Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

In the present scenario with a far from perfect use of social media by marketers there are instances when they get it right. Samsung Canada got it right when they used it to give a free custom Samsung Galaxy SIII to a Samsung fan with his artwork on it. Shane posted a pic of his conversation on the Facebook page of Samsung saying that he was a big fan of Samsung and wanted a free version of Samsung Galaxy SIII. Samsung responded by saying that they couldn't give a free phone everyone and returned the favor with a pic of kangaroo on a unicycle. The entire conversation went viral on reddit . Finally Shane got a custom made Samsung Galaxy SIII, the only custom made SIII in Canada. Brand managers at Samsung will feel the heat due to loss of reputation and confidence in Samsung Smart Phones as a result of the lost patent law-suit against Apple . From a brand building perspective such activities on social media can mitigate the impact of loss in reputation. ...

In a landmark case Apple was awarded $1.049 billion in damages by the jury examining the case. There are two important perspectives in this case - First is to calculate the money gained by Samsung in infringing the patents and the money lost through this lost suit. Second is the long term impact on their market share. Apple had made Samsung an offer of $30 per handset and $40 per tablet as a licensing fee to use its patent. Experts say this would've roughly cost  Samsung $250 million dollars in 2010. So clearly considering that Samsung has to pay four times this amount in damages due to patent infringement does not indicate that it was a wise decision. WSJ reports Apple said, it iwas willing to offer a 20% discount to Samsung if the Korean tech giant agreed to cross-license its technology to Apple. Assuming an unsubsidized price of about $600 on a handset, $30 would amount to a royalty rate of about 5%. Payments under the proposal would have com...

I was reading a very interesting article by Henry Blodget on Facebook's stock price decline and the role of near-term financial focus on a company's future. It mentioned the case of Amazon that I'd like to share.  Amazon had a period of hyper growth in its stock price between 1998-2000 after which its stock price crashed to pre-1998 levels. For around seven years the stock price of Amazon traded side-ways before Amazon's extensive focus on customer service started paying off. Their stock gradually rose and it became the e-commerce behemoth that it is now. The lesson is simple. In 1997-98 Amazon's focus was on quarterly financial reports. It had its advantage in the short run but kicked back soon. Their focus on customer service took time but was necessary in the long term success of the company. 

Science fiction movies are not all fiction. Naomi Wolf  reports that in the race for making a country secure, popular tourists spots like Disney are using facial recognition technology developed by the United States military to track unaware tourists.  She further reports that after the infamous occupy crackdown movement which witnessed brutalities against reporters of the occupy wall street movement and the protesters, she noticed " bizarre camera/lights had been installed not only all around Union Square but also around Washington Square Park " On taking a pic of them and asking she says, " Commentators who had lived in China said that they were the same camera/streetlight combinations that are mounted around public places in China. These are enabled for facial recognition technology, which allows police to watch video that is tagged to individuals, in real time ". I can see the Bourne series coming to life. But this is shit scary. The only missing piec...

People say, "let's end corruption". But how can it be? Our life is stressed out! Work, family, loneliness and relationship issues. Adding to this is a thick topping of unemployment and terrorism. Phew! We also need some entertainment and some rest. When the broom is dirty, how can it clean the room? If we are the change agents, we are the brooms cleaning the room. And clearly we are too crowded with other dust. The problem is not the room, it is the unclean broom.

Wade Michael Page on 5th August 2012, undertook a mass shooting that killed six people and wounded four others. The possible reason - Hate! Hate has been the reason in past for organized and individual acts of violence. One common reason for hate has been envy. Envy has long been held to be a harmful emotion involving the desire to deprive others of the qualities or possessions that they possess and we covet ( Belk 2011 ). Envy at its extremes is of two types - Benign envy and Malicious envy. Benign envy aims to level up. For example when our friend gets a good boss, we usually end up saying - "I am envious of your job". This is not destructive. Malicious envy on the other hand is destructive. Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Due to different governments, different backgrounds and other factors, every person does not get every good thing in life. Hate related violence as experienced by In...

Our world is filled with advertisements and promotions. I am part of the community that does this sort of work. Apart from destroying the natural surroundings through ugly billboards, neon lights, glossy posters and other works of the money making mind, marketers are involved in another sinister act – Propagating Consumerism. By the time a child grows up, she has already seen thousands of hours of TV, scrolled through countless newspapers and magazines, and travelled through miles of roads with banners. All of these orchestrate the origin of materialistic aspirations. These aspirations are thieves of our lives. They make us work in order to fulfill them. We in-turn weaken social ties and spend time working to fulfill these desires. Through our chase of material goods we create a demand for energy mostly fuelled by fossil fuels. You drive a big car, which consumes more fuel, you have more air-conditioners at home, which mean more electricity consumption, and you stop re-using due to su...

There is no dearth of pretentious people in this world. You don't need to search for one. But then there are friends, enemies and folks who aren't pretentious. They are simply genuine. They wouldn't wait for a second to say "The don't like your dress", if they don't like it.  In the same way market places can be divided into the pretentious and the genuine customers.  Now let me come to the point of advertising. For a decade there has been a debate on the question of effectiveness of advertising. The trends lean toward sales promotion. In my opinion there has been only problem - Marketers haven't tried to understand the situation. As John Romano has famously said, “ The smaller the understanding of the situation, the more pretentious the form of expression. ” Pretentious expression won't appeal to the genuine customer. Advertising won't yield results let alone "measurable results".