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/