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The greatest lesson I learned about myself from 299 is that I am a huge procrastinator, and extremely lazy. I always left everything until the last minute, whether it be writing speeches for first term or editing my resume. However, from this, I learned that I work well under pressure. Without a time constraint, I will spend my time Facebooking and randomly wasting time. When a time constraint was applied, I got things done, fast.

From the resume/cover letter assignment, I learned that although I am messy, I am very detail oriented. I made sure that every part of my resume was formatted exactly as asked for, earning myself 40/40 on the assignment.

I hope to be more proactive in classes and speak more when allowed.

The person I learned my greatest lesson from was a stranger. I do not remember her name. My family and I were on a trip to New York City with a tour group. On the last day of the trip, we went shopping. While we were shopping, she came across a pair of shoes that she fell in love with. For some reason, she chose not to purchase those shoes, and we moved on. Ever since leaving the store, she would NOT STOP TALKING about those shoes! We didn’t have an opportunity to go back to buy them, and the only things that came out of her mouth were “I regret not buying those. I regret not buying those.” She may possibly have been the most annoying person I have ever met.

However, I appreciate the great lesson she taught me: live life with no regrets. If you really want something, whether it is a pair of shoes or to go skydiving, you should go for it. Don’t disappoint yourself (or annoy other people) by regretting not making the move or taking action!

In the currently technological age, consumers are able to receive marketing messages through remarkable amounts of media. Major sporting events, such as the Olympics or World Cup Soccer, have significant viewership across the globe – those who don’t watch sports regularly will even tune in to join the action. Events such as these are valuable to companies, as they offer an opportunity to market to a wide audience. However, sponsorship of large sporting events is a significant investment, and potential sponsors must ask themselves: “Is it worth our money?” Needless to say, sponsors want a return in their investment, which could come from a variety of areas.

Bell invested over $200 million into the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, over ten times the amount VANOC expected from its Premier National Partners. With such a tremendous contribution, it should be expected that VANOC reciprocate Bell’s support by helping to maximize its returns, with specific attention in the areas of market share and financial profit.

December 1st, 2010 was World AIDS Day. On that day, a number of celebrities sacrificed their digital lives in order to raise money and public awareness for HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. They will not access Facebook or Twitter until one million dollars is raised by fans. To donate, all you have to do is pop a quick text message, ‘BUYLIFE’ to 90999.

For this campaign, viral marketing is being used via social media to attract attention from the social-savvy segment of the population. Viral marketing is only a recent thing, considering that social media hasn’t been around for that long. And boy oh boy, is it working. The website for Digital Death, buylife.org, crashed due to too much traffic.

Marketing messages such as this creates a lot of buzz, causing word to spread quickly. For example, I saw this video through a link on somebody’s Tumblr feed, and I (as well as many other bloggers) am reblogging it, conveying the message to more and more people! Such effectiveness could not be achieved without so many outlets of social media.

I believe viral marketing is pretty awesome, especially for awareness campaigns such as Digital Death. To see how the campaign is coming along, click here to visit the buylife website.

So this year, my parents made the foolish decision to give me a VISA card. and SINCE it’s linked with my parent’s account, the limit is a lot higher than it would be if it were my own account. What does that mean? Credit card abuse! 🙂 December is here, and we all know what that means: Christmas shopping. Already, the malls are bustling with holiday shoppers. Store windows are decorated with fluffy fake snow, shiny tinsel, and enormous holiday ads. Ahh, the holidays. Consumerism at its best.

How does Christmas affect our economy? With all the spending and purchasing, one has to wonder. Temporarily, the economy will be given a boost. Also, it generates more jobs, as retailers need extra hands for the big lineups during Christmas rush. But with the current world economy being so unhealthy in recent years, how will consumers react? A survey by Deloitte claims that this year, forty-two percent of shoppers will spend less than they did last year. So what does this mean for retailers? Personally, I hope that they’ll lower prices…SALETIME! Since many consumers are lower on their budget this year than previous years, they’ll be attracted to the lower prices, which may definitely help retailers increase sales. But would that be a smart thing to do? Hmmmmmmmmmm. I guess we’ll just have to see.

But for the time being, I’ll just abuse my credit card until my mother gets angry. Hooray!

Since the development of the internet, a great number of daily activities have become much easier. One of those activities is shopping. More and more people are online shopping every day, and a recent poll said that 61% of Canadians want to do their Christmas shopping online this year.

Benefits

With online shopping, consumers are able to stay in the comfort of their home AND shop, all with the click of a mouse. Buying products online allows consumers to browse through large categories and numbers of products at a time without having to visit separate stores in person. It saves a significant amount of time spent travelling to/from the stores, leaving the consumer with surplus time to spend elsewhere. Furthermore, by simply entering a credit card number, consumers can have the products they purchased delivered right to their doorstep. Convenient, right? If the online store is successful, business owners also receive positive benefits. They are able to save money on rent to spend elsewhere in their business. This is the reason why purchasing items from sites such as eBay is so much cheaper than buying items in the store.

Problems

Online shopping also creates some problems for both consumers and businesses. One major problem is that with the new technology, companies don’t have to hire as many workers. This decreases the number of jobs available. For consumers, there are a number of issues that may arise. One major problem with online shopping is that customers don’t get to see the actual product they are ordering in person. Thus, what they receive may not be what they had originally expected. This may result in the customer having to return the product, which means a lot of wasted time.

In the end, it is up to the customer whether or not they want to purchase online. Personally, I love online shopping, and think that the benefits outweigh the problems. Since online shopping is still a relatively new concept, it will be interesting to see what kind of new ideas companies will come up with to increase profit via the internet.

Pretty much every person who’s ever had a childhood knows what Disney is. Whether it be Disney’s movies, Disneyland Resort, or Disney’s music. The Disney empire was created by one man, Walter Elias Disney. In his lifetime, he was a film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, and international icon.

Walt Disney brought a significant number of new ideas into life. He created the Walt Disney Resort, which has developed internationally. He brought the cartoons that we have all grown to love.

Without doubt, he has generated a significant amount of wealth. His empire grew rather quickly, going from a young cartoonist to an Academy Award winner at the age of 28. Over the course of his entire career, he won a total of 26 Academy Awards. Turning a drawing of Mickey Mouse into the key character of an international resort; the innovation that Disney has is astounding.

The characters of Disney are recognizable by any person who has access to any form of media in the world. From a high school drop out to entrepreneur, Disney is definitely one of the most successful companies built by a single entrepreneur in history.

The first text message was sent on a personal computer in 1992. Now, texts are mostly sent or received on via mobile network services. The number of text messages are exponentially increasing yearly as they are simple ways to communicate in a short and efficient manner. All around the world, mobile phone users are texting, from elementary-aged children to senior citizens. My 8 year old brother sends text messages to tell my parents to pick him up. My mom forwards a ridiculous amount of inappropriate jokes during office meetings. In fact, she probably texts more than I do. Both of them reside in China, where texting is extremely cheap. In the year 2007, over 700 billion text messages were sent in the country.

These messages can be sent in any situation, such as between employees and employers, friends, and family. In this way, there can be conflicts between formalities, as some interpret messages differently compared to others. For example, there was a situation in Canada where an employee was terminated due to inappropriate text messaging. His message was unintentional in terms of its context. His intent was to send a quick message to convey a serious negotiation. However, the manner in which his message was sent was inappropriate, as the reader mistook his humour and information as informal and unprofessional. After further examination, more of his text messages were viewed and seen as inappropriate for the workspace and in turn, hurting the company’s name and reputation.

In a more positive light, businesses have been utilizing texting as a way to take advantage of new technology in order to seek competitive advantages. Texts are secure, reliable, fast, and confidential. They allow users to hide the emotions that may be seen in face-to-face meetings or heard through phone calls.

In conclusion: Texting = awesome.

GAP debuted a new logo on its website this week. (pictured above) It wanted to go from it’s classic blue box with white letters to something more “modern”, yet still keep its blue box in the picture somehow.  For some companies, logo changes have brought a fresh, new look and good reviews. See some of them here. The original GAP logo has been around for 20+ years. Is it about time for a logo change?

According to online users, it’s not. The comments posted by internet surfers on their blogs and other various social networking sets have not been as kind as GAP had expected.

Here are some that were posted on GAP’s facebook page:

In December of 2006, my grade 9 year, my friend introduced to me Facebook. At the time, I was only the second person in the entire school in my grad year to have it. I thought: “oh, it’s just another fad website, like Xanga or Nexopia.” Little did I know, four years later, I will have spent an extremely unhealthy amount of time on this website…browsing, posting, creeping. I’m quite certain that I’ve spent more time on Facebook than I have sleeping or studying.

In the last couple of years, Facebook and other social media websites, such as Twitter and YouTube, have been growing faster than ever, and have become an incredible tool for corporations and businesses. With such a huge number of users logging on every day, businesses are able to market to so many people that much faster. For me, businesses that utilize social media as a way to reach out to their customers seem so much more “trendy” and “hip”. They seem more in touch with the modern technological age we currently live in, which, as a consumer, tells me a lot about their social awareness. In fact, I attended a sale today that was advertised through an event on Facebook.

Without doubt, these social media sites are not going to go away anytime soon, if at all. It’s hard to imagine life without Facebook. Now that I think back over the last four years, I don’t know what it would have been like without all those event invites, tagged photos, relationship statuses, wall posts…I’m sure my friends would all say the same thing. I can state with 100% confidence that social media makes an enormous impact on our daily lives. And since the internet is open to everybody, especially with most of these social media services being completely free of charge, businesses have a ridiculous amount of potential in the field.