Hele Down wrote an excellent blog on businessblogshub.com explaining how business can help promote a positive image of themselves and how it may not necessarily incur high costs.

She implores small businesses to consider using the media to promote themselves and talks about how you should not think that only the big companies use these channels. According to her, other than the time you spend arranging it-the rest of the promotion is virtually free.

I found this extremely interesting because small business do indeed rule out the possibility of promotion using the media (Newspapers, TV or Radio) because more often than not, it is considered extremely expensive. She says ‘Being published in the press or featuring in an industry magazine can add weight to all your other marketing and shouldn’t be seen as something only the big companies go after’. This always made perfect sense to me growing up. If a small business could merely do something newsworthy such as an inauguration event, special discount or special feature, it was guaranteed promotion in the  media without it paying a dime.

Hele also says ‘The thing to remember is that good press is more about what your business does than what it says’. This is key, as business should deliver on what they promise and as they say, actions speak louder than words! A business’ actions leave a much more lasting impact than what it may say in its press release.

She also cites examples using which you can generate publicity for your business and not expect heavy costs in return. Her ideas are extremely appealing though one may criticize her on being far too simplistic as quite often, the media requires an ‘extra’ incentive to provide any form of coverage.

As they say, the world is a selfish place.

One aspect which Comm101 didn’t really explore was the effects or mergers or takeovers. I wanted to give an example of two giant companies. I’m going to talk about P&G buying Gillette.

P&G paid a huge amount of money to buy Gillette. 54 billion dollars to be precise. The reasons for Gillette could be many but the most evident ones, keeping in mind that this was a friendly transition, will be discussed here.

The acquisition of Gillette by P&G may be due to reasons such as ‘shelf space’. As Susan Egan, Managing Director of Egan-Jones Rating Co., said at the time of the acquisition, ‘The fight for shelf space is ongoing, it’s one of the main things that a large consumer product company like Gillette is looking at, and a combination with Procter & Gamble makes a lot of sense,” Egan said. “It’ll enable both Gillette and Procter & Gamble to get better shelf space and to distribute their products more cheaply.”

Due to the friendly nature of this great acquisition, Gillette’s former CEO became chairman of Cincinnati-based P&G, joining its board. Warren Buffet, owned the largest number of shares in Gillette and was extremely happy about the deal and dubbed it a ‘dream deal’.

Statistics said, that this acquisition would catapult P&G’s annual sales to more than 60 Billion dollars. Such acquisitions, mergers and takeovers may help to reduce fierceness of  competition, get rid of the price and shelf wars and accumulate resources to become a consolidated better firm and may even help to expand. However, when mergers and takeovers fail, the results are colossal. The Damien-Chrysler failure is a reminder. Therefore, such steps should be taken with much caution and research.

This is in response to Winsum Tam’s blog post where she wrote an excellent post explaining the recent mishap in calculation resulting from the alleged usage of a non-factual source for information (Wikipedia) by a senior executive of BP.

They say that ‘knowledge is power’. That may be true but a few amendments to that saying might be in order keeping in sight the post by Winsum. Knowledge from a factual source IS power, without a doubt. But knowledge or information from a source which is not reliable can often create more problems than it solves. Mr. Rainey will agree with me as he’s currently looking at 5 years of posible jail time due to his miscalculations. According to his sources of information, a deepwater rig leaked 5000 barrels of oil per day; whereas, engineers believed it could possibly be up to 100,000 BOPD.

This made me appreciate the need for citations in all my work in university. Information is only as resourceful as its source and if that information is used to make decisions which will effect others too, then accountability also comes into question. This incident will serve as a reminder to all those in positions of power and responsibility because they have a greater responsibility on their shoulders as opposed to someone using information solely for himself.

Therefore, it is fair to say, your source is equally, if not more important, as important as your information.

Mina Coyne wrote an interesting blog post about a very famous bank,  Merrill Lynch, settling litigation for a huge some of money. She talked about ‘Should people with power in firms be able to take advantage of their power by lying or cheating to improve their company?’

That debate she sparked is too simplistic. The instinctive answer is ‘of course no!’ but it happens everywhere around the world and Merril Lynch is not the sole abuser of power. Recently, ‘JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse agreed to settlements with the Securities and Exchange Commission totaling $417‘. Apparently, they misled investors regarding  securities ‘while some of the underlying loans were already showing signs of delinquency’.

What’s interesting to note however, is that out of these 2 banks, none admitted or denied guilt and simply agreed to settle. This gives rise to the notion that ‘Money is power’. JP Morgan and Credit Suisse were able to wriggle their way out of further legal proceedings simply by agreeing to settle and compensating financially for the ‘misinformation’.

Although, being unbiased is what I usually aim for in my blogposts, I can not help but think about the many families who were destroyed due to the consciously depicted inaccuracies of such banks and I can not help but lash out at them. These banks still have the audacity to not accept their guilt, their crimes, their doings and their actions. This is injustice to the maximum and accountability should be extended to all the perpetrators. In addition, the sphere of accountability should be widened and should not be merely restricted to financial or monetary compensation by the perpetrators.

Ikea, the giant international home products company, recently found itself in a very awkward situation. It appears that the company’s suppliers used political and criminal prisoners. This directly contradicts Jeanette Skjelmose statement, Ikea’s sustainability manager, who said: “We deeply regret that this could happen. Using political prisoners in production has never been accepted within the Ikea Group.”

Ikea acquired the services of Ernst & Young, an accounting firm, to look into the matter, dating back 25-30 years. This digging into the past may prove more irksome and defaming  than Ikea may anticipate considering how, ‘The group is campaigning for compensation for many former prisoners, whom they say carry psychological and physical scars from the labour they were forced to do.’ Such unveilings of the past can destroy a company’s reputation singlehandedly but it seems Ikea is determined to rise above this as it has asked Ernst and Young to look deeply into this matter and come up with a report.

Ms Skjelmose went on to say that Ikea follows a strict procedure and codes of conduct for its suppliers now but also accepted that the measures used earlier were not effective enough.

This coming out clean by Ikea is a component of Corporate Social Responsibility which they aim to enforce through their image as socially responsible company. ‘Ernst & Young looked at 20,000 pages of documents from Ikea’s internal records and 80,000 archived items from German federal and state archives and interview more than 90 people.’ The level of extensive research and probing depicted above proves that Ikea wants a clean and fair representation of the past and  a ‘clean’ image, accepting of its own mistakes and rectifying them.

Ikea is not alone in this in today’s day and age where reputation of companies is vitally important and they strive to maintain those images to be seen as a socially responsible company. In one of my previous posts, I wrote about Olympus digging up records of the past few decades to rectify some grave mistakes.

Therefore, it is evident that being a ‘clean’, ‘uncorrupted and ‘honest’ company is what everyone is aspiring to be these days. The question however is, is all this part of a marketing strategy to attract more customers or a genuine effort to uphold standards of social responsibility?

You decide!

Think you can spot the difference?

For many years, China has been under immense global pressure to take a stronger stance against the counterfeit mafia that has flourished in the domestic Chinese market. These groups produce copies of high end products and sell them at the same price as the originals in markets both outside and inside China.

Recently, 73 people were caught and arrested by the joint efforts of the Chinese police and US authorities manufacturing and exporting fake international brands.  These  brands are usually extremely high end products and cater to quite a niche market.  One would think that such an industry would not amount to much but estimates and statistics say otherwise. ‘The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates the amount of counterfeit goods and pirated copyrights in world trade grew from about $100 billion in 2001 to about $250 billion in 2007…’   

The potential to make money in this industry is huge but questions of legality, ethics and morals come into question. It’s strictly illegal to produce all of the counterfeits that we see circling around in such markets. Issues such as intellectual ownership rights, copyrights, patents and all sorts of other legal formalities come into play combined with the possibility of these items actually causing harm.

A health care worker was selling counterfeit poisonous cosmetics to unsuspecting customers through eBay. The ramifications of which could be huge considering her products were extremely toxic, poisonous and could even lead to brain cancer.

In conclusion, think twice before buying something which seems to good to be true.