Honesty Is the Best Policy

choi

(1) Stephen Moore, How Pizza Became a Growth Stock. Wall Street Journal, Mar 14, 2015 (appearing in the Saturday column The Weekend Interview).
www.wsj.com/articles/the-weekend ... th-stock-1426286353

(a) Excerpts in the windows of print:

The secret? The Domino’s CEO cites a mea culpa ad campaign, digital delivery and unlikely new markets.

‘We’ve discovered Africans love pizza,’ Patrick Doyle says. ‘They order them on their mobile phones.’

(b) Quote:

“In his [Patrick Doyle's] five years as CEO [2010- ], annual sales have climbed to $9 billion from about $2 billion. Some 250,000 workers [some are corporate employees , and others franchise employees; see Note below]wear a Domino’s uniform and sell roughly one billion pizzas each year. During the Super Bowl, Domino’s was taking a dizzying 1,400 orders a minute. Making pizzas may not be the sexiest business—though it’s a $125 billion world-wide market. But while investors obsess over finding the next Facebook, the share price of Domino’s has soared from $13 in 2010 to just over $100 today. It has been among the top performing stocks in the Fortune 100.

"Mr Doyle became CEO after two of the company’s worst years, and sales were still sliding. One of his first decisions was to take an unorthodox approach: 'We held a series of focus groups with consumers and we discovered that people hated the [Domino's] pizza. So we ran these TV ads featuring Americans complaining about how bad Domino’s pizza tasted.' Then Mr Doyle appeared on screen with an apology and promise: 'We hear you America. Sometimes you know you’ve got to make a change. Please give us another try.' * * * In the three months following those ads, Domino’s had its fastest rise in sales in company history.

"Domino’s is also riding the digital revolution. 'In a lot of ways we’re really a technology company,' Mr Doyle says. * * * He adds that digital drives sales by making ordering easier and more efficient, and saves money on bad orders [incorrect orders that customers refuse to accept and pay] because customers 'take their own orders so they make fewer mistakes.' * * * The atmosphere at company headquarters feels more like Silicon Valley than a fast-food company. Most employees here are computer programmers and technicians monitoring in real time what people are ordering, how long it is taking to fill an order, and the online complaints and comments that stream in.

"Although the Domino’s menu also includes such things as sandwiches, pasta and chicken wings, 80% of its sales are pizzas.

(c) Note: “The headquarters are a few miles up the road from where the original Domino’s Pizza opened in 1960."

Domino's Pizza
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino%27s_Pizza
(Domino's is the second-largest pizza chain in the United States (after Pizza Hut) and the largest worldwide, with more than 10,000 corporate and franchised stores in 70 countries; In 1960, Tom Monaghan and his brother, James, purchased DomiNick's, a small pizza store in Ypsilanti, Michigan [six miles east of Ann Arbor]; in 1998 to Bain Capital, Inc)

choi

Ben Sisario, Lawyer Rocks Music Industry Again; An outsider takes on the music industry to win pivotal cases. New York Times, Mar 16, 2015.
www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/busin ... industry-again.html

Quote:

"Many top entertainment lawyers see themselves primarily as deal makers [who do not litigate], whose connections to both artists and the studios and record labels that hire them are often viewed more as synergy than as conflicts by those involved. And even the tough-minded litigators among the core firms seldom push against the status quo quite as aggressively as someone like Mr Busch. 'Talent does not want to sue the record companies, for fear of being blackballed,' said the Los Angeles lawyer Neville L Johnson, who represents actors and musicians.

"Mr Busch said that an important part of his courtroom strategy is connecting with the jury. 'You have to be the truth teller,' he said in an interview last week. 'Some lawyers I have gone up against are perhaps more technically proficient, but I feel like I’ve done a very good job of connecting with the jury and being sincere in everything that I do.'

"Other lawyers * * * complain he is so aggressive in fighting for his clients that he does not care what havoc is created along the way. But they afford him grudging respect. The nearly $7.4 million in the 'Blurred Lines' case, a combination of damages and a share of the profits Mr [Pharrell] Williams and Mr [Robin] Thicke received, is one of the largest awards for a case of its type, legal specialists said.


Note: "In the small world of high-powered entertainment lawyers, Mr [Richard S] Busch, 49, has carved out a niche as a crusading outsider, winning cases that have had wide-ranging repercussions for the music industry. Among them are Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films, which established that even the tiniest sample — a piece of one song used in another — needs legal permission, and FBT Productions v Aftermath Records, which led to a wave of litigation over how royalties are paid in digital music."
(a) Bridgeport Music v Dimension Films (CA6 2005) 410 F.3d 792
scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2589269115679339204
(b) FBT Productions, LLC v Aftermath Records (CA9 2010) 621 F.3d 958.