Ikea boss proud to be stingy

Geneva – Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, ranked 4th richest man in the
world, drives a 15-year-old car and always flies economy class, in part
to inspire his 90 000 employees worldwide to see the virtue of
frugality. full story

Marketers listen

If there was one quote I would keep in mind as a marketer is as follows “The consumer is our teacher — listen and learn.”

H&R Block doesn’t know tax

“Shares
of H&R Block fell on Friday after the tax preparation and software
provider admitted it had miscalculated its own state income taxes,
understating its liabilities by $32 million as of April 30, 2005.” full story

Institutional Power Outage

Steve Rubel quotes from the latest Forrester Research paper stating that institutional power is on its way out and has implications for marketers. Unless you are totally clueless you shall be shocked by the findings.

TTC clueless about cluetrain

A Toronto blogger who came up with his own version of the subway anagram on BoingBoing has been sent a cease and desist. Wow, people are excited about your service and you decide to send lawyers after them to stop it. When a decision like this is made I wonder if the marketing department had any say. If they were involved, they are totally clueless on the cluetrain.

Disturbing memo to marketers

George Silverman’s memo to marketers, don’t forget to read his thoughts about Jack Trout’s article in Forbes.

Complexity causes 50% of product returns: scientist

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Half of all malfunctioning products
returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but
customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices, a
scientist said on Monday. full story