by Johnny | Aug 4, 2004 | Marketing
Catchy tune from Faithless: Mass Destruction. I wasn’t that familiar with them until now, but this one blew me away….
Whether long range weapon or suicide bomb
A Wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction
…Misinformation is a weapon of mass destruction
…Fear is a weapon of mass destruction
…Inaction is a weapon of mass destruction
My story stops here, lets be clear
This scenario is happening everywhere
And you ain’t going to nirvana or favana
You’re coming right back here to live out your karma
by Johnny | Aug 2, 2004 | Marketing
The hardball manifesto was a main feature in the April Harvard Business review. It’s a call for companies to play it harder, to widen the gap between themselves and their competitors… relentlessly and ruthlessly. Hardball companies should strive for “extreme” competitive advantage: something that puts them totally out of the reach of their competitors.
According to the authors, Hardball is not about direct confrontation. They compare it to war: for a military force to be reasonably assured of success in a direct attack, its strength must be several times greater than its opponent’s. (sounds like something straight from Sun Tzu). So they need to outflank their competitors. To achieve competitive advantage and drive toward this extreme competitive advantage, hardball players must be “action oriented, constantly impatient with the status quo”, “playing the edges, probing that narrow strip of territory between the places where society clearly says you can play the game of business and those where society clearly says you can’t”. But hardball is not about breaking or bending, the law. It is not about crooked accounting, breaching contracts, stealing trade secrets, or predatory pricing. It’s not about being mean. It’s about being the best.
All of this reminds me of Sun Tzu’s Art of war, or the book “Marketing Warfare” (Ries & Trout) based on Von Clausewitz’ ideas where the principles of war are applied to the business world.
As Sun Tzu said it in the Art of War: “It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.“… So the question is: is this allright? Is it warranted for marketeers to play this hardball game? Do we all
have to become so ruthlessly adversarial? Can we survive if we’re all hardball players? You tell me.
(On a sidenote, there is one very wise lesson in the article: the bigger and more succesful hardball (and other) companies become, the more difficult it will be to keep their advantage over competitors and the bigger the danger that people become complacent. The article refers to what Kelleher – Southwest Founder – said in a letter to all employees in the early 1990s: “The number one threat is us (…) we must not let success breed complacency; cockiness; greediness;
laziness; indifference; preoccupation with nonessentials; bureaucracy; hierarchy; quarrelsomeness; or obliviousness to threats posed by the outside world.” All too often, we do become complacent.)
by Johnny | Jun 13, 2004 | Marketing
Have you ever seen those “what if earth was hit by a giant meteor” movies, and wondered what would happen if a meteor would land on say … your house? Well, wonder no longer: now you can find out what would happen to you if one was to hit you. For example, if an iron rock of about 1 Km diameter was to hit earth at a 4 degree angle about 10 km away from me, my position would be “inside the transient crater and I’d be ejected upon impact”… which is just a scientific way of telling me I’d be blown to pieces. Which is good, considering what would have happened to me if I was further away, like 50kms, because then I would become a human torch. Always choose the lesser of 2 evils.
Am I making this up? No way. On this very serious site, you’ll find an online program that will estimate the seismic, blast wave, and thermal effects of an impact as well as the size of the crater produced by that impact. Click here and see what’ll happen to you if the Big One ever hits you.
by Johnny | May 31, 2004 | Marketing
Everyone likes to make a bit of extra money. Some go cleaning, some let you blow up a cow with, let’s say, a rocket launcher.
If you’re done with Unreal tournament, and feel like blowing up real cows, Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, is the place to be. Apparently the Cambodian army likes to make a little extra on the side: their special combo was a cow and a rocket-launcher for US$400: US$200 for each (it seems that you get to keep your US$200 for the cow if you miss).
Read on here for more weird things to do on your travels. And remember: it’s a strange world out there.
by Johnny | Apr 3, 2004 | Marketing
It’s official, at least according to this site. Belgium is a leftist mock-up, a "device applied to propagate the Liberal agenda throughout the world". Go Figure … So it seems I live in a Matrix-like world whereas my body is somewhere in a pod underneath Eurodisney. And my childhood heroes, the Smurfs, are apparently communists. Life is full of conspiracy theories it seems. So don’t forget to to put on your special aluminum protective helmet while reading this (it also helps against alien abductions).
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