Monthly Archives: November 2015

Toms shoebox promoting the “one for one” deal

I am opposed to the “one for one” business model from a humanitarian viewpoint because although it is very effective marketing,  the product given to the customer is often of bad quality. Products should be to alleviate “pains” in the most convenient and affordable way possible, providing the highest marginal utility. If the “one for one” model is implemented, that would cause there to be less consumer surplus.

In addition, the model does not provide long term solutions; instead actually provides a negative impact to the same communities it is trying to assist.

“By undercutting local prices, Western donations often hurt the farmers, workers, traders, and sellers whose success is critical to lifting entire communities out of poverty. That means every free shoe donated actually works against the long-term development goals of the communities we are trying to help.” – Cheryl Davenport

I agree with and support the “one for one” business model from a business viewpoint because put simply, “Toms isn’t designed to build the economies of developing countries. It’s designed to make western consumers feel good”. Providing a strong enough incentive for a consumer to purchase your product, even if the incentive is a false sense of goodwill, means that the marketing is working. Toms has implemented this model in a successful way, with enough feelings of reliability given to the consumers to drive sales, and ultimately make profit.

Sources:

[1] http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679628/the-broken-buy-one-give-one-model-three-ways-to-save-toms-shoes

Image which from a video which shows Golden attacking the Uber driver

Benjamin Golden, a senior marketing manager at Taco Bell was fired from his position shortly after a video of the assault taken from the Uber drivers dash-cam was released to the public.

The assault had nothing to do with how well Golden preformed his job, however due to public outrage demanding his removal from his position at Taco Bell, the company had no choice but to let Golden go.

This links topics from both marketing and ethics. It was negative publicity for Taco Bell and resulted in thousands of distraught customers. The incident also relates to ethics; Golden has attempted to issue a public and in-person apology to the victim Uber driver and appears remorseful. However, Taco Bell’s decision will have the impact of ruining Golden’s entire professional career. On the other hand, it would be extremely difficult to keep Golden on board given the circumstances and negative impact on the company’s image.

I believe that the main deciding factor for this situation was the video. It is undeniable proof of what happened and allows the public to be easily outraged. If there were no video proof of the incidence occurring, it would have been settled quickly, have received minimal media coverage, and Golden would have most likely have kept his job. Yes I completely agree that Golden was one-hundred percent in the wrong in this situation, however I do not believe that this one intoxicated mistake should warrant him with thousands of death-threats, to be publicly humiliated, and have the rest of his professional career and social life ruined.

Sources:

[1] http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/taco-bell-fires-marketing-manager-who-was-caught-video-punching-uber-driver-167905

[2] http://abc7news.com/news/uber-attack-suspect-makes-statement-wants-to-apologize-in-person/1070606/

Zerodium, a notorious “premium acquisition program for zero-day exploits and advanced cybersecurity research” has paid out the 1 million dollar bounty it offered for anybody who could “find a way to remotely jailbreak a new iPhone or iPad running the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system iOS (in this case iOS 9.1 and 9.2b), allowing the attacker to install any app he or she wants with full privileges.”

The winning team cannot be identified due to having to sign a non-disclosure agreement as part of the agreement.

A “wanted poster” for the iOS 9 bounty, featured on Zerodium’s website.

What use does Zerodium have for needing such an exploit, and justifying the ridiculously high reward bounty in exchange for it?

There is a new emerging and thriving business revolving around selling exploits to government agencies, who are willing to pay significant amounts to bypass the security of applications that companies who created them refuse to allow them to access.

Many companies, such as Mitnick Security have programs which match exploit holders to government personnel, which are heavily controversial regarding the ethics behind it.

If Zerodium were to sell the newly discovered iOS exploit to the right clients, they could potentially come up with a much, much larger profit.

Sources:

1. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/somebody-just-won-1-million-bounty-for-hacking-the-iphone?utm_source=mbtwitter
2. https://www.mitnicksecurity.com/shopping/absolute-zero-day-exploit-exchange