Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Comments to classmates
Alex, the class requires at least 6 comments to my classmates' or teammates' blogs. The following are blogs that I left comment on.
Comment to Xinkai Gong, "Intellectual Property in International Trade"
Comment to Claire, "Amazon's Latest Promotion - "A Show of Thanks" to Customers"
Comment to Maggie Jordan, "The Darth Vader Challenge"
Comment to Raj, "1st Team Post: Amazon.com and Global Markets"
Comment to Tammy, "Marketing/Tech. Blog Post/NIKE Says "NO" to Sears"
Comment to Alex Husted, "a real pickle for Vlasic"
Comment to Alex Husted, "Flexplay - the 48 hour, no return DVD"
Comment to David Gong, "pennsylvania tourism blogs"
Comment to Annamarie, "Expansion of post by Junko Husted of this Class"
Comment to Rachel, "Team Post #1: Amazon.com's Pricing Strategy"
Finding me on the web
I was able to find my Amazon Promtion blog came out 1st place by using Google. Hope this will count for my extra points.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Blog to Blog Post #2, Is “Butcher Advertising” the future of marketing?
Elton John, the "Rocket Man", lends face to AirTran. “The image of the British pop Singer will begin appearing on more than 20 AirTran Airway jets to promote the launch of satellite radio” at each passenger seat. Elton John’s head on 717 is comparable in dimensions to the head of Statue of Liberty.”
You can hardly imagine that Sir Elton John, who is famous for his extravagance, would let a dirt-cheap airline to use his image. Actually, it is a partnership between XM Radio and AirTran. The unique feature or the irony of this collaboration is that XM, which Elton John endorsed all conventional advertising rights to, only allows AirTran to use Elton John’s image for the promotion, not his name, his music, his body, his voice or anything else.
XM was wise enough to let AirTran use the image only, and save Sir Elton’s new song “Answer in the Sky” to promote its own new digital portable receiver Delphi MyFi. Of course, with Americans’ obsession with fame and celebrity, AirTran got huge publicity and feedback from customers.
Is this the new marketing technique? Is this a new chapter to advertising using celebrities? You can butcher the celebrities into pieces and use them for different promotions, their name, their voice, image or any of the body parts sparately? Is this the new way to satisfy the needs for fame and celebrity and also to manage the advertising budget? Maybe some day we will see JoLo’s butt only on Calvin Klein’s underware?
My classmate, Maggy Jordan, she blogged about "Howard Stern and the Satellite Wars". The competitor of XM Radio, Sirius Radio signed, $500 million, the biggest broadcasting contract with Howard Stern. Even though Sirius’ plan for Howard Stern to justify to $500 million contract remains unrevealed, they might get some got some hints or lessons from XM by how they used the celebrity of Sir Elton John. Stay tuned and we will find out.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Blog to Blog Post #1: Becoming Blogophobia or Embracing the Blog
Blogging has become a powerful communication medium day by day. Thank for this class and my professor Alex Brown, I got into blog recently. Blogging is a new world to me and I am still trying to figure it out. This article, Warning: Your clever little blog could get you fired was shocking to me.
Peter Whitney got fired because of his blog, "A boy, a dream, a box of muffin mix" because some notes about his friends, his life and his job. To me his blog is just like a diary, but the only difference is that Peter publish it, everybody can read it and he does not care people read about his life.
What happened to Peter, do you think it is a lesson to all the bloggers that we should stop blogging? Did Peter stop blogging because he got fired? Of course not.
Blog is not totally new. We have been using message board for years for opinions and resources. Blog is just a new form of message board in the 21st century. With the increase of individual bloggers day by day, many companies are embracing blog as their new model for business. Business week just lauched their own blog, of course, it causes various "Cheers And Sneers For The Blogosphere".
I learned from my classmate David Gong's Pennsylvania tourism blogs that his company is using blog for the promotion of tourism. However, his company uses filter to monitor and censor its blog for some legal issues. It is still easy for monitoring the company blog. Most concern lies how to monitor personal blogs of individuals inside or outside the company 24 hours a day. Blogger can blog away company's project, new products and some insider information.
maybe a potiential way to have an open dialogue with the customer, but some harm to the business can be done in short term. Any kind of information leak can cause damage to the company. But do not become blogophobic. As one of the telecommunications and technology lawyer says, "The law is trying to catch up with the technology. This is like what we saw a few years ago with employers passing polices about e-mail. Now we're seeing it with Web logs."
Blog maybe a potiential way to have an open dialogue with the customer, but some harm to the business can be done in short term.
