This Month from Knowledge@Wharton

Business Wire, May 2, 2008

Stories this month include "The Hard Sell: How to Market Products That Are No Longer Popular" and "Navigating Olympic Sponsorship: Marketing Your Brand without Alienating the World"

Plus: Video Podcasts Including With Profs Jeremy Siegel on the Economy and Peter Cappelli on Talent

PHILADELPHIA -- This past month some of the timely stories from Knowledge@Wharton <http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu, the Wharton School's online research and business analysis journal include:

The Hard Sell: How to Market Products That Are No Longer Popular

Condos in Miami, traditional music stores, gas-guzzling cars, pharmaceuticals that get unfavorable press, foods made with trans fats: All marketers, from time to time, confront products that, for whatever reason, become difficult to sell. What strategies should companies follow to reposition their products in ways that might attract new audiences, or at least retain existing ones? One answer: segmenting. "There are so many different kinds of customers out there. You just need to find them," says one Wharton expert.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1950.cfm

Navigating Olympic Sponsorship: Marketing Your Brand without Alienating the World

Images of Chinese guards and local police protecting the Olympic torch on its journey to Beijing were hardly the kind of publicity the IOC or the Chinese government were hoping for. Nor can the 12 "Worldwide Olympic Sponsors" be thrilled at the latest images of hand-to-hand street fighting. How can sponsors make the August Olympics a brand builder for their products rather than a public relations nightmare for their companies? Wharton professors suggest they figure out a way to reap the benefits of associating with the event while maintaining reputations for corporate social responsibility outside China.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1938.cfm

'No Place to Hide': The Pressure on Companies to Address Global Warming Heats Up

The scientific community now overwhelmingly agrees that earth's 6.5 billion inhabitants are contributing to global warming through heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. While various industries are yielding to public pressure to address climate change, new carbon emission regulatory regimes are coming soon, and they will likely carry significant costs, according to experts from business and academia who spoke at the recent First Annual Conference-Workshop on Business and the Environment, which was organized by the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) at Wharton/Penn.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1952.cfm

Podcasts:

Jeremy Siegel on the Fed's Latest Cut, $4 Gas and the Outlook for Investors

The economy seems to be sinking toward recession, with new home sales at their lowest since the early 1990s. At the same time, inflation is picking up. Some Americans are paying $4 for a gallon of gas and coming home from the supermarket with sticker shock. Today, the Fed deemed recession the bigger worry and cut short-term interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, from 2.25% to 2%. Was this the right choice? How will it affect the financial markets? Should investors bet on a stock market rebound or hide on the sidelines? Knowledge@Wharton put these questions to Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel, author of The Future for Investors.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1951.cfm

Sea Change: What's on the Horizon for Royal Caribbean's Richard Fain

Richard Fain is chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruises, the Miami-based global cruise company that operates 36 ships under the Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International brands, among others. He joined the company in 1981 as an outside director and became chairman and CEO in 1988. He spent 13 years before that at Gotass-Larsen Shipping Corp., a London-based owner and operator of cargo ships. Knowledge@Wharton asked him to update us on the cruise business.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1944.cfm

The Talent Hunt: Getting the People You Need, When You Need Them

Ask any CEO or senior level executive what his or her biggest challenge is, and the answer is almost always finding and keeping good people. Yet most executives fail to manage their company's needs in a way that recognizes the unpredictability of the global marketplace. In a book titled, Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty, Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources, proposes a new approach to this issue based on applying the principles of supply chain management to people. He and Joyce Bradley, senior vice president and general manager, Delaware Valley region, of global human capital consulting firm Lee Hecht Harrison, spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about talent management, including the challenges of managing employees in a recessionary economy.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1942.cfm

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