Monday, May 28, 2012

The Strategist Quiz (#255)





The Strategist Quiz (#255)
Gaurav Sri Krishna / New Delhi May 28, 2012, 00:21 IST

  1. What is common to the brands, Asian Paints and Pringles?
     
  2. What significant event related to the social networking world is linked to NASA’s final service mission for the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009?
     
  3. This person was appointed professor of painting and sculpture at the University of New York (now New York University) during the 1830s. He invented a marble-cutting machine that could carve a three dimensional sculpture in marble/stone and later discovered that it was not patentable because it infringed an earlier invention. One of his famous paintings is that of the Dying Hercules. Name him.
     
  4. What is the ‘Become Indra’s Advisor Contest”?
     
  5. If the name Redmond is synonymous with Microsoft, then with which brand is the place Waterloo synonymous?
     
  6. In the late 1950s, faced with overwhelming debts, three babies and only $200 in hand, a songwriter spent most of the $200 left with him and bought a tape recorder. This machine would let him vary playback speed and therefore used it to alter his voice and went on sing a song called the Witch Doctor and created history. His creation is now worth more than a billion dollars. Name him and his creation.
     
  7. What are the McCaslin, Menlo, Moorestown and Medfield platforms?
     
  8. Name this Indian company that was founded by two British gentlemen in 1902 and for some time it was part of a UK company called the Red Hand Composition company.
     
  9. With which brand are these ad lines connected — We Roar and As alive as you are?
     
  10. Identify the mascot and the brand it is linked to form the visual.
     

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Gaurav 

Answers to last week's quiz (#254)



  1. When and which company coined the acronym for Office Automation — OA? It recently unveiled a new global brand tagline. 

    Ricoh Company Limited of Japan in 1977. It recently introduced this new brand tagline, Imagine. Change.
     
  2. During the early years of this US university, established in the 1630s, tuition fees could be bartered for with lumber, livestock or construction stones. Name the university.Harvard University
     
  3. This company was very popular for its chain of tea shops it established during the 1890s in the UK which unfortunately closed in the early 1980s. In the information technology world, not known to many, it is credited with one of the industry’s firsts. Name the company and its pioneering achievement.J Lyons & Co was the first to use computers for business. Its first computer was developed in 1949 and was called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office).
     
  4. This business book published last year is about a famous personality and is titled____Invests Like a Girl. The author feels that the subject of the book is a great investor because he activates deliberative “feminine” wisdom when making investment choices. Name the person on whom this book is written and its author. Warren Buffet. Warren Buffet invests like a girl is written by LouAnn Lofton.
     
  5. Who introduced the concept of the 3 Horizons for growth to the management world? McKinsey and Company in a book titled “The Alchemy of Growth” authored by its consultants Mehrdad Baghai, Steve Coley and David White
     
  6. Whose quote is this “I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It is all living”?Richard Branson
     
  7. A Danish telephone engineer and inventor patented what he called a telegraphone in the 1890s. By what name is his invention better known as today?The telephone answering machine
     
  8. Which brand of fuel and lubricants did the Wright brothers use for their first historic flight at Kitty Hawk?The Standard (oil’s) Fuel and Mobil Oil brand of lubricants
     
  9. Which technology product company’s mascot is called Redhead or simply, Rex?Kingston technologies, the company that is considered the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products
     
  10. Identify both the brands from the visuals of their mascots and state the differentiators.They are bunny mascots for Duracell and Energizer . The Duracell Bunny campaign was launched in 1973 and predates the Energizer Bunny, which was created in 1989. The Energizer Bunny wears sunglasses, has larger ears, is a different shade of pink, and has a different body shape. The Energizer Bunny is depicted with a drum, because the Duracell Bunny toys had drums.
There were 33 all-correct entries for The Strategist quiz #254. Sampad Mishra, Rourkela; Suman Billa, Trivandrum; Afroz Ahmad, Thane; Atman Dhruva, Mumbai; Anuj Saraf, Mumbai; D Surendranath, Secunderabad; Anjali Iyer, Mumbai; Anurag Srivastava, Lucknow; Sunanda Joshi, Mumbai; Nitin Narayan, Panaji.
Sampad Mishra also wins Rs 2000.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Answers to last week's quiz (#252) Strategist Team / New Delhi May 14, 2012, 00:01 IST


  1. This business magazine was first called New Business when it was launched. It witnessed the great crash of the Wall Street in 1929. Seeing this, the founder decided to change its name the subsequent year. Name the founder and the magazine.Fortune. It was founded by Henry Luce who was also the editor and founder of the Time magazine.
     
  2. What term is used to describe a unit for the smallest detectable movement of a mouse in the computing industry? The cursor moves on the screen proportionally, at a rate of say X number of pixels per unit of this measure.Mickey
     
  3. Connect a Bruce Willis movie with a 42-year-old product from Sears and what do you get?Die Hard. Introduced in 1967, it took nine years of intense research and more than $1 million for Sears to develop DieHard, America’s most innovative automotive battery.
     
  4. Whose words are these “And there was Jack Welch. I got him into India because GE was not known in India and Pakistan. I pressed upon him to come. Rajiv Gandhi, who was a high-tech guy, had admiration for Jack. India was a closed economy and I became GE’s national adviser”? Kushal Pal Singh, a former army officer and chairman of developer DLF. DLF controls 3,000 acres or about 25 per cent of the township of Gurgaon.
     
  5. Which company manufactured the ballot boxes for India’s first general election that was held in 1951?Godrej & Boyce
     
  6. Which brand gets its name from a French opera set in British India that was about the daughter of a Brahmin priest and her servant Mallika?Lakme a brand now owned by HUL. Lakmé is an opera in three acts by Léo Delibes Festinger.
     
  7. Which brand used this tagline “Drivers Wanted” and also ran an ad campaign on the same theme?Volkswagen
     
  8. During the 1900s a family of seven brothers immigrated to California from Italy and they made strides in aviation by inventing the first enclosed cabin monoplane. In the 1950s in order to treat a family member’s arthritis symptoms with a hydrotherapy pump the brothers invented a pump and a small niche business was born. Name the family.Jacuzzi Brothers after whom Jacuzzis are known today
     
  9. This entity changed its logo in the early 2000s because it developed a wide range of licensed merchandise and products. The new logo is based on its magazine’s iconic gold border. Name it and the firm that designed the logo. National Geographic’s now famous yellow frame logo was designed by the brand design firm Chermayeff & Geismar that was established way back in 1958
     
  10. Identify the character from the visual and name the company that created it. 

    Swampy, the first original Disney character for a mobile game called Where’s My Water? It is a puzzle video game developed by Creature Feep and published by Disney Mobile, a subsidiary of Disney Interactive Studios.

The Strategist Quiz (#253) Gaurav Sri Krishna / New Delhi May 14, 2012, 00:59 IST


  1. What name is given to a new type of company/corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems?
     
  2. Which company’s new baseline is Go Further?
     
  3. In this era where social networks are beginning to dominate the internet space, what have been named after actresses Aishwarya Rai, Dia Mirza, Celina Jaitley and Bipasha Basu?
     
  4. In 1916, when this brand started its creators wanted to use the line “the first ‘feel-like-everyday’s-a-Saturday’ shoe”. Since it was too long for a tag, they called it Champion. Name the brand and give the two words that are its contribution to the footwear industry and are used generically.
     
  5. This symbol was first incorporated on at least one 1889 model of the Underwood typewriter and subsequently from 1905 all its successful typewriters carried it. In 1971 this person made a breakthrough invention and said to his colleague “Don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on”. Name the person, his invention and the symbol.
     
  6. The advertisements of which brand in the mid 2000s featured Manoj Night Shyamalan, Tiger Woods, Kate Winslet, Robert De Niro, Venus Williams and Beyonce Knowles?
     
  7. The family member of which famous business group published a book of essays titled “Buried Stories”?
     
  8. Despite this iconic brand’s founder passing away way back in 1888, the company has opened a twitter account in his name which has more than 79,000 followers. Name the twitter account and the brand.
     
  9. What is common to the sale of the library of a British politician Sir John Stanley and the sale of the library Napoleon took with him into exile on St Helena?
     
  10. Identify the company from its logo.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Strategist Quiz (#252)


  1. This business magazine was first called New Business when it was launched. It witnessed the great crash of the Wall Street in 1929. Seeing this, the founder decided to change its name the subsequent year. Name the founder and the magazine.
     
  2. What term is used to describe a unit for the smallest detectable movement of a mouse in the computing industry? The cursor moves on the screen proportionally, at a rate of say X number of pixels per unit of this measure.
     
  3. Connect a Bruce Willis movie with a 42-year-old product from Sears and what do you get?
     
  4. Whose words are these “And there was Jack Welch. I got him into India because GE was not known in India and Pakistan. I pressed upon him to come. Rajiv Gandhi, who was a high-tech guy, had admiration for Jack. India was a closed economy and I became GE’s national adviser”?
     
  5. Which company manufactured the ballot boxes for India’s first general election that was held in 1951?
     
  6. Which brand gets its name from a French opera set in British India that was about the daughter of a Brahmin priest and her servant Mallika?
     
  7. Which brand used this tagline “Drivers Wanted” and also ran an ad campaign on the same theme?
     
  8. During the 1900s a family of seven brothers immigrated to California from Italy and they made strides in aviation by inventing the first enclosed cabin monoplane. In the 1950s in order to treat a family member’s arthritis symptoms with a hydrotherapy pump the brothers invented a pump and a small niche business was born. Name the family.
     
  9. This entity changed its logo in the early 2000s because it developed a wide range of licensed merchandise and products. The new logo is based on its magazine’s iconic gold border. Name it and the firm that designed the logo.
     
  10. Identify the character from the visual and name the company that created it.
compiled by Gaurav Sri Krishna, strategist-gsk.blogspot.com
business-standard.com/stratquiz

Answers to last week's quiz (#251)


  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”? 
    Steve Jobs during the Macworld in February 2004 
     
  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.
    Old Monk, dark Rum manufactured by Mohan Meakin Ltd. One of its groups on facebook call themselves as Council of Old Monk Rum Addicted Drinkers and Eccentrics (Comrade). 
     
  3. What was first celebrated in 1995 by UNESCO is continued even today to promote reading publishing and copyright. What is this day called?
    World Book Day, it is celebrated on the 1st of March every year 
     
  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.
    David M Cote, CEO of Honeywell International. One Hon refers to One Honeywell 
     
  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.
    Manoj Bhargava’s company Living Essentials makes the drink 5-hour ENERGY 
     
  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.
    Cognitive Dissonance, a term coined by psychologist Leon Festinger 
     
  7. Who made this statement “I haven’t frowned since 1987” and with what is it connected?
    It is a statement made by Canadian Jean Carruthers who, along with her husband, dermatologist, Alastair arruthers, is credited with the discovery and pioneering of Botox
     
  8. The heart of which company’s talent management process is called Session C?
    GE 
     
  9. What is a computer scanned binary code better known as?
    Bar Code
     
  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.

    The Last Drop whisky/Cognac, manufactured by the last drop distilleries, is vintage premium liquor which is one of the most expensive in the world (approx Rs 14 lakh a bottle). It was served by Shahrukh Khan in a post IPL win party in Chandigarh recently.