Media Matters – SFU Business in the News – October 16

How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending October 16, 2009.

National and World News

• Marketing prof Lindsay Meredith continued a run of media hits. He was in a Globe and Mail story on the re-emergence of the Sun Ice line of ski swear (now Sunice), saying the brand “probably still has cachet” for older skiers. “It’s not top of mind but it’ll be: ‘I remember that name.’ There should be some leverage.”

• Closer to home, Meredith was also in a Vancouver Sun story on “new habits for consumers, investors and businesses”. Wrote the Sun: “Increased savings means spending cutbacks, and there have been winners and losers on this front, said Lindsay Meredith, marketing professor at Simon Fraser University’s faculty of business administration.” He noted restaurants are hurting, with many families choosing to eat at home, or at cheaper alternatives. “An unexpected effect of the recession has been a jump in the sale of flat-screen televisions. Apparently, families are choosing to spend $2,000 on a television as cocooning replaces a $10,000 destination vacation, Meredith explains.” Canwest News Service sent the story to clients across the country.

• The Globe and Mail and CTV News reported Vancouver city council will do some rewriting in November of the bylaw that aims to control signage and public disturbances during the Olympics. Marketing prof Judy Zaichkowsky said official sponsors—and the cities that want their business—have to combat ambush marketers and their signs. “I think that’s what they have to do. The problem is these sponsors put out this enormous amount of money” to be associated with the Games.

Education

• The FP Executive section of National Post talked to dean Daniel Shapiro of SFU Business about SFU’s school of business. “We have been consistently first to market with innovative programs. We offered the first executive MBA in Canada in 1968. We were, if not the first then among the first, to offer an MBA in the management of technology. We were the first to offer an MBA for a newer demographic, people with no education in business and with little work experience. And our financial-risk management program is also unique in its kind.”