Ho Ho Ho
Santa Claus transformed
Christmas. Can he also transform investor's
perceptions of it?
The man
who created the world's most valuable brand remains an elusive figure
when not in his grotto, often shielded by the tinted windows of a
personalized executive sleigh that serves as his mobile office. Friends
say that money is not his motivation, even though he is apparently
seeking now to sell off all or part of his privately held empire.
Talking to the elves, seeing the children smile, guiding the creative
side of Christmas, these are the things that drive him, he says.
Yet the
owner of the trademark beard and belly-laugh is also a man shrewd enough
to have grasped the money-making potential of Christmas when nobody saw
it as a commercial enterprise at all, and many thought it doomed to
merge with New Year. Santa Claus, a former bishop from Asia Minor,
thought differently. He did not invent Christmas, he likes to say now,
but he did re-invent it. Probably nobody has ever seen the link between
reindeer and revenues more clearly. "Besides", says one high-ranking
elf, "he throws great parties."
Santa's
quirky management style, combining large quantities of mulled wine with
a tight grip on the reins, has turned the homum into the ho-ho-ho. Once
just a two-day affair in churches and private houses, Christmas is now
the biggest-spending item in most western countries after health care
and defense. The logistics of that success require Santa to be in
thousands of malls by day and down millions of chimneys by night.
Advisers say he relies on a series of proprietary algorithms derived
from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which allow him to be in an
infinite number of places simultaneously so long as nobody believes he
is really in any one of them.
Of course,
Christmas has to grapple with the fundamental uncertainties affecting
all modern industries. They include globalization, the spread of the
internet and the pervasive power of Wal-Mart. All of these seem to be
working, for the moment at least, in Christmas' favour. Global warming
may pose a long-term risk. The ageing of the population in many of
Santa's major markets is less of a worry. Even if it means relatively
fewer children, whether naughty or nice, it may also mean more indulgent
grandparents.
But the
biggest question overhanging Christmas is one of succession. What if
some accident sleighed Santa tomorrow? Christmas would probably survive
as a religious festival, economists say, but spending patterns might
never recover - throwing much of the world into a perpetual mid-winter
recession. That, says Santa, is the main reason he now wants to involve
outside shareholders and professional managers, or, as he calls them,
"subordinate Clauses", in the owning and running of Christmas.
Some
analysts think the man in the red suit has simply spotted a good moment
to sell. With liquidity booming around the world, Santa can hope to get
a fat price for all or part of his franchise from "sledge-funds" run by
rich private investors. Kris Kringle, owner of snowbiz.org, a
Santa-watching web site, believes that Santa's decision to bring in
outside managers also reflects the failure of his past attempts at
diversification using in-house elves and Lapps. A British health-care
subsidiary, the National Elf Service, lost money and was taken over by
the government. The Lapp-Dance chain of folk clubs in Scandinavia was
sold to a trade buyer who relaunched them for an adult audience.
There has
been speculation, too, that Santa wants to cut back on his business
commitments in order to launch a political career in one of the many
countries where he could claim citizenship, possibly Canada. After
decades of being told that government was "no Santa Claus", commentators
say, voters would welcome a government that was, indeed, Santa Claus.
Still
saintly
Santa
himself denies any such plan, insisting that Christmas will remain his
top priority. If he does ever get more free time, he says, he will do
more good works. He rarely uses his official title of Saint Nicholas,
but it clearly rankles with him that the Catholic Church demoted him in
1969, by making observance of his feast day (December 6th) optional - a
move he blames on "pro-Eastern" forces in the Vatican. He is also a
saint in the Orthodox Church, he points out, and enjoys worldwide
acceptance as a patron saint of children, thieves, bankers, prisoners,
sailors, unmarried girls and pawnbrokers, not to say Greece and Russia.
All that means quite a backlog of problems, some of them going back to
medieval times.
Whatever
the motives for a Christmas sale, the prospectus, if it comes, will be
much in demand. With the Artic as its home and a fat man as its
trademark, the business looks, says one potential investor, "like a
cross between the Alaska purchase and Kentucky Fried Chicken". The
assets will be almost all intangible, but "what do you expect - it is
the season for goodwill", says another. The more pressing question will
be whether the trademarks and copyrights assembled by Santa can
guarantee real effective ownership of Christmas worldwide, and for how
long.
A banker
close to the deal says the small print here will be reassuring. He says
that Santa quietly bought up a lot of outstanding rights and licences
after a bid to "steal" Christmas, by the Grinch, came dangerously close
to succeeding in 1957. This same source also plays down worries about
the size of the health and pension benefits owed to the elves and
reindeer. Outsiders have wildly over-estimated the scale of Santa's
toy-making operations, he says. They require only a tyny workforce. More
than 99% of Christmas gifts for children are bought in shops by parents,
and are merely "co-branded" by Santa at the moment of giving. The real
key to the deal, this banker concludes, is whether Santa sticks by his
promise of continued involvement. For Christmas to go on working, he
says, "you just have to believe in Santa Claus".
Publicado no The Economist (December 24th 2005
- January 6th 2006)
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É fácil
aprender alemão!
Conta o livro que os cangurus (beutelratten) são
capturados e colocados
em jaulas (kotter), cobertas com uma tela (lattengitter) para
protegê-los das
intempéries. Estas jaulas, em alemão, chamam-se jaulas cobertas com tela
(lattengitterkotter) e quando possuem em seu interior um canguru,
chamamos ao conjunto de "jaula coberta de tela com canguru", ou seja:
lattengitterkotterbeutelratten.
Um dia, os Hotentotes prenderam um assassino (attentäter), acusado de
haver matado uma mãe (mutter) hotentote (hottentottermutter), mãe de um
garoto surdo-mudo (stottertrottel).Esta mulher, em alemão, chama-se
hottentottenstottertrottelmutter e a seu assassino chamamos, facilmente,
hottentottenstottertrottelmutterattentäte. No livro, os índios o
capturaram e, sem ter onde colocá-lo, puseram-no numa jaula de canguru (beutelrattenlattengitterkotter).
Mas, incidentalmente, o preso escapou.
Mas, incidentalmente, o preso escapou.
Após iniciaram uma busca. Rapidamente vem um guerreiro Hotentote
gritando: - Capturamos um assassino (attentäter)!
- Qual?? - pergunta o chefe indígena.
- O lattengitterkotterbeutelrattenattentäter - comenta o guerreiro.
- Como? O assassino que estava na jaula de cangurus coberta de tela? -
diz o chefe dos Hotentotes.
- Sim, responde a duras penas o indígena - o
hottentottenmutterattentäter, assassino da mãe do garoto surdo-mudo.
- Ah, demônios, diz o chefe - você poderia ter dito desde o início que
havia capturado o
hottentotterstottertrottelmutterlattengitterkotterbeutelrattenattentäter
(assassino da mãe do garoto surdo-mudo que estava na jaula de cangurus
coberta de tela).
Assim, através deste exemplo, podemos ver que o alemão é facílimo e
simplifica muito as coisas. Basta um pouco de interesse.
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Rhababerkuchen!
Achtung!!!
Neuer Alkoholtest in Deutschland ab 01.01.2006!!!
Es wurde festgestellt, dass trotz der Einmal-Mundstücke die Alkotester
unhygienisch sind.
Daher wird im neuen Jahr ein neuer Alkoholtest eingeführt:
Wer nach dem Trinken den folgenden Text fehlerfrei lesen kann, darf
seinen Führerschein behalten!
In einem kleinen Dorf wohnte einst ein Mädchen mit dem Namen Barbara.
Barbara war in der ganzen Gegend für ihren ausgezeichneten
Rhabarberkuchen bekannt.
Weil jeder so gerne Barbara's Rhabarberkuchen aß nannte man sie
Rhabarberbarbara.
Rhabarberbarbara merkte bald, dass sie mit ihrem Rhabarberkuchen
Geld verdienen könnte.
Daher eröffnete sie eine Bar:
Die Rhabarberbarbarabar. Natürlich gab es in der Rhabarberbarbarabar
bald Stammkunden.
Die bekanntesten unter Ihnen, drei Barbaren, kamen so oft in die
Rhabarberbarbarabar um von Rhabarberbarbaras Rhabarberkuchen zu essen,
dass man sie kurz die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren nannte.
Die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren hatten wunderschöne dichte Bärte.
Wenn die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren ihren
Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbart pflegten gingen sie zum Barbier.
Der einzige Barbier der einen Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbart bearbeiten
konnte wollte das natürlich betonen und nannte sich
Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbier.
Na, könnt ihr noch folgen?
Na dann mal weiter, Zeit für´s Finale...
Nach dem stutzen des Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbarts geht der
Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbier meist mit den
habarberbarbarabarbarbaren in die Rhabarberbarbarabar um mit den
Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren von Rhabarberbarbaras herrlichem
Rhabarberkuchen zu essen.
So, das wars. Ganz einfach oder? ;-)
Also mein Führerschein ist demnächst weg!
Viel Glück!!!
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