100-$200 billion market)

Sharing things socially will be almost entirely on smartphones

iOS6 integration tied into Facebook will set the new standard for how social media will be deeply integrated into all future smartphones
The advancing technology in smartphones, better cameras, bigger bandwidth w/Bluetooth 4, NFC chips, bigger screens will only accelerate the sharing of photos, videos, locations, purchases, and more

Everyone who wants to be social is already social

In a way, social is peaking. New users to the giants, Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare, are less important than having their existing base maintain usage or increase usage. In fact, Facebook has peaked with the number of unique users. Twitter & Foursquare’s new users will be a lot less interesting than what their current users will continue to do.
There will be no alternatives to Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare; there will only be a user’s choice to keep using them or not.
Creating new interactions via social will be the biggest & brightest frontier for social. Instagram = Photos+Social, Sims Social = Gaming+Social, Flipboard = Reading+Social

Consumption of video on mobile devices will eclipse all other devices

Things like HBO to Go, ESPN anywhere, Netflix, Amazon Prime are the tip of the iceberg
Nearly every content producer of any digital publishing property will start producing video content
Existing efforts from digital publishers will aggressively expand due to their need to better monetize their properties

—

The next 18 months are going to get crazy. Everything as we know it will change.

Growth Hacker

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:50:40 -0400

Growth Hacker:

I honestly thought this would be a bullshit post but I was totally wrong.

Marketing+APIs+Doing it

This really is a great case study and without a doubt, marketers suck at understanding how to promote through APIs.

"We’re Fucked It’s Over” (WFIO)"

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:49:54 -0400

““We’re Fucked It’s Over” (WFIO)”

- Things To Consider Before Saying “I Do” To Investors | TechCrunch

Nice acronym to keep memorized.

The Day After - NYTimes.com

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:02:54 -0400

The Day After - NYTimes.com:

Quite a good opinion piece in the New York Times about the day after North Korea falls. The question of when North Korea falls is insignificant when rebuilding North Korea will take decades upon decades. Shin Dong-hyuk’s “Escame from Camp 14” only touches upon the incredibly alien existence of North Korea.

Dubin wrote the spot last October and shot it with his good...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:52:56 -0500

Dubin wrote the spot last October and shot it with his good friend and co-director, Lucia Aniello. It cost about $4,500 and the team managed to bang it out in a single day, shooting on location at the actual factory warehouse, at their fulfillment center in Gardena, California. (via A Startup Ad Pivot: Behind The Dollar Shave Club Promo | Co.Create: Creativity \ Culture \ Commerce)

Now this is a startup video.

(via Apple Wins Patent for iWallet: The one that will rule the...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:23:00 -0500

(via Apple Wins Patent for iWallet: The one that will rule the World - Patently Apple)

Apple’s iWallet patent shows exactly what Apple could do. This is why I’m excited:

Read this patent for Apple’s iPhone integrating NFC for mobile payments with the iTunes Store.

Now look at $AAPL.

The general theory in mobile+NFC has been this: the moment Apple’s iPhone has NFC for mobile payments, the entire world will embrace NFC. Literally, it’ll be almost over night. Like how Apple made smartphones with keyboards completely irrelevant or an iPad to be the standard for tablets; I think this will change everything.

I believe this will happen for several reasons:

The iPhone’s overall position as a smartphone sales leader places it either number one or number two in whatever available ranking. An iPhone 5/5s/6 would be able to immediately make a dent in the market.
The hundreds of millions of credit card accounts tied to an iTunes/App Store account let this feature work immediately out of the box. Setup would be blindingly simple.
Merchants with NFC swipe capable credit card readers would have to do nothing.
Apple’s marketing genius (ie: running tons of TV ads showing a product demo) would make understanding how this works ubiquitous.

The hundred billion dollar wrinkle of all this is simple but crazy. If Apple let users put in their bank information into iTunes, Apple will have invented a better debit card.

Of course, it’s actually way more complicated than that but Apple could offer merchants a lower fee to process the transaction (let’s say Apple takes 2% to Visa’s 3.5%), the user doesn’t have to pay anything extra and iTunes would show a charge that would be pulled at little cost from the bank (credit card fees > debit card fees > direct debit payments).

Users would love the superior experience. Merchants would relish a new competitor to the Mastercard, Visa, American Express card fee oligopoly. And Apple would be able to profit on every transaction.

I don’t think Apple is thinking about a NFC payment system, an Apple iPhone enabled NFC payment system will happen and it’s only a matter of time (this year’s 5 or ‘13’s 5s is my bet). The 2nd part that I wrote about, the disruption to the credit card fee oligarchs, is more of an if but I believe Apple’s interests are strong enough that it will absolutely happen. If this is the case, Apple’s stock is worth billions more than what it is today.

Lastly, it’s important to note a final point about Apple. Apple doesn’t go into markets because money can be made. They go into markets because they can make the experience significantly better than the status quo and find healthy profits. Mobile payments as an industry right now is a total mess (Isis, Google Wallet, Wal-Mart+Target) and the credit card fees charged on merchants make no one happy (take a guess what Apple pays out to credit card fees, this can be calculated). This is why the “iWallet” patent is so exciting, a completely better experience is around the corner.

"What’s holding back mobile ad spending is the almost caveman like belief that display..."

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:44:06 -0500

“What’s holding back mobile ad spending is the almost caveman like belief that display advertising is going to be relevant on a mobile device the way that it is in a magazine. The truth is that meaningful, measurable brand engagement - that companies will be willing to put meaningful dollars to work with, will not come from display advertising on phones, but through more engaging experiences like the app ecosystem or social experiences. Lets stop trying to pretend that the mobile ad space is a great delivery vehicle for display advertising, and we will see mobile as a brand/commerce marketing opportunity take off at scale.”

- — Jeffrey Dachis

What’s Holding Back Mobile-Ad Spending? | Digital - Advertising Age

Hmmm. Something worth thinking about.

The “Galapagos effect” in Japan

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:00:00 -0500

Fantastic Japanese denim & neo-French style pastries are great and everything but the Economist smartly points out the Japanese electronic manufactures are hemorrhaging money.

$17 billion in fiscal 2011 losses for Sony, Panasonic & Sharp? With no Japanese manufacturer seems capable of making a profitable LCD TV nor a globally competitive cell phone, it’s sad times for that Japanese.

This whole article does make you wonder about reiterating in isolation. Do firms and or people have enough self-awareness of working in the galapagos?

The headline, the tweet, and the unfair significance of Jeremy Lin - Grantland

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:11:10 -0500

The headline, the tweet, and the unfair significance of Jeremy Lin - Grantland:

By far one of the best things I’ve read in the past week. Jay Caspian Kang had a bit of a different childhood than what I experienced but an outstanding essay about the state of the current issues facing Asian Americans. It’s a good place and a weird place.

Why Are Harvard Graduates in the Mailroom? - NYTimes.com

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:43:29 -0500

Why Are Harvard Graduates in the Mailroom? - NYTimes.com:

In their book “Freakonomics,” Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt explain, among other things, the odd economic behavior that guides many drug dealers. In one gang they described, the typical street-corner guy made less than minimum wage but still worked extremely hard in hopes of some day becoming one of the few wildly rich kingpins. This behavior isn’t isolated to illegal activity. There are a number of professions in which workers are paid, in part, with a figurative lottery ticket. The worker accepts a lower-paying job in exchange for a slim but real chance of a large, future payday.

This more or less explains Hollywood.

This more or less explains Advertising.

Freemium Games

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:30:22 -0500

There is a lot to explore here and I like EA’s freemium push with the Simpsons. A nice proof point showing how it works with Temple Run:

Right before we switched it to free in September, we had a couple hundred downloads/day at 99 cents, with some in-app purchase sales. After switching it to free and settling at No. 100 Top Free app, we had about 50,000 daily downloads, and a whole lot more in-app purchases. In fact, revenue went up 10x immediately upon switching to free, so keeping it free was a no brainer.

— Temple Run developer Imangi Studios’ Natalia Luckyanova in Venture Beat

Is Tokyo the best place on earth for food, denim & drink in the world or what? Who wants to go?

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:41:47 -0500

For decades, Japan simply imported the wares of foreign cultures, but recession has led to invention. The country has begun creating the finest American denim, French cuisine and Italian espresso in the world. Now is the time to visit.

Made Better in Japan - WSJ.com

Born or Raised In the U.S., Why Are Entrepreneurs Returning to Korea? | Inc.com

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:20:03 -0500

Born or Raised In the U.S., Why Are Entrepreneurs Returning to Korea? | Inc.com:

It’s funny, the story really doesn’t address the question with a well defined answer but it doesn’t really matter. The beauty of the story is the amount of hustle by the Korean-Americans & internationally minded Korean nationals trying to reconquer the old-school Chaebol powered Korea.

If it means sleeping on a futon next to your desk for a year to win then so be it. I’d do it in a heartbeat.

"SOME parents give their children cakes. A few give them cake shops. The hot topic in South Korea is..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:33:02 -0500

“SOME parents give their children cakes. A few give them cake shops. The hot topic in South Korea is the trend for daughters and grand-daughters of chaebol families to open bakeries and other small food outlets.”

- Bakers and chaebol in South Korea: Let them eat cake | The Economist

This in a nutshell defines Korea’s chaebol problem.