Archive for the 'Business' Category

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Ying and Yang by Asics

Published on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 in Advertising, Business and Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

So, imagine you have to come up with a campaign for selling shoes, sports shoes, trainers. You tell yourself well there is a right foot, a left foot and what does that make you think of. The Ying and Yang concept of course, or opposites attract, etc. Well Asics have come up with such a campaign and they are putting the left and right forward… “What’s a left without a right?” And pronto you think about Adam and Eve of course. I started thinking about the left and right parts of my brain but then I’m a bit weird ;)

Asics Body Mind Sound Left Right

And of course the temptation to go back to basics and talk about Adam and Eve…

The place of premium products during the recession

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 in Business and Society. 0 Comments Tags: , .

P&G are getting good results on premium products (see article on Brandweek) but at the same time private labels are winning market share.

How much is that blog worth in my window?

Published on Monday, March 2, 2009 in Blog, Business and Web. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Just read MacIntyre’s great post about the value of blogs out there. We are of course talking about professional sites that are not really on par with the likes of the majority of blogs out there though. You’re talking about people who make a living out of writing on their blogs (or getting others to write for them). MacIntyre created a previous top 25 list of blogs and their valuation in 2008, he’s back again with another list for 2009 of the top 25 blogs.
As we are nearly all faced with the reduction in spending on advertising, one would expect sites like the ones listed in 2008 to have dropped in their ‘value’. I mean Wall Street are having hard times so it seems normal that this would have a ricochet effect on the rest of us. But it seems that it isn’t necessarily the case for all, and on the contrary some of the sites listed have gained value… It’s like christmas come early ;)

It’s cold outside

Published on Sunday, March 1, 2009 in Advertising, Business, Marketing and Society. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Articles are flowing about how big companies are cutting away at their budgets, if they are not cutting then they are renegotiating costs with their agencies, here and here…
The article on AdAge explains how companies are also taking a look at consolidating:

PepsiCo last week reported a 43% drop in fourth-quarter profits on write-downs and restructuring and a 9% drop in full-year profits. During Coca-Cola’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Feb. 12, CEO Muhtar Kent said the marketer has slashed its agency roster by more than half. “We have consolidated, ” he said. “Agency numbers have gone down by more than half, and I think we have driven a lot of efficiencies in our marketing, our market-research costs.”

The survey in the above emarketer article indicates cuts are increasing in the various marketing and advertising areas.

The survey also demonstrates it is not always about cuts in spending but also about reallocation of Ad spending. We are seeing during this time of recession that ROI and the ability to provide hard data about ROI is important. There is a distinct move of money from TV to Digital and big companies are putting their money behind the idea that there is a better return on investment in digital media.

Being more efficient with money that is available to spend on advertising is therefore very important. You see so many catch-up campaigns where companies are just trying to better their competitor without looking about being innovating and really thinking about what will allow them to provide interesting and hopefully even innovative services to their customers. There is great article from the creator of the subservient ‘chicken campaign‘, not really innovative or providing an interesting service but as memorable ads go this is right up there with the effective few.

But even though it is cold outside, paying attention to clients needs does pay off and companies that are doing a good job in this arena, like Google, are getting top scores.

“Since new customers are harder to come by in an economic downturn, firms need to pay even more attention to building loyalty with their most important customers,” wrote Bruce Temkin, author of Customer Experience Correlates to Loyalty.

Companies that have a good brand, that people will trust and who also advertise efficiently are highly likely to come out of this recession far better than the others…

Note: there is a new article on emarketer (20 March 09) concerning a Myers Publishing survey providing a new view on how ad spending will evolve.

Does an Entrepreneur lose flair over time ?

Published on Saturday, December 30, 2006 in Business, Marketing and Trend. 0 Comments

Bill Nguyen, a serial entrepreneur explains in a CNN Money article why he feels that his experience has pushed him to be less bold in his approach and thus probably takes off an edge he would have had on ‘the market’, the first time round :

“Here’s what I think about the whole serial entrepreneur thing: Every time I do something, I suck a little bit more,” Nguyen says.
“Experience teaches you to be less bold, more concerned. All these life experiences teach you to be afraid. I have to try so much harder now not to be the sum total of my experiences.”

Unusual honesty and an interesting read…

Visas in the US are still scarce

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006 in Business, Immigration, Politics and Society. 0 Comments

The washingtonpost describes the current despair that can be felt in the US from many technology companies and research institutions who really need to hire skilled workers and were hoping that this year would see new legislation pass through Congress to allow US companies to employ talented people from aboard.
Some feel that the bill that has been put forward, tried to change too much :

“It is incredibly difficult to pass major legislative reforms in any areas, and they tried to bite off a lot,” said Jenifer Verdery, a policy director for Intel Corp., which has lobbied for more skilled foreign workers. “We’ve made a strong case, and we’re hoping to take that to the finish line . . . if there is any policymaking left to do after the election.”

But the current situation is getting unbearable for many specialised companies in the US :

Jai Pathak cited the Hungarian roots of Intel Corp. co-founder Andrew S. Grove, whose work helped create the modern computer industry that employs millions of Americans.
“What would have happened if the United States had decided to close the doors on him?” Pathak said

Which Movie Online ?

Published on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 in Business, Film, Music and TV. 0 Comments

TV Series and the Internet are getting on fine wouldn’t you say ? The music industry has been cornered into the position of accepting that systems like iTunes are actually working and working well. So why would the movie industry continue to dig its heals in about distributing films over the Internet ? You may think that the whole music industry versus the Internet fiasco was a lesson in itself but no it seems not !
A good article over at washingtonpost.com discusses the illogical behaviour of the movie industry and how hard companies like Apple and Amazon are working on changing this, bringing out boxes that will allow people to view downloaded films on their TVs…

It seems in the same way that book publishers are creating barriers in the online publishing industry to make traditional channels of distribution happy, the movie industry is similarly motivated to create barriers… When will they learn ?

Beware of the Pretext

Published on Monday, September 11, 2006 in Business, Society and Unusual. 0 Comments

The current HP scandal is the consequence of what is known as “pretexting”.
Over at the washingtonpost.com there is an article that covers the shady procedure of “pretexting” to obtain information about a person. Although you may like myself, be astonished and unaware that executives of the same company engaged in spying upon each other like this, it seems it is not uncommon !

pretext : a purpose or motive alleged or an appearance assumed in order to cloak the real intention or state of affairs
Merriam Webster

Have you ever wondered, when you get inundated with questions by some random telemarketer, “How many people live in your apartment ?”, “Do you own the apartment ?”, “Do you all work full-time ?” and so on… whether there is some hidden agenda ? Or worse, for the pure paranoid, whether they are planning to figure out when you’re not at home ?!

Ringing around the world at the right time

Published on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 in Business and Travel. 0 Comments

If you travel a fair amount as I do and also need to ring people up who may live on the other side of the world it’s not always easy to remember what the best time to ring people is.

Well, fear no more, you’ll never make a mistake again with the World Clock Meeting Planner !

world clock meeting planner

As you can see you have the appropriate ‘business’ parts of the day and corresponding local time are in green (good to go). You also have in a nice yellow colour the parts of the day that are for family and good friends. If you’re ringing up in the red parts there had better be a good reason whoever it is ! ;)

Here I was checking out what time I could ring Sebastien in New York, while taking into account his hectic work day.

Hacks and phishing, more and more sophisticated

Published on Monday, July 17, 2006 in Business, Code, Tech and Trend. 0 Comments

An article on WashingtonPost.com explains how a security flaw in Powerpoint has enabled hackers to infiltrate companies and retrieve vital information in a specific espionage case. It seems that the criminals using this hole in Microsoft PowerPoint wait until Microsoft have just released their security updates, and this is becoming a trend. In the wake of new updates they launch their attacks knowing full well that updates have not dealt with the flaw they have identified !

Andreas Marx of AV-Test.org notes that hackers appear to be surfacing with new exploits just days after Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday cycle has passed, possibly to have more time to exploit vulnerable systems before Redmond issues its next round of updates.

Attacks like this and phishing techniques are well thought-out and often extremely complex operations that require skills that even some of the top computer companies would rather have in-house than having to battle against them. A recent MITM (Man in the Middle) attack against Citibank, rather Citibank customers, used an extremely sophisticated system that could easily fool savvy IT folks ! This attack is also explained in detail in washingtonpost.com’s Security Fix section.

Banks are now faced with traditional scams and the new extremely sophisticated cyber-scams like the above phishing techniques.

It’s a good idea to remember that banks will (should) never request your pin code over the internet and checking the domain name is a good idea. In the above example the domain name used was “citibank.com.tufel-club.ru” and not “citibank.com”.