Bike Weight Marketing BS

Just saw this polished-turd marketing-speak on the Giant Bicycles website. How difficult would it really have been to say, "This bike in size medium weighs 24.8lbs in factory-configuration"? Instead, we get this crap:

"How much does this bike weigh? It’s a common question, and rightly so. But the truth is, there are no industry standards for claiming bike weights—and this leads to a lot of misinformation. Variances exist based on size, frame material, finish and hardware. And as bikes get lighter, these differences become more critical. At Giant, we believe the only way to truly know the weight of any particular bike is to find out for yourself at your local retailer."

Please. Gag me with a raw fork.

At least the bike looks cool, though.

So I was thinking of trying out the HTC HD2...

Based on a recommendation made to me by a loyal Pappillon reader earlier this year, I'd been thinking about trying the HTC HD2. Today, I received a text from a friend who manages a T-Mobile retail store, advising that the phones were finally in and he could hold one HD2 for me until Saturday. I'm impulsive and often push common sense aside when making decisions (see Feb. 2010 revelations...), but this time I  wanted to refresh my memory with some research and make an informed buying decision. So I hopped online, but - owing to post-concussion syndrome and general flittiness - decided to make a quick post here before I got stuck-in on the question of dropping mad loot on a Windows Mobile-equipped "smart-phone" (their words). After putting together a post concerning one of the most amazing crash photo sequences I've ever seen, this was the first ad that was served up to ME on my OWN BLOG:

Something similar happened previously with a Competitive Cyclist ad and a pair of Oakley's [Editor: And a priest and a nun? Just asking...] (see below), but this is different enough that I don't know if I should interpret it as a sign of impending consumer folly or a not-so-subtle nudge pushing me to spend my hard-won shekels (sheqel, Hebrew: שקל‎, pl. shekels, sheqels, sheqalim, Hebrew: שקלים‎) on a phone that one reviewer describes as (paraphrasing) the sexiest, most beautiful tragedy of a smartphone ever. Thoughts? (Besides that this post is much ado about nothing...)

  HTC HD2 - it's pretty freakin' hot for a phone

 The Competitive Cyclist ad - Hey I'm a Believer

If you made it to the bottom of the post, I just wanted to apologize for sucking you in on what was the blog post equivalent of the movie "Pearl Harbor" - a vapid entry that struggles to hang meat onto Pappillon's bones on a day without confirmed news of a major doping scandal (on the other hand, I've supposedly got at least 180 potential doping scandals brewing here, but, according to some, am the bastard of bastards for not posting what would basically be the raw material for my book (amongst other things, depending on who's counting) and starting to name names - pfft! Let's hope that the UCI kicks Swiss Federation ass and succeeds in completing their persecution of the hapless Jan Ullrich, who more and more to me seems like an East German version of the Michelin Man crossed with the Pillsbury Dough Boy - just leave him alone already...

Design and the Consumer

From Fast Company (a publication I didn't realize was still in business) comes this gem:

"In a simpler time, design wasn't harsher than a mixed-martial arts event. In the olden days, say three years ago, companies would order their new logos and new-and-improved packaging from their design fortresses on high, and the lowly customers below would quietly accept the blobby, 3D-textured versions of once-beloved logos without complaint.


No more of course, as we've seen all too clearly in the last month with Facebook's reconsideration of its new look his week after a whopping 94% of users gave a thumbs down to the redesign, and Tropicana yanking its new packaging created by the Arnell Group after the primary customer reaction was that their grocery had introduced a generic store-brand O.J. and where was the orange with the straw in it?"

Read more, here.

Hollywood's dominance of the movie industry : how did it arise and how has it been maintained?

Hollywood’s dominance of the movie industry has been the subject of numerous studies. An interdisciplinary literature review in this thesis identified twenty different single or multiple factor explanations that try to account for Major studio dominance at different time periods but cannot comprehensively explain how Hollywood acquired and maintained dominance for nine decades. This thesis reviewed the economics, management and marketing literatures to identify existing theoretical explanations for the acquisition and persistence of market dominance. It then integrated existing theories identified within the business literature into a ‘theoretical lens’. This lens enables an historical analysis of Hollywood’s longstanding dominance of the movie business to be undertaken from a strategic business perspective. This thesis concludes that the Major studios rise to market leadership and enduring dominance can primarily be explained because they developed and maintained a set of strategic marketing management capabilities that were superior to rival firms and rival film industries. It is argued that a marketing orientation and effective strategic marketing management capabilities also provide a unifying theory for Hollywood’s enduring dominance because they can account for each of the twenty previously identified explanations for that dominance. The original contribution of this thesis is the development of a strategic marketing management lens and a set of guiding questions that can facilitate a strategic analysis of market dominance in any industry.

ID Code: 16687
Item Type: QUT Thesis
Keywords :
Department: Faculty of Business
Institution : Queensland University of Technology
Copyright Owner : Copyright Jonathan Derek Silver
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16687/