W. P. Carey MBA - Executive Program - Arizona State University

A rare event

This is the largest loss margin the Yankees have ever suffered: 22 to 0. The second largest loss was way back in 1925, when they lost 19 to 1.

What's makes it even worse, is that the Yankee payroll this season is $ 184,193,950 and the Indian's payroll is $ 34,319,300, about $150,000,000 less (source here).

Brand mapping Bush and Kerry

Considering "Bush" and "Kerry" as brands led Landor Associates (branding firm) and Penn, Schoen and Berland (research firm) to release a joint study comparing the attributes of both George Bush and John Kerry to well-known brands.

The charts at the right show brand-mapping by each set of likely supporters. Click on each graphic to expand it.

The results of the study show the following brand associations:

The study reveals Bush supporters associate the brand called Bush with brands that evoke attributes such as ... “reliable, humble, heritage, and solid.”

Kerry supporters associate the brand called Kerry with brands that convey attributes of “high-quality, high-performance, hip, and young.” Undecided voters associate more trendy and upscale brands with Kerry and attach more common and mainstay brands with Bush.

And here is the advice Landor's Managing Director Allen Adamson would give to each of candidates if they are to make their individual brand more attractive to undecided voters:

"... Kerry must prove that he has substance, that he's not all flash and marketing. Bush, on the other hand, must focus on emphasizing that his strengths – stability and reliability – are more important than being ultra-modern or progressive."

Outside the box

If you've tried showing a movie on a wall of your home or at work through a digital projector, you've likely been impressed with both the size and the resolution of the picture it puts up. If you have had this experience, you're not alone; and the market is responding.

"Sony has created a new black screen material that rejects ambient light other than red, green, blue. This means that the Achilles heel of front projectors -- rejection of ambient light -- may soon be eliminated. So before you go painting your room in reflective acrylic or blow dough on a plasma screen, you might want to wait until this hits the market. I'm guessing that within a year, you'll have 3 lb. DVD-quality projectors for sub-$1k capable of throwing 90in images onto your hot new roll-up black screen. The TV-in-a-box could well start disappearing from the American living room by decade's end if this technology works out."

A great metaphor

It was like watching a blacksmith at work while he whistled opera.

It's from Lileks' column today. Here's the context: Rudy Giuliani spoke at the RNC and this is the Conventioners' point-of-view:

They hear Rudy say this:

Neither party has a monopoly on virtue; we don’t have all the right ideas, they don’t have all the wrong ideas, but I do believe there are times in history when our ideas are more necessary, and more important, and critical. And this is one of those times – when we are facing war and danger.

Privately, of course, people feel a little stronger about the distribution of right and wrong, but that’s for the back room when ties loosen and the bottles open. But what Giuliani did was completely typical: aggressive graciousness. It’s why people who disagree with many of his positions admire him greatly, and why he spoke Monday night. And dang: he was good. He was hard: first time I’ve heard someone get up and slam Arafat by name in such a context. A sharp elbow at Germany. A Kerry section played mostly for laughs. An amazing last 10 minutes - dodged nothing. It was like watching a blacksmith at work while he whistled opera.[emphasis added]

Irrespective of your political position, the metaphor is great, I think.

Presidential ad campaign

One of the curiosities of the current Presidential campaign is how each side is chosing to allocate its resources. The chart at the right shows the number of ads on major cable-TV channels between January and June, 2004 (source: Nielsen Media Research and WSJ Reseach; linked from here).

Here is the Journal's take on this data:

President Bush is spending heavily on cable-television advertising in his bid to win re-election, and if the channels he is dropping dollars on are any indication, he is particularly concerned about voters he should already have in the bag.

Through the first six months of this year, Mr. Bush's campaign bought almost 3,100 ads on cable, mostly on channels that attract white male viewers, many of them affluent.

Interestingly, The Golf Channel (400 Bush ads and second only to MSNBC in total number of ads) has such a small viewing audience it doesn't even bother to subscribe to Nielsen to get viewer ratings. The channel claims that about two-thirds of its audience between 35 and 64 have household incomes over $100,000 per year. The channel watched by a few, wealthy, golf-playing males wouldn't seem like your typical Republican target for lots of campaign investment.

This spending pattern is a marked departure from the 2000 campaign:

Four years ago, Nielsen research shows that the Bush-Cheney committee didn't buy any time on the cable-news networks, and the Gore-Lieberman campaign bought just 12 spots.

Does the Republican campaign know something others don't? The Journal speculates on the riskiness of this cable-TV strategy. The election is supposed to be decided by the "swing voters," those who are undecided at this point. How sizeable is this group?:

about 10% of the electorate -- in about a dozen swing states. Who these on-the-fence citizens are and what they watch are matters of debate. But if Mr. Bush is using cable largely to shore up his base, isn't he risking wasting money preaching to the converted?

More discussion here.

End-of-summer special

In one of the busiest weeks in astronomical history, NASA announced that four new planets have been identified in the past week: three by U.S.-based teams and one by a European team.

Planet-hunting is the hottest field in astronomy, with hundreds of researchers joining a race that just a decade ago was reserved for a few dreamers. This past week has been a dizzying one with three teams in the United States and Europe rushing to announce their discoveries of new exoplanets - those orbiting stars other than our sun.

And in astronomy as in other areas, networks of indivdual efforts seem to be equal to single, large institutions:

What makes the American discovery noteworthy is it was found through a network of small telescopes.

Which country won the most gold medals?

Which country "won the Olympics"? According to President Romano Prodi of the European Union, it was the EU: 82 gold medals compared to 35 or fewer for any other country. He looks forward, he says, to the European athletes carrying the EU banner in the Beijing Olympics, alongside their own coutry's flag.

Where's the computer?

The new iMac G5 -- it's a monitor and ... ? Where the computer?

The entire computer, including a G5-based logic board, slot-loading optical drive, hard disk, speakers, and even the power supply — dwells inside the enchanting display. Modern living starts at $1299.

The display is the computer in this new, sleek model.

Read all about it (more pics, too).

Media meltdown?

This columnist says that "mainstream media" -- now sometimes referred to as legacy media -- have lost their monopoly on getting news and opinion to the general public. Technology changes have erased many of the barriers to the kind of mass communication that only large city newspapers and national TV networks could afford in the past. The result is a shift to non-traditional media sources: talk-radio, cable TV stations and, most significantly, the internet.

But he believes that the loss of their monopoly is not mainstream media's biggest problem:

The biggest problem is that, like most monopolists, they've spent so many years enjoying their position and not worrying about quality that they're left floundering now that competition is exposing their faults. Like the folks at GM who couldn't understand why people were buying Toyotas all of a sudden back in the 1970s, today's Big Media folks are shocked to see ratings and circulation numbers falling while readership for Internet sites skyrockets. And, like the auto executives, they're even starting to mumble about the need for protection.

That and the fact that they are now admitting they have a bias in their coverage. This year's political conventions are evidence of the erosion of their influence, he says.

'Chaklis', 'sibomana' and 'mymouse'

The question is: What are three words never used on the internet? Go to wordcount to find out some of the 86,000+ words that are used and how often they are used. "Conquistador" comes in last in the "frequency of use" list. You can do word searches, too: "football" is far ahead of "baseball" which is ranked higher than "basketball." It's the stuff of guessing games and bets.