Since the book went live, Smith’s name has careered around the Web. “When people Google me, all of this appears, and everybody says wow,” says Smith. “It supports everything I do. I’m popping up all over the place.”

Since ditching her $2,000-a-month Yellow Pages advertisement in 2002, Smith has become a modern-age marketing maven. She writes an e-newsletter and posts instructional videos on YouTube, covering topics from infection control to painless injections. Smith also writes on dental health for local newspapers. Result: Since 2002, annual revenues have tripled to $1 million, while her marketing budget hasn’t grown a penny, she claims.

Getting the word out on the cheap is one of the greatest hurdles for aspiring small-business owners in any economic environment, let alone the troubled one we’re in now.

“In times like this, people think the first thing to do is to cut back on marketing to save money,” says guerrilla-marketing expert Jay Conrad Levinson. “But that’s kind of like ditching your wristwatch to save time. A down economy is not a time to become low profile, or people will forget you.”

Levinson’s contrarian philosophy: Double marketing outlays in tough times, to perhaps 8% of projected gross sales from a more typical 4%.

Better yet, get more out of your current marketing budget by exploiting technology. “Before the Web, we had to advertise in somebody else’s media–magazines, billboards,” says David Meerman Scott, viral-marketing strategist and author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. “The Web allows you to tell your story directly.”

Then again, you don’t want to sell your story too hard out of the gate. “Most marketing campaigns fall down because they’re specifically designed to sell products and generate leads,” says Scott. A better plan: Back off the sell and amp up the entertainment.

Example: When Approva, a Reston, Va., financial-software company, wanted to grab the attention of bean-counter types at large companies, it made a snarky online video featuring a song celebrating Sarbanes-Oxley’s fifth birthday. Approva’s logo appears in the video, which it uploaded to YouTube, but at no point is there a hard sell. The video’s production costs might have climbed to a few thousand dollars, but that’s still a small investment relative to its potential reach on YouTube.

Bartering for exposure is another effective strategy. That’s where all those trigger-happy bloggers come in.

By now everyone knows that the more people who link to a Web site, the higher it appears in Google’s search results. With that in mind, ScanMyPhotos International, a Los Angeles-based shop that turns print photos into digital files, offered bloggers 1,000 free photo scans if they agreed to place a link to Scan’s site on their blogs.

Result: Within two months, Scan’s site leapt to the first search page when Google users entered the phrase “photo scanning.” (Note: When using this technique, be sure to specify the text that bloggers use when linking to your site; choosing the right keywords is critical to getting the most out of the search engines.)

Along these lines, the rise of online networks plugged into specific local communities is a huge marketing opportunity for small businesses.

LifeAt.com, for example, allows users to post news, classified ads and restaurant reviews. The site keeps tabs on hundreds of “communities”–including specific apartment buildings and neighborhoods. Other sites that can help boost local visibility are Yelp.com, Insiderpages.com and Best of the Web. (For more on marketing via online social networks, check out Top Tips For Building Your Online Network.)

Another option: Host a virtual tradeshow. While real tradeshow booths are an expensive hassle to set up and tear down, slapping up a virtual booth, or even running your own round-the-clock show, is virtually painless. The design software (available for free through the main tradeshow Web site) allows you to dress up your booth by importing your company logo and adding product shots and videos–and you don’t need to be a computer-graphics wizard to use it.

The other nice thing about virtual trade shows: You can measure their performance. All site-builders offer data-reporting options, including registrants’ contact information, what booths they “visited,” which videos were watched and how much time each visitor spent at the site.

Cost? Show sponsors can charge exhibitors a fee, or give the booth space away for free and collect for any personal information gathered from visitors. Site builders like GoExhibit and ClickExpo charge sponsors around $50 a month to set up the show. (For more, check out How To Make A Splash At A Virtual Tradeshow.)

If you can, let others do your marketing for you. Three years ago, Chris Lindland, founder of Cordarounds, online peddler of pants with horizontal whales that go “around” the leg, had a clever viral marketing idea. He convinced the proprietors of the Black Horse pub, his favorite watering hole in San Francisco, to add Cordarounds as an item to its drink menu.

The trade: Lindland promised (by way of a biweekly email to customers) a free beer for all who dropped by the Black Horse wearing their Cordarounds. He only had to make good on that promise about once a month; meanwhile, hundreds of Black Horse customers ended up asking what the heck Cordarounds were.

If all else fails, take another hard look at the market and its willingness to pay for your product or service. Market surveys can cost up to $10,000, but there are some cheaper online options. Online surveys are easiest. Zoomerang charges $599 for a year subscription to its surveys service; Survey Monkey offers subscriptions starting at around $20 per month. Of course, for perhaps $100 in food and drinks, you could host your own focus groups too.

A final reminder for demanding entrepreneurs: Marketing strategies, no matter how innovative, take time to gain traction. “Most people look for instant results,” says Levinson. “[But] no matter how good the offer is, it’s not going to work in a hurry.”

Dubai Sports television channel, part of Dubai Media Incorporated (DMI), has announced a deal to show top German football action free-to-air.

It has cemented an agreement with Bundesliga, Germany’s premier football league, and the Sportsman Media Group, making the Dubai-based channel the exclusive broadcaster of all the German matches in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The contract will enable Dubai Sports channel to broadcast all Bundesliga matches via its two free-to-air stations to more than 100 million households in 23 Arab and North-African countries.

The 24-hour free-to-air Dubai Sports channel won the rights for all Bundesliga games following an intense bidding process.

Rashid Al Amiri, general manager of Dubai Sports channel said: “Our successful bid validates our status as the region’s widely popular sports channel that offers top-notch bouquet of programming and this has been acknowledged by the German football organisations.

“As a comprehensive sports channel, we are keen to further strengthen our programme offerings, especially in football, in the near future.”

Source : ArabianBusiness.com

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Gold Bond, a century-old concoction of zinc oxide and menthol, is best known for alleviating jock itch and diaper rash. But its owner aims to conquer a wider swath. Chattem, its corporate parent, wants consumers to dab Gold Bond just about anywhere. In a recent brainstorming meeting 12 Chattem executives debated the best puffery for a possible line of Gold Bond lip balm. “‘Soothing’ is good,” said J. Blair Ramey, the company’s cohead of marketing, “but ‘healing’ is even stronger.” A few folks nodded in agreement. “What about ‘restoring’?” asked Alexander (Zan) Guerry, chief executive of the company. “I like the idea of putting ‘restoring’ and ‘healing’ on a product that will moisten your lips.”

Chattem knows all about restoration. The company buys ailing health and pain-relief brands that still have good name recognition. It then spruces up packaging and promotions and stretches the monikers as far as possible. It has come up with more than two dozen Gold Bond offerings, now carried in most of the 110 discount, grocery and drugstore chains (with 68,500 stores) that do business with Chattem. The company is looking into as many as 11 versions of the Gold Bond lip product, to be retailed for as much as $7 a tube. All will have pretty much the same ingredients (the usual petrolatum, octinoxate and octocrylene you find in antichapping products).

Besides Gold Bond, Chattem owns the Icy Hot pain reliever and Selsun Blue dandruff shampoo product lines. Selling over-the-counter remedies for everyday aches and flakes is a decent business. Chattem netted $64 million over the past year on sales of $450 million. The Chattanooga, Tenn. company’s average five-year annual revenue growth: 12%. Chattem ranks number 46 on our list of the Best 200 Small Companies in America.

Ronald Galante, Chattem’s acquisitions scout, is on the prowl for other brands to add to the 26 now in the portfolio. An ideal target would have a gross margin not far from the 80% enjoyed by Gold Bond and annual sales between $10 million and $50 million. At least once a day he speaks with other companies, such as Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, to ask if they might be inclined to sell a premium brand in an uncluttered category. A gas-relief remedy would be nice. He covets Robitussin, the cough and cold medicine owned by Wyeth. J&J’s motion-sickness drug Dramamine is high on his wish list.

Last year Chattem paid $410 million for five brands, with combined annual sales of $120 million, that J&J needed to unload when it acquired Pfizer’s consumer products division. Those brands included Kaopectate, the antidiarrhea medicine, and Balmex, the diaper rash cream. “Things that are very important to us are an afterthought for other companies,” says Guerry, 59.

Before Chattem acquires a brand it often conducts focus groups to uncover untapped potential. That is how it learned, for instance, that people liked to sprinkle Gold Bond on their feet. A short time later Chattem rolled out three Gold Bond foot care products. It often reduces or reshapes product packaging so it can squeeze more onto delivery trucks and store shelves. Chattem execs may spend up to 18 months discussing details of a product relaunch with Wal-Mart, the source of one-third of Chattem’s revenue.

It takes some imagination to see the possibility of new features in anti-itch powders and the like, but Chattem can do that. Unisom, an over-the-counter sleep aid it acquired last year, is getting a lift from a new “sleep melt” tablet introduced in April. It dissolves in an insomniac’s mouth without water.

Chattem spends $120 million a year on advertising and promotion. A typical TV ad runs 15 seconds, contains no more than 42 words and includes a jingle or catchy tagline. The company credits its “Never Wear Black Without the Blue” campaign with doubling Selsun Blue sales to $40 million since 1992. John Stroud, marketing co-chief, is proud of a motion-activated shelf display for Bullfrog waterproof sunblock–it croaks when a shopper walks by.

Chattem occasionally shells out a little extra for a celebrity endorser. It recently agreed to pay model Christie Brinkley $2 million to endorse act mouthwash. To differentiate it from category leader Listerine and others, Chattem is playing up act’s ability to restore tooth enamel. The mouthwash now comes in seven versions and posted sales of $60 million last year, a 50% increase over the year before.

There are occasional misfires. Earlier this year consumers started complaining about Icy Hot Heat Therapy, a chemical pouch that becomes hot when it’s exposed to oxygen. It was created so users could press it against their skin. Users claimed that the pouch was irritating and, in some cases, causing burns. In February Chattem yanked the product from shelves. The recall didn’t jolt the company’s stock price, but to date Chattem has settled 118 claims–133 are still pending–for a cost of $200,000. It has no plans to relaunch the skin-pouch product.

The company’s biggest headache has been its diet drug, Dexatrim, which it bought for $95 million from Thompson Medical Co. in 1998. In 2000 the FDA recalled all drugs containing phenylpropanolamine because the chemical appeared to increase the risk of stroke. Chattem’s shares hit a ten-year low of $2.34 following the recall. Then in 2003 the FDA recalled drugs containing ephedrine, an ingredient in two Dexatrim products that Chattem had discontinued in September 2002. Chattem paid a total of $56.3 million to settle 372 claims between 1998 and 2003.

Guerry has his own remedy for such troubles–a mellow, Zen-like approach: “There’s no such thing as stress. There’s only stressful thinking.”

Guerry is a descendent of Zeboim Cartter Patten, who founded the Chattanooga Medicine Co. in 1879. Its first product was an herbal laxative called Thedford’s Black Draught, which it bought from A.Q. Simmons, a doctor in Georgia. Company salespeople crisscrossed the country on foot and by buggy, painting sales messages on storefronts and on the sides of barns. Chattem sold the brand in 1993. It is still marketed by Lee Pharmaceuticals of South El Monte, Calif.

Chattanooga Medicine hit it big in the 1940s when its scientists discovered antacid compounds (dihydroxy aluminum aminoacetate) that were later used in Bufferin and Rolaids. Under Alexander Guerry, Zan’s father (who took over in 1958), the company developed Pamprin, an over-the-counter pill containing acetaminophen and pamabron, for menstrual cramps. Alexander Guerry changed the company’s name to Chattem and took the company public in 1969. Using bank loans and cash, the company started buying beleaguered drugstore brands like Ath-O-Med, a line of vitamins and first-aid ointments. Zan took over right after his dad died of a heart attack while playing tennis in 1990.

As a teenager and in his 20s, the younger Guerry was a professional tennis player who competed with Arthur Ashe and John McEnroe. He played in the 1977 U.S. Open and lost to Jimmy Connors. Maybe that’s why Guerry, who owns Chattem stock worth $16 million, sees himself as something of a coach. One of the company’s 139,000-square-foot warehouses doubles as a “locker room,” where guests like Duke basketball coach Michael Krzyzewski and former footballer Joe Namath deliver inspirational talks on topics like leadership and success. Sports slogans predictably creep into Guerry’s talk, like: “You’re going to have good matches and bad matches.”

There is certainly a rah-rah attitude at Chattem these days. Tough economic times can be good for this business. Big companies will seek to get rid of minor brands. Even if they are unemployed, people keep buying remedies for their aches and discomforts. Says William Chappell, analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: “In a financial meltdown people still have arthritis and dandruff.”

Source : Forbes.com

Ruffin CEO Bill Bronson is on a mission. Counterfeits of his company’s adventure gear and clothing are on the rise, and Bronson is hell-bent on stopping them. He has hired top-notch investigators to track down the criminals, invested in technology that will help distinguish his products from look-alikes, and pushed onlinevendors to stop selling fakes. All of that has cost a lot money, however, and the problem seems to be getting worse. How far should Bronson take his campaign ?

Giorgio Brandazza, a professor at SDA Bocconi School of Management, fought a similsr battle as an executive at Calvin Klein. He advises Ruffin to mitigate the effects of copycats by building up the company should increase its retail presence in countries where it is plagued by fakes. Single brand stroes will allow Ruffin to guarantee customers they’re getting authentic goods, showcase its products in distinctive ways, and build strong relationships with consumers.

J. Merrick “Risk” Taggart president of Victorinox Swiss Army in North America, recommends zeroing in on the worst counterfeiting offenders. A resource Ruffin should take advantage of, he says, is customers and border patrol officers, if the company frequently communicates with them about ports of entry and consignee consignor data, these officials can more easily sniff out illegal activity.

The foundation for any good defense against counterfeiters, say Candace S. Cummings, general counsel of VF Corporation, is instituting tight controls over the company’s supply chain and distribution process. That means, among other things, choosing manufacturing parteners carefully and having strict contracts with distribution parters that, for example, prohibit products from going anywhere but outlets the company trusts.

Wal-Mart entered the new millennium with the appointment of H. Lee Scott Jr. as the third CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 2000. That same year, Fortune magazine ranked the company fifth in its “Global Most Admired All-Stars” list and named Wal-Mart the third most admired company in America. The 2000 Cone/Roper Report once again ranked Wal-Mart as the No. 1 Corporate Citizen in America.

Hispanic Business magazine ranked Wal-Mart one of the “Top 25 Diversity Recruitment Programs” in 2001 for its aggressive program to hire and promote Latinos. In 2002, Wal-Mart received the 2002 Ron Brown Award, the highest Presidential Award recognizing outstanding achievement in employee relations and community initiatives.

Wal-Mart marked a significant turning point in 2005 with a new commitment to bring environmental sustainability into its business, under the leadership of CEO Lee Scott. The sustainability commitment developed after Wal-Mart lead the corporate drive to assist in U.S. hurricane relief efforts with $18 million in cash donations. That same year, in McKinney, Texas, and Aurora, Colo., Wal-Mart created experimental stores that save energy, conserve natural resources, and reduce pollution. The company also launched the Acres for America program, which conserves critical wildlife habitats for future generations.

Fortune magazine also placed Wal-Mart in the top spot on its “Most Admired Companies” list two years in a row, in 2003 and 2004. In 2004, Wal-Mart was also presented the “Corporate Patriotism Award,” which is presented to a company that exhibits exceptional dedication to supporting of U.S. service members and their families.As of 2005, Wal-Mart employed more than 1.6 million associates in more 6,200 facilities around the world – including 3,800 U.S. stores and 3,800 international units – with $312.4 billion in sales for the year. The company served more than 138 million weekly customers in the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

By 2006, the number of weekly customers grew to more than 176 million around the world, with 6,779 locations. Wal-Mart had record net sales of $345 billion. The company increased its ownership stake in Seiyu in Japan, to 53.3 percent, and increased its ownership of CARHCO to 51 percent, renaming the company Wal-Mart Central America.

Through the Wal-Mart Foundation, charitable partners, and donations from customers and associates, Wal-Mart contributed more than $415 million in cash and in-kind merchandise to 100,000 organizations worldwide. Wal-Mart also launched a new $4 generic prescription drug program to help customers in its U.S. pharmacies save money on health care.

In February 2007 Wal-Mart helped launch Better Health Care Together, a unique partnership of organizations dedicated to a set of four common sense principles for achieving a new American health care system by 2012. Later in the year, Wal-Mart expanded its successful $4 generic program, which as of 2007 had saved customers more than $396 million on prescription drug costs.

Wal-Mart International reached significant milestones as well. In August, Wal-Mart and Bharti Enterprises announced an agreement to establish Bharti Wal-Mart Private Limited, a joint venture for wholesale cash-and-carry and back-end supply chain management operations in India.

The 3000th international store, a Supercenter in Sao Paulo, Brazil, opened in November 2007. In December, Wal-Mart successfully completed a tender offer to acquire all issued and outstanding shares of Seiyu in Japan, which raised Wal-Mart’s ownership to 95.1 percent.

On April 10, 2008, Sam’s Club celebrated its 25th anniversary. In 2008, Sam’s Club operates more than 590 locations nationwide and more than 100 locations internationally.

A facelift and even lower prices kept the world’s largest retailer afloat in a troubled economy.

Staring down the barrel of brutal fourth-quarter retail forecasts, CEO Lee Scott dramatically cut prices on 15,000 items - including popular toys and electronics - by 20% more than usual to lure holiday shoppers. That rocked the industry, pressuring other retailers to squeeze already tight margins.

The tactic worked: Wal-Mart grossed $100 billion, breaking its fourth-quarter sales record, and soundly beat Target in same-store holiday sales for the first time in nearly a decade.

Over the past four decades, Wal-Mart has been proud to serve the communities where we operate. We’ve received numerous awards for our work, which would not be possible without the support of our customers, associates and communities around the world. Here is just a sampling of our recent recognition:

• Top 50 Companies for People with Disabilities – CAREERS and the disabled magazine
• Spirit of Excellence Award – American Bar Association
• Corporate Diversity Honor Roll – Latin Business Magazine
• Best 15 Companies for Diversity Marketing – Black Enterprise Magazine
• Top Companies for Multicultural Women – Working Mother Magazine
• Top 50 Companies for Latinas – LatinaStyle Magazine
• Top Companies for Female Executives – National Association of Female Executives
• Top Companies for Asian Americans – Asian Enterprise Magazine
• Top 50 Employers of Women Engineers – Woman Engineer Magazine
• Top 50 for Supplier Diversity – HispanicTrends Magazine
• Top Organizations for Multicultural Business – DiversityBusiness.com
• Corporate Partner of the Year – National Association of Women Business Owners
• Best Green Companies – Working Mother Media
• Top 100 Employers for the Class of 2008 –The Black Collegian
• 50 Best Companies for Latinas – Latina Style

At the Nasdaq OMX Group, a single technician sits in front of eight flat-panel computer screens in a quiet operations center, 51 stories above the World Trade Center construction site. On one screen, quotes blink on and off at speeds barely visible to the human eye. On another, a fever chart showing orders and completed trades scrolls along like the electroencephalogram of an agitated 2-year-old.

To the extent that the Nasdaq market exists anywhere, it’s within a single rack-mounted Dell server in a rented data center somewhere across the Hudson River. That machine routinely processes 70,000 orders, cancelations and trades per second but can handle up to 250,000 per second–enough to deal with trades on the Nasdaq plus the London and Paris stock exchanges with room to spare.

An entire trading floor crammed into a suitcase-size computer: That’s the future of exchanges, and Nasdaq was there first, having been all-electronic–floorless, that is–since its inception in 1971. In the early days the trades were by telephone; since 1983 they have consisted of computer clicks.

With roughly 33% of the total volume in U.S. equities, and 2,500 employees, Nasdaq OMX is rushing to push more stock trades as well as futures, options and other derivatives onto its superfast, supercheap servers before competitors like NYSE Euronext catch up. “As you add scale, your incremental cost goes to zero,” says Robert Greifeld, 51, a former computer salesman who took over at Nasdaq in 2003 as it was being spun out of the old National Association of Securities Dealers, now the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. “Our goal is to add more incremental trades at zero cost.”

In a year of spectacular market meltdowns, Nasdaq OMX Group has capitalized on the turmoil. It is our Company of the Year.

The chaos in financial markets–to say nothing of exploding volatility–has been a windfall for exchange operators. Combined U.S. trading volume on all exchanges averages 10.6 billion shares a day, compared with 4.2 billion two years ago and 1.5 billion a decade ago. The recent increase in volume is accompanied by an explosion in volatility: The CBOE Nasdaq Volatility Index, reflecting short-term expectations of volatility in the Nasdaq 100 Index, surged to 80 from 20 or so between mid-2006 and October of last year. At four-hundredths of a penny per share, Nasdaq takes in $800,000 in fees on a 2-billion-share day, just for pushing electrons through its servers.

But there’s more competition for that traffic. A 2007 federal regulation ordered brokers to route their trades to the cheapest exchange, not the one that is most convenient. In Kansas City, Mo., Bats Exchange, a three-year-old competitor, now handles approximately 12% of U.S. volume, including 12% of the trading in Nasdaq-listed shares.

Traders are also doing 7% of their volume in “dark pools,” the electronic equivalent of a back alley where buyers and sellers transact anonymously, according to Tabb Group, a Westborough, Mass. market researcher. “People used to talk about each stock having a principal exchange,” says Daniel Mathisson, managing director in charge of a Credit Suisse division that uses computers to direct trades to the lowest-cost exchange at any given moment. “Now the trading’s going all over the place, and there is nothing to stop that trend.”

So Greifeld plays offense, using cheap technology to get business. In 2005 he paid $935 million for Instinet Group, one of the largest electronic exchange operators, chiefly to get his hands on the Island trading engine, particularly fast and inexpensive technology developed by a young Brooklyn, N.Y. entrepreneur in the mid-1990s. Within months Greifeld scrapped Nasdaq’s expensive Tandem computers in a Connecticut data center and moved Nasdaq to off-the-shelf servers. “We have to have the same cost structure as the startups–we can’t give any quarter,” he says.
Source : Forbes

Bridgestone Corp (5108.T) skidded more than 5 percent after Japan’s largest tyre maker cut its operating profit forecast for the year to Dec. 31 to 118 billion yen ($1.3 billion) from 155 billion yen, citing slumping sales in North America and Europe in the face of global recession.

Japanese markets were closed on Tuesday for a national holiday.

“Investors lack trading factors to keep buying stocks. Coupled with a fall on Wall Street, Japan’s economic fundamentals are bad and so are corporate earnings, including those of Toyota and Honda,” said Fumiyuki Nakanishi, manager at SMBC Friend Securities.

“But losses appear to be limited as I think the market expects to see a New Year rally in the U.S. on hope for the new administration after investors return from the Christmas holidays.”

The benchmark Nikkei .N225 shed 234.83 points to 8,488.95, after rising 1.6 percent on Monday to book its highest finish since Nov 11.

The broader Topix declined 2.7 percent to 825.77.

In the United States, further deterioration in the housing market and worry over weak consumer spending in the final stretch of the Christmas shopping season hurt Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones .DJI 1.2 percent lower.

Takashi Ito, a senior strategist at Nomura Securities, said he expects to see further cuts to corporate earnings forecasts for the next business year.

TOYOTA SLIDES

Toyota shares slid 4 percent to 2,780 yen. The automaker blamed a relentless sales slide and a crippling rise in the yen in what it said was an emergency unprecedented in its 70-year history. [ID:nT299128]

Many market analysts said the revision had been largely factored in.

Rival Honda Motor Co (7267.T) lost 5.7 percent to 1,797 yen and Nissan Motor Co (7201.T) shed 2.3 percent to 297 yen.

Bridgestone declined 5.2 percent to 1,219 yen.

Denso Corp (6902.T) and other auto parts makers sank after Toyota’s profit warning, fueling investors’ worries over the outlook for the auto industry as manufacturers around the world struggle with a sharp drop in sales.

Denso dropped 2.8 percent to 1,342 yen. Earlier on Wednesday, the company slashed its group net profit forecast by 90 percent to 10 billion yen for the current year to March.

Kanto Auto Works (7223.T) tumbled 11.5 percent to 1,038 yen and Stanley Electric (6923.T) shed 3.5 percent to 917 yen.

On the bright side, Toshiba Corp (6502.T) gained 3.8 percent to 329 yen after the Nikkei business daily said the firm plans to spend up to 30 billion yen to build a lithium ion battery factory in Niigata Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, boosting its production capacity for state-of-the-art batteries about 70-fold.

Trade was light on the Tokyo exchange’s first section, with 748 million shares changing hands, compared with last week’s morning average of 898 million.

Declining stocks outpaced advancing ones by more than 6 to 1. (Reporting by Aiko Hayashi; editing by Sophie Hardach)

Source : Reuters

Boeing had barely ceased its banshee wail before Barton Brady’s cell phone piped up. “Viva Las Vegas” the king of ring tones-belted out of its tiny speaker just a the flight attendant announced their arrival at Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport.

Brady glanced around, acknowledging the amused appreciation of his fellow first-class passengers, whose own phone soon joined in to create a cacophonous chorus.

Since the mind 1990s, management-metaphor boutique Serendipity Associates (SA) has been offering clients sizzing similes and snappy sound biter. But the nead of SA, Barton Bridy, gets word that someone is now poaching in his territory. It’s the low-rent operation Tropes R Us, which has started offshorring production to lreland and will soon flood the market with high-quality, low-coast metaphors. Does this move cofirm Brady’s fear that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge in right-brain work ? Four experts comment on this fictional case study.

Daniel H Pink, an author and consultant, say SA should move to higher ground-to find new ways to differentiate itself on the basis of right-brain capabilities that will be difficult to offshore. Doing this, he writes, requires an education system that nurtures creativity.

John Chuang, CEQ of talent consultingfirm Aquent, writes that Brady could raily U.S. citizens to protest the country’s current immigration policy, which makes it difficult for companies to import top talent. Brady should also broaden the definition of SA’s business.

Richard Phelps, a human resource executive at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, argues that contrary to the prevailing view of many in the Wes, workers in emerging economies are equal to the demands creative work. Sashould assemble the best right brains on the planet and either hire them or contract with them to represent the SA brand.

Charlie Wrench, the CEO of brand and design consulting firm Landor Associates, advises Brady not worry about his country – which Wrench believes will continue to attract a disproportionate share of the world’s creative talent – but about his multinational clients, who need service providers to display a powerful combination of right-brain and left-brain skills. Learn more Harvard Business Review September 2008

Source : Harvard Business Review

Steve Astephen’s legacy is everywhere. It’s in the oceans. It’s in the mountains. It’s on the street. But more than anywhere, it’s in the air, where his clients’ exploits inspire the next generation of action sports stars. Ten years ago, Astephen revolutionized the action sports industry when he recognized the marketability of its larger-than-life athletes and created an agency focused on turning them into brands. He has since partnered with Wasserman Media Group and become one of the biggest names in the game, but he still remembers when his biggest asset was the sort of infectious energy that comes only from someone eager to break the mold.

“It’s definitely something that you have to be so passionate about,” Astephen says. “If you’re not passionate about it, you won’t put in what it takes, especially if it hasn’t been done before. All the doors get shut on you in the beginning. We used to just dial and dial and call and call and doors were just slammed, slammed, slammed. Then one day someone says, ‘Sure, come on in. I’d like to hear about this.’ You get these companies that want to come in and they see that my world–action sports–is clearly something that is tangible. It’s something that’s rewarding. It’s something that creates a great return on investment, and it’s something that everyone can benefit from.”

Before starting his agency, The Familie, Astephen had worked on the retail side of action sports with Vail Associates. He left Vail Associates to open his own snowboard shop at the age of 20. From there, he moved into marketing and promotions for several other companies, where he continued to come up with new ways to advance action sports athletes and their sports.

Astephen says a large part of his success as an agent comes from the wealth of personal credibility he’s earned in the action sports world.

“A lot would say I was the first agent in action sports,” he says. “But that’s not necessarily true. IMG did have a guy who was working with some snowboarders and some wakeboarders. It’s just that they didn’t have relevancy. They weren’t in this world. It’s just not there for them. When I signed my athletes, it was because these guys were my best friends. I only got from snowboarding into motocross and skateboarding and BMX because all the athletes intertwine, and the world of action sports is very tight.”

Astephen’s clients include some of the biggest figures in the action sports world–names such as Dave Mirra, Ryan Sheckler, Carey Hart, and Bruce and Andy Irons. For him, success is much more than getting his clients noticed in the water, on the track or in the half-pipe–it’s about helping them create lasting legacies by starting their own companies. For his up-and-comers, he preaches a mantra of patience–a willingness to “say no to a dollar now because you might gain six in three years.”

Like many entrepreneurs, Astephen recognizes that sometimes it’s easier–and more lucrative–to simply ride a different path than to reinvent the wheel.

“My personality as an entrepreneur is not to be doing something that has never been done. If I look back at my first business–a snowboard shop–it’s been done, and they used to be called ski shops,” he says. “All I was doing was taking a specific niche and creating my own ski shop. My agency had been done for 30 or 40 years before me. I just did it differently. Do your research and really look at other smart people.”

When it comes to tapping others, Astephen is just as passionate about the present and the future as he is about the past. He says much of his success–especially in the early going–comes from shedding the clichés of the maverick entrepreneur and enlisting people who know more than he does.

“It’s so important to surround yourself with smarter people,” he says. “If I hadn’t hired a CFO as fast as I did–maybe too early, but I was lucky enough to hire a CFO who understood marketing and promotions and wanted to do that as well–I would say today that I would be in a lot of trouble. I’m blessed to be the guy–because of the way I was raised–I need help. I’ve always needed help. So surrounding myself with smarter people was the biggest thing. I knew what I could do. ”

It wasn’t long before the smarter people Astephen seeks started coming to him–prospective investors and partners. After a short-lived deal with publishing giant Austin Hearst and an offer from ad agency behemoth Omnicom, Casey Wasserman approached him in 2002. Wasserman, grandson of Hollywood legend Lew Wasserman, had started WMG a few years earlier and was looking for a partner rather than an investment. It was the difference Astephen was craving and something he encourages all entrepreneurs to consider when the time comes to take their businesses to the next level.

“The great thing about [Wasserman] is that he became like a brother and a friend more than a partner,” Astephen says. “Those are truly the people [you want to find] as an entrepreneur. If your eventual goal is to sell your company, if you want to continue to be passionate and work with your brand or your company, you’ve got to find the right people whom you’re going to do that together with.”

Selling the company outright was never an option for Astephen, who at 30 knew he had much more to accomplish. Six years later, his partnership with Wasserman is stronger than ever–all the more reason to stay involved.

“If your goal is to continue to grow and you need resources to do that, go to someone who’s like-minded. Casey’s passionate. He has the money that I never would’ve had, but he doesn’t act like that. He’s not going to just write you a check and then milk you for all the money. He continues to want to grow. He continues to want to reinvest. He continues to want to expand.”

Thanks very much to his hard work, Astephen is living at ground zero of action sports’ mainstream explosion. But in a world where success is measured by the ability to seemingly defy the laws of physics, his final words of advice seem amazingly grounded.

“Be true to yourself, sleep really well at night and surround yourself with smarter people.”