Big Brands Big Trouble

One of the most respected marketing gurus in the world shows why some of today's biggest brands are having trouble and how to avoid repeating their mistakes. It wasn't long ago that Levi-Strauss, Xerox, Crest, AT&T, Firestone, and Digital Equipment dominated their respective markets. What happened to undermine their standings and of those of other superbrands? Are their declines simply the inevitable consequence of change and the birth of new competition? In this important predecessor to the classic Differentiate or Die, "the king of positioning," Jack Trout answers that question with a resounding "No!" Writing in his signature, straight-from-the-hip style he reveals the disastrous marketing and strategy blunders that led to the dissolution of the most recognized superbrands. He clearly shows how those mistakes could have been avoided. With the help of in-depth case studies chronicling the events leading up to the falls from grace of Sears, Miller Brewing, Xerox, Crest, Burger King, and other past market leaders, he identifies the ten most common mistakes that big brands make, and he develops a set of expert guidelines for marketing managers and executives on how to build, protect, manage, and expand their companies' brands and avoid brand-killing blunders.

Hailed as "toweringly important" (Baltimore Sun), "a work of scrupulous and significant reportage" (E. L. Doctorow), and "an unforgettable historical drama" (Chicago Sun-Times), Big Trouble brings to life the astonishing case that ultimately engaged President Theodore Roosevelt, Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the politics and passions of an entire nation at century's turn. After Idaho's former governor is blown up by a bomb at his garden gate at Christmastime 1905, America's most celebrated detective, Pinkerton James McParland, takes over the investigation. His daringly executed plan to kidnap the radical union leader "Big Bill" Haywood from Colorado to stand trial in Idaho sets the stage for a memorable courtroom confrontation between the flamboyant prosecutor, progressive senator William Borah, and the young defender of the dispossessed, Clarence Darrow. Big Trouble captures the tumultuous first decade of the twentieth century, when capital and labor, particularly in the raw, acquisitive West, were pitted against each other in something close to class war. Lukas paints a vivid portrait of a time and place in which actress Ethel Barrymore, baseball phenom Walter Johnson, and editor William Allen White jostled with railroad magnate E. H. Harriman, socialist Eugene V. Debs, gunslinger Charlie Siringo, and Operative 21, the intrepid Pinkerton agent who infiltrated Darrow's defense team. This is a grand narrative of the United States as it charged, full of hope and trepidation, into the twentieth century.

At sumer camp, a boy is obsessed with finding Omah, a hairy creature that reportedly roams the woods.

A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we -- the everyday people whose data powers AI -- aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into -- one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI -- the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself -- is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.

It's all in the reflexes. Jack Burton from John Carpenter's cult-hit film, Big Trouble in Little China returns ... A direct sequel to the film, Jack is back and he's brought some old friends--and a few enemies. Kidnapped and dropped into communist Russia, Jack and his best friend Wang must survive .the KGB, the ancient Chinese Wing Kong, and a series of fantastical horrors if they ever want to get home. With the help of Gracie Law and Egg Shen, they will have to unlock a centuries-old mystery that could tear apart the very fabric of reality in order to survive.

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

The authorized and in-continuity sequel to the cult hit film Big Trouble in Little China, co-written by its creator, John Carpenter, presented in a new value priced format! Jack Burton, a macho, truck-driving adventurer, finds a stowaway demon hiding on his rig, The Pork Chop Express, but that soon becomes the least of his troubles. He helped his best friend Wang save his fiancée from the clutches of an ancient sorcerer, but now the wedding has been invaded by more evil forces with one thing on their minds—revenge against Jack Burton! Director John Carpenter returns with Eric Powell (The Goon) and artist Brian Churilla (Secret History of D.B. Cooper) in the continuing adventures of Jack Burton, taking place mere moments after the ending to the cult-classic film. Collects Big Trouble In Little China #1-12, previously collected in Big Trouble in Little China Volumes 1-3. Legacy Editions collect every issue of the most popular BOOM! Studios series in chronological order and in a newly designed, value priced format for the very first time

Ries and Trout share their rules for certain successes in the world of marketing. Combining a wide-ranging historical overview with a keen eye for the future, the authors bring to light 22 superlative tools and innovative techniques for the international marketplace.

Not just another day at the office or is it? -The surgical technician ducks as a stapler flies past his head during the concluding moments of a lengthy and difficult operation. -The high-powered, internationally known finance guru seeks to turn fortunes around at the university of which he is now president and finds himself a leader without followers. -The powerful satraps silently sabotage the CEO's desperately needed growth initiative. These are "moments that cannot be ignored" -- events, actions, comments that stop people in their tracks and, in one fell swoop, make it blindingly clear that an organization is stuck and unable to move forward. And they have become regular occurrences in today's corporations, non-profits, and educational institutions as new forms of work, communication, and technology expose the ways in which an organization's culture -- or "the way we do things around here" -- conflicts with new competitive demands. The result: telling incidents -- all too visible elephants in the room -- that reveal underlying conflicts as well as hidden assets. In The Moment You Can't Ignore, Malachi O'Connor and Barry Dornfeld tell fascinating "you are there" stories of people and organizations as they encounter and then navigate through and beyond these un-ignorable moments, and show what we can learn from them. They outline the big questions organizations need to ask themselves about identity, leadership, and the capacity to innovate that an understanding of culture can help answer, and deliver powerful insights into recognizing and harnessing hidden assets that point in the direction of a new future. In our age of porous organizations and constant change, The Moment You Can't Ignore demonstrates that the adage, "culture eats strategy for lunch," is more relevant now than ever.