comm 101

In terms of advertisements, people are used to ignore it or feel disgusting while they reading something online. However, Instagram has turned the table. From Chu Han’s blog, it was said that over 5% of impressions Instagram runs on the ads resulted in Likes. This is an unbelievable data for a marketing expansion throughout the ads.

18 hours after the first ad of @michaelkors’s watch was posted, there were 33,985 new followers and an increase of 16 times followers as a result of it.

Even there were 20% of negative commitments, 1% showed their purchase interests on the MK products. The effectiveness based on the MK instagram experiment was successful anyway, the total number of “likes” has showed the prospects of the ads.

I think I would agree with Han’s opinion that its prospects were based on their novel typed ad and the better photography. From my opinion, instagram ads are making more than that. As we know, Instagram is making the short-video photos in their networks. It seems like a huge potential for the 3rd parties to make their creative ads on Instagram. In addition, Instagram makes ads more like artworks, they may not be considered as ads.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/chuhan/

http://nitrogr.am/blog/key-metrics-first-instagram-ad/

November 11th, an ordinary day in Canada, but not a usual day in China. 11.11 is a date which is considered as “Single Day” in China, because the number”1″ is always single. As a result, the online shopping website Taobao made a marketing strategy to make a big sale on every 11.11. From Zijian Mao’s blog, it was talked about the effectiveness of the online shopping festival, “Just 55 seconds after 12 p.m., the sum of business transaction is over 100 million RMB and the whole day’s business transaction is more than 6 billion dollars!” From my perspective, it was an amazing data for online shopping. Moreover, there is not only great discounts and shipping from taobao, but also the finical strategy from its prospects. Actually, they have improved the normal price before 11.11, then they just made 50% off from the improved price. So they just making easy money from customers who thought it was on a big “sale”. Also, I think the company Alibaba is doing more than that. More specifically, they are also making a online banking system. They split the member’s paying accounts into 2: one is pure paying account; while the other is an investment account with 4.67% yearly interest. (10 times higher than banks)

https://blogs.ubc.ca/zijianmao/

http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bank/dsfzf/20131115/023017328189.shtml

After the great work-at-home kerfuffle of 2013, Yahoo made a new policy which forces managers to rank their employees on a bell curve. Then they fire those who performed interior than others based on the bell curve. For those high performing company, they are less likely to take this strategy to lower the motivation of their employees. From the twitter of Joshua Brustein, it was reported over 5 percent of those high performing companies used this system in 2011, which down from almost 20 percent two years earlier. For this bell curve ranking system, it was both high stakes and arbitrary. This system is based on the preferences of managers, and there is less likely objective about it.  As a result, many employees lose their faiths from their jobs, also the job satisfaction seems like to fade away. From my perspective, it seems like a horrible and unjustified policy for employees. More specifically, employees will be more likely unwilling to work since they have been ranked on a bell curve. They may use other systems such as the bonus system to reward and motivate their employees. In addition, they may also give their employees shares or ownership to motivate them.

Source:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-12/yahoos-latest-hr-disaster-ranking-workers-on-a-curve

Snapchat, which is becoming increasingly popular among teenage users. It allows users to share the disappearing-message craze in this social network app. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Snapchat turned down an all-cash offer from FB and will not consider any acquisitions or investment till next year. In other words, Snapchat can grow without Facebook’s help.This means that Facebook has to compete with Snapchat equally. It is not unusual that Facebook snap up a threatening competitor like Instalgram in the last spring.  Buyout offer to Snapchat is a strategy to widen its target market, and also enrich its fancy functions of their apps. From my perspective, Snapchat was not making money from their apps, however, the buyout offer is a double-edged sword, which consists of both opportunities for growth and risks of their future individual development.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303789604579196023009484870

People always feel disppointed that wait in a long line when they go shopping. For the fast fashion brand H&M, they started a new era of a convenient paying system- bringing cashier into dressing rooms. On this Thursday, H&M’s flagship store on Times Square, is starting a new paying option- “try and buy”. For this alternative system, the most concerned problem is whether the new system will work well without a extra theft-prevention measures. But Merriman says that this may not be a question if they do normally at sales. Moreover, H&M intends to implement their tech-savvy store designs, which including Social Media Lounge, free Wi-Fi, integrated iPads, headphones with music, etc. From my perspective, it is a catching motion to bring cashier into dressing rooms. It is not only an action to make convenient shopping, but also a marketing strategy. More specifically, it may attracts more people to go their shops thus boost sales. In addition, it was interesting for me because it seemed like to solve the big problems when people go shopping. Also, the high-tech dressing rooms are fancy for customers.

Source: (Article& picture)

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-13/h-and-ms-megastore-brings-cashiers-inside-the-dressing-rooms

Today, the new Apple products of new iPads, MacBooks, and Mac Pros were introduced  in San Francisco.However, what makes Apple decide to sacrifice its profits to free its major software? This is including Mac OS X, code-named Mavericks. Mavericks and two other software suites, iWork and iLife. Also, Apple kept the trend to lower its price for the previous version of Mac OS X,Mountain Lion ($19). On the contrary, MSFT charges a much more expensive price to update its new version system($120). To answer this question, this is actually a marketing strategy for Apple to make more profits. More specifically, software is a means to sell hardware. There are still some professional apps to make a powerful profit margin, but it can not be regarded as the major products in markets. Its marketing strategy is to let your Apple products update the latest version of the software as soon as possible, so it can achieve the perfect integration of its hardware and software in a more efficient way. Thus, they can sell more Apple products due to the integration of its hardware and software.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-22/why-apple-wants-its-software-to-be-free

When thinking of Samsung Gear, the very first smart watch in the market, I consider it as a redundant product. Just simply imagine what one can do on that tiny screen. Texting and input anything will take a lot unnecessary efforts. So it should not be considered as a traditional input tool which accept complicated touching commends, rather it should only accept simple touching command. It’s possible that voice command becomes the dominant means of input. The complicated output is not desired as well. The ideal apps running on it would be like heart beat display and music apps. Too much lines is a disaster to a product in such society that people desire efficiency. Moreover, this gadget should be considered a compliment to the cell phone itself instead of standing alone. Without the phone, Samsung Gear will mostly resemble an iPod Shuffle with a touch screen on it. This is meaningless to most users who has various needs. The futures of Samsung Gear or same kind of device are still unknown. Market will judge.

Andrew , Hoyle. “Samsung’s smartwatch is style over substance.” CNET. (2013): n. page. Web. 8 Oct. 2013. <http://reviews.cnet.com/samsung-galaxy-gear/>.

On Monday, it was the first time that NLSN published a new TV metric for social TV: Twitter TV Rating. This TV program was generated to measure not only the “authors”- the about of people who were tweeting, but also a greater scale of “audience” – the people who actually view these tweets. The analysis of Nielsen TV Rating demonstrated the number of Twitter TV audience is approximate 50 times larger than the authors who generated the tweets.

In the past, TV is always considered as social and conservation- driven. But now, Twitter generates the new metric to enforce the multiplier media today. It has a great prospect for the future development in TV advertisements, and investment by media buyers. Moreover, the majority of users from social TV are more likely to use Twitter more frequently  during the show than during the commercial break—which seems like a good news for the brands.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-07/twitter-impressionism-tv-gets-a-new-metric#r=hp-lst

Recently, the World Bank has cut its forecast for the economic growth of the developing countries in East Asia . It was expected to be grown by 7.8 %, but it reached 7.1% in 2013.

One of the most important factor  affect the growth forecast is that the slowdown in China’s growth and the prospects of  US stimulus measures. Slowing growth of China’s economy influence the whole economy in East Asia. Its expectation was 8.3% economic growth, however, it just reached 7.5% growth this year. The World Bank said  that the slowdown was rooted from the shifting the export-dominated economy to domestic demand.

This is a headwind for the slowdown of the domestic demand. Meanwhile, it is also a tailwind for the world economic growth. There will be some advantages and disadvantages for the slowdown of the East Asia economic growth. When they encountered with the economic challenges, they also had opportunities to develop the Asia economy.

Source: (article & picture)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24426894

Swill-cooked oil is waste animal oil and oil that has been used several times – usually by restaurants – for frying.

In China, most of resturants used the swill cooked oil for making more profits. From my point of view, it is kind of  destruction  for all Chinese citizens and our next generation. I think the restaurants should not take their profits beyond the physical health of human being. Also, it is a huge damage for the restaurant managers. They cannot avoid to go to the other restaurants for their whole life.

Moreover, there are thousands of illegal oil factories in China. The swill cooked oil is usually collected by the collectors to spread out to the nearby restaurants. So I think authorities should emphasize cleaning up illegal oil collectors to prohibit the distribution of the illegal oil.

In addition, it is really immoral to make profits by the illegal swill cooked oil. The managers should reflect on themselves about the questions.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-06/30/content_12805065.htm