Strangely, the greatest under-10 second TV commercial in the world does not advertise a product or a service. It has no great soundtrack. No fancy trick shots or post production. In fact, it whizzes by faster than the time it actually takes. And yet it freezes you, stuns you, pulverizes you for every hundredth of every one of those less than 10 seconds.

10-sec TV commercial

Business Standard

A little over two years after its launch, i10 has replaced Santro as Hyundai&rsquo;s flagship brand in India.

i10 replaces Santro as Hyundai's flagship brand

After tapping the premium and popular segments, HUL has entered the lower end of the tea market with its new offering, Brooke Bond Sehatmand.

A new brew

Indian Premier League (IPL), the annual Twenty20 cricket championship aired on SET Max, will make a homecoming of sorts this year. In 2009, the second edition of IPL was played in South Africa because it coincided with the General Elections and the country&rsquo;s security apparatus was stretched. This time it&rsquo;s back to the country of its origin.

Indian Premier League: Returning home

    The first monorail train system and a single track vehicle were set up in the US in a record time of six months with the help of German engineers. The person who dreamt of it introduced a nine-step process in his company to convert all blue-sky ideas to reality.

Answers to last week's quiz (#132)

Life insurers have begun to spend big money on brand promotion. The market, after all, is crowded. At last count, there were 22 companies in the fray for a market estimated at Rs 55,355 crore. SBI Life, the 74:26 venture of State Bank of India and BNP Paribas Assurance, has been not as aggressive as its rivals so far as brand promotion is concerned. Where others rolled out campaign after campaign, SBI Life stuck to its old campaigns.

SBI Life: Catch 'em young

INDIAN INFLUENCE: The home furnishing industry is greatly influenced by traditional motifs and design, though there is some Western element in terms of styling (use of lace, minimalism etc). Such designs greatly appeal to modern customers who are increasingly adopting a modern lifestyle but are still attached to their roots.

KIT: Trends in Indian Home Furnishing Industry

Urging educational institutions to move beyond mere teaching of technology, Vic Hayes, popularly known as the 'Father of WiFi', has advocated teaching cross intersection of technology, management and policy. In the city to educate history and utility of wireless internet connectivity, Hayes highlighted on innovative usage of wireless internet technology during a lecture at Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA).

B-schools should blend technology with management:Vic Hayes

    What is the term used to define physical and digital mail, documents and packages that flow across organisations to their customers and back? It encompasses people, technology and processes from document creation to production, distribution and management.

The Strategist Quiz  (#133)

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Authors: Moira Chatton &amp; James O Gill
Publisher: Crisp Publications 
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TAMING GLOBAL FINANCIAL FLOWS
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Publisher: Palgrave
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THE DISNEY WAR
Author: James Stewart
Publisher: Simon &amp; Schuster 
Price: Rs 1,288
ISBN: 9780684809939.
FREE
Author: Chris Anderson 
Publisher: Random House (UK)
Price: Rs 502
ISBN: 9781905211487.
GETTING THINGS DONE
Author: David Allen 
Publisher: Penguin USA 
Price: Rs 562
ISBN: 0142000280.
THREE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR
Author: Joseph Stiglitz 
Publisher: Penguin UK
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 9780141039442.
SUPERFREAKONOMICS
Authors: Steven D Levitt &amp; Stephen J Dubner 
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 9780713999914.
SECRETS OF POWER NEGOTIATING
Author: Roger Dawson 
Publisher: Career Press
Price: Rs 895
ISBN: 1564144984.
THE PROFESSIONAL
Author: Subroto Bagchi
Publisher: Penguin 
Price: Rs

The top 10 business bestsellers

How Korean consumer durable majors LG and Samsung knocked out rivals in the fight for market share and brand recall.

Korean takeover

The Indian School of Business (ISB) has been ranked twelfth in the global B-school rankings released on Monday by the Financial Times, London.

ISB ranked 12th in FT ranking

Value innovation can help improve efficiency across the organisation and deliver better results.

Where innovation creates value

Carrefour, the world's second largest retailer, is all set to enter India &ndash; it will launch its own cash and carry venture this year. The buzz about the French retail giant finally tying the knot with Kishore Biyani&rsquo;s Future Group is also getting louder.

Lessons from carrefour

India Inc&rsquo;s rural focus is undergoing a key shift. So far, the strategy was to only introduce smaller packs of their flagship brands at lower price points.

Nestle, Glaxo focus on rural-specific products

Nearly 10,000 MBA applicants will take the second phase (retest) of the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2009 over the next two days (January 30 and 31) after the prestigious examination, which was computerised last year, had to be extended due to technical glitches.

CAT retest from today, 10,000 to appear

Xavier Institute of Management-Bhubaneswar (XIMB) in association with Unicef held a state level Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Ensuring Environmental Sustainability, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on Tuesday. The meeting was inaugurated by Shadrack Omol, state head-Unicef. &ldquo;Currently, all the world leaders are debating on the issue of climate change at Copenhagen. People all over the world have started feeling the relationship between environment protection and global peace&rdquo;, said Omol. The forum called for strict legal measures to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by the industries.

XIMB-Unicef meet on Environment Sustainability

You could call it the clash of the titans. Tata Sky&rsquo;s innovative use of its brand ambassador Aamir Khan as a ventriloquist, aging taxi driver, family man and puppet (remember the actor&rsquo;s man-woman act in the first of his commercials for the DTH operator last year) has indeed made rivals sit up and take notice of it.

Khan versus Khan

After the price war, snacks makers have made the &lsquo;health&rsquo; platform their new battleground. While PepsiCo recently positioned cracker brand Aliva as a health food, Parle Products has gone a step ahead with Monaco Smart Chips, which the company claims, is not fried &ndash; a first in the chips segment.

Monaco's healthy but tasty route

The predictions for next year by a leading forecaster of advertising spending will have the India&rsquo;s ad fraternity smiling.

TV dominates, print a close second

With the pressure mounting on them to bring a satisfactory closure to the computer-based Common Admission Test (CAT), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have announced a procedure to look into the wrong-doings of the first online edition of the test this year.

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