David Kippen's Blog (7)

Toyota is Human After All: Cracks in Quality in the World's Best Brand

Coke’s the real thing. (So much so, they sell bottled water.) Everyone loves Google. (Or used to.) Everyone loves Apple. (Except all the folks who don’t.) Everyone’s crazy about Starbucks. (Except for tea drinkers, Peet’s fans, fans of small business, and so on.)

Besides being insanely popular and having detractors, what do these brands have in common? Well, not much—except they all rank at or near the top of Interbrand’s list of the world’s most valuable brand by brand… Continue

Added by David Kippen on April 7, 2010 at 6:13pm — No Comments

The Purr of the Iron Tiger

Today's NY Times reports on something I saw first-hand in Shanghai and Beijing: the Year of the Tiger got off to an early start and the Central Bank is trying to cool things down a bit.

What's bad news for the central bank is good news for the jobs market, at least from the candidate's perspective. From my perspective, this is good news about the recovery to come in the U.S. market,…

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Added by David Kippen on February 13, 2010 at 4:36pm — No Comments

ABC's of Market Research: Tools of the Trade

On this trip, Cate and I will be visiting a variety of cities--from Beijing to Bangkok, Cairo to Dubai, London to Mumbai--to do market research for a top global brand.

We’ll be talking to people with a variety of different jobs to understand what they think about work and working, what’s differentiating about what our client offers, and how this varies from place to place and job to…

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Added by David Kippen on February 9, 2010 at 5:13am — No Comments

DIY Market Research Part One: Field Observation

Field observation is an essential component of any serious market research project, particularly in emerging markets, but it’s usually overlooked by agencies. Now, you may not have a budget for field work but if you can squeak in a trip to an emerging market I want to give you a DIY tool set you can use to get some basic understandings of the market you're interested in.

Why do market research at all? Because you don’t…

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Added by David Kippen on February 8, 2010 at 8:00pm — 1 Comment

Beijing to Bangkok

What's that line about the best laid plans?

I knew China might block Gmail, but who knew it would block RecruitingBlogs?

Guess Jason's a more dangerous guy than we thought--or maybe it's Animal they're worried about. Whatever the case, I'm in Bangkok now so I'll be putting up posts from the last few days over the next few days.

Thanks for your patience. They'll be worth the wait.

Added by David Kippen on February 6, 2010 at 10:39am — 2 Comments

The Tail of the Tiger

Early last year, during the depth of the financial crisis, I had the opportunity to do market research in China for a major pharma firm. At the time, even highly employable R&D scientists and marketers were worried about the coming crisis. Conventional wisdom was, “when the developed world sneezes, the developing world catches a cold.”

Not so much this time. More like a sniffle. Though China’s economy has suffered—who can forget the breathtaking… Continue

Added by David Kippen on January 29, 2010 at 3:49pm — No Comments

Tomorrowland Blog

Next week, I head out to mainland China, then Thailand. Then Cate's going to Cairo and Sharm-el-Sheikh. Then I'll go to Dubai and Mumbai.

Want to come? Awesome!

Just follow this space.

Every day, I'll send postcards from tomorrow from wherever I am. I'll send pictures. Maybe videos. I'll keep it light, lively and interesting.

And that's easy to do. You may think of… Continue

Added by David Kippen on January 26, 2010 at 7:30am — No Comments