Archive for November 18th, 2009

FOX is biased … but MSNBC isn’t … huh ?

November 18, 2009

… and Comedy Central is “investigative journalism”.  So says one of the President’s closest advisers.

Excerpted from Bloomberg.com, Obama Aide Dunn Renews Criticism of Fox, Hails Jon Stewart, Nov. 14 2009

President Barack Obama’s outgoing communications director, Anita Dunn, renewed her attacks against Fox News as she praised the “investigative journalism” of Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and said MSNBC isn’t a biased cable news network.

After the controversy between the White House and Fox News erupted, Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush’s political adviser, said that cable news channel MSNBC had a left-leaning bias.

Dunn disputed that contention, saying MSNBC is a “different kind of a network”. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aBRJYGPAmOoo

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Are “great” companies great … or just lucky?

November 18, 2009

Excerpted from: HBR, Are “Great” Companies Just Lucky?, by Michael E. Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed, and Andrew D. Henderson, April 2009

Studies that examine high-performing companies to uncover the reasons for their success are both popular and influential.

They’re the basis of the insights behind best sellers like In Search of Excellence and Good to Great.

But there’s a problem: The “great” companies from which these studies draw their conclusions are mostly just lucky.  Many of the “great” companies cited are, in fact, nothing special. 

A firm is remarkable only when its performance is so unlikely that systemic variation alone cannot account for its results. Most success studies don’t address this fact, relying instead on the “self-evident” nature of exceptional performance.

To understand how lucky some firms might get because of systemic variation alone, we ran simulations that gave us a picture of how firms might do if they differed only in their luck.  Then, we compared actual results with simulated results, which allowed us to determine which firms had delivered performance so
unlikely that it was probably due to something remarkable about them.

Using this method, we evaluated 287 allegedly high-performing companies in 13 major success studies.

We found that only about one in four of those firms was likely to be remarkable; the rest were indistinguishable from mediocre firms catching lucky
breaks.

By our method, even in the study with the best hit rate, only slightly more than half the high performers had profiles
that were credibly attributable to something special about the firms. In short, what qualifies as remarkable performance is anything
but self-evident.

This doesn’t mean you should necessarily dismiss the advice offered in success studies. But, success studies should be treated not as how-to manuals but as sources of inspiration and fuel for introspection.

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Cruisin’ the Net for luxury & fashion … the marketing power of the Web

November 18, 2009

TakeAway:  This is another big victory for online retailers.  Anyone in fashion who does not take them seriously should think again.

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Excerpted from WSJ, “From the Runway to Your Laptop,” By Christina Binkley, October 1, 2009

At the D&G runway show in Milan last week, the CEOs of Saks, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman were relegated to second-row and third-row seats. In front of them, sitting primly in the first row, was the CEO of online retailer Yoox.com.

The moment—coming as the super-sexy women’s styles for next spring pranced down Milan’s runways—marked a shake-up in an ultra-hierarchical world. The privileged treatment of a digital-media figure showed that luxury fashion is ready to introduce styles to the public in new ways … 

Front rows are reserved for those most important to a brand’s success … In past years, Yoox CEO sometimes borrowed tickets to shows from other guests. But in the past year, Yoox has expanded its business of creating online stores for luxury brands such as D&G … and for Jil Sander … and this season, Yoox CEO has been invited to too many shows …

The warm welcome extends to bloggers. While the New York shows have been inviting some bloggers for a few seasons now, many of Europe’s luxury houses have been slower to allow bloggers into the shows. But two days after the D&G event … four surprised bloggers found themselves seated in coveted spots near the queen of fashion …

Luxury brands have long been leery of the pedestrian Internet, a place where consumers coldly compare prices while forgoing attentive service … But online luxury sites like Net-a-Porter.com proved that many women would do just that. Now, Yoox … is running online stores for brands including Bally, Valentino, Pucci, and Marni …

This season, Twitter and Facebook are littered with fashion brands—including Louis Vuitton and Burberry—testing how social-media sites might benefit them … A number of brands have tried streaming their shows live on the Internet …

Designers feel that the Internet offers the possibility of talking directly to customers …

Edit by TJS

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Full Article
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704471504574445222739373290.html#mod=todays_us_personal_journal

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Posted in Internet - Soc Networking, Internet Marketing - eCommerce - | Leave a Comment »