Logo 2.0
Todays consumer is hyper sensitive to changes in the cultural landscape, which they recontextualise into their own communications. < / web 2.0 >
Here's a bunch of people making fun of web 2.0 logos
.Con
I've been reading .con, a history of the .com boom and bust. It takes place at pretty much the time I was leaving university and going to work in the web industry. Indeed one of my old CVs mentioned having 'a ringside seat' on the whole affair.
I'd love to be able to talk to myself as I was then. I remember thinking two things
a) The .com bubble was clearly ridiculous and couldn't last
b) Internet business was the only way to do business
Clearly these positions would have been hard to reconcile, but I'm pretty sure that's what I was thinking. It was a kind of 'all those .com's are dumb, but this web thing is really going to work'. Clicks and Bricks was the buzzword for that state of mind I seem to recall.
In my defence the company I was working with at the time made a point of not dealing with .coms. We worked for real businesses who paid cash, not stock options, and most of the projects I worked on made money for someone - often a lot. So perhaps I did know what I was doing - but I doubt it. If I'd been working somewhere with stronger Kool Aid I think I'd have swallowed it all...
Duff in for how much?
Football finance is one of the most misunderstood things around. Even journalists who should no better have been trumpeting the 'Newcastle only paid #5m for Duff' story as if it's news.
When a transfer fee is announced it's in everyone's favour to exaggerate it. So the selling club will tot up all the potential add ons, extra payments, performance bonuses etc. in order to claim that they got an offer too good to turn down, while the buying club do the same to demonstrate their level of ambition.
The truth is that for most transfers there's a 50% cash payment up front with the rest spread over a few years. I seem to remember there's some sort of different regulation for payments relating to overseas transfers from the UK that makes them more financially attractive as well.
Anyway, the key point is that the stock market is the only place where what gets talked about is cold hard cash. We acquired an asset (Damien Duff) and we are committed to at least #5m. Future payments aren't mentioned - but I wouldn't be surprised if they're linked to appearances, champions league / UEFA qualification, international appearances or even goals scored. All of which could easily push the 'newspaper figure' up to the #10m talked about.
The other thing to look for is what it takes to balance the books. Like most assets player registrations are depleted over the life of the asset on the balance sheet. So assuming the reported 17m Chelsea paid for Duff was real and he was there for three years that leaves 6.8m to go, so the Chelsea accounts will only show a 1.8 million loss on the deal. More likely though some of the agreed #17m was still outstanding and we've got him for exactly what it cost for Chelsea to break even.
While I can't think of examples off the top of my head this is a very common pattern in football transfers, and one the press almost never notice.
I have a plan
Mostly it involves doing a lot more blogging than I have been lately. I'm aiming for a post a day. Not including the blogging I do for work
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)