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CEOs get all the attention when it comes to the debate over excessive pay but they are far from the only fat cats in corporate Britain, as some startling figures in a report by the High Pay Centre and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development make clear.

The two organisations found that there are 1,394 gilded individuals at the top of the corporate pyramid designated as "key management personnel". These people receive strikingly high sums of money. In the most recent financial reporting year for the FTSE 100, they were collectively paid £2bn, good for an average annual salary of just over £1.4m.

Who are these financial wizards? What do they do? Because of the way the reporting rules work it's very difficult to say.

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Why we need to shine a light on the FTSE 100's 1,397 fat cats

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CEOs get all the attention when it comes to the debate over excessive pay but they are far from the only fat cats in corporate Britain, as some startling figures in a report by the High Pay Centre and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development make clear.

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Fast-fashion retailer Boohoo has grown even faster than expected this year, it reported on Thursday, pushing shares up more than 10 per cent.

The group said full-year sales were now expected to rise by between 33 and 38 per cent, compared with previous guidance of 25-30 per cent. Margins before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation will remain at about 10 per cent.

Boohoo shares, which were listed in London in 2014, were recently up about 15 per cent on London's Aim exchange at 279.9p. They peaked to an all-time high in early trading at 285.8p on Thursday. The shares, which were heading for their biggest intraday climb since April 2018, have risen about 73 per cent this year.

The group, founded by Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane in 2006, has been on a tear in recent months and its market value is now greater than that of Aim-traded rival Asos, which has been hit by two profit warnings.

Boohoo has become a bright spot in the general retail malaise as it benefits from consumers increasingly shopping online, while many high street chains have struggled to cope with the pace of change. Even some digital pioneers are finding themselves outmanoeuvred by Boohoo, which adds about 200 new items to its website daily.

Last month, the retailer acquired the online business of Karen Millen, the upmarket womenswear retailer, in a departure from its usual strategy of targeting young consumers with cheap fashions.

Analysts at house broker Jefferies said consensus profit forecasts would rise by around 3-4 per cent following the statement.

Boohoo brought in revenue of £856.9m in 2018, which was almost 50 per cent higher than the previous year. This latest guidance implies 2019 revenues of up to £1.18bn.
With additional reporting from Sarah Provan
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Boohoo boosts full-year guidance as sales soar

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Fast-fashion retailer Boohoo has grown even faster than expected this year, it reported on Thursday, pushing shares up more than 10 per cent. The group said full-year sales were now expected to rise by between 33 and 38 per cent, compared with previous guidance of 25-30 per cent.

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Boohoo, the online fashion retailer with an army of 16 to 24-year-old fans, has nearly doubled its profits, helped by paying celebrities and other "influencers" to promote its products on Instagram.

The Manchester-based company, which has turned its founders into multimillionaires, reported on Wednesday that sales had risen by 51% to £295m in the year to the end of February. This pushed the retailer's pre-tax profit up by 97% to £31m.

Mahmud Kamani, who founded Boohoo alongside the designer and self-described "proper northern lass" Carol Kane in 2006, said 2016 had been a "momentous year" for the company and his family. Its shares, which floated on the Aim market in 2014, have risen by more than 270%, from 50p to 186p, over the past 12 months.

The retailer has a stock market value of £2.1bn, more than Mike Ashley's Sports Direct at £1.7bn.

The Kamani family owns 38% of the shares, worth more than £800m, while Kane owns 4.5%, worth almost £100m.

Earlier this year, Boohoo expanded by buying fashion website PrettyLittleThing, which was set up by Kamani's sons Umar, Adam and Samir. The company also boosted its US presence by buying Nasty Gal, founded by the former eBay star seller Sophia Amoruso, for $20m (£15.6m).

Boohoo's rise has mirrored that of Asos, shares in which have increased from £36 to £56 over the past 12 months, as investors back large online brands. Asos is now valued at £4.7bn, equal to 80% of Marks & Spencer.

Neil Catto, Boohoo's chief financial officer, said the company's success with mostly millennial customers had been driven by its focus on encouraging celebrities and bloggers to post about the retailer's clothes on Instagram.

"We work with a whole spectrum of influencers, celebrities and wannabe bloggers - all people with a presence online - and we work with them so they can spread the word about Boohoo. It goes likes wildfire on Instagram," he said.

Catto said it was hard to single out any Instagram user as delivering the most sales, but the launch of a plus-size range with the model Jordyn Woods had proved very popular. "It got a lot of buzz as she is friends with the the Kardashians," he said.

He declined to say how much influential people are paid to promote the company's clothes on social media, but added that some can be encouraged to help out in return for free samples and pizza. "You can pay people to wear your clothes, or give them free clothes, [but] some are just interested in our fashion and will come along and have a pizza in our offices and put the range on Instagram," Catto said.

Catto said the company's target age group was 16 to 24-year-olds, but added that 50% are older than 24, while 10% are under 16.

The retailer plans further expansion in the US, where sales grew by 140% compared with 33% in the UK. Analysts at stockbroker Peel Hunt, who have a buy rating on Boohoo's shares, upgraded their 2017-18 pre-tax profit forecast to £40m. "With strong trading momentum from autumn/winter likely to have provided a good start to the new season, trading updates are unlikely to disappoint and the medium-term outlook remains encouraging," they said.

Kamani has vowed to focus on growing the business rather than enjoying his millions. When he cashed in more than £200m of shares in the company's flotation, his phone rang non-stop, he said. "Someone rang to ask if I wanted to buy a jet. Someone even asked if I wanted to buy a football club. I said to him: 'Are you on drugs?'," he said at the time.

Kamani inherited his love of fashion from his father, Abdullah, who sold handbags on market stalls in north-west England after leaving Kenya in the 1960s. Kamani went on to found a successful family textile business, supplying high street names such as New Look and Primark, before focusing on Boohoo.

Asked why the business started in Manchester, he joked: "That's where the plane landed. London was probably an extra £60."
Topics

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Fashion retailer Boohoo nearly doubles profit after celebrity Instagram tie-ups

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Boohoo, the online fashion retailer with an army of 16 to 24-year-old fans, has nearly doubled its profits, helped by paying celebrities and other "influencers" to promote its products on Instagram. The Manchester-based company, which has turned its founders into multimillionaires, reported on Wednesday that sales had risen by 51% to £295m in the year to the end of February.

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Are Christmas adverts an effective marketing tool? Or a costly tradition?

The release of Christmas adverts is now a traditional part of the festive season, but with so much hype and retailers all in competition to produce the most compelling advert, does the cost translate into benefit for the business?
Ad awareness
Ad awareness is a key measurement for advertising performance, in which we ask panellists if they have seen and advert for a particular brand in the past two weeks. We have indexed the scores to 100 starting on November 11 th to allow us to compare how each brand has done during the holiday season.

Looking at the data for the major UK supermarkets, it is clear that John Lewis and Partners (which includes Waitrose) stormed ahead of the competition.
Click to enlarge
Following the release of their Christmas advert, starring Excitable Edgar the dragon, in November, their indexed ad awareness score jumped an impressive 300% and has remained high throughout December. In comparison, Sainsbury's advert, released around the same time and featuring Nicholas the Sweep, only saw a rise of around 80% in the brands ad awareness score.

For the high street retailers such as Debenhams and Marks & Spencer's retail, the story is similar. Even Amazon, who released their ad earlier than competing brands, saw little change in their ad awareness over the period.
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Debenhams' Christmas advert saw its indexed ad awareness score jump to a high of 200% whereas some brands, such as Very, saw their ad awareness scores actually dip over the course of November and December. Even online giant Amazon saw only modest changes in its indexed ad awareness scores.
Consideration
Our consideration score asks whether someone would consider purchasing from a particular brand, by comparing this with our ad awareness data we can examine if Christmas adverts do translate into business for a brand - again we have indexed these figures to compare potential growth in score across brands.
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The data shows that despite a huge 300% percentage point jump in their indexed ad awareness score, John Lewis and Partners' (which includes Waitrose) consideration score, while improving over the period, doesn't correlate. In fact the brand with the best uptick in their consideration was Marks and Spencer, which saw their indexed score jump to just under 130%.

Of the retailers, Very saw big changes in its indexed consideration score, rising as high as 140% and dropping below 100%. Amazon, on the other hand, despite putting out a substantial Christmas advert campaign, saw little variation in its consideration scores.

If we look at the raw consideration scores, not indexed for comparison, a pattern reveals itself. Larger brands like Amazon have higher consideration scores to begin with, for example Amazon averages 69% across this period compared to 10% for Very.
Are Christmas adverts worth the hassle?
What our data suggests is that Christmas advertising could have a more tangible result for smaller, less well known brands, but for bigger brands the ads are great for exposure. We can see this through BrandIndex Word of Mouth scores, which asks which of the following brands panellists talked about with friends and family in the past two weeks (whether in person, online, or through social media).
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For retailers like John Lewis, their Christmas campaigns bring in big jumps in its indexed Word of Mouth score, but as we saw earlier the brands consideration score remains fairly stable. Looking at Very however, the Word of Mouth score doesn't achieve the same peaks as often, yet the Brands consideration score received the biggest boost relative to its score in early November.
Click to enlarge
What the data ultimately shows us is that consumers will already be considering shopping with Amazon, has shown by its higher score, and Christmas advertising is unlikely to sway a substantial number of new customers because their customer base is already so wide, this is also true for the likes of John Lewis and Partners, whose average consideration score was also high at 45%. However, for smaller brands competing brands such as Very, Christmas advertising has the potential to be much more valuable.
Image: Aldi Learn more about YouGov BrandIndex here

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How did this year's Christmas adverts perform? | YouGov

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The release of Christmas adverts is now a traditional part of the festive season, but with so much hype and retailers all in competition to produce the most compelling advert, does the cost translate into benefit for the business?

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Growth, market growth, discussion on numbers, discussion on history, future

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Hobbycraft, the UK's leading arts and crafts retailer, has announced full year results for the year ending 17 February 2019.
Key financial and operational highlights include:

Total revenue increased by 5.4% to £177.7 million

E-commerce revenue grew by 22.7%

Strong growth in Adjusted EBITDA* of 27.8% from £9.5 million to £12.2 million

Five new stores opened during the year bringing total store portfolio as at year end to 94

Hobbycraft Club, the UK's largest craft database, grows to over 3.9 million members

Hobbycraft Chief Executive, Dominic Jordan, said: "We are pleased with our performance and how our offer has improved over the past year. We continue to pursue our plans for multi-channel growth as we target our strategy to improve the broader appeal of our brand. This is being achieved through leveraging our broad product range which meets the needs of core hobbyists, families and everyday makers, with continued focus on delivering value to our customers.

"Our focus remains on great customer service and colleague engagement as we seek to provide help and inspiration to customers in their local communities. Our in-store workshop programme plays a key role where our colleagues demonstrate their incredible knowledge and passion for crafting whilst helping customers with their projects.

"Looking ahead, whilst we expect the retail environment to remain challenging we are well placed to continue to execute our growth plans, with initial trading in the first quarter of this year ahead of the prior year."

Hobbycraft delivered another strong year of growth with total revenue increasing by 5.4 per cent and online growth of 22.7 per cent.

They will continue to open new smaller format stores in relevant locations across the United Kingdom to drive profitability and brand awareness. This is coupled with their plans to increase E-commerce participation through investing further in their online experience as well as driving Click and Collect growth.

They intend to continue to drive footfall to stores through an increase in their in-store demos and workshop programme where we taught 100,000 customers last year. They are fast becoming the social centres for craft in their local communities.

Hobbycraft's multi-channel channel growth is also supported by the Hobbycraft Club which now has 3.9 million members as well as their growing social media community which has now over 650,000 followers.

Their focus on all aspects of customer service has directly increased their Net Promoter Score to 86 per cent (2018: 82 per cent) and drive to support the wellbeing and development of their colleagues has helped improve their colleague engagement to 90 per cent.

*Management consider that Adjusted EBITDA reflects the trading performance of the Group, excluding the impact of capital investment. Adjusted EBITDA is operating profit/(loss) before exceptional items, share based payment charge or credit, the movements in fair value of financial instruments, any impairment charge or write back of tangible and intangible assets, any income statement charge or credit in relation to the onerous lease provision, shareholder monitoring fees, depreciation and amortisation.

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Hobbycraft, the UK's leading arts and crafts retailer, has announced full year results for the year ending 17 February 2019.

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The debate around Tesla is being defined by extreme bulls to one side and extreme bears to the other.

A rational middle ground is hard to hold in this two-front battle over Tesla's future.

Tesla moderates can take solace in the probability that the extremists are wrong.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tesla is about to enter yet another critical moment. The carmaker will report first-quarter earnings next week, and after two consecutive quarters of profits, analysts expect a loss - and they've been guided toward that prediction by CEO Elon Musk himself.

Tesla shares have slid 12% year-to-date, and at about $270, they're far, far away from the now-notorious $420 price that Musk proposed to take the company private last year. Tesla also didn't climb above $350 a share this year before it had to cover a convertible bond payout, so the carmaker took care of the bill with over $900 million in precious cash.

That just the tip of the troubling iceberg, too. Tesla reported lower-than-expected vehicle sales for Q1 (although 10,000 cars were in transit to owners and weren't counted in the total), disappointing investors who had seen almost 250,000 vehicles delivered in 2018.
Read more: Tesla isn't the next Theranos - here are 10 reasons why
I won't go on, but the bad news has invigorated Tesla bears - both professional investors such as hedge-fund manager David Einhorn, who has been short Tesla for years, and the ad-hoc "#TSLAQ" community that congregates on Twitter, widely discussing Tesla's impending bankruptcy. But plenty of bulls have doubled down. Cathie Wood of ARK Invest hasn't backed off on her firm's ambitious (some might say comical) $4,000-per-share target, Loup Ventures' Gene Munster remains thoroughly Tesla-positive, and assorted sell-side analysts have re-affirmed buy ratings and price targets above where Tesla has been trading.

Fantasies to the left of me, fantasies to the right

Tesla is holding an investor event to showcase its "full self driving" (FSD) technology next week, and this has added fuel the fires that both sides have been tending. For the bears, it's another case of Musk promising something that Tesla can't deliver - because he's seen the multi-billion investments that the likes of GM's Cruise has raked in from SoftBank and Honda for autonomous vehicles.

For the bulls - well, for some of them (chiefly Wood), it's a signal that Tesla will soon morph into a high-margin provider of "transportation services" and move away from the capital-intensive, low-margin, hard-t0-disrupt car business (despite Tesla's plan to build another factory in China, presumably to manufacture cars).

Each group is furiously blowing its dog whistles. Wood tweeted that Tesla's autonomous event would shame Lyft (the idea is that Tesla is going to create a fleet of self-driving, hailable electric cars), while Einhorn told investors that Tesla is again on the "brink" of tanking. In the wilds of #TSLAQ, Musk has been getting pulverized, and of course at Seeking Alpha the negativity just keeps on coming. The whole thing sounds like two opposing armies banging swords and axes against shields before unleashing hell.

This is all good for business. Bulls and bears both need to market their views, and in the auto segment, Tesla is the only chance to use a public company to stake out outlandish positions. Everybody else - Ford, GM, FCA, Ferrari - has a relatively transparent enterprise and has spent the past decade doing nothing but making money. But anyone who wants to rationally assess Tesla needs to block out the noise and locate the signal.

It isn't hard. Tesla fundamentally makes cars and sells them. The business isn't different from what Henry Ford undertook over 100 years ago. Back then, people loved their Model T's. In 2019, people love their Model 3's (and Model S's and Model X's). This type of business requires a huge amount of money to keep running, at a global scale can bring in tens of billions of revenue each quarter - and throws off decent, if not spectacular margins, (Unless you're Ferrari!).

Tesla has created the electric-car market

Looking at Tesla's business in this context, we see a carmaker that has singlehandedly created an EV market in the US - Tesla's overall share of the 17 million in annual vehicle sales is about 3%, on par with Volkswagen. Tesla sold almost 250,000 vehicles last year and in the fourth quarter moved above $7 billion in revenue. Its net margins, given its pricing mix (roughly $50,000-$150,000), probably average out to something like 10%-15%, although it's too soon to credit Tesla with a number there because it hasn't slowed down long enough to consolidate profits.

Tesla's cash position could be better, and its debt load is concerning (although much of it is a legacy from SolarCity, which Tesla acquired in 2016 and whose solar-panel leases it had to absorb). But its massive sales and revenue increases place it well above other niche automaker and give it a level of market credibility that's closing in on the BMWs and Audis.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is it.

I'm sorry to have to break this to you. There is no massive, Theranos/Enron-grade fraud at work. Nor is there an impending takeover of the worldwide transportation industry. The extremists are flatly wrong. Short-seller Jim Chanos is wrong, uber-bull Ross Gerber is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But don't worry, they and their supporters on each side will continue pumping their arguments.

The big short sellers have been, at the macro level, wrong for years. But so have the mega-bulls, with their crazy futuristic visions drawn from Silicon Valley examples, such as Apple and the smartphone business or Amazon and its disdain for profits. That hasn't stopped them from endlessly chasing new angles.

It's scary in the middle

I will tell you, however, that's it's lonely in the middle - or scary, as when Odysseus had to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis. That's where I've been sitting for some time now, and the only people I can find who are sympathetic to my view are in the actual auto industry.

And to be honest, I don't think Tesla's current valuation is justified by the growth of its business. But I also think that a real correction is unlikely to happen until the US auto industry slips into a downturn, and that's perhaps a year more away. Tesla might not even be hit that hard because its buyers are more committed than consumers at large - and tend to be more affluent and able to keep on buying even when times are bad.

The more serious Tesla naysayers usually cite a deluge of new electric vehicles coming to market from established automakers as a sign that Tesla's advantages could soon go away. But they ignore that Tesla has achieved its market share with essentially no advertising. For big auto to start eating Tesla's lunch, it's going to need to spend billions on top of the billions they've already spent developing electric cars- and in the short term, that might not be worth it. Big auto can take its time, so long as it continues to print money selling SUVs and pickup trucks.

Extremist are rarely correct, but they have one thing going for them: there's an insatiable appetite for their views on Tesla. Tesla moderates, meanwhile, are fighting on two fronts. You don't win in such scenarios; you just hang on, at best, until one or both combatants on your flanks run out of ammunition or retreat.

They usually do. And when that happens, Tesla will move on and become the company its existing business predicts it will be. The extremists, predictably, will vanish, or switch to a new fantasy. And then they can be wrong all over again.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s).

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Extreme opinions about Tesla are completely wrong - here's why

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The debate around Tesla is being defined by extreme bulls to one side and extreme bears to the other. A rational middle ground is hard to hold in this two-front battle over Tesla's future. Tesla moderates can take solace in the probability that the extremists are wrong.

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Bartlett and Ghoshal

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Due to increasing globalisation the past decades, even smaller companies have been able to cross national borders and do business abroad. Consequently, many terms have been given to companies operating in multiple countries: multinationals, global businesses, transnational companies, international firms et cetera. The aim of this article is to clearly define these different terms and see how they differ from each other, because they do differ! An often used framework to distinguish multiple forms of internationally operating businesses is the Bartlett & Ghoshal Matrix (1989). Bartlett and Ghoshal clustered these businesses based on two criteria: global integration and local responsiveness. Businesses that are highly globally integrated have the objective to reduce costs as much as possible by creating economies of scale through a more standarized product offering worldwide. Business that are highly locally responsive have as extra objective to adapt products and services to specific local needs. It seems that these strategic options are mutually exclusive, but there are companies trying to be both globally integrated and locally responsive as can be seen in some examples below. Together these two factors generate four types of strategies that internationally operating businesses can pursue: Multidomestic, Global, Transnational and International strategies.

Figure 1: Bartlett and Ghoshal's Typology of Multinational Companies:
Global, Transnational, International and Multidomestic Strategy

Multidomestic: Low Integration and High Responsiveness

Companies with a multidomestic strategy have as aim to meet the needs and requirements of the local markets worldwide by customizing and tailoring their products and services extensively. In addition, they have little pressure for global integration. Consequently, multidomestic firms often have a very decentralized and loosely coupled structure where subsidiaries worldwide are operating relatively autonomously and independent from the headquarter. A great example of a multidomestic company is Nestlé. Nestlé uses a unique marketing and sales approach for each of the markets in which it operates. Furthermore, it adapts its products to local tastes by offering different products in different markets.

Global: High Integration and Low Responsiveness

Global companies are the opposite of multidomestic companies. They offer a standarized product worldwide and have the goal to maximize efficiencies in order to recude costs as much as possible. Global companies are highly centralized and subsidiaries are often very dependent on the HQ. Their main role is to implement the parent company's decisions and to act as pipelines of products and strategies. This model is also known as the hub-and-spoke model. Pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer can be considered global companies.

Transnational: High Integration and High Responsiveness

The transnational company has characteristics of both the global and multidomestic firm. Its aim is to maximize local responsiveness but also to gain benefits from global integration. Even though this seems impossible, it is actually perfectly doable when taking the whole value chain into considerations. Transnational companies often try to create economies of scale more upstream in the value chain and be more flexible and locally adaptive in downstream activities such as marketing and sales. In terms of organizational design, a transnational company is characterised by an integrated and interdependent network of subsidiaries all over the world. These subsidiaries have strategic roles and act as centres of excellence. Due to efficient knowledge and expertise exchange between subsidiaries, the company in general is able to meet both strategic objectives. A great example of a transnational company is Unilever.

International: Low Integration and Low Responsiveness

Bartlett and Ghoshal originally didn't include this type in their typologies. Other authors on the other hand have attributed the name to the lower left corner of the matrix. An international company therefore has little need for local adaption and global integration. The majority of the value chain activities will be maintained at the headquarter. This strategy is also often referred to as an exporting strategy. Products are produced in the company's home country and send to customers all over the world. Subsidiaries, if any, are functioning in this case more like local channels through which the products are being sold to the end-consumer. Large wine producers from countries such as France and Italy are great examples of international companies.

Figure 2: Organizational structures of the Bartlett and Ghoshal's MNC Typology:
Global, Transnational, International and Multidomestic Strategy

Table 1: Characteristics of MNC Types (Multidomestic, Global, Transnational) - Bartlett and Ghoshal

MNE Archetypes of Administrative Heritage

Bartlett and Ghoshal are not the only academics who have been trying to classify internationally operating companies. Verbeke (2013) has looked at a large number of multinational enterprises (MNE's) and their administrative heritage, and distinguished four archetypes of MNE's: Centralized Exporter, International Projector, International Coordinator and the Multi-centred MNE. Each will be elaborated on below.

Centralized Exporter

The centralized exporter is a home-country managed firm that trades and sells products internationally. In this case, most production facilities are located in the home country and foreign subsidiaries, if any, are functioning largely as facilitators for efficient home country production. Products are standarized and only minor customer-oriented activities are done abroad. The centralized exporter is very close to an international or global company in Bartlett and Ghoshal's typology.

International Projector

The second archetype is the international projector. These kind of companies build upon a tradition of transferring its proprietary knowledge, which was developed in the home country, to foreign subsidiaries across the globe. These subsidiaries are essentially clones of the home operations, since the business model and its success recipe are simply copied and pasted abroad. The automotive company Ford is known for this strategy in its early days in the 1900s. Disneyland is another great example of a successful business model that has been copied all over the world.

International Coordinator

The international coordinator does not only rely on knowledge and resources from its home country as could be seen in the two archetypes above. Instead the international coordinator manages international operations both upstream and downstream the value chain through a tightly-controlled but still flexible logistics function. They tap into location advantages from multiple countries in order to form an efficient vertical value chain across borders. It is therefore perfectly possible that the raw materials are bought and manufactured in multiple countries and that the product is being assembled elsewhere where labor is cheapest. A good example of an international coordinator is Apple. The components of Apple's flagship product, the iPhone, are bought from multiple suppliers all over the world and are finally assembled in China. Design and marketing on the other hand are still largely done in California where Apple is headquartered.

Multicentred MNE

Finally, the multicentred MNE consist of a set of entrepreneurial subsidiaries abroad. Local responsiveness is the foundation of this company's strategy. The only thing that holds these firms together are the shared financial governance and the identity and interests of the founding fathers and owners of the company. Ultimately the multicentred MNE should be viewed as a portfolio of largely autonomous and independent businesses. Bartlett and Ghoshal's multidomestic strategy is most closely associated with this archetype. Philips is known for using this approach in the early years of its existance.

Figure 3: MNE Archetypes of Administrative Heritage (Verbeke, 2013):
Centralized Exporter, International Projector, International Coordinator and Multi-centred MNE

International Business In Sum

Taken this all together, there are many ways in which companies can do business abroad. When a firm has economic operations located in at least two countries, they are often referred to as multinational enterprises or companies (MNE's or MNC's). But the way in which they do business abroad determines whether we can call it an international, global or transnational company for instance. By being aware of these different types of multinationals, you will be better able to structure your own strategic options when going global. In case you want to know more about foreign market entry options, you might want to read more about the OLI paradigm.

Bartlett, C.A. & Ghoshal, S. (1989). Managing Across Borders. The Transnational Solution. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Harzing, A.W. (2000). An Empirical Analysis and Extension of the Bartlett and Ghoshal Typology of Multinational Companies. Journal of International Business Studies.

Verbeke, A. (2013). International Business Strategy. Cambridge University Press.

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International Business Strategy EXPLAINED with EXAMPLES | B2U

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Due to increasing globalisation the past decades, even smaller companies have been able to cross national borders and do business abroad. Consequently, many terms have been given to companies operating in multiple countries: multinationals, global businesses, transnational companies, international firms et cetera.

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A cry of blue murder went up last April when Paramount Pictures released the first trailer for its much-anticipated, long-delayed Sonic the Hedgehog movie. The Sega video game icon had been reimagined as a Cronenberg-esque nightmare. Its fur was both too real and creepily incorporeal. And then there were those dead eyes gazing from a face half Saturday morning cartoon, half Edvard Munch watercolour. The entire internet essentially ran away screaming.

Scary Sonic was put out of his misery with a drastic redesign that gave the character a cuddly gloss ahead of its release this weekend. The makeover added an estimated $5m (£3.8m) to the already hefty $90m (£69m) budget (much of it presumably accounted for by flesh-and-blood stars Jim Carrey and James Marsden). Yet something about that original fumble felt weirdly apt. To turn a beloved figurehead of early nineties couch-bound entertainment into a cobalt creep-show from our darkest dreams isn't just a misstep. It is a catastrophic error. Exactly the sort that Sega committed over and over through its ultimately sorry history in console gaming.

Sonic the Hedgehog ruled the primordial video gaming scene of 30 years ago like a tiny, button-nosed dinosaur. He was cooler and much, much faster than Nintendo's platform-hopping Italian plumber Mario. That mattered a great deal when he was unleashed upon gamers in the summer of 1991. Long before Sony and Xbox carved up console gaming, Sega and Nintendo were sworn enemies, twin colossi obsessed with outdoing each other.

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Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Sonic and Mario were soon at the frontline of this conflict. Though sharing a superficial cuteness, they represented radically different philosophies. Sonic was the bad boy with lightening feet and an air of mischief. Mario was slower, wackier - clearly for kids and adults who also wished they could go back to being kids.

All these decades later, Nintendo continues to sell millions of consoles and to pump out Mario sequels. Sega's empire is, by contrast, dust in the wind. Today it is largely focused on games for third-party systems. You can, for instance, enjoy Sonic the Hedgehog on Nintendo Switch. It's like Voldemort and Harry Potter teaming up for Quidditch.

Before Sonic, Sega had played second fiddle to Nintendo. The origins of the two companies were also very different. While its mortal foe had been founded in Kyoto in 1889 as a manufacturer of playing cards, Sega's roots were far more contemporary. The company was established in Tokyo in 1960 by expat American businessmen. One of the founders, Martin Bromley, had actually witnessed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Now here he was, sitting in his high-rise office in Tokyo's Shinagawa ward, thinking of ways to satiate Japan's bottomless craving for electronic distractions.

Success initially came through the importation of gaming machines, pinball tables and jukeboxes. In the late sixties, it moved into coin-operated video games. Sega entered the home console market in 1982 with the SG-1000 system. But it failed to challenge Nintendo's dominance in Japan. In this scenario, Nintendo was Super Mario, Sega one of the hapless Goombas who earn the plumber points when he bounces on their heads.

All that changed with the Sega Mega Drive, which came out in Japan in 1988 and Europe in 1990 (and was re-christened the Sega Genesis in North America). Sega had designed the console to be faster than its major rival, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (released outside Japan in 1991 and 1992). And it brought the fight straight to Nintendo by debuting a cute mascot to rival Mario.

Mr Needlemouse, the original design that preceded Sonic, was created in Tokyo by the in-house team of programmer Yuji Naka, artist Naoto Ohshima and designer Hirokazu Yasuhara. His blue colour was inspired by Sega's cobalt-blue logo; the over-sized boots were apparently based on those worn by Michael Jackson in a video. Somewhat improbably, his zippy personality was a tribute to the "can do" attitude of US President Bill Clinton.

It was in America that Sega had its highest hopes for its new creation. Which is why Ohshima went to Central Park in 1990 with the design for Mr Needlemouse and several other possible mascots (including future Sega favourite, Mighty the Armadillo).

Trying not to be run over by joggers or cyclists, he canvassed passersby for their opinions. The consensus was that Mr Needlemouse was the most popular by a clear margin. Back in Tokyo, it was decided to make him the star of the new game. They also changed his name to Sonic.

Sonic the Hedgehog was a huge hit from its release. In America Sega broke with convention by running ads that explicitly contrasted Nintendo's plodding Mario with its super-fast blue spiky mammal. Sales soared. Sonic shifted over 40 million units; the Mega Drive romped to a 65 per cent market share. The console wars had a new champion.

The problem was that the bulk of Sega's success was outside Japan. On home turf it continued to lag far behind Nintendo. This led to tensions between the North American and European divisions and the more cautious head office in Tokyo.

The lack of joined-up thinking would soon reap disastrous results. A series of clumsy bolt-on upgrades for the Mega Drive failed to find an audience. They also confused buyers who were told an all new console, the Sega Saturn was in development. Should they pay to upgrade their Mega Drive with one of these new Sega CDs add-ons - or wait for the Saturn?

Sega did get one thing right in recognising video games were no longer child's play. Sonic was far more irreverent than the wholesome Mario. And the advertising campaign for the Saturn continued to play to an imagined edgier fanbase. In one North American commercial, an actor dressed as a sphincter muscle is squeezed between latex walls as its owner gets stuck into the new console. This was buttocks-clenching entertainment. David Bowie and Michael Jackson were rumoured fans, too.

Still, sometimes Sega went too far. The infamous 1992 Sega CD game Night Trap tasked the player with protecting teenage girls from masked invaders. One notorious scene sees a woman menaced with an enormous phallic hose that sucks blood from her neck before she is bundled off by three men and killed in a bathroom. There was an outcry in the House of Commons and the US Senate, which responded by introducing the first rating system for games, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB).

With all the publicity, Night Trap was obviously a massive hit, even after Toys "R" Us removed it from its shelves. A bigger issue for Sega was that it suddenly no longer had to contend just with Nintendo. In early 1995, Sony set jaws dropping across the video game community when it used an animated T-Rex to demonstrate the remarkable processing power of its forthcoming Playstation console.

Sony's sights, moreover, were clearly set on Sega, rather than Nintendo. The rivalry broke out in earnest at the 1995 E3 games convention in Los Angeles. Sega had hoped to steal a march by announcing it would be rolling out the Saturn in North America ahead of schedule and at a keen $399 (£306) price point.

Enter Sony American head of development Steve Race, who walked to the mic and said just one thing: "$299". The room dissolved into applause and calumny. Sega North American chief executive Tom Kalinske turned to a colleague and said "Oh s***".

Like Sega, Sony recognised that the future of video games lay in the adult market (Nintendo would continue to plod along catering to families). The problem was that it did it so much better. Sega's games were edgy in a juvenile way. They appealed to 15-year-olds. Sony went for 25-year-olds, putting Playstations in clubs and hiring hip dance acts such as Leftfield and The Chemical Brothers to soundtrack its games.

As Tom Kalinkse instantly understood at E3, the Saturn was toast. The Playstation was cheaper, trendier and graphically superior. All of Sega's hopes ultimately rested on its next console the Dreamcast, launched in 1999.

Everyone agreed it was a fantastic piece of kit. It was far easier to programme than the wonkily designed Mega Drive and Saturn. And its titles were great. But they were often hideously expensive to develop. The groundbreaking Shenmue cost $50m (£38m) alone. More importantly, Playstation had thoroughly stolen its thunder.

Sonic was going on for 10 years old and now Sega was running out of money. Many of its top games designer, including Oshima and Yasuhara, had moved on. Sega America's new president Peter Moore announced that, in order to stay viable, Sega would have to sell five million Dreamcasts in the US by end of 2000. It fell short by two million. Once the dominant player, it now held just 15 per cent of the US video game market, far behind Sony (50 per cent) and Nintendo (35 per cent). In January 2001, it announced it was getting out of the console business.

"Sega didn't have the money to compete with Sony or Nintendo, both of whom had really deep pockets," says Ken Horowitz, editor of Sega-16 website. "Those companies could endure losses on hardware for longer periods of time, and they had much more cash for marketing than Sega did.

"The company was losing money, the PlayStation 2 was beating the Dreamcast in sales pretty badly and there was more competition looming on the horizon with the Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox," adds Chris Powell, editor of Mega Visions magazine.

"You have to keep in mind that at that time, Sega didn't have separate branches of business like Sony and Microsoft did, so they had very limited revenue sources, comparatively speaking, which would have made it increasingly difficult for Sega to remain competitive with the Dreamcast.

"Sega has continued to diversify by branching out in the casino and resort industry, expanded its licensing programs and even has its first feature movie, Sonic the Hedgehog," he says. "Had Sega stuck with the Dreamcast and remained in the hardware business, I can't imagine they'd still be in business today and certainly not as healthy as they currently are."

There is a happy ending of sorts. Sega has had huge success with titles such as Football Manager and Total War. And now with Sonic, it is getting into movies. That is a market Nintendo has steered clear of following 1993's disastrous and humiliating Super Mario Brothers film. If Sonic burns up the box office, might final bragging rights go to the hedgehog?

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How Sega conquered the video games industry - and then threw it all away

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A cry of blue murder went up last April when Paramount Pictures released the first trailer for its much-anticipated, long-delayed Sonic the Hedgehog movie. The Sega video game icon had been reimagined as a Cronenberg-esque nightmare. Its fur was both too real and creepily incorporeal.

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How Stories control our Economic reality

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How Stories control our Economic reality

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How Stories Control Our Economic Reality

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Culture, international, growth, strategy

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In the Wall Street Journal, Dana Mattioli and Konrad Putzier speculate that the white-collar workplace as we know it might soon cease to exist.

They cite Twitter's plan to allow its 5,000 or so staff to work from home indefinitely, along with plans by OpenText Corp to cut more than 50% of its global offices.

"Many executives ..." they say, "point to the success of an unprecedented work-from-home experiment, and how little productivity appears to have been impacted after millions of employees in technology, media, finance and other industries have been forced to work remotely for months."

Yet if we're to understand why some 74% of corporations, according to one study, now intend to employ at least some of their staff in that way, we should recognise work from home as neither "unprecedented" nor "an experiment" but rather a method of labour organisation crucial to the development of the modern economy.

When capitalism first took hold in Britain, industrialists relied upon the so-called "putting out" system, in which subcontractors distributed raw materials to men and women labouring for piece rates in their homes. The arrangement persisted for centuries, prevailing in the manufacture of cloth, ceramics, gloves, lace, knitted goods and similar items well into the 19th century.

Today, after weeks of staying at home, many of us regard the prospect of returning to a centralised workplace with a mixture of ambivalence and dread.

It's a sentiment that the men and women of the 18th century would have recognised.
Working from home has a troubled history. Coronavirus is exposing its flaws again | Helen McCarthy
Back then, most people sought to labour in their own house, with factory work only a last resort. The "putting out" method might have entailed dreary toil for minimal pay but it allowed workers to exercise some control as to what they did and when. They could continue to supervise their children, tend their animals and maintain their gardens, while celebrating the religious and folk holidays central to early modern society.

By contrast, as the historian NSB Gras says, factories emerged "purely for purposes of discipline so that the workers could be effectively controlled under the supervision of foremen". Indeed, as another scholar notes, "there were few areas of the country in which modern industries ... if carried on in large buildings, were not associated with prisons, workhouses and orphanages".

Because the first white-collar workers usually performed some kind of management function, early "offices" often functioned as a privileged adjunct to the factory. A senior clerk in the 1850s might, for instance, expect to perform his duties in a work environment that "closely resembled his home in its furniture, its open fire, curtains and, by the end of the century, gas lighting".

But, as clerical work proliferated, the office became subjected to the same supervisory techniques by which Frederick Winslow Taylor broke industrial labour into simple, carefully-timed components. Management texts from the first decades of the 20th century reveal an obsession with controlling the most humdrum of tasks, with "the seemingly innocuous act of blotting [...] accused of wasting 35 seconds [and] the minuscule time differences in fastening together papers by way of a paperclip versus a tag [...] the subject of much discussion".

Today, most of us don't get assessed on the basis of how quickly we turn in our swivel chairs (it should take 0.009 of a minute, according to a guide from 1960).

That's because, by bringing workers out of the home, the office (just like the factory) gave them collective social power. Despite the best efforts of "efficiency experts", white-collar employees began to organise - and, by so doing, won at least some control over their working life.

As a result, for every person you know who wants to stay at home, you can probably think of another who misses the camaraderie of a shared workspace: a place to chat, to make friends and, at times, to rebel.
'My desk isn't usually as messy as this': Guardian readers share their work-from-home setups
The contradiction plays out in the corporate enthusiasm for office abolition.

Naomi Klein has identified an attempt to use Covid 19 to impose what she wittily calls a "Screen New Deal". She argues that the shock of the pandemic has provided cover for those who would implement a raft of oppressive social practices associated with the tech industry.

Certainly, in the workplace, the virus has rendered many of us almost totally dependent on third-party software packages, in ways that potentially give employers tremendous power.

Earlier iterations of the newly ubiquitous Zoom, for instance, contained an option called "attention tracking", which, under certain circumstances, notified administrators if users clicked away from the active window for more than half a minute. The feature's now been removed but you can see how working from home might normalise all kinds of other so-called "employee tracking software".

"My manager knows every single damn thing I do," a semi-anonymous remote worker called "Jane" explained to Vox. "I barely get to stand up and stretch, as opposed to when I am physically in the office. I feel like I have to constantly be in front of the computer and work because if not, either the [software] logs me out for being idle, or my manager randomly sends a check-in email that I must reply to promptly."

In the 19th century, capitalists needed workers in one place to monitor them, and that meant paying for expensive factories, in which troublesome trade unions could potentially organise.

Today, though, it's actually easier to surveil an atomised remote-based workplace than one congregating in a single building. By keeping their staff at home, bosses can disrupt workplace collectivity - and can save on rent while doing so.

It remains to be seen how many companies will follow through on the new anti-office rhetoric. But in these strange times, an embrace of a high-tech "putting out" system might yet be on the cards, as capitalism goes back to its future in increasingly dystopian ways.

Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist

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Working from home has a long history - be careful what you wish for not wanting to go back to the office | Jeff Sparrow

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In the Wall Street Journal, Dana Mattioli and Konrad Putzier speculate that the white-collar workplace as we know it might soon cease to exist. They cite Twitter's plan to allow its 5,000 or so staff to work from home indefinitely, along with plans by OpenText Corp to cut more than 50% of its global offices.

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ft.com-Top-rated companies raise 1tn in 5 months to fill war chests

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The latest video is out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSm2fH3rLF8 The data I quote comes from the Office for National Statistics. My message is simple: wealth taxes are not politically easy and there are better ways to tax those with wealth more, at least in the short term.

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The biggest cruise ship company in the world has navigated its way through crisis after crisis. Now, it's found itself at the center of a pandemic.

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Episode Notes

For decades, Carnival Corporation has successfully sold affordable luxury to passengers, becoming the largest cruise ship business in the world.

The reason why a vacation at sea can be so inexpensive has to do with both the vision of Carnival's founder and the historical origins of the cruise industry itself. But that affordability can also come with unpleasant consequences. Now, the entire industry's future has been thrown into doubt by a deadly virus.

Cindel Pena was a passenger onboard Carnival's headline-making "poop cruise." Ross Klein is a cruise industry expert and professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Jim Walker is a Miami-based maritime lawyer and publisher of Cruise Law News.

Podcast production by Jess Miller and Asha Saluja.

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Even Before the Pandemic, Carnival Navigated its Way Through Crisis After Crisis

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The biggest cruise ship company in the world has navigated its way through crisis after crisis. Now, it's found itself at the center of a pandemic. Choose your preferred player: Copy your ad-free feed link below to load into your player: For questions about subscriptions or your Slate Plus feed, check our FAQ.

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Carnival suffered losses of $4.4bn (£3.6bn) in three months, as the cruise company's business was all but sunk by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Revenues dropped to $700m from $4.8bn for the same March-May period in 2019, as bookings dried up and the corporation's cruise lines suspended sailings after severe outbreaks onboard its ships.

While many lines, including its British subsidiaries P&O and Cunard, have said they will pause operations until at least the autumn, Carnival hopes some business will resume from late summer, with $475m banked in bookings for 2020 sailings. It retains a total of $2.6bn in customers' cash, with many having accepted vouchers for future sailings in 2021.

Many ships - with crew onboard - remain offshore and unable to dock because of restrictions imposed by governments. Carnival said 21,000 employees were still on its ships, about a quarter of its crew, but it expected to return most of them home by the end of June.

The company warned it would face ongoing operating and administrative costs of about $250m per month once all of its ships are in "paused status". Only 61 of more than 100 ships in the fleet have so far managed to reach harbour.

The group plans to sell six cruise ships, which typically cost between $500m and $1bn new, as it seeks to adjust to an uncertain future.

Carnival said it could not predict when normal business would resume. However, it "expects to resume guest operations, after collaboration with both government and health authorities, in a phased manner, with specific ships and brands returning to service over time".

It expects the first cruise holidays to return "will be from a select number of easily accessible homeports", rather than the fly-cruise market, and that its fleets will be smaller.

Carnival said it had raised more than $6.6bn this year in bonds and share issues to boost its liquidity.

It said earlier this year that the sector may never fully recover, after being centre stage during the early part of the pandemic. Passengers on the Diamond Princess were confined to a cabin off Japan in February, while the Ruby Princess was identified as a key importer of Covid-19 to Australia.

The cruise operator, which had to repatriate passengers at a huge cost, faces lawsuits from passengers on coronavirus-hit ships.

In another sign of the industry's struggles, the British cruise line company Cruise and Maritime Voyages said on Wednesday it was in emergency discussions with prospective investors and lenders after a potential loan deal collapsed.
Topics

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Carnival to sell six cruise ships as bookings dry up

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Carnival suffered losses of $4.4bn (£3.6bn) in three months, as the cruise company's business was all but sunk by the Covid-19 pandemic. Revenues dropped to $700m from $4.8bn for the same March-May period in 2019, as bookings dried up and the corporation's cruise lines suspended sailings after severe outbreaks onboard its ships.

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COVID-19's really affecting the people who grow your brew. But we're doing lots to support them and thought you might like to hear about it.
 
There's loads more info here: https://t.co/P4WzWoIi2Z
 
(It's about everything we make at @Taylors of Harrogate, not just Yorkshire Tea).

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COVID-19's really affecting the people who grow your brew. But we're doing lots to support them and thought you might like to hear about it.
 
There's loads more info here: https://t.co/P4WzWoIi2Z
 
(It's about everything we make at @Taylors of Harrogate, not just Yorkshire Tea). https://t.co/KsiFR01WW6

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COVID-19's really affecting the people who grow your brew. But we're doing lots to support them and thought you might like to hear about it.

There's loads more info here: https://t.co/P4WzWoIi2Z

(It's about everything we make at @Taylors of Harrogate, not just Yorkshire Tea). pic.twitter.com/KsiFR01WW6
— Yorkshire Tea (@YorkshireTea) May 19, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
COVID-19's really affecting the people who grow your brew. But we're doing lots to support them and thought you might like to hear about it.
 
There's loads more info here: https://t.co/P4WzWoIi2Z
 
(It's about everything we make at @Taylors of Harrogate, not just Yorkshire Tea). https://t.co/KsiFR01WW6

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
COVID-19's really affecting the people who grow your brew. But we're doing lots to support them and thought you might like to hear about it.
 
There's loads more info here: https://t.co/P4WzWoIi2Z
 
(It's about everything we make at @Taylors of Harrogate, not just Yorkshire Tea). https://t.co/KsiFR01WW6

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
COVID-19's really affecting the people who grow your brew. But we're doing lots to support them and thought you might like to hear about it.
 
There's loads more info here: https://t.co/P4WzWoIi2Z
 
(It's about everything we make at @Taylors of Harrogate, not just Yorkshire Tea).

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A growing number of people recognize the importance of marketing for business success. However, one of the biggest mistakes you can make during marketing campaigns is not taking a look at marketing fails.

Are you ready to explore some of the most memorable marketing fails from famous brands and big companies? These examples of bad marketing have endured the test of time and continue to follow these organizations to this day. Taking a look at older mistakes, such as the New Coke debacle from the 1980s, as well as more recent ones, like the infamous Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner, will help you better understand why all facets of a marketing plan - its research, strategy, execution, and management - must work together in order for it to be successful (as well as what happens when they don't work together).

After taking a look at these marketing fails, you will see how having a comprehensive marketing plan for your business is crucial to your overall success.

Why Marketing Matters and How to Avoid Marketing Fails?

Marketing can make your business successful, but only if you do it correctly. A marketing mistake can harm your business for years to come and permanently change how your customers see you.

Even huge brands with massive marketing and advertising teams make massive mistakes that haunt them for years to come. This is why strategic, thoughtful marketing is so important. When the creation of marketing deliverables is not in tune with the strategy, research and campaign management, things go awry. Your message will fall flat and will not speak to its target audience. Worst of all, your entire marketing plan might backfire altogether.

Planning, research and implementation must all be integrated and work together toward a singular goal for marketing to be effective. When

The New Coke Switch

In 1985, Coca-Cola got rid of its traditional recipe in favor of a new, sweeter version that they hoped would better compete with Pepsi. Customers, however, hated the taste of New Coke and didn't like the change that this new product represented. Additionally, in making this change, Coca-Cola basically admitted that Pepsi's product was superior and that they couldn't compete with it.

In the wake of the backlash, they eventually changed back to their old formula and embraced their unique brand identity as an American icon. It's important to be mindful of your brand identity and ensure that your marketing materials actually match it, instead of contradicting it.

The backlash from this major marketing fail resulted in a number of noteworthy highlights, some of which included:

Several talk show hosts commenting on the marketing fail

New Coke product boycotts

Legal action

Some people in southern cities emptying New Coke bottles in the streets

More than 400,000 letters and calls directly to the company, with some callers sounding "like they were discussing the death of a family member"

The Kenneth Cole-Cairo Tweet

Back in 2011, Egypt was experiencing significant political and social unrest in the wake of an uprising. A week after the uprising began, fashion designer Kenneth Cole tweeted, "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo."

There was an immediate backlash, as people were offended that he made light of a serious political movement. The tweet was removed and he later apologized, but it's important to avoid using political unrest as a way to advertise your brand. Not only is it insensitive, but it may also cause the public to lose trust in your business because your marketing team is unaware of how to properly connect with your target audience.

The Gap Logo Change

In 2010, Gap suddenly changed its logo in an effort to be more modern. However, it was a rebranding failure, as there was no reason or shift behind the change. Moreover, they didn't consult their customers' opinions on the new logo - which was a mistake, because many of their customers ended up disliking it.

Less than a week later, they switched back to their old logo and learned that they shouldn't rebrand a company needlessly or without getting customers' opinions. Incorporating the needs and wants of your target audience into your thoughtful marketing plan, with visuals that match that trajectory of your company, are key components of rebranding.

The Kendall Jenner-Pepsi Ad

Marketing to younger generations differs from marketing to older ones, and many millennials and members of Generation Z won't appreciate ads with a lack of social awareness. In 2017, Pepsi released an ad featuring Kendall Jenner. At a protest, she gives a police officer a can of Pepsi. He drinks from it, and the crowd goes wild. This commercial didn't go over well with the public, as it borrowed heavily from imagery associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. People claimed it was highly insensitive and trivializing at best, and racist at worst.

Pepsi pulled the ad and apologized the next day. Just as with the Kenneth Cole tweet, it's important not to make light of serious issues, especially if they could directly affect your customers. Blending your message, strategy, visual elements, and audience research will allow you to make sure your marketing efforts have the effect you want, without embarrassment or underperformance.

The New York Times' Email

This is a case of email marketing gone awry. Back in 2011, the New York Times sent out an email to people who had recently canceled their subscriptions. They asked them to reconsider, and offered a discount to encourage them to come back. Instead of sending it to the 300 intended people, however, they accidentally sent it to over eight million people.

Things got worse when the Times tried to deny that they sent the email. They admitted their mistake and honored the discount for a certain number of customers, but it's a good reminder to always double-check who you're sending emails to. Gaffs like this one can indicate that you're out of touch with your customers and other departments in your business. You need to present a unified front that matches and supports your business's brand and marketing strategy.

The Oprah-KFC Giveaway

In 2009, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) promoted a giveaway for two pieces of grilled chicken, two side dishes, and a biscuit on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." More people wanted to claim this deal than KFC accounted for, and they didn't honor the deal for millions of customers. It actually ended up going to court, which resulted in a $1.575 million settlement, forcing KFC to honor their deal for customers who had the original coupons.

The ultimate lesson to learn here is to never make promises you can't keep. Giveaways can be a great way to generate interest in your business, but only if you have the means to back them up. It just goes to show that even a well-planned marketing strategy can go wrong if your response to an unexpected situation is contradictory to your plan.

Final Thoughts

There are many different ways you can have marketing mishaps, and you need to be careful when planning and executing all your different strategies. You can make mistakes with your content distribution, email marketing, or even your company website - all of which could end up harming your business and brand.

Want to learn how to create a marketing campaign that doesn't turn into a marketing fail? Contact IGW today!

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6 Failed Marketing Campaigns (And What You Can Learn From Them) - IGW

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A growing number of people recognize the importance of marketing for business success. However, one of the biggest mistakes you can make during marketing campaigns is not taking a look at marketing fails. Are you ready to explore some of the most memorable marketing fails from famous brands and big companies?

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ft.com-Wall Street banks net record fees for pandemic fundraisings

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Editor's note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub

W HERE COVID-19 strikes, it reveals hard truths. In recent weeks Latin America has become the centre of the pandemic, responsible for over half of daily deaths. The region's acute health crisis is accompanied by an economic decline unrivalled in the developing world. The IMF forecasts that output in the region will shrink by 9.4% in 2020, more than three times the contraction of 3% projected for emerging economies as a whole. The economic and social devastation wreaked by the pandemic is all the more painful for coming on the heels of two underwhelming decades. Investors had waxed enthusiastic about Latin America's prospects during the great emerging-market boom of the 2000s and the 2010s, only to be disappointed. The few gains that were made seem almost certain to be reversed.

The economies of Latin America are far from homogeneous. Many share characteristics, however, that have conspired to make the region among the hardest hit in the world. In some places lockdowns have been stringent: Peru, for example, took the extraordinary step of closing its mines, the foundation of its economy, contributing to the IMF 's grim forecast of a decline in output of 14% this year. But big and dense cities, with high rates of poverty and substantial segments of the population in informal work, have limited the effectiveness of lockdowns. The large informal sector, together with weak state capacity, has also undermined the reach of government relief and exacerbated the economic collapse. Populist blowhards with little time for experts govern the region's biggest economies, compounding its problems.

The bleakness of 2020 in Latin America also owes much to the condition of its economies before the coronavirus spread. Many limped into the new decade. Growth across the continent-even excluding Venezuela, whose economy collapsed catastrophically in recent years-was just 1.8% in 2018 and 0.8% in 2019. By the start of this year, Argentina and Mexico were already in recession; many other countries were stagnating-including Brazil, which enjoyed only the briefest of respites after a serious political and economic crisis in 2015 and 2016.

These woes fit a longer-running pattern of Latin America falling behind. The turn of the millennium marked the start of a great surge in the fortunes of the emerging world, and a departure from the usual state of affairs, in which poorer countries only rarely caught up to rich-world incomes in sustained fashion. Trade grew explosively, commodity prices boomed and the developing world asserted itself more confidently on the world stage. In the 2000s real output per person across the emerging world (on a purchasing-power-parity basis) rose at an astonishing clip of 4.6% per year, or four times the pace achieved by rich economies. The great gaps in income between advanced countries and the rest that opened during the 20th century seemed destined to narrow and close in the 21st.

Latin America, however, proved a laggard. It managed an average growth rate in real per person incomes of just 1.9% in the 2000s: faster than in rich economies but the lowest of the emerging world (see chart). In the 2010s growth in the region ground to a near-halt, at just 0.5% per year, behind both the emerging-country average and the rich world. Latin America's relatively high incomes-its larger economies are nearly all middle-income-may have contributed to slower growth: the richer you are, the less scope to grow by borrowing established technologies from other places. Its isolation mattered, too. The fastest growing emerging economies of the era were industrialising countries in Europe and Asia, which could latch on to the manufacturing supply chains of advanced neighbours. Few Latin American economies, apart from Mexico, enjoyed similar opportunities. And although the quality of governance-and of macroeconomic policy in particular-has improved markedly since the debt crises and inflations of the 1980s and 1990s, corruption, crime and volatile politics have made Latin America a less hospitable place for investors than it might have been.

The countries of the future

Latin America has averted a debt crisis-so far. The Federal Reserve dollar-swap lines enjoyed by Mexico and Brazil have shielded them against troubles sparked by dollar shortages. IMF credit lines available to Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru have eased market pressure on the region. Central banks have been able to cut interest rates to provide something of a cushion against the pandemic's economic damage, without provoking capital flight.

Still, there is no escaping the fact that even the healthiest of Latin American economies faces a punishing road back to normality. The IMF's forecasts for growth in 2021 are decidedly tepid: GDP in the region is expected to expand by 3.7% next year, compared with 5.9% for the emerging world as a whole. Unless the growth in covid-19 infections falls rapidly, even those meagre projections will prove too optimistic. The reduction in inequality and poverty that was achieved in the past two decades is now at risk. The World Bank warns that poverty in the region could rise by as much as 23m this year. Government policy seems unlikely to alleviate these hardships. Mass protests erupted in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador last year. Political systems may be strained further.

It matters too that Latin America's three largest economies are among its most troubled. Argentina has defaulted on its debt-again-and faces a risk of runaway inflation. Brazil's epidemic rivals America's as the worst in the world; it may need help from the IMF to avoid a debt crisis, or turn instead to inflationary finance. Mexico suffers from threats to the rule of law, a president seemingly determined to scare off private investment, and an unpredictable northern neighbour, which is also its biggest export market.

For Latin America covid-19 is a double shock: a brutally painful tragedy in its own right, and the definitive end of a growth opportunity that the region largely failed to exploit. The future of its economies and its societies depends on whether Latin Americans can be persuaded that there will be other chances in the future-and that next time its governments will do more to seize them. ■

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "A Latin American tragedy"

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Editor's note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub W HERE COVID-19 strikes, it reveals hard truths. In recent weeks Latin America has become the centre of the pandemic, responsible for over half of daily deaths.

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— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020

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Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace

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Tired of ineffective note taking techniques?

You know the kind:

The ideas behind them seem good, but ... they're not exactly techniques you would ever actually use.

And every time you try some new note taking technique ...

No matter what, all of them seem to lead to one place:

You ... writing down loooooong strings of notes verbatim.

It's usually boring, and (stand by for truth pill) ...

Boring Note Taking Rarely Works!

It gets worse:

These boring note taking styles mean that you're always struggling to keep up. You often wind up missing huge sections of the lecture and struggle to reconstruct what was said from the notes.

And if you're anything like me, you don't want to struggle with your memory!

Pause for a second.

Check this out, along with Adolfo Artigas' bonus tip:

Now back to our regular scheduled blog post:

If you're tired of struggling with your memory after note taking, then you're in the right place. I'm going to give you some counter-intuitive note taking techniques to try.

Some of them even tap into episodic memory and how to improve it (check out that post and Magnetic Memory Method Podcast episode for 4 super-powerful episodic memory exercises).

But please understand the following ...

This is The Brutal Truth About
Note Taking Techniques

You can read all the articles on note taking in the world, but it's never the note taking techniques that should take the blame when you fail to remember information.

There are other factors at play and they all meet in one central place:

So if you're taking lecture notes verbatim, that's the first thing that should change. This practice is taking you out of the presence of the information at a moment when your focus should be on its source.

To help you increase your focus and memory, get ready for techniques that I've used myself to remember more and develop tremendous confidence in any subject area.

The 6 Guiding Principles That Govern
Magnetic Note Taking

But before diving into my Magnetic Note Taking Techniques, let's take a step back and look at a few other factors.

We need to be aware of them for one simple reason:

All the best note taking techniques in the world won't help you for even a second if you haven't got the following aspects handed. And if you don't have a mind's eye, don't miss these aphantastia image streaming exercises.

After all, your note taking can only ever be as good as the state in which the notes were taken.

1. Be well rested

Seriously. I'm on YouTube Live every once in awhile, and always astounded by how late some learners in the world stay up.

I don't care what note taking techniques you use. They all suffer if you're tired. Click To Tweet

And exhaustion means this:

No note taking efforts in the world can help the information enter your mind at the highest possible level. We can't properly pay attention to what we're learning when we're tired and often wind up taking notes about unimportant details.

But when you're well-rested, you pay closer attention to the information that matters. This raised level of awareness already makes every note taking technique you try instantly better.

To help you get a better rest and benefit from the improved memory abilities sleep creates, check out this Magnetic Memory Method Podcast episode on sleep and memory improvement.

2. Nutrition and Hydration

Foods that improve memory aren't hard to find. Luckily, many of us don't have a hard time finding water either.

We don't need to dwell on this topic for long, but please understand that your brain shrinks when it's not properly hydrated. Many foods deplete your hydration.

By making a few simple dietary changes and drinking more water, your note taking abilities will go way up automatically.

3. Fitness and Meditation

Your brain is a physical entity. The more you exercise it, the greater focus you'll experience.

Likewise, meditation primes your brain to pay attention and remember more. Meditation improves concentration and memory too.

4. Knowledge of how memory works

Note taking skills work better if you know about the Primacy Effect and Recency Effect. You're much more likely to remember the beginning and end of a lecture, for example.

But even if these general rules don't fall in your favor, the forgetting curve will take its toll unless you do something about it.

The science of memory, particularly as it stands in support of a Memory Palace approach, should be covered immediately. It will add a great deal to how you think of note taking from a meta level.

Never forget: practical tips are great, but understanding why the tips work is golden. Using tips based on understanding makes you and your memory Magnetic.

5. Be Prepared

We'll talk in a moment about pre-reading, but as a global point, too many learners show up to lectures unprepared.

As a student myself, I can't tell you the amount of times I heard people asking, "what's this week's lecture about?"

That should never be the question on your lips. You should know the syllabus or plan inside and out so that your brain is primed and prepared to lock-in on the most salient points.

Seriously:

If you want to help yourself remember more, stack the chips in your favor by reading as much as possible in advance.

Heck, you can even email the speaker and ask what you should read to be better prepared if it isn't already clear to you.

I'd even suggest pushing for more suggestions.

Even if you only have time to skim over the suggested material, you're feeding your brain with velcro hooks. And the more hooks you have before you show up, the more material will stick.

And if you're using Memory Palaces, these 3 Memory Palace training exercises will help.

6. Know Your Learning Preferences

Finally, a huge shortcoming to all note taking is that many people aren't aware of their learning preferences. They don't know if they're primarily visual, auditory, kinesthetic or conceptual.

And when you lack that knowledge, you can't determine your MMM Learning Hierarchy. I'll be talking a lot about how to do this in a new book I'm releasing. For now, just understand that you probably have a sensory preference of which you're unaware.

The following techniques on offer here reflect some of mine. Regardless of how I learn, the most important thing is this:

Experiment with different note taking techniques based on your MMM Learning Hierarchy. You'll quickly find yourself remembering more when you honor the way your brain prefers to learn by matching your note taking approach to these preferences.

Heck, you might even find yourself focusing and concentrating on your studies like a Zen Master.

WARNING!

You're about to discover some of my most prized - and totally counterintuitive - techniques for taking notes at lectures.

These are significantly different from how I would take notes from a book. You can explore that approach here on my podcast and infographic about How to Memorize a Textbook. Everything in that teaching applies here as well, provided that you take your notes on index cards or move them over to index cards.

None of the techniques you are about to discover are mutually exclusive. You can use some of them at the same time. You can even use all of them to varying degrees in the same lecture.

But what you should never do is experiment with new note taking techniques when the stakes are high. Like gambling, only try something new when you can afford to lose.

With that caveat in place, here are ...

How to Remember Notes:
My Favorite (And Most Magnetic) Note Taking
Techniques For Lectures

1. Release Yourself From Note Taking

To be honest, I often prefer not to take notes at all if I can avoid it.

At least ... not the first time around.

How is avoiding note taking possible?

How is it even responsible? Desirable?

Especially when you're someone dumping thousands of dollars into a university education, a certification course or other live educational event.

Easy.

Just press record.

Many speakers will allow you to record their talks. And when you can record, you can simply release yourself to absorb the information without distracting yourself with the need to capture any of it.

I know this is counter intuitive, but it's well worth practicing. I suggest that you go to a few public lectures where you don't need to remember anything and then use the room as a Memory Palace as you listen.

Don't know how to create a Memory Palace? No problem. Consider this:

Once you have the Memory Palace tool working in your favor, cool things can start to happen.

When you remove the consequences of forgetting and then think back to the lecture and allow yourself to remember, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what comes back.

It's almost as if you've said to your memory, "Go ahead and forget everything. It will be fine."

Of course, you're not actually saying that, and this "reverse psychology" could backfire.

But by releasing the outcome, you'll likely focus more on the proceedings and remember more by default.

You can practice being more present in the room and using a Memory Palace.

Allowing yourself to recall information without notes provides you with profoundly powerful memory exercise.

Things can go wrong with recording devices. But if you have a solid network of friends, they can supply you with their notes and commentary.

Now, you might be thinking...

What if I'm a loner? What if I don't like studying with friends or comparing notes? What if I'm too shy to ask?

Don't worry. I get it. I'm like that too. But the brain benefits of studying and discussing with other people are too high to miss. Use my mental strength guide to help you make a change.

If nothing else, you can at least meet with other students online for asynchronous discussion or have your camera off in Zoom rooms.

But please do make an effort. It might be hard at first, but it's outside your comfort zone that all the growth and benefits will be found.

2. Take Notes From The Recording

Recordings are powerful assets. You can listen to them anytime you want in the future, as many times as you want. They can also serve as the basis for these 5 Sensory Memory Exercises.

And you can take notes at your leisure with one powerful asset:

You're encountering the information for the second time, not the first.

You've already got the broad overview, and you've primed your memory with reverse psychology. And you're also in a position to listen more strategically.

Plus, when you take notes from the recording, you're able to do it in a preferred environment free from the distractions of other people in the room. You're even free from the visual distractions created by many speakers themselves.

You can review recordings as often as you wish.

If you like 2x-ing your content, you can listen to it faster on the second review.

You can also pause the recording so that you're taking notes without missing out on any of the information yet to come.

Speakers often don't prepare lectures for the purpose of creating recordings. Their lack of intention to perform for your posterity can make the recording slow, punctuated by "dead air" and filled with the sounds of people and paper shuffling.

That's why I like to use 2x speed and sometimes even go through them in small doses of 15 minutes at a time. But the review is worth it no matter how you slice it up.

Also, it's important that you shut off all distractions when re-listening to material. If you don't, you risk missing the same information you failed to notice the last time.

3. Minimize Notes, Maximize Creativity

Although I do like to attend lectures and take no notes at all, I still always have a notebook. The discipline of always carrying a memory journal is one of the best accelerated learning techniques you can have.

And in that notebook, I like to doodle. I've doodled in lecture halls around the world. And it's also a great activity while watching or listening to recorded lectures.

The longer the lecture and the more attention they require, the more I find doodling beneficial.

Why?

Because long content can make me fidgety. No matter how enthralling it is, I like to be moving.

The best part?

Drawing doesn't exclude note taking. Rather, it shapes and informs it.

As I draw, I write down keywords and notes that seem interesting to me and useful for further exploration.

In a way, doodling while paying attention to information is like mindmapping, but without creating a deliberate mind map. It also helps me focus on the information as it flows in real time without being distracted by writing down things said seconds or minutes ago while new information is accumulating.

There are also different kinds of drawing that are useful. I would divide these between doodling abstract shapes and forms and drawing characters.

For many years, I drew abstractions almost entirely. Then I started drawing figures. Doctor Fuse Less is one figure in particular who came up in my notebooks again and again.

In either case, I found that by drawing the same things repetitively while focusing on lectures helped me focus even more on the material. It's being creative and giving the body something to do without creating anything from scratch.

This lowers the cognitive drain of the doodling and maximizes how it can focus your attention like a laser on what you're learning.

After that, the keywords you write down on the page are triggers or catalysts for remembering what was discussed.

You increase your focus on the content.

You give your memory exercise by letting it decode keywords you've made, rather than having to read through hastily written notes later.

You might struggle to decode the keywords you noted down.

You also might get better at drawing, but you can't expect to get an A+ on an exam if you cover it with doodles.

4. Be A Note Taking Maximalist (If You're Prepared To Follow-Up)

Sometimes I like to take massive amounts of notes. To do this, I just go hog wild.

There is no particular strategy. It's just to write down as much as I can in a linear fashion.

Is this effective?

Yes and no.

But in order to make sure that it is effective as possible, I tend to type these kinds of notes later into a document or a summary.

I talked about the power of writing summaries last week when we discussed instant gratification, and that raises an interesting point.

Writing down as much as you possibly can during a lecture is essentially succumbing to scarcity. You're acting out of the fear that you're going to miss something.

We need to be really careful about this fear.

Why?

Because chances are, fear will cause you to write down a bunch of useless information and actually miss the most important points.

Why does this happen? Because you'll be note taking while the more relevant information is streaming past you, outside of your awareness.

And you can't write summaries of information you missed.

So if you're going to use the maximalist technique, back it up with a recording so you can review the lecture later.

Your wrists and arms get lots of exercise. You feel like you've accomplished a lot.

Most times you won't have accomplished much. Instead, it was a bunch of activity that crowded your attention when you needed to be focused elsewhere.

5. Have a note taking strategy and style planned in advance

Now that you have some more approaches in your note taking arsenal, you can start practicing them.

But I find that one of the most important aspects of note taking is simply being strategic about what you write down.

For example, I've had a lot of students who write down all the book titles I mention ... but they're not the type of students who ever go and read those books.

As a result, they miss out on what I'm actually saying about those books while writing the titles down.

But if you notice that you have the habit of writing down a bunch of information you never follow up on, you stand to gain a lot by writing down only so much information as you can and will follow up on during the post reading phase.

On the other hand, maybe you don't have to attend the lecture at all. You can skip a whole lot of lectures entirely by simply reading an article written by the speaker and then reading all the books and articles mentioned in the bibliography. I have done this many times and feel confident that I gained as a result and never lost.

Or, you can combine reading material by the lecturer and attend the lecture. Pre-reading is a great strategy and one that will maximize the value of every lecture you attend.

You'll be prepared and have maximum flexibility.

None. Unless you're the type of person who gets so caught up in preparation that you suffer analysis paralysis.
Pros:
Magnetic Tips For Beyond The Lecture

Levels of Processing Effect
Cons:
Speaking of pre-reading and post-reading, one of the best things you can do regardless of how you take notes is read beyond the lecture.

And understand that you get more bang for your buck if you also speak with others about what you've encountered in lectures.

Some of my favorite memories of university involve the discussion groups I attended with my fellow students.

In English 1300, for example, a small cluster of us all walked away with the top grades.

Why?

Because after many of the lectures and tutorials, we met to discuss the material further.

I'll never forget sitting up in the 7th-floor Grad Lounge of the Ross Building.

I don't think we were aware of it at the time, but think of the unconscious message we were giving ourselves.

A first-year course and we chose the grad lounge as our meeting room for discussion. We treated this first-year course as if it was graduate-level material and that gave all of us a cutting edge.

And while we were there... we took more notes!

Later, in grad school, I recall other student groups with different dynamics.

In one of my favorites, we would each voluntarily read an article to present to the group. In this way, each of us was exposed to additional reading material for which we had no time. Yet, we could still take notes about the key points, remember these and enjoy the effect of priming our memory for future encounters with that text or references to it.

Write summaries

I hated it at the time, but one of my grad school professors always made me write 300-500 word summaries of the books I read for a directed reading course.

(That means, it was not a course with other students, but a program of reading and writing just between her and I.)

From this experience, I learned the power of going beyond note taking. I learned to process the information in my own words, which is incredibly powerful for memory and reading comprehension.

I often take notes on index cards.

That way, I can shuffle them around, but more importantly, they can be stored in baggies and alphabetized by topic.

I put them in plastic baggies because I learned that elastic bands rot over time and ruin the cards.

A lesson learned, to be sure, and to be expected, because...

Effective Note Taking Is A Process That Develops Over Time

Effective note taking skills are everywhere. There are scientific studies well worth your attention too, such as this Scientific American article about not taking notes with a laptop.

Whatever you do, I suggest that you approach note taking as an art and a science. Make sure that you experiment with multiple styles and track your results.

As you pay attention to what's happening more consciously, you'll learn more about what works for you and lean towards your preferences with greater understanding.

But at all times, choose flexibility. Make sure you have on hand what you need whenever you attend a lecture or recording of one so that all your bases are covered.

And above all, remove all stress. So many learners bring so much worry about the game of education that they forget to play it.

But learning really is a game. It's one you can win too, provided you put your memory first. And provided you have the mental strength strategies we all need to succeed.

And to help with that, I'm confident these note taking techniques - if you give them a try in combination with the bigger picture of your rest, relaxation, health and a Magnetic Memory Palace Network - will force you to remember more without so much as breaking a sweat.

Matthew Clark was one of my favorite profs in grad school. Through the magic of the Internet, I now have the chance to take some notes from one of his lectures.

Wanna trade?

Last modified: July 10, 2020
Bonus:

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How to Memorize Notes: 5 Proven Note Taking Techniques

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Podcast: Download Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | RSS Tired of ineffective note taking techniques? You know the kind: The ideas behind them seem good, but ... they're not exactly techniques you would ever actually use. And every time you try some new note taking technique ...

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Editor's note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub

W HERE COVID-19 strikes, it reveals hard truths. In recent weeks Latin America has become the centre of the pandemic, responsible for over half of daily deaths. The region's acute health crisis is accompanied by an economic decline unrivalled in the developing world. The IMF forecasts that output in the region will shrink by 9.4% in 2020, more than three times the contraction of 3% projected for emerging economies as a whole. The economic and social devastation wreaked by the pandemic is all the more painful for coming on the heels of two underwhelming decades. Investors had waxed enthusiastic about Latin America's prospects during the great emerging-market boom of the 2000s and the 2010s, only to be disappointed. The few gains that were made seem almost certain to be reversed.

The economies of Latin America are far from homogeneous. Many share characteristics, however, that have conspired to make the region among the hardest hit in the world. In some places lockdowns have been stringent: Peru, for example, took the extraordinary step of closing its mines, the foundation of its economy, contributing to the IMF 's grim forecast of a decline in output of 14% this year. But big and dense cities, with high rates of poverty and substantial segments of the population in informal work, have limited the effectiveness of lockdowns. The large informal sector, together with weak state capacity, has also undermined the reach of government relief and exacerbated the economic collapse. Populist blowhards with little time for experts govern the region's biggest economies, compounding its problems.

The bleakness of 2020 in Latin America also owes much to the condition of its economies before the coronavirus spread. Many limped into the new decade. Growth across the continent-even excluding Venezuela, whose economy collapsed catastrophically in recent years-was just 1.8% in 2018 and 0.8% in 2019. By the start of this year, Argentina and Mexico were already in recession; many other countries were stagnating-including Brazil, which enjoyed only the briefest of respites after a serious political and economic crisis in 2015 and 2016.

These woes fit a longer-running pattern of Latin America falling behind. The turn of the millennium marked the start of a great surge in the fortunes of the emerging world, and a departure from the usual state of affairs, in which poorer countries only rarely caught up to rich-world incomes in sustained fashion. Trade grew explosively, commodity prices boomed and the developing world asserted itself more confidently on the world stage. In the 2000s real output per person across the emerging world (on a purchasing-power-parity basis) rose at an astonishing clip of 4.6% per year, or four times the pace achieved by rich economies. The great gaps in income between advanced countries and the rest that opened during the 20th century seemed destined to narrow and close in the 21st.

Latin America, however, proved a laggard. It managed an average growth rate in real per person incomes of just 1.9% in the 2000s: faster than in rich economies but the lowest of the emerging world (see chart). In the 2010s growth in the region ground to a near-halt, at just 0.5% per year, behind both the emerging-country average and the rich world. Latin America's relatively high incomes-its larger economies are nearly all middle-income-may have contributed to slower growth: the richer you are, the less scope to grow by borrowing established technologies from other places. Its isolation mattered, too. The fastest growing emerging economies of the era were industrialising countries in Europe and Asia, which could latch on to the manufacturing supply chains of advanced neighbours. Few Latin American economies, apart from Mexico, enjoyed similar opportunities. And although the quality of governance-and of macroeconomic policy in particular-has improved markedly since the debt crises and inflations of the 1980s and 1990s, corruption, crime and volatile politics have made Latin America a less hospitable place for investors than it might have been.

The countries of the future

Latin America has averted a debt crisis-so far. The Federal Reserve dollar-swap lines enjoyed by Mexico and Brazil have shielded them against troubles sparked by dollar shortages. IMF credit lines available to Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru have eased market pressure on the region. Central banks have been able to cut interest rates to provide something of a cushion against the pandemic's economic damage, without provoking capital flight.

Still, there is no escaping the fact that even the healthiest of Latin American economies faces a punishing road back to normality. The IMF's forecasts for growth in 2021 are decidedly tepid: GDP in the region is expected to expand by 3.7% next year, compared with 5.9% for the emerging world as a whole. Unless the growth in covid-19 infections falls rapidly, even those meagre projections will prove too optimistic. The reduction in inequality and poverty that was achieved in the past two decades is now at risk. The World Bank warns that poverty in the region could rise by as much as 23m this year. Government policy seems unlikely to alleviate these hardships. Mass protests erupted in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador last year. Political systems may be strained further.

It matters too that Latin America's three largest economies are among its most troubled. Argentina has defaulted on its debt-again-and faces a risk of runaway inflation. Brazil's epidemic rivals America's as the worst in the world; it may need help from the IMF to avoid a debt crisis, or turn instead to inflationary finance. Mexico suffers from threats to the rule of law, a president seemingly determined to scare off private investment, and an unpredictable northern neighbour, which is also its biggest export market.

For Latin America covid-19 is a double shock: a brutally painful tragedy in its own right, and the definitive end of a growth opportunity that the region largely failed to exploit. The future of its economies and its societies depends on whether Latin Americans can be persuaded that there will be other chances in the future-and that next time its governments will do more to seize them. ■

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "A Latin American tragedy"

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Editor's note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub W HERE COVID-19 strikes, it reveals hard truths. In recent weeks Latin America has become the centre of the pandemic, responsible for over half of daily deaths.

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Five Productivity FEYNMAN strategies for Learning: 🧠

i) See every challenge as an opportunity.
ii) Understanding is more important than memorization.
iii) Embrace uncertanties and doubts.
iv) Think and Focus deeply.
v) Learn from your mistakes and start over again.

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
Five Productivity FEYNMAN strategies for Learning: 🧠

i) See every challenge as an opportunity.
ii) Understanding is more important than memorization.
iii) Embrace uncertanties and doubts.
iv) Think and Focus deeply.
v) Learn from your mistakes and start over again. https://t.co/BLCbuf6e22

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Five Productivity FEYNMAN strategies for Learning: 🧠

i) See every challenge as an opportunity.
ii) Understanding is more important than memorization.
iii) Embrace uncertanties and doubts.
iv) Think and Focus deeply.
v) Learn from your mistakes and start over again. pic.twitter.com/BLCbuf6e22
— Prof. Feynman (@ProfFeynman) May 3, 2020

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Five Productivity FEYNMAN strategies for Learning: 🧠

i) See every challenge as an opportunity.
ii) Understanding is more important than memorization.
iii) Embrace uncertanties and doubts.
iv) Think and Focus deeply.
v) Learn from your mistakes and start over again. https://t.co/BLCbuf6e22

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Five Productivity FEYNMAN strategies for Learning: 🧠

i) See every challenge as an opportunity.
ii) Understanding is more important than memorization.
iii) Embrace uncertanties and doubts.
iv) Think and Focus deeply.
v) Learn from your mistakes and start over again. https://t.co/BLCbuf6e22

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Five Productivity FEYNMAN strategies for Learning: 🧠

i) See every challenge as an opportunity.
ii) Understanding is more important than memorization.
iii) Embrace uncertanties and doubts.
iv) Think and Focus deeply.
v) Learn from your mistakes and start over again.

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ven before the pandemic came along, the world economy faced a set of deepening crises: a climate emergency, extreme inequality and huge disruption to the world of work, with robots and AI systems replacing humans.

Conventional economic theories have had little to offer. On the contrary, they have acted like a cage around our thinking, vetoing a range of progressive policy ideas as unaffordable, counter-productive, incompatible with free markets, and so on. Worse than that, economics has led us, in a subtle, insidious way, to internalise a set of values and ways of seeing the world that prevents us even imagining various forms of radical change.

Since economic orthodoxy is so completely embedded in our thinking, escape from it demands more than a short-term spending splurge to prevent immediate economic collapse, vital though that is. We must dig deeper to uncover the economic roots of the mess we're in. Putting it more positively, what do we want from post-coronavirus economics?

Mainstream economics has taught us that the only rational way to deal with an uncertain future is to quantify it, by assigning a probability to every possibility. But even with the best expertise in the world, our knowledge often falls far short. Frequently we struggle to predict which outcomes are more likely. Worse still, there may be outcomes we haven't even considered, futures that no one had imagined, as the pandemic has so vividly shown.

Framing the future in terms of probabilities gives us the illusion of knowledge and control, which is extraordinarily tempting, but it's all hubris. In the run-up to the 2007 financial crisis, bankers were proud of their models. Then that August, the Goldman Sachs chief financial officer admitted the bank had spotted huge price moves in some financial markets, several times in one week. Yet according to its models, each of these moves was supposed to be less likely than winning the UK national lottery jackpot 21 times in a row. World events sometimes demand humility.

There are clear lessons here for how to address the climate emergency: rather than focusing on the average climate impacts predicted by mathematical models that depend on probabilistic knowledge that is highly unreliable, we must think seriously about worst-case scenarios, and take steps to avoid them. Yet economic orthodoxy pushes us away from precautionary action. If mainstream economics has a single overarching objective or principle, it is efficiency.

Efficiency means getting the most "bang for your buck", the most benefit for every pound spent. Any other course of action is wasteful, surely? But eliminating waste implies eliminating excess capacity, and we now see the consequences of that in health systems worldwide. Our obsession with efficiency, if it means failing to plan for a pandemic or a climate emergency, will cost lives.

Our priority should be resilience, not efficiency. We need to build resilient systems and economies that are explicitly designed to withstand worst-case scenarios - and have a fighting chance of coping with unforeseen disasters too.

Ultimately the problem with economic orthodoxy lies in how it frames our values and priorities. Decisions must always be about trade-offs - the weighing up of costs against benefits, ideally measured through prices in markets. If we take our ignorance about the future seriously, this cost-benefit calculus should not even get started. Because costs outweighing benefits is the oldest excuse for not taking precautions - and is a recipe for disaster when the benefits, or the costs of inaction, are vastly undervalued.

Cost-benefit thinking also leads us to assume that all values can be expressed in monetary terms. Many politicians and business leaders fixate on statements such as "a 2°C rise in average global temperature will reduce GDP by up to 2%", as though a fall in GDP measures the true costs of the climate emergency.

In practice, this thinking means that the value of everything is measured by how much people offer to pay for it. Since the rich can always pay more than the poor, priorities get skewed towards the desires of the rich, away from the needs of the poor. So more money is spent on R&D for anti-wrinkle creams than for malaria treatments. Big Pharma has been relatively uninterested in developing vaccines, because a vaccination programme only works if the poor get vaccinated too, which limits the price manufacturers can charge.

We might seem to be beyond that now: the world has woken up, and rich countries will spend "whatever it takes" to tackle the pandemic. But Covid 19 vaccine research - and countless other fields of medical research with the potential to save as many lives in the long-term - needs continuous, reliable funding over many years. Once the market sees better profit elsewhere, funding will be cut, and the researchers will retire or move on, their experience lost.

Economic orthodoxy supports the narrative that this pandemic is a unique disaster no one could have prepared for, and with no wider lessons for economics and politics. This story suits some of the world's billionaires, but it's not true. There is an alternative: the pandemic provides further evidence that to tackle the climate emergency, inequality and any emerging crises, we must re-think our economics from the bottom up.

* Jonathan Aldred is an economist at Cambridge University and author of Licence to be Bad: how economics corrupted us

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This pandemic has exposed the uselessness of orthodox economics | Jonathan Aldred

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ven before the pandemic came along, the world economy faced a set of deepening crises: a climate emergency, extreme inequality and huge disruption to the world of work, with robots and AI systems replacing humans. Conventional economic theories have had little to offer.

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Photo Producer for Commercial Advertising Published on Pret a Manger is a fast food chain based in the United Kingdom. This presentation features a case study on the company, it's brand essence and an analysis of the marketing mix: product, price, packaging, distribution, marketing communications, and consumer information.

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Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get them in front of Issuu's millions of monthly readers.

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Influence of stakeholders - shaerholders

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Influence of stakeholders - shaerholders

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One of Boohoo's largest shareholders has sold the majority of its stake in the online fashion retailer, saying the company's response to reports of poor working conditions in its supply chain had been inadequate.

Aberdeen Standard Investments sold off 27m shares this week, representing two-thirds of its shareholding, as it said recent events had knocked its conviction that Boohoo was improving standards. It is not clear if Aberdeen intends to sell its remaining 13m shares.
Boohoo co-founder Jalal Kamani linked to Leicester garment factory
Lesley Duncan, the deputy head of UK equities at Aberdeen Standard, which was the company's sixth largest shareholder before the share sale, said it had invested in Boohoo when it listed on the stock market in 2015, at which point the fashion firm met its ethical criteria.

She said: "Over the years we have lobbied the company to improve its management of supply chain transparency, environmental efficiency and working conditions. While we would have liked progress to have been quicker we did feel that progress was being made.

"However, in the last few weeks our concerns have grown on the progress being made, which even before recent developments had negatively impacted our conviction levels in the company. Having spoken to Boohoo's management team a number of times this week in light of recent concerning allegations, we view their response as inadequate in scope, timeliness and gravity."

Duncan said Aberdeen Standard tried to use its influence as an investor to prompt change but in instances where standards had not been met, divestment was appropriate and responsible. The shares sold were worth nearly £80m at Thursday's closing price. The largest shareholder in Boohoo is its co-founder and executive chairman, Mahmud Kamani, with a 12% stake.

The divestment came despite Boohoo announcing on Wednesday an independent review of its UK supply chain. The review, led by Alison Levitt QC, will be accompanied by a £10m investment in "eradicating malpractice" in its supply chain.

Ethical investment experts said Aberdeen Standard's move, which followed allegations of low pay and poor hygiene at a Leicester-based supplier to Boohoo, was likely to influence other groups to reassess their holdings in the company.

Ben Nelmes, head of public policy at the UK Sustainable Investment & Finance Association, said: "Boohoo is a company that a lot of ethical investors have had concerns about for a long time. Some won't go near it and some have made repeated representations to management to get them to improve what they are doing. No doubt having seen what Boohoo have said and done in recent days, some will be leaning more towards what Aberdeen Standard have done."

According to the Morningstar research group, 20 sustainable funds have investments in Boohoo, including funds offered by Legal & General Investment Management and Man Group. L&G said it would be raising concerns with Boohoo's management in the coming weeks.

Man Group said: "The reported issues at Boohoo are concerning and our stewardship team is looking closely at how we can most effectively engage with them on it."

Shares in Boohoo dropped 2.3% on Friday to 280p, partly reversing a bounceback on Thursday from three days of declines. The shares have dived 28% in a week, wiping £1.4bn off the value of the company - which is now worth £3.5bn. The hit came after allegations in the Sunday Times that a factory in Leicester supplying the company, which owns a string of brands including Nasty Gal and Pretty Little Thing, paid workers below the minimum wage and failed to provide adequate protection from the coronavirus outbreak.

The reports follow a string of exposés on poor labour rights in garment factories in Leicester, where Boohoo sources 40% of its clothing, kicked off by an Ethical Trading Initiative-backed report in 2015.

Thulsi Narayanasamy, at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, which has campaigned for investors to divest from Boohoo over labour rights issues, said: "This [divestment] has been a long time coming. It is remarkable that it has taken an exposé in 2020, five years after the issue was first raised. It should be taken as a sign for other brands that poor labour rights are not acceptable."
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Boohoo shareholder sells off shares in firm worth nearly £80m

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One of Boohoo's largest shareholders has sold the majority of its stake in the online fashion retailer, saying the company's response to reports of poor working conditions in its supply chain had been inadequate. Aberdeen Standard Investments sold off 27m shares this week, representing two-thirds of its shareholding, as it said recent events had knocked its conviction that Boohoo was improving standards.