robot-alert!

I've stuck together a bunch of photos of my friend Michiru Morikawa's extraordinary master's degree exhibition. You can download it with the link below, watch out it's a 2MB jpeg image.

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I just came across a good stringing together of some of the latest managerspeak words fresh from the US. I usually try to write these down when I come across them but they're hard to remember somehow.

The thing is, you really need to let ideas bubble up before you tie a ribbon around them. Right now, let's take an audible and I'll remind all of you that you are entrepreneurs within the organization and you should feel ownership of the product. Seriously, let's take your goals and we'll ladder them up. I just want to make sure that your takeaway from this is a deliverable. Also, is it granular? Scalable? Why don't we drill down here and find some metrics that will really move the needle. Because we're bringing it down the home stretch. It's going to be totally automagical. Let's get beyond the low-hanging fruit. All the QA is baked in. This is going to be a tent peg for us, and I'm not just banging the table.

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I've updated mattmatt.com's illustration portfolio with some recent productions. Click here.

It tastes nice with chocolate... since it's kind of bland...

To understand this you need to know that Ford owns Jaguar. The parent company has announced more profits partly due to 'cost improvements', on the same day it's announced firing more than 1,000 people from its plant in Coventry near here. Profits over people.

Ford lifts profit forecasts

Fri 17 September, 13:08
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ford has raised its third-quarter and 2004 profit forecasts because of strength in its financial services business and cost improvements in its car operations. More...

Jaguar to axe 1,150 jobs

Fri 17 September, 13:59
By Michael Smith

COVENTRY (Reuters) - Hard-pressed luxury marque Jaguar says it will cut about 1,150 jobs at its main plant in Coventry in a bid to return to profits, in another blow to Britain's fading glory as a carmaking centre.

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If I read this article correctly, people are paying a year's salary to take a week-long tour of Paris inspired by a best-selling thriller. Is it just that people are super rich in America?

This week Ms. Decker ran her first "Da Vinci" program, donating the chateau for a four-day inaugural theme tour to a group of acquaintances from Marin County who bought the trip for $15,000 at a school fund-raising auction. A weeklong Da Vinci Code tour with lodging in her 15-bedroom, 240-acre spread costs $55,000. Breakfast is included.

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Here's a self-promotional piece I've done for a London toy shop called Playlounge. They're doing a 2nd birthday thing with a bunch of collector card type things done by different artists and designers. They're one of London's outlets for those weird toys that Japanese people seem to take for granted.

This is my competition in the pro wrestling stakes... Jimmy Beaulieu...

An image from Sax Rohmer's "The Emperor of America" in Collier's Magazine. Rohmer invented Fu Manchu.

I've been drinking fancy teas. Then yesterday I went back to normal tea (PG Tips which I like because of its strangely shaped bags). I found I could drink immensely more of it without getting tired of the taste. With fancy teas I could only manage a cup and then I had to switch to something without so much flavour, like hot water. Normal tea, you can just hook up to an IV drip and you're all set. Or one of those hats that holds drinks along with straws that come down into your mouth.

I'm mainly just posting this to test out Flickr... Ofoto still seems better for photos, but I don't think you can blog from it. Also Flickr has an iPhoto plugin, so you can send stuff to it from iPhoto.

That's the French word for pro wrestler. Me and Quebeçois cartoonist Jimmy Beaulieu are doing a joint exhibit in Poitiers chez Éditions Flblb and we're both doing self portraits as pro wrestlers to be put together on a poster. Here's mine.

Krispy Kreme gets a front page story in today's Wall St Journal. It's all about cult branding, profit margins, franchising strategy etc. Donut mania means big business. The actual fabric of reality doesn't come into it. People are consumers of products. It's the same mentality if you go into Starbucks... it isn't a coffee shop, it's a brand. They sell a book called "My sister's a barista" all about the story of the Starbucks brand. Like you're supposed to sit there drinking your coffee thinking about how marvelous the brand is.

vens Are Cooling
At Krispy Kreme
As Woes Multiply
Lower Profit, Slower Growth,
Informal SEC Probe Beset
A Cultural Phenomenon
For Sale at Truck Stops Now

By RICK BROOKS and MARK MAREMONT
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 3, 2004; Page A1

When a Krispy Kreme shop opened in Rochester, N.Y., in late 2000, more than 100 people lined up in a snowstorm before 5 a.m. to get one of the first hot, gooey doughnuts off the conveyer belt. Within about an hour, the drive-through lane was choked with 75 cars. Three TV stations and a radio station broadcast live from the scene. Anchors gobbled doughnuts on the air.

The excitement was genuine, but hardly spontaneous. Each local media outlet had gotten an early-morning delivery of 10 dozen free doughnuts from Krispy Kreme. Traffic reporters mentioned tie-ups near the store after a public-relations firm told them about it.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. has used a blend of wily, low-cost marketing and finger-licking irresistibility to grow from a sleepy regional delicacy to a cultural phenomenon. It was dubbed the "hottest brand in America" by Fortune magazine last year as its stock hit nine times the 2000 initial-public-offering price.
[Scott Livengood]

But reality has begun to overtake the hype. Revenue growth slowed sharply in the past two quarters. Profit plunged 56% in the quarter ended Aug. 1, the company said last week. Sales at shops open at least 18 months, which used to post double-digit gains, will be flat to slightly down for the rest of the year, it also said last week.

The biggest problem for Krispy Kreme may be that the company grew too quickly and diluted its cult status by selling its doughnuts in too many outlets while trying to impress Wall Street. The number of Krispy Kreme shops has nearly tripled since early 2000, with 427 stores in 45 states and four foreign countries. Some 20,000 supermarkets, convenience stores, truck stops and other outside locations also sell the company's doughnuts.

"Where I get my gas tank filled, you can pick up individual Krispy Kreme doughnuts," says Gary Rhodes, a spokesman for Kroger Co. The Cincinnati company recently removed Krispy Kremes from self-serve display cases at 120 supermarkets in Ohio and North Carolina after sales declined. At those stores Kroger now sells its own brand, which it says are larger and cost customers 15 cents less. Kroger reports a "significant" rise in single-doughnut sales in Raleigh, N.C., since the switch.

Another issue is that Krispy Kreme has relied for a significant chunk of profits on high profit-margin equipment that it requires franchisees buy for each new store. Its profits have also been tied to growth in the number of franchised stores, because of the upfront fee each must pay. But there will be fewer store openings. Last week the company said it was cutting back sharply on the number of new stores.

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