Graham Clark's Blog

GM has begun preparing to rollout its new electric plug-in Chevrolet Volt for the Canadian market next year. They have decided to target some specific markets: Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, Ottawa-Gatineau, Vancouver, Victoria and Oshawa. GM decided to target these markets because the new car is best adapted to city driving, due to a short battery range of 40-80 kilometres. They have decided to target these markets because they believe that customers in those areas are willing to pay the premium for the environmental positives of the car. It is currently set to be priced at an expensive $41,000, although “fuel” costs for the car are estimated by GM at roughly 1/6 that of a comparable gasoline powered car in Ontario.

This is a good example to illustrate the planning involved behind unveiling a new product, and the potential risks involved in a firm moving from the core products they are known for. GM is famous for their gas-guzzling cars and has been focusing on the Canadian market as a potential base for re-imaging the company. To this end they sponsored the Vancouver Olympics with 4600 “green” vehicles. The Prius has managed to find good reception in Canada, but is the market for “Green” vehicles already saturated?

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/gm-targets-green-canadians-for-volt-rollout/article1822914/?cmpid=nl-bizt1

With the exposure of confidential US government secrets by WikiLeaks by the Australian internet activist Julian Assange has raised important questions around information security. Data is becoming an increasingly abundant commodity in the “Information Age” and therefore businesses have to be careful with how they handle sensitive information. According to one manager of a security firm, many large companies still do not have clear policies about access to information within the company.

Leaks can serve a purpose to the public by promoting freedom of information that is required to stop illegal activities however they also can also destabilize legitimate business operations when important data is shared with the competition. From the WikiLeak controversy, businesses should take this opportunity to establish clear policies on access to information and invest in consistently improving data security systems. However beyond that, keeping employees satisfied and believing in the company can go a long way to preventing defectors. Besides the high retraining costs associated with high employee turnover there can also be problems from information leaks. So maybe you should try and have employees leave on better terms than just a pink slip?

Sources:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/companies-beware-the-next-big-leak-could-be-yours/article1821887/singlepage/#articlecontent

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/assange-threatens-to-release-entire-cache-of-unfiltered-files/article1825922/

Over the summer I was lucky enough to be in South Africa during the World Cup. While there I attended the match between Denmark and the Netherlands where Bavaria was accused of helping to organize 36 Dutch female fans to wear popular Bavaria orange dresses during the match. FIFA has gone over the top on numerous occasions with efforts to protect primary sponsorship rights, such as at the Germany World Cup many Dutch men were forced to watch a game in their underwear because the lederhosen they were wearing had the name Bavaria on it. In South Africa, fans were banned from wearing shirts for the two most popular South African football teams, the Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, because they are sponsored by Vodacom the telecom rival to the FIFA sponsor: MTN.

Bafana Bafana is also sponsored by Vodacom and therefore no posters or billboards could be put up with players from the South African football team wearing their shirts. Therefore all the advertising featured players wearing unpatriotic “Africa United” shirts, much to the disgust of the local population. The resulting press and anger generated over the Bavaria and Vodacom incidents only helped to increase their appeal to customers. This shows how guerrilla marketing can work if it is creative, but also how some of the sponsors such as MTN need to also be creative to compete and establishing their place in consumer’s minds.

“GOOGLE is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one,” – Larry Page & Sergey Brin

As a company, Google has grown rapidly since its creation 12 years ago to now have a market capitalization of $180 billion. The word “Google” became a word in the Oxford English language dictionary in 2006 and become synonymous with searching. Much of their growth has been due to impressive organic innovation, however especially recently this innovation has been largely from acquisitions. The company has taken over, among others, YouTube and DoubleClick, with talk of taking over a localized marketing firm Groupon, with the goal of horizontal expansion.

Their manner expansion could potentially be a limiting factor for future growth and innovation as their workforce is now numbered at 23,000 and the company has been forced to increasingly look at taking over companies for access to new ideas and employees. HP has encountered similar problems as a company founded in a garage coming up with new ideas has been forced into buying out other companies to prevent stagnation. Google’s concept of running a venture capitalist enterprise as part of their business may fall outside of their core-competence but could solve some of their bureaucratic issues.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/17633138