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Barry Diller and the IAC

Fifteen years after Barry Diller had gone to see QVC the home shopping network, he was on CBS 60 minutes today. Within minutes of being on 60 minutes the Internet search engines were buzzing with searches for "Barry Diller" ! How much the media consumption experience has changed over the last 15 years !

And Barry Diller a former media executive  guessed that there would be some kind of technology convergence in consumer buying behavior. I liked the way CBS showed the QVC format which historically involved infomercials,call centers and computer screens. Add the Internet and you have the huge and growing IAC portfolio. You would have used at least some of the famous IAC brands like Expedia,Ticket Master if not many others.

I also  enjoyed the admission by Barry Diller and the clarification by his wife Diane von Furstenberg that he starts with only a fuzzy idea of where he is going to go. He "fakes it till he makes it" - I suppose all kinds of visioning is like that- you have to believe in something and see how you go, but keep going. In parting, Diller made a wonderful and thoughtful comparison between Google and IAC.While Google was a mega brand people didn't know about IAC but if IAC became like Procter and Gamble ,which has so many famous brands - it would be great.I thought , this was a rather neat way of looking at a portfolio of Internet brands.

Mario Andretti and Creative Content

Mario Andretti is a familiar name to racing car ethusiasts and to video gamers. My only exposure to car racing has been at the Australian Grand Prix about a decade ago when my client Southcorp Holdings kindly invited me to sit in their box at the Adelaide Grand Prix. Frankly, I was a little upset with a couple of crashing cars (luckily no major injuries) and have maintained only a mild interest in auto racing since. However, when I read that Andretti is a big name in video gaming and more importantly is now available in a cell phone version; my interest revived.

More interesting from this blog's point of view was that the entire game for the Verizon platform was developed overseas. According to this article creative content outsourcing is becoming big business. Apparently GWE (Global Wireless Entertainment) started by asking their vendor, Paradox  Studios to research Mario Andretti and took about six months to get the game developed. Development involved an alpha stage where more detailed specifications were drawn and then a beta stage when a playable racing car game became available.  Both launch time and cost for the new game in a new platform (mobile) was drastically reduced by getting the creative folks in Mumbai (Bombay) to work on the project.

Creative Content outsourcing has its own unique challenges, including the need to keep up good and regular communications with the developers and creative folks overseas, good natured experimentation and the ability to move with a team you really have not met. Also the question of good intellectual property management is  important. Nevertheless creative content outsourcing does seem to be the emerging as a frontier in global outsourcing ...

Japanese "Manga" made in Philippines

The huge Japanese "Manga" or cartoons and comics industry is just too busy. Inq7.net reports from Manila that Japan’s Toei Animation Co. Ltd., the Dragonball Z creator is going to ask their wholly owned subsidiary Toei Philippines to do the animation work. Toei Animation Company has expanded its distribution to LA and France and needs to speed up production to meet the expected increase in demand. While the Japanese animators will do the art direction and  key animation - the Philippines subsidiary will do background, coloring and Camera works. If Philipines runs short of capacity then the Japanese company will shift the work elsewhere. Even "art" work can be divided and globalized; I am thinking...

My Outsourced Life- New Hollywood Movie

AJ Jacobs, Editor at Large of Esquire Magazine undertook a one month exercise of outsourcing his personal and professional tasks to two firms in Bangalore.  These tasks included buying movie tickets and fighting with his wife via outsourced email.

Times of India reports that Jay Roach of "Meet the Fockers" fame will be directing a movie for Universal based on Jacobs' experiences. Hilarious!