Weekend Digest: The World Cup Edition

For our weekend business and political readers:

WORLD CUP IS BIG BUSINESS
A “billion dollar business,” reports Forbes. In fact, Forbes says this year’s World Cup Brazil will generate 66% more revenue than the previous 2010 tournament in South Africa. So where does all the money come from?

Almost all of the revenue FIFA generates comes from television rights ($1.7 billion) and marketing rights ($1.35 billion) from corporate partners like Adidas, Emirates, Sony, Visa, Hyundai and Coca-Cola. Blue chip companies love to throw money at the World Cup because it is followed passionately throughout most of the world.

How much will the sport’s international governing body, FIFA (International Association of Federation Football), actually rake-in during this year’s tournament that kicks off June 12? For the astounding figure and more on the big business of World Cup soccer, click on this link.

CHARTS OF THE NATION’S JOB MARKET RESHAPED BY THE RECESSION
You know there are your everyday charts and graphs we’ve all seen endlessly in office meetings and retreats. The New York Times, though, has posted 255 charts that are definitely not “everyday” and take a most intriguing look at “how the recession reshaped the nation’s job market, industry by industry.”

Five years since the end of the Great Recession, the private sector has finally regained the nine million jobs it lost. But not all industries recovered equally. 

Go to this link to see for yourself how different industries have recovered and not mended.

FOCUSING YOUR START-UP ON SALES

From the Wall Street Journal:

The most important thing an early-stage startup should know about marketing is rather counterintuitive: that you probably shouldn’t be doing anything you’d use the term “marketing” to describe. Sales and marketing are two ends of a continuum. At the sales end your outreach is narrow and deep. At the marketing end it is broad and shallow.

Expert Jessica Livingston says, “Successful startups almost always start narrow and deep.”

Apple started with a computer Steve Wozniak made to impress his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club. There weren’t a lot of them, but they were really interested. Facebook started out just for Harvard University students. Again, not a lot of potential users, but they really wanted it. Successful startups start narrow and deep partly because they don’t have the power to reach a big audience, so they have to choose a very interested one. But also because the product is still being defined.

So what is the danger of the term “marketing”?

All too often, I’ve seen founders build some initially mediocre product, announce it to the world, find that users never show up, and not know what to do next.

For the complete story and more startup advice, go to this link.

MOOCS AND BUSINESS SCHOOLS
Not familiar with the term MOOCs? Well you probably are, but may not have heard them called that. It stands for Massive Open Online Courses.

Over the past few years, business school administrators — like other university officials — have been losing sleep over Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs), worrying that these low-cost digital alternatives will cannibalize their business model.

Are these fears well-founded?

Find out at this link.

HILLARY’S NEW MEMOIR
Although not officially scheduled to be released until June 10, CBS says it bought a copy of Hillary Clinton’s new book, “Hard Choices” at a book store.

As she mulls a potential presidential campaign, the book, published by Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS Corp., offers rich detail of her four-year tenure as secretary of state on issues such as Benghazi, U.S. relations with Russia, shifting strategy in Afghanistan, the fallout from the Arab Spring and the worsening chaos in Syria. She touches on negotiations with the Taliban and attempts to secure the freedom of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, whose recent release has been the subject of a growing controversy for the White House.

Of course subjects like Benghazi, Osama bin Laden and Vladimir Putin were expected topics, but juicy tid-bits like how she made-up with President Obama over wine at a high-ranking congressional leader’s home are also offered.

For an early inside look at the memoir, click on this link.

THE NOBODY WHO FORCED A MISSISSIPPI SENATE RUN-OFF
He is a realtor and a volunteer pastor at the State Penitentiary and Thomas Carey’s 4,800 votes were “enough to leave Sen. Thad Cochran, a 42-year incumbent, and state Sen. Chris McDaniel short of a majority,” reports The Clarion-Ledger.

“I didn’t get in the race to tie it up and have a runoff,” said Carey, a Hernando resident. “But apparently it’s what the Lord wanted.”

Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the nonpartisan The Cook Political Report, said the votes for Carey were enough to force a runoff.

“Those were largely protest votes,” she said. “Nobody knows who this guy is.”

You can learn more about who this guy is by going to this link.

The Republican Senate seat runoff vote is June 24 between Cochran and McDaniel.

Incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran needs a large, broad turnout in a June 24 runoff — a steep hill, since runoffs are typically parochial with low turnout.

Challenger Chris McDaniel needs his blue collar and tea party base of voters in his strongholds to turn out strong again. They still appear fired up and ready.

Both Republican U.S. Senate campaigns need money, lots of it fast, or outside groups willing to spend on their behalf.

So who has the edge?  Or does either candidate?  Go to this link to find out.

HOW ‘THE BOSS’ GOT HIS POLITICAL FIX
Rocker Bruce Springsteen’s most popular and influential work to-date is his 1984 album “Born in the U.S.A.”

POLITICO reports there were also several political side-stories involving “Born in the U.S.A.”

“Born in the U.S.A.” is also the Springsteen album whose songs have had the longest half-life in U.S. political discourse, from President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to co-opt Springsteen’s popularity right after the album’s release to John Kerry’s ploddingly literal use of “No Surrender” in his presidential campaign 20 years later. Even Barack Obama, probably the most broadly appreciative music fan ever to occupy the Oval Office, chose a Born in the U.S.A. track (“I’m On Fire”) for a 2008 playlist of favorite songs.

But what was the greatest political impact of “Born in the U.S.A.” and who was responsible for it?  You will be very surprised at the answers. “Spin” over to this link to find out.

COULD YOU GET ELECTED DOG CATCHER?
The Washington Post takes a look at people who have actually been elected to the position of dog catcher as well as the history of the once-elected title from days gone by.

Yes, “dog catcher” actually was an elected position, at one time, in some places. But the era in which that was the case appears to have overlapped heavily with the era, our current one, in which the job was a punchline. No one today is actually elected dog catcher; they are simply unable to even be elected dog catcher, as the saying goes.

The “can’t get elected dog catcher” joke was around even while people were actually being elected as dog catcher.

Take a look at this funny retrospective at the much-maligned dog catcher post at this link.

D-DAY IN COLOR
Life magazine offers colorized photos of before and after D-Day in England and France.

Seventy years later, these powerful pictures still resonate and invoke emotions that help us understand why our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were part of the Greatest Generation.

View them here.

CUSTOMIZABLE OCTOCOPTER
Say what?

In the wake of Amazon’s audacious plan to employ delivery drones someday, there’s now another company working to create a drone that could lead the way to airborne automatic deliveries and tackle some of the specific problems of package delivery. Called the HoresFly, this drone comes equipped with eight rotors — twice the amount of the standard consumer drone–and has its sights set on becoming your new delivery man.

“Why eight instead of four rotors?,” asks Fast Company.

That’s what we wondered.

Read on at this link for the whole scoop.

EMOJI ALBUM COVERS
Fast Company also reports, “Singer/songwriter Wesley Stace is tweeting out inventive emoji (emoticon) versions of classic album art lately, and they are spot-on and rad.”

As of this writing, Stace is up to 51 entries in the series, and suggests that he is done with it. Scrolling through his Twitter account, however, you can see some of the inventive ways he’s used the pictorial shorthand to convey the images in the original art of albums like David Bowie’s Heroes and Pink Floyd’s Animals.

Be “rad” and go to this link for your emoji fix.