Sunday, April 29, 2012

Just wondering how many of you knew about the bear hidden in Toblerone's Matterhon moutain logo? 

Answers to last week's quiz (#250


Answers to last week's quiz (#250)
Gaurav Sri Krishna  / New Delhi Apr 30, 2012, 00:58 IST




  1. Which product is adorned with a diamond studded clip that resembles the knife from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic ‘Psycho’?A limited edition Montblanc pen, which pays tribute Alfred Hitchcock and costs Rs 1.1 million
     
  2. The payment industry is witnessing a new revolution where mobile readers that plug into a cell phone’s head set jack are replacing traditional Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machines and the manual card imprinters. What is the industry nick name for manual card imprinters and EDCs?Knuckle Busters
     
  3. Who was responsible for the first noodles to be consumed in outer space and when did it happen?The inventor of instant noodles, Momofuku Ando developed Space Ram, the first instant noodles that were consumed aboard Space shuttle Discovery in 2005. It was made in such a manner so that the noodles and the soup could escape zero gravity and stay together.  
  4. What is common to the brands Lonesome Pine, Laughing Gravy and Another Fine Mess?They are all beer brands celebrating Stan Laurel’s (Laurel & Hardy) connection to the town of Ulverston in UK, where they are made. Lonesome pine is a song from the film Way out West.
     
  5. This company has a lot of firsts associated with it. It is known for its excellent engineering and began to invest more in innovation by setting up a unit called Magic labs. Its founder called himself the Chief Innovation wizard. For this company Brilliance is the key word. Name it.The Taiwan based company HTC
     
  6. During the 1830s this person made a leap in lateral thinking by devising a machine that could stitch cloth with two threads from two separate sources. Being an altruistic Quaker he never pursued his invention because his daughter thought it would put seamstresses out of work. Needing to settle a debt with a friend, he conjured up another invention in three hours from bits of wire. Name him and the invention.Walter Hunt, Inventor of the safety pin
     
  7. This company was originally a small dental supply company purchased by its current CEO. Its product range has names like — “I am not really a waitress" and “You don't know Jacques.” Name the company and the business it is in?OPI, a professional nail care company established in 1981 now bought over by Coty. It has fanciful names for its nail polish shades.  
  8. The founder of this company started his career in the late 1800s by adopting the open road and the life of a traveling salesman, peddling pianos, organs, and sewing machines off the back of a wagon. Later he sold stock in the Northern New York State Building and Loan Association. Name him.Thomas J Watson (Sr) founder of IBM
     
  9. This TV show is one of the firsts in the business and was launched in August, 1948. Although the show looked unscripted, it relied on writers including a young Woody Allen. Name the show and state how it was a path breaker.The “Candid Camera” show launched by CBS on August 10, 1948 is considered the industry's first reality TV Show
     
  10. Identify the brand and explain the significance of the logo.
    Toblerone. It was created by Theodor Tobler (1876-1941) and Emil Baumann in Bern, Switzerland in 1908. The image of a bear is hidden in the Matterhorn mountain symbolising the town of its origin (Bern). 
There were 36 all-correct entries for The Strategist quiz #250. Dr Yogesh Gavali, Mumbai; Kamlesh Banger, New Delhi; Zaid Ahmad, Bangalore; Dibyendu Sarkar, Kolkata; Mohammad Ahmad, Tanda; Suman Sarangi, Noida; Chandan Nagar, Hooghly; D Surendranath, Hyderabad; K Subrahmanyam, Bangalore; Ramarao, Visakhapatnam
Dr Yogesh Gavali also wins Rs 2,000 

The Strategist Quiz (#251)


The Strategist Quiz (#251)
Gaurav Sri Krishna / New Delhi Apr 30, 2012, 00:59 IST

  1. Who said this and when “We don’t think that televisions and personal computers are going to merge. We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on”?
     
  2. This brand hasn’t spent a single rupee on advertising since its launch in the mid 50s. It has innumerable number of pages and groups devoted to it on Facebook, one of them run with the abbreviation “Comrade”. It is the largest selling brand in the world in its category. Name it.
     
  3. What was first celebrated in 1995 by UNESCO is continued even today to promote reading publishing and copyright. What is this day called?
     
  4. Name the CEO and the company in which he instilled a new culture by identifying 12 behaviours that include customer focus and championing change and called it One Hon. He took over as CEO in the early 2000s.
     
  5. A dropout from Princeton University is a new entrant in the Forbes Billionaires list of 2012. The brand he created controls 90 per cent of the energy shot market in the US. Name him and the brand he created.
     
  6. What is the term used to describe our state of mind when our actions are not consistent with our beliefs? Despite warnings on cigarette packs getting to become more graphical and scary and knowing the fact that it is unhealthy, people continue to smoke.
     
  7. Who made this statement “I haven’t frowned since 1987” and with what is it connected?
     
  8. The heart of which company’s talent management process is called Session C?
     
  9. What is a computer scanned binary code better known as?
     
  10. Identify the brand from its company’s logo and the accompanying visual. It made news at a celebration recently and costs upwards of Rs 10 lakh a piece.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Surprised only 2 got it right last week

I don't know which question was the difficult one. Only 2 managed to get the all correct for last week's quiz. 

Answers to last week`s quiz (#248)



  • Connect Lockheed Martin and Coal India Limited to find what is common to them?
    London based hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund, a hedge fund that actually is a charity organisation, is the top institutional holder of Lockheed Martin and also holds 1 per cent stake in Coal India Limited
     

  • Whose advertisement ran these lines “Lipsmackin, thristquenchin, acetastin, motivatin, goodbuzzin, cooltalkin, highwalkin, fastlivin, evergivin, coolfizzin,____? These lines are from Pepsi Cola’s advertisement released in 1973
     

  • The Aston Hill races near Birmingham provided the inspiration for the first half of a very popular brand’s name. Which is the brand?Aston Martin, the car James Bond prefers to drive. The name Aston was married to the surname of its founder Lionel Martin and hence thus it got its full name.
     

  • Name the term that is used to describe a technique for defeating a cipher or authentication mechanism (password) by trying to determine its decryption key or passphrase by searching all likely possibilities. It uses a targeted technique of successively trying all the words in an exhaustive list. Dictionary Attack
     

  • The base line for this brand’s latest advertisement reads ‘Gets You Back To You’. It tells the story of a woman overcoming obstacles, symbolised by a hill, to reach a place of perspective. It features a moving and contemporary cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way. Name it.Twinings Tea
     

  • A last minute call to step in and make a presentation lead to this person publishing one of the most popular business books which is said to have spawned the management guru business. It was first published in 1982 and it was based on a study of 43 companies. Name the book and its author. In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
     

  • What firsts are James Cameron, filmmaker and Gavin Bate, mountaineer linked to?First ones to tweet from the deepest spot on earth (Mariana Trench) and highest point on earth (Mount Everest)
     

  • Who said this “Thinking first of money instead of work brings on fear of failure and this fear blocks every avenue of success”?Henry Ford
     

  • Which airline was the first one to order the Boeing 747 when it was launched?PANAM in 1966
     

  • Identify the logo from the visual. Also name the designer who won an award for this creation.
    BRICS 2012 New Delhi summit logo. A contest to design a logo for this conference was announced by the Ministry of External Affairs and the winner was Sonesh Jain, an architecture student of the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.

  • The Strategist Quiz (#249)


    The Strategist Quiz (#249)
    Gaurav Sri Krishna / New Delhi Apr 16, 2012, 00:01 IST



    1. Connect the Bollywood film Fanaa and the army truck scam that has hit BEML and find out what is common to both.
       
    2. If Facebook is the No.1 social networking site then what is SpaceBook?
       
    3. What is common to N Chandrasekaran, CEO of TCS, Winston Churchill and former US president Franklin Roosevelt? Get the clue from Rembrandt’s famous painting titled “Night Watch”?
       
    4. What is named after Georg Joseph Kamel, a Moravian missionary who was in Philippines in the mid 1600s?
       
    5. This person was a PhD from Yale, who at the age of 28 set up a national telegraph company to compete with Marconi’s. He was associated with 25 different companies that went into bankruptcy. He was called a scientific kleptomaniac. Name him and the invention he is famous for.
       
    6. This brand was developed by a pharmacist and his wife way back in the 1900s in Australia. It was introduced in India in 1947. Today this brand is considered as the worlds largest in sales and market share in its category. Name it.
       
    7. The co founder of which company who had always enjoyed tinkering with machinery and had gained some notoriety for building a working printer out of Lego bricks, took on the task of creating a new kind of server environment that used low-end PCs instead of big expensive machines.
       
    8. The alkalising process associated with this machine became to be known as “Dutching”. Name the inventor whose name is also a popular brand.
       
    9. What is a Kitemark?
       
    10. Identify both the logos which look similar. The brands carry names of their respective founders.

    Monday, April 2, 2012


    The Strategist Quiz (#247)
    Gaurav Sri Krishna / New Delhi Apr 02, 2012, 00:58 IST


    1. After the recent tragic killing of Trayvon Martin in the US, this brand has unintentionally taken on the role of brand representative for the shooting protests. Name the brand and state the reason.  
    2. Just as its shares started selling to the public for the first time, BATS Global Markets halted trading on its own stock, week ending 24th March, 2012 after a series of technical errors in its system. What is BATS?
       
    3. What is common to Juan Atkins the inventor of Techno Music and the world’s richest person Carlos Slim Helu?
       
    4. The greatest contribution of this advertising genius of the 1900s was helping to create a national tooth brushing habit in the US. Before the advent of the brand for which he created advertising campaigns, almost no Americans brushed their teeth. Name the person and the brand.
       
    5. This American brand started in a Michigan farm by two brothers in 1892 is now British owned. Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison and Mahatma Gandhi were its users. It was one of the first to bring out a Mickey Mouse branded edition during the 1930s. Name it.
       
    6. For IBM it started in 1952 and ended in 1982. For Microsoft it started in 1998 and ended in 2004. What is being referred to here?
       
    7. Who renamed what as Theobroma, which meant for food of the gods in Greek?
       
    8. On October 15, 1932, when JRD soared in a tiny single-engined De Havilland Puss Moth from Karachi with a 25-kg first load of mail to Bombay via Ahmadabad, which oil company refueled his plane in Ahmadabad?
       
    9. Whose baseline reads “Working for a World Free of Poverty”?
       
    10. Identify the organisation from its logo. It is a cooperative by character where its customers can become members of their local units and also have a say in its operations.