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MonthlyNewsletter

October2010

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• Where Great Ideas Come From

• Ads Disguised as Viral Videos

VIDEO INDEX

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*ABSTRACT INDEX

• Buying Houses for Employees• Temps Becoming Temporarily Permanent• In-House Innovation• 7-11: A Family Company?• Saving Jobs in Germany• Japanese CEOs Happy with Sensible Salaries• Too Much of a Good Product• Decoding Trader Joe’s• Adventures in Alcohol Packaging• Making Children’s Food Healthier w/ Mandates

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• Studies show that helping employees purchase a home improves productivity and employee retention.

• CVS counsels its employees on house hunting and even gives them money for down payments and moving costs.

• Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee provides its

employees with a forgivable $3,000 loan if they buy a house in the city.

Building Houses for Employees

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• Do home incentive programs offer economic benefits to companies?

What do you think?

• Why is employee retention so valuable to companies?

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• Increased hiring of temporary workers is typical in the early stages of economic recovery.

• Traditionally temps are often converted into full-time staffers after about six months of quality work.

• Today, however, temporary workers are typically remaining just that, leading some to think that temp workers will be an integral part of the economy’s “new normal.”

Temps Becoming Temporarily Permanent

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• What’s the major downside to the economy’s new normal?

What do you think?

• Will this new normal affect the motivation of workers?

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• The greatest, often untapped resource of business innovation comes from a company’s own employees.

• Structuring staff into management-lead innovation communities gives new shape and purpose to employees’ expertise.

• Managers must be sure to gather a broad spectrum of viewpoints as well as be open to every employee’s input.

In-House Innovation

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• Would innovation communities work at not-for-profit and public institutions?

What do you think?

• What are key factors to remember in establishing innovation communities?

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• When John Andikian opened his own convenience store, his average monthly sales of $70,000 were not enough to keep his business going.

• Andikian converted his store into a 7-11, ramping up sales to $160,000 within the first month.

• 7-11 hopes that franchise conversions will make up 60% of their total franchise growth in 2010.

7-11: A Family Company?

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• What’s the key advantage of franchising to aspiring businesspeople?

What do you think?

• What’s an important lesson to learn from this story?

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• Germany’s short-work policy allows companies to cut employee hours while the government foots up to 67 percent of the remaining payroll.

• Officials credit the short-work policy with saving half a million jobs, leading to Germany’s lowest unemployment rate in 17 years.

• The policy prohibits widespread hiring, however, which could lead to sluggish economic growth.

Saving Jobs in Germany

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• Should the United States consider policies such as “short-work” to help our elevated unemployment rate?

What do you think?

• Why do German unions accept “short-work” and work-time accounts?

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• Japanese securities regulators recently ordered companies that pay their executives more $1.1 million to disclose their salaries.

• Fewer than 300 people working at Japan’s 3,813 public companies earned enough to disclose their incomes.

• The biggest earners in Japanese business are foreigners, such as Carlos Ghosen of Nissan ($10 million/year).

Japanese CEOs Happywith Sensible Salaries

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• Are stock options and bonuses reasonable rewards for CEOs?

What do you think?

• Why do U.S. CEOs earn considerably more than their foreign counterparts?

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• Companies often take a popular product and create new variations of it that change the product’s size, flavor or color.

• Studies show that these bloated product lines confuse consumers, harm supply chain efficiency and sometimes lead to shortages.

• Companies are advised to structure their products into tiers as well as offer some niche products only to those who order them directly.

Too Much of a Good Product

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• What’s the advantage of deepening product lines in popular brand categories?

What do you think?

• How far should a brand extension go?

Photo courtesy of Kevin McShane

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• Food retailer Trader Joe’s is flourishing across the nation with its line of premium, affordable groceries.

• Trader Joe’s stocks only one brand of a particular product, which normally sports the name of the store on its packaging.

• The company offsets its lack of product variety with customers’ trust in the quality of the Trader Joe’s name.

Decoding Trader Joe’s

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• What does Trader Joe’s success say about smaller retailers’ ability to compete against giants?

What do you think?

• Will expansion threaten the cult-like following the company now enjoys?

Photo courtesy of David Shankbone

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• Scottish brewing company BrewDog released a $765, 55% alcohol by volume beer that came encased in a taxidermied rodent.

• This shocking beer was intended to challenge public perception of beer packaging.

• In Pennsylvania, strict liquor laws have lead retailers to install government-run wine vending machines in grocery stores.

Adventures inAlcohol Packaging

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• What would be the consumer product classification for BrewDog’s beer?

What do you think?

• Does distributing wine in vending machines sound like a good marketing option?

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• For years the food industry has tried to stave off government regulation over food marketed to children through lax, self-generated standards.

• New health guidelines from the FTC could prevent companies from advertising unhealthy foods toward kids.

• The guidelines have not been implemented officially yet due to heavy lobbying from the food industry.

Making Children’s FoodHealthier with Mandates

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• Should strict nutritional enforcement be imposed on the food industry?

What do you think?

• Do strict regulations have much chance of being enacted?

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