Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles

′Küng’s book stands out for its focus on concepts, drivers, and dynamics. Its scope and learning are brilliant and dazzling. This updated edition will be a source of insight for students and a tool for industry veterans who seek the perspective of academia.′
– Eli Noam, Columbia Business School

′A landmark contribution to scholarship, Küng’s excellent book provides an empirically rich and analytically sharp-sighted guide to contemporary organizational strategies in a complex and dynamic media environment.′
– Gillian Doyle, University of Glasgow

′In the age of relentless technological disruption, unlimited distribution and non-professionalization, media firms are more dependent than ever on strategic management. Küng articulates the dimensions of media industries to account for an ever-increasing array of challenges and strategies.′
– David Craig, University of Southern California

In this Second Edition of a book many found invaluable for research and teaching, including myself, Küng accomplishes a challenging task: to preserve all the best qualities of the First Edition while both extending the scope and deepening understandings about strategic management theory in application to media industries.′
– Gregory Ferrell Lowe, University of Tampere

With the media industries facing unprecedented change and challenge from top to bottom, it has never been more vital to understand the elements of strategy and how they apply to media organizations.

This new edition:

• Shows innovation, disruption and strategic adaptation in action, with a stronger focus on a case-based approach
• Takes readers deep into case studies on BuzzFeed, The Guardian, Netflix, the New York Times and the BBC
• Explains strategic theory and concepts with insight and clarity
• Shows how to understand change and decision-making within media organizations.

This is the essential guide to change and management in the media industries – ideal for students of media studies, media economics and media management.

Coca-Cola. Harley-Davidson. Nike. Budweiser. Valued by customers more for what they symbolize than for what they do, products like these are more than brands–they are cultural icons. How do managers create brands that resonate so powerfully with consumers? Based on extensive historical analyses of some of America’s most successful iconic brands, including ESPN, Mountain Dew, Volkswagen, Budweiser, and Harley-Davidson, this book presents the first systematic model to explain how brands become icons. Douglas B. Holt shows how iconic brands create “identity myths” that, through powerful symbolism, soothe collective anxieties resulting from acute social change. Holt warns that icons can’t be built through conventional branding strategies, which focus on benefits, brand personalities, and emotional relationships. Instead, he calls for a deeper cultural perspective on traditional marketing themes like targeting, positioning, brand equity, and brand loyalty–and outlines a distinctive set of “cultural branding” principles that will radically alter how companies approach everything from marketing strategy to market research to hiring and training managers. Until now, Holt shows, even the most successful iconic brands have emerged more by intuition and serendipity than by design. With How Brands Become Icons, managers can leverage the principles behind some of the most successful brands of the last half-century to build their own iconic brands. Douglas B. Holt is associate professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School.

You lost your job six months ago. You’ve emailed 90 resumes. You’ve scoured the job boards and the help wanted ads. You’ve called recruiters, old bosses, former coworkers…but nothing. You’re scared. You’re beginning to think there are no jobs out there. But there ARE jobs. And you can get one of them–if you’re willing to try the job search technique that most people are too timid to try.

If you’re one of 9 million Americans looking for a job, you don’t want to go 12 to 24 months without a job offer (as many do). The trick is to tap into the hidden job market–where 90 percent of the jobs really are!

Get Hired FAST! shows you how to use a direct-calling strategy that will generate at least three interviews in three weeks. It gives you a 15-day Action Plan, complete with charts, scripts, and other tools that will enable you to use the direct-calling technique like a professional.

This no-holds-barred book also includes insider advice on how to ace the interview once your calling strategy pays off, negotiate the best offer, and keep the job once you get it.

Get Hired FAST! shows you where and how to identify key contacts in target companies, how to uncover crucial data about target companies, how to script calls to hiring managers in advance–and handle any scenario, from voicemail to conversations with contacts’ staffers.

A One-on-One Financial Planning Session with Suze Orman

With her New York Times bestseller The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, America’s leading financial expert Suze Orman transformed the concept of money forever by teaching us to recognize the emotional aspects of our relationship with it. Now, this fully revised edition of Suze Orman’s Financial Guidebook translates Suze’s own brand of motivation and inspiration into a user-friendly, hands-on workbook that will empower you to work through the nuts and bolts of personal finance, with Suze as your trusted adviser.

Updated to keep you abreast of our quickly shifting economy, you’ll find:

• Insightful exercises, quizzes, and worksheets to help you understand how your parents’ relationship with money affects yours, and what money means to you

• Up-to-the-minute information on tax codes, IRA rules and regulations, and long-term-care insurance

• Useful strategies for coping with the ever-changing landscape of educational costs, social security, and the stock market

• An outline of key questions that every financial adviser should ask you upon your initial meeting

• An in-depth analysis of all your monthly expenses, providing a realistic picture of just how much money you have to work with and how you may not be respecting your money as much as you should

Regardless of your age and income, it is never too early or too late to take control of your money. Suze Orman’s Financial Guidebook is the perfect companion to The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, the personal finance classic that changed the way millions of Americans viewed money. Full of self-tests, thought-provoking questions, and Suze’s easy-to-understand personal finance advice, here is your empowering approach to achieving financial freedom forever, with the best guide possible.

A rigorous two-year study of the top 800 value-creating public companies found that growth generated internally through a commitment to customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and profitability resulted in consistent employee retention, stock value improvements, and better returns on investment.

In The Road to Organic Growth, Edward Hess shares the full results of his breakthrough study, providing fresh, and often-surprising perspectives on what it really takes to foster organic growth. Using instructive examples from leading companies such as SYSCO, Best Buy,Tiffany & Company, Outback Steakhouse, and Stryker Corporation, Hess reveals the strategies these trailblazers used to achieve long-term growth from within.

Drawing upon original research, interviews, and in-depth corporate studies, Hess identifies the six keys to achieving organic growth and-most important-explains how to seamlessly and consistently incorporate them into a formula for sustainability and competitive advantage to

• Develop a simple, easy-to-understand business model and growth strategy
• Be entrepreneurial at the point of customer contact
• Measure everything-from finances to operations to behaviors
• Build an engaged, loyal, and multi-talented people pipeline
• Find humble, internally-focused operators to lead your company
• Be an execution and technology champion

  The Road to Organic Growth proves that you can build a sustainable, successful business without the expense of acquisitions, financial manipulations, or devaluing your employees. By exceeding customer expectations, building an employee-centric organization, and focusing intensely on measurement and performance, your company will achieve consistent, solid growth from within.