Interested in the dynamics of today’s music industry? Rolling Stone has a solid article for you. While this article is not exactly chock full of new pieces of information, it is thorough.

Mattel Inc. is in the midst of its trial MGA Entertainment Inc. based on ownership of copyright in the girl’s toy franchise ‘Bratz’. The underlying claim is that the designer who conceived of the Bratz developed the toys while an employee of Mattel. If Mattel is successful in its claim, it will reap hundreds of millions in damages and hundreds of millions each year in licensing and other revenues.

Bloomberg reports that recent economic changes in China, the rising yuan and increasing labour costs, are leading to textile and other manufacturing jobs moving to cheaper areas like India and Vietnam.

Vietnam’s laborers earn an average of 1.669 million dong ($104) a month, 41 percent less than China’s lowest-paid workers in the central province of Jiangxi, according to World Bank data.

India’s wages are lower than Vietnam’s, averaging 3,843 rupees ($87) a month, according to CEIC. India is copying China’s special economic zones, building more than 400 that will provide low-cost land and rents, five- to 10-year tax breaks and duty-free imports.

Volvo takes automobile safety seriously. So seriously that it has set a goal to eliminate in-car deaths and injuries by 2020.

via autoblog

The entire Chrysler company - plant workers and salary workers - will be going on vacation for 2 weeks this summer. Where do you think Chrysler should go on vacation?

The world’s largest investment bank, Goldman Sachs Group, is launching a $100 million (US) global initiative to teach business and management skills to 10,000 women.

The initiative specifically plans to target women in the Middle East, Asia and Africa who might have little or no opportunity to pursue such an education. The program links major U.S. and foreign universities together to teach the curriculum — which can span five weeks to nine months.

source: Associated Press

In an effort to reconnect with an older market, Luis Vuitton is using Keith Richards in billboards and magazine ads. Why Keith Richards? People tell Bloomberg that “Keith Richards is timeless and ageless,” said Rita Clifton, who heads the U.K. division of brand consultant Interbrand. “He’s lived his life on the edge, but he’s not a sleaze bag. He’s lean and mean and he’s still current.”

Could it be that Korean auto executives at both Hyundai and Kia are putting too much pressure on and have little patience for U.S. division executives? This Detroit News commentary makes it seem as such.

Although the South Koreans started out emulating the leading Japanese automakers, and hope to beat them, they lack some of the qualities that have helped the Japanese to succeed: their patience, their conservative goals and demand-driven approach to the auto market.

The South Koreans also clash with U.S.-based sales executives over how to position the brands, with Hyundai trying to push its nameplate upmarket faster than some of its U.S. dealers think it should.

The Asian automakers all experience strains between the managers at headquarters and those at the lucrative U.S. operations. But the turnover of U.S.-based executives at Hyundai and Kia has been exceptionally high, and the changes occur without any warning.

Very interesting clash of cultures.

Last week Martha Stewart’s company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. has purchased the rights to Emeril Lagase’s cookbooks, television programs and kitchen products for $50 million in cash and stock. That seems like a hefty sum considering Emeril no longer has a show on the Food Network.

Apple, you know those ipod folks, has become the lead sponsor of American Idol. The implications of this venture include:

- “Idol” downloads will now only be available on Apple’s iTunes store
- iTunes will sponsor online streaming of performances on the American Idol website
- Apple brands will also be integrated into the show — just wait for the judges to be seen using iPhones.

Additional information can be found via this Variety article.

I will admit that there is not much in the way of spice and interest in the content of this article about the departure of Hugo Boss AG’s Chief Executive Officer. The opportunity though to use the above title, though, was too good to pass up.

The New York Times reports that Bono’s (red) initiative is coming under scrutiny as some are beginning to question how much the organization raises versus the marketing costs that have been spent.

They criticize a lack of transparency at the company and its partners over how much they make from Red products, and whether they spend more money on Africa or advertising.

“Look at all the promotions they’ve put out,” said Inger L. Stole, a communications professor at the University of Illinois. “The ads seem to be more about promoting the companies and how good they are than the issue of AIDS.”

In the Super Bowl ad Sunday, which promoted Dell’s recent Red debut, a man buys a Red laptop and finds himself cheered in the street by strangers and kissed by a beautiful woman. At the end of the commercial, three screens flash in rapid succession: “Buy Dell. Join (RED). Save Lives.”

In its March 2007 issue, Advertising Age magazine reported that Red companies had collectively spent as much as $100 million in advertising and raised only $18 million. Officials of the campaign said then that the companies had spent $50 million on advertising and that the amount raised was $25 million. Advertising Age stood by its article.

To the best of my knowledge, Red does not do any marketing of its own. Any marketing is done by the partner companies who incorporate Red in their marketing. What cannot be questioned is the fact that Red has raised millions for its causes, which have benefited many lives.

Over all, more than $59 million has been contributed by Red and its corporate partners to the Global Fund. Red-financed projects have helped put more than 30,000 people on antiretroviral treatment and provided more than 300,000 H.I.V.-positive pregnant women with counseling and treatment, according to data from Red and the fund.

Red and its donors have contributed nearly all the corporate money that has gone to the fund, which had $2.4 billion in 2007. This made Red the 15th-largest donor — more than Russia has given so far, and more than China, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland have pledged.

New for 2009 is the Hummer H3T - it’s a pickup truck. Necessary? That is questionable. Given that pickups appeal to a big, but select market, will a small pickup with a Hummer face appeal to truck buyers? Will the pickup capabilities appeal to Hummer fans? Probably not with these looks. Something to watch for.

Looks like I owe a happy belated birthday to Lego, which turned 50.

Lego A/S, Europe’s largest toymaker, commemorated the 50th anniversary of its interlocking plastic building bricks by re-introducing a set from five decades ago.

The Town Plan set, which contains 1,000 blocks and costs 1,199 kroner ($237), went on sale today along with a hundred other new items on the Web site of the Billund, Denmark-based company. Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular Internet search engine, marked the occasion by using depictions of the bricks to spell its own name on its main Web site.

Lego, which estimates that children spend 5 billion hours a year playing with its bricks, was founded in 1932 as a maker of wooden toys. The company has made more than 400 billion of the plastic blocks since they were patented in 1958 by the father of current owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen. Its name comes from the first letters of the words “leg godt,” Danish for “play well.”

above quotations via Bloomberg

As the International Herald Tribune reports things are brewing in Israel to test not the electric car per see, but the mass consumption of the electric car.

The idea, said Shai Agassi, 39, the software entrepreneur behind the new company, is to sell electric car transportation on the model of the cellphone. Purchasers get subsidized hardware - the car - and pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, like minutes on a cellphone plan, eliminating concerns about the fluctuating price of gasoline.

“Because the price of gasoline fluctuates so much during the life of a car, it’s hard to predict the cost basis for driving,” Agassi said. “But electricity fluctuates less, and you can buy it in advance, so I can give you a guaranteed price per mile, cheaper than the price of gas today.”

How is that for an attempt at alliteration. Burt’s Bees, which is a natural personal care company (most famous for its chapped lips products) is being bought by Clorox Inc. for $950 million US.

Adage.com has some interesting insight into Clorox’s plans…

For those who thing Big Bleach is a corporate evil, see what the folks at Burt’s Bees have to say about who now owns the hive:

As you’ve probably heard by now, we at Burt’s Bees are entering an exciting new chapter in our lives as a result of the recent sale of the company to The Clorox Company. It’s a great opportunity to help us better deliver against our mission of making truly natural personal products available to everyone, everywhere.

This new journey gives us the energy and the resources to do even more. Not only will we be able to accelerate our growth, but this will also help us to grow the natural personal care category in general, furthering our commitment to The Greater Good.

You can keep counting on Burt’s Bees in the ways you always have. We will always stay steadfast behind our values and commitment to making the best natural personal care products with the most environmentally sensitive packaging and nature-safe manufacturing processes. And, above all, we’ll continue on with our social mission to make people’s lives better every day, naturally.

It’s your desire to improve your well-being and the world around you that has given us the support to take this next step. We thank you and ask for your continued support so we can keep the Burt’s Bees hive buzzing.

The International Herald Tribune explores the interesting subject of lighting. More specifically, the article discusses the various options for energy and not energy efficient lighting and how compact fluorescent bulb (CFL) is likely to be the future winner, even though it does not give off ‘nice’ light.

One designer has threatened to wage war against them. Another reckons they’re so depressing that we’ll be driven into psychotherapy. A manufacturer describes them as “very unfriendly” and, even, “a little violent.”

The objects of their derision are compact fluorescent bulbs, otherwise known as CFLs, the miniaturized versions of fluorescent strip lights, which are touted as energy-efficient alternatives to the incandescent bulbs that have lit our homes for over a century. The problem is the quality of their light. “It’s completely indifferent and boring,” said the German lighting designer, Ingo Maurer (the one who thinks they’ll be a boon for shrinks). “They make you feel as though you’re waiting for a bus or a train at a desolate station.”

Judith Havermann writes in the Wilson Quarterly that “Women now hold half of all management jobs in America. Business books and magazines tout their superior leadership style. What’s really changing in the country’s corner offices?” Read on.

Wharton School of Business professor Joel Waldfogel, in his new book, tears into the prevailing notion that markets left alone will sort themselves out and can be left to the dynamics of the invisible hand.

In the prevailing view, markets allow everyone to get what they want, regardless of what others want — recalling Blockbuster Video’s “Go Home Happy” slogan — while allocation through government imposes what John Stuart Mill called a “tyranny of the majority” — that you get what you want only if the majority wants it. This stark distinction between markets and government, advanced by Milton Friedman in his book Capitalism and Freedom, has been the rationale behind letting markets decide a wide variety of questions for decades. But according to Waldfogel, the tyranny of the majority is also at work in many markets, benefiting some, harming others, and not always ending up promoting efficiency.

The tyranny of the majority — Waldfogel calls it “the tyranny of the market” — arises whenever two conditions hold. First, production entails substantial fixed costs; and second, preferences differ across groups of consumers. High fixed costs limit the number of products that markets can profitably offer, so that only large groups get appealing products. And when preferences differ across groups, then those not targeted — “preference minorities,” in Waldfogel’s words — are unable to go home happy.

The face of advertising of beauty care products is changing….

Shampoo advertising in Japan typically featured glamorous blondes praising imports from Procter & Gamble and Unilever.