Best Global Brands 2007

Interbrand recently published their Best global brands 2007 report, which ranks the world's top 100 brands according to their value.

The finance geeks will certainly find something to argue with the valuation, discount rates, etc ... but I can't help thinking that this is an extremely clever methodology for a branding consultancy to have developed (pp. 50-51 of the PDF report), as well as one of the most fascinating reads around if you are interested in brands. (note to self: invite them to LBS next year).

This year, probably biased from my internship, I noticed that no major pharma company has made a decent place in the rank (except J&J at #90, but are they really pharma?).

Think how big some pharma companies are! Think how many million people use their products every day! Think how important those products are to their lives! Is pharma getting it wrong?

Bike maintainance & marketing strategy: improving

First sunny weekend in months, spent preparing for the Suffolk Coast bike ride coming up this weekend. Lots of cycling, followed by (nearly) successful front derailler maintenance and (largely) successful front wheel straightening. I am quite proud of these achievements, given that I usually am pretty useless at repairing stuff.

Today - Monday - back to work. Big presentation in the afternoon to get buy-in on strategy form Lady at 'international' (very smart!). I used Aaker's strategic marketing audit framework, from John Roberts Advanced Marketing Strategy course this year. It went down very well. I couldn't help noticing that the same presentation done one year ago would have met a lot more resistance. Perhaps in the end the MBA is starting to pay off?

Last terms' grades and front derailler

This term's grades have finally arrived. Pretty disappointing overall. Funny because I really enjoyed a lot of the subjects, but hey ... that's life. Year one of the MBA is officially over now.

I could spend time complaining about the courses, the grading and all that stuff. Instead, I think I'll go try and fix my front derailler. http://www.bikewebsite.com/ftder.htm

bugger!

London-Cambridge bike ride

Picture of Ryan and me after completing the London to Cambridge bike ride last sunday (50 miles). It was so good I already signed up for the Suffolk Coast bike ride on August 5th (58 miles)

two speeds

FAST:
the nice thing about working for a big company is that they have a formal career path for MBAs. In other words, if you are good, they will give you the opportunity to make it really big, and really fast (and I would like to stress the word "if"). A select group of people who work their ass off for big gains.

SLOW:
if you don't have a certain type of formal qualification, whether an MBA or a Phd, there seems to be a limit to how far you can go, no matter how good you are. A lot of bright people are pretty much stuck in the middle, worrying about safety procedures, telephone training, fire drills, company car, my colleague has a nicer laptop, the menu in the canteen, the color scheme on a powerpoint slide ...

SO WHAT?
A discussion with K and U today during lunch makes me realise how hard it is for a big company to keep their people leaner and meaner. It was easy in the old days at the advertising agency, where everyone believed that they could change the world (the probability to get to the top was perhaps 1:70) and you could retain talent based on that promise.

But how do you achieve this in a large company? How do you create credible incentives if the probability to make it to the top is 1:40,000 ?

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