Postings from the Edge

Global PR, new PR, social media and printing ink

Friday 20 July 2007

Carlsberg's disappointing global ambition

Carlsberg, the Danish brewer, is looking for a new chief executive to replace Nils Smedegaard Andersen. The company has gone through a huge amount of change over the past seven- eight years, moving from being a national producer with a few international outposts to being a truly global corporation with common policies and practices. So what is the profile of the new CEO? He needs to be Danish, according to the chairman of the Carlsberg Foundation.
The reason is that Carlsberg is more integrated in Danish society than any other and any CEO needs to find his way around ministries, government and the arts, says the chairman Povl Krogsgaard-Larsen to daily business paper Børsen.
What staggering narrowness of vision! Close to 90% of Carlsberg's turnover is generated outside Denmark, how about finding someone who can manage that?
Krogsgaard-Larsen's comment raises two points about globalisation in Denmark:

  • Globalisation is something that goes on 'out there'
  • It implies that Danes are natural global leaders that nip out and solve the world's problems in an afternoon after doing the really complicated stuff at home.

Both of course are nonsense. While I suspect Carlsberg knows better, the Carlsberg Foundation (which owns 51% of the company) ought to be ashamed of such a comment

Wednesday 18 July 2007

... and just to prove my point

Morten Lund (who will forever be known as a Skype investor although he does other things) has blogged this. It is a web service that sits on the end of a PDF workflow and converts the files into a virtual book or magazine that is searchable by Google
http://www.pagegangster.com/

Now if you can just combine this with a feed into the local digital printer who can rattle you off a copy and post it to your home address...

The death of print media - again

Forbes has a story about how online media is going to put an end to print media

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/07/16/redherring-print-blogs-tech-media-cx_bc_0716techmedia.html

It's a good story, but in these days when xml is separating content and structure I can't help thinking that the reporter is barking up the wrong tree. The big fuss about paper vs. screen is about a delivery mechanism and how you attach ads to that mechanism. We should be focusing on content and then delivering that content in the way people want it - paper or screen. The production systems need to be flexible enough so people can choose. Its the news that ought to matter, not the box in comes in.

And I wouldn't rule out paper just yet - when everyone is competing for space on a screen, a well-timed delivery of good old fashioned paper might just be a refreshing change. If it were me, I'd make people subscribe to the content and let them choose how they want to read.

Monday 16 July 2007

Need I say more?