A Better Course http://bettercourse.org "thou hast councilled a better course than thou hast allowed" Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:00:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en links for November 19th http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/458916534/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/20/links-for-november-19th-2/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:00:17 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/?p=282
  • Why have they replaced Tower Bridge with some leather boots, belts and bling chains? No, honestly, why? Perhaps even their advertising drones were struggling to capture the full gaudy scale of Westfield, recognising that there is no neat or simple way of conveying quite what the place is all about.
    (tags: westfield potlatch advertising towerbridge )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/20/links-for-november-19th-2/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/20/links-for-november-19th-2/     links for November 19th http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/457817230/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/19/links-for-november-19th/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:03:10 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/19/links-for-november-19th/
  • "Mary and Matt kick it up a notch with some design and 5.5 ounces of chocolate. It's a chocolate pie chart of 70% milk chocolate, 20% dark, and 10% white." Christmas is coming, all!
    (tags: chart stats statistics visualization chocolate flowingdata )
  • “lucky” people tend to see themselves as lucky, whether they are or not: I asked my subjects to imagine being in a bank. Suddenly, an armed robber enters and fires a shot that hits them in the arms. Unlucky people tended to say this would be their bad luck to be in the bank during the robbery. Lucky people said it could have been worse: “You could have been shot in the head.”
    (tags: luck lucky bigcontrarian )
  • 80 per cent of the revenue came from 52,000 songs. What's eye catching about the number? Well, the typical inventory of a conventional high street record store was around 4,000 CDs. Or … around 52,000 songs
    (tags: brandnew online longtail stats music musicindustry )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/19/links-for-november-19th/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/19/links-for-november-19th/     links for November 18th http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/456603183/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/18/links-for-november-18th/#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:04:35 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/18/links-for-november-18th/
  • although the language is obfuscated, he is implying that the people he is letting go are the weaker ones, even though many of Tesla's problems clearly stem from errors made by senior management (including Musk) and from the the economic environment.
    (tags: bobsutton leadership layoffs management tesla )
  • Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among either group. Black voters made up 11 percent of the electorate in 2004 and 13 percent in 2008, while young voters comprised 17 percent of all voters in 2004 and 18 percent four years later.
    (tags: bigcontrarian politics statistics )
  • This recession seems stranger the more I look at it. We’re not seeing a decline in work, and I know few people curtailing their spending habits. Quite the opposite. I know more than a handful who are spending more than normal, capitalizing on many of the unfathomable bargains available.
    (tags: bigcontrarian recession oil )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/18/links-for-november-18th/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/18/links-for-november-18th/     Money talk http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/456541429/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/18/money-talk/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:45:02 +0000 Alexandra Mitchell http://bettercourse.org/?p=278 From Big Contrarian (specifically this post):

    I know few people curtailing their spending habits. Quite the opposite. [...] Anecdotes are of course useless, but the disconnect strikes me as something to think about.

    The anecdotes here are, I think, interesting data points - are people spending less and consciously not talking about that? How long is the time laspse between spending less and talking about spending less? There’s already been an increase in adverts that don’t have any kind of message other than “This will save you money” - and I wonder if this is based on actual customers talking, and how much more nuanced these conversations actually are.

    ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/18/money-talk/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/18/money-talk/     links for November 9th http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/447778931/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/09/links-for-november-9th/#comments Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:05:09 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/09/links-for-november-9th/
  • Early that summer, the campaign made the unorthodox decision to announce its vice presidential pick via text messages sent directly to supporters. It wasn't just a trick to do something flashy with technology and attract media attention. The point was to collect voters' cell-phone numbers for later contact during voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. Thanks to the promotion, the campaign's list of cell-phone numbers increased several-fold to more than 1 million.
    (tags: politics america campaign directmarketing newsweek )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/09/links-for-november-9th/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/09/links-for-november-9th/     links for November 4th http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/442040655/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/04/links-for-november-4th/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:23:02 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/04/links-for-november-4th/
  • Fandom feels like a highly inappropriate way to relate to political life: In my book I discuss the troubling tone of a lot of cultural-taste conversation, the way that it's used to sharpen social distinctions, but at least there the stakes are relatively low (at least in the short term); in politics the consequences feel more dire.
    (tags: zoilus election fandom america )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/04/links-for-november-4th/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/04/links-for-november-4th/     links for November 2nd http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/440406818/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/03/links-for-november-2nd/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:34 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/03/links-for-november-2nd/
  • Any activity that actively promotes us getting through each iteration (including the learning phase) faster, is value-creating. Everything else (including a lot of traditional "agile" or "lean" tactics) is waste.
    (tags: startup innovation lessonslearned data insight customer leadership )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/03/links-for-november-2nd/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/11/03/links-for-november-2nd/     links for October 23rd http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/429926046/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/23/links-for-october-23rd/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:00:43 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/23/links-for-october-23rd/
  • The shift away from credit cards - even if it's short-lived - could be another blow for retailers who are already facing a very difficult sales year. "With credit cards, consumers spend 30% more (on purchases) than with cash," Dvorkin said.
    (tags: consumer cnn creditcard credit america )
  • (tags: advertising ibelieveinadvertising elephant )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/23/links-for-october-23rd/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/23/links-for-october-23rd/     links for October 22nd http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/428744558/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/22/links-for-october-22nd/#comments Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:02:26 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/22/links-for-october-22nd/
  • This crisis is as much about values, trust, and business integrity as it is about declining stock prices and limited credit. Be sure to remind your colleagues, your customers, and the world at large why what you do matters, why you started the company in the first place, and what kind of impact you're trying to have on the world.
    (tags: recession management leadership venturecapital billtaylor harvardbusinessonline )
  • It is accuracy, not Pollyanna-ism, mole-hunting or messenger shooting, that is indispensable to the good journalism the public has the right to expect.
    (tags: politics journalism bbc ft finance )
  • Image stabilisation advert from Canon. Somewhat unheimlich.
    (tags: ibelieveinadvertising advertising canon )
  • This mailing is printed on rough paper similar to a shark’s skin and tells the recipient where to cut the envelope open, revealing a bloody shark fin stump.
    (tags: advertising directmail charity ibelieveinadvertising )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/22/links-for-october-22nd/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/22/links-for-october-22nd/     links for October 20th http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ABetterCourse/~3/426651976/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/20/links-for-october-20th/#comments Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:00:54 +0000 admin http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/20/links-for-october-20th/
  • Mr Lahde, who has made tens of millions of dollars from his highly successful bets against the financial and property sectors during the past two years, also called for the legalisation of cannabis and said he was now dropping out to spend time with his money… Mr Lahde did not immediately return calls.
    (tags: ft hedgefund subprime resignation )
  • I don’t mind it having a different taste to standard Pepsi or Coke – there’s always a push for a new flavour to help differentiate – but I’d want a premium drink to be more complex than the standard drink, whereas Coke is an incredible rich mix of flavours, very carefully balanced, Pepsi Raw is one-note (apples), two-note at best (burnt sugar), and weirdly ends up tasting more artificial than the product it revises.
    (tags: review product productmanagement productlaunch brand food antimega pepsi cocacola )
    • ]]>     http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/20/links-for-october-20th/feed/ http://bettercourse.org/2008/10/20/links-for-october-20th/