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　　Top Managers Are Quitting, Without a New Job

　　When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving “to pursue my goal of running a company.” Broadcasting his ambition was “very much my decision,” McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29.

　　McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn’t alone. In recent weeks the No.2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don’t get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations.

　　As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders.

　　The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Korn/Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey:”I can’t think of a single search I’ve done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first.”

　　A FADING STIGMA

　　Those who jumped without a job haven’t always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later.

　　Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. “The traditional rule was it’s safer to stay where you are, but that’s been fundamentally inverted,” says one headhunter. “The people who’ve been hurt the worst are those who’ve stayed too long.”

　　The question is how quickly these ambitious managers can land on top. Smith's search didn't take long; neither did McGee's. When debating whether to leave, he reached out to colleagues, CEOs, and headhunters. Their advice, he says: "If you're viewed as good, it actually might be a positive thing. It shows you have the independence and self-confidence to go for what you want."

　　Text 3文章取自The McKinsey Quarterly(麥肯錫季刊)，原文標題為：Beyond Paid Media: Marketing's New Vocabulary。分析的是大眾媒體最新的變化，由于涉及一些專業(yè)詞匯，所以難度為較難。

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　　Beyond Paid Media: Marketing's New Vocabulary

　　The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional "paid" media--such as television and radio commercials, print advertisements and roadside billboards--still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers enamored of a product may, for example, create "earned" media by willingly promoting it to friends, and a company may leverage "owned" media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its website. In fact, the way consumers now approach the process of making purchase decisions means that marketing's impact stems from a broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media.

　　These expanding media forms reflect dramatic changes in the way consumers perceive and absorb marketing messages. As a result, some strategic-marketing frameworks--such as the popular "paid, owned, earned" one--are in serious need of updating. Many marketers use this framework to distinguish different ways of interacting with consumers, forms of financing and measures of performance for each contact. Yet the paid, owned, earned framework increasingly looks too limited. How, for example, should a marketing strategist for a company react to requests from other companies to purchase advertising space on its product sites? How should a company deal with online activists when they take hold of a product or campaign to push a negative emotional response against it?

　　Two media types must therefore be added to the framework: "sold" and "hijacked." These new forms of media, which demand sustained investment and attention, challenge the traditional strategies, structure and operations of most marketing organizations. Yet marketers should view their expanding range of media options not only as a challenge but also as an opportunity worth grasping, to encourage readers to share content or even create their own.

　　Five Forms of Media

　　Too many companies view marketing plans as little more than an exercise in where and when to buy media placement. Yet as the number of digital interactions increases, marketers must recognize the power that lies beyond traditional paid media.

　　Paid, Owned, Earned

　　Paid media include traditional advertising and similar vehicles: A company pays for space or for a third party to promote its products. This market is far from dying; options for marketers are expanding exponentially with the emergence of more targeted cable TV, online-display placement and other channels, not to mention online video and search marketing, which are attracting greater interest. The second category, owned media, consists of properties or channels owned by the company that uses them for marketing purposes (such as catalogs, websites, retail stores, and alert programs that e-mail notifications of special offers).

　　Earned media are generated when the quality or uniqueness of a company's products and content compel consumers to promote the company at no cost to itself through external or their own "media." Starbucks ( SBUX -news - people ), for example, announced in July that its Facebook fan base exceeded 10 million people, the highest of any U.S. corporation. The company directly links its recent strong performance to its social-networking efforts and "crowdsourced" innovations such as "My Starbucks Idea," a website where anyone can suggest ways to make the company better.

　　Similarly, Honda ( HMC -news - people ) Japan undertook a promotion on the social-networking site Mixi where more than 630,000 people registered for information about the launch of its new CR-Z vehicle. The company automatically added "CR-Z" to these users' Mixi login names (for example, "Taro CR-Z") and gave them a chance to win a car. Nonregistered users wondered why people suddenly had login names incorporating CR-Z. Thanks to the buzz, prelaunch orders reached 4,500 units, and actual sales topped 10,000 units in the first month.