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Dayton
Business Journal…
Bizarre
business news of the week
by DBJ Staff
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Weird
things happen all the time, and
some of the odd things that go on in the business world are just as
bizarre as
anything you find in the pages of your daily newspaper’s entertainment
pages or
police blotter.
Some
of these oddball things that go
on in the business world can serve as lessons of what not to do, or how
to
capitalize on different situations. So we thought it would be worth
sharing
some of those weird things.
•
How can you capitalize on something
as bizarre as the saga of now-convicted felon and former Illinois Gov.
Rod
Blagojevich? Spirit Airlines has found a way to attract customers and
get some
free publicity.
After
“Blago” was sentenced to 14
years in prison, the airline offered a “seat-selling” sale of $14
one-way
tickets from Chicago, according to the Huffington Post.
•
The entertainment industry can be a
cut-throat business, but the Discovery Channel TV series “Mythbusters”
took the
pirate-theme a bit too far this week. The show was doing a stunt with a
cannon
ball when it misfired and went through a nearby housing development.
The
wayward cannon ball went through
two houses and a van before stopping, according to MSNBC.com. Luckily
nobody
was hurt in the incident, but that’s not the type of publicity the
network
wanted.
•
Some say investing in the stock
market these days is no different than going to Las Vegas and gambling
with
your life savings. But a column on Yahoo Inc.‘s finance Web site this
week
reveals that so-called “sin stocks” are paying a much higher return
than the
markets overall.
Companies
such as adult entertainment
firm Rick’s Cabaret International is up 30 percent since early October,
with
beer giant Anheuser-Busch
Inbev and
Jack Daniels maker Brown Forman Inc. both up big as well.
But
the oddest thing is that a “vice”
mutual fund has been organized so you can buy the full slate of
tobacco,
alcohol and gambling-related stocks, such as Las Vegas Sands. But it
even
includes defense companies that make weapons, including Lockheed Martin
Corp.
and Raytheon Co.
Read
this and other articles at the
Dayton Busness Journal
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