MADONNA

Summer 2003 saw little sign of any slowdown in the career of 44-year-old Madonna
Louise Veronica Ciccone. During May, her tenth album, American life, topped the- Billboard
charts and a deal with GAP distributing her first children’s’ book, The English Roses was
secured. Meanwhile, at her music and film production company, Maverick, her list of projects
and stable of recording artists continued to grow. Twenty years after her first album, Madonna
was still the world's highest earning female entertainer and one of the best-know women on
the planet.

In the summer of 1978, aged 19, Madonna arrived in New York with$ 35 to her name.
After five years of struggle, she landed a recording contract. Madonna (1983) ultimately sold
10 million copies worldwide, while Like a Virgin (1984) topped 12 million copies. Between
1985 and 1990, six further albums, three world tours, and five movie roles had established
Madonna with an image and persona that transcended every single field of entertainment:
she was a rock singer, actor, author, and pin-up. Yet, she was more than this -as her web site
proclaims, she is "an icon artist, provocateur, diva, and mogul". She has also made a great deal
of money.

What is the basis of Madonna's incredible and lasting success? Certainly not the
outstanding natural talent. As a vocalist, musician, dancer, songwriter, or actress, Madonna's
talent seems modest. Few would regard her as an outstanding beauty. She possesses
relentless drive. Her wide range of activities - records, concerts, music videos, movies, books
and charity events - belies a remarkable dedication to a single goal: the quest for superstar
status. For close to 20 years, Madonna has worked incessantly to establish, maintain, and
renew her popular appeal. She is widely regarded as a workaholic who survives on little sleep
and rarely takes vacations: "I am a very disciplined person. I sleep a certain number of hours
each night, then I like to get up and get on with it. All that means is that I am -in charge of
everything that comes out".

She has drawn heavily on the talent of others: writers, musicians, choreographers, and
designers. Many of her personal relationship have been stepping stones to career transitions.
Her transition from dance to music was assigned by her relationships, first, with musician
Steve Bray, then with disc jockey John Benitex. Her entry into Hollywood was accompanied by
marriage to Sean Penn and affair with Warren Beatty. Most striking has been her continuous
reinvention of her image. From street-kid look of the early 1980s, to the hard-core sexuality
of the 90s, and spiritual image that accompanied motherhood, Madonna’s fans have been
treated with multiple reincarnations. As Jeff Katzenberg of Dreamworks observed: “She has
always had a vision of exactly who she is, whether performer or businesswoman, and she has
been strong enough to balance it all. Every time she comes up with a new look it is successful.

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When it happens once, OK, maybe it’s luck, but twice is a coincidence, and three times it’s got
to be a remarkable talent. And Madonna’s on her fifth or sixth time.”

She was quick to learn the ropes both in Tin Pan Alley and in Hollywood. Like Evita
Perón, whom Madonna portrayed in Evita, Madonna has combined determination, ambition,
social astuteness, and mastery of the strategic use of sex. As a self-publicist she is without
equal. In using sex as a marketing tool, she has courted controversy through nudity,
pornographic imagery, suggestions of sexual deviance, and the juxtaposition of sexual and
religious themes. But she is also astute at walking the fine line between the shocking and the
unacceptable. In recent years Madonna has devoted increasing time to nurturing the talents
of others, mainly through her recording, film production, and management company,
Maverick Inc., a joint venture with Time Warner. Her protégés included Mirwais, William
Orbit, Donna De Lory, and the Deftones, and the comedian Ali G: “I’ve met these people along
the way in my career and I want to take them everywhere I go. I want to incorporate them
into my little factory of ideas. I also come into contact with a lot of young talent that I feel
entrepreneurial about.”

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GENERAL GIAP AND THE VIETNAM WARS, 1948-75

As far as logistics and tactics were concerned, we succeeded in everything we set out
to do. At the height of the war the army was able to move almost a million soldiers a year in
and out of Vietnam, feed them, clothe them, house them, supply them with arms and
ammunitions and generally sustain them better than any army had ever been sustained in the
field…
On the battlefield itself, the army was unbeatable. In engagement after engagement, it was
the force of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese, not he US that emerged victorious. How
could we have succeeded so well yet failed miserably? 1

Despite having the largest army in Southeast Asia, North Vietnam was not match for
South Vietnam so long as the South Vietnam and its US ally were defeated not by superior
resources but by superior strategy. North Vietnam achieved what Sun Tzu claimed was the
highest form of victory: the enemy gave up. The prime mover in the formulation of North
Vietnam’s strategy was General Vo Nguyen Giap. In 1944, Giap became head of the
Vietnamese Army until 1974 and Minister of Defence until 1980. Giap’s strategy was based on
Mao Tse Tsung’s three-phase theory of revolutionary war: first, passive resistance during
which political support is mobilized; second, guerrilla warfare aimed at weakening the enemy
and building military strength; finally, general counteroffensive. In 1956, giap’s brilliant victory
over the French at Dien bien Phu fully vindicated the strategy. Against South Vietnam and its
US ally, the approach was similar.

Our strategy was . . . to wage a long-lasting battle . . . Only a long-term war could
enable us to utilize to the maximum our political trump cards, to overcome our material
handicap, and to transform our weakness into strength. To maintain and increase our forces
was the principle to which we adhered, contenting ourselves with attacking when success was
certain, refusing to give battle likely to incur losses2.

The strategy built on the one resource where the communist had overwhelming
superiority: their will to fight. As Prime Minister Pham Van Dong explained: “The United States
is the most powerful national on earth. But Americans do not like, inconclusive wars… We can
outlast them and we can win in the end”. Limited military engagement and the charade of the
Paris peace talks helped the North Vietnamese prolong the conflict, while diplomatic efforts
to isolate the United Stated from its Western allies and to attain the US peace movement
accelerated the crumbling of American will to win.

The effectiveness of the US military response was limited by two key uncertainties:
what were the objectives and who was the enemy? Was the US role one of supporting the

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1 Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., On Strategy (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982): 1
2
Vo Nguyen Giap, Selected Writings (Hanoi: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1977)

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South Vietnamese regime, fighting Vietcong terrorism, inflicting military defeat on North
Vietnam, or combatting world communism? Lack of unanimity over goals translated into
confusion as to who was the enemy and whether the war was military or political in scope.
Diversity of opinion and a shifting balance of political and public opinion were fatal for
establishing a consistent long-term strategy.

The consistency and strength of North Vietnam’s strategy allowed it to survive errors
in implementation. Giap was premature in launching his general offensive. Both the 1968 Tet
Offensive and 1972 Easter Offensive were beaten back with heavy losses. By 1974, Giap
recognized that the Watergate scandal had so weakened the US presidency that an effective
American response to a new communist offensive was unlikely. On April 29, 1975, Operation
Frequent Wind began evacuating all remaining Americans from South Vietnam, and the next
morning North Vietnamese troops entered the Presidential Palace in Saigon.

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WILLIAMS & DAUGHTERS

Between 2000 and 2003, Venus and Serena Williams dominated women's tennis. The
Williams v. Williams Wimbledon final of 2000 inaugurated an era of sibling dominance: in 2002
and 2003, both Wimbledon and the US Open featured all- Williams final. The sisters were even
more remarkable given their race and socio- economic background. lac tennis champions are
rare, where the typical breeding grounds of world-class players tend to be suburbs and
country clubs rather than the inner city. The architect of the sisters' success in professional
tennis was father, Richard Williams. Born in Shreveport, Louisiana to an impoverished single
mother, Williams was determined to better himself. By the mid-1970s, he ran a small security
business and lived with his wife and four children in Compton, Los Angeles. His vision in now
part of sporting mythology:

Once upon a time a poor black man (Richard) and his wife (Oracene) got married and
settled down in South Central L.A. One day Richard is idly watching tennis on TV when prize
money figures are displayed. He turns to Oracene and says, "Honey, let's have two kids. They'll
be daughters, and I'll raise them to be tennis superstars and millionaires. Life will be good. "
Oracen; a little more practical than her husband, says, "Richard, you've never owned a tennis
racquet. I know dammed well you've never played tennis”. But Richard says, "not to worry
baby. How hard can it be? You hit a little ball into a big green square".

Venus Williams was born on June 17, 1980; Serena followed her 14 months later.
Surrounding himself with tennis books and videos, Richard Williams began planning the girls'
development. "There was a plan from two years before Venus was actually born to how I
would raise my kids with the help of my wife wile - their education, their food and most of all
their tennis. I'm the master planner no-one is going to out-plan me: At the age of four, Venus
began tennis lessons in the public courts coached by Richard. In the following year, Serena
joined them. Richard's approach to coaching was both comprehensive and unorthodox:

 He bought used tennis ball for 10 cents each. He reasoned that poorly bouncing balls
would require his girl to be faster across court
 Wondering why men's tennis services were so much stronger than women's he
hypothesized that girls are not so used to throwing things as boys. On this basis, he
encouraged Venus and Serena to throw their tennis racquet as far as they could
 He had the sisters working on a punch bag to develop the girls' strength, hand-eye
coordination, and footwork
 He made the girls use baseball bats to return tennis ball - it develops accuracy and
swing
 During laborious training sessions, the girls would work on improving their accuracy by
hitting balls repeatedly at fixed mark

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 Above all, father Williams worked on developing commitment, attitude, and psychological
resilient. He was resilience. He was dedicated to developing his daughters as winners -They
are champions in art, in education, in designing their clothes, in helping underprivileged kids
- as well as champions in tennis". He would place large signs around the house and garden. He
was well aware of the dangers of early burnout. White focusing on tennis, he encouraged his
girls to participate in track, basketball, ice-skating and, most of all, their schoolwork. In 1991,
he pulled both girls out of the national junior circuit - the usual path to stardom for young
tennis player - in order to alleviate outside pressure on them. He trained them too in other
aspects of championship tennis. When they were 4 and 5, he bought a video camera and
began media training them. As soon as they became professional, they became involved in
clothes design, sponsorship. and public service activities. By the time Venus won her first US
Open title at the age of 17, the girls were well prepared for the role of tennis champions.