Just a quick apology and explanation to my Brain Storm! Business Podcast listeners.

I've been sick for about a month, and I'm finally feeling a little less like death. I'm just not up to doing a podcast this week, especially since I can't talk for long without coughing.

So I should feel good enough to deliver a new business podcast for next week. Thanks for your patience with me!

Penny Haynes, 1st Podcast Publishing

This week's Digital Business Books' free ebook is a special excerpt from Brain Storm! Volume 1, an ebook with hundreds of brainstorming ideas based on business news and technology.

To claim your free copy, go to the Special Offers section at DigBizBooks.com and add this to your ebook collection.

Check back each week at DigBizBooks.com to see what the next free ebook is.

Horace was in advertising when he met Otto Stern, a mail-order plant entrepreneur. The plants ended up in poor condition from transportation, so they found someone to develop a water soluble fertilizer. Horace's wife named it Miracle Gro.

Their first ad in 1951 capitalized on America's post-war infatuation with science and focused on laboratory tests and amazing results. His advertising was sensual, scientific with tests, and personal through testimonials.

So the basic three things Horace did to succeed were: [Read More!]

Welcome to the Brain Storm! Preview Channel.

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Accidental Guru - Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell's new book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is the New Yorker writer's latest book, focusing on the phenomenon of how "our ability to read people's intentions is paralyzed in high-stress situations." His first book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference moved him from a staff writer to a marketing guru - or even god. "His New Yorker articles have become reading for B-school students." However, when asked about the influence he has had on America, he reminds them that even best sellers reach less than 1% of Americans.

Yet, it's who he is reaching that has made the difference. Starbucks' Howard Schultz says the tipping-point is what "made" his company. Gladwell created a system of classification that is divided into "connectors, mavens and salesmen", and companies have redesigned their entire Relationship Management strategies to fit the model. Companies started hiring and deploying into the field "key influencers", and making The Tipping Point required reading. Simmons Market Research then "created the Tipping Point Segmentation System - syndicated research clients can use in order to understand how to reach the 12.5% of the U.S. population that falls within Gladwell's classification of tipping-point segments."
[Read More!]

Yule Log Jam

Do you really know how goods get to your local retailer for you to purchase for Christmas? There really is a “long boat to China”, or FROM China, and it brings the pretty packages that we buy during the holidays, as well as all year long.

But that boat from China has to dock somewhere, and someone has to unload those packages, and some trucker or train has to deliver them to distribution centers and retail outlets. What we don’t realize is that we are running out of time and space to complete import business as usual, especially for the holiday crunch.

“The Los Angeles-Long Beach ports handle 43% of America’s imports.” This holiday season, 137 ships came sailing in, and only 94 of them could fit into the harbor, and some who docked had to wait as many as eight days to unload, which is twice as long as normal. These ports are the only ones large enough to handle the big ships, some with more than 4,000 containers on board. Combined, they handle “62% of all shipments to West Coast ports from Asian exporters.” [Read More!]

Publishers Make A Splash with Beach Reads

Click the title to hear the audio article.

“Five New York publishing houses are teaming up with an exclusive [nature] resort [Little Dix Bay in the British Virgin Islands] to get new books in the right readers’ hands early.” Visitors to the resort will get an opportunity to read upcoming books before they are publicly released. Guests can order books, like room service, and return them when they leave.

“Word of mouth is the best way to sell books, and it’s the hardest to create. But if you’re sitting by the pool and you see other people reading a book that’s free for the taking, you might just pick it up and discover a new author.” That’s especially true since there has not been a pool there until this year, and there is absolutely no television on site. [Read More!]

Murdoch’s Air War (DirecTV has taken off like a rocket)

British Sky Broadcasting, or BSkyB, allows 7.4 million Brits to place an onscreen bet on a soccer game, and switch camera angles to better watch his favorite soccer team. Sky owns almost 70% of the pay-tv market in England.

Rupert Murdoch has taken over DirecTV (from Hughes Electronics, a unit of GM), and plans on upgrading it to the same level of interactivity of BSkyB. DirecTV has added 14 million viewers, 600,000 of which were cable viewers. Satellite is completely digital, whereas cable is still trying to upgrade its customers with digital systems. However, cable companies aren’t sacrificing profits today for possible customers tomorrow, as Murdoch is. He’s able to out spend them, and it’s paying off – right now. [Read More!]

GM’s Saturn Problem

14 years and 15 billion dollars later, Saturn hasn’t made one cent. Saturn was originally created as a “different kind of company” so non-GM customers would purchase GM cars in disguise. Plastic dent free bodies, and very high customer satisfaction rankings kept it going, but there were no profits for GM, the parent company.

Competition from Japan and Korea weren’t figured into the equation. All auto operations are running in the red. So what is GM going to do to get out of this financial quagmire? Unload Saturn? Of course not – they are going to sink 3 billion more dollars into Saturn – and make it just another GM car, sort of.

The name won’t change, so hopefully the customer loyalty won’t change (because 70% of Saturn buyers won’t even consider purchasing another GM car), but the designs and parts will be wholly GM. It will be another example of one car created with slightly different variations under different names – but all basically the same car by one manufacturer.

Why not just get rid of Saturn? [Read More!]

The iPod people have invaded Apple’s stores!

By Andy Serwer, Fortune, December 2004

Hardware companies can’t do retail? Says who? Not Apple. Not with the iPod sales spiraling almost out of control. There was a line of people waiting to pay $300 to $400 for an iPod. That says a lot about their product – or is it their marketing?

Apple has sold 6 million iPods to date, with 2 million being sold just in the last quarter. Within 14 days, Apple increased their projected sales by 30%, gauging it by early customer responses and sales. And Apple’s stock has more than doubled this year.

Next move? A mini-mini-iPod which only holds 60 songs but costs $150. It’s a generational thing in many ways. Older generations think of Apple as something weird – the younger generation thinks of Apple as hot, which could affect Mac purchases eventually. [Read More!]

Fabio Trades Book Jackets for Jackets

By Julia Boorstin, Fortune December 2004

Fabio has moved from modeling for romance novels to selling coats through Walmart’s Sam’s Club, which can’t keep them in stock. Fabio says he was always interested in the fashion industry, and learned from his mother that women had the buying power, “even if men have the illusion of running the world.”

The question was “Why coats?” His fans complained about the scarcity of fashionable clothing outside of big cities. When he approached Sam’s Club about it, they were very skeptical, saying that coats were the hardest thing to sell. They test marketed in 2 stores, to see if they could sell 400 in three weeks. They sold 6,000 almost immediately, and Sam’s Club ordered coats for all 600 of its U.S. stores. [Read More!]

The Big Benioff - Software On Demand at Salesforce.com

By Daniel Roth, Fortune December 2004

Salesforce.com is changing the way you think about software – well, as long as you want to be connected to the internet. What he does is create software that you utilize online, instead of resident on your computer. Why would you ever want to pay someone a monthly fee for a program you could keep resident on your computer? That is the question Benioff is waiting for you to ask.

Step back and look at the bigger picture. Don’t just think of it as a program you pay for as long as you live, think of it as a program that you pay to use, but don’t ever have to worry about updating or upgrading. Think of it as a program that has an increasing number of software add-ons that work seamlessly with this program, and you don’t have to worry about compatibility. This is called Software On Demand.

Benioff’s method of attention-getting has included hiring protesters “to demonstrate outside of archrival Siebel Systems’ events – and even hired fake news crews to “cover” them. The B-52’s performed at Salesforce.com’s launch party (at that time the company had no customers). David Bowie sang at a fundraiser sponsored by the company, and Arnold Schwarzenegger helped kick off an update of the service. [Read More!]

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Introduction: Scott Allen is the leading expert on building quality business relationships online, offering training programs in conjunction with social networking sites LinkedIn, Ryze, and others, plus courses on creating a powerful personal presence and growing your social network on the internet. He has been quoted in ABCNews.com, CFO, Christian Science Monitor, Sales and Marketing Management, and other major publications. A 20-year veteran entrepreneur and IT executive, he has implemented solutions for clients such as IBM, Computer Services Corporation, and Amazon.com. He was formerly VP of Professional Services and VP of Product Management for Mongoose Technology, an enterprise portal and community infrastructure vendor. As the Entrepreneurs Guide on About.com, he provides over 10,000 weekly readers with guidance and resources to help them start and develop their new businesses.