There's Basically Nothing You Can Say That Isn't Trademarked

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Written By Spencer Bailey and Julian Sancton on March, 2012

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Can you confidently say that you have never in your life said the words “It’s gonna be awesome”? If not, then you may be on shaky legal ground, as the phrase is trademarked. Benjamin Palmer, the stylishly disheveled chief executive of Barbarian Group, a digital marketing and creative agency in New York, says his colleagues initially registered his favorite catchphrase on a lark.


Palmer and his team learned that in order to claim an international trademark, they had to display the phrase in question prominently in their materials, so they put “It’s gonna be awesome™” at the top of their site and on the backs of their business cards.

“In terms of what it gets for us,” says Palmer, “it’s just enthusiasm for awesome.”

The benefits of trademarking are that no one else can make money off your distinctive phrase. It becomes your own, and that’s that. Bloomberg Businessweek compiled a list of everyday phrases you might not know are trademarked, from “What are you gonna get?” (American Express (AXP)) to “That’s a good idea” (Rubbermaid (NWL)). Don’t see your favorite catchphrase? Call the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office right away.

Charities and activists' best friends-Social media

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Written By Claire Suddath on March 16, 2012

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Social media has long been a favorite tool of charities and activists, who use platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo to reach the people they’re trying to help and simultaneously tug at potential donors’ heartstrings. Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project is one of the most adept at this, although none of its videos even comes close to the viewership numbers achieved by Kony 2012. (President Obama’s It Gets Better video, for example, has only 1.2 million views.) So why has the Invisible Children video resonated with the Internet community more than the campaigns that came before it? Here are five reasons that Kony 2012 succeeded.

1. it tells a story: “If you have a message, you have to tell it as a story, because that’s what entertains people,” says David Segura, chief executive of viral video marketing company Giant Media. “If this was structured as a PSA, we probably wouldn’t have donated or shared it with our friends.” Instead, we’re told a story that unfolds over several years. We want to know what happened to Jacob, what happened to Kony, and what is happening now.

2. the video is about you: “Every single person in the world started this way,” Russell tells us. “He didn’t choose where or when he was born, but because he’s here, he matters.”

3. It’s action-packed: Giant Media’s Segura says that videos with a lot of visual movement have been proven effective time and again. “The video uses movement as a form of aggression,” he explains, in much the same way that the Old Spice guy commercials or more recently the Dollar Shave Club video does, although those two use it to be funny.

4. Famous people told you about it: “For years we’d been trying to get our message out at a grassroots level, from the bottom up,” says Keesey. “This time we thought we’d try the top down.” Invisible Children created an information pack for each of its targeted celebrities that included a personalized video about why the charity needed that specific person’s help.

5. The story isn’t over: For most viral campaigns, the entertainment ends when the video stops playing. But Kony 2012 is different. It calls on people to take action on a specific day in the future. “Everyone is anticipating that something will happen next,” says Segura. “We’re all supposed to go out with stamps and posters and become part of something, and these guys are promising that if we do that, something will happen. It’s not clear what, but you feel like if you participate, you’re going to win. It’s brilliant marketing.”

Kid CEOs: Sisters Sell Spa-Themed Products for Girls

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Written By Keenan Mayo on March 19, 2012

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When not in school, Brea and her 12-year-old sister, Halle, are the founders and chief executive officers of Sweet Dreams Girlz, a producer of paraben-free skin care products for young girls, including shampoos, conditioners, facial cleanser, lip balm, and moisturizer. The idea for the company was borne out of a themed slumber party the Holmes sisters hosted for a group of friends and relatives. The girls chose a “spa” theme. So their parents took them to a local outpost of Bath & Body Works (LTD) to stock up on supplies.

“Well, it was kind of my idea,” says Halle, a sixth-grader. “We were going to have a spa night at home, so we went to the local store and found that there weren’t any girls’ beauty lines. So I turned to my sister and said, ‘Why don’t we start our own?’”

Sweet Dreams Girlz launched in 2010 with a $6,000 investment from their parents. According to Lisa, who owns a plus-size fashion line called Honey Clothing, the girls’ company brought in roughly $22,000 in revenue last year. This year, so far, they’ve pulled in $5,000. Their most popular items, they say, are the Pink Sugar Body Wash Smoothie, Iced Lemon Cookie Body Wash Smoothie, and the Body Frosting Moisturizer. “The girls always loved things that are sweet,” say Lisa, explaining the sugary labels. (Other scents include Chocolate Chip Cookie, Pomegranate Peach, and Marshmallow.) “These are the things they like. They vetted all of the products with their friends in their own little focus group.”

Bottom-line: find the needs, create the market, pursue your interests

Family Businesses Should Plan Now for Rising Gift Tax

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Written By Karen E. Klein on March 19, 2012

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For 2013, assuming Congress does not act, the lifetime limits on gift tax will fall from $5.12 million to $1 million. That means an individual can gift, over his lifetime, no more than $1 million tax-free starting in 2013. The top gift tax rate on amounts of more than that $1 million threshold is also scheduled to rise from 35 percent to 55 percent starting next year.

The significant difference in tax exemption rates between this year and next could indeed factor into your small business succession plans, says Ed Kohlhepp, president of Kohlhepp Investment Advisors in Doylestown, Pa., but it should not be the deciding issue.

“Assuming a parent wants to turn over 100 percent of the business to his children, the best year to do it is in 2012. We know that there is a $5 million-plus exemption for gift taxes in place this year. That is likely to go back to $1 million in 2013,” Kohlhepp says. There are many other things to consider in business succession, however, including managerial roles, how the business assets will be divided up between the children, and whether the company founder is ready to give up complete control.

Great Product. Then, How to Sell It?

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Written By Karen E. Klein on March 15, 2012

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Retail sales can be costly and difficult to crack, says Ron Hubsher, chief executive of the Sales Optimization Group in New York. “Well-entrenched competitors develop systems to keep out new entrants. Typically, you might have to find a wholesaler who might use a distributor to get the product into retail. Then, to get shelf space, you may have to pay a slotting fee or marketing development funds. You have to shell out the money before any sales are made, and it may take many months to get paid,” Hubsher says.

Think about trying out multiple distribution channels for your product, including direct sales online, as you get started. Once you build a reputation and customer base, it will be easier to attract distributors eager to represent your product line. Direct sales are less costly and will help you find your target customer while you test the marketplace, says Kristin Zhivago, a consultant and revenue coach at Zhivago Management Partners in Jamestown, R.I.

Set up a Facebook page and Twitter account for your products, if you don’t already have them, and invest time in social media marketing. You should also contact bloggers and people who post videos about your types of products and offer to send them free samples in return for reviews. She recommends Sprout Social and Solve360 to manage your social media efforts and your contacts with online influencers.

Conduct due diligence on potential sales partners similar to what you would do before hiring an employee, says Ron Volper, managing partner of the Ron Volper Group and author of Up Your Sales in a Down Market. (check with their secretary of state’s office), checking with the Better Business Bureau, getting their credit report from D&B, and talking to their references.

Dangerous delusions of SINGAPORE's success

The original article is from http://www.economist.com
Written Mar 20th 2012, 10:14 by R.C. | DILI AND SINGAPORE

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IT’s important to have ambitions, especially if you are a poor country at the bottom of the pile. And what better way to drag oneself up than to emulate somebody else’s success? Where better to turn to than Asia? The region, after all, is the very model of post-war economic development. This is where so many tigers seem to have miraculously conjured astonishing rates of economic growth and development despite their hobbled beginnings.


It’s easy to see why developing countries might be seduced by Singapore’s recent success—but it’s also perfectly delusional of them. What many poorer countries seem to like about Singapore is that it seems to sell the quickest path—a short-cut, almost—to development. After all, wasn’t Singapore, now probably the world’s richest nation measured by wealth per capita, just a malarial swamp only a generation or two back? That’s what many people seem to believe. 

Yet this is far from the whole story. When Singapore became an independent, post-colonial country, in the early 1960s, supposedly at the same point on the development trajectory at which many of its admirers see themselves, it was already a highly developed, prosperous and sophisticated entrepôt. It was rather back when Sir Stanford Raffles founded his trading station in 1819 that the little island was not much more than a swamp. A century-and–a-half serving the trading interests of the hegemonic economic and political power of the day, the British Empire, turned that swamp into a thriving port and a bustling, prosperous multi-racial community. Singapore’s post-independence politicians can take enormous credit for steering their little island-nation to its present heights, but they did not inherit a Timor-Leste or Rwanda.

One striking problem with their analogies is that Singapore’s workforce immigrated to this island on the straits, encouraged by the British rulers, solely to serve the interests of commerce. It’s no wonder that the country still tends to be rather good at it. Other crowded little countries will not enjoy this advantage. They can talk of Singapore as being a “hub”…but Singapore largely became so only as the gateway to the riches of old Malaya, with its legendary bounty of rubber, tin and copper. Other countries will not enjoy that extra-territorial advantage.

A Marketer's Homage to the Soda Can

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Written By Steve McKee on March 12, 2012

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PepsiCo (PEP) recently announced that it will add an additional $500 million to $600 million to its roughly $2 billion advertising budget to support its soda brands in 2012, in an attempt to catch up with the heavy spending (and sales gains) of archrival Coca-Cola (KO). If there’s one thing Big Soda understands, it’s that advertising works. But no matter how big a hit they score with their ads, nothing is more important to the marketers at Coke, Pepsi, 7-UP, Mountain Dew, and every other soda maker as their packaging.

PepsiCo benefits from 1 billion packaging impressions (jargon for exposure to marketing messages) per day—that’s how many snacks and beverages the company sells around the world. Coca-Cola’s numbers are even more impressive, serving 1.7 billion bottles, cups, or cans of The Real Thing per day. Even if each impression is worth as little as a penny, that’s a marketing value in the tens of millions of dollars. Every. Single. Day.

To reap those benefits, however, each brands’ packaging has to compete at the grocery shelf (or vending machine) with dozens of others, all contending for the attention of shoppers. A soda can is the last opportunity a company has to persuade shoppers to tip its brand into their shopping carts. And it’s the single most frequent exposure consumers have to the brand, not only at the supermarket but in their refrigerators, at their desks, and on their countertops.

First and foremost, they understand that form is as vital as function. What a soda can delivers—the product inside as well as the message outside—is of no value if it first doesn’t capture attention. That’s why you see bold colors and sweeping graphics in the soft drink aisle. A common mistake many advertisers make is putting their rational messaging ahead of emotional appeal. The old saying that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care has a marketing corollary; consumers won’t pay attention to what you say unless you say it in an attractive or entertaining way.

Second, consistency is king. While logos and imagery must keep up with the times (Pepsi refreshed its look once a decade through the 1970s, twice in the 1990s, and again in 2008), the soda makers don’t want anything to distract you from spotting their brand on a crowded shelf. Coke tripped itself up late last year when it rolled out a snow-white can for the holidays, as some people confused it with Diet Coke and others swore the product inside tasted differently. There’s nothing wrong with tweaking your branding for a special occasion, but attention-getting efforts can sometimes backfire (see “The Case for Brand Accretion”).

Third, a soda can is easy. Easy to stack. Easy to carry. Easy to open. Easy to buy in quantity. It wasn’t always that way—cans used to be much heavier and less pliable, and they lacked the tapers at the top and bottom that make them stackable and storable.

Fourth, cans are informative without being intrusive. Much of the information on a soda can is there because it has to be—content weight, bar code, ingredients, calorie count, copyright notice, etc. But the soft drink makers found a way to provide information without overcompromising aesthetics. And they don’t forget to extend an invitation—not just to enjoy the contents but also to engage with the brand, through a consumer information number, a website, and often an encouragement to recycle. Every company has many things it wants to share with its customers, but there is hierarchy and order to effective brand communications.

Finally, a soda can—like any great marketing effort—is an extension of the brand itself. Coke considers its packaging “the most enduring symbol of our brand promise,” according to the soda maker’s vice president for global connections, Ivan Pollard. One of my colleagues says she hates drinking out of cans that overdo it with movie promotions or theme park passes. To her, a third-party promotion on a can of her beloved soft drink is like a commercial at a movie theater—not what she signed up for.

Social Entrepreneurship: Why Mentors Matter

The original article is from http://www.businessweek.comWritten By Thane Kreiner on March 09, 2012

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Entrepreneurship is the one of the most popular clubs at U.S. business schools these days, and the field is gaining momentum. With more than a decade working with field-based social entrepreneurs from the developing world through our Global Social Benefit Incubator, we feel our mentorship program is the secret sauce.

Mentors help social entrepreneurs build their businesses, often by learning with them how to overcome obstacles that range from government antipathy and a dearth of distribution channels to a lack of talented human capital. These are radically different than the challenges they have faced in their Silicon Valley careers.

Forty executives, financiers, consultants, and venture capitalists share their entrepreneurial expertise and business acumen with social entrepreneurs in the poorest countries, helping them expand revenues faster than expenses while increasing the number of lives affected. Social enterprises only help the poor if they’re sustainable, and they help more people if they can scale up.

Mentors routinely remark that they learn more from social entrepreneurs than vice versa. They feel privileged to work with ambitious people committed to making an impact on the lives of the poor. As the chief executive of a San Francisco startup said: “This is the best work that I do—I love it.”

Lazy Men: The Next Frontier - businessweek

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Written By Ashlee Vance on March 08, 2012

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In the technology world, we have Moore’s Law, which posits that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every 18 months. In the world of men’s grooming products, there’s a little known (well, completely made up by me) corollary known as Hokum’s Razor: Gillette will add one blade to a razor for every high-priced pitchman it hires. The company hopes that men will give into their primal urges and pay extra for a razor that promises more blades and more handsome.

Dollar Shave Club, a startup in Santa Monica, Calif., has decided to take the Razor Industrial Complex head-on. Earlier this week, it began selling razors on a subscription model. You pay $1 per month and have five, two-bladed razors delivered to your door. (For $6 a month, you get four-bladed razors and for $9 per month, you get six-bladed razors.) All the products feature aloe vera strips and swivel heads.

Another startup called Manpacks has done pioneering work on the lazy man grooming premise for two years. It sells razors, underwear, condoms, and t-shirts on a subscription basis, delivering a new batch of goods every three months. “Our customers don’t want to have think about these kinds of things anymore,” says Ken Johnson, the company’s 34-year-old co-founder. “Everything is built to be efficient and simple—the way men like it.” Amazon.com (AMZN) and other big names sell similar products but overwhelm men with choice, according to Johnson.