Month: February 2010

To be honest, visiting CTV’s Olympic site becomes my daily routine during the Winter Olympic period. On the website there is a blue  ‘Facebook Connect‘  button which i keep seeing it in other websites, such as the Mint Pavilion site. At first i didn’t really know what is it, so i clicked it. A small window popped up showing a double arrow from facebook to the site and said something about my permission. I didn’t bother with it as i was in a hurry to check out olympic results. Until today when i was watching the Canada vs Slovakia semi-final hockey game online, i realized there was a box with choices of live blog, facebook, and message on top. I clicked the live blog and chat instantly with other online viewers. Then i moved to the facebook option and found out my facebook-ctv connected friends’ status updates, and i could choose to updates mines and expose to everyone not only friends.

After googling what is facebook connect, now i understand that it allows CTV to access to my friends list and i can publishing activites through CTV on facebook. Great, one simple click that connects the world, and i just helped to promote CTV.

Besides, asking me to facebook connect, the website also asked me to register with CTV, and so i did. And I ended up receiving more than 10 emails a day about olympic events alerts and news. Great.

On many other Olympic-related websites, there is also a ‘NewsFeed’ icon, and it directly links to their Facebook fan page. Well, I usually click to become a fan because its not a big deal. Plus, I enjoy reading other fans posts, especially on the official Olympic fan page that i can browse through others unique olympic news and photos.

Social media marketing also appears @ my olympic workplace, the Coca Cola Pavilion.

Inside the Coke Pavilion, there is a Photo with the Torch section (you can take a free photo with the torch). Sometimes my role is to tell visitors to go home, visit the website printed on the little bar-coded card they received after taking the photo, and they can directly download their pictures from it (so they don’t have to do it on site, even though we do have acer computers setup for it). Later i realized this is such a great marketing idea, because people would check out other information when they head to the site and look for their photos. Well, if they choose to do it right on the venue, they can also share the photos instantly on facebook, and after they approved it, it will post on the facebook newsfeed and all the friends would know about it.  One click spreads the news with no returns, and you just can’t get rid of social media.

Social media started off as a individual’s networking among its friend-hood. As more companies participates, the network expands and social media marketing becomes an inevitable trend for any company to promote and contact with potential customers online directly. Ways of communication change, same as ways of doing business. Its very interesting how one can now sell products without having an actual store/booth and how one can promote a product without a powerpoint or display board but simply having a button, a click and a website.

If you have visited any Olympic Venues during this amazing Winter Olympic  game period, you would definitely realize almost every drink that people were holding is a Coke product – coke, vitamin water, sprite, nest tea, etc. Almost everyone knows what Coke is about, so how can Coke keeps on promoting or polishing its brand?

The answer is PlantBottle.

Newly introduced during the Vancouver Winter Olympic 2010, PlantBottle is made up to 30%  of sugar cane waste that would usually go towards landfill after being extracted to make the syrup, and 100% recyclable. It is truly a brilliant idea that plant can fully be used to make a product. It is also a valuable opportunity for Coke to establish an sustainable and corporate social responsible image, and wash away the on-going criticism about its negative health effects and monopolistic practices. I wouldn’t agree that it is ‘Greenwash’ which certain people thought of. Coke did quite a bit of contribution back to the community too, including a $20 million global multi-year partnership with World Wildlife Fund in preserving animals projects, a outdoor athletic facility for a community centre in Vancouver’s Eastside based on the recycling efforts happen during the Winter Game, as well as a contour bottle design competition that aims to generate proceeds for the Aboriginal Youth Legacy Fund. I am definitely not praising Coca Cola although i do work at the Coke Pavilion at Yaletown. Yet i am truly impressed by their brand development once i got in contact with them.

If you observe their past slogans, advertisements and the stars they hired to be their spokesman, they were all carefully implemented. From ‘Refresh yourself’, ‘Its the real thing’, to ‘Open Happiness’, their goal moves from the product itself to the customer’s perspective. Somehow there are some kind of regulations saying that they can not sell Coke to child under 13, yet they got the Minute Maid 100% orange juice for them. You think coke is too sugary? They have Coke diet and Coke Zero for you. You just can’t get away from Coke products.

In comparison to Pepsi, i remembered back in the 2006 Pepsi was quite popularized, at least i still recognized some of its funny commercials. I realize a lot of its commercials are soccer-related, and i think Pepsi is slightly more popular in Asia countries than Coke, because Pepsi promoted its brand with stars as spokemen earlier than Coke did. At least i remembered who was the spokeman of Pepsi in Hong Kong when i was very little.

For now, Coca-Cola seems to become more diversify and more engaged than Pepsi. After this Vancouver Olympic, Coca-Cola for sure will gain substantial new customers in Canada (at least the Coke Pavilion is surveyed to be the top worth visiting site). As Olympic for many fast developing countries (like China, Russian, South Africa) is being viewed as an opportunity to shine to the world, Coke being the sponsor of Olympic (i believe till 2020) will be ahead to enter these new market than Pepsi and it would be very interesting to see how Pepsi and Coke compete in the future.

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Below is just a banned commercial from Pepsi. Smile 🙂

And Here is just an article about brands preparing for marketing in 2012 olympic.

USB is fast enough for transferring folders or simply word documents from one computer to the other. Right now the Light Peak technology is invented, what else can i look forward to in the future ?

Led by one of the the largest CPU producers Intel, information transfer has now entered a new revolutionary era. Applying the Optical Fiber technology invented by the Nobel Prize Winner Professor Charles Kao 高錕 into a computer CPU, information transfer between devices can be done in almost a split-second. US B 2.0, which was not the USB finger that i originally thought but rather it refers to the plug itself, is the popular plug that we can see in common electronic devices like those monitor and camera plugs to computer. Yet Light Peak’s speed is USB 2.0’s times 30 (10Gb per second) as it does not use the usual aluminum wires anymore.

The superspeed Light Peak is already invented and its a tinier router with less energy consume and contains 2 sets of channel that doubles the speed into 20Gb per second. It is even faster than transferring files through online synchronization in the Internet.

“Intel is working with the optical component manufacturers to make Light Peak components ready to ship in 2010”.That means I can transfer my photos from my camera simultaneously to my computer soon! If the internet cable was all replaced with Optical Fiber, speed would not be a problem anymore. Entertainment, information and news can be download, upload and deliver instantly. But keep in mind that more subtles issues such as spread of viruses may arise to become a headache.

More details on Light Peak Techonology can be found @ Intel website.

Early at the end of January, when iPad was introduced to the market, not only there were many criticism across the Internet about its originality, Amazon also launched a ‘fight’ with one of the largest US book publisher MacMillan. Amazon removed the purchase button for all the MacMillan published books and only allow third-party to sell them on Amazon.com. In the past few years, as Amazon aims to obtain large market shares with the best selling ebooks price set at $9.99 each, books publishers have a limited profit margin. In addition, publishers usually sells actual books (averagely at $24 US) before selling eBook online. Hence, as Apple introduced iPad and launched the iBookstore online, publishers favored Apple’s suggestion to allow them to set the price and the online retail agent gain 30% of it as commission. Now the eBook price could be increased up to 12.99 to 14.99 US and Amazon accepted the same suggestion with its publishers. In the future, Kindle may share its current 60% market shares with iPad.

This negotiation progressed only in a few days and Kindle accepted the reality pretty quickly which limits its sales loss during its shutdown to MacMillan’s eBooks. And i realized how one product can affects others’ strategy to sustain its profit margins, and how amazon changes from a price setter to become a price taker following the inevitable Apple trend. As a consumer, iPad current prices is starting at $499, while Kindle is $330. I would rather buy a Kindle over iPad as Amazon is a long standing online retailer with stable and varied product online services.Plus, Kindle is more simple to use and has more reading oriented functions, such as instant dictionary and Wikipedia connect, and i guess the color display is not really a necessary  feature when it comes down to almost $200 price difference. (A comparison table can be found here) Yet I like the Microsoft Courier concept the best and if it could be manufactured and sold in store I would immediately go line up and buy one, because its idea is just addicting and exciting, and its high level of interaction is just like playing a video game where you can have substantial control of your own computer. And I’m sure if Microsoft can produce this, thousands of Apple fans will turn to follow Microsoft.

Yet their latest product the Microsoft’s slate PC is simply like a Window fits into a iPad case, and i would not buy one as i have a laptop already even though its heavy carrying it around.

And here is just a random funny video that i found when i typed in iPad on youtube: iPad on MadTV

Although I am not a big reading fan, I like the Amazon’s electronic book reader Kindle 2 when I just saw its introductory video, and I believe it will continue to become a great hit to many reading-oriented people. With its reader-friendly design, it allows highlight and add note aside, just like leaving pencil markings when you read an actual book. It also provides unlimited wireless access, which means readers can search for books and read online anytime at anywhere. My favorite Kindle’s feature is its text-speech service and also the non-reflective display technology called ‘electronic paper’, so I will unlikely to encounter the situation where I have to adjust my book position to avoid reflection of lights.

One thing that caught my eye when I read the article about Amazon’s success is that Steve Jobs once predicted Kindle would fail because “people don’t read anymore.” I believe that because of Kindle, people can break through the physical barriers of carrying or reading a book (such as carrying a heavy book around or unable to leave a pencil marks on the book) and they would read more in length and quantity. If I could read my university textbooks in Kindle2, I would definitely buy one as I do not have to worry to look for cheaper textbooks or to preserve it in a good condition so that I can resell them at a not-too-low price. My backbone would not be tired from carrying books and walking around campus the whole day. Plus, I could immediately find solutions to some unknown words or concepts through built-in dictionary and direct access to Wikipedia, and I would not have to wait till later to solve them on a computer.

Comparing to Kindle 1, Kindle2 now has picture display,upgraded Oxford dictionary and allows both words and pdf file. In a reading perspective, it seems to become a better reading-oriented tool comparing to some other electronic readers such as Sony PRS-505, which allows audio and memory stick insert, and Fujitsu ebook, which has full color display.