Newsmakers

Who's in the News: A Round-up of Media Mentions

Exporting Values Through Movies

During the occupation of Nanking in the winter of 1937, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were killed by the Japanese. A small group of foreigners, including an American doctor and a German businessman, saved tens of thousands of lives.

Their heroism is on display in a documentary film, Nanking, directed by Bill Guttentag (pictured at right), a filmmaker and lecturer at the GSB. He feels it’s important to make films that address political and ethical issues.

“The entertainment industry makes up 6.5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product,” Guttentag told the San Francisco Chronicle. “For better or worse, we’re exporting our values.

It’s an incredibly important industry.”

Last Minute Shoppers Easy to Please

As their deadline approaches, shoppers become increasingly motivated by negative emotions—what will my wife say if I don’t have a birthday present for her?—and make different decisions than they might have earlier.

According to a study by GSB Professor Jennifer Aaker, PHD ’95, and Cassie Mogilner, PhD Class of ’10, people were more likely to act on negative advertising messages when a decision had to be made immediately: They said they were willing to pay $672 for an airline ticket when warned that they would miss their vacation if they didn’t act soon, whereas they would pay only $493 for a ticket that came with a positive message. When making a decision about a trip that was months away, they said they would pay more when the message was positive.

“When people feel like they have a lot of time, they become aspirational and confident—they want to buy the best thing,” Mogilner told the Washington Post. “As time closes in, they become less confident and their goals become much more minimal.”

Time Pressures Color Consumer Decisions Say Researchers

Is Internet Advertising Passing Toddler Stage?

Like toddlers just figuring out how to string words into sentences, three key online areas—social media, online video, and games—are beginning to learn how to be more effective in their pursuit of advertising dollars.

“The slow start is because there are no standards yet in any of these media,” wrote Jeremy Liew, MBA ’00, for VentureBeat. An advertiser can make one TV ad and run it on multiple networks, or create one print ad for several magazines. But online properties require custom ads.

“All three industries need ad unit standards to be able to scale,” wrote Liew, who is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners in Menlo Park, Calif. “This year, standards will start to emerge in each media.”

Riding High on the Harley Hog

Chuck Toeniskoetter, MBA ’73, has worked on the restoration of San Jose’s St. Joseph’s Cathedral and the old Santa Clara County Courthouse. But for Toeniskoetter, who is chairman of Toeniskoetter & Breeding Inc. Development, simple pleasures—like being able to ride his Harley-Davidson motorcycle—are more important.

Toeniskoetter had a stroke in 2000 and for a time couldn’t even pick up a utensil with his right hand. Now that he’s able to ride again, he finds that the bike helps him break down social barriers.

“People everywhere are interested in the Harley,” he told the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. “It crosses all lines, from the CEO to the assembly-line worker.”

GM’s Chief Corvetteer

Corvette has a new chief engineer: Tom Wallace, Sloan ’80. He’s new to this particular job, but he has been with GM since 1966. He came to the GSB in mid-career “because [GM] thought maybe I was a little too ‘engineering-ese,’” Wallace told Vette: America’s Favorite Corvette Magazine.

And Wallace said his interest in cars goes back even further: “When I was in high school, I had the fastest car in town.

I used to drag race at the time and very seldom lost.”

Surfing the Mall

The first time Scott Dunlap, MBA ’98, went on a 100-mile run, he injured his leg at mile 96. Instead of quitting, Dunlap limped for 2 hours and 20 minutes to reach the finish line. “I found out I had much more in me than I would have guessed,” he told the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.

Dunlap is using his energy and focus on the company he founded, NearbyNow. Its goal is to bridge the gap between online and offline shopping by making malls searchable via internet and cell phone.

“There’s a trend of people who research online but buy locally,” Dunlap said. “If we get it right, we don’t have to go sell to one of the large search companies. We can become a large company.”

$Candace Matthews, MBA \'85, at home with her family.$ Working Out Roles for Two-Career Couples

In 2001, Candace Matthews (pictured at right), MBA ’85, was offered a dream job: president of SoftSheen–Carson, a L’Oréal company. But she wondered about the toll the increased travel, longer hours, and relocation would take on her family, which included recently adopted 3-year-old twins.

Her husband, Bruce, offered to sell the coffee shop he owned and take care of the children and the household full time. It hasn’t always been easy. “I’ve had to adjust to comments from people who think I’m not doing my job as a mother,” Matthews told Essence magazine for a story about gender role reversals in some families.

But the arrangement has worked. “There is absolutely no way I would have this kind of success in my career without Bruce,” she said.

2003 GSB Women's Conference: Candace Matthews

Tight Reigns on China’s Video Sharing

Google’s video-sharing site YouTube is absent from China, which creates an opportunity for local startups. “That does give the players in China some time,” said Victor Koo, MBA ’94. Koo is CEO and founder of Youku.com, a video-sharing company based in Beijing that recently received $25 million in venture capital money.

The site can’t show videos with sexual or political content, which are prohibited by the government. “Sex videos are easy to screen,” Koo told BusinessWeek. Political content is “a little tougher,” but Koo said, “We have algorithms that make everything related to politics stand out for us to identify.”

Putting in a Cork Makes Wine Profits Sag

Argentina’s exports of wine to the United States almost tripled from 2002 to 2006. But it’s not clear the growth will continue. Inflation is leading to increased labor costs, and the euro’s strength means European-made wine barrels and corks cost more, USA Today reported.

“Like any business, we need to find efficiencies,” said Santiago Achaval, MBA ’89 and president of the Achaval Ferrer winery. “It is the big concern going forward.”

Solar Pioneer

Freeman Ford, Sloan ’80, flew planes off aircraft carriers in the Vietnam War. Today he’s fighting a different battle: the energy problem.

Ford is president and CEO of FAFCO, the oldest and largest manufacturer of solar pool-heating panels in the United States. The company has made enough solar collectors over the past 30 years to generate the same amount of power as four nuclear reactors. Despite slow U.S. adoption of solar power, Ford is optimistic.

“If our destiny is to survive, and I think it is, we are going to have to recognize that we need to use the resources that we are given more intelligently; we are going to have to be a bit more imaginative,” he told the Chico News and Review. “I think we can certainly do this.”

$Javier Olivan, MBA \'07, works on internet language transparency goals.$ Facebook Strives for Transparent Language

What if you want to use Facebook but you speak Swahili? Javier Olivan, MBA ’07, hopes you could be part of the solution. He works on Facebook’s Translations application, which allows translators all over the world to put Facebook into different languages. Users then vote on the best translation.

“Facebook users are great, and they’re really passionate about the product,” Olivan said in an interview on blinkx, a video search engine. Swahili may have to wait; the application is starting with French, German, and Spanish.

“Hopefully someday we’ll get to the goal where everybody on the planet is on Facebook,” Olivan said.

Interview with Javier Olivan

Improved Searches in eBay’s Future

EBay’s incoming chief executive officer, John Donahoe, MBA ’86, wants to take on rival Google’s search dominance. Donahoe told the New York Times he wants eBay to use its wealth of information—including customer feedback, information from PayPal, and shipping costs—to help buyers find what they want more quickly.

“Let’s say you wanted to buy a BlackBerry,” Donahoe said. “Last time I checked we had 25,000 BlackBerry listings. That is a fairly confusing experience. A year from now you will be able to say,

‘I want a BlackBerry. Boom. Show me the latest models and the cheapest price.’”

Business Software to the Third Power

Almost a decade ago, Marc Benioff left business software maker Oracle to start Salesforce.com. Now the next generation of company alumni is coming into its own: Workers are leaving Salesforce.com and other firms founded by Oracle alumni to start companies. One of them is Tien Tzuo, MBA ’98, employee No. 11 at Salesforce.com who has started Zeora. It aims to provide billing systems to companies that sell software services.

“Oracle led the database revolution and Salesforce.com led the on-demand revolution,” Tzuo told CRM Buyer. “Maybe we can lead the next revolution.”

Stanford Business magazine