Interesting article in today’s NY Times Chinese companies building global brands by acquiring well-known, existing brands. Because they’ve been in the news, the article mentions the Lenovo acquisition of IBM’s laptop business, Haier’s bid for Maytag and the CNOOC bid for Unocal.

The reason for the global business shopping spree?

“Chinese companies are now facing serious [...]

Have you tried Del.icio.us yet?

Do you know what Del.icio.us is?

Besides having the best name of the .us suffix, Del.icio.us allows you to create a page that of links that you can share with family, friends and visitors to your site.

Del.icio.us says it’s a:
social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to [...]

We’re going to comment on this Knowledget@Wharton article a little later today, but the authors conclusions have some interesting implications for the medical device industry:
...the use of odd names seems to work best in products thta rely on the senses, such as food or fashion, and would probably not work in a high-stakes product category [...]

Here’s a summary of the products featured last week on Medgadget, along with our usual chatter about the product names..

Inovio Biomedical’s Medpulser Electroporation therapy device, an electroporation system specifically designed for the local tumorablation through electrochemotharapy. The device applies a controlled electric field to targeted tissues locally and allows individual cells to be perfused [...]

Pharma to TV: Drop dead.

According to this BrandWeek article, Bristol Myers Squibb is “re-thinking” its use of direct-to-consumer advertising, specifically on television. And if one major pharmaceutical company is re-thinking its Direct-to-Consumer advertising strategy, then others will surely follow.

We’re not surprised. TV advertising is the black hole of advertising budgets. Advertisers could slice and dice [...]