On President Barack Obama&rsquo;s 50th birthday, the markets handed him a stunning sting. A 500-point decline on the Dow, signalling there will be no celebrations for the President or indeed America. It&rsquo;s now clear that the party is a long way from starting for the world&rsquo;s biggest economy. Euro-zone is in a funk alongside. And until America fixes job creation and Europe its debt, which looks increasingly difficult, brace for a plunge.

Party poopers all around

Business Standard

A few weeks ago, I heard the Yale Whiffenpoofs, the 102-year old acappella group, perform in New Delhi. If you&rsquo;ve heard collegiate male acappella groups before, you&rsquo;ll agree that there&rsquo;s something very endearing about fresh-faced, earnest-looking young men in black tuxedos and white gloves singing melodiously and in complete harmony in those wonderful baritone, bass and tenors. It can engender a warm, fuzzy feeling in the most indifferent heart.

Sing together

Magnus Carlsen finished with (+5,=4,-1,) and 19 points (soccer scoring) in Biel. His TPR was 2835. Morozevich (+4,=5,-1) scored 17 with a TPR of 2821 to confirm that he's recovered his health and form. Shirov and Vachier-Lagrave both scored 12 (both had +2,=6,-2) while Caruana and Pelletier trailed with 10 and 5 respectively.

Chess (#686)

To promote the 2001 film, A Knight&rsquo;s Tale, a Sony marketing executive invented a reviewer and concocted a suitable quote to be highlighted in its promotional poster. The movie went on to become a blockbuster.

VW Polo romps home

New brands won&rsquo;t be built by doing what old brands did better; new brands are built by thinking about the world in new ways, by reimagining the role and purpose of brands in people&rsquo;s lives. Branding is first and foremost a battle of &ldquo;episteme&rdquo;, to own the ideological framework, one that determines truth itself. Big brands are good at passing off their truths as the ultimate truths. Dettol will make you believe that the whole world is hostile and we are under siege, Airtel and Nokia will convince you that &ldquo;We&rdquo; is greater than &ldquo;I&rdquo;, Nike will make you believe that if you have a body you can be an athlete and so on.

No holds barred

The role is fast changing from managing to being a growth champion.

New, improved marketing manager

    This company was founded by the first user of the 1-800 toll free number as a sales channel in the US. His company&rsquo;s famous slogan was &ldquo;leave off the last S for savings&rdquo;. Name him and his company.

The Strategist Quiz (#213)

    He is known as &ldquo;any time, any quantity man&rdquo;. Name the person and his company which were in the news recently.

Answers to last week&#39;s quiz (#212)

The initial success has prompted telecom companies to hardsell the new service.

The prime time 3G show

250 million active users across the globe access the site on their handsets.

Facebook dominates the mobile space

Food brands are trying to make products, which were earlier seen as occasional indulgence, to become a part of the regular shopping basket.

Target: Top of the pyramid

IBM advertised its employees as proud IBMers and Intel showed how its USB-inventors are different. Tata Steel is seeking to do the same.

Steeling the brand

Sony PlayStation (PS) has 80 per cent share in the Indian game console market. Sounds good, but Sony isn&rsquo;t celebrating &ndash; yet. That&rsquo;s because the market is still tiny (India has 2 per cent video game penetration), comprising only the upper layer of the SEC audience. This is in sharp contrast to the 60-70 per cent penetration in markets like the UK.

Sony PlayStation takes the mass route

Producing a good wine is simple: just put good wine grapes and a good winemaker together and voila! That&rsquo;s the theory. In practice it&rsquo;s a little more complicated &mdash; at least in India. For one, few vineyards here produce good wine grapes and those that do rarely have enough to spare for you and me. For another, while in France or Italy you almost can&rsquo;t throw a stone without hitting a winemaker, in India they are much rarer and generally have to be imported.

Paradise or plonk?

Indian hopes at the World Junior in Chennai rest on 14-year-old Girish Koushik. Koushik, rated just 2309, shares third-fourth place with Darius Swiercz of Poland. Both have 7 points after 9 rounds. The Armenian duo of Robert Hovhannisyan (8) and Samvel Ter-Sahakyan (7.5) and are in first and second. Koushik has a GM norm and 4/5 against GM opposition.

Chess (#687)

On the 10th floor of Mafatlal Centre in South Mumbai, &lsquo;pugmarks&rsquo; can be spotted everywhere. Hemendra Kothari, 65, the big cat of investment banking, is ready to show the trail right to its end. He first opens the door to a room named Kanha where hangs a rectangular picture of two young tigers frolicking in brown grass, about to paw each other. On the other end of the floor is Bandipur where tigers are swimming towards their prey with huge luminous eyes.

Wild life

They sell in lakhs, churn out hundreds of novels in a lifetime and constantly finetune their storylines according to the latest trends. Aabhas Sharma meets the bestselling writers of Hindi pulp fiction.

Plots of gold

Atul Sobti, former MD and CEO of Ranbaxy, quit that job to start Gurgaon&rsquo;s first exclusive local paper.

'Why not go far away?'

If the riots in England and America&rsquo;s debt crisis have a silver lining it&rsquo;s that they prove that India does not have a monopoly on leadership deficit.

The leadership deficit

Srinivas Krishnan drives the new Maruti Suzuki Swift and finds out whether it remains the benchmark in its segment.

The Bench

Bill Roedy made his channel a hit, but can&rsquo;t get out of the way of his story.

MTV Roedy's reality show-off

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