Saving Ukraine - The Economist

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21597897-turmoil-ukraine-chance-west-prove-it-still-force-good-how

First and foremost, Ukraine needs a legitimate, national government. The interim leaders installed by the Rada, its parliament, may be more palatable than Mr Yanukovych; but the Rada is a nest of crooks and placemen, and scarcely more legitimate than he was, as some protesters, and Russia, have pointed out. It is vital that the presidential election in May is clean, and seen to be: Western monitors must help to ensure that. And the new president should be untainted by the score-settling and nest-feathering that have blighted Ukraine’s politics. That is one lesson from the Orange revolution of 2004—an event that seemed to herald a democratic future, but instead merely reshuffled an entrenched elite. Yulia Tymoshenko, the Orange veteran and two-time prime minister, who was sprung from jail as Mr Yanukovych fled, should keep out of it.

The Pepsi challenge: keep the company in one piece

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21597902-pepsi-challenge-keep-company-one-piece-let-my-fritos-go

COMPARED with most documents bearing a corporate letterhead, Nelson Peltz’s 37-page argument for the break-up of PepsiCo, published on February 20th, is a good read. The drinks and snacks firm has “lost its entrepreneurial spirit” and is “shifting to a plodding, ‘big company’ mentality”, it claims. Its managers “may fundamentally misunderstand the business”. The answer is to spin off PepsiCo’s successful snacks division, Frito-Lay, from its battered beverages business. Each would recapture its competitive zeal and gain the freedom to act on it. It is a refreshing change from PepsiCo’s blather about driving choice in the “macro-snack universe”.

Viral Video Chart: Justin Timberlake, Michele Obama and House of Cards

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/28/justin-timberlake-house-of-cards

1. History of Rap 5 (Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake)
Hitting it off

2. Spectator TV presents Westminster's 'House of Cards'
Power corrupts

3. Lip Sync Battle with Paul Rudd
Mime's a hit

4. Camera error on BBC News
Dropping out of the picture

5. "Ew!" with Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell & First Lady Michelle Obama
Ew what?

6. Human Loop the Loop with Damien Walters - Pepsi Max. Unbelievable #LiveForNow
Cool runner

7. Brian Williams Raps "Rapper's Delight"
Clipped speech

8. Amazing tongue twister rap // (I bet you can't say this!!!!)
Speechless …

9. Netflix Drone To Home
Watch this space

10. World's Fastest: 270.49 mph Hennessey Venom GT 
Drive of his life

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 27 February 2014. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

The Future of Wikipedia - WikiPeaks?

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21597959-popular-online-encyclopedia-must-work-out-what-next-wikipeaks

Ad break: 3 mobile 'Sing It Kitty', Channel 4 'Live From Space', Coca-Cola

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/27/ad-break-3-mobile-kitty-channel-4-space-coca-cola

Watch a girl lip-syncing to Starship's We Built This City and Gravity-style graphics in our review of new TV commercials

Ukraine: The February revolution - The Economist

Can Ukraine find any leaders who will live up to the aspirations of its battered, victorious but sceptical protesters?

Best-Picture Math : Vanity Fair

Data crunching may not help Oscar-hungry producers or office-pool bettors. Still, the themes, motifs, and plots from 85 years of best-picture-nominated movies do tell a story

The secret to viral video marketing

The top 10 viral marketing videos of 2013 have been announced, but what does it take for a campaign to go viral?

 "It's rare that content (especially branded content) gets traction without a large media spend behind it, or at least a large amount of money to kickstart initial interest"

2013 Top Ten Viral Videos

Dove - Real Beauty Sketches: 135,838,683 views

Turkish Airlines - The Selfie Shootout: 133,722,104 views

Volvo Trucks - Epic Split: Live Test 6: 102,430,941 views

Google - Chrome For: 95,598,261 views

Evian - Baby & Me: 75,779,488 views

Intel/Toshiba - The Power Inside: 70,052,385 views

5-Hour Energy - 5-Hour Energy Helps Amazing People: 67,860,563 views

Jay-Z - Magna Carta Holy Grail: 57,344,188

YouTube - What Does 2013 Say?: 56,230,354

Miami Heat - Harlem Shake Miami Heat Edition: 55,087,246

Source: Visible Measures (As of 24 December 2013)

Buzzfeed Lessons for Mainstream Media

Some may scoff, but graphic images on social media could be a valuable way to make foreign news more accessible

Uneasiness about the sudden interest in Ukrainian politics prompted Politico to run a column by Sarah Kendzior headlined "The day we pretended to care about Ukraine". The piece rounded on the "apocalypsticle" in general and Buzzfeed in particular (hardly surprising given Politico's direct competition with Buzzfeed's increasingly impressive editorial presence). "What does it mean for Ukrainians? Few apocalypsticle authors pose the question, because the only relevant question is what it means for them: traffic. Ask not what Buzzfeed can do for Ukrainians, but what dying Ukrainians can do for Buzzfeed," asserted Kendzior, who had either not been reading Buzzfeed's excellent and extensive coverage of the crisis, or was choosing to ignore it and focus on the photos.

"Our editors are held to high standards when it comes to balancing multimedia with important factual context. We also use data and metrics to inform our distribution strategies and engage as many people as possible with these important stories. There are dozens of examples amongst our best performing stories. Most recently, this story on Russia was shared 87,000 times and was read over 1m times."

Ukraine's crisis : A tale of two countries - The Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2014/02/ukraines-crisis

Ukraine's new dawn - Shots called, now what? The Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2014/02/ukraines-new-dawn

The Smart App-artment from Cornflake - Jonathan Margolis

http://howtospendit.ft.com/gadgets/48143-app-artment

Scanomat coffee machine, from £6,354; De Dietrich DOP1190GX TFT touchscreen oven with Intelligent Cooking System, PyroClean and interactive display, £1,500; FlatFrog tabletop TV entertainment system, £5,500; rotating walls and floor by Ecoism, about £12,000; Denver Montreal fire, £8,040; all at Cornflake, 37 & 41 Windmill Street, London W1 

Ad break: James Corden for Cadbury's, Sochi Paralympics, VW

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/21/ad-break-james-corden-cadburys-sochi-paralympics-vw

Watch the Brit awards host lip-sync his way around London and an uplifting Games commercial in our review of new work

Viral Video Chart: Pharrell Williams, Game of Thrones and Will Smith

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/21/pharrell-williams-game-of-thrones-will-smith

1. Snowboarding New York City
Get a grip!

2. "Evolution of Hip-Hop Dancing" (w/ Jimmy Fallon & Will Smith)
Blew it up

3. Game of Thrones Trailer #2 - Vengeance (HBO)
Another world

4. Let It Go - Frozen - Alex Boyé (Africanized Tribal Cover) Ft. One Voice Children's Choir 
Shivers down the spine

5. Chèvres en équilibre - goats balancing on a flexible steel ribbon
Butting each other out

6. Pharrell Williams Mashup (Happy Get Lucky) - Pomplamoose
Lose yourself

7. World Premiere of First Guardians of the Galaxy Trailer
Marvel-ous

8. Eye of the Tiger on a dot matrix printer
Paper jam

9. Woman chased by hundreds of rabbits
Hopping mad

10. The Best Crosswind Landings Ever!
Plane skill

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 20 February 2014. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

Ukraine’s crisis - The Economist

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21597004-bloody-skirmishes-between-police-and-protesters-centre-kiev-could-yet-descend

IOC bans Ukraine's athletes from wearing black armbands at Sochi

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/19/ioc-bans-ukraine-black-armbands-sochi-olympics

The International Olympic Committee has banned Ukrainian competitors at the Sochi winter Games from wearing black armbands to commemorate the deaths of protesters and police in Kiev.

The country's Olympic association said in a statement that it had asked the IOC if its competitors could mark the "deep pain over the loss of fellow countrymen" by wearing black armbands. "The answer was received from the IOC that in accordance with the Olympic charter it is not possible to do this."

Sponsor logos are everywhere at the Olympics, but the IOC regularly bans anything it deems to be political.

Shanghai Tower video viewed more than 27m times

Urban exploration - Where were you while we were getting high?

On February 12th two urban explorers posted a video online of their 650m ascent to the top of the Shanghai Tower, the world’s second-tallest building. 

Vadim Makhorov, who is 24 and from Russia, and Vitaliy Raskalov, a 21-year-old Ukrainian, chose the calm of Chinese New Year’s day to attempt this feat.

Why businesses can't manage creativity

James Allen outlines why management's role in the corporate creative process is an oxymoron: creativity can't be managed, it can only be encouraged

 In businesses across the world, workers congregate around vast boardroom tables. They think they're having great ideas, but usually they're not. Someone should tell them that you can't schedule inspiration – that it's wholly unreasonable to expect the big idea to spontaneously appear in a brainstorm next Thursday morning at 10:30.

Girl From Famous 1981 Lego Ad Has a Few Things to Say About Today's Gendered Toys

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/girl-famous-1981-lego-ad-has-few-things-say-about-todays-gendered-toys-155795

‘I watch four hours of rubbish TV a day & I am not ashamed!’

‘Gogglebox’ showed that TV can unite the nation

During 2013 – according to the latest figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (Barb) – we watched three hours; 55 minutes; and 30 seconds of TV per day. 

At no point did any Gogglebox character beg to watch a Sky Arts documentary on the History of the Ceramic Kiln or refer to a repeat of Lena Dunham’s movie Tiny Furniture – which influenced Girls y’know – and at no point did anyone suggest the TV was turned off so the family could practice 20 minutes of mindfulness meditation to a Tibeten windchimes app. In fact, no one seemed to care about Breaking Bad at all. No, Gogglebox was about big, broad, mass-market TV which unites the nation, allots focus for debate, and more importantly than anything else, cheers people up.

Only 1.5 per cent of viewers are consuming TV via computer screens and tablets, and the remaining 98.5 per cent of us are still watching it on the big clunking screen in the corner of the room. It’s worth remembering this the next time one is faced with a deeply pretentious mobile advert featuring some excitable cash-rich time poor wazzock who seems unable to walk down a road without simultaneously watching a Premier League game or House of Cards on Netflix on his phone. 

Nigella on Gogglebox
Gogglebox - John Lewis Christmas advert discussion

Konstantin Ernst's Blockbuster History in Sochi

Ernst's "Dreams of Russia" captured these dynamic cultural trends that have transpired over the last 15 years. A patriotism centered on Russia's cultural heritage, a re-examination of Russia's recent pasts that allows space for some problematic eras, and an audience-friendly showcase full of technological innovations: all were on display at Sochi.

Ernst is the head Channel One, one of the state-owned television stations in Russia and the most-watched network in the country. He is, as Joshua Yaffa aptly described him in a recent New Yorker piece, "the premier visual stylist of the Putin era." In addition to heading Channel One, Ernst was responsible for helping to turn around the Russian film industry in the 2000s. He has produced several of the highest-grossing films in Russian history, including "Night Watch," the 2004 sci-fi/fantasy movie that brought Timur Bekmambetov to prominence: Bekmambetov would go on to helm "Wanted" and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter." Ernst has also brought out innovative and award-winning television serials, including an adaptation of Anatoly Rybakov's glasnost-era bestseller about Stalinism, "Children of the Arbat." The television version starred Chulpan Khamatova, who helped to carry the Olympic flag in Ernst's opening.

Ernst's work on big and small screens developed in the wake of the 1998 ruble collapse, the second time the Russian economy bottomed out in the 1990s. Ernst took over the channel in September 1999 — the very same month Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister — and announced that both Russian cinema and Russian television needed to be "reborn"

Putin's Master of Ceremonies - The New Yorker

An adventure into the intricacies of Russian public relations

How Nokia, Citi, Coca-Cola and Nike Treat Gay Employees in Russia

My quest turned out to be less of an investigation and more of an eye-opening adventure into the intricacies of Russian public relations and how difficult to can be to obtain information — any kind of information — from the Russian representatives of multinational companies.

After two weeks of exchanges, some companies decided that they would not give a comment for this article. Chrysler "decided not to comment because it is a sensitive issue," while Novartis felt "this is not a matter of principle, so we have nothing to say." Citi and McKinsey offered no explanation for their refusal to comment. Xerox "preferred not to comment" and Natalia Luneva, director of corporate communications at Dutch bank ING, said she "did not want to comment on this."

The HR executive at Pfizer was sick when I first called. Later the press office said it "took the issue off the table."  MasterCard initially said its HR executive was on a business trip and later that it had "realized that they did not have time for the question anyway."

В результате получилось не столько расследование, сколько захватывающее описание попыток нашего корреспондента добиться от российских представителей международных компаний более-менее внятных комментариев.

Advertisers still appear to believe in the charisma of paper

As new high-end glossy Porter launches, the appetite for digital versions of titles does not seem to have mass appeal

Anyone looking for evidence of readers migrating in an orderly fashion from paper to point-and-click will be disappointed. The magazines with the most significant percentage of their sales on tablet or phone were in a relatively narrow band of predominantly male interest titles – such as T3 (42.3%), Stuff (19.33%), GQ (9.58%), Top Gear (8.8%) and the Economist (5.72%) – and some of the other percentages hinted at less than transformational change.

Beyond the business class lounge neither readers nor advertisers seem to have a massive appetite for a new form of delivery. Vogue sells 192,763 print copies compared to 8,314 digital ones, Good Housekeeping 410,981 compared to 3,561. TV Times only sold 217 "copies" on digital compared to 254,376 on paper. It's not the only title that can't decide whether to stick or twist. Look at it from the publishers' point of view. Are they moving from one format to another or contemplating a future where the complexity increases but the revenue doesn't?

Nevertheless, as the publishers have noted to their surprise, these advertisers still appear to believe in the charisma of paper. It doesn't much matter what any media commentator says about Carole Radziwill's underwhelming thoughts on mystique, the 18 pages of white lace for spring or whether there is anything that David Bailey hasn't already said about fame, the pages of Porter that really matter are the 26 between the cover and the first page of editorial, which are occupied by Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and others in an order which has no doubt been the subject of much arm-wrestling.

US Media in Numbers - Sochi Special

Sochi a Big Hit in USA - New York Times

Netflix holds winning hand as web pioneers try to transform television

The firm that began as a DVD rental service is now producing dramas, and is poised to exploit the online media revolution

Behind the new shows lies Netflix's real innovation – its recommendation technology. Using a customer's history, Netflix tailors its library into an estimated 79,000 "microgenres" – Oscar-winning Romantic Movies about Marriage, Gritty Suspenseful Revenge Westerns, Evil Kid Horror Movies – you watch it, they categorise it. "The whole service acts as a filter," says Syfret. In a world where there are too many choices, Netflix offers a solution.

Netflix is a tech company first and a media company second. Founder Reed Hastings studied maths and later artificial intelligence at Bowdoin College in Maine. The company employs people to tag movies with metadata.

Before they can start, they have to absorb a 36-page training document that sets out how to rate movies on categories from gore and sexual content to romance and even narrative elements like plot conclusiveness and the moral status of characters. Combine that with the data viewers provide and Netflix is certainly creating the most powerful movies database the world has ever seen.

Forecast: The world in 2114

Economists predict that geo-engineering, performance drugs and artificial intelligence will shape our future

Sex, violence & movie certification

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street may be cleaning up at the box office but it has a very dirty mouth

Whether a film becomes more obscene the more swear words it contains is arguable: presumably the law of diminishing returns kicks in at some point. As the late film critic Roger Ebert once pointed out, when you’ve heard one f-word, you’ve heard them all. But film classification boards on both sides of the Atlantic disagree: the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rule that teenagers’ films must have fewer than four “fucks”. More important than numbers is context: “fucks” can only be used as adjectives in such films, preferably in humorous contexts, and never as verbs. Who says grammar isn’t useful?

What are we working for? - By Simon Kuper

‘Both men and women now want to combine work with raising kids. That means nobody can stay in the office all hours’

Today’s Chinese and Koreans work hard not because of Asian values. Rather, people tend to work hard when they are poor and then suddenly enter a system that lets them get richer through hard work. That’s what happened in postwar Germany and Japan, in Korea after its war, in China after Mao, and to countless immigrants in the US. However, once people have some money, they want to chill. In the typical immigrant trajectory, the first generation runs a corner shop, the second generation is a dentist and the third works part-time in an aromatherapy shop in Santa Fe. As Chua and Rubenfeld say: “Group success in America often tends to dissipate after two generations.”

Lego builds on story of its fight to survive to reach new heights

The Lego Movie has rich pickings for those seeking metaphors.


In among the millions of brightly coloured bricks in the film that is released globally this weekend, some have seen an anti-business message; others a 100-minute long commercial to the Danish toy company; and yet more see the struggle in life (or Lego) between following instructions and staying creative that is a central part of the plot.

Where Lego really stands out, however, is profitability: its first-half net profit of $437m eclipsed the $112m of the maker of Barbie dolls, leaving the Danish group as the most profitable toymaker in the world.

Part of that is down to the simple maths of making plastic bricks. Prof Robertson notes the alchemy of turning ABS plastic bought for less than $1 per kilogramme into Lego sets that sell for about $75 per kg.

Lego: the rise & rise

Ad break: Sopranos star for Telenor and Haribo's inner child

Watch Steven van Zandt appear for Norwegian telecoms company and fun with gum – once you get past the jingle

Viral Video Chart: Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, John Hamm and Walter White

Benedict Cumberbatch and George Clooney on Twitter insults, a Game of Thrones curtain-raiser and celebrity Facebook movies

1. Justin Bieber's Facebook Look Back video
All that matters

2. Ellen's in Bruno Mars' Ear
Throaty chuckles

3. Shanghai Tower (650 meters)
Urban ninjas

4. Celebrities Read Mean Tweets #6
Star insults

5. Spray from a big wave hits BBC reporter - BBC News
Jon Kay spray

6. Game of Thrones Season 4: Ice and Fire: A Foreshadowing
It's coming …

7. Camera falls from airplane and lands in pig pen
Pig in a poke?

8. Facebook Look Back - Walter White
There's meths in his madness

9. Vader's Look Back
Forcing a laugh

10. Hilarious Soccer (Football) Goal Celebration | Head Butt Costs Player A Red Card
Heading for the dressing room

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 13 February 2014. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

Putin and the media - Dreams about Russia

Beyond the spectacle of the Sochi Olympics is a crackdown on Russia’s media

Although the state formally controls only two main broadcasters, many private ones come directly or indirectly under a media empire of Yury Kovalchuk, a friend of Mr Putin. Besides National Media Group, which has stakes in three TV channels, including 25% of Channel One, Mr Kovalchuk also has a large indirect stake in Gazprom Media, Russia’s largest media group, which owns five television channels, several radio stations and a publishing company. Gazprom Media’s structure is complex: it is 100%-owned by Gazprom bank, almost half of which belongs to Gazprom’s pension fund. Most of this is managed by a firm linked to Mr Kovalchuk.

Companies linked to Mr Kovalchuk also control most television advertising. In 2010 he bought Video International, Russia’s largest advertising agency. Gazprom Media and Video International account for two-thirds of the country’s television-advertising market. Until recently Mr Kovalchuk played almost no role in Gazprom Media, but he has recently been more active, say insiders. He was involved in the appointment of Mikhail Lesin, a founder of Video International, as head of Gazprom Media.

Mr Lesin is no stranger to Gazprom Media assets. Most of them, including NTV, were seized from Vladimir Gusinsky, a media tycoon who created them and then fled the country after Mr Putin’s arrival in the Kremlin in 2000. Mr Lesin, then minister for press and mass communications, endorsed a secret agreement under which Mr Gusinsky was made to sell his assets to Gazprom in exchange for his own freedom and safety. The agreement served as evidence in the European Court of Human Rights that the attacks on Mr Gusinsky were politically motivated and in breach of the European convention. As head of Gazprom Media, Mr Lesin last autumn negotiated the purchase of media assets from Vladimir Potanin, another Yeltsin-era oligarch.

Daily Chart - The expansion of Lego

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/02/daily-chart-8

18 human traits that explain why readers can't get enough of BuzzFeed

Business psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic reveals the reasons why the online publisher is so successful

1) We are all quite average

2) We are visual creatures

3) We are like our friends

4) We are too lazy to express our views

5) We are at best self-interested – at worst, self-obsessed

6) Extensive lists are bound to include some sensible arguments

7) Its posts are quirky, cheeky and imaginative

8) It does not take itself too seriously

9) It's got structure, without being fully predictable

10) Quantity does lead to quality (eventually)

11) We love lists

12) We love to share and discuss our values

13) Conventional news is way more boring

14) It wants to know us, and it does know us

15) It's not about who says, but what is said

16) Its posts are current but timeless; polarising but uncontroversial

17) We are bored (even though we are busy and time-deprived)

18) We are busy and time-deprived

Buzzfeed's Jonah Peretti on how ideas travel on the social web - video

Movies vs. TV: Which Is the Medium to Watch?

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/03/movies-television-creative-debate



It was now Mad Men, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, Homeland, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Boardwalk Empire, and other potent spells, amplified by Twitter, Facebook, and voluminous recaps, that transfixed fans and turned critics into evangelicals. For depth and psychodynamics of characterization, ingenious knife twist of storytelling, jaw-dropping sequences (the Challenger-like explosion and shower of debris witnessed from the backyard pool in Breaking Bad), and nutritious roles for women, TV had left the movies behind to play with their giant robots. The hearth fire of the H.D. flat screen had displaced the multiplex. Not everyone conceded this shift in pop-culture primacy. Some dissenters rebutted the column thoughtfully; others said mean things about me on the Internet, where lacy manners and the minuet won’t be making a revival anytime soon. But in 2013 doubts of my own began to creep in. It looked as if the pendulum had swung back in the movies’ favor, setting the stage for a rematch, or at least a rethink.

Curling should go platinum at Sochi

Marketers should jump on this neglected sport's bandwagon

Curling is imbued with a lot of what makes people talk about something in social media. Curling’s fascinating; it deceivingly looks like something we all think we can do. And the thought of it can be funny: Grown people carrying a big brush and chasing a stone down a sheet of ice.  It might surprise you to know that curling interest surpasses figure skating during the Olympics, based upon our review of Google searches.

You can’t argue with the data; curling has captured our interest. It’s time for an advertiser to own a piece of the competition and celebrate the fun.  And if you still don’t believe it,  post some pictures rounding the internet of the 22 year old Russian curler on your Facebook page, and see how your virality scores improve.

'Russian women are notoriously sexual. Stop judging us'

Nestlé and L’Oréal - Skin deep

THE most interesting thing about Nestlé selling part of its stake in L’Oréal back to the cosmetics company is what it got in return: full control of Galderma, a Swiss maker of skin treatments.

Known for Kit Kat chocolate bars and Nespresso coffee capsules, Nestlé wants to be a provider of health as well as nutrition. With the L’Oréal deal it is becoming a food-pharmaceutical hybrid, a model that others are likely to follow as consumers age and fret more about their health.

It is not the only big food company on a health binge. Danone’s Activia yogurt is marketed as a cross between a treat and a therapy (though in Europe it is not allowed to make health claims for its “probiotic” cultures). PepsiCo’s quest to cut the sugar content of its product portfolio included an acquisition in 2010 of Russia’s Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods, a manufacturer of yogurt and other bone-building dairy products. Pepsi Special, which is sold in Japan, supposedly reduces fat absorption.

The luxury-goods market - Disillusioned hedonist shoppers

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/02/luxury-goods-market


Ms D’Arpizio wants luxury firms to tailor their products, advertising and distribution more specifically to different sorts of customers. They could also take a leaf out of Apple’s book, she thinks, and strive for a continuing after-sale relationship that would make repeat purchases more likely and disenchantment less.

But there is a circle here that even the most attentive after-sale management cannot really square. Successful firms create a desire for their personal luxury products that goes beyond any rational assessment of value and quality. The intrinsic promise, in most cases, is that the buyer herself will become more desired if she acquires a Bottega Veneta bag, silk-and-lace Eres undergarments and a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch. It is hard to imagine the mobile app that could secure that result.

The 9 most boring TV sports

Curling, biathlon, ice dancing and luge - just four of the sports that somehow didn't make Bill Borrows' list of the least interesting sports on television

When I was asked to come up with a list of the most boring sports on TV I think my editor must have had the Sochi Winter Olympics in mind. But the Pythonesque silliness of sports such as curling and skeleton bob, and the fact that we actually have a chance of winning a medal or two, make it appointment TV in my house.

9 More Boring Sports to Watch on TV

Branding, Yogurt & Bears

Q&A with Peter McGuinness, chief marketing and brand officer, Chobani

Creativity matters, because if you’re not engaging and you’re not entertaining, you’re not relevant, you’re not resonant, you’re not loved, you don’t have consideration.

No matter what channels come and go and no matter what upstream creativity occurs and does not occur, what is downstream will never change in this business. Success is defined by sales. 

The Sochi Olympics Remain a Chobani-Free Zone

The algorithm method: how internet dating became everyone's route to a perfect love match

The success of recommendation systems ,which are just as applicable to products as people

With the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and celebrity-driven online media, have come more personalised and data-driven sites such as OkCupid. These services rely on the user supplying not only explicit information about what they are looking for, but a host of assumed and implicit information as well, based on their morals, values, and actions. What underlies them is a growing reliance not on stated preferences – for example, eHarmony's 200-question surveys result in a detailed profile entitled "The Book of You" – but on actual behaviour; not what people say, but what they do.

And with each of these developments – through the internet, home computing, broadband, smartphones, and location services – the turbulent business and the occasionally dubious science of computer-aided matching has evolved too. Online dating continues to hold up a mirror not only to the mores of society, which it both reflects, and shapes, but to our attitudes to technology itself.

Big companies’ revenue and profit

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21595971-big-companies-revenue-and-profit

Fashion and journalism - Press-a-Porter

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/02/fashion-and-journalism

The traditional division of labour was that the brands would pay for advertising or hope for favourable mention in the press. Now they want to weave “stories” around their products and tell those stories themselves. Marks & Spencer, a struggling British department store chain, will make its website more magazine-like when it relaunches this year. Going shopping on websites means “reading a magazine”, says M&S’s online chief, Laura Wade-Gery.

How was Putin's television screen showing all five Olympic rings?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/winter-olympics/10625401/Sochi-opening-ceremony-How-was-Vladimir-Putins-television-screen-showing-all-five-Olympic-rings.html

Konstantin Ernst, executive creative director of the opening ceremony, told reporters at a news conference that he called down to master control to tell them to go the practice footage when he realised what happened.

"This is an open secret," he said, referring to the use of the pre-recorded footage. The show's artistic director George Tsypin said the malfunction was caused by a bad command from a stage manager.

Ernst defended his decision, saying that the most important part was preserving the images and the Olympic tradition: "This is certainly bad, but it does not humiliate us."