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Wal-Mart
Cutting the Number of Associates Daily
Inside the Retail
Giant
By Angie Eros
Associated Content
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What is Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart is the
happy face that we all see every time we go into pick up the common
items, like milk and bread; never did it occur to us that the things
that we so thoughtlessly set out of place on a distant shelf, or the few
cans of tomato soup that we might dishevel along the way, may make a
workers night just a little bit longer, stretching the already
microscopically thin work force just a little thinner. As the giant
struggles to keep it's standing in the world, it adapts and makes cuts
to benefit it falling profits. How big can Wal-Mart get? With annual
sales topping out in the billons, they continue to grow, but at what
cost? Profit seems to be the only force that has enabled this retail
giant to take over the market, as we know it; gone are the days of
quality, when a television would last for twenty or more years, when a
refrigerator or electric stove bought at the beginning of a marriage
would last past retirement. Blame it on China or Taiwan if one must, but
it is Wal-Mart that wants it faster and cheaper; if it is made out of
metal, make it out of plastic; if it requires cutting a step or two in
quality control, or even safety, anything to keep the numbers that
Wal-Mart is so obsessed with from dropping and the profits high.
Things are also changing on the inside
of this super power; not only is it becoming more and more difficult for
workers to get their jobs completed by the end of their shift, due to
labor cuts and cross training in five or more departments at one time,
but also a cyclone of new policies created to suite the company and not
the families that depend on it for their livelihood. Tough it out for
years and see where it gets you; a piece of paper telling you what a
good worker you have been to the company, a good job pin to add to the
other junk trinkets of appreciation collected over the years. But will
anyone care when your body is broken from all the years of lifting and
moving things by yourself, because the labor budget was more important
than providing adequate staffing? Maybe a "Get Well" card in layaway and
then all at once, you're forgotten. Then the long road of finding out
that the health insurance you worked so hard to pay for throughout the
years is just as worthless as the pep rallies management gives each and
every day at their store meetings; the list goes on and on.
Wal-Mart has made the money, slain and
beat down the mom and pop stores of yesterday leaving nothing left but
themselves, changing their tide of retail from the low price leader, to
the leader of high prices and low quality, both in the products they
sell as well as the life and environment they provide for their workers.
Wal-mart is telling its once family oriented philosophy good-bye and it
employees make the choice. Family is no longer an option for wal-mart
and they don't care if you have been there forever, they come first.
There attendance policy doesn't even excuse you if you in the emergency
room dying. Show up or risk your job and that is the end of it. A
tornado could wipe out your house and you would still have to show up if
it didn't affect more than three fourths of the county. Management is
trained to handle each situation as if they could easily replace you.
Sure they could, for less and still get by or maybe they just want to
lower the number of paid employees all together to get the numbers up.
That is the situation in most of their store. Work with what you have
and enslave those already their. If you can run your store on a skeleton
crew do it and don't worry about whom gets sick and tired have being
your workhorse. They customers will understand and they profits will
soar. So the next time you knock over a can of beanie weenies or a
bottle of motor oil, make it neat, you never know who job you'll make
easier.
2007 © Associated Content
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German retailer to
reflag Wal-Mart shops
The Associated Press
December 29, 2006
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German retailer Metro AG's Real
division said Friday it would reflag 80 percent of Wal-Mart Store Inc.'s
former stores in Germany under its own name and close 15 of them by
mid-2007.
Metro bought Wal-Mart's German stores
earlier this year, and has already renamed six of them as Real markets.
Real said in a statement that it would also close the former Wal-Mart
headquarters in Wuppertal by the third quarter of 2007.
"The Real marketing network will be
strengthened for the long-term through taking over of most of the
Wal-Mart branches," the statement read.
"These locations are an outstanding
geographical and strategic fit for Real and will provide a clear
improvement of the company's position on the German market."
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The
WalMart Rule
Bruce Fleming
December 29, 2006
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In 2005 and 2006, one of the most-used
political slogans in Washington involved the so-called "Pottery Barn
rule," after the popular retailer. It had nothing to do with homewares,
however. The rule was this: "You break it, you own it"-it was thrown as
a reproach against the administration that invaded Iraq. (Little matter
that spokespeople for Pottery Barn protested that this in fact was not
their rule.) For the New Year, I propose another rule, which I call the
Wal-Mart Rule. It comes from Wal-Mart's disastrous experiences in
Germany, where they've recently gone bankrupt. The rule is this: In
foreign perception of the US, the perceiver, like the customer, is king.
In 2006, Wal-Mart, that seemingly
unstoppable juggernaut of low-price retailing that the left loves to
hate and the right sees as the proof that capitalism works, pulled out
of the world's third-largest economy, Germany. Wal-Mart, the formerly
invincible, went bankrupt, belly-up, pleite (as we say in German). Many
reasons were given: the loyalty to "corporate identity" demanded of
workers, a concept strange to some Germans; the fact that the Wal-Mart
director for Germany didn't even speak German; the fact that in our
so-PC times the store forbad "flirting" among workers, a prohibition
many Europeans think is merely puritanical and dumb; the fact that
workers were required to smile at and greet shoppers (Germans think
something is brewing if people are too friendly); and the fact that
Wal-Mart's big-box stores are simply too unlike the little mom-and-pop
stores, called "Aunt Emma Shops" in Germany, that have defined retailing
there for generations. Some economic commentators mentioned President
Bush's unloved Iraq War, and even more general anti-American sentiments
in the German populace.
Whatever the reasons, the result was
huge losses for Wal-Mart, and ultimately a pullout. Of course, we say.
If they don't like you in retailing, you simply pack up and leave, if
you have a place to leave to. You don't stay around and rail at those
stupid customers for not loving you more. You, the retailer, have
proposed; the customer has disposed. And that's all there is to it. If
people don't want what you're selling, you can't sell it, because they
won't buy it. They don't even have to give a justification for not
buying it. They just don't buy it. It's capitalism, buddy. Suck it up.
I propose the "Wal-Mart rule" as a
warning to Washington politicos. Thus: it doesn't do any good to rail at
people who don't want to buy what you're selling. If they're not buying
it, you either change your tune, or you pack up and go home. The
customer is king. Even in terms of world opinion.
Just now, as every opinion poll shows,
the US's public standing in the rest of the world has fallen to new
lows. We can certainly debate why that is so, but it's clear that the (wo)man
on the street outside the U.S. is simply not buying what the crowd in
Washington is selling. And it doesn't do a bit of good for the
inside-the-Beltway folks to excoriate all the foreign customers
streaming out the door. They've voted with their feet: it's up to the US
to do something about it if we want a presence there at all. Since
"there" is anywhere else in the world but here, it would behoove us to
figure out what went wrong and rectify it -- not turn the air blue about
how dumb those damn furriners are to doubt us.
Still, many people will. Turn the air
blue, that is. Dadgummit! We're not anti-democratic, even if we suspend
habeas corpus, don't-call-it-torture interrogate, keep people in legal
limbo if the president designates them "enemy combatants," and listen to
phone calls-the whole lot. That's the price we pay to stave off another
9/ll; only lily-livered liberals get upset about cops playing hardball
right back.
In purely rational terms, it's surely
true that the current administration's infractions of civil liberties
are miniscule. But the fact is, they loom large to the rest of the
world. That's got to be our point of departure.
The fact is, none of these measures
really seem to be getting anywhere near the people who brought us 9/11,
any more than the invasion of Iraq got us al-Qaeda. Foreigners aren't
dumb, even if they're not American. They noticed things like this, and
pointed them out. At which point the current administration became
apoplectic.
But the Wal-Mart rule tells us people
don't even have to have a good reason for disliking what America does.
If they do, they do, and it's up to us to do something about that. The
customer is king, even if what we're selling is a view of ourselves.
America's standing in the world is
currently low indeed-justly or unjustly. (For the record: I think it's
unjust, but I understand why it's so.) A friend of mine, a Berliner with
longtime U.S. ties, teaches English and American culture at a school in
Berlin. She tells me that her efforts to make the point that the U.S. is
a positive force in world affairs are now in vain. No one will listen to
her. The students roll their eyes and disagree when she speaks of
"American democracy," which they now hold to be an oxymoron.
Of course she, I, and my readers here
know they're simply ungrateful. Her students are the new generation of a
city that the U.S. kept alive through the Luftbruecke and protected for
years from the U.S.S.R. with our troops. So yes, we can feel
self-righteous and whine. Or we can take onboard the fact that even
these people, our allies, don't like us, and address the reasons why.
In terms of perception, as in
retailing, the customer is king.
Let's all hope for a better 2007.
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Goodwill shops locating
near Wal-Mart
The Associated Press
December 29, 2006
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Seeking to tap into Wal-Mart's big
customer base, Goodwill Industries in northeast Ohio is moving some of
its thrift stores closer to the big-box retailer.
"We share the same demographic," said
Marisa Rohn, vice president of marketing and fund development at
Goodwill Industries of Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio. "We've
found when we locate near a Wal-Mart, we're less of a destination shop
and more of a mainstream shop."
Earlier this month, Goodwill shut down
a location in Massillon and is relocating it to a shopping plaza in the
city that has a Wal-Mart as the anchor store.
Goodwill also plans to close its
flagship shop in downtown Canton and move it to nearby Perry Township --
a few feet away from a Wal-Mart.
The branch has built stores recently
in New Philadelphia and another in Canton close to Wal-Mart locations.
The New Philadelphia store had $1 million in sales in its first 10
months, Rohn said.
"The dollar and cents are important,
but more than that, the more we can make and generate, the more missions
we can plow," Rohn said.
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Metro says to
keep 70 Wal-Mart stores open
Reuters
Fri Dec 29, 2006
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FRANKFURT, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Metro AG
<MEOG.DE> said on Friday it plans to keep open 70 of the 85 Wal-Mart <WMT.N>
hypermarkets it bought earlier this year in Germany.
Metro, based in Duesseldorf, said that
the Wal-Mart hypermarkets would be converted to its Real brand stores
before the middle of next year.
Fifteen stores would be shut, Metro
said.
Metro bought Wal-Mart's stores in
Germany in late July. Metro said then that Wal-Mart, whose operations in
Germany were struggling, was keen to sell and Metro bought the stores at
a bargain price.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
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Wal-Mart stays open for
search
Mitchell store
doesn't close despite pre-holiday threat
By MELANIE BRANDERT
Sioux Falls Argus Leader
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Last Saturday afternoon, Eva Voorhees
heard the clatter of feet on the roof of the Wal-Mart Supercenter in
Mitchell where she works in the photo department - but it wasn't the
pitter-patter of reindeer.
It was the police looking for a bomb.
Up front, police officers, the SWAT team and others were busy searching
the store next to customers who were browsing for gifts. The police
looked in jewelry counters, wrapping paper rolls, freezers, the back
room where trucks unload and closets at Tire Lube Express.
During the nearly two-hour search,
Wal-Mart officials opted not to evacuate the busy discount store even
though police recommended they do so. Wal-Mart officials said the call
was a hoax and not a threat.
The incident has family members of
Wal-Mart employees criticizing store officials for failing to take the
threat seriously.
Voorhees has worked at the Mitchell
discount chain for about four years. Her daughter, Charlotte Goode, 36,
said Voorhees called her Sunday, crying and upset as she relayed the
story.
"It's right before Christmas. They
were swamped with people," she said. "To me, they endangered the
community, customers and associates. They put making a buck ahead of
public safety."
On Saturday, the Mitchell store - like
many retailers nationwide - was filled with customers making last-minute
holiday purchases. The store had at least $400,000 in sales at stake.
When Elida Antaya of Plankinton
shopped at the store about 9 a.m., she said it was full of customers.
The store received a call at 2:10 p.m.
from a male who said a bomb was there. Lyndon Overweg, Mitchell public
safety chief, said the caller did not go into specific details.
The SWAT team was dispatched, along
with many officers to help clear out the store.
Overweg said police recommended the
store be evacuated to allow SWAT team and other officers to search the
building. But Wal-Mart opted not to, he said.
"We look at it from a public safety
standpoint," Overweg said. "How they approach their issue, you'll have
to talk to them."
Wal-Mart District Manager Steve
Hanselman in Sioux Falls said Wednesday night that Wal-Mart would never
put its customers or employees' safety at risk. He said the decision to
keep the store open was not based on Saturday's six-figure sales number.
"What is most important to our
associates is their safety," he said. "Myself, Wal-Mart and city
officials came to the decision that it was a hoax."
Hanselman deferred further comment to
corporate media relations.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Marisa Bluestone
said Tuesday the threat was nonspecific.
"The safety and security of customers
is always a top priority," she said. "We work closely with law
enforcement to determine if there's a threat to customers and
associates. We make evacuation decisions based on discussions with law
enforcement."
Bluestone could not say how Wal-Mart
officials made the decision not to evacuate.
"It was a decision made by the
management team and local authorities," she said.
Despite Wal-Mart's decision, Overweg
said police had a mission to search the store.
Mitchell police does not have a
bomb-detecting dog, so officers scoured the store's interior and
exterior, Overweg said. Off-duty and animal control officers were used
in the search that took 11/4 to two hours.
"Had we found any device, everything
would have been cleared out," he said. "But no items or anything were
found."
Antaya, whose two daughters work there
and are mothers of four children, did not hear of the incident until
Saturday night at a Mitchell restaurant. She was stunned to hear the
store wasn't cleared out.
"That struck me wrong right away," she
said. "I said, 'Is the mighty buck better than people?' How can they put
money over people's lives? You just don't do that."
She began to think about the prospect
of those four kids, ages 5 to 11, being without their mothers.
When Antaya's daughter, Auranette, 28,
returned home to Plankinton, she gave her daughter a big hug. She said
one of her daughters asked a supervisor what was going on, and they were
told, "Oh, we can't say."
"She was pretty shaken up herself,"
Antaya said of Auranette.
Wal-Mart employees did not receive
formal news of the threat until a Sunday morning meeting. Voorhees said
manager Ron Warner told workers a bomb threat occurred. When asked, he
said Hanselman and the loss prevention division at company headquarters
in Bentonville, Ark., chose not to evacuate.
Attempts to reach Warner were
unsuccessful Wednesday.
Voorhees called Overweg and Hanselman
and told Gov. Mike Rounds' office that public safety was not preserved
in the incident. According to Voorhees, Hanselman said it was a prank
and said, "Do you know what it would do to Wal-Mart's business?"
When asked what policy Wal-Mart had in
determining when to evacuate the store in the case of a threat,
Bluestone repeated that the company works closely with law enforcement
to determine if a threat exists to customers.
She would not give a reply on whether
the company would have evacuated workers and customers if the threat had
been a direct one but said it works with law enforcement.
Voorhees said that Wal-Mart employees
have codes on the back of their name plates. Blue is for a bomb threat.
"As far as sending panic through the
store, they could have said a code blue and employees would know," she
said. "I have never been trained what to do with a bomb threat."
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Wal-Mart waits, yet
AmCan makes upgrades
By KERANA TODOROV
Register
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
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The battle over American Canyon’s
proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter is expected to return to Napa County
Superior Court in the new year, where city officials, developers and
opponents of the center will hammer out the next legal steps.
But while they await court action,
city officials have been getting updated directives from the appeals
court that ordered a halt to construction of the superstore in November.
The First District Court of Appeal ruled early this month that the city
had violated a state environmental law and city policies in approving
the store, and had temporarily banned any further construction work.
Subsequently, the court has partially
lifted the ban, but only to allow repairs on Napa Junction Road both
east and west of Highway 29 , as the city had requested. In its Dec. 15
order, the court also agreed that some water and sewer maintenance and
repairs could be done.
In its unanimous November opinion, the
court found the city violated the California Environmental Quality Act
when it approved the Wal-Mart Supercenter — a discount retail center and
grocery store. The court found that the city’s traffic analysis was
flawed and that the city should have taken into consideration the effect
Wal-Mart will have on neighboring Vallejo.
On Dec. 18, the court made a move that
will have no effect in American Canyon, but could cast a shadow on other
big box projects within the jurisdiction of the First District Court of
Appeal, which stretches from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Oregon
border.
At the request of the citizen’s groups
that sued American Canyon, the court agreed that part of its opinion in
the case would be deemed published — meaning it has precedential value
in other litigation.
American Canyon City Attorney Bill
Ross said parts of the ruling “became precedent. The court found the
Supercenter is a specific type of commercial (land) use even though it
is not defined in the city’s ordinance.”
On Thursday, the city hired a
consultant, Michael Brandman and Associates, for $117,700 to prepare a
new study for the project.
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The Year in Review:
Wal-Mart worries
The Associated Press
December 27, 2006
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Story Tools order a reprint digg this save to del.icio.us NEW YORK
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's
biggest retailer, saw shares edge down nearly 2 percent during the year
as the company worked on improving same-store sales and struggled to
bolster its image with consumers.
The Bentonville, Ark.-based company is
attempting to attract different types of consumers. On one hand, it
seeks to attract more upscale customers, as rival Target Corp. has. To
do that, it opened a superstore in Plano, Texas, featuring a sushi bar,
wine section and a fall clothing line with trendy items such as skinny
jeans.
Still, Wal-Mart continues to appeal to
discount hunters, and the company instituted an aggressive discount
campaign on prices for toys, consumer electronics and small appliances
during the holiday season.
But same-store sales figures continued
to sag.
In October, Wal-Mart said it would
sharply reduce its rate of domestic expansion, in an effort to restore
sales and profit growth in the U.S., its biggest market.
But in November, just before the
crucial holiday sales season began, the company warned of a sales
decline for the first time in 10 years and said same-store sales growth
would be no better than 1 percent. In fact, it fell 0.1 percent.
Wal-Mart expects December same-store sales to be flat to no more than 1
percent higher than last year.
The company suffered an internal
marketing crisis late in the year, as Julie Roehm, senior vice president
of marketing communications, left in December after less than a year on
the job, and the company dropped its new ad agency -- Interpublic Group
of Cos.' DraftFCB.
Wal-Mart expects to name a new ad
agency by the beginning of January.
Its share price fell about 1.5 percent
during the year, hitting a 52-week low of $42.31 on July 18, reaching a
52-week high of $52.15 on Oct. 23, and falling since then to close on
Dec. 26 at $46.11.
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India's Bharti to invest 7.0 billion dollars in deal with Wal-Mart
NEW DELHI (AFP)
12-27-2006
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India's Bharti Enterprises, which tied
up with Wal-Mart to start a nationwide chain of retail stores, said it
will invest about 7.0 billion dollars in the project by 2010, according
to a report.
The group, which owns the country's
top private phone firm, said it will set up 200 large stores and
hundreds of smaller ones to cater to the increasingly affluent Indian
middle class, estimated to be made up of 300 million people.
"Depending on what we do in real
estate and logistics, we will invest around seven billion dollars by
2010," Sunil Mittal, chairman of the group, told the Business Standard
newspaper.
Mittal told the newspaper that the
group's realty company will identify property for the venture, from
which he expected to earn one to two billion dollars in the same period.
Last month the group tied up with
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, to open stores that would be
owned by Bharti and run under a Wal-Mart franchise.
India does not allow foreign
investment in retail except for single-brand stores such as Nokia or
Nike.
Other foreign groups such as Wal-Mart
have to sign franchise deals with local companies to enter the Indian
market.
The newspaper report said that the
front-end stores would bear the Bharti name, but talks were on to
include the Wal-Mart brand as well.
Organised retailing makes up only
three to five percent of India's retail business, with the rest
dominated by nearly 15 million traditional mom-and-pop stores.
Earlier this year, India's biggest
private firm Reliance started opening a chain of supermarkets as part of
a multi-billion-dollar retail rollout. The company said it aims to have
4,000 stores by 2011, with an annual sales target of 25 billion dollars.
Other major Indian business houses
such as the Tata group and the Aditya Birla Group are also moving into
the sector, which has annual turnover of about 300 billion dollars.
That figure is expected to double by
2015, according to consultants PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
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Is Wal-Mart hitting the wall?
BARRIE MCKENNA
Globe and Mail
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WASHINGTON — The bright yellow smiley
face has been a fixture of Wal-Mart advertising for a decade now.
It's been like a good luck charm,
beaming down on Wal-Mart and its customers as the company swept the
planet, rolling back prices and opening thousands of new stores.
But after the year the company has
just endured there are more long faces than happy ones around Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., these days. Among the
setbacks: botched fashion upgrades, embarrassing leaks, a retreat from
Germany, messy store renovations, failure to get a bank charter and the
first monthly sales drop in a decade.
Now, the ubiquitous happy guy may be
on the way out too as Wal-Mart remakes itself by reaching way beyond its
loyal core of bargain hunters, hooked on "always low prices" on
everything from socks to sausages.
"Wal-Mart is simply running into the
law of big numbers," argued Dan Gilmore, editor of Supply Chain Digest,
an online industry newsletter.
The company is packing stores closer
and closer together, cannibalizing its own sales, and running headlong
into crowded suburban markets already well-served by scores of savvy
rivals, such as Target Corp., Best Buy Co. Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. Inc.
"Wal-Mart is trying to go upstream to
attract a more upscale customer. But this is awfully hard for a store so
ingrained in the public mind with low prices, staple goods and . . . a
huge scale over which this transition has to be managed," Mr. Gilmore
added.
Other critics complain that Wal-Mart
has simply tried to do too much, too fast, and it caught up to them in
2006.
"Repositioning a ship like Wal-Mart is
not a six-month project," explained retail consultant Richard Seesel of
Retailing in Focus.
After three years of decelerating
growth, Wal-Mart seemed to hit the wall as 2006 drew to a close. In
November, sales fell 0.1 per cent -- the first monthly sales decline in
a decade. And executives warned that sales in December would be flat.
Wal-Mart is apparently finding that
it's not easy to transform itself from a mass marketer, where everything
is a commodity, to a store that sells higher quality items at reasonable
prices. It's one thing to be the price leader in kids' running shoes or
Elmo dolls. It's quite another to stock clothing fashions that appeal to
shoppers in both semi-rural Bentonville, Ark. and wealthy, urban
Bethesda, Md.
Wal-Mart, for example, introduced a
new line of private label "Metro 7" clothes in mid-2006. But many of the
items, such as hip-hugging jeans, didn't go over well in much of Middle
America, where the casual clothes of choice are more likely to be
super-sized sweat pants and camouflage hunting apparel.
Some analysts said Wal-Mart is caught
in a squeeze -- wanting to move upscale, but highly dependent on driving
traffic with deep discounts on hot items, such as high-definition TVs
and toys. And it's a tactic nimble rivals have learned to match.
"Everyone is now selling China Inc.,"
pointed out retail consultant John Landsdale of zaxpop.com. "The local
hardware store, pharmacy or grocery store is as likely to have that
profitable electronic, self-care, home thing or garden tool at as low a
price as Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is stuck selling loss
leaders, while the competition for the good stuff is too high."
So Wal-Mart has begun carefully
segmenting both the look of its stores and the selection to appeal to
narrower niches, such as Hispanics, African-Americans and upscale whites
as part of a massive remodelling of 1,800 U.S. stores over 18 months.
Wal-Mart executives dismiss the
criticism that size is an impediment to change.
At a recent meeting with analysts,
Wal-Mart executive vice-president Eduardo Castro-Wright suggested size
may actually be an asset as it creates clusters of similar stores --
chains within a chain.
"Our size sometimes gets in the way of
many things," Mr. Castro-Wright said. "But it is very good . . . where
you can continue to obtain the economies of scale. With the initial
segments that we are working on right now, there's none that would have
less than 100 stores. Each one of these segments is a chain."
And in the end, all of its customers
essentially want the same thing, Wal-Mart executives insist.
"Every segment that we have -- from
the loyalist who is the most financially challenged, to the skeptic who
has a very high income," John Fleming, Wal-Mart's chief marketing
officer told another gathering of analysts. "They want the same two
things from Wal-Mart: They want unbeatable prices, and they want a fast,
easy shopping experience."
The stress of all this change is
starting to show. In early December, Wal-Mart abruptly fired the
marketing executive who was put in charge of identifying new ad agencies
to craft the image overhaul.
Julie Roehm, 36, who had been lured
away from car maker DaimlerChrysler AG, left amid allegations that she
had taken gifts and was too cozy with some of the ad executives vying
for Wal-Mart's $580-million monster account.
Ms. Roehm, who was senior
vice-president of marketing communications, is credited with introducing
image advertising to Wal-Mart, including a series of commercials on
ESPN's Monday Night football that took direct aim at Best Buy customers.
Her departure prompted speculation
that "the smiley face" may not be on the way out after all.
"They need to get back to their
roots," marketing consultant David Polinchock of Brand Experience Lab
said, "and focus on who they are and stop all of their distractions,
playing in a world where they seem to not fit."
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Bratz Dolls
work conditions harsh
Associated Press
December 22, 2006
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The pouty Bratz dolls so popular as
Christmas presents are made at a factory in southern China where workers
are obliged to toil up to 94 hours a week, among other violations, a
labor rights group said in a report released Friday.
The report by U.S.-based China Labor
Watch and the National Labor Committee details allegations of harsh
working conditions, especially during peak delivery months, and of
violations of workers' rights to injury and health insurance.
The edgy, urban-styled rival to Barbie
is made by a subcontractor in the southern export hub of Shenzhen, as is
typical of many products sold in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Workers are paid the equivalent of 17
U.S. cents for each doll, the report said, while the dolls retail for
US$16 (euro12) a piece or more.
Calls to the Van Nuys, California,
headquarters of MGA Entertainment Inc., which launched the Bratz brand
in 2001, were not answered and there was no immediate response to an
emailed inquiry to the company's public relations office.
Calls to the China-based spokesman for
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a main distributor of the dolls, went unanswered
Friday.
The allegations in the report describe
practices found at many Chinese factories producing name-brand products
for export. They include required overtime exceeding the legal maximum
of 36 hours a month, forcing workers to stay on the job to meet
stringent production quotas and the denial of paid sick leave and other
benefits.
The report shows copies of what it
says are "cheat sheets" distributed to workers before auditors from
Wal-Mart or other customers arrive to ensure the factory passes
inspections intended to ensure the supplier meets labor standards.
It said workers at the factory
intended to go on strike soon to protest plans by factory managers to
put all employees on temporary contracts, denying them of legal
protection required for long-term employees.
More than 120 million Bratz dolls have
been sold since the toy debuted in 2001
[back to top]
Best (and Worst) Ads of '06
It Was the Year of
Cavemen, YouTube and Anti-Advertising; Meeting Viewers 'Head On!'
By SUZANNE VRANICA
and BRIAN STEINBERG
December 22, 2006
[back to top]
People may remember 2006 as the year
of anti-advertising, when marketers and their ad agencies went to great
lengths to make sure their ads didn't look like typical Madison Avenue
handiwork.
To promote its new malt iced tea,
Diageo PLC's Smirnoff created a two-minute spoof of a rap video and
posted it on video-sharing Web site YouTube. The iced tea was mentioned
only in passing. Almost 2 million people have viewed the Smirnoff ad on
YouTube so far. "As soon as you do the classic bottle close-ups, big
company graphics or lots of shots of sweaty bottles -- people reject
it," says Kevin Roddy, executive creative director at BBH, the New York
firm that crafted the video.
The low-key approach is a major
reversal for an industry long keen on marketing messages delivered with
a sledge hammer. It comes as new technologies -- such as digital video
recorders -- give consumers more control over what ads they see. As a
result, marketers' top priority is no longer selling but simply getting
the public to watch an ad.
"There is a blurring of the line
between advertising and entertainment," says Greg Stern, chief executive
officer of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners. "You have to bring consumers
in first just to be able to talk to them."
Below is a list of our choices for the
best and worst ads and other marketing gimmicks in 2006.
The Best Monkey Business
CAREERBUILDER.COM
CLIENT: CareerBuilder.com, a Web
concern jointly owned by Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy. AGENCY: Cramer-Krasselt
CONTENT: Consumers were able to construct a humorous video email
featuring a chimp, and craft a customized message by recording a voice
greeting via the telephone, which the chimp would repeat to the person
the email was sent to. The emails were meant to drum up pre-game hype
for two Super Bowl TV ads CareerBuilder was running featuring
chimpanzees managing a corporation. FEEDBACK: Eleven months later, the
monkey emails are still circulating. So far, CareerBuilder says, more
than 80 million monkey emails have been played. The site's traffic rose
34% this year, due in part to the email campaign. CareerBuilder says one
of the most important results of its Super Bowl viral push was that it
held the interest of consumers, most of whom spent six to nine minutes
playing with the make-your-own monkey emails.
TiVo Buster
KFC
CLIENT: Yum Brands Inc.'s KFC AGENCY:
Interpublic Group's Foote Cone & Belding CONTENT: KFC carefully designed
a TV ad to circumvent Madison Avenue's latest nemesis: digital video
recorders. One frame in the ad contained a secret code word -- "Buffalo"
-- which viewers can use to redeem a coupon for a free KFC "Buffalo
Snacker" chicken sandwich. Only viewers who used their DVR, or an analog
video cassette recorder, to slow the ad and watch it frame by frame
could see the code. To get people to participate, KFC ran newspaper ads
with details of when the ad would run. FEEDBACK: With ad-skipping
devices threatening Madison Avenue's age old way of doing business, KFC
and FCB were among the first to experiment with ways around the pesky
devices. Roughly 103,000 people claimed "Buffalo Snacker" coupons after
entering the hidden code on KFC's Web site. Furthermore, the publicity
prompted an increase in the number of people visiting KFC's Web site. In
the weeks the ad ran, the site drew 3 million page views, 40% more than
the amount of traffic it usually gets over a similar period of time. The
chicken purveyors also managed to land 852 mentions in the media, KFC
estimates, including from some TV stations that ran the commercial free
as part of a news report.
An Edgy Shave
PHILIPS NORELCO
CLIENT: Philips Electronics NV's
Philips Norelco AGENCY: Omnicom Group Inc.'s Tribal DDB CONTENT: Philips
knew it couldn't hawk its unique "Bodygroom" shaver -- designed to help
a man shave hair on his back, chest and intimate body areas -- on a mass
medium like TV. The product wasn't for everyone, and might even be seen
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