Check Mr. laus's challenge out at http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/208338,czech-president-klaus-ready-to-debate-gore-on-climate-change.html .
This is of more than passing interest to (a) those of us who thought that its lust for world domination died off with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and (b) we advocates of international economic development and prosperity via laissez-faire capitalism and global free trade.
But don't bet on the High Priest of Hot Air to take him up on it. The executive-jet-setting Mr. Gore has so far refused any and all requests to discuss, let alone debate, the shaky premise on which his career was resurrected from a lifetime of mediocrity.
]]>This is an abject lesson in the mis-management of public expectations; a kind of PR in reverse.
The key word is hubris, displayed on a scale not seen since recent/former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer bragged to someone 'I am a fXXXing steamroller' (who did it with his socks on.)
Check it out at http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/travelers_check/archives/2008/03/heathrow_so_muc.html
]]>
By Andres Oppenheimer, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
Published: January 18, 2008, 00:13
As a longtime commentator on Latin America, I'm used to getting yelled at, but when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently labelled me an enemy of the revolution on national TV, it was more than my usual dose of venom. I never imagined that Chavez would mention my name six times in an angry speech, accusing me and other "big intellectuals" of undermining his leftist programmes.
Nor did I imagine that I would be demonised by many seemingly calmer, less radical Latin American officials and their friends in the business world. But the publication of the Spanish-language edition of my new book about Latin America's malaise, Saving the Americas, had turned me into a punching bag for people across the political spectrum.
My sin was becoming a party pooper - arguing that Latin America is falling behind at a time when the commodity-rich region is going through its biggest boom in decades. Granted, I got far nicer reactions from Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, a Nobel laureate, and former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, but their praise was drowned out by those denouncing me as a spoiler.
So what caused the stir, which helped sell more than 200,000 copies of the book's Spanish edition? Basically, it was my observation that the region is suffering from peripheral blindness: It fails to see that it is falling behind the rest of the developing world.
To be sure, Latin American governments and international financial institutions have good grounds to celebrate these days. The region's economy has been putting in its best performance in 40 years, according to the United Nations. Some countries, such as Venezuela and Argentina, have been growing at rates around a whopping 9 per cent. A record $65 billion per year has been flooding back home in family remittances from Latin American migrants in the United States and Europe, offering a new source of income to millions of the region's poor. And soaring world prices of oil, soybeans, copper and other commodities - alongside China's emergence as a major buyer of the region's goods - have resulted in a regional export bonanza.
Not surprisingly, Latin American leaders have been jubilant. Venezuela's Chavez crowed that his oil-rich country was growing not only economically but "socially, morally, even spiritually". Former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner assured his country that the whole world was marvelling at Argentina's impressive economic recovery. Mexico's then-president, Vicente Fox, asserted that Mexico was growing "like a locomotive that after taking off, starts picking up speed".
External factors
The only trouble is that Latin America is growing economically almost exclusively because of external factors, especially a growing world economy and high commodity prices, rather than because it has its own house in order. And those outside boosts won't last forever.
What was my heresy? As Latin American leaders were strutting, I argued that their claims that the region was entering a new era of prosperity were fairy tales. (My book's Spanish title was Cuentos Chinos, and in Portuguese, it was Contos do Vigario, both of which translate roughly as "Tall Tales.") And so they are. Latin America's economy has grown at a 5 per cent rate for the past five years, but China's has been growing at 10 per cent rates for nearly three decades, India's at about 8 per cent rates for a decade, and Eastern European economies have been expanding at near 6 per cent annual rates. Even Africa has recently grown at 6 per cent rates. In fact, measured against other parts of the developing world, Latin America's economy is growing at the slowest rate.
If you consider poverty reduction, the contrast is even starker. While Asia cut poverty from 50 per cent of its population in 1970 to 19 per cent nowadays, Latin America barely reduced poverty from 43 per cent of its population to 36 per cent over the same period, UN figures show.
So what, I asked, are Asians doing that Latin Americans aren't? For one, I argued, many Asian countries are guided by pragmatism and obsessed with the future, while many Latin American countries are guided by ideology and obsessed with the past.
Ironically, while communist-ruled China is going out of its way to woo foreign investors, several nominally capitalist Latin American countries seem to be trying to keep investors away. But the most troubling trend for Latin America is its stagnation in education, science and technology. While Asians and Eastern Europeans are creating increasingly highly skilled labour forces, most Latin American countries have barely modified their outdated education systems.
My favourite example: Of each cup of Latin American-grown coffee that American consumers buy at any US cafeteria, less than 3 per cent of the price goes to the region's farmers. The remaining 97 per cent goes to those involved in the genetic engineering, processing, branding, marketing and other knowledge-based activities that help produce a cup of java, most of which are based outside the region.
Depressing statistics
Despite these depressing statistics, I'm still optimistic about Latin America. The region is also experiencing several encouraging trends, including more democracy and political and economic stability.
Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru, among others, are breaking away from Latin America's age-old curse of extreme political swings, which led to instability, capital flight and ever-growing poverty. These and other countries have bet on economic continuity, which is beginning to draw growing domestic and foreign investments. In several cases, shrewd economic moves have been made by a new breed of economically responsible leftist governments.
Granted, US officials and most of us in the media focus on Chavez and his allies in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, who reliably get big headlines with their calls for socialist revolution. But Venezuela and its friends don't account for more than 8 per cent of Latin America's gross domestic product. Latin America's real story is being written elsewhere in the region - and it may still have a happy ending.
Andres Oppenheimer is a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald and the author of 'Saving the Americas: The Dangerous Decline of Latin America and What the US Must Do'.
Since then, a nationwide boycott of the Citgo brand has ensued (something to do with Mr. Chavez calling Mr. Bush el Diablo and teaming up Sen. Kennedy to exploit this nation's needy with heating- oil discounts) which continues to be sold at approximately 14,000 -- many of them exceedingly slick and spiffy -- Citgo service stations across the country.
So how goes the boycott? Answer: It's hard to tell. Aside from a few poorly tended blogs and a virtual blackout by the so-called mainstream media, one wouldn't know there was a boycott on at all. The only coverage we could find is this report from a few days back by a Pittsburgh-area newspaper: http://www.slate.com/id/2177484?Gt1=10636 .
...which provides a flimsy enough excuse to send you to a hilarious but insightful column from Slate wherein one Anne Applebaum fills us in as to just why it is that American actors and models love to hang out with Hugo...
...and we thought it was the hugs.
See for yourself at http://www.slate.com/id/2177484?Gt1=10636.
]]>Chaos, that’s what.
Trace it to China, the neo-capitalist behemoth that seduced the Western world with low costs, quick turnaround times, high productivity – call it global sourcing – and now has the chutzpah to sport a laissez-faire attitude toward what brand stewards on this side of the Pacific quaintly refer to as product quality and consumer safety.
The list of lethal products originating from the world’s largest factory grows with every news report chronicling a death, an injury or a close call (and the ensuing recall) from the contamination and failure of things produced in The People’s Republic for consumption by the American public.
Maybe it was a good thing as long as it lasted.
Business boomed, consumers didn’t complain much and the recall phenomenon became commonplace enough to not even be considered front-page news -- and we’re not talking about cheapo items sold in low-rent dollar stores, either.
Each of the above-mentioned incidents was and is associated with a global or national manufacturer of considerable repute, namely Motorola, Nokia, Colgate, Iams, Mighty Dog and Pet Pride, whose products were and are sold in dozens of such big-name retail emporia as Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, Kroger and K-Mart, to name a few.
And most of them have come to light in the past few weeks and months.
To see the kind of meltdown we’re talking about, we’ve done the legwork for you to skim through the sordid-but-almost-funny details right here and now:
For the exploding cellphone story go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/world/asia/06cnd-explode.html?em&ex=1183867200&en=0512f220402ea400&ei=5087%0A
For the ban on drug-contaminated seafood living in raw sewage click on: http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/28/news/international/china_fish/index.htm, then go to http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56004
For the lead-painted toy-train item visit The Consumerist (a blog) at: http://consumerist.com/consumer/finger_pointing/thomas-the-poisonous-tank-engine-recall-fallout-continues-270657.php
To learn how exploding car tires may cause a New Jersey entrepreneur to go bankrupt, try http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/27/autos/chinese_tire_recall/index.htm.
We find very useful Meg Marco’s question: “If outsourcing is done both to cut costs and defer responsibility, if something goes wrong are consumers OK with that? (Do you) hold the brand responsible, or not?”
We most certainly do -- as should the consumers of these products, whether considering future purchases or legal action – and as should the appropriate federal, state and local authorities in the event there are penalties for laws broken or standards violated.
Easy to say, of course. The tricky part is that because none of these sanctions applies to those who deliberately break the rules outside the United States, the best alternative is for your company to be a lot more choosy – and to consider the marketing and legal consequences of a quality meltdown -- the next time it sets up an outsourcing deal.
Meanwhile, the best news we’ve heard is a relatively new phenomenon that’s getting up to flying speed: the China-Free label. No, not the ‘Free-China’ label -- that’s a whole other matter over in the realm of politics.
The China-Free label is catching on fast. As a manufacturing mantra it has to do not so much with quality control as it has with quality assurance. As a brand-marketing philosophy it’s a return to first principles.
Josef Blumenfeld of Tradewind Strategies in Boston, puts it this way:
“Despite its unquestioned emergence as a global economic power, China does not have a single global brand. In survey after survey American consumers can’t name one either.
“In reality, the most-recognized Chinese brand is….Made in China.
“A successful brand conveys favorable attributes about the company, products and services it represents, says Blumenfeld, “and the market responds by increasing the revenue, profits and stock value of the world’s leading brands.
“Aside from low cost, the ‘Made in China’ brand projects nothing positive. The shocking revelations of tainted toothpaste, pet food and Thomas the Tank Engine toys coming from China has only tarnished the ‘Made in China’ brand further.
“And the market has responded. Reuters recently reported on the emergence of the ‘China-Free’ label – implying that the source of tainted ingredients has been eliminated from the supply chain.
(For a Reuters report on the ‘China-Free’ concept go to http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/06/news/companies/china.reut/index.htm)
“This counter-brand poses enormous risk for China and its sizzling growth,” says Blumenfeld.
“China has allowed its ‘Made in’ brand to become synonymous with ‘disposable,’ and no corporate brand has emerged to illustrate the improving quality of Chinese-made goods.
“China allowed ‘Made in China’ to say ‘cheap and disposable’ and its growth engine continued to chug ahead. If “China-Free” tells US consumers that a product is free of tainted ingredients, how quickly will it come to signify respect for the environment or adherence to international labor protocols?
“Unless China marshals its forces to protect Western consumers – as well its own citizens making products for export – ‘Made in China’ will continue to imbue its products with a host of negatives and risk. Beijing should heed this wake-up call. “China-Free” could stop China’s growth engine dead in its made-in-China tracks.”
An excellent point well made.
Think about it: How many people have simply written off buying any brand of California-grown fresh spinach since last year’s e.coli scare? There comes a time when something in the back of the American consumer’s mind simply says, enough – and there goes an entire category.
You think not? Then try this test: Slap a 'China-Free' sticker on a few thousand boxes of your product and watch it fly off the shelves.
If that time hasn’t arrived for ‘Made in China’ goods, it may be fast approaching.
What do you say?##
]]>Having a bit of history with this enchanted but troubled island, this is one gringo who can't wait for the wall to fall and for la fiesta mas grande to begin.
I say the sooner that brands from all over the world can be openly sold and marketed in Cuba, the better.
But Coke and Super Glue selling on the black market at crazily inflated prices do not a cogent argument make.
Of course the greatest economic transformation in that tiny country's history would come about at once if the floodgates of free trade and open commerce were to suddenly be flung open.
The trouble is, making that happen is a two-way street -- a fact conveniently overlooked by the mind-numbed Blame America robots responding to Mr. Sanders' blog.
Here's the Inconvenient Truth:
- Selling foreign-made consumer goods NO MATTER WHERE THEY COME FROM -- without Fidel's o.k. is and has been FELONY, and thus a one-way ticket (if you're lucky) to a not-very-comfortable PRISON in the People's Republic of Cuba, for the past four decades.
That's because the individual (as in capitalist pig) is nothing and the all-powerful state (as in bureaucratic bully) is everything in this and other Workers' Paradises around the world.
So let's get real: The situation is not merely about us 'keeping hard U.S. currency out of (Cuban) peoples' hands.' It's about the Catro regime preventing Cubans from having the slightest control over their own destiny.
We're ready to trade, market and sell branded consumer goods down there from now until the cows come home, as are millions of Cubans both on an off the island.
Drop the embargo now -- and see how long it takes Fidel and his cronies to lift their fanatical oppositon to individual and collective free entreprise in their own backyard.
We're ready. 'La Navidad en Habana,' as they say every year in Miami. Pense en eso.
But don't hold your breath.
]]>Our advice is to strip it and flip Chrysler as fast as that can be done.
Sorry about that.
Read Newsweek at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18665395/site/newsweek/ on the newly privatized Chrysler Corporation and talk about slimming it down and putting it on the block...
...then ask yourself, why wait?
Why not stop as soon as possible the enormous waste of time, money and manpower that's been going on since long before Daimler-Benz stepped in and took over where others were too wise to tread?
Root out the paychecks, the perks, the facilities and the operations that are no longer needed. Buy out the former, sell off the latter, THEN get back to the busness of building and marketing cars and trucks instead of creating sinecures and legacies.
Bitter medicine, to be sure. But there's no other way.
As presently constituted, the enterprise that Walter P. Chrysler cobbled together 75 years ago is about to disappear -altogether - and with it ALL of the perks, the bonuses, the work rules, the pensions and the benefits that marketing and manufacturing have to carry.
There's not much about any model in the Chrysler -- or Ford or GM -- lineup, in fact -- from design to performance or quality control, from durability to passenger safety to fuel economy or marketing -- that anyone need make an excuse for, or that can't stand up to its non-U.S. counterparts.
To this alumnus and longtime observer of the U.S. automotive scene came of age in Detroit and cut his eyeteeth on marketing jobs at the Dodge and Chrysler-Plymouth divisions and Chrysler's corporate headquarters, Daimler's hubris merely extended a day of reckoning that was long overdue.
The Germans either glossed over, failed to see or flat-out ignored what was the unholy alliance of a bloated union and an equally bloated white-collar management dually entrenched in a decades-long scramble to entrench and to perpetuate their collectively won perks, pensions and benefits.
So UAW President Ron Gettelfinger had it exactly right when he opined that Cerberus's true intention probably was to 'strip and flip' when it showed up with the offer that Daimler found too good to turn down.
So let's get it on.
]]>
And of course there's lots of support from our friends and allies everywhere, right.
Check this out for a fresh perspective: http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=197938.
]]>The reason: rights activists are on the march and gaining monentum, from Tibet to France, from the campus of Harvard to the players themselves. Their purpose: to link the policy of the world's largest non-democracy (China) with the monumentally obscene behavior of the world's most murderous regime (sudan) toward its downtrodden non-Muslim majority.
News accounts indicate the activists are gaining ground. As publicity for their cause gets traction it will become increasingly unformfortable and embarrassing for those in China who are able to see themselves via outside, i.e., Internet eyes. It was Satchel Paige who said you can run but you can't hide. Now of course there's neither running nor hiding.
Linkage is what it's about, and China doesn't like the low-down way it looks and feels. Nor does the International Olympic Committee, for that matter...nor especially the megabrand marketers who've committed ten$ of million$ of buck$ for the privilege of strutting their $tuff before a billion-$trong primetime audience in a monumental $alute to excellence.
Who can blame any of these entities for fervently hoping, each for its own reason, that the Darfur hullabaloo will somehow just blow away? But of course it won't. Nor will it be drowned out. Because as the heat goes up for the mega-marketers they will have subtle ways of registering their displeasure -- and the Chinese know it.
So look for action to follow the traction. Because the stakes are too high, the issue is too compelling, and the official -- that is to say, the institutional -- Chinese psyche is just too bound up already with the global prestige it stands to gain by being able to play the good and gracious host, not only to the world's greatest spectacle, but to its own long-awaited post-Tianmen Square coming-out party.
We're betting the world will know long before gametime that as the erstwhile purchaser of two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports and as the regime's only major-power ally, China used its leverage to stop the killing, the starvation and the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of non-combatant men, women and children -- and that it did so because it was The Right Thing To Do.
On the other hand, we couldn't care less why.
]]>(For the latest, go to: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18072804/?GT1=9246 .)
We congratulate the marketers and advertisers who refused to associate their brands with such outrageously egregious trash -- as well to the MSNBC, CBS, WFAN and Westwood One people who had the decency (what a strange new marketing word!) to not let him get away with it anymore.
]]>Here we go again too stating that for reasons of personal and professional accountability it's time for him to go.
The perpetrator du jour is none other than the grandaddy of all radio shockjocks, Don Imus of the nationally syndicated WFAN/MSNBC radio/cableTV "Imus in the Morning" show in New York.
For the too-stupid-to-repeat idiocy that got him in hot water and a report on what's already an ongoing melodrama with his career at the center, go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17999196/?GT1=9246.
The issue has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with putting an end to using the public airwaves to insult, offend and ridicule large swathes of the audiences they purport to serve.
"I'm a good person who said some bad things," indeed. Give me a break, Imus. Three weeks from now you'll be back at it, laughing up your sarcastic sleeve, flipping critics the proverbial bird.
"I'm so ashamed by what I said that I just don't want to show my face," would make a better point.
It's time for marketers whose advertising budgets bankroll the stations and networks that broadcast such sleaze to consider the consequences if and whenever those who take offense let their feelings be known in the marketplace.
Asked today what she might want to fill Imus's empty spot with during the offender's two-week slap-on-the-wrist hiatus that begins next Monday, team captain Essence Carson had this quick-witted response: "Highlights of the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team's 2007 season?"...
...for which we'd enthusiastically tune in -- especially with the prospect of Imus live-narrating the play-by-play. Wouldn't THAT be the perfect finale for a long and happy show-biz career?
]]>That’s what's going on in the Sudan as the world turns a blind eye to the so-far murder of 400,000 men, women and kids and the displacement of 2.5 million refugees whose villages have been put to the torch by their Chinese-financed government.
It’s happening right now, nonstop. Try to picture the horror for yourself, as it won't be on the Evening News.
So an especially large kudos goes out to Ronan the son and Mia the actor Farrow for having the chutzpah not merely to take up the cause, but to link the ongoing nightmare of Darfur with China and the upcoming Olympics in Beijing -- and to put the onus on U.S. sponsors, plus none other than Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg, to do something about it.
Farrow and son know whereof they speak, each having visited this devastated region of North Africa numerous times. They make their case today on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal: he as a Yale Law School student, she as an actor of considerable merit and professional standing.
The sponsors – Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, General Electric and McDonald’s among them – for ignoring the Beijing-Khartoum linkage; and Mr. Spielberg, “who quietly visited Beijing this month to help stage the Olympic ceremonies.”
To the question: How do they ignore the fact that it’s Chinese oil money that’s bankrolling the Darfur genocide? – the world deserves an answer.
Fact: If President Omar Al-Bashir is the criminal and President Hu Jintao his accomplice in a conspiracy to ensure Chinese access to Sudanese oil, that makes “Schindler’s List” director and holocaust celebrity Spielberg -- and every 2008 sponsor -- this killer's willing enablers.
Another takeaway from the Farrow article is the revelation that among advocacy groups “there’s another slogan afoot. Rather than ‘One World, One Dream,’ people are beginning to speak of the coming ‘Genocide Olympics.’”
Now THAT is a marketing strategy. What’s your opinion?##
]]>Given the over-the-top insensitivity of the so-called campaign for CNN's Cartooon Network -- it's hard not to use the words arrogance and stupidity in this sentence -- the resignation today of Mr. Samples blows a breath of fresh air over a sorry episode in the annals of TV tune-in promotion.
He did the right thing. One way of looking at it is that somebody had to draw the line up to which no one should go. So thanks to Jim and his nitwit agency for showing us where it is.
(See http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/09/news/newsmakers/cartoon_network/index.htm?postversion=2007020915)
Cartoons have to be funny to someone to attract an audience, and adult cartoons have to be edgy to get grown-ups to watch -- which means an agency probably has to go to unusual lengths to break through with an impression strong enough to last all day and get people in great numbers to go to their TVs and tune in to a certain channel and certain program at a certain time.
So hooray for the agency (which shall continue to go unnamed in this space) too, which after all really did deliver the goods. As Mr. Samples probably knows if he looked at the overnights, it was Mission Accomplished and then some. High fives all around.
On a CPM basis, this extravagant bit of idiocy was worth at least the $2 million that CNN will be paying to the citizens of Boston for their time and trouble. Our bet is that the ratings for that particular program on that particular night were better than they'd ever been, and than they'll probably ever be, from that point on.
So the agency gets the boot, Mr. Samples gets a career change just when it seems the time was right, and the bird-flipping robot becomes their legacy. It's almost poetic.
Meanwhile, congratulations (no-name) agency guys and gals! You really proved you can raise (or is that the word?) the bar. But hold the encore. We know what you can do.
]]>