How social media is changing the business of the Fête des Vignerons
The last Fête des Vignerons took place back in 1999, before the dawn of social media, smart phones, and easy access to the internet. In part two, executive director Frédéric Hohl talks about the impact of social media on ticket sales for the traditional Swiss festival.
The Fête des Vignerons makes its return after 20 years
The centuries-old Fête des Vignerons—or Winegrowers’ Festival—comes along just once every couple of decades in Switzerland, with the next one set to kick off on July 18 in Vevey. The month-long celebration is run like a private business with the primary goal of sustaining the next one. Frédéric Hohl, the executive director, talks about staging the festival that he says couldn’t happen anywhere else in the world.
Sherry: My motivation was people saying “it can’t be done”
Ann Sherry knows a thing or two about seeing a company through a reputation crisis. After years in banking, she took over as CEO of Carnival Australia at a tumultuous time and is credited for turning the company around. In part two, she lists the three reasons why she relished the task and talks about the future of the cruise industry.
How one executive proved diversity means higher profits
Ann Sherry, former chairman and now adviser at Carnival Australia, says diversity helped her company outperform in her region. At this year’s Global Summit of Women in Basel, she talks about why such events are crucial for measuring progress, why it’s important to have more women on the board, and why she’s “less patient about the pace of change.”
Super Bock CEO: “We’re small but we compete with the big sharks”
Super Bock’s biggest rival in Portugal is Heineken, the highest-selling beer in the world, and the very same brewer Super Bock replaced as main sponsor of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Now CEO Rui Lopes Ferreira is beefing up competition in China, its biggest export market, by making a beer specifically for the Chinese market.
Super Bock’s coup to replace Heineken at the Montreux Jazz Festival
Super Bock has taken over Heineken’s spot as a main sponsor of the Montreux Jazz Festival. It’s a move CEO Rui Lopes Ferreira says will help the Portuguese beer company elevate the brand in Switzerland. He shares how the partnership came to be and what role majority shareholder Carlsberg Group played in moving the three-year deal forward.
Here’s Yogi Sadhguru’s top tip to avoid burnout
He has millions of social media followers, but his core message is simple: to get 7.6 billion people on the planet to live peacefully. Sadhguru, the Indian yogi, mystic, and founder of the Isha Foundation, also wants to improve everyone’s life, including by preventing workers from burnout.
For Indian mystic Sadhguru, yoga is more than just a business
Yoga is an 80-billion-dollar industry, with millions practicing around the world. But to Indian yogi Sadhguru, the founder of the Isha Foundation who just visited the UN in Geneva, it is more than just a business. Political and business leaders around the world are paying attention to what the mystic has to say.
How Mammut is getting off the Greenpeace blacklist
Mammut CEO Oliver Pabst plans to reduce his company’s overall carbon footprint by 30 percent by the year 2030. A sticking point, however, is Mammut’s use of the harmful compound PFC in its clothing, which Greenpeace protested in 2016. While it is an industry-wide issue, Pabst says Mammut is working to be free of PFC by 2023.
Mammut CEO on getting to customers to pay a premium
Oliver Pabst, the CEO of Swiss mountaineering company Mammut, explains how a simple stone his nephew gave him has inspired his company’s culture. In part one of our interview, he also talks about digitizing the entire value chain and why he doesn’t allow phones in company meetings: “We are not made for multitasking.”
It’s not the end of the road for Formula E in Switzerland
Switzerland is missing from next year’s Formula E calendar. But Swiss ePrix CEO Pascal Derron says that’s not the whole story. He sits down with Hannah Wise to discuss why Swiss bureaucracy caused it to miss the FIA deadline, and how he hopes that the race will return to Zurich in 2020.
Marcegaglia: China must change if it wants to do business with Europe
Emma Marcegaglia says that Europe’s relationship with China is less “romantic” and more pragmatic these days. Although she disagrees with the U.S. approach in initiating a trade war, the chairman of Eni says that China needs to be “strongly pushed” to allow easier access to its market and fair bilateral trade relations.
Marcegaglia’s message to Switzerland and EU: Italy is still strong
Italian steel magnate Emma Marcegaglia, chairman of Eni, says that while Italy’s economic growth has weakened, the EU’s third-largest economy still packs a punch and should be taken seriously. She also emphasizes that the country’s issues are not exclusive, adding “Europe as a whole has work to do.”
Stefan Catsicas places bets on a world beyond meat
Stefan Catsicas, CEO of Lausanne-based Skyviews Life Science, has put his weight behind the new food revolution of meat alternatives offered by companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. But he says the next radical shift in eating is still just around the corner.
