Ken Shaw, one of the nicest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, knows a thing or two about investing. He gives a great tip on a book on his blog. According to Mr. Shaw, the book is a great introduction on how to invest like the pros do – a must read if you want to make some serious mullah!

I suggest you check it out.

With his new book, released the Autumn of 2009, Chris Anderson takes a look at FREE, as a philosophy, the history of it, and how it has come to be a new form of how one can make money. He even goes as far as to give good example of how YOU as a business owner can make money buy sell your product for nothing.

I know that my views are not shared by many, but here’s my view of the whole “Give it to me for free, and I might pay you for it” scenario.

The minute after I had finished listening to the book, I decided to buy it. Thus, Chris Anderson will get what he deserves for writing the book, even though that was not his intention. For him, you can download the book from iTunes, and never ever give him another dime. He believes that if the book is good, people can hire him to come to there country and talk about it – and for that, he’ll charge. I agree!

The same might be the way that the music industry should look upon themselves. The artist gives away it’s music for anyone to listen to it, and if people like it, the artist might be able to come to their country and/or city to play. Chris Anderson shares this view – which is nice to hear. The generation of young people today are more and more interested in seeing the artist, then just to listen to it – seeing is believing. What could be one of the reasons why the industry does not like this way, is that most contracts in the industry gives the record company money for the number of records sold, and the number of times the song is played on the radio. The artist makes it’s money when “creating the music” – kind of like a worker at the mill. As long as s/he grinds the corn it gets paid. But it will not get money when the company sells the flower at the store – unless the worker is entitled to a bonus, but that’s different.So when the artist plays his/her songs live – it gets paid from the number of tickets sold. The record labels get close to none.

I will not go any further into how the music industry should change their point of view, but I have a plan.

If you want to hear it, you can reach me via my e-mail, but it’s going to cost you to hear it.

Download Chris Anderson’s book as a podcast here – from iTunes.

More and more companies are turning towards viewing branding as a do-or-die method for seeing short-term sales generating long-term relationship. And it is!

All the signs are showing that it works. So how can some one possibly decide/believe/prove that branding is wrong?

Lucas Conley thinks that he is on to something, and even though I cannot find any proof that this whole branding-thing has gone too far, I must agree with mr. Conley that we are looking at a very perplexed situation here.

To brand things seems to work. But. Can you un-brand something. Because the second you say that you do not like branding, you actually done just that. You’ve branded yourself. You have put yourself in a category of people who do not like branding, together with Naomi Klein (among others).

Daniel Tosh (comedian) said it when he talked about people who referee to their belief as: “not being religious, but spiritual!” – His answer to this was: “Though he wasn’t honest, they sounded interesting.”

And isn’t a little bit silly fighting against this thing – branding.

The main argument to it is that companies use branding to fool people into believing that the product that the company offers, is the best there is. Or that this or that product will make you part of a certain community. Is that so bad?

Isn’t it good that we can, by buying a product, be part of a social group. If it weren’t for the things we buy we would be coloring our hair, or measuring our genders all the time – long and to the left would stand in line 2, thus forming one social community that could buy normal jeans, but needs a little extra length in the crotch area.

As one can clearly read, I’m not convinced by mr. Conley’s work, however, I am glad that some one tries to find some way to criticize branding, because nothing works better after being scrutinized and re-thought.

The book also convinced me that I, even though I tried long not to, have to read Naomi Klein’s No Logo.

Branding something isn’t bad, we as consumers have to start to face the consequences when we don’t search for the proper information on the subject. It is up to us to think for our self.

There you go, I just branded myself as a mr. Know-it-all! Awesome.

Any way. The book is what you can expect from the title, it helps you define a difficult person, which kind of “difficulty” this person presents to you, and who to solve/deal with it.

There are seven identified “probelm makers”,

1. Hostile-Aggressive
2. Complainer
3. Silent and Unresponsive
4. Super-Agreeables
5. Negativist
6. Bulldozers and Balloons and
7. Indecisive stallers,

all commonly found in an office.

What struck me the most while reading through all of these is, I have been everyone of these S.O.Bs.! My freaking God, I have been all of them. I have stalled, and have bulldozed, heck, I have even been negative for some unexplanatory reason. This book actually helped me more NOT to do these things again, than to help me solve the problem when others are the problem.

There are not many books that I would say that you should read, let alone, there are hardly none that I honestly say are a MUST-read. But this might be one of them. Because it can help you with yourself, as well as others. This is the best motivational book I have ever come across.

READ IT!

It is hard not to have ones hopes up to high for a seque when the first one was that good – they revolutionized how the man on the street looked at economics – this a sequel must either be so far different from the other, or contain much more suprising facts.
For this book, it was either one. I would not say tyt this was different from their first, nor was it the same. Somehow they managed to copy the first book, figurally.

Why should terrorist get life insurrance? What should we worry most about, global warming or cooling? How can we make doctors understand how important it is to wash their hands? And, how come that a new, modern, clean hospital full of doctors had a higher child mortality than if the children would have been born at home – on dirt floors?
All of these questions are answered in the new book, and in the end, you wish they could have continued writing a couple of more chapters.

For me, a full-time master student, set to major in marketing, this book could just been used as a suggestion for conversation starters/killers. But I see more than that. For me, this is consumer behavior at it’s best. The core of it. Think of it, aren’t terrorists customers at a bank? Aren’t people who visits the hospital just as much patients as customers?

When ever I read one of the two books on the subject, I tend to think out tens of different ways to apply it to my topic of study. Allready, I’ve found three things that I can use for my master thesis.

There are two ways to look at things – for what they are, and for what they could be: it is just a question of how much you want to think about it.

We seem to share the same views – It is hard for a company to adopt one thing when they lack solid base prior to it. However, Tapscott & Williams present four suggestions that might help your company to get started. After considering them, I believe that they are on to something.

1. Be Open – Great that you have done things the same way for a long time, but would your results have been beter if you would have done it differently?
2. Peer
3. Share – Novartis (Medical Company) shared five years worth of data with the community, free of charge. By doing so they earned a good reputation in the science community, as well as letting others use the data that might solve medical issues faster.
4. Act global - You might find your best friend on the other side of the world, but only if you let them know you exist.

Though it might not teach you THAT much on the subtitle topic – What makes them click? However, there are a lot of facts that one can use, apply, or just throw around to sound smart and cool. And I must say that I learned a thing or two concerning how a web store works, but the info I will bring with me is far more than that. It is how I function in purchase, as well as social situations.

1. Accept, enjoy, and respect our differences.
2. Don’t believe the “impossible in Japan” message. Everything is possible, but it may take some time.
3. Understand that risk minimization is an important part of all decisions
4. Understand that there is volume in niches, and that there are enough for you to go around. Find and focus on your niche.
5. To succeed one must enjoy. Take notes of all the different situations you encounter.
6. Learn to love big cities like Tokyo. To know the city, you might have to go there a couple of times
7. Take a ride on the Yamanote Line. Observe how people change depending of where you are.
8. Do something that the Japanese themselves do.
9. Ask, ask, and ask again. Everybody wants to answer, and everybody wants to give advises. Ask the same questions to many people and sooner or later you’ll get a more or less correct answer.
10. Be provocative and be positive, by doing this you can shorten the road to success that means everything, and nothing.
11. Listen, listen, and listen again. There are many messages, tips, and advises from your surroundings.
12. Leave the bonucular at home, but pack a magnifying glass. Everything is in the details.

Fredrik Törn released his doctoral thesis on “how established brands can enhance their strength, interestingness, and vitality.”

All in all, it is six articles and I do believe he might have broken some new grounds in this one.

Notes:

Incongruent: When ad and brand are not corresponding with each other.

Quote from Keller on the importancy on maintaining consistency in ads:

It is important when building it, however, not crushial

It takes time to understand the incongruency

To uphold realism in a brand study, one should follow what McQuarrie (1998) found in order to get a result as close to reality as possible, using the

The Six Factors of Reality

1. Advertisements are embedded and not the focus of attention
2. Advertisements attempt to influence choice
3. Advertisements are subject to competitive interference
4. Advertisements must influence choice after a delay
5. Advertisements may be repeated, and
6. Much advertising is for familiar brands
7. Effect of student sample (Fredrik Törn added!)

The methods which are successful to build brands equity (for new brands) may have to be revised when moved to enhance well established brands.

A brand with an incongruent connection between ad & brand will get more

• Attention,
• Emotional response,
• there is a more sophisticated process of brand association,
• a better brand recall
• it is more latched into the viewers memory, and
• the belief will be largely unchanged

Ad attitude and Brand attitude is weaker for familiar brands than for unfamiliar brands

An incongruent ad works less the second time, since the viewer has connected the ad to the brand, thus it is congruent in this person’s mind.

Though most studies done by mr. Törn showed that this will help a brand to be recognized and get attention, one study, however, showed that the brand attitude and the purchase intentions were remained unchanged.

Using an incongruent celebrity endorsement worked for market-leading brands, as well as for a second-tier brand, however, as with the other, the connection has to make sense. Tiger Woods being an endorser for diapers makes sense if people understand that he has children, but not if he’s a bachelor running around “getting tail and being protected”.

Can the reason for why Generation Y:ers being more egotistic, be that we do not NEED to care about others?

Some years ago, men and women where divided on the job market, or let us be honest, the women weren’t allowed out there if they were married. Back then, the man had to provide for his family. Who the hell had time to care about “numero uno” when he needed to get food on the table.

Today, when often the man and the women are working full-time, both bringing in some serious cash – one can be a little more open to go it’s own way.

Now, I have no idea if this is obvious, if everybody knows this and I am just very late in getting it. Maybe this was said in the book and I just completely forgot it. But if not, what can we do with this information?

We can test this by comparing families were both adults work, and were only one does. They could answer questions concerning their job status, how many jobs they have switched from etc.

We should at least get something we could work with, use what ever comes out of that study and use it to support single-working families.

Now, the title is a little bit harsh – I KNOW. But it is not to far fetched. Because of females speaking up, getting out on the job market and thus “creating” this situation, it might be some truth behind it. And in no way do I for a second believe that the feminist movement stands and fall on this argument.

No matter what, I believe we’re heading in the right direction.