November 15, 2005

Lost in translation?

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

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Lost in translation?

Rob May notices that a German court prevents WalMart from banning office romances.

Wal-Mart has lost a court appeal to try to legally ban its employees in Germany from having office romances.
The regional industrial tribunal in Dusseldorf upheld an earlier verdict by the local Wuppertal industrial tribunal that the company’s “ethics rules” were in breach of German law.
Wal-mart tried to introduce a 28-page ethical code that forbids “lustful glances and ambiguous jokes” as well as “sexually meaningful communication of any type”.

That’s pretty bizarre. Next thing WalMart will be doing a Queen Victoria and insisting that table legs get covered up.

Waterfalls and chaos

I linked to this paper on wicked problems the other day and Chris Corrigan commented “there’s a lot in that paper eh?”. Which is true.

Unhurried marketing

I’m experimenting with marketing less and listening more

Passion brands bring people together based on common interests and excitements. I’m particularly interested in ones created from the bottom up, as opposed to driven by producers concerned mainly with profit.

Medinge Moments

Just back from another extraordinary gathering at Medinge where the community that has produced Beyond Branding meets each summer. I was planning to keep this

The volatile chemistry of trust

Interesting research from Stanford suggests that exciting brands get more trusted after making mistakes and putting them right whilst more “sincere” brands start with more trust but lose it more easily. Perhaps the sensible interpretation is that second-guessing customers can be a waste of time!

Customer-centricity: is it the answer?

Michael Hammer’s new book, The Agenda, is about the rise of customer power. But is customer-centricity really such a good model for business and society?

What brand are you?

Thanks to Matt Tucker at Smith Associates for telling me about What Brand Are You. It strikes me that lots of companies waste money on

Just Undo It?

The AntiBrand: blackSpot sneakers, a project by Adbusters attacks Nike directly. In doing so they take on what has become one of the great icons

Putting humanity into branding

We live in a world of too much marketing and too much branding. People’s faith in advertising has fallen to new lows as we simply

New Abbey

So the Abbey National is rebranding itself this morning. As I write this entry, they are revealing their new look, their shortened name (just “Abbey”)

walmart germany employee+relations

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Lost in translation?

Johnnie Moore

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