Toyota has done many things right in responding to its current crisis: its spokespeople have filled the media with messages of reassurance, its PR people have blogged and tweeted non-stop to fill the information vacuum, its website is full of details about the recall and its call centre is working flat out to deal with customer enquiries. So why is its hard-won reputation still facing the biggest challenge in its corporate history?
Analysis of Toyota’s handling of the incident provides clues as to why – despite a barrage of communication over the last fortnight – it still seems to be fighting a losing battle. And the key to its problems lie primarily in what happened before the crisis erupted, rather than its response to it (though this has been less than perfect).
Last weekend, Robert Boch sold a new Camry sedan with a sunroof and alloy wheels for $21,691, and the customer got a 0% loan on the deal as well.
Just a month ago, a similar model sold for $500 more, with a 2.9% interest rate on the loan, said Mr. Boch, a co-owner of Expressway Toyota in Boston.
“We have to do what it takes to keep things moving,” said Mr. Boch. “There is blood in the water and that sharks are out. We have to protect our turf.”
As of October 2009, Aardvark said it had 90,000 users, with more than half of them having asked or answered a question. Eighty-eight percent of questions had been answered, and 60 percent within 10 minutes.
Erin Bolger’s, author of “The Happy Baker: A Dater’s Guide To Emotional Baking“, pitched on CBC Dragons’ Den last night and it was a ton of fun to watch her talk and pitch. Now, the no cash deal is a sure win for Arelene, what I am much less sure is how does Erin think now. I am trying to interview Erin to find out if the deal is closed and how are things with her book.
At press time, the book’s success or failure is riding a lot on Erin’s shoulder. But I like Erin and hope she does well. Stay tune and I will post an interview if I get a chance to chat with her.
Rains is an award-winning NFB animation by David Coquard-Dassault. Rains is most recently screened at the 2010 Sundance film festival. In the eyes of this reporter, it is a stunningly and beautifully drawn (pencil-drawn) piece of animation.
Since I speak no French, the following is my email interview with David (links, additional notes and emphasis added).
Kempton: The rains and water look absolutely realistic. May I ask how did you do it? Did you film artificial/real rain and then composite on top of your beautiful pencil drawings?
David: The rain was generated using After Effects. I drew a few pencil lines: the impact of the rain on the cars – the ripples in the puddles were animated by hand – then, with the software, we multiplied and randomly dispersed them at the rhythm we wanted.
Because of the different contrast values and textures of the various shots, the rain was very hard to handle.It disappeared against some backgrounds; against others, it was too obvious and washed out the pencil. We had to create different kinds of rain for each shot and co-ordinate them all to create the downpour.
Kempton: The story is beautiful told. How did you come up with the story and script?
David: Before sitting down to write, I drew scenes and graphic compositions to link them together: that was a preliminary storyboard.
With Rains, I was trying to create an atmosphere rather than tell a story, which meant a quite different approach to the script. The difficulty in writing a contemplative film resides – at least in part – in finding a hook for the script.
I didn’t really start writing until after doing the storyboard. The challenge of writing a script, using words rather than drawings, was to work backwards from the idea, in a way, trying to find a thread that would move the film forward, that would give it meaning.
Kempton: Your first film looks spectacular. How long did it take you to make it? What are some of the hard challenges you faced in making the film?
David:Rains was 10 months in the making while I was an artist-in-residence at Folimage, in France. But it took three years, from idea to distribution, before the film could finally be seen. There are always problems making a film, no matter how small. Aside from the rain mentioned above, the true challenge seemed to be bringing immobility to life.
Kempton: Can you talk about the music and the sound effect? They are both beautiful.
David: When writing this type of contemplative film, you need to have a very precise idea of the music you want. I worked on the computer animation with the piece “Fratres,” by Arvo Pärt. Félix Dufour-Laperrière, who was in residency at the same time as I was, making Rosa Rosa, had introduced me to Pärt’s minimalist music (films are made of chance encounters). Christophe Heral, my composer, then wrote the main lines of the piece in order to offer his own point of view. He was able to work with all the sound in the film – the music and effects – to create a soundscape in harmony with the film: The pictures and sound are closely linked.
Kempton: And the group of birds at the end of the film is so lively. So minimalistic and yet realistic and beautiful at the same time. How did you make them so real?
David: I believe that I rendered them well, but they are not, strictly speaking, realistic. The film, through drawings, provides an interpretation of birds in flight – that is animation’s main advantage.
[Kempton note: I incorrectly used "realistic". What David managed was to magically bring out the essence of a bird and a flock of birds in flight with a pencil line or a few pencil lines.]
Kempton: Any other things you want to say about the film or the filmmaking process?
David: Making a film is exhausting. It’s really time I made another.
***
Here is a trailer of David Coquard-Dassault’s Rains.
“Canadian airline passengers should brace for the possibility of pricier travel after next month’s federal budget, a roundtable on air security was told Wednesday.
Michael Skrobica, a spokesman for the commercial aviation industry, said he fears the Conservative government will feel “huge pressure” to hike the air travellers security tax in a bid to offset the cost of expensive full-body scanners and other new security measures without adding to the already massive deficit.”
As if all the harassment in the airport is NOT enough, the fed was us to pay for the harassment.
“Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture. Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible. [...]
We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”
Love this kind of experiment to push the boundary of possibilities and set higher expectations for customers thus forcing the broadband providers to up their services.And pushing city or state governments themselves and via their citizens to act. Neat.
Calgary’s condominium apartment market “remains mired in a slump” [...] unsold units are at about 2,000 and although that number is down from about 3,200 a year earlier, about half of the decline was due to cancelled projects.
“Some larger projects that are completed or nearing completion have large numbers of unsold units, and in some cases had few or no sales in 2009,” said the report.
“Based on average monthly sales in 2009, the unsold inventory would take almost three years to absorb.”
Are these condos deals or not really deals?
With an over-supply of condos, it is easy to think that the prices will likely drop drastically and there may be deals to have, right? Well, it depends. Sure, many of the condo units have not been built and simply died with the unfunded/under-funded projects. But the real problem for potential buyers looking for a deal is that some of these completed projects were “finished” in manners that made the current owner want to scream.
There are horror stories of condo builders forcing buyers to take procession of these brand new condos with many parts of the condos unfinished as there are no laws mandating the builders to finish everything before they close the deal. Apparently if the condo is “liveable”, they can force closure. So cabinets and drawers with NO handles attached is a “liveable” condo. And the buyers are left to screw the handles on themselves.
When some of these new batch of condos are finished in such a rush and unprofessional manner, buyers looking for deals will have to pay very close attention to ALL the details in the condo and sadly many of the important details are hidden behind walls or under the floor and cannot be easily inspected.
Buyers looking for deal may think they pay a good price but end up with serious and unexpected problems later on. Sometimes many little signs of poor workmanship on things you can see can be used as an indication of potential problems you don’t see.
When a deal is way too good to be true, pay close attention in all the details before you sign on the dotted line. Buyers beware.
This reporter had the great pleasure of listening to the The Canadians Tenors last June at Calgarian entrepreneur, philanthropist Brett Wilson‘s garden party. The Canadians Tenors’ voices are simply beautiful. And today, I’ve been told that they will appear on Oprah! Yes, Oprah! [6:29pm update: the Tenors gave a beautiful performance AND they got to perform with Celine Dion. And they will be singing at the Olympics. Good for them!]
As part of his entertainment industry investment, Brett has been backing the Tenors as a financial partner since the summer of 2008 and is rather pleased with their success over the past 18 months.
Now, as if appearing on Oprah is not enough, I’ve been informed that The Canadians Tenors will be also appearing on Dr. Phil on Friday, February 12th and then performing the American Anthem at the upcoming NBA All-star event on Sunday, February 14th.
For the fans of CBC Dragons’ Den, Brett is known as one of the nicer Dragon and has a high percentage of his Dragons’ Den deals closed after due diligence.
The Calgary press were given practically no advance notice for the two Calgary events at 9:30am and 11am on Monday Feb 8th, 2010. Notice of the public events was posted on Sunday for a Monday event.
For the 9:30am budget roundtable, the gathered press were herded into the room at around 9:40am. mr harper spoke almost inaudibly (I had to increase mr harper’s volume in the video by 200%) for less than a minute for the photo op. No questions were allowed for the gathered press as stipulated in the public events media advisory. mr prentice and 10 Alberta businessmen sat there quietly as planned and staged when mr harper was speaking.
It was unfortunate that the room for the budget roundtable was very small, the 50-70 seconds for photo op was too short, and mr harper spoke way too gently (inaudibly). The end result was chaotic, more than one Calgary/national media outlets were unable to get useable material at the first photo op.
Upon requests from the gathered media, the PMO (Prime Minister Office) promised to try to find someone attending the budget roundtable to speak to the media. And on this, the PMO delivered and an roundtable attendee was made available. Actually, another attendee who left by the front entrance also stopped by to answer questions from the media. Both persons’ answers can be seen in the following video.
For the 11:00am Alberta caucus meeting, the gathered press were herded into the room, a much bigger room for the 20+ attendees, where more spaces were available for cameras and TV cameras. Again, mr harper spoke almost inaudibly (the 200% volume boost didn’t help this time because the camera shuttle sound nearby was louder than many of mr harper’s words). But at least photos were taken and the press were herded out of the room in about 60 seconds.
Again, upon request by the gathered press to have someone answering questions after the Alberta caucus meeting, the PMO said they “will try” to find someone to answer questions. This reporter decided to leave before the end of the caucus meeting (see reasons in the discussions).
Discussion of issues raised by the above facts (with matching fact & discussion number),
As a courtesy and a little bit of respect to the Calgary press (and press in other cities), it makes sense to give more advance notice to the press. I suspect the 10 businessmen and the 20+ Alberta caucus members didn’t get a call on Sunday about the roundtable so they had much more advance notices to prepare. This would be useful especially for a Monday morning event at 9:30am. Bottom line: Yes, courteous would be nice but the PMO can do what pleases it on this one. The PMO doesn’t have to be courteous to the press. My understanding is that Calgary, mr harper’s home riding, is simply getting the same discourteous treatment as other cities mr harper had been holding roundtable. So Calgary is nothing special for mr harper.
What the prime minister said in the two events for about 60 seconds each was almost inaudible and the total lack of opportunities for reporters to ask mr harper questions before, during, or after the budget roundtable was unacceptable. Bottom line: If all the prime minister harper and the PMO wanted was to have local media take photo and video of mr harper and be his official mouth piece, then the PMO should consider not informing the media outlets about the Calgary or other cities’ events. And simply issuing standard PMO approved photos and videos. This way, at least the video will have audible sound! (more in #3)
Bottom Line: The very funny thing was the PMO actually had a boom mike setup for both events to capture much better sound than local media ended up getting. Of course, this reporter is being facetious in suggesting the PMO to NOT inform the local media and simply distribute “approved photos and videos”. In fact, if PMO takes on the role to distribute “approved photos and videos”, then it is functioning no different than the China’s government controlled mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency (the sole government approved news source if and when the Chinese government declare a news as “embarrassing/sensitive” including the 2008 Sichuan earthquake).
The gathered press (me included) were lucky to have two budget roundtable attendees answering questions. So some general sense of the discussions could be obtained. But the clear and present pink elephant in the room was mr harper! Yes, mr harper was the pink elephant in the room that every reporter wanted to asked a question or two. In fact, after the chaotic first photo op where some of the gathered reporters were angry of the impossible arrangement and the superficial nature of the photo op. Later that morning, I was reliably informed by a TV reporter colleague that mr harper had not allowed reporters any questions when harper visited Calgary last year. This lead me to think mr harper has become way too controlling and has been unable to communicate effectively. Bottom Line: The press in Calgary and other cities should be viewed as proxies for Canadians. The press’ jobs are to ask questions important to Canadians, and to get answers from their elected politicians regarding issues & initiatives important to Canadians. The role of the press is even MORE IMPORTANT now because the parliament has been prorogued single-handedly by mr harper for an extended period. When opposition parties (elected by Canadians across the country) cannot hold prime minister harper and government ministers accountable by questioning them in the parliament, that important role of “holding the government accountable” falls, unfortunately, onto the shoulders of the press.
Well, the photos and video clips were taken successfully at photo op #2. The formalities were done. Unfortunately, the important issues raised above remains unresolved.
This reporter decided NOT to wait for the caucus meeting to finish because of two reasons.First, the “will try” from the PMO was not good enough for this reporter to wait for another hour to 90 minutes. Second, and this is the key reason why I left, when the clear and present pink elephant in the room (mr harper) would NOT answer questions, the sad fact of life was that the token politician in that room sent to answer questions would only be authorized to speak from a list of likely meaningless scripted talking points. Bottom Line: In China, the value of reporting meaningless & scripted talking points may mean staying alive and be employed for another day. In Canada, this reporter made the conscious decision to walk away and refused to be a mouthpiece of mr harper’s or the government of Canada’s information/disinformation.
“We need more people to stand up against the powerful and idiotic politicians in Canada, U.S., Hong Kong, and many places around the world where we have the rights to freedom of speech.“
I never quite thought that I would be the person/reporter that “stand up” and speak up against powerful politicians: writing about mr harper, freedom of speech, and naming mr harper as the pink elephant in the room. But in life, sometime things need to be done. And in this case, this reporter/blogger ended up discussing freedom of press, mr harper, and the pink elephant in the room, because of mr harper and the PMO persistence and dangerous press restrictions.
Note: When mr prentice came to Calgary the week before to talk about the new environment policy, he at least had a press scrum and answered some media questions.
Got excited watching the Vancouver 2010 Olympic torch Relay in Richmond tonight. Here is a video captured. (note: video has been uploaded to YouTube, it may take a few minutes for processing. stay tune.)
Here are a few brief points made by the PMO “designated” roundtable participant Doug Mitchell,
high level discussions about energy, the general economy, agriculture, and how to generate the economy [economic activities]
look at where is Canada and in reference to US in the recovery
home improvement plan/stimulus showing the desired effects
improvement from stimulus doesn’t last forever, ultimately someone has to pay for it
recovery is fragile but Canada is doing well comparing to other nations
people still worry about their jobs, worry about the future, people have to be cautious
general mood in the room is positive
Edmonton-based Cal Nichols also stopped to answer a few questions from the media,
Cal thinks mr harper is reaching out and looking for feedback and ideas, whats working, whats in the best interests for Canadians, with clear focus on how we are perceived by the world because we are part of a global economy.
Stimulas programs are going to carry on and have to work within the budget.
No discussion about equalization payments in the meeting.
Main themes of the meeting: (because this was an Alberta based group) there were good discussions about energy initiatives, carbon capture, environment.
Talks about the economy: Locally, optimism amongst the group. Everybody in the room is mindful of not only what is good for Alberta but what is good for the rest of the country.
“Harper projected optimism in a short statement he made for reporters before closing the doors on the meeting.
“We had some good news last week on the jobs front. We had a little bit of good news on the Buy America front. Commodity prices are obviously a lot better than they were a year ago,” he said.
“That all said, we think we still have some significant challenges going forward, given the fragile state of the global recovery.”
A deal was struck last week that allows Canadian companies to be temporarily exempt from some of the Buy American elements of Washington’s stimulus package.”
The following video shows mr harper at his photo ops, and two participants talking about the roundtable discussions in full. More discussion of mr harper’s visit to Calgary after the video.
Note: It is hard to write about prime minister stephen harper’s budget roundtable and Alberta caucus meeting in Calgary yesterday without stating how limited and restricted the media access were (and apparently the pm’s previous Calgary visits are the same). The “Photo opportunity off the top (cameras and photographers only)” stipulation, meaning no chances for gathered reporters to ask any questions, lead to superficial reporting of very limited value of what the prime minister thinks on the core issues. This reporter will explore that in another article.
Google’s Street View has gone to many strange places, even off-road. But in preparation for the Winter Olympics it equipped a snowmobile with 360-degree cameras and took it to the top of Whistler, the Canadian ski resort where the Games will take place.
“Priceless” by William Poundstone is one book that this Calgary reporter/blogger knows will worth more than the price of the book. I will be sharing more of the insights and wisdom learned from the book in upcoming articles.
In the mean time, here are some reviews of “Priceless“,
“Priceless is an instructive and entertaining romp through the hits of recent research on decision making, which will leave you amused, smarter, and wondering about what money and prices really mean.” —Daniel Kahneman, professor emeritus, Princeton University, and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics
“The psychology of prices is, to an extent, the psychology of life, and thus the lessons of Priceless are indeed life lessons. Poundstone’s lively descriptions of the irrational quirks that characterize our behavior are engaging and enlightening. Take it with you when you’re thinking of buying (or selling) something. It might save you a bundle.” —John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences and Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up
“If you can get this book for under $100, grab it! After you read it, you will better understand why the price you paid felt like a bargain.” —Max Bazerman, professor of business administration, Harvard Business School, and coauthor of Judgment in Managerial Decision Making
Every year, I eagerly await announcements of exciting events or speakers that will lead me to block off my time and decide I will attend bwtvf and NextMEDIA conferences. OK, I know it is a short drive from Calgary to Banff, but I don’t want to report simply because I have to. I want to attend and report because I LOVE to!
Well, for 2010, because of one man, I am again going to attend and report from Banff World Television Festival with the most excitement and eagerness because I just LOVE Ricky Gervais and consider Ricky one of the most talented comic mind and producer/creator of shows in our time.
If you are remotely connected in the entertainment business, find time to attend 2010 Banff World Television Festival and you will learn a lot, plus you get to meet Ricky. Here is the press release from Banff about Ricky.
Banff, AB – The Banff World Television Festival and nextMEDIA are delighted to announce that Ricky Gervais will be presented with the Sir Peter Ustinov Comedy Award, at this year’s event taking place June 13-16 at the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta. The award acknowledges outstanding comedic performances – prominent comedic actors who have received this prestigious award include John Cleese, Bob Newhart and Kelsey Grammer.
In addition to being recognized for comedic excellence, Gervais will also chart his career and success to date, in an interview, which delegates can attend.
Over a 10-year period Ricky Gervais has become the most influential British comedian since Charlie Chaplin. He is an award-winning stand up and his tour ‘FAME’ became the fastest selling UK stand up show in history, selling an untouchable 100,000 tickets in 9 minutes.
Named one of the 100 Most Influential People In The World by Time Magazine, one place behind Nelson Mandela, Ricky has also won two Emmys and three Golden Globes. ‘The Office’ is the most successful British comedy of all time being shown in over 90 countries with seven remakes.
“This is probably the greatest honour of my career. Only the Nobel Peace Prize can top this, but I will only accept that in person if the ceremony is held somewhere as beautiful as Banff. I think they Fedex, luckily,” says Ricky.
Posted by kempton 
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