Price comparison websites' cuddly mascots are the new frontier in financial product marketing: From meerkats to robots
Summary:
It was Christmas Eve when I started to worry about my family. As we assembled for the annual festivities, three of my kin – who, perhaps tellingly, have asked not to be identified in this article – brought along their collection of cuddly meerkats and placed them together by the fire: Aleksandr, Sergei, two Olegs, and two more Olegs in safari outfits. As I surveyed this unsettling homage to online insurance aggregation, I realised that my folks must have bought six financial products from CompareTheMarket in order to assemble the collection. “Actually,” confessed one person closely resembling my sister, “I bought one Oleg second-hand, and I don't actually use the credit card that got me Aleksandr.”
Facts:
- I looked on eBay, saw them changing hands for more than £30 each, and understood even less
- CompareTheMarket and Confused.com both declined to be interviewed for this piece, but maybe the conclusion is self-evident:
Summary:
Yahoo has opened the door to a sale of its core internet business, as part of a raft of measures aimed at reversing the company’s long-running slump. The US search firm, which also revealed that it suffered a $4.4bn loss last year, said it would explore “strategic alternatives” for the internet unit alongside its preferred plan of a spin-off. Yahoo has come under pressure from activist investors to sell off its main business and cut costs so it can return to better shape. In a bid to placate angry investors, who have seen the shares slump more than 44pc from a high of $52.37 in November 2014, Yahoo revealed plans to axe 15pc of its workforce. It aims to have 9,000 employees by the end of the year
Facts:
- Yahoo will also close offices in five cities - Dubai, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Milan - and raise up to $3bn from the sale of non-core assets.
- , Yahoo has been looking at ways to maximise the performance of its $24bn stake in Chinese internet retailer Alibaba. A spin-off plan developed over most of 2015 was axed in December, prompting Yahoo to look at hiving off its main business instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment