Weekend Digest: The Unforgettable Bosses And Airplane Packing Edition
by October 17, 2015 7:01 am 215 views
TV PREVIEW: U.S. REP. FRENCH HILL
On this week’s TV edition of Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock, which now airs at our new time – Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7:
U.S. Rep. French Hill. The U.S.-Mexican border, American energy security, and the turmoil surrounding a new Speaker of the House. The 2nd District Republican weighs in.
The Private Option. It’s still the subject of debate as a Health Reform task force moves forward. State Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, and House Minority leader Michael John Gray, D-Augusta, are our roundtable guests. Do they share any common ground?
Plus, KATV’s Janelle Lilley recaps the top headlines of the week, including a discussion of the Democrats’ first Presidential debate.
Tune in to Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock on KATV Ch. 7 Sunday at 9:30 a.m.
WANT TO MORE EFFECTIVELY REACH A CHANGING AMERICA?
Then you need to amend your marketing strategy, according to Entrepreneur.
The last 15 years have produced a major shift in our country’s consumer population, as various, diverse groups have grown in number and become a prevalent force in our nation’s economy. Think about the emphasis on multiculturalism and about the qualities unique to millennials. In fact, a recent Nielsen study reported that 92 percent of the total growth in U.S. population since 2000 had come from multicultural groups.
But it is the multicultural groups (defined as Asian Americans, African Americans and Hispanics) and millennial groups that are leading us into this new wave of consumer habits.
“So, the question for brands becomes, how do they keep up with both the explosive growth of a new generation and their ever-changing consumer behaviors?”
What’s the answer? Find out at this link.
HORROR ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY PAYS OFF FOR MARK CUBAN
Inc. reports, “Mark Cuban should be all smiles this Halloween.”
His $2 million investment in horror entertainment company Ten Thirty One Productions has helped grow the business at breakneck speed. Cuban’s largest Shark Tank deal and the second-largest in the show’s history, Ten Thirty One creates and produces live Halloween-themed attractions and is projected to hit $5 million in revenue this year, up from $3 million in 2014, according to founder Melissa Carbone. Cuban invested in the company in 2013.
Ten Thirty One’s most popular attraction is the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride, which attracts 60,000 people to the pitch-black woods of L.A.’s Griffith Park every year. The company’s biggest moneymaker, the hayride expanded to New York this year and Carbone has plans to add another hayride in Cuban’s hometown of Dallas in 2016.
“More than half of Cuban’s $2 million investment, however, went toward growing a summer event called The Great Horror Campout, an immersive overnight experience in which 2,000 people take part in a haunted scavenger hunt with demonic forces and lost souls. Carbone launched the campout in 2013 in L.A. and has since expanded it to eight more cities.”
Learn more about Cuban’s profitable scary industry at this link.
7 THINGS THAT MAKES BOSSES UNFORGETTABLE
Forbes says, “Once again, Google has topped Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. This marks Google’s second year in a row at the top of the list, and their sixth victory overall.”
Google knows that people don’t leave companies; they leave bosses. But unlike most companies, who wait around hoping for the right bosses to come along, Google builds each Googler the boss of their dreams.
Unforgettable bosses change us for the better. They see more in us than we see in ourselves, and they help us learn to see it too. They dream big and show us all the great things we can accomplish.
“Google’s program isn’t the only way to become a boss people want to work for. Any of us can study the unique qualities of unforgettable bosses to learn valuable skills,” the report says.
So what are they? Find out here.
‘WHY BIG COMPANIES STRUGGLE TO MARKET ONLINE’
Harvard Business Review reports, “For all their rhetoric about a digital future, established firms in most industries still sell mainly through traditional channels, while newcomers seize the virtual territory.”
Take retail: Walmart sells more than $1 billion a day through its stores but online it sells one sixth that of Amazon. The reasons for this vary to some extent across industry context, but in general one or more of the following factors will be in play:
Connect to this link to learn what they are.
IVANKA TRUMP, THE QUIET POWER BEHIND THE TRUMP THRONE
POLITICO Magazine has posted quite an intriguing piece about this “quiet power,” Trump’s daughter.
But, unlike the father, the daughter seems so secure about herself and her prominence that she doesn’t need to brag. As the second-most famous member of a family that all but fetishizes good breeding—brother Donald Jr. calls it the “racehorse theory” of talent—Ivanka seems to be missing the desperation gene that drives her father’s constant pursuit of clicks and clippings.
On the campaign, Ivanka Trump, who grew up playing in her father’s office, is his most influential adviser, his de facto first lady in waiting and his character foil: the cautious, measured power behind the striving, showy candidate. She was the first person Trump mentioned by name when Sean Hannity asked in August, “Is there anyone close to you that you count on most?” and the member of his inner circle whom he consulted during the Megyn Kelly imbroglio.
“And when Trump announced his candidacy in June, it was Ivanka who introduced her father, while his wife, the former Melania Knauss—a less public person save for her sometimes racy work as a fashion model—stood in the background,” said POLITICO.
Go to this link to learn more about the “quiet power” behind the blusterous billionaire GOP presidential candidate.
HILLARY SHINED
Real Clear Politics reports, “In the end, it seemed too easy. Hillary Clinton didn’t just win the first Democratic debate. She pretty much eliminated – for her purposes, anyway — the need for any others.”
In this one debate, after all, she accomplished almost everything she set out to do.
The list was long, too — nearly as long as her long, hot summer. There was the trust issue. The Biden-as-savior issue. The Bern-mentum issue. The summer-of-hell issue. The email issue. The political-expediency issue.
She had to win the debate. But more than that, she had to assure the millions of Democrats watching the Vegas showdown that they had made the right bet on her in the first place.
So how did she do it? Connect to this link for a review of Clinton’s knockout performance.
DEMOCRATS BUST-UP WHOLE GOP IN DEBATE
The National Journal says, “In the Republican debate last month on CNN, candidates didn’t pull any punches when it came to Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of State was namechecked 41 times by her Republican opponents, who slammed her on policy and frequently sought to align her with the Obama administration. No other Democratic candidate was specifically named.”
Wednesday evening, Democrats finally took their first turn on the debate stage. But if you guessed the Democrats would spend all night trash-talking Trump, Bush, or Carson, you were wrong. Trump was the only Republican candidate mentioned by name during the three-hour event—and only twice.
That’s not to say the Democrats went easy on their across-the-aisle opponents. But rather than focus on a single candidate, they took wider swings at the Republican party in general. Clinton and Sanders referred to the GOP 16 and 11 times, respectively, compared with Rubio’s and Fiorina’s four and three mentions of “Democrats,” “the left,” or “left-wing government.”
For the full story and analysis connect here.
DOGGONE HUCKABEE CRITICIZED AGAIN
CNN Politics reports, “Mike Huckabee shrugged off criticism Wednesday that a tweet he made about Koreans eating dogs was racist.
Instead, the former Arkansas governor said, liberals are “delusional and lack humor.”
Huckabee was tweeting throughout Tuesday’s Democratic debate, and raised eyebrows with a joke he made about Bernie Sanders’ plans to increase government spending.
“I trust @BernieSanders with my tax dollars like I trust a North Korean chef with my labrador! #DemDebate,” he tweeted.
For more on this dust-up, go to this link.
FROM WASTELAND TO WONDERLAND; TV’S ALTERED LANDSCAPE
“The boob tube”
“The idiot box.”
“The plug-in drug.”
“A vast wasteland.”
When I began writing about the television industry in the mid-1970s, these were some of the kinder terms of endearment. To imagine back then a television universe where creativity is unbound; where Hollywood’s most revered writers, directors, producers and actors clamor for the chance to “do TV”; where talk of a new “Golden Age” abounds, would have required a serious exercise in delusion, or the ingestion of controlled substances.
But it has happened. Why?
Why indeed at this link.
HOW TO SQUEEZE MORE PASSENGERS INTO A PLANE
Airbus has found a new way according to Fast Company.
As you’ve noticed, airlines are always trying to squeeze the most out of every available inch of space in planes. So why should they waste all that valuable headroom over the middle section of an airplane cabin? That must be the thinking behind a patent application from Airbus, which stacks seats—and the passengers in them—double height.
So what’s “double height” and how does it work?
Connect here for the full story.
‘WHAT IT’S LIKE TO WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE’
Bloomberg Business posts, “When Nobel Prize winners receive the phone call informing them of their award, a typical response is disbelief. Some new laureates wonder whether it’s a prank.”
Then the award committee came calling at 6:10 a.m. on Monday, that wasn’t a question Angus Deaton had. At least not until they put his friend and fellow economist Torsten Persson, the panel’s secretary, on the line.
“Torsten Persson said, ‘This is not a prank,’ and I thought, ‘I never thought it was a prank, why is he telling me that? He’s messing with my head,'” Deaton said, laughing. The 69-year-old, who became the newest Nobel laureate for economics.
Why was he selected and what was it like for Deaton that as “a Scottish-born economist who also holds American citizenship, has described measurement as being at the center of what he does.”
Read the complete story at this link.