Monthly Archives: November 2014

The world needs social entrepreneurs more than it needs the United Nations

Posted on by under COMM 101
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UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, addresses the OSCE in Vienna on November 4, 2014. UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

If the United Nations was fully funded, why would we need social enterprise or Arc Initiative?

Even if all the money necessary to eradicate the world’s problems were available to fund the United Nations, it would still not be enough to do so. The reason? People who work for the United Nations are not capable of entering the world’s most impoverished areas and implementing projects that will independently sustain themselves when they eventually leave. Impoverished areas need its own citizens to become entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs understand the people, culture and problems of the area. They have the best knowledge of the community they are affecting, have the greatest motivation to improve it and, therefore, they are most suited for the job. In order to increase the number of social entrepreneurs, we need programs such as Arc Initiative to educate and empower, so that these citizens can receive the tools and knowledge necessary to succeed in their business ventures. Although the United Nations has provided short term aid and has proved useful in maintaining peace among world leaders, it is not the key to sustainably reducing poverty or famine in the long-term.

RE: Snapchat as an Ad Medium

Posted on by under COMM 101

No one likes seeing ads on their social media news feeds. With the exception of the corporations themselves. This blog post by Rob Schlyecher, Creative Director at Vancouver advertising agency, Spring, touches upon the newest social media platform, Snapchat, and its rising potential as an ad medium. With Facebook, Twitter and YouTube playing as veterans in the social media ad game and Instagram following close behind, it’s just a matter of time before Snapchat follows suit. Despite the company’s rejection of acquisition offers of $3 and $4 billion from Facebook and Google, respectively, Snapchat is still a profit-maximizing corporation and undoubtedly recognizes the financial value in opening its app up to advertising.

Consumers do not like to see a plethora of ads across their news feeds. With a rise in advertising being seen across many popular social media platforms, disruptors are beginning to crop up. Ello is one such disruptor, with a platform very similar to Facebook and a point of difference being that they promise no advertisements. As a fairly new player in the game, it will be very interesting to see how consumers adapt to such a social media site and how the current players will fight this new competitor.

RE: Bowie Ko’s Blog Post

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I’m glad Bowie wrote about the topic of sexualizing women for use as a business’s value proposition. Bowie wrote about restaurants such as Hooters, which utilize female waitresses dressed in minimal clothing as their main value proposition in order to attract male customers. Thinking in grander terms, sexualizing women and men as a marketing scheme is something that we see in the media and business world quite often. Everywhere, we see men and women in advertisements wearing little clothing or staring seductively into the camera. The fact of the matter: sex sells. If the model consents and the business makes profits, while not engaging in illegal activities, then it should be allowed. As long as the firm does not compromise the model’s dignity by releasing ad campaigns without their consent or forcing them, in any way, to engage in sexual campaigns, it will always exist in our world – whether we like it or not. This comes back to our business ethics lecture and the question of what a business’ primary responsibility should be – to better the community or to increase profits for shareholders.

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