Craig King's Profile

financial institutions are extraordinarily conservative, as are businesses. With the borrowers and the lenders who fuel the economy all steering clear of high-risk deals, things go smoothly: loans are almost always paid on time, businesses generally succeed, and everyone does well. That success, however, inevitably encourages borrowers and lenders to take on more risk in the reasonable hope of making more money. As Minsky observed, “Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure.”

s people forget that failure is a possibility, a “euphoric economy” eventually develops, fueled by the rise of far riskier borrowers - what he called speculative borrowers, those whose income would cover interest payments but not the principal; and those he called “Ponzi borrowers,” those whose income could cover neither, and could only pay their bills by borrowing still further. As these latter categories grew, the overall economy would shift from a conservative but profitable environment to a much more freewheeling system dominated by players whose survival depended not on sound business plans, but on borrowed money and freely available credit.

nce that kind of economy had developed, any panic could wreck the market. The failure of a single firm, for example, or the revelation of a staggering fraud could trigger fear and a sudden, economy-wide attempt to shed debt. This watershed moment - what was later dubbed the “Minsky moment” - would create an environment deeply inhospitable to all borrowers. The speculators and Ponzi borrowers would collapse first, as they lost access to the credit they needed to survive. Even the more stable players might find themselves unable to pay their debt without selling off assets; their forced sales would send asset prices spiraling downward, and inevitably, the entire rickety financial edifice would start to collapse. Businesses would falter, and the crisis would spill over to the “real” economy that depended on the now-collapsing financial system.

Yet throughout this period, the financial system - not the economy, but finance as an industry - was growing by leaps and bounds

Nor did they pay attention to consumers’ and companies’ growing dependence on debt, and the growing use of leverage within the financial system.

By the end of the 20th century, the financial system that Minsky had warned about had materialized, complete with speculative borrowers, Ponzi borrowers, and precious few of the conservative borrowers who were the bedrock of a truly stable economy. Over decades, we really had forgotten the meaning of risk. When storied financial firms started to fall, sending shockwaves through the “real” economy, his predictions started to look a lot like a road map.

But does Minsky’s work offer us any practical help? If capitalism is inherently self-destructive and unstable - never mind that it produces inequality and unemployment, as Keynes had observed - now what?

Minsky’s other solution, however, was considerably more radical and less palatable politically. The preferred mainstream tactic for pulling the economy out of a crisis was - and is - based on the Keynesian notion of “priming the pump” by sending money that will employ lots of high-skilled, unionized labor - by building a new high-speed train line, for example.

Minsky, however, argued for a “bubble-up” approach, sending money to the poor and unskilled first. The government - or what he liked to call “Big Government” - should become the “employer of last resort,” he said, offering a job to anyone who wanted one at a set minimum wage. It would be paid to workers who would supply child care, clean streets, and provide services that would give taxpayers a visible return on their dollars. In being available to everyone, it would be even more ambitious than the New Deal, sharply reducing the welfare rolls by guaranteeing a job for anyone who was able to work. Such a program would not only help the poor and unskilled, he believed, but would put a floor beneath everyone else’s wages too, preventing salaries of more skilled workers from falling too precipitously, and sending benefits up the socioeconomic ladder.

But not perfect. Indeed, if there’s anything to be drawn from Minsky’s collected work, it’s that perfection, like stability and equilibrium, are mirages.

His was a kind of existential economics: capitalism, like life itself, is difficult, even tragic. “There is no simple answer to the problems of our capitalism,” wrote Minsky. “There is no solution that can be transformed into a catchy phrase and carried on banners.”

nd he advises against listing items from least to most expensive, because that focuses the consumer on pric

stead he mixes up items, making it hard to find their price — thereby encouraging the customer to emotionally commit to something before finding out what it cost

But my favorite strategy of his is that of putting some absurdly expensive item on the menu. Rapp doesn’t expect many consumers to buy it, but having it there makes expensive items appear cheap by compariso

his explains why having high MSRPs is so important. Conventional wisdom is that high list prices allow sales organizations to engage in price discrimination through discounting. There’s definitely some truth to this assumption, but there’s more to it than that. High list prices can actually increase perceived value — even in businesses in which the marginal cost of production is low.

At times like this, with people I love, the no just felt empty and a little incomplete. At the stoplight, she leaned over and spoke: "I think I want to be left out of this little experiment."

A rule that applies to the time it takes to get a job done (work will grow to fill the available time) or to electricity (demand grows to match the available supply), also applies to social power. As more becomes available, our lives increasingly fill with moments necessitating its use.

n Western culture, the physical traits of influence and power manifest themselves in Hollywood, in the news, and in history. Broad shoulders, straight white teeth, tanned skin, thinness — these are a few of the traditional characteristics of people who could be considered “successful” — not tattoos and body piercings, though both are more accepted now than they were in the 1950s

n other words, we’ve developed a way of thinking about the world that predictably associates style, income, and success. Unfortunately, that association is becoming less and less accurate as more global cultures begin to interact and merge.

The fact is, these types of studies reduce the complexities of culture to sweeping generalizations — generalizations that are emphasized further in news stories, blog posts, and tweets.

“The job of leadership today is not just to make money. It’s to make meaning,”

his new cultural climate presents a historic opportunity for brands to transform themselves into arbiters of meaning. When your brand is a vector, your base becomes a movement — as we learned from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. A “meaning surplus” will become imperative: Only businesses that give more than they take will be able to create sustained brand loyalty. Out: bottom-line pragmatists and financial wizards. In: philosophers, ethicists, and social entrepreneurs.

The advent of the social web has disrupted traditional marketing conventions and has democratized the concept of branding

The truth is, a brand is no longer exclusively the bastion of marketing. In today’s open-sourced, hyper-transparent economy, customers own the brand, and no platform, book, or rigid compliance guidelines designed to protect marketers’ idea of that brand can change this. You cannot control your brand anymore, period.

A brand is a small town that never sleeps. It is open to (almost) everyone, it is vibrant, and it is made of and by people who are willing to connect in pursuit of either utilitarian value or a common cause — or both. It is composed of myriad social networks, micro-communities that communicate 24/7. Companies that embrace this new continuum and act as “brand urbanites” will easily adapt to the new digital arena

. If brands don’t have a point of view, they won’t be able to connect. If they don’t have an argument to make, they won’t be meaningful.

Brands need to be well-traveled, well-read, and educated. If they only repeat the same message again and again, they won’t be able to engage in a conversation.

efined marketing as “the whole business seen from the customer’s point of view.” Put another way, every single interaction the customer has with a business can and should be seen as marketing.

“A truly successful business is one that is an ongoing conversation. Those conversations are marketing — if you add value and connect to your customer, you’re succeeding. If you don’t, you fail.”

Clustering customers into segments based on aggregated demographic or behavioral data has serious limitations in an “age of conversations” in which the boundaries between consumer and producer, amateur and professional, are blurring.

empathy as a critical skill set and calls for companies to be “wired to care.”

The more control it gives up, the more influence it gains.

The more invisible marketing becomes, the more effective it will be.

“Brands aren’t defined by campaigns anymore, but by the consumer ecosystems we nurture to support them,”

“Start with beliefs and you’ll get believers. Marketers still need to use every trick in the book and dozens that haven’t been thought of yet to engage people in great, compelling stories. The difference today is this: To make believers, the stories have to be true.”

Increasingly, this content is small. Small content can go anywhere. With accelerated news cycles, shrinking attention spans, and communications fragmented into 140-character tweets, instant gratification and presence have become the predominant paradigms of online interaction

Microblogging services such as Twitter diversify meaning into myriad atoms of communication, hyper-targeted in-the-moment forms of looking at the world by expressing it in real time: As marketing strategist Geoff Livingston says, “Now is gone.” The shorter the attention span, the more important the role of microformats. The more sliced up the content, the richer the channels of communication. The smaller your brand, the more you can share it.

The Obama for America campaign masterfully utilized the power of social networks to generate this small-world effect. “As networks grow, they shrink,” says Jure Leskovec of Carnegie Mellon University. “As people accumulate friends, the distances shrink.” The more people joined the social Web hubs of the Obama campaign, the easier it became for the messages to spread and for the campaign to amplify its outreach and turn undecided voters into Obama voters and passive supporters into active volunteers. The bigger the network grew, the more the distance between the brand and its followers shrank. The campaign became an inclusive movement for everyone: Obama was us, and we were Obama.

Similarly, all businesses — regardless of their industry — need to realize that they’re not just selling products or services: They’re in the communication business, tasked with sharing information.

In a digital economy where most transactions are free (or expected to be free), value is created through sharing. Sharing makes content meaningful.

A study from Nokia predicts that by 2012 a quarter of all entertainment will be “circular”: created, edited, and shared within peer groups rather than generated by traditional media.

. Similarly, management guru Gary Hamel (The Future of Management) proclaims a new “gift economy”: “Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it. To gain influence and status, you have to give away your expertise and content.

And you must do it quickly; if you don’t, someone else will beat you to the punch — and garner the credit that might have been yours.”

Companies that are not afraid of showing their vulnerability have begun to embrace radical transparency as an effective way to humanize their brands: Online retailer Zappos lets every employee blog, Comcast has its engineers go on message boards to answer customer questions, and more and more companies are using Twitter for what it is best suited for — ostentatiously public personal conversations.

As much as transparency can underscore that you have nothing to hide, it can also highlight that you have a lot to give

warm coral, vermillion orange, verdant green, hibiscus red, hot pink, pungent purple and sapphire blue

sunny yellow

sugary pink, lavender, fuchsia, turquoise, lemony yellow, and (of course) the signature Valentino red.

Burberry Prorsum

neutral palette

bright turquoise

magenta

draping of fabrics into pleated, airy dresses in cobalt, emerald, yellow and orange

After a pause for a sampling of black and white, the explosion of color continued with teal, magenta, citron, coral, and purple billowing, belted, embroidered and embellished silky creations.

How to Color Your Wardrobe

one bright piece as an accent feature

contrasts bright colors of spring and summer nicely

innocence and purity.

White can expose you to fashion faux pas, however, since lightweight fabrics in this color easily reveal visible panty lines and/or colors and patterns of underwear

his legendary status may be in part due to the fact that black makes people look thinner

Black absorbs light and is hands-down the most stylish and timeless color in the world of fashion

Dramatic black is often worn by creative types, and in our commercial society black is the color of authority and power

passion and love,

produces a biological response, getting people all hot and bothered by quickening the pulse and increasing the breathing rate.

emotionally intense color

also makes the wearer look heavier and is an appetite stimulant

Red can also appear confrontational – think of matadors – so avoid red when carrying out negotiations, as it may work against you.

very gentle and calming

Purple is a color rarely found in nature – a fact that instantly draws attention to anyone wearing it

traditionally represented luxury, royalty, wealth and sophistication

Blue usually produces the opposite emotional response of the color red; blue stimulates a chemical reaction in the body, producing feelings of peace and tranquility, so blue is the perfect shade for yoga apparel.

Fashion consultants advise wearing blue to job interviews because it has been shown to symbolize loyalty.

alming and refreshing color, green represents nature.

he color of money, dark green is masculine, and suggests wealth.

he most difficult color for the eye to process, yellow can be overpowering – perhaps this is why people tend to lose their tempers and babies cry more in yellow rooms.

The Color Orange

Wearing orange is a fantastic way to command attention. A combination of passionate red and happy yellow,

Like red, orange is very stimulating, but orange (and especially peachy orange) is less aggressive and more soothing.