Inside Atlético Madrid: can the club go global?

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/da99c814-88b2-11e5-90de-f44762bf9896.html#slide1

Atléti will also gain from a revolutionary change in Spanish football: clubs have just agreed to divide their TV money more equally. “That’s a game-changer,” says Kenyon. For years, every Spanish club negotiated its own TV deal. That suited Real and Barcelona, which in 2013/2014 each got €140m from broadcasters. However, smaller clubs got peanuts. Consequently, Real and Barça monopolised the best players. This inequality allowed a midsized country in economic crisis to fund two world-beating teams. But it also made the Spanish league boringly predictable. As one Atléti official phrases the question: “Do we want to have a league or just two clubs that we clap?” Finally, under pressure from government, Real and Barcelona consented to a new, more redistributive system.

The story of how pop was made—and who made it

http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21678193-story-how-pop-was-madeand-who-made-it-bopping-brilliant


Sweden, the country that produced ABBA, never lost its appetite for soaring melodies. Its government offered free music education. Moreover, its artists were not constrained by racial boundaries in American music, and could produce “a genre-bursting hybrid: pop [white] music with a rhythmic R&B [black] feel”. And because English was not their first language, they were free to “treat English very respectless”, as Ulf Ekberg of Ace of Base, a band, says, “and just look for the word that sounded good with the melody”.

“Authenticity” is being peddled as a cure for drooping brands

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21678216-authenticity-being-peddled-cure-drooping-brands-its-real-thing


However, authenticity is far easier to pull off when your product has some real-world qualities that its competitors lack. The most striking recent example is that of America’s craft beers. As drinkers turn against the pallid swill pumped out by mass-market brewers, the craft brewers have almost doubled their market share in the five years to 2014. Although many long-established, heavily advertised but mediocre products are losing force, and the fickleness of consumers is making it harder for them to maintain premium prices, for those firms that get the product right and have a genuine story to tell, the rewards can still be huge. The textbook example of this is Apple, whose devices’ superior design and ease of use make it a powerful brand in a commoditised market. Last year it had only 6% of the revenues in the personal-computer market, but 28% of the profits. That’s real authenticity.

The Mysterious Death of the Man Behind Putin's Media Machine

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/the-mysterious-death-of-the-man-behind-putins-media-machine/548764.html


Lesin was present at the creation of Russia's state-dominated media sector. As press minister he forced media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky to cede control of television station NTV while Gusinsky sat in a jail cell. In 2005, he helped create Russia Today, now RT, a television network that broadcasts Russia's point of view in multiple languages and aims to undermine Western news narratives. Afterward, he served as an adviser to the Kremlin.

James Bond film Spectre’s opening weekend in America

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/11/daily-chart-5

"Disinformation Review" - new EU information

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/ukraine/press_corner/all_news/news/2015/2016_11_04_1_en.htm

Its objective is to show the European public the high amount of such disinformation attacks that target European audience every single day, to expose the number of countries targeted, and, thus, to explain to the European audience the breadth of this problem. The data and information collected would help to conduct a better analysis and, thus, be ready to counter and pre-empt possible misinformation attacks in the future.

One Man's Revenge Against Russian Propaganda

https://globalvoices.org/2015/11/03/one-mans-revenge-against-russian-propaganda/#

"How much contradiction can Russians absorb without going crazy? At any point in time, they believe two opposite things. For instance, there are no Russian troops in Ukraine, but we are winning the war. Because we cannot lose. Because Russians can never lose. But there are no Russian troops in Ukraine. So whatever is broadcast, they will believe, because it’s instinctive. Even if it’s lies, we’ll believe them because it’s our guys who are telling the lies. Because everyone is lying, and we’re going to stick to our lies"

https://noodleremover.news

How the Mad Men lost the plot

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/cd1722ba-8333-11e5-8e80-1574112844fd.html


Brands are not the rich sources of differentiation marketers like to think of them as, but short cuts through the complexity of decision-making. Most consumers aren’t aware of, or interested in, the difference between Nescafé and Kenco and don’t want to spend longer than they need to thinking about which they prefer. They just want to get coffee and get home. Marketers are usually surprised to hear this and find it hard to accept — they like to imagine that people who buy their brand are deeply attached to it. But the data show that even people who regularly favour one brand over others will pick a competitor if it happens to be more easily available or cheaper that day. In the words of Sharp’s mentor, Professor Andrew Ehrenberg: “Your customers are customers of other brands who occasionally buy you.”

The Fat Jew: 'Social media is running out of steam'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11962516/The-Fat-Jew-Social-media-is-running-out-of-steam.html

"What's funny is that I love billboards and classic, traditional forms of advertising," the Fat Jew reveals. "The problem with the internet is that everything is so disposable, you know? People forget whatever they see, like, three seconds later. But if I were to put up, say, a billboard of me wearing a thong made of beef jerky to advertise a beef jerky company, you're going to look at that for more than three seconds.

Steve Jobs: the legacy of Apple's mysterious co-founder

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/01/steve-jobs-the-afterlife-film-michael-fassbender-danny-boyle-alex-gibney


Since Steve Jobs’s death from cancer in 2011, the myths keep accumulating. Tim Adams assesses his legacy and speaks to Danny Boyle and Alex Gibney, directors of two new films – one a drama, the other a documentary – about the mysterious Apple boss

It’s Star Wars v Hunger Games in a box office battle – but don’t rule out 007

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/31/star-wars-hunger-games-james-bond-battle-box-office-franchises

Force Awakens may become the highest-grossing film of all time, eclipsing Avatar, which banked $2.8bn around the world.But Katniss could still be victorious. The Force Awakens has failed to secure a release date for this year in China, where it is not as well known as the Hunger Gamesfranchise, which is enjoying a surge in popularity.