Category Archives: Directing Business

Etc., Marketing

Go Daddy: Spicing it up

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“I said, ‘What do you mean, scale?'” Parsons recalls. He disagreed with investment bankers’ suggestions that, among other things, he should keep headcount low even as he grows. “People think that because we’re an Internet company, we should be less people-intensive. I believe the exact opposite. When it comes to the Internet, people like dealing with people.”

Which is why Parsons has worked so hard to give Go Daddy a personality that, like it or not, sells. Parsons alone, for instance, decided to plaster the Go Daddy name on Michelle’s chest in the 2005 Super Bowl ad. And for the 2006 Super Bowl, he recut the commercial, featuring Michelle appealing to an arbiter of TV decency standards, 13 times before winning approval from ABC – each time taming it down, and each time watching business climb after news reports revealed that he was having to pull back to placate censors. Says Tucows’s Noss, “He played that thing like a maestro.”

More at Business2.0

Etc., Strategy

Chinese firms and price wars

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Two important factors in understanding price war distinctions are first, the state of each area’s market and second, the price sensitivity of consumers in each area.

“Chinese companies do have a lot more experience with price wars, which are widely reported business events,” says Zhang. “They are good at it. In the past 10 years, what triggered (the price wars) is the fact that the markets in China are growing. This business environment provides many profitable opportunities for [companies] to engage in price wars and to hone their skills. In a growing market, there are all different companies competing — some good, some bad — and the industry finds a way to consolidate. The only way to do that is a price war, where you bring down the prices and squeeze out the inefficient [companies].”

But the Western market is a more mature market, offering what Zhang calls “oligopolistic competition among mostly equals.” In lieu of price wars, this so-called mature market “encourages more finesse in devising marketing strategies” which may help explain why price wars are so frowned upon.

More at KnowledgeWharton

Etc., Management

This is like TIVO for your work

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But arguably no big business has smashed the clock quite so resolutely as Best Buy. The official policy for this post-face-time, location-agnostic way of working is that people are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done. “This is like TiVo (TIVO ) for your work,” says the program’s co-founder, Jody Thompson. By the end of 2007, all 4,000 staffers working at corporate will be on ROWE. Starting in February, the new work environment will become an official part of Best Buy’s recruiting pitch as well as its orientation for new hires. And the company plans to take its clockless campaign to its stores–a high-stakes challenge that no company has tried before in a retail environment.

More at Businessweek