In this blog post on the Harvard Business Review, it explores the pitfalls of a company using social media.

The example Qantas, the Australian Airline company, who had a twitter promotion in which people were to tweet about their dream vacation, but backfired and had people tweeting about the CEO’s huge pay raise and the lack of employee pay raise and how it was labelled as greedy.

In my opinion, this is not bad marketing as despite the situation being negative, it has caught the attention of the media and it will provide free publicity for Qantas and it allows the customer to feel more involved and in the know about what is happening with the companies they are interested in.

As in my previous blog post, I stand by my opinion that it need’s to be handled properly with a specific purpose and a narrowly specified target market or else it will reach the wrong markets, prove ineffective and waste money.

I agree with the blog to “stop treating social media as marketing” and that it should be used more for customer relations, unless the product your are promoting is ideal for marketing through social media.

In response to Connie’s blog about social media as a marketing tool, I was left with the question: is this where marketing should expand to?

Social media, a prime example being Facebook, is “about connecting people together”, is this where companies want to begin new marketing, or stick to the conventional advertising?

Source: Glee The Music.com

I believe that the success of your marketing over social media will be based on what product you are marketing and who your target market is.

For example take Glee which has a Facebook page where it premieres its new music to the fans before it is released on iTunes in hopes of creating major hype for the next episode and increasing the initial song sales. This definitively paid off with their latest hit, the Adele mash-up of “Rumour Has It/Someone Like You” which soared to the top of the iTunes charts last week.

The reason the marketing worked: it was meant for a younger audience who use social networking so much that it consumes their life. So, marketing insurance plans over Facebook won’t go well as the younger generation won’t be interested to find out more, but if its music and pop culture sensations, I think you have found the best marketing strategy for your product!

Apple, one of the most widely known technology companies in the world today, is a classic example of being  entrepreneurial.

It fits the most common defintion for being entrepreneurial: working for one’s self as it was created by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in a garage in the 1970s in California. At that point, they had huge risk as they were starting up a technology industry of creating computers in Silicon Valley, where the market was booming and it was uncertain if they would be successful or not.

They were also thinking about innovation, specifically as to where the industry would be going a few years down the road and what to do to keep up with the changing nature of technology.

The best fit for Apple that defines it as  entrepreneurial is the amount of wealth and the rate at which the wealth was created. It went from being a small operated company and by the 1980s one of the main computer creators, and now today is the company responsible for the most popular laptops, the MacBooks, and the hugely popular iPod and iPad, which keep on adding to their wealth which is sent right back for new innovations.

Source: CBC News

Just yesterday, Tim Hortons announced that they would be expanding their range of all ready extremely popular Canadian coffee to now include espressos, lattes, and cappuccinos. By doing this, Tim Hortons has identified that a weakness of their company and products is that they only offer basic coffees and that they are surviving on being a Canadian company while competing against other coffee companies such as Starbucks. By moving into the espresso business, Tim Hortons has taken the opportunity to expand their line of products to increase the competition between themselves and other coffee companies in hopes of getting more sales and a larger demand for Tim Hortons coffee products which have the reputation of being good quality and affordable at the same time, in comparison to one of its main competitors Starbucks which is know for high quality coffee but very expensive in comparison.  Also, their competitors in the quick service coffee industry, most notably McDonald’s, are creating new marketing campaigns in attempt to compete with Tim Hortons with their new announcement of new coffee products so they are not swept out of the market in the eye of the consumers.

Just days ago, Warner Brothers announced that they will no longer be shipping any copies of the films to stores as of December 29. This is a marketing model that is most commonly used by Disney with their animated classics which has proven to be quite profitable. By removing the films from stores, it causes customers to rush out and buy the films before they are removed so that they can enjoy them, while Warner Brothers plans re-releases of the films in the future with new editions or on a new video format for a limited time causing the rush of sales once again.

Source Amazon.ca

This causes the supply chain for Potter films to be open for limited time windows every few years in which production will be maximized, but due to the limited nature, demand is extremely high to and profits are made, and then removed once again when profits begin to decline or the inventory turn over rate increases becomes to large.

This model has been extremely successful for Disney as they re-release their “classics” every few years, but will Harry Potter be able to be as profitable as their are a limited number of films, considering they have made $5.1billion before the release of the last film on DVD/Blu-Ray?

In response to Logan Graham`s blog Marry Me, Groupon about how Groupon can create profit for a business as a response to his previous blog about how Groupon has the ability to harm a business, I am proposing the question of what variable decides if Groupon profits or harms a business.

Logan came to the conclusion that “low variable costs and an intangible good“ are most likely to lead to the best success with Groupon, but I do not believe this to be the case. I believe that for Groupon to be successful is that the business must be in a popular industry with lots of substitutes present so that the coupon for that business attracts customers to  that specific business.

Also, the promotion through the coupon has to be a good deal or else customers will not bother to use the coupon and the business will loose money.

I do agree that the product or good must be an intangible good as if it is not useful to the general population; customers will not be searching Groupon for promotions on that good.

So, business owners need to examine the market of their product before making a decision to use Groupon or not.

On Tuesday, the business world lost a very important figure: Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple.

Steve Jobs revolutionized the world of technology and music over the past few years and while doing so, his company became one of the most popular companies in the technology industry for computers and portable music players. Back in 2001, the music industry was being plagued by illegal downloading of music, and then Jobs came out with innovative online music store iTunes which has now become one of the most popular places to by music online and it has kept the music industry alive, and caused other online music stores to emerge such as Amazon Music.

He was also the man behind the invention of the iPod, which replaced bulky MP3 players with the sleek iPod which fit into the user’s pockets, which has now revolutionized to the phone industry with the iPhone and the tablet industry with the iPad.

Steve Job’s work at Apple over the past decade has made Apple the model business for all other business in the portable music business and has been the inspiration for many new devices, such as the Blackberry Playbook, and with his passing this week the industry will be changed forever.

The situation is that an anonymous letter claiming that Silvercorp Metals, a Chinese mining company based in Vancouver, committed fraud while reporting their profits/losses for 2010. They are accused of reporting a profit in the United States for 2010 while reporting losses in China for 2010. The ethical dilemma here focuses on lying. Silvercorp Metals has been accused of lying, but are denying these claims and are posting reports on the internet proving these claims false. The ethical situation here is that lying in business is not good as it can provide ways to escape paying certain fees or taxes and becoming eligible for special circumstances that the company should not normally be eligible. That is the ethical dilemma if Silvercorp is indeed committing fraud. On the other hand, the ethical situation is that the creators of the anonymous letters are committing fraud themselves to discredit Silvercorp to knock Silvercorp down a level which puts them to some unknown advantage, which is bad business as they are gaining an advantage through lies and deceit. Either way, the situation is full of bad ethics that can sway either way depending on the outcome of the investigations being done by the FBI, and other government agencies.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-14/silvercorp-denies-report-on-sales-says-fbi-seeking-authors.html