In the four-minute advertorial, a young Chinese woman, her long hair pulled into a ponytail, weeps as her parents discuss her single status. “She’s just average-looking, not too pretty,” her mother says. “That’s why she’s a leftover.” In China the phrase sheng nu, or “leftover woman,” is a derogatory term referring to those in their late 20s who are unmarried.
A Procter & Gamble marketing campaign aims to remove this stigma while promoting products such as its $179 Facial Treatment Essence and $225 GenOptics drops for age spots, both included in its pricey SK-II skin-care line. The campaign features women who’ve chosen to pursue their dreams instead of being pressured into marrying for the sake of it. It’s helped increase sales of SK-II in China more than 50 percent over the past nine months, says Markus Strobel, global president of SK-II. “This campaign has put us on the map in China and generated extremely positive sentiment among consumers and retailers,” he says. “It’s helping us win with young professional and executive women.”
advertorialという単語は英和辞典にも載っていました。
（ウィズダム） advertorial (新聞雑誌の)記事形式の広告, PR記事.
（ケンブリッジ・ビジネス） advertorial an advertisement that is designed to look like a written article and seems to be giving information rather than advertising a product: Learn more about advertorials and how they can be an effective advertising medium for the products you sell online.
The bottom line: A marketing campaign in China for SK-II products has boosted sales growth more than 50 percent over the past nine months.
記事で It encourages women to overcome barriers and work and live as they want.と書かれているようにそのような女性たちを応援するために広告が作成されたのでしょうが、容姿を強調しすぎだという批判やこの広告一つで問題が解決されるわけではないというもっともな指摘もあります。
Gilhool is no fan of P&G’s campaign, saying it emphasizes women’s appearance and not their accomplishments. “I think the impact of the ad isn’t aligned with the intention,” she says. P&G spokesman Damon Jones says the campaign “celebrates women who are independent and creating their own definition of happiness, regardless of societal expectations.”
Chinese women who want to delay marriage or stay single say it will take more than an ad to alter prejudices. “The commercial just spells out the problems we have. It doesn’t really give a solution,” says Tong Lei, a 36-year-old executive who works in the tourism industry in Shanghai. She’s seen the video but hasn’t used SK-II products. “My parents can understand that society has changed,” she says, “but their values, in terms of prizing marriage, won’t change.” She says her relationship with her parents improved only after she moved from their home into her own apartment two years ago, an option not economically possible for many single women. “This mindset of looking down on single women will only change when my generation becomes parents,” she says.
日本にいると「中国けしからん！愛国日本！！」という雰囲気が強く中国人を煙たく思いがちですが、自分らしい人生を模索している点では我々と何ら変わりはないですよね。広告の最後にあったDon't pressure dictate your futureという言葉が印象的です。（それこそ広告の思う壺だという人もいるかもしれませんが。。。）
Morite2さんのブログでfeasibilityが紹介されていましたが、記事ではhe’s “encouraged” that the technology is feasible.という表現がありました。ビジネスでfeasibleとあれば事業として実行可能であることを指すことが多いのでまったくのデタラメとは言えないようです。といってもhe’s encouraged thatとあるので断言したというよりも保留した態度でありますが。。。
Of all the advisers Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed, Concepcion was the most candid in saying the tests’ accuracy isn’t yet guaranteed. Based on the data he’s seen, though, he says he’s “encouraged” that the technology is feasible. The first step is, “Does it work?” he says. “And if it does not work, can we tweak it until it does work?” He’s working with the company to set up a real-world academic study, comparing finger-prick tests against traditional venous draws in hospitals, to prove “once and for all” that the technology fulfills its promises. If it isn’t perfect, he says, the solution isn’t to pile on Theranos. It just means the company needs to work harder. He adds: “There are millions of people out there who need this to work.”
In a June 2014 cover story for Fortune, I helped raise to prominence the inventor-entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes and her remarkable—I think everyone will still go along with that adjective—diagnostics company Theranos. Fairly high up in my story there is a whopping false statement. After explaining that Theranos’s tests could be performed with a finger-stick, rather than using traditional venipuncture (a syringe in the crook of the arm), I wrote that the company “currently offers 200—and is ramping up to offer more than 1000—of the most commonly ordered blood diagnostic tests, all without the need of a syringe.”
I remember coming back to this point again later: How exactly would venipuncture help them cope with volume? I was told that my question was getting into the realm of trade secret. A secret, for sure. But maybe a different kind of secret. So I blew it. And I should have included all these colloquies in the original story. I regret the error.
American Booty They’ve survived the Civil War, The San Francisco quake, The Titanic. But can Levi’s beat back yoga pants? アメリカンヒップ 南北戦争も、サンフランシスコ地震も、タイタニックも切り抜けてきた。 リーバイスは果たしてヨガパンツを巻き返せるか。
American Beautyに絡めたタイトルなんでしょうが、言葉遊びを訳すのは難しいです。。。あと、今回のタイトルで使われている歴史的出来事はリーバイスが古くからある企業であることを示す例であって特にそれ以上の意味はないと思います。
(オックスフォード) yoga pants Stretchy knit pants designed to be worn for yoga or other exercise. EXAMPLE SENTENCES There are no pom-poms in sight; girls wear yoga pants and bra tops and are drenched in sweat after an hour spent learning and relearning a 90-second routine. There was the 60-something Pilates instructor in front of me, shoulder-length gray hair and dressy yoga pants, telling her 40-something horn-rimmed glasses-wearing friend about how the switch from Astanga yoga to Pilates had changed her whole life. 50 winners will receive a deluxe holistic gift basket to help you relax, soothe and renew, including yoga pants, an aromatherapy candle, massage oil, a relaxing CD and Ohm products.
Distressed Denim: Levi’s Tries to Adapt to the Yoga Pants Era Levi Strauss may have invented jeans, but it never saw yoga pants coming. Inside the effort to win back the hearts, and butts, of shoppers By Tim Higgins | July 23, 2015 Photographs by Justin Kaneps for Bloomberg Businessweek
The bigger problem with the line was that Levi’s misread stretchy pants as a trend when they were more like a clothing revolution. Yoga pants’ rise is nearly synonymous with that of Lululemon, a Vancouver company that got its start in 1998 and whose market capitalization is now $9 billion. Women have long since worn yoga pants out of the vinyasa studio, finding them perfectly suited for a run to the grocery store, hanging out at the park, and attending a lecture. Yoga pants aren’t merely soft, or tight in the right places. They feature advanced materials that boost women’s figures; they last a long time; and they manage to be both stylish and casual.
Levi’s missed the appeal. “As we saw ‘casualization’ continue even further, the customer basically told us that they had enough denim until something really unique and innovative came along,” says Marshal Cohen, an analyst at NPD. “We really saw the denim industry and denim retailers basically turn their nose up on the customer and say, ‘We don’t care what you really want, we’re going to tell you what you want.’ ”
Yoga pants’ rise is nearly synonymous with that of Lululemon, a Vancouver companyとあるのようにYoga pantsというとLululemonというイメージになっているようで、コメディ番組にもとりあげられていました。
Elle ShowもYoga Pantsの流行を取り上げていて、Businessweekと同じような内容＝yoga pantsが売れてジーンズが売れていないという状況に触れています。EllenもLulelemonというブランドをあげていますね。
Ambition matters more than brains in Shigenobu Nagamori’s world. As chief executive officer of Japanese motor maker Nidec, Nagamori is known for his eccentric management style. Prospective employees have faced off against each other in eating and shouting competitions; new hires at headquarters in Kyoto have had to clean toilets. “Motivated people can do anything if they work hard,” Nagamori says in his autobiographical comic book, The Man Hotter Than the Sun. “It’s not people’s talents that matter,” the CEO tells his acolytes in one strip. Passion matters, and enthusiasm, and tenacity. And, if Nagamori is a role model, something else matters as well: a sizable ego.
たたき上げの経歴をrags-to-riches riseとしています。
He boasts of a rags-to-riches rise: Starting with three employees, he made small motors in a prefabricated hut next to his mother’s Kyoto farmhouse. Japanese companies, questioning the upstart’s abilities, refused to place orders with him. So Nagamori went to the U.S. and landed a contract with 3M to make a smaller motor for a tape recorder. “With this, Nidec Corporation’s reputation grew both inside and outside Japan,” according to the comic book.
Nidec employs about 128,000 people globally. Corporate executives such as SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son seek Nagamori’s advice about acquisitions and management. The CEO has met with such leaders as Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, where Nidec recently built a factory and has four more under way. Executives polled last fall by Nikkei BP, an influential Japanese business publication, voted Nagamori the country’s best CEO.
基本的にはほめている記事ですが、無給の休日出勤などを述べている従業員の不満を紹介しています。
Not everyone finds working at Nidec so magical. Setsuo Matsui, who retired in 2010 after 42 years at a Sankyo factory in Nagano, says that after Nidec bought the company, Nagamori demanded that workers come in early every day to clean the facility; vacation was discouraged, and a chill came over the place. Matsui still remembers the unpaid Sunday he spent at a training session on office manners. Nagamori ordered that everyone learn how to bow properly. “I didn’t feel comfortable claiming overtime or taking time off,” Matsui says. “Neither did anyone else.”
"The Man Hotter Than the Sun" The Story of Shigenobu Nagamori, the founder of Nidec Corporation "I will be a president in the future!" Mr. Nagamori continuously entertained his big dream of creating a leading business. He founded Nidec Corporation in 1973 in order to create a large business involving motors, devices that he had so ardently devoted his passion to from early childhood. Within his lifetime, he has transformed Nidec into a global enterprise with business bases located all around the world. How did Mr. Nagamori engineer this rapid growth? His dramatic half lifetime of effort will be introduced in cartoon format.
Elon Musk’s Space Dream Almost Killed Tesla By Ashlee Vance | May 14, 2015 Illustrations by The Red Dress SpaceX started with a plan to send mice to Mars. It got crazier from there.
Antonio Gracias, a Tesla and SpaceX investor and one of Musk’s closest friends, had watched all of this transpire; 2008 told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias said. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray. Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets.”
Since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, only one Silicon Valley titan seems to carry a similar air of dark mystique. This would be Elon Musk, currently the C.E.O. of the rocket company SpaceX as well as the electric-car company Tesla Motors. The 43-year-old Musk is also chairman of SolarCity, the largest American solar power installation company. His wealth at the moment is estimated by Forbes to be around $13 billion, yet Musk emigrated from South Africa to Canada at age 17 with barely enough money to feed himself, living off the kindness of Canadian relatives and working odd jobs — cleaning boilers, cutting wood — before ultimately signing up for undergraduate classes at Queen’s University in Ontario. Not long after, Musk switched to the University of Pennsylvania to study economics and physics. Then he moved west to Silicon Valley and began to build and sell companies. He is now, quite arguably, the most successful and important entrepreneur in the world.
“We’ve become a nation of indoor cats,” Dave Eggers wrote in “A Hologram for the King” (2012), his existential novel about an American doing IT work in the Saudi Arabian desert. “A nation of doubters, worriers, overthinkers.”
Ashlee Vance, in his new biography of the celebrity industrialist Elon Musk, delivers a similar notion of the deflating American soul. An early Facebook engineer tells Mr. Vance, “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” The author quotes the venture capitalist Peter Thiel: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”
If Silicon Valley was holding out for a hero after Steve Jobs’s death, a disrupter in chief, it has found a brawny one in Mr. Musk. This South African-born entrepreneur, inventor and engineer is the animating force behind companies (Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity) that have made startling advances in non-indoor-cat arenas: electric cars, space exploration and solar energy. He is all of 43.
（By DWIGHT GARNER） The best thing Mr. Vance does in this book, though, is tell Mr. Musk’s story simply and well. It’s the story of an intelligent man, for sure. But more so it is the story of a determined one. Mr. Musk’s work ethic has always been intense. One observer says about him early on, “We all worked 20 hour days, and he worked 23 hours.”
（By JON GERTNER） Vance traces the chaotic early years of these two firms — SpaceX and Tesla, respectively — with a compelling ticktock of events. We see that Musk is brutal on himself, routinely working 100-hour weeks. He is brutal as a boss, too, often berating or summarily firing colleagues while hogging credit for others’ accomplishments. Yet he is without question a leader who pushes risky ideas forward through a combination of long-range vision and deep technical intelligence. He knows how to hire good people and how to motivate them. Most important, he never, ever gives up.
These faults hardly make Vance’s book unreadable, however. And until we see how things finish up many years from now — Will Tesla crash? Will SpaceX take us to Mars before NASA? Will Musk become the richest person in the world? — this work will likely serve as the definitive account of a man whom so far we’ve seen mostly through caricature. By the final pages, too, any reader will sense the need to put comparisons to Steve Jobs aside. Give Musk credit. There is no one like him.
