Branding has become ubiquitous, with new brands becoming word-of-mouth successes literally overnight, and many welcome the easy familiarity they bring to daily life. But now brand proliferation is threatening not only to stifle true choice in the marketplace, but to render hard-won brand identities - some decades in the making - meaningless. With today's unprecedented access to thousands of brands a day, via Twitter, Facebook, and the rest, the balance of brand power is shifting irrevocably away from the businesses behind them. In Brandstorm, branding guru Liz Nickles argues that, as a result, the brand is no longer a value proposition in itself, and that marketers and brand managers must stop the dilution and focus on meaningful, market-specific reinvention for those brands that can stand the test of time. She offers the success secrets behind leading brands like Ralph Lauren, Justin Bieber, and Revlon, and how to channel them today.
Branding has become ubiquitous, with new brands becoming word-of-mouth successes literally overnight, and many welcome the easy familiarity they bring to daily life. But now brand proliferation is threatening not only to stifle true choice in the marketplace, but to render hard-won brand identities - some decades in the making - meaningless. With today's unprecedented access to thousands of brands a day, via Twitter, Facebook, and the rest, the balance of brand power is shifting irrevocably away from the businesses behind them. In Brandstorm, branding guru Liz Nickles argues that, as a result, the brand is no longer a value proposition in itself, and that marketers and brand managers must stop the dilution and focus on meaningful, market-specific reinvention for those brands that can stand the test of time. She offers the success secrets behind leading brands like Ralph Lauren, Justin Bieber, and Revlon, and how to channel them today.
What does it mean when decision making has speeded up beyond imagining? When life and work are fused rather than relegated to their own places and times? What about the impact of the serial career on industries built with the expectation that they were training employees for the long haul? Based on unique research and interviews, The Change Agents is a clear-eyed examination of what living in a wired world really means to organizational behavior and individual empowerment. The media has been full of stories of the dizzying ascents and fast falls of dot-commers over the last few years, but The Change Agents shows how the rest of the world -- from top CEOs to the guys in the mailroom -- is irrevocably affected by a paradigm shift as wrenching as the industrial revolution. Nickles has identified a self-empowered group she labels "Change Agents" who are demanding more power in the workplace than previous generations were granted after years with a company - and they are getting it. The Change Agents shows how they do it and why it matters. Backed by exclusive statistical research and scores of personal interviews, Faster Forward is a revealing and significant look at the future for everyone who works today.
We have witnessed a revolution in the way consumers relate to a product; increasingly tending to reject brands which offer over-extensive lines in favour of those which are able to offer a lifestyle. Brand Storming sets out to provide a guide for business people to meet consumer expectations.
Having followed Mexico's cartels for years, border security expert Sylvia Longmire takes us deep into the heart of their world to witness a dangerous underground that will do whatever it takes to deliver drugs to a willing audience of American consumers. The cartels have grown increasingly bold in recent years, building submarines to move up the coast of Central America and digging elaborate tunnels that both move drugs north and carry cash and U.S. high-powered assault weapons back to fuel the drug war. Channeling her long experience working on border issues, Longmire brings to life the very real threat of Mexican cartels operating not just along the southwest border, but deep inside every corner of the United States. She also offers real solutions to the critical problems facing Mexico and the United States, including programs to deter youth in Mexico from joining the cartels and changing drug laws on both sides of the border.
On a warm September night in 2002, former acquaintances Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis reconnected at a mixer for new students at Harvard Business School. Alexis had just ended a four-year run at eBay during the dotcom boom and bust. Alexandra had just spent three years as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Now they were entering the country’s top training ground for future titans of Wall Street and the Fortune 500. Little did either suspect that five years later, they’d become famous not in finance or consulting or corporate management, but at the bleeding-edge intersection of fashion and technology. Gilt Groupe – launched by Alexis, Alexandra, and three colleagues in 2007 – is one of the most fascinating startups of recent years, with a valuation of more than $1 billion. And it all began with one bold idea: to bring sample sales online and change the way millions shop. As Alexis and Alexandra write about the day Gilt.com went live: “We had created a website that could potentially change the rules of retail, for both shoppers and brands. If shopping was traditionally a slow, leisurely activity that might consume an entire day, it would now be competitive, addictive, urgent, thrilling—a rush delivered at the same time each day. Shopping would become not just easier, but so much fun.” But turning that vision into reality wasn’t easy. Designers had long controlled their own sample sales by staging them in anonymous, makeshift locations and strictly limiting invitations. Those lucky enough to hear about a Marc Jacobs or Hermès sample sale would drop everything and run for dramatic, fleeting bargains. Why should elite brands support a new startup trying to replicate the experience online? And even if brands like Valentino, Christian Louboutin, and Zac Posen got on board, would shoppers embrace such a website? Would the kind of people who love high-end fashion really visit a new online sale each day? Was “accessible luxury” a breakthrough idea or an absurd oxymoron? Alexis and Alexandra share their perspective in this dramatic story of Gilt’s birth, rise, and evolution. They show how they juggled the conflicting needs of their suppliers, engineers, marketers, and potential investors. They explain how they blended their individual strengths and weaknesses and managed their rapidly growing team. They cover the growing pains of expanding into new categories like housewares, travel, and menswear. And they take us through the darkest moments of the recession when Gilt might easily have died. As you’ll learn from the true story of Gilt, anything is possible for those with the creativity to recognize a new opportunity and the perseverance to make it real.
The way we think about money has extraordinary impact. This book satisfies the growing longing for a financial overview that can provide practical advice and demonstrate how money is a social tool. Making Money Matter introduces the reader to common money mistakes, and the dysfunctional nature of the current financial framework. Its overview of the SRI world will inspire investors to push their advisors’ envelope while providing new strategies to meet the demand for positive impact. It provides a philosophical basis for transforming our view of money from an end unto itself to a means to change the world for the better. This book traces the author's journey from early financial innocence to an appreciation of how money works and how it can be transformed. People who care about the planet and society at large need a bridge from deeply felt values to practical understanding and advice that will lead to a new money paradigm. This new approach covers all aspects of money from everyday transactions to high impact investment options. It describes a new investment paradigm that will support both reasonable returns and long-term societal and planetary health. Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is well established for smaller scale investors in the public space and impact investing for accredited and qualified investors is taking hold in the private-space. Readers want more than flat definitions, and need an inclusive overview that can inspire investors on all levels to move the trillions required for addressing the world’s many dire problems. This book’s unique contribution is a personal, practical and holistic approach to socially conscious investing, which engages the reader in a way that is both healing and empowering. Making Money Matter is designed for mass appeal. First, its biographical, true-confessions format introduces the reader to common money mistakes made by the author, while personalizing the dysfunctional nature of the current financial framework. Secondly, its personalized overview of the countermovement of socially-conscious investment options is designed to inspire investors to push their advisors’ advice-envelope while providing investment managers with practical new strategies to meet the burgeoning demand for positive impact. Finally, this book provides a philosophical basis for the new money paradigm that shows how to transform our view of money from an end unto itself to a means to change the world for the better. This book is aimed at people who are concerned about Wall Street, banking and our current monetary and finance system, average investors, businessmen, progressives, libertarians or fiscal conservatives. However it should be of particular interest to investment professionals looking for new ways of meeting their clients’ needs. Investment managers and consultants need to be educated about this space. This book should be as popular among family office associations as the Chartered Financial Analysts Association. But this book's ultimate goal is to provide inspiration to all levels of investors. Everyone uses money, and the way we think about money has more impact than all the impact investments put together. This thinking needs to change. Just as consumers drove the growth of the local and organic movements, investors will drive the new money paradigm. This may help anyone to begin to think about the real bottom line of every transaction, which is the impact of our actions on the planet - including all living beings that inhabit it.
With clarity and concision, Juan Cole disentangles the key foreign policy issues that America is grappling with today--from our dependence on Middle East petroleum to the promotion of Islamophobia by the American right--and delivers his informed advice on the best way forward. Cole's unique ability to take the true Muslim perspective into account when looking at East-West relations make his insights well-rounded and prescient as he suggests a course of action on fundamental issues like religion, oil, war and peace. With substantive recommendations for the next administration on how to move forward in key countries such as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, Engaging the Muslim World reveals how we can repair the damage of the disastrous foreign policy of the last eight years and forge ahead on a path of peace and prosperity. Cole argues: * Al-Qaeda is not a mass movement like fascism or communism but rather a small political cult like the American far right circles that produced Timothy McVeigh. * The Muslim world is not a new Soviet Bloc but rather is full of close allies or potential allies. * There can be no such thing as American energy independence, we will need Islamic oil to survive as a superpower into the next century. * Iran is not an implacable enemy of the U.S.--it can and should be fruitfully engaged, which is a necessary step for American energy security since Tehran can play the spoiler in the strategic Persian Gulf. * America's best hope in Iraq is careful, deliberate military disengagement, rather than either through immediate withdrawal or a century-long military presence--in other words, both the Democrat and Republican presidential candidates are wrong.
