Month: March 2011

Influence (n/v):

the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others.

I know some of us here are huge fans of M&Ms. Some of us also happen to be Angry Birds addicts. M&Ms are round. Those lovable birds (and pigs) are round as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you: Angry Birds M&Ms.

Okay, granted my Photoshop job wasn’t the sharpest (It came to me last night in the midst of Stats homework, so you can imagine what kind of craziness my mind was filled with), don’t you think it’s a stroke of genius? Imagine it now, Rovio can partner up with Mars Inc., M&Ms’ parent company and extend the Angry Birds brand to food! First we have Angry Birds plush toys, then came the tag-team with the animated feature Rio. Is there a limit to what or where our loveable feathered friends will go? The company’s long term goals include building up the Angry Birds brand and I think a partnership with such an influential confectionery company will only bring good things to the once struggling Rovio. If the partnership again takes off, this may lend itself to other food-related ventures such as Angry Birds breakfast cereal, and as crude as it sounds, Angry Birds bucket meals at KFC (oh the irony)!

There can be a whole marketing campaign surrounding these lovable birds!  I see it now: There can be instructions posted on the internet or distributed virally (e.g. YouTube, “street teams”, flyers) on how to build your own DIY catapualt to launch the M&Ms/breakfast cereal onto user-made “levels” with green M&Ms substituting for the pigs and graham crackers for wood planks etc. etc. – kind of like playing with your food (but infinitely better).

The games development company has in fact set itself some lofty goals: in an interview with tech magazine Wired, Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka (who’s business card reads “Mighty Eagle”) outlines the company’s plans for these angry avian friends of ours: “What we’re doing is we’re building out the Angry Birds world…Pac-Man is only one game. Mario is a better benchmark.” Mars Inc. + Rovio = WIN.

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Stay tuned for more Angry Birds/M&M mash-ups in future posts! I fully intend to make a whole set of them so check out the blog often~

Oh Charlie Sheen, you never fail to amuse us with your crazy antics. Dating numerous strippers, beating up your girlfriends, going on cable TV to denounce your boss. You, who has the “DNA of Adonis” and “the blood of a tiger”, is currently jobless. Your string of marital problems is troubling, but does Hollywood care? I don’t think so. Sure no network in their right mind would hire Mr.Adonis but you can’t deny the firestorm of publicity Charlie Sheen’s weirdo interviews have generated – as well as the piggy-backers trying to ride on the coattails of Mr. Sheen’s infamy.

In their defense, the following people aren’t opportunistic vultures waiting to eat up the remains of Sheen’s career…or maybe they are. Nonetheless, this story (like many others) stresses the importance of maintaining a personal brand. Negative publicity can hurt your reputation – or in Sheen’s case, diversify your career options. Sadly, just like when Michael Jackson’s popularity skyrocketed after his untimely demise, we can expect Charlie Sheen to become even more famous post-Two and a Half Men. After all, who needs a crummy long-running show when you’ve been “blessed with a new brain” and have “magic…and poetry at [your] fingertips”?

• Winnipeg, MB native Jarrett Moffatt dreamed up the site Live The Sheen Dream in his room one boring winter afternoon. To date, it has had nearly 396,000 Likes on Facebook and 15,000 retweets on Twitter. Even the man himself has described Moffatt’s “social media experiment” as “epic.”
• From the publication house that brought you the Sarah Palin series of comics comes The Infamous Charlie Sheen. Bluewater Productions will be releasing the Sheen-centric comic book during the Summer months.

  

• One company not so happy with Sheen’s antics however (and no, it’s not WB) is Xango LLC., purveyors of XANGO™ Juice, which, according to the company website: “harnesses the nutritional attributes of the whole mangosteen fruit through a proprietary formula”. Now that must be why Sheen has so much vim and vigor these days, since he has been seen waving a machette around, a bottle of XJ in hand. The company’s quick to distance itself from Charlie Sheen though, confiding to gossip website TMZ’s sources that they are “very nervous” to be associated with him. Come on Xango, Charlie’s waiting for his sponsorship deal – don’t disappoint!

(This is a continuation of my current stream of Apple-related posts. Don’t blame me, blame the Church of Steve.)

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As if I can’t talk enough about Apple. The folks at 1 Infinite Loop have done it again with the release of the optimized iPad 2, the original iPad’s faster and lighter cousin. It is interesting to note that the pricing has remained the same as the original iPad’s: $499 for an entry-level 16GB model, $599 for a 32GB model and $699 for a brand new 64GB one.

Now pricing shouldn’t even be an issue for Apple. But nonetheless it makes you wonder why they didn’t change the price at all for a product that is supposed to be equipped with new bells and whistles only a fanboy could dream of. All things considered, the iPad 2 isn’t a marked improvement from its predecessor – much like when Apple released the iPhone 3GS boasting everything the iPhone 3 has…with improved speed. Incremental tinkering like the kind done with the iPad 2 would make it hard to justify say, even a $50 increase in price in the eyes of your average joe and most people who can’t see the between the two.

One could argue that the company had to keep prices at an even level rather than raising them given the fact that there wasn’t much done in the innovation department (aside from the cameras everyone’s been dying to have on their iPads). But one thing’s for sure: lowering the price isn’t an option. Price is one of the few ways Apple has maintained its allure as a high-quality brand and to lower the price of a new product that hasn’t quite entered its growth phase would probably do more harm than good (harm in the sense that the product’s prestigious image might be cheapened in the eyes of Apple’s core consumers). In maintaining the old price point however Apple has communicated another message: “This is the new iPad. For the same price as the old one you can get all the excellent features it had…and more! Now isn’t that a great value?”.  This is a characteristic move by a company who makes it a point to communicate the product’s value every chance they get.

Now excuse me while I ogle at the new iPad.

(I’ve been away from the blog for quite some time now! That’s what 3 midterms on the same week + Assignment Mountain does to you. Now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.)

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At the rate Apple is releasing products, I might never buy another iPhone/iPod/iPad/iThing.

I’ve owned at some point in time an iPod Mini (when I was a wee tyke), an old 1G iPod Shuffle that was handed down to me, an 3G iPod Touch which I got for Christmas two years ago (only to be rendered obsolete by the 4G version) and as of today I am the proud owner of a hand-me-down: my dad’s ancient (if you consider 2008 old) 2nd-gen iPhone. There was always a point in time when I regretted my buying decisions and I vowed never to buy an Apple product (obviously I broke that vow so now I’m not too keen on keeping promises I can’t keep). Buyers’ remorse always hits, but quickly dissipates as the next model makes the rounds on the internet (rumors), TV (like those snazzy Apple ads) and in-store ads (don’t you just love those store displays?).

There must be a reason why droves of Macheads still go to the Church of Steve (Jobs) and hang on to his every word – why, when the iPhone 4 came out, they were quick to line up even though the iPhone 3G was released just a few months ago. The residents of 1 Infinite Loop know what makes people tick. The desire to be on the forefront of things is often a driver for many “early adopters” but at what price? Do we the consumer constantly have to pick up the tab? Certainly consistently rolling out new models is done at the risk of annoying the few who buy the product in its dying phase (the “laggards” and even the “late majority” are guilty here), but does Apple really care?

Probably not. It’s up to the consumer to decide on the right time to buy items with a relatively high turnover, monitoring rumors and keeping abreast with all the news coming out. We can’t really blame Apple for coming out with something new every 6 months, as that is the nature of innovation – to always be one step ahead, constantly improving oneself in order to maintain that advantage. This is the business strategy they’ve chosen – us Macheads just have to live with it. Or buy a Vaio.