Big Brands Fighting To Replace Vodafone On Manchester United T-Shirts

As Vodafone announced last week that it is ending its four-year deal with the once world richest football club’s, two years early, Manchester United is in talks with a number of global brands giants about replacing Vodafone as its shirt sponsor, according to reports.

Vodafone’s deal is set at 9 million pounds, or about $15.5 million. Some of the names reportedly thought to be willing to top that include Google, IBM and Yahoo but Coca Cola and Levi’s as well.

While for Yahoo this would not be a first, as  Yahoo has been quite successful in sports marketing with a 2001 global sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup and the Yahoo Dome, home to Japan’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, it would definetly be a first for Google. Even if they recently opened their Manchester regional offices, as well as a London GooglePlex, I still can’t really see Google on football t-shirts, but who knows.

Technorati Tags: Google, Yahoo, Manchester United, Vodafone

The World’s Most Respected Companies 2005

As we’re getting to the end of the year, the time is coming for various tops and classifications for the year that passed.

For the eighth year, the Financial Times (reg. required) has published its World’s Most Respected Companies list. And for the first time, Microsoft garnered the number one position. Not only that — Bill Gates was named the World’s Most Respected Business Leader, and was second on the Most Influential Business Writer of Management Guru list, losing only to management theorist Peter Drucker, who passed away earlier this month.

As FT wrote in its announcement:

The new economy has finally triumphed over the old. For seven successive years, General Electric has topped the table of the world’s most respected companies. But for the first time it has been pipped to the post by Mircosoft, the software group.

The top ten comapnies, out of 50, named this year by the Financial Times, are:

1. Microsoft
2. General Electric
3. Toyota
4. Coca-Cola
5. IBM
6. Wal-Mart
7. BP
8. Procter & Gamble
9. Apple Computer
10. Siemens

Technorati Tags: World Most Respected Companies, Top 10, Microsoft, Business, Bill Gates

Euro Cities Monitor 2005

Senior Executives from 501 European companies, systematically selected from “Europe’s 15,000 largest companies”, gave their views on Europe’s leading business cities, in a study published by Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker. The principal findings are:

• In the overall rating of best cities for business the top cities of London and Paris continue to lead by a pretty big margin.
• The other cities to move up this year are: Berlin (9th to 8th), Lisbon (16th to 14th), Düsseldorf (18th to 16th), Budapest (23rd to 21st), Glasgow (24th to 22nd), Copenhagen (26th to 25th), Helsinki (28th to 27th) and Oslo (30th to 29th).
• Valencia and Bucharest head the list of other cities threatening to break into the top 30.
• Warsaw remains the city that can expect the biggest influx of companies over the next five years, with 41 of our sampled companies expecting to locate there. If this happens, Warsaw would move up to 6th position in terms of international company representation.
• Prague, Moscow and Budapest can also expect a healthy inflow of companies; and Bucharest is attracting interest. Paris, London, Madrid and Milan are the most popular nominations among the more established business cities.
• Worldwide, Shanghai remains the clear favourite – 41 of our companies expect to expand there.
• Beijing, followed by Mumbai and Mexico City can all also expect future investment from Europe.
• London extends its leading position over Paris but these two cities are well ahead of their nearest rivals. Barcelona overtakes Amsterdam in fifth place with the top seven cities clear of the rest. The small differences in scores of cities outside the top seven means that slight changes in score can produce a movement of several places in the rankings.

Here is the list of cities that made it to the top 10, along with their scores:

1. London 0.87
2. Paris 0.60
3. Frankfurt 0.33
4. Brussels 0.30
5. Barcelona 0.28
6. Amsterdam 0.24
7. Madrid 0.24
8. Berlin 0.19
9. Munich 0.18
10. Zurich 0.18

You can download the full PDF report here. Via Hotnews.ro

Technorati Tags: european+cities, city+monitor,, euro+cities+monitor

Romanian Banking System

Bank Austria Creditanstalt released an interesting monitoring report on banking markets in South Eastern Europe, analyzing banking sectors reform and progresses in 7 countries in the region: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Romania and Serbia Montenegro.

Here are excerpts from the Romania – Knockin’ on EU’s door, chapter:

Although Romania has made impressive progress in reforming its banking sector, the banking system’s efficiency still lags that of developed market economies, highlighting the necessity to press forward with reforms, especially in view of the country’s upcoming EU membership.

With foreign banks’ already dominant position expected to rise further and markets becoming increasingly saturated, fiercer competition among banks is expected to trigger a further wave of consolidation via mergers and acquisitions, which bodes well for further efficiency gains.

Download the full: Banking in South-Eastern Europe – On the Move (PDF, 1.5MB). Via: Hotnews.ro

Tags: Romania, banking, Banking in South Eastern Europe

Edleman/Technorati Bloggers Survey

Edleman/Technorati joint survey, regarding blogger’s relation with public relations, are out.

The survey asked bloggers questions related to how PR companies can get the relationship right, how PR companies can help them rather than annoy them, how can improve the conversation, how can earn their trust. The survey questiones 821 bloggers from 53 countries, half of them (54,81% from US, 3 answers from Romania).

Some interesting results from the study include:

• 34% of bloggers blog to increase their visibility as an authority, 32% do it to create a record of their thoughts – so a majority do it for their personal image
• Executive bloggers are only half as believable as employee blogs – that makes for an interesting argument against CEO bloggers and in favor of employee blogs!
• When looking for product information, bloggers tend to trust way more other bloggers (62.85%) than company website (26.19%), corporate blog (6.09%) or company press releases (4.86%).

See full results of the study here. (via)

Tags: PR, Public Relations, Bloggers Survey

AOL – Weblogs Inc Deal Revisited

As day passed, news started to flow, making Weblogs Inc. buyout by AOL the news of the week at least, but certainly a story that will keep the blogosphere busy for a while and will throw bloggers in long debates on the subject.

First of all, some more interesting aspects on the deal itself. It seems like bloggers of the Weblogs Inc network found this out from another blog (jeez, this is sort of funny). Then Darren Rowse from ProBlogger broke in and reveiled some more details of the deal:

• WIN are selling to increase the resources that they couldn’t provide otherwise (offices, technology, people, infrastructure) as well as extra traffic.
• Nothing is changing – in terms of management which will continue to run WIN as an independently operated AOL company
• WIN headlines will start appearing on AOL home page, netscape, AIM etc
• Bloggers will need to sign a new contract shortly which will allow bloggers to own their own content for offline use
• The contract will contain other features yet to be announced that are favorable to bloggers
• There is no increase in pay mentioned but allusions to more money in the network due to the deal

On the other side Darren mentions that reaction from WIN bloggers is for the most part very positive with the news that Jason staying on, while a blogger from the network mentioned this morning:

I’m not wearing any damn AOL tshirt, and I sure as hell aint telling anyone how much I love their service.

As for myself, while I do believe the part with the t-shirt, I won’t be so sure about the last part of its sentence on the long run, and this kind of things don’t make me be so thrilled about this deal.  I really expect to see a lot of cross-promotion between the network and AOL owned offline and online titles, and that will be probably the least that might happen.

I have to agree more with Nick Denton of Gawker Media who quickly denied false rumors that the Gawker Media blog network is currently for sale:

The acquisition of WIN by AOL is exhilirating news, in many respects, most of which I shouldn’t list here. For what it’s worth, Gawker isn’t for sale. The whole point about blogs is that they’re not part of big media. Consolidation defeats the purpose. It’s way too early.

Without denying the business aspects of the deal and the huge amount of money, for a 2 years old company, that Weblogs Inc. got I also have to admit I tend to agree more with Denton on this. I’m still found of weblogs as independent media, with no direct connection with the big-sharks companies.

More, it seems like there’s a bubble smell in the air:

John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly opened the second edition of the Web 2.0 conference this afternoon with an exchange along these lines: Battelle said that last year, the mood at the conference was simply, “We made it” — we survived the Internet industry’s dark winter. This year, he said, it’s more like, “Something really important is going on — let’s not screw it up.” O’Reilly added: “We are definitely running the risk of another hype cycle.” (via)

More on the bubble thing:
Techdirt: And Now Comes the Real Blog Bubble
MobHappy: Weblogs Inc Sells to AOL for $25 million

Tags: AOL, Weblogs Inc, Calacanis, Gawker Media, Nick Denton

Romanian Investment Environment 2005

Romania ranked 35th in 104 countries within a classification in terms of performance index for foreign direct investments (FDI) released during the Conference of the United Nations for Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The introduction of the flat taxation rate of 16 percent was the main trigger that pushed Romania 22 places up in the top. Also, in terms of tax level, the 16 percent tax Romania is placing Romania on third place worldwide, just after Letonia and Bulgaria.

The record level of the foreign capital that has considered Romania as an appealing destination in 2005, up to $5.1 billion, has been the outcome of privatisation undertaken in the oil company Petrom, as well as several important greenfield projects and the expansion of already existing projects, particularly within the automotive and services industries. Romania has attracted 168 greenfield projects this year as against 116 in 2004 and 112 in 2003.

Within South-Eastern Europe, Romania and Bulgaria have been the main destinations for foreign direct investments, accounting for 70 percent of the foreign capital invested in the region in 2005. However, broading the scale, with this jump, Romania is still behind Bulgaria (placed 12th), Slovakia (placed 25th), Moldova (placed 26) or Czech Republic (placed 33rd) but ahead Hungary (placed 46th), Slovenia (placed 60th) or Poland (placed 75th).

Read full UNCTAD World Investment Report 2005.

Tags: Romanian Investments, Investment Environment

Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies – 2005

Hype Cycle. Hmm, that really sounds geeky, so first of it let’s define it:

According to Word Spy, hype cycle is:

a sequence of events experienced by an overly-hyped product or technology, including a peak of unrealistic expectations followed by a valley of disappointment when those expectations aren’t met.

We meet it in a pretty similar way in the marketing’s product lifecycle.

Gartner’s hype cycle goes something like this: new technologies get overhyped in the beginning; then they go out of favor; eventually they’re adopted by the mainstream but by that time they’re no longer news.

A Hype Cycle is a graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and business application of specific technologies. It goes something like this:

Basically, hype cycle is only measuring the buzz as well as the adoption rate. It doesn’t necessarily correspond to the long-term utility – or success – of a phenomenon. That is a thing that only time will tell.

So why the buzz about it? That’s because Gartner released couple of days ago its 2005 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.

Check the graph (or click the thumb for full view, or simply download it as PDF) of the hype cycle plotted with every emerging technology (i.e. from corporate blogging to carbon nanotubes, and from quantum computing to speech recongnition).

Tablet PCs, Internet micro payments, passive RFID and video-conferencing are four technologies that are firmly stuck at the bottom of the “trough of disillusionment” while business process management suites, peer-to-peer VoIP and biometric identity documents find themselves right at the “peak of inflated expectations”.

The research firm has pegged Corporate Blogging and RSS as being two years away from mainstream adoption. For now, both are tumbling into Gartner’s Trough of Disillusionment (along with wikis and desktop search) as a result of too much media buzz. If you believe Gartner, Corporate Blogging is already sooo… last year (2004). The media rumble about Corporate Blogging is almost deafening by now. It’s not a “new” story anymore. Which is not to say that blogging isn’t still a “new” thing to many companies. So watch out bloggers the trough of disillusionment is right ahead. It will be an interesting subject to follow.

Technorati tag: Hype Cycle, Corporate Blogging

Who’s There? Seth Godin’s New Ebook on Blogging

Seth Godin author of famous bestsellers as All Marketers Are Liars : The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World or Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers just gave a hand in promoting blogs and blogging among those unfamiliar with specific terms and notions releasing for download the free ebook: Who’s There? (1.6MB, PDF), Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web.

This is part of the Incomplete series of ebooks that tries to identify just a few important (and overlooked) ideas and sell you hard on putting them to work for you. I believe that your problem (if you have a problem) isn’t that you don’t have enough data. You have too much data! You don’t need a longer book or more time with a talented consultant. What you need is the certainty of knowing that you ought to do something (one thing); then you need the will to do it.
 
I’m going to assume that you’ve got one of a few goals. If you don’t want to accomplish any of these things, feel free to ask for a refund (and click here for some entertainment…)
1. Understand how and why the mainstream media is dying.
2. Figure out why your organization needs a fundamentally different approach to the web.
3. Embrace the fact that you can’t just change your tactics… the truth of what you do and who you are has to change as well.
4. Realize that all of this is very inexpensive and very quick. The hardest part is finding the will do it right.

And more than that, if you’re interested on how to make websites that do their job better, then you can download Seth’s Knock Knock ebook released in June (if you haven’t already).

For romanian readers here is the link to Seth’s Permission Marketing… in Romanian.

Technorati tag: Blogging, Free Ebook

Advertising Clichés

An interesting article published by online edition of BBC News on (annoying) clichés in advertising.

“It’s tiresome to see characters in adverts who don’t resemble anyone you know,” says the article.

Here are my favorites ones:

1. Men are obsessed with sex but will forego sex in order to watch football or drink beer.
2. Women are locked in a constant battle with their weight/body shape/hairstyle.
3. Career success is entirely based on your ability to impress your boss.
4. Mums are often harassed but NEVER depressed/unable to cope.
5. Any act of male stupidity (e.g. walking across a clean floor in muddy boots, putting the dog in the dishwasher, etc.) will be met with a wry smile, not genuine annoyance/anger.
6. Married men will flirt with other, younger women but NEVER act upon it.
7. Scandinavians are, without exception, blonde and beautiful.
8. Women have jobs they never do in real life, e.g. dockworker (who looks like a model).
9. Children will not eat fruit or vegetables. Ever.
10. Both men and women find driving deeply pleasurable, never boring or stressful.
11. High Street bank staff are (A) friends of the customers, and (B) of slightly above-average attractiveness (only if female).
12. All women (except stay-at-home housewives) have interesting and enjoyable careers.
13. Any over-the-counter medical product will work instantly and 100% effectively.
14. Women never merely hop in and out of the shower, instead preferring to act out some sort of soapy Dance of the Seven Veils.
15. School is a happy experience for all children.

Via: Adverblog

Technorati tag: Advertising