[Timely] Romance from Ralph Lauren

Have you seen the Ralph Lauren "Romance" commercial on TV? I found it to be a "beautiful" video, giving the right message and at a sub-conscious level, making the viewers want it! Couldn't be a better time to launch the campaign than during the V-fever time!

You can watch this and all the commercials of Ralph Lauren at the corporate website. Just click on "RL-TV" while you are there and you can watch this commercial.

Alternatively, you can watch this and other variations of this commercial at YouTube.

And, did i mention, it was a TV commercial? I watched it on TV.

A Change in Perspective

A picture can be taken from different angles. Some angles produce the best shot, some not. But nonetheless, all these angles show the same truth!

Well, the point I am trying to make is that “a change in perspective does not necessarily shifts the core”. Instead, it brings in more variety and options for us to talk, think, and argue about. In organizational context, we often tend to get caught in the “do not touch, it is working” complacency or high “self efficacy” bias of executives.

Whatever, it be, the winning organizations always like to challenge their assumptions.

For now, I will end with a simple suggestion. When you ask your folks to answer Y/N questions – just change the meanings to read as follows:

Y – Why?
N – Why Not?

See, what difference this simple exercise makes. It will charge up the room and suddenly you will see better responses to your Yes and No questions. Don’t believe me? Try it!

Microsft Bid for Yahoo!

My last month's post (Jan 14th) "Microsoft+Yahoo>Google" - the billion dollar question - where I had written about Microsoft's interest in Yahoo, seems to be getting closer to reality. With today's announcement of Microsoft's offer of $45 Bn to yahoo, where at one end Yahoo stocks rose by 60% during the day, Google's dropped. This, in spite of the fact that Google showed 17% growth in Q4, its stock price went down by 7%. As a side note: Q3 profit for Google was 46%. Wall Street is benchmarking Google against Google :)

Anyways, it will be an interesting development and many equations will change if the Microsoft-Yahoo deal gets finalized. It is worth the wait to see what happens next - I surely am watchful.

In my previous post, I had mentioned and I repeat "But, at $45 billion, is this game worth playing?"

These are some related interesting read, that adds different perspectives to the deal:

CBS News

M&A and the Anti-trust

How it Helps Google - Information Week

80% odds that deal will be successful

India Connection