I am literally rolling on the floor laughing, and I don't know what he is saying!!!!
Wednesday 30 January 2008
you just have to love the internet ...
... especially when you stumble across people like this guy. No idea what the hell he is saying, nor why there is stuff hanging off his right nostril. But he's just priceless.
Monday 28 January 2008
nr.2
so it looks like LBS is the second best MBA in the world.
wow! we must have done something good!
http://rankings.ft.com/global-mba-rankings
wow! we must have done something good!
http://rankings.ft.com/global-mba-rankings
Wednesday 23 January 2008
They want to legislate kids thin!
I just received email from the British Heart Foundation informing me about their latest petition. They want the government to ban any form of junk food advertising to kids, and so they set up their little campaign.
To be honest, TV advertising has already been banned, but digital advertising (i.e. banners, websites, online games, etc…) hasn’t yet, so that’s what they are trying to accomplish.
Stories like this one (and this other one) find me very skeptical. I wonder:
1) Why do people attribute so much power to marketing and advertising?
The issue here is that UK children are fed an incredible amount of unhealthy food. As a result they grow up obese, and are likely to develop diseases in their adulthood, dying young and costing the NHS a lot of money. It is much more than advertising: it involves the (poor) food culture of a nation, parent’s lack of time to prepare good food, cost pressures leading school canteens to serve junk food instead of healthy vegetables, AND marketing. So to say that kids are unhealthy because of their exposure to advertising is stretching it a bit.
2) Why do people think that we can legislate the problem away?
Of all the causes underlying poor eating habits, I believe culture is the main one. Italy, my home country, is a good example: we are exposed to the same amount of junk food marketing as the UK, yet our eating tends to be a lot healthier. I believe it comes down to the fact that Italian kids grow up with their mum routinely cooking home food every day. That way we develop a better concept of what is healthy, and we learn how to cook ourselves from a very young age. This is not written in any law, so I believe that legislating food marketing will not solve the problem in the UK.
Nonetheless, healthy eating and healthy living are definitely a big topic out there at the moment, at least in the UK.
Some campaigning -like Jamie Oliver’s for example (here and here) - is in my opinion well done, because it is fundamentally attempting to use media to seed a better food culture into the nation, as well as putting pressure on the industry to adopt a more responsible approach to such issues. My hope is that good businesses will recognise this trend towards health, and will start adapting their offering to a changing consumer demand.
However, some other campaigning, like BHFs, is in my opinion purely provocative and aimed only at the most apparent aspects of the matter: marketing and advertising.
It might get some more marketing activity banned, but I doubt it will help children grow healthier.
-
UPDATE 24/01: kind of relevant: http://www.brandrepublic.com/Campaign/News/778867/Govt-industry-plot-75m-ad-drive/
To be honest, TV advertising has already been banned, but digital advertising (i.e. banners, websites, online games, etc…) hasn’t yet, so that’s what they are trying to accomplish.
Stories like this one (and this other one) find me very skeptical. I wonder:
1) Why do people attribute so much power to marketing and advertising?
The issue here is that UK children are fed an incredible amount of unhealthy food. As a result they grow up obese, and are likely to develop diseases in their adulthood, dying young and costing the NHS a lot of money. It is much more than advertising: it involves the (poor) food culture of a nation, parent’s lack of time to prepare good food, cost pressures leading school canteens to serve junk food instead of healthy vegetables, AND marketing. So to say that kids are unhealthy because of their exposure to advertising is stretching it a bit.
2) Why do people think that we can legislate the problem away?
Of all the causes underlying poor eating habits, I believe culture is the main one. Italy, my home country, is a good example: we are exposed to the same amount of junk food marketing as the UK, yet our eating tends to be a lot healthier. I believe it comes down to the fact that Italian kids grow up with their mum routinely cooking home food every day. That way we develop a better concept of what is healthy, and we learn how to cook ourselves from a very young age. This is not written in any law, so I believe that legislating food marketing will not solve the problem in the UK.
Nonetheless, healthy eating and healthy living are definitely a big topic out there at the moment, at least in the UK.
Some campaigning -like Jamie Oliver’s for example (here and here) - is in my opinion well done, because it is fundamentally attempting to use media to seed a better food culture into the nation, as well as putting pressure on the industry to adopt a more responsible approach to such issues. My hope is that good businesses will recognise this trend towards health, and will start adapting their offering to a changing consumer demand.
However, some other campaigning, like BHFs, is in my opinion purely provocative and aimed only at the most apparent aspects of the matter: marketing and advertising.
It might get some more marketing activity banned, but I doubt it will help children grow healthier.
-
UPDATE 24/01: kind of relevant: http://www.brandrepublic.com/Campaign/News/778867/Govt-industry-plot-75m-ad-drive/
Monday 21 January 2008
MBAs: not just after money
I received from Hill&Knowlton (big PR agency) a copy of their report "Reputation & the War for Talent"*. It is a very interesting survey of 527 MBA students and their career priorities.
The main message seems to be that MBAs will consider the 'reputation' of an employee as an important factor determining its attractiveness. Hence, according to H&K, building a strong corporate reputation is important in order to attract and retain talent.
Off course the big assumption, I would argue, is MBAs=talent (:-)), but apart from that it is a very interesting perspective. More can be found here.
--
* by the way: I appreciated that they first asked for permission and then emailed the report. Shows an uncommon appreciation of some basic netiquette principles. well done.
The main message seems to be that MBAs will consider the 'reputation' of an employee as an important factor determining its attractiveness. Hence, according to H&K, building a strong corporate reputation is important in order to attract and retain talent.
Off course the big assumption, I would argue, is MBAs=talent (:-)), but apart from that it is a very interesting perspective. More can be found here.
--
* by the way: I appreciated that they first asked for permission and then emailed the report. Shows an uncommon appreciation of some basic netiquette principles. well done.
Thursday 17 January 2008
LBS Media Club careers evening
The following is the invite to a Media Club event that we are organising. I'll post it here in case there are any media companies reading, who might be interested in attending. Drop me an email if so.
LBS Media Club careers evening, 20th feb 2008, 17.00 – 20.00
We are the London Business School media club.
We are a student-led organization, grouping some 300 MBA students with a professional interest in the media industry, including advertising, tv, publishing, film, content, gaming, etc.
We have on average 6 years work-experience. We are young, talented, international, and mad enough to leave good jobs to be trained at one of the world leading business schools for 22 months.
About half of us are first year students: currently looking for a 2-3 months work assignment during the summer, to get to know a new employer and apply MBA-learnings to a real-life business situation, before going back to class in autumn.
The rest of us are second year students, graduating in spring-summer 2008, and looking for a full-time job in media.
Our goal
We would like to invite a selection of the best media companies and head-hunters on campus February 20th 2008. We would like to meet them for a career chat, in a relaxed and informal context, and hopefully start a fruitful relationship.
The evening
We aim to start at 5.00 and finish around 8.00
Not all our company guests are familiar with the MBA programme, so we have invited Diane Morgan, Director of Career Services at London Business School, to open the event with a short explanation of what the London Business School MBA programme is about.
We will then quickly move to our cocktail bar, where we hope to get to know each other better over a drink or two.
We are aware that your time is valuable, so we will also provide a quiet area, with coffee tables and comfy chairs, for one-to-one meetings with the students that you are most interested in. In order to help you decide who you would like to meet, we will set-up a database of CVs from which you will be able to cherry pick.
We hope that this will be the beginning of many fruitful relationships.
LBS Media Club careers evening, 20th feb 2008, 17.00 – 20.00
We are the London Business School media club.
We are a student-led organization, grouping some 300 MBA students with a professional interest in the media industry, including advertising, tv, publishing, film, content, gaming, etc.
We have on average 6 years work-experience. We are young, talented, international, and mad enough to leave good jobs to be trained at one of the world leading business schools for 22 months.
About half of us are first year students: currently looking for a 2-3 months work assignment during the summer, to get to know a new employer and apply MBA-learnings to a real-life business situation, before going back to class in autumn.
The rest of us are second year students, graduating in spring-summer 2008, and looking for a full-time job in media.
Our goal
We would like to invite a selection of the best media companies and head-hunters on campus February 20th 2008. We would like to meet them for a career chat, in a relaxed and informal context, and hopefully start a fruitful relationship.
The evening
We aim to start at 5.00 and finish around 8.00
Not all our company guests are familiar with the MBA programme, so we have invited Diane Morgan, Director of Career Services at London Business School, to open the event with a short explanation of what the London Business School MBA programme is about.
We will then quickly move to our cocktail bar, where we hope to get to know each other better over a drink or two.
We are aware that your time is valuable, so we will also provide a quiet area, with coffee tables and comfy chairs, for one-to-one meetings with the students that you are most interested in. In order to help you decide who you would like to meet, we will set-up a database of CVs from which you will be able to cherry pick.
We hope that this will be the beginning of many fruitful relationships.
Wednesday 16 January 2008
home alone
I am at home alone tonight and am finally finding some time to blog down a few interesting things that happened last week.
The first was the Brand Management course at LBS, which sadly has gone by very quickly. Absolutely ex-tra-or-di-nary: 30 hours of class to get branding like I never did before, and to realize the job of a brand managemer, providing it's on the right brand, can actually be rather exciting.
The credit goes entirely to the professor, Mark Ritson, who is an incredibly experienced, talented and entertaining teacher. It would be a tragedy if LBS, for whatever reason, was to loose this man.
The second interesting thing was actually part of the Brand Management course, but it was so special to me that it deserves a mention on its own: on Thursday evening we had Emily Richards as a guest speaker.
Emily is an alumna of LBS, currently brand manager on Cadbury Dairy Milk. She told us the story of how the best piece of advertising in 2007 came about, thanks to a very good brand strategy and an extraordinary creative idea. Without going into too much detail, I had literally goosebumps when she told us how close the campaign came to be killed off, and how hard the team had to fight to keep it alive. Chapeau.
Finally, the third interesting thing, at least to me, is that the recruitment season has started again on a positive note. There was an important interview last week, there will be one this Friday and there will be one next Tuesday. All of them with different, super interesting agencies. December was a hard and long month and I was really tired of interviewing, but for the first time in a long while I now am actually quite looking forward to it.
The first was the Brand Management course at LBS, which sadly has gone by very quickly. Absolutely ex-tra-or-di-nary: 30 hours of class to get branding like I never did before, and to realize the job of a brand managemer, providing it's on the right brand, can actually be rather exciting.
The credit goes entirely to the professor, Mark Ritson, who is an incredibly experienced, talented and entertaining teacher. It would be a tragedy if LBS, for whatever reason, was to loose this man.
The second interesting thing was actually part of the Brand Management course, but it was so special to me that it deserves a mention on its own: on Thursday evening we had Emily Richards as a guest speaker.
Emily is an alumna of LBS, currently brand manager on Cadbury Dairy Milk. She told us the story of how the best piece of advertising in 2007 came about, thanks to a very good brand strategy and an extraordinary creative idea. Without going into too much detail, I had literally goosebumps when she told us how close the campaign came to be killed off, and how hard the team had to fight to keep it alive. Chapeau.
Finally, the third interesting thing, at least to me, is that the recruitment season has started again on a positive note. There was an important interview last week, there will be one this Friday and there will be one next Tuesday. All of them with different, super interesting agencies. December was a hard and long month and I was really tired of interviewing, but for the first time in a long while I now am actually quite looking forward to it.
Sunday 6 January 2008
back again. not long to go
It was a good holiday. chilled. relaxing.
Term starts tomorrow. Three courses: Brand Management, Financing the Enterpreneurial Business, Managing the Growing Business. Then management report on Jaycut, then done!
(ah ... I should also find a job).
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