Matt Canute's Blog

Many companies these days that try to sell products in the form of digital media have the common problem of dealing with illegal downloading. After all, why pay for something when it’s actually more convenient to download it for free? The online gaming industry suffered from this for many years. An example of this would be Spore; countless hours were spent developing this “revolutionary game” that would supposedly change everything. The only revolutionary thing about Spore, however, was that it was pirated 1,700,000 times in less than three months.

An online gaming company known as Valve, however, seems to have pioneered a successful way to make money by distributing and managing over 1,100 games to about 25 million customers across the globe. Many players are willing to buy the game and “own” it in digital format to be a part of the close-knit online community.

I spend a lot of my time on “Social Bookmark” sites like Reddit or Digg, and I’ve noticed that the online gaming sections will be filled with constant praise for Valve. This is probably due to the fact that they treat their customers very well, as in reading 10,000’s of emails a day and responding to a lot of them. And when they respond to an email, users will share their experience on social media websites.

Approximately 250,000 users view this positive feedback on a daily basis. It seems that in our new social media driven world, treating customers exceptionally well is the best kind of marketing. Finally. When you treat the customers nicely, the customers will sell the product for you.

Let’s suppose that you were seeking a job in the moving industry. What if the employer told you that they would only hire you if you cut your hair? Most of us would probably be happy to comply. However, let’s suppose that you were a part of the Rastafarian movement, and it was against your religious beliefs to cut your hair? Does this count as religious persecution?

Currently, the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission is in the process of suing Lawrence Transportation Systems for refusing to hire Christopher Woodson due to his dreadlocks hairstyle. The company defended its decision by stating that “[their] policy states that hair, facial hair, beards and general grooming must be neat, clean and trimmed.” However, Woodson is in an interesting position, because due to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his employers are required to make “reasonable accommodations” to religious beliefs. Therefore, since the Rastafarian movement encourages its followers to avoid cutting their hair, Woodson has the right keep his hairstyle.

Lawrence Transportation Systems defended themselves again by stating that his hair would cause an “undue hardship on the company,” basically meaning that some customers would feel uncomfortable with Woodson’s hair. Personally, I would feel fine with Woodson moving my furniture around, as long as his hair was clean. It will certainly be fascinating to see how this controversial issue ends.
http://www.inc.com/news/article/2010/10/virginia-company-sued-for-refusing-to-hire-man-with-dreadlocks.html

Just as the previous blog entry discussed BMW’s manufacturing system becoming similar to the Toyota model, it seems that BMW has also decided to imitate  Toyota in the art of developing faulty brake engines.

A few months ago, Toyota was forced to issue a massive recall of up to 437,000 of their cars.  All across the globe, many people found themselves unable to slow down their rapidly accelerating Toyota Prius, resulting in many car accidents, and even the unfortunate deaths of some families.

To say the least, this had certainly caused a large dent in Toyota’s reputation of safety and reliability.

Today, BMW has recalled up to 350,000 of their luxury cars throughout the world. Yet it seems that BMW’s reputation was not damaged as badly as Toyota had been.  This could be due to the fact that, thankfully, there has been no reported accidents or injuries due to the faulty power braking system.  In fact, a further look into the braking problems reveals that the cars were still basically safe.  Rather than losing the brakes altogether, BMW’s cars would experience a very slight reduction in braking due to a possible leak which potentially caused a vacuum loss, essentially just making the brake pedal harder to press.

It is also interesting to note that their recall is completely voluntary. Mr. Robertson, a member of BMW’s board of management for sales and marketing, claimed, “I think we’re behaving in a way that people would expect of a premium brand.” It looks like BMW might have actually managed flipping around their accident into yet another halo effect for the company; it will be interesting to see how consumers react to a company voluntarily admitting that they made a slight mistake.