When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam.When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country.. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will.
– Quote about Sachin in TIME, Thanks Parvin Jain.
This double centurion now has 93 Centuries in Tests and One Day International formats, scoring the first double hundred in the game. Sachin has been individually earning more than INR 400 million annually, a huge amount by Indian standards. These are the endorsements he is paid. for diverse campaigns like Pepsi, Visa and MRF(wound down last year). He earns an equal amount from Mumbai Indians in the IPL. Cricket’s biggest brand recently sublicensed the brand “Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar” to Reliance Communications during the last Cricket World Cup.
The current Indian Captain Dhoni also earns an equal amount in endorsements and plays for the Chennai Superkings.
However the LITTLE MASTER has till yesterday’s game been outbid by a ew in the IPL including Kevin Petersen and now team-mate Keiron Pollard. He is still in the prime of the game. Friendly competition between sports celebrities is likely to have a positive impact on the social web.
Lest you and I thought that Macmillan is going to be material only in demanding royalties from iPad and Kindle, the followers of education reform in Obama country have something more important than 123 million European subscribers to look forward to (That’s February’s Facebook score – 23% of Europe’s Pop) . Macmillan is also producing its own ebook software for laptops and iPhone which is already releasing special ebooks for school and college text from Atkins’ insights in Chemistry to standard Psychology texts in editions called Dynamic Books. these books can be rewritten by faculty for their class on the subject and would still be available at about 66% discount to their published price.
There is also a print on demand option for a higher price. For innovators like Amazon and Apple, this definitely makes things more complex than Adobe Air script or the style and looks game as offerings show greater customisation and increase consumer demands outside price and availability criteria.
Here’s the great investigative work from the NY times team working out kinks in Obama’s reform plans
While many publishers have offered customized print textbooks for years — allowing instructors to reorder chapters or insert third-party content from other publications or their own writing — DynamicBooks gives instructors the power to alter individual sentences and paragraphs without consulting the original authors or publisher.
“Basically they will go online, log on to the authoring tool, have the content right there and make whatever changes they want,” said Brian Napack, president of Macmillan. “And we don’t even look at it.”
In August, Macmillan plans to start selling 100 titles through DynamicBooks, including “Chemical Principles: The Quest for Insight,” by Peter Atkins and Loretta Jones; “Discovering the Universe,” by Neil F. Comins and William J. Kaufmann; and “Psychology,” by Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert and Daniel M. Wegner. Mr. Napack said Macmillan was considering talking to other publishers to invite them to sell their books through DynamicBooks.
Students will be able to buy the e-books at dynamicbooks.com, in college bookstores and through CourseSmart, a joint venture among five textbook publishers that sells electronic textbooks. The DynamicBooks editions — which can be reached online or downloaded — can be read on laptops and the iPhone from Apple. Clancy Marshall, general manager of DynamicBooks, said the company planned to negotiate agreements with Apple so the electronic books could be read on the iPad.
The modifiable e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional print textbooks. “Psychology,” for example, which has a list price of $134.29 (available on Barnes & Noble’s Web site for $122.73), will sell for $48.76 in the DynamicBooks version. Macmillan is also offering print-on-demand versions of the customized books, which will be priced closer to traditional textbooks.
The screenplays for “The Hurt Locker” and “Up in the Air” won top honors Saturday evening at the Writers Guild of America awards.
“The Hurt Locker’s” Mark Boal received the WGA award for original screenplay for his gripping drama about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq. Boal, who is also nominated for an Oscar, thanked the American soldiers in the war-devastated region who let him “get up close and personal” to the “chaos and hellishness” when he was embedded there as a journalist.
“Up in the Air’s” Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner won for adapted screenplay for their dramedy about a corporate downsizer. The two have won numerous critics’ awards, as well as the Golden Globe, for their screenplay, which was based on the book by Walter Kirn. They are also nominated for an Academy Award.
“I can’t tell you how extraordinarily proud I am to be standing in front of you,” said Reitman, who also directed the film. “I am always a writer.”
Several writers who are nominated for this year’s Oscar in the original or adapted screenplay categories — including “Inglourious Basterds’” Quentin Tarantino and “An Education’s” Nick Hornby — weren’t eligible for a WGA award because their movies either hadn’t been written under the guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement or under a collective-bargaining agreement of one of the international guilds.
The winners were announced at simultaneous ceremonies at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and the Hudson Theatre in New York.
Other winners in film and TV categories included:
* Documentary screenplay: “The Cove,” Mark Monroe.
* Dramatic series: “Mad Men,” Lisa Albert, Andrew Colville, Kater Gordon, Cathryn Humphris, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Brett Johnson, Erin Levy, Marti Noxon, Frank Pierson, Robin Veith, Dahvi Waller and Matthew Weiner.
Meanwhile, there were the Chinese films with the Golden Bear(Berlin)
The Chinese Film “Tuan Yuan” , or Apart Together, won the Silver Bear for the best screenplay at the 60th Berlin film festival on Saturday. “Tuan Yuan”, directed by Wang Quan’an, who won the Golden Bear in 2007, is about a soldier who flees Shanghai in 1949 for Taiwan.
After many decades he returns to his old life to find his former love has long since married. The film opened the 60th Berlin film festival and was one of two Chinese language films in the main competition.
The other is the newest film “San qiang pai an jing qi” (“A Woman, A Gun And A Noodle Shop”), by Zhang Yimou, whose classic “Red Sorghum” won the first Golden Bear for China in 1988. Altogether ten Chinese language films were shown at the festival.
Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu won the Berlin Film Festival’s coveted Golden Bear for best movie, with controversial Polish-French filmmaker Roman Polanski honoured by the Berlinale.
Kaplanoglu’s movie, Bal (Honey), about a young boy who goes in search of his father after he fails to return home was one of 20 films competing for the top awards at the 60th anniversary Berlinale.
The slow-moving Bal completes Kaplanoglu’s trilogy of films, which charts the life of a man called Yusuf in rural Turkey. The two previous instalments were called Egg and Milk.
Ok, this blog post goes..You are fresh out of MBA school and need to show someone our marketing skill, so you write one on toothpaste brand extensions..Seems familiar? almost.
In fact, It has never been done. Though a senior consultant has written MarketSense on the illogical rush for brand extensions, commenting on her family heirloom the Crest her grandma brought home first, ha!
I would have thought more people would have written about toothpaste. As a principal, and having suffered enough at the hand of CXOs around the world, I cannot avoid spending money on toothpaste, either. And I invariably pick up a Colgate. Which one? 17 in the neighbourhood Kmart aisle, though even Wal-Mart has a lot of paste, maybe just P&G Crest.
I do not buy the logic at all. The toothpaste market is hardly $1.5 billion in the States and the same outside US if everyone is buying their hollow tube for the morning breath of freshness. In that Colgate has 17 brands of toothpaste and 8 brands of Toothbrush which are actually all the same brand. And each ‘ extension’ spends its own $30 million in the launch year. Colgate already sells one-third of the toothpaste in China despite a Chloroform controversy for it while Crest has made it too in 2009
In 1994, when I finished MBA school, it seems the buzz was for Tartar Control with Crest beating CP hands down with 16% share in the Tartar control toothpaste!
Colgate Sensitive is still spending $30 million on its latest avatar and the story still is a dentist or two recommending it etc throughout the world. Crest has recently conquered China as well, along with the premium priced Gillette mens products to ‘prove the point in quality and price’ I remember this signature product of toothpaste has also been used as part of dental convention humor in full length movies. Wasn’t it the same in the popular ‘Friends’ in the retiring season?
The $16 billion Colgate and the $84 billion P&G continue the freshness wars with no respite for the affluent and the BOP consumer in 100s of markets around the globe. Here’s what is sounds like when you praise your toothpaste - and I am quoting green:
I first tried Tom’s Natural Anticavity Fluoride toothpaste in Spearmint.
I want toothpaste. even when I sell it. not Natural, Anti-Cavity, Fluoride, Spearmint – literally biological warfare in my mouth, every time I wake up.
Seriously brand extensions are a big no-no. Even if it is squeezing the tube.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA LAUNCH
A planned study in contrast was the Colgate Wisp. If you grab hold of the viral video, make sure you listen to it till the end. They removed all the smart alt uses for the no paste no spit brush and spun a 4 for 1 Wisp offer and rafffles and free tickets around the World on your purchase. That dollar, is as tried as Granny’s pickle. really.
India’s Investment rate is a piggish 36% . People seem to have an innate strength from having put their money in a FD. While HSBC Canara’s new dimpled cheeks shone in the baby showers on OOH Media, ( new ad speak /for bored upwardl y mobile salaried Twenty-somethings and senior bystanders watching Flat panel screens across Cafes, theaters and Super Malls ) Religare also launched a $25 million ad budget , covering its own brands at Religare Enterprises, Religare Life, Religare AMC and lately its Macquaries run Wealth Management venture
Religare Macquarie Pvt Wealth
With only the AEGON Life Ad making impact this year, it is a wonder why more such marketing budgets are not under close scrutiny. MAcquarie is running a Print and Outdoor campaign, as usual educating the upwardly mobile urban and his more distinct but rich rural brethren to add and invest in the right kit.
The education whim is likely to continue to be the winning motif in all such publicity campaigns, leavin room to defend marketing expenses for insurance fund administration or advisor fees on your portfolio and looping all possible positioning and targeting ambitions into an endless market development broadcast rather like a new age Aldous Huxley or George Orwell government tellng its citizens about good governance.
Religare already has 452 towns in its umbrella, even the $1 million budget Macquarie getting nine offices in cities like Coimbatore and Guwahati. Will we have enough cash currency to fill the airtime for such dollops of marketing thru educative print and cost of retirement ads?
Don’t get me wrong. And let me clarify I never even added myself to any Indian Media list. Just a clarion call against sloppy joes with a pen. You see the world is online, and I can see a need to refresh and reload before witting on that aching keypad. Even I have been making more spelling errors with all the furious writing, and doing more and more critiques of writing now. Actually there is a psychological reason for that. My teenage daughter is also getting prizes in English. For understanding a language and expressing in writing. Wow!
So Marketing in IT services has not been the in-thing. After all, it is the promoter and CXO team’s imagination and (lack of ) fanciful leaps has created (€ literally) reality for them. But I know more than a couple of Amols in the industry and worse at CXO level, and not in the client company. The Clients could converse every time. It is that environment, and the public front is about cost cutting. So you can’t blame the world if you churn out this stuff for the WSJ. You have to blame WSJ.. and Amol. What your presentation deck should do, as a mission and vision statement.. That trap, Amol taking that download from a David Scott at a NASSCOM and making up basis on the road. You need some experience behind it. I have had a wonderful team and a great production at IBM for the marketing decks we produced. By jove, were they concise and impactful. And they carried the senior management and the thought leaders, except for the cousins of nepot and the sweet nowhere looking cult of Amol, which was lying in diususe in the organization adding years to their label. And it is because of Infosys and Wipro that we treat marketing as an afterthought. Because of lag leaders as a cult. And no they don’t take it as a strategic function, but then you are just getting fanciful dreamy and not watching the road you are driving after that. But maybe each function is just crowd-sourcing and the right intensity of ‘pathetic’ I can’t live with either. Or the cult of Amol.
Sorry Amol, but maybe some other marketing guys in the industry we are making will get courage from this. You missed that lesson. Corporate Marketing is not that fluffy deck. It is creating that attitude, and when we create a brand we create an industry for it.
But the common wealth enjoys it..and the New Zealand Budget for example has $77 million for school sports. If more money was to come from others except RBS, the sport would do well and so would the brands
Meanwhile, we will only get to see Six Nations rugby and in the CG games later, minus the Camels and still in India during the festive season.
