Old Spice, mean CEOs and a teen business queen – July business links
Thursday, July 29, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
| Tags: links,
online,
sales,
BP,
advertising,
Elevate,
CEOs,
Zappos,
payouts,
Old Spice
Our monthly pick of the most popular web stories for business leaders and entrepreneurs.
CEO payouts: Golden parachutes: Following the £1 million payout to departing BP chief executive Tony Hayward this week, The Economist rounds up the bosses who walked away with far less modest payouts.
Do high incomes make CEOs mean?: The answer, it would appear in this report, is yes. But which came first, the mean demeanour or the high salary? Chicken, egg, anyone?
18 – and already on her third business: When she’s not signing $100,000 investment deals, teenager Diane Keng is busy co-founding MyWEBoo.com with her slightly older brother Steven. It’s a service that helps people manage multiple social media personas from one place, which sounds like a winner to us.
Weirdness is one of the 10 core values of Zappos: Zappos is an American footwear (now also clothing) company renowned for its customer service and word-of-mouth recommendations. In this four-minute video, CEO Tony Hsieh reveals the company’s 10 core values, which include ‘Deliver WOW through service’ and ‘Create fun and a little weirdness’, among the more traditional ‘Embrace and drive change’ and ‘Pursue growth and learning’. They’re good examples of how to put business values into plain English, but also Hsieh says Zappos both hires and fires on the basis of these. His interview question for weirdness, for example, is: ‘How weird are you, on a scale of 1 to 10?’. It’s Zappos’ way of celebrating an individual’s personality, which they encourage in their customer service; if the candidate doesn’t know how to respond, it’s a ‘no hire’. Weird? Wonderful? You decide.
Hey Old Spice haters, sales are up 107%: Proof, if needed, that an old-school brand can reinvent itself successfully via internet advertising. If you haven’t seen them yet, the new Old Spice adverts are both funny and clever! Watch them here…
FREE download of latest Elevate magazine: Issue 3 of Grant Thornton’s magazine for entrepreneurs and business leaders is now out. To get your free PDF copy, visit the downloads page (short registration required) or to receive future editions as a hard copy, please email your name and address to elevate@gtuk.com. In this issue: Chris Brogan on four ways to leverage social media for business; a Q&A with Nick Robertson, chief executive of ASOS; how to adapt your business to the modern economy; M&A in China; and how to find and land the best non-executive director roles.
Reader Comments (0)