A Better Course

• ::: I believe in advertising ::: » Kalashnikov Watches: Tank Watch
  This is a fairly dense piece of imagery. It’s excellent.
  (tags: advertising ibelieveinadvertising kalashnikov branding brand)
• Play office politics without getting dirty – Nov. 29, 2007 – Ask Annie
  You also need to know what the consequences will be if you take a risk and it doesn’t work out. Will you get a slap on the wrist, or be ostracized for a while and then forgiven, or will you be fired?
  (tags: cnn entrepreneurship corporateculture)
• Web metrics | Many ways to skin a cat | Economist.com
  But when it comes to banner advertising, says Mr Rothenberg, advertisers just have to consider all these new measures as they would a pointillist painting by George Seurat: looking at one dot is no fun; taking them all in can be rewarding.
  (tags: advertising online theeconomist statistics)
• Face value | Doing well by being rather nice | Economist.com
  The purpose of treating his employees well is to succeed in business. The average rate of staff turnover at SAS is around 4% a year, compared with around 20% in the software industry as a whole.
  (tags: corporateculture sas technology theeconomist)

• Facebook May Revamp Beacon | Business Week
  ‘At issue is the Beacon program, which alerts members’ Facebook “friends” to purchases and other activities on third-party Web sites.’ Excellent use of the quotation mark from Business Week.
  (tags: businessweek facebook web2.0 advertising privacy)
• Neuromarketing » How To Increase Customer Pain
  Paying money for things activates the pain center in our brain, and that this effect is increased if the price is perceived to be unfair. If you expect a cup of coffee to cost less than a couple of dollars, and you get charged five, buying pain kicks in.
  (tags: neuromarketing buyingpain brand marketing advertising customerservice)
• Soup Up Your Cellphone – New York Times
  Widgets are small applications, most often free, that appear on your phone’s menu pages. They will not turn your vintage Motorola StarTAC into an iPhone, but they will add features and functions that you didn’t think your phone could ever possess.
  (tags: nytimes mobile technology)

It would be interesting to see how many people went to the Overstock website from a Facebook Beacon news item, versus how many people went there from an article or blog post complaining about Facebook Beacon.

Given the degree of closeness of most people on Facebook to most of the people on their friends list (not a great deal), I’m unconvinced by the idea that Beacon will function as a trusted referral, or (in the long run) as anything more than another type of advert to ignore. Nevertheless, I’m sure Overstock and the other partner sites are greatly enjoying the publicity in the run up to Christmas.

• MySpace Isn’t Just for People Who Like to Watch – Bits – Technology – New York Times Blog
  MySpace will add a clone of the Facebook News Feed. But MySpace needs to be innovative in its own right, especially around more ways that people can create and consume entertainment with their friends.
  (tags: facebook myspace nytimes web2.0 technology social)

• Are You the Best Boss for Your Business? | Business Week
  Many companies encounter problems when they grow to around 20 employees; when they are forced to make the transition from the high-performance/cheap-labor model that worked in the startup phase and start paying the real costs of labor and productivity.
  (tags: entrepreneurship businessweek business management)

• Perfectly Marketed TV Show Somehow Fails | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
  Experts say that, while there have been several documented cases in the past of television programs underperforming in the face of brilliant marketing campaigns, a direct cause for the bizarre phenomenon has not yet been determined.
  (tags: theonion marketing television funny)
• Shortsighted Management – New York Times
  The founders may rush so quickly to market — in trying to become attractive enough to Wall Street to hold an initial public offering or to lure a potential acquirer — that their best ideas may not be given time to develop.
  (tags: management entrepreneurship nytimes)
• 2008_Presidential_Logo_Dissection.pdf (application/pdf Object)
  The 2008 Presidential logos analysed – via Brand Autopsy
  (tags: america presidentialelection design)
• ::: I believe in advertising ::: » Il Manifesto: Left hands
  Superbly uncanny advertising for Il Manifesto.
  (tags: advertising ibelieveinadvertising design ilmanifesto)

• The Psychology of Waiting Lines > General article by David Maister
  if managers are to concern themselves with how long their customers or clients wait in line for service (as, indeed, they should), then they must pay attention not only to the readily-measurable, objective, reality of waiting times, but also how those wai
  (tags: service product waiting psychology davidmaister queue)

• Learning Mandarin | False Eastern promise | Economist.com
  In a few decades China may overtake America as the world’s top economic power. Will Britons who learn its language be rewarded with better careers? Barring some kind of sea change in global language learning, the answer will almost always be no.
  (tags: theeconomist china language career economics)
• Cost of Thanksgiving soaring: Merrill Lynch | Reuters
  “One reason why consumer confidence is receding at a time of year when everyone would be so joyous may be because the cost of partaking in the holiday spirit has soared and bitten deeply into purchasing power,” David Rosenberg wrote.
  (tags: reuters thanksgiving america economics)

Lovely IKEA adverts (via swissmiss)

I like the way IKEA are (or seem to be) responding to the perception of their furniture as entirely generic by placing the home as a site of creativity; as well as the above, the UK “Not For Sale” campaign puts their products in a similar space.

It’s an well-timed branding campaign, because they’ve already established themselves (very successfully) as inexpensive. These sets of adverts seem to be aimed at bringing back people who used to shop at IKEA by putting the products in a different consideration set – “things that are wanted”, rather than “things that are needed”. Essentially, they’re now in the same space as their competitors. But (still) cheaper.

• In Small Biz, There’s No Small Stuff | Business Week
  I have come to see these scenarios as more than annoyances; they are often signals of a critical failure of leadership. We can only assume that senior execs they can’t be bothered by such trivial matters as customers reaching customer service
  (tags: businessweek customerservice customer marketing)
• Chart Chooser
  Use the filters to find the right chart type for your needs. Then download as Excel or Powerpoint templates and insert your data.
  (tags: via:preoccupations analytics business excel graph design visualization statistics)