Organic Discount or Competency Penalty? The real reason organic wines sell for less

March 9, 2010

Tweet Stereotypes about non-profit and for-profit firms explain why organic wine can’t command higher prices. Today’s Freakonomics column picks up on UCLA research reported earlier this week by Matt McDermot at Treehugger.com. The researchers, Magali Delmas and Laura E. Grant, demonstrated that organic wine cannot command as high a price as conventional (non-organic) wine. This […]

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Rearranging Chairs as an Act of Leadership

March 8, 2010

Tweet Certain members of my friends and family circle make fun of me tease me because I often rearrange the chairs at social, public and business gatherings. My beloved sister got a bit irked by my penchant for chair moving last month when, 20 minutes before her party started, she came into her living room […]

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That Special Starbucks: Does the place help the people be authentic?

March 4, 2010

Tweet First it was the Siren. Then it was the Christmas cards. For a while, it’s been the original artwork by their very own baristas displayed on the walls.. And now, my favorite Starbucks is getting bouquets of flowers. On a recent visit, there were two big vases of flowers on the counter by the […]

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Social Media Risks: Restoring trust when your brand mascot is a killer (whale)

March 2, 2010

Tweet The challenge of being authentic on social media can be scary. Many organizations are afraid of being ‘on’ social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where they (or their representatives) are accessible and active in real time. They worry that participating in real time on social media platforms will expose them as unthinking, out […]

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Useful research, if you are a gang member

March 1, 2010

Tweet Oh how I love empirical research– the chance to answer burning questions, with real data, so that you can act more effectively. Consider this new tidbit of info that I picked up over the weekend: Full beer bottles break with less force than empty ones, so if you are going to hit someone in […]

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What Keeps Women From Moving Up the Ladder? Not “experience”, but corporate laziness

February 24, 2010

Tweet This just in from Forbes Magazine — yet another article about why “women” don’t get promoted. (hat tip to my friend @ShaunRSmith) Orit Gadiesh and Julie Coffman, in Why Women Don’t Make It Up The Ladder summarize several of the arguments that are advanced to explain why so few women, relative to men, get […]

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Why So Much Anger at the Girl Scouts?

February 22, 2010

Tweet Ever since I poked the beehive back in August with my post about Walmart and Girl Scout cookies, my blog and I have been receiving angry comments from people who just hate the Girl Scouts. It’s one thing to be angry at Walmart, but the Girl Scouts? I don’t understand… Why is there so […]

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Fix the Brand of Men’s Figure Skating: Send Out the Clowns, and get me Johnny Weir

February 19, 2010

Tweet The ‘Brand of Men’s Figure Skating’ is broken. The brand lacks coherence, it isn’t compelling, and sometimes it isn’t even attractive. And it’s all because of what those guys wear. In an ideal world, the Brand of Men’s Figure Skating reflects a hearty frisson between between the brand’s two defining attributes: Athleticism & Artistry. […]

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Girl Scouts Rebrand Their Cookies: “Every Cookie Has A Mission”

February 18, 2010

Tweet The Girl Scouts have been busy with their organizational re-branding efforts. With the start of the 2010 Cookie Season, they have a new branding campaign specifically designed to make Girl Scout cookies meaningful. Back when I wrote the post Wal-Mart Knocks Off the Girl Scouts, about Walmart entering into competition with the Girls Scouts […]

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Authentic Student Entrepreneurs: Embedding Personal, Product and Organizational Brand

February 17, 2010

Tweet What do fledgling entrepreneurs need to know about creating authenticity? And what, if anything, does this have to do with cupcakes? I had a chance to try to boil it all down to a few key ideas when I taught two classes of an undergraduate Entrepreneurship course at NYU’s Stern School of Business. My […]

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