US verdict on Nigeria’s anti-graft war

REGARDLESS of what the President Goodluck Jonathan government may say, the United States’ position on the thriving culture of corruption in Nigeria gives a fair representation of opinion about the subject, both within and outside the country. While Jonathan claims that the extent of corruption in the country is exaggerated, the US government and other concerned individuals are of the opinion that the monster has not been tackled with the deserved seriousness.Read more

Brand language

Brand language is the body of words, phrases, and terms that an organization uses to describe its purpose or in reference to its products. Brand language is used in marketing to help consumers connect specific words or ideas to specific companies or products.^[1] When developing a brand language word choice and tone are the two fundamental components. Word choice is the vocabulary that is used in the marketing or advertising, while tone refers to the attitude of the advertisement. Tone is not limited to language, it can also be incorporated through visual elements as well as delivery.^[2]Brand language is a part of verbal brand identity, includes naming of both corporation and the products they sell as well as taglines, voice, and tone.^[3] Another benefit of developing a brand language is the ability for a corporation or product to be recognizable across international borders, while other advertising codes can be misinterpreted, words can be translated to ensure brand unity.^[4]

Information and analytics: Kotler on marketing

A former CEO of Unilever said that if Unilever only knew what it knows, it would double its profits. The meaning is clear: Many companies sit on rich information but fail to mine this information. This has led to an explosion of interest in knowledge management: organizing a company’s information so that it is easily retrievable and learning can be extracted from it.
Many companies, especially those resulting from mergers or acquisitions, have ended up with incompatible data systems. Before they can get a whole view of their customer, competition, and distribution, they have to streamline and integrate their data into a single data system.
Marketing is becoming more based on information than on brute sales power.
 Thanks to the computer and the Internet, no salesperson can say to the boss that he or she didn’t know the prospect’s industry, company, problems, or potentials. Using sales automation software, a salesperson can record each prospect’s and customer’s needs, interests, opinions, and hot buttons. The salesperson can answer questions in the prospect’s office by connecting with the company’s mainframe or other resources on his or her laptop. The salesperson, after negotiating, can print out a customized contract for the prospect to sign. And afterward, the salesperson can look up what any customer bought and figure out further opportunities for cross-selling or up-selling.
Besides sales automation software, companies need marketing automation softwareto help their marketers gain efficiency and effectiveness.
One form is real-time inventory management, where a marketer can tell what the company and its competitors sold yesterday, including features and prices. This not only facilitates more synchronous production planning but also allows real-time tactical responses.

• Some people define Wal-Mart as an information system company more than a retailer. Wal-Mart knows the sales of each product in each store at the end of the day, making it easier to order the right replacement stock for the next day. The result: Wal-Mart carries lower inventory and therefore needs less working capital. Its ordering is driven by real demand, not by forecasted demand. It has synchronized its ordering with the demand flow.
• 7-Eleven in Japan is another retailer making data-driven decisions. 7-Eleven replenishes its stock three times a day in response to orders from individual store managers of what they expect to sell in the next few hours. 7-Eleven not only trains its store operators to capture customer and sales information but also teaches them how to use it.

Another form is real-time selling, where a company has programmed in rules suggesting other products and services that might be mentioned to a prospect or customer on the spot.

• Suppose a couple in their late forties comes into a bank for a home repair loan. Such customers are likely to have college-age children, and the bank might mention a college loan as well.
• A business traveler checks into a hotel that knows from her record that she is a frequent traveler. The hotel clerk might offer to arrange for her stays at sister hotels for known future dates.

Still another form is marketing process automation, where a company has codified its marketing processes that its product, brand, and segment managers need to know to operate more effectively.

• A brand manager needing to do a concept test turns on his computer and looks up the six steps in a concept test; he receives tips and best-of-class examples. A brand manager needing to choose an appropriate sales promotion turns to her computer to get world-class advice.

Yet another form is an assortment of software packages that facilitate handling such processes as new product development, advertising campaigns, marketing projects, and contract management. They are being developed by Emmperative, E.piphany, Unica, and several other marketing automation firms.
In all battles—military, business, and marital—victory goes to the party that has the better information. Arie De Geus, former strategist for Royal Dutch/Shell, observed:
 “The ability to learn faster than our competitors may be our only sustainable competitive weapon.”

At the same time, managers often must make decisions before they have all the facts. If they wait too long, the opportunity may be gone.

Do Display Ads Influence Search? Attribution and Dynamics in Online Advertising by Pavel Kireyev, Koen Pauwels, and Sunil Gupta

Executive Summary — The introduction of online metrics such as click through rate (CTR) and cost per acquisition (CPA) by Google and other online advertisers has made it easy for marketing managers to justify their online ad spending in comparison to the budgets used for television and other media.

Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?

With servant leadership, a leader's primary role is to serve employees. Everyone from Lao-Tzu to Max De Pree thinks this a wonderful model. Why then, asks Professor Jim Heskett, is this style so rare among CEOs?

Why Good Deeds Invite Bad Publicity

Many executives assume that investments in corporate social responsibility create public goodwill. But do they? Felix Oberholzer-Gee and colleagues find surprising results when it comes to oil spills.
Do companies with reputations for acting in socially responsible ways receive public goodwill when unpleasant news hits?
The question of how much (or even if) corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies benefit companies beyond the knowledge that they are good corporate citizens is much debated. There is next to no evidence that CSR positively adds to a company's bottom line, according to Felix Oberholzer-Gee, the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. "You cannot find a robust direct link between CSR and financial performance.

"“You cannot find a robust direct link between CSR and financial performance”

It is true that in areas such as environmentally sustainable practices, customers have been willing to pay responsible producers a premium for products; take organic cotton, for example. For the most part, however, companies have had to content themselves with thinking that even if there isn't an immediate payoff for doing the right thing, then at least the goodwill they build up with the public will provide a buffer to offset negative publicity when something goes wrong.
The idea is that corporate social responsibility operates exactly like fire insurance. On any given day, you won't see any benefit. In fact, you could go years shelling out money for a service you aren't using. But on the day that, heaven forbid, your house does burn down, then you will definitely be glad you invested in insurance.
But does CSR "insurance" really pay off when companies need that goodwill from the public? In a recent working paper, No News Is Good News: CSR Strategy and Newspaper Coverage of Negative Firm Events, Oberholzer-Gee set out to test the insurance hypothesis using the real-world example of the 20 largest oil companies in the United States. Along with Jiao Luo and Stephan Meier, both of Columbia Business School, Oberholzer-Gee collected data on several thousand oil and chemical spills (most of them, thankfully, quite small) over a six-year period from 2001 to 2007. The researchers also collected newspaper reports over the same period to see how often companies received negative publicity for those spills, or whether, indeed, they earned brownie points for their superior environmental record when the inevitable accidents occurred. To get a handle on where each company fell in its CSR initiatives, the researchers used stats from the corporate research firm KLD Research & Analytics, which ranked companies on "Environmental Strength," including positive measures such as pollution prevention programs, recycling, and energy efficiency; and "Environmental Concern," which includes negatives such as regulatory fines and emissions of toxic chemicals.

A faulty insurance policy

The researchers hypothesized that those companies that had higher CSR ratings would be more likely to be reported in the media if a spill occurred. After all, it's not news when a company with a bad environmental record is reported to have been negligent; it's more notable when a good company screws up. But if the insurance argument held true, then greener companies should at least see more favorable coverage when spills occur, with the media being more likely to attribute them to chance or bad luck than negligence or malfeasance.
When the researchers ran the numbers, they found evidence to support the first part of their hypothesis: greener companies did receive more coverage for spills. A one-point increase in the Environmental Strength score resulted in a 25 to 35 percent greater chance that a spill would be covered. Surprisingly, however, they also found that companies with the lowest CSR scores were more likely to be reported in the press when they had a spill.
"Both the leaders and the laggards experience heightened media attention," says Oberholzer-Gee. "We didn't anticipate that."
 To explain why companies with a poor CSR record make a convenient target for the media, the authors turned to sociological studies. These show that readers like unexpected news—explaining why accidents at the greenest companies were widely covered—but those same readers also find comfort in stories that conform to already-held beliefs. Therefore, readers might find interest in an oil spill by a company like BP, which for years portrayed itself as a leader in environmental concerns; but they might also find interest in an oil spill by ExxonMobil, demonized by some for its environmental lapses. The companies in the middle, meanwhile, received a pass since their neutral rankings don't fit into an easy narrative.
 “A CSR positioning that says either you are already fantastic or you are trying to be fantastic is a risky position”
To test the second part of the insurance hypothesis—that companies with higher CSR scores garner more favorable coverage when spills were reported—the researchers performed a textual analysis of the newspaper stories, mining the text with software that ranks the tone of the words used in a given story. When they added up the scores, however, they found no difference in the tenor of the coverage for greener companies. Those companies with positive environmental records were criticized just as heavily as those with negative records.
"The idea that if you invested in CSR in the past, then people will think more highly of you in the case of an accident, this idea is not borne out in our data," concludes Oberholzer-Gee.
In other words, at least when it comes to oil spills, the goodwill "insurance policies" weren't worth the paper they were written on.

Lessons learned

One lesson to take away from the findings is that managing media coverage and a company's reputation with regard to CSR programs is not trivial.
"A CSR positioning that says either you are already fantastic or you are trying to be fantastic is a risky position," says Oberholzer-Gee. Such claims raise the public's expectations and make the company a lightning rod for media coverage in the case of an accident or some other negative event. Meanwhile, he says, "those that make less extreme claims either are disregarded by the press or have a far less likelihood of seeing their failings exposed."
While that conclusion may seem cynical, Oberholzer-Gee does point out that there may be other perfectly legitimate reasons to engage in CSR—perhaps consumers will pay a premium for specific sustainably produced products; or perhaps having an environmentally responsible image will help in recruiting top talent.
"And of course," he emphasizes, "there is also the idea that companies should try and be good because they believe it's the right thing to do for the environment or their community."
In such cases, it's important to realize that there are consequences. "Sometimes in my interactions with executives, they say, 'We meant really well and we were socially minded, and now we don't see any return or gratitude,' " says Oberholzer-Gee. "It's important to have reasonable expectations about the consequences of that engagement, and hopefully that makes it more sustainable over time."
In other words, while doing good may be its own reward, sometimes it may be the only reward. It's up to each individual company to decide whether that is enough.

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

Upgrades to existing product lines make up a huge part of corporate research and development activity, and with every upgrade comes the decision of how to brand it. Harvard Business School marketing professors John T. Gourville and Elie Ofek teamed up with London Business School's Marco Bertini to suss out the best practices for naming next-generation products. Key concepts include: