Nivea has also been sued for false advertising

Reality usually falls extremely short of an advertisement

My family has always laughed at the concept of Nutela being a “nutricious” food option as it is advertised to be. I was actually quite happy when I read Ben Morgan’s blog that they had been sued for misleading. I don’t think it is ethical for a company to be taking advantage of people who are uninformed. Using suttle deception in advertisements is actually quite common in this day and age, and something people should be more aware of. A food identity blog informed me that Nestle had been sued for stating that it’s water was naturallly sourced when it was municipally sourced. Orange Julius claims to have All Beef hot dogs. In reality the brand of hot dogs they use is called All Beef, however the hot dogs themselves are not actually all beef. Activia was sued for claiming their yogurt had nutritional benefits when it didn’t. Nokia falsely advertised pictures for a phone that were not actually taken by the phone. I could go on for days with other examples. Clearly false advertising is unethical and it is illegal, so why is it still happening so often? The problem with misleading advertisements, as this financial post article expands on, is that false advertising is hard to prove, and hard to take to court. Furthermore it has been successful time and time again. Given these factors false advertising is unlikely to stop anytime soon so the best we can do is to be informed ourselves!

Photo retrieved from: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/V7H11jbbdQk/TbZ07EI3FVI/AAAAAAAAJGU/bvNHkw5JLQ8/s1600/false_advertising-img-685.jpg

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/06/images/nivea_ad.JPG

Flip is a restaurant from my home city in Regina, Saskatchewan. There have been thirteen E-coli cases reported in Saskatchewan over the past few months. Five of these cases had all recently eaten at the restaurant Flip. While home on the weekend I learned that they had voluntarily shut down for 5 days for this reason so that an investigation could be done. Many people were very critical of this decision. The restaurant I work at thought that this was a bad business decision because they would now stand out in a negative way. I disagree with this because I think if they had stayed open they would have had more negative press. E-coli is a very serious issue to have in a restaurant and had they stayed open it would have sent the message that they don’t take safety seriously. Also had they not cooperated with the investigation it could have seemed like they had something to hide, when in reality they have never had any health issues in the past. I think that Flip made the best business decision possible given the situation.

Image retrieved from: http://www.leaderpost.com/7365521.bin

In light of the class about social entrepreneurship I wanted to dedicate a blog to Ten Tree Apparel, an upcoming company from my home in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Ten tree Protect the world you play in

The founders of Ten Tree saw damage being done to our environment and found an innovative way of trying to improve the state of it. For each article of clothing they sell 10 trees will get planted. Ten tree recognized tree planting as a way of restoring the environment and used it to create a profitable business. Their motto protect the world you play in really hit home for me as a person who spends a lot of time outdoors.They have already partnered up with WeForest and the Canadian Wildlife Association, and have over 100 retailers around Canada.

Ten tree family

They also recently appeared on Dragon’s Den and received the 100 000$ that they asked for at 20% along with marketing help. Here is the Dragon’s Den episode with Ten Tree Apparel. Here is a link to a Short documentary about Ten Tree on how they got started, and to their Inspire campaign encouraging people to get active outdoors. Check them out and support sustainable companies!

Images retrieved from the Ten tree website, and from their Facebook page.

This article seems to paint an optimistic picture for the future of the Blackberry. Rim has added a free call feature to BBM when connected to wifi. Contrary to this article I don’t think this signifies positive things to come. I actually would say that it more so demonstrates how behind they still are from rival companies such as Samsung and Apple.

Rim Blackberry, the Samsung Android, and the Apple iPhone

Considering the fact that apple added free video call to the Iphone months ago, I don’t think this new feature is much to get excited about. By simply reproducing successful product ideas from rival companies Rim is guaranteeing its failure. If Rim plans on competing they need to be coming out with new innovative products, and ideas.  Creating this free call feature after Apple’s free video feature implies that they are too focused on what competitors are doing. What they should be doing is re evaluating their own product and spending time creating something new and exciting instead of just trying to keep up. I think they should be customizing to focus their attention on markets where they are more successful such as overseas rather then struggling to compete in North America.

Image retrieved from: http://www.aaronklein.com/2010/09/blackberry-vs-android-vs-iphone-2010-edition/

Google’s privacy policy has had a lot of controversy surrounding it. The official google blog states that it is there to improve and customize their service and was put in place to produce quicker and more accurate search results. The problem is the concern for privacy. Majority of people, are not comfortable with all their internet activity to be tracked, especially when using a shared or public computer.

People use google to search sensitive topics, and they should be able to do so without broadcasting it to their family. I think privacy is a very grey area. It is hard to tell when a line has been crossed, and once it’s been crossed things can escalate quickly. I think this new privacy policy will only open doors for other companies to do the same. Furthermore I think it could encourage governments and companies to dismiss the importance of the individual’s privacy. Even if you don’t think this policy is violating privacy, which I believe it is, it is certainly headed in that direction. The video and article here talk a bit more about google and also highlight some negative results that could arise from the privacy policy.

Image retrieved from: http://thedijje.blogspot.ca/2012/03/googles-new-privacy-policy-how-to-be.html

Crowded London Streets

The extensive process needed to immigrate is a very controversial topic for most countries and even more so for Great Britain.  Most countries are trying to simplify these processes, Great Britain is not among those countries.The economist articles linked here are of the opinion that having such harsh immigration rules is damaging to business and the economy and that Great Britain should be opening it’s doors like countries such as Australia, Canada and the U.S, instead of closing them. I strongly disagree with this statement. I agree that the latter countries should be encouraging immigration but what these article’s don’t take into consideration is the size, and population of the countries. Canada’s density population was last reported at 3.75 people per square Km, leaving plenty of room for growth. Britain’s population however was reported at 402.1 people per square km. In simpler terms Britain is squeezing double Canada’s population into less than a 12^th of its size.

World Population density map

 In my opinion high levels of immigration for an already congested space only creates more unemployment and more housing shortage, injuring the economy more than limited immigration. An article linked here talks more about how crowded the UK is.

Data retrieved from: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/canada/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html

Population density graph retrieved from: http://www.bartholomewmaps.com/population_density.html

Crowded streets photo retrieved from: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2007/12/10/this-holiday-season-londons-streets-are-absolutely-jammed/

Elyssa’s blog talks about how Jimmy Kimmel was able to get people to think the iPhone 4s was actually the new iPhone 5. I thought this was an excellent demonstration of brand power and loyalty, and the effect that expectations can have on a product. In this case the power of marketing has a lot to do with the response to the new iPhone. It was people’s expectations for a faster and more innovative iPhone and their extreme trust in Apple having superior products that let them believe it was the new iPhone. This blog made me consider why I have purchased Apple products over the years and whether the marketing could have impacted my decision as well. I found a similar exampleof brand loyalty between Coke and Pepsi. On average most people would say they preferred the taste of Coke.

A meme depicting customer’s loyalty to Coke.

However when a blind taste test was conducted between the two products with consumers unaware which cola they were drinking 57% preferred Pepsi. This shows that knowing which cola they were drinking affected the taste, similar to the way knowing or thinking it was the iPhone 5 made it faster and lighter.

Image retrieved from the Ecards website.

Over the past few years China’s economic growth rate has been extreme. So much so that people are starting to question the legitimacy of it all. There is growing concern that the slowing of the economic growth may lead to an altogether crash. This concern stems from facts that “imports in August actually fell, by 2.6% year on year” and “businesses accustomed to two digit GDP expansion” have been reduced to one digit. It is suspicious that despite reporting exceptional economic growth China’s electrical use did not grow commensurate with the growth in the economy, given that so much of their economic growth is based on manufacturing. The skepticism towards the legitimacy and accuracy of the data only fuels this concern. I think this is an issue that should be looked into by future investors who potentially plan on expanding to China. From a business standpoint it is important to know everything about what your investing in before investing, especially the economy your investment will be a part of. Here is a link to The Economist article that expands on this topic.

This August the Canadian Government eliminated nearly 3000 reviews which were meant to assess the environmental damage that industrial projects could have. The aim of the changes was to speed up the evaluation process, but seems to be neglecting the fact that the purpose of these reviews is to ensure that the projects are not causing severe environmental damage.This concerns business because omitting the reviews altogether is extremely beneficial for all major corporations involved in these projects. Specifically, the oil and fossil fuel companies will benefit, since 678 of the cancelled reviews were fossil fuel projects and 248 were pipeline projects. This is a stark demonstration of how difficult it is to balance efficiency and profit, with safety and social wellbeing, and the role the government plays in maintaining that balance.

I found these articles especially interesting because 638 of the projects were in Saskatchewan, which is where I’m from. “Saskatchewan is the 2nd largest oil producer in Canada”, behind only Alberta. In Saskatchewan “3,528 oil wells [were] drilled in 2011, representing a 29-per-cent over the figure for 2010”. This growth was, I would assume, slowed only by obstacles such as environmental assessments. In my opinion the real reasoning behind disregarding these assessments was not to improve overall efficiency but to improve efficiency for fossil fuel and oil production. Coincidentally this simultaneously increases the efficiency of the money being transferred into corporate pockets. Links to articles where I found the data listed above and that expand on this topic are below.

Article 1

Article 2

Article 3

Dyncorp corporation is a private company specializing in armed forces, aviation and security. They are regularly hired by the US government for peacekeeping, drug eradication or diplomat protection in a variety of countries including Haiti, Afghanistan, Colombia, Bosnia, ect. Their website would make them out to be heroes however if you look deeper into the corporation it becomes clear that they have gravely abused their authority multiple times. One instance of this abuse occurred when they were hired by the U.S to assist the war on drugs in Colombia. They were hired to eradicate all illicit crops. Instead of discovering what areas were populated they sprayed toxic herbicide everywhere resulting in deaths and illnesses. My guess to why they didn’t chart the populated areas is that they were too lazy to follow protocol. For this reason and many others I do not think millitary should be privatized. It should be run solely by the government which would at least remove some profit motive out of the business of killing. It would simultaneously make it easier to ensure that regulations and protocols are being followed. Here is a link to the suit filed and here is the official Dyncorp Website.

Dyncorp is also accused of being involved in the sex trade.

Image was retrieved from: http://blogs.longwood.edu/humantrafficking/2012/03/03/the-whistleblower/