Royzemi

Exams finished

RL — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:51:30 +0000

That’s it. Exams are finished – at least for me! Thanks to the joys of OCR, marking is as good as done too. Glad to see one tall person in the Zemi did so well as to increase her grade too.

… Now just to decide if the idiots who cause me extra work deserve their pass grades …

Now for the summer. Lots of things to do, not least organising my FOUR Twitter accounts. @royzemi has been around since the early days of Twitter, but everyone seems to be signing up to my personal account nowadays. Time to split things.

Other things on the list for the summer: Costco, SC report, prep Global Marketing (going to be about positioning), play with the kids and try to stay reasonably cool. It’s when the temperature gets above 30 when you really miss the green fields.

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Why Mosburger can’t compete

RL — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:42:45 +0000

It’s been interesting to watch RU first years tangle with the problem of how Mosburger is supposed to compete with McDonalds in Japan. Originally created as the Japanese McDonalds, with high levels of quality and service, the chain seems to be completely unable to grasp the fact that it’s customers (in fact, probably hamburger customers everywhere) won’t buy simply because ingredients are said to be made in Japan. At least it’s getting more international: Nan Pizza?!

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Typical smoker

RL — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 06:59:48 +0000

I’m not sure I can add much to this picture. The Japanese says something like: “How about this taste? Arrived in Japan.” It seems to me that Japan Tobacco (who never call themselves anything but JT nowadays) have a very clear target with the Winston ads they’re running on all and every fag vending machine in the area.

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Smiles in short supply at Starbucks Ikebukuro Nishi

RL — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:54:53 +0000

The Starbucks Ikebukuro West Exit store I think keeps its title a the second worst in the world. The only place I’ve received worse, less friendly and down right miserable service at a Starbucks is still Gatwick Airport and even the miserable 12 year old seeming boys serving in Ikebukuro today weren’t that bad – they just seemed to hate their lives and were contemplating either mass depression or worse.

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Softbank incompetency — again

RL — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:55:05 +0000

Now, I know almost all phone companies are evil incarnate, but
Softbank really does double it up with pure incompetency. Not only do
they have a monopoly on iPhone sales in Japan at a time when it is
overwhelmingly the most popular smartphone (I strongly suspect that
this is something that has saved the company over the past 2 years as
much as its rather silly marketing based on racial stereotypes), but
it remains terrified that the bottom will drop out of its shakey
existence and has wildly underestimated demand for the iPhone 4. I
don’t care personally. Being tied into Softbank’s unavoidable 2-year
contract on my iPhone 2, there’s no chance I’ll be getting a new one
for 6 months at least. Not only that, it charges 4 times the price of
iPad 3G access compared to the UK. Unbelievably poor management.

Perhaps what is even more amazing, Docomo or KDDI hasn’t turned to
Apple and offered them a deal to also get the iPhone — something that
has of course happened in other markets. But this simply smacks of
Softbank having some agreement on a long term monopoly, plus the fact
that Japanese manufacturers will be threatening the other two
providers not to take on the iPhone anyway.

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