At the stroke of midnight on December 31st, the year on the calendar changed to 2004. It was a new year. With it, M&M thought of changing its products too. For a short period of time. All the colourful M&M candies lost all of their colour: red, blue, green, yellow, orange and brown. M&M introduced black & white candies on all the store shelves. M&M’s spokesman Jeffrey Moran said “Madonna is constantly reinventing herself. So we look at it as a way of re- energizing our brand.”
Then the bomb fell. Continue reading “Fighting for the colours”
Derek works as a general contractor, but there is nothing general about his work. He specializes in basement and bathroom renovations. A young and delightful couple hires Derek to renovate their home. Derek does a splendid job for the couple – Tammy and Andre, and he gives them an invoice payable within 10 days. 10 days pass by within no time. Soon 20 days fly by and Derek sees no payment forth coming. When a month goes by and Derek hasn’t heard from the young couple yet, he gives them the dreaded collection call. 
Joy Morgan was an “antiques” buff. She used to host an antique trade show twice a year every year. Joy would get all the antique shop owners and vendors together and make them showcase some of their products. And then she would promote the show through press releases and other means. Every vendor paid her a flat fee for a booth in the show. On top of that, she also charged $3 as an entrance fee to all attendants.
Peter M. is an acoustic guitarist. He has some real talent. He recorded a CD with 15 of his tunes and named it “Well Strung and Solo.” The CD received some very good reviews. But the good reviews alone didn’t bring in many sales. So Peter started hunting for live performance gigs. 
“It’s the biggest game of the year: Florida State vs. Miami in Tallahassee this Saturday. Thankfully, I will be in attendance to cheer on the Seminoles. What I’m equally thankful for is that I didn’t have to pay much for the tickets (about the price of a nice dinner), despite the selling of tickets from anywhere between 200 and 600 dollars. I certainly was not willing to pay this price for a ticket, but now that I have one I am also not willing to sell it at those prices.” 
Gary has a good life. He lives in a small town in California and owns an insurance agency. When he turned 50 and decided to open a restaurant and nightclub. Life was perfect. Except for one thing: he was bald. Gary didn’t let his baldness ruin his perfect life score. He instead used it as an opportunity. He changed the world and made baldness trendy.
Joy Morgan was an “antiques” buff. She used to host an antique trade show twice a year every year. Joy would get all the antique shop owners and vendors together and make them showcase some of their products. And then she would promote the show through press releases and other means. Every vendor paid her a flat fee for a booth in the show. And on top of that, she also charged $3 as an entrance fee to all attendants. 
Some 30 years back, K.E. manufactured sunglasses. His sunglasses were of good quality. And they were cool looking too. But the other big branded companies always sold more units than him. K.E. didn’t have much money to advertise his top quality sunglasses and thus he could never successfully create awareness about his cool looking and longer lasting sunglasses.
In a small country squashed between Russia and Sweden lay Finland. Its capital city was Helsinki. A relatively unknown soccer team called the city its home. The soccer team was lousy and as a result had less than 300 supporters. But that all changed. In relatively short time, the team built a fan base of more than 30,000 diehard supporters. 
Mark Twain once said, “A bank is an institution that lends you an umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.” Banks have earned a bad reputation with many people. They are seen as a money hungry institution that does anything to increase profits. A number of years ago, one bank saw an opportunity and tried to change that opinion. Here is that story: