Month: November 2010

After my COMM 101 class today, I became more interested to learn about marketing and sponsorships.

During class we came up with many reasons to justify Bell’s $200 million bid for the Olympics sponsorship. An interesting comment was that Bell invested in a national sponsorship and not an international one. Also many people actually do not recognize Bell as the official sponsor.

However, I believe that it was a good investment for Bell as it gained huge marketing power that it didn’t posses before. Bell carried all 10 Consortium networks which enabled the company to provide access to the Olympics games live on both High definition TV and handheld mobile devices. This key feature attracted as many as 81,212 account activations generally on a 3-year contract.

Furthermore, Bell was the exclusive carrier for the smartphone Samsung OMNIA II. The phones primary feature enables the user to watch the game live with the wireless Olympics works (WOW) system1.

I believe it was a good investment as it attracted me to get a Samsung OMNIA II during the Olympics Games.

After a class discussion about social enterprise with COMM 101, I got interested to help the society. In class we also made it clear that there is a difference between profit and non-profit sectors. I did not know that companies such as Starbucks were actually not social enterprises even though they donate money to Africa.

After that class I grew more interest to learn more about social enterprises, especially World Vision. I have heard and partipcated in some of their events such as their 30 hour famine. As a participant I went on a 30 hour famine with my friends and stayed at school that night to help raise funds for the children in Africa.

Alternative ways such as being a children’s sponsor can also help improve the lives of the children in Africa. With the cost of only $35 a month it will help improve their education, skills training, health care and safe water. You can choose a child by going on their online gallery to browse for their pictures. Also you can search for a child’s gender, country age or even their birthday. It is really afforable for us to give out $35 a month to support a child, but to them the $35 means a whole new future to them.

During our business plan two presentations in my COMM 101 class, I witnessed many different styles of presentations. Some groups used a formal delivery style while others used a skit performance.  However, one similiar characterestic between all the presentations was the usage of visual presentation.

Visual presentation is imperative to deliver a clear and concise message. Not only does it give the audience time to absorb the information but it allows moving motions to attract the audiences attention. It is very similar in advertisement. Video media is now replacing the old fashion newspaper advertisement. With the growing technology such as the new Apple iPad Tablet, there are now 4 sets of screens (computer, mobile, TV and tablet) to attract a consumer’s attention. To show the impact of the internet, as much as 88% of  online newspaper viewers will purchase the good or product. As a result, even newspaper company are moving towards online features to attract the online users.

With that being said, it is no surprise how every group in COMM 101 are working very hard to design their own unique and attractive powerpoints. To further enhance its display, Prezi will probably make a presentation more dynamic.  Think that it is too much work? If so, simply adding a video clip in the beginning might just do the trick to set the theme in your presentation.

One of the major causes for the 2008 financial crisis is from poor managements in banks. From our last class, we discussed about the roles of a bank, and I decided to further analysis it to help connect these concepts with our modern society.

In general there are two types of banks, Investments banks that sell security or Depository banks that typically handle mortgages.

The problem started when the United States eliminated the “Financial Services Moderation Act.” By trying to help the general population afford money they decided to lower the mortgage rate to allow more people to start their mortgages.

These types of mortgages are typically “Prime Mortgages.”However, most people stopped paying their mortgage because they could not financially afford it and started to back out.  Since banks normally put most of their cash in investments, it was hard to give cash back to the investors on the Depository side. Eventually, as the bank runs out of money, people will tend to do a “bank-run” which caused many banks to bankrupt during the great financial crisis.

This crisis affected everyone world-wide including investors, banks, currencies, businesses. The reason behind this crisis is because people bended the rules of the game but they didn’t get the job done properly.

Glossary

Financial Services Moderation Act – 1999 when the government allowed banks to hold “Investments” and “Depository” activities

Prime Mortgages – the property value is much higher than the loan value

Eg: house mortgage

Bank-Run– when everyone tries to take money out of the bank at once

The person that first comes to my mind when I hear the word “entrepreneur” is Steve Jobs. Today he is the CEO and Chairperson of the powerful Apple Inc. In today’s society it is impossible to not have the desire to place our hands on an apple product, such as their newly released Iphone 4 and their Ipod nano 6th Gen. His entrepreneurship” can be summarized under two main categories, risk and innovation.

Risks

In today’s highly competitive electronic industry, Apple is placing themselves on the hot spot. New ideas must be brought on the table everyday to avoid being consumed by their competitors such as Samsung, Sony, and Blackberry. Their products must meet high demands in the industry against the competitors’ such as the newly released Blackberry Torch.

Innovation

The iPhone 4 is regarded as one of the most innvative phones in human history. Its features include a full touch screen, two way camera chat and wifi connectivity to emails and video entertainments. Furthermore, Apply has launched over 300,000 apps since 2008 to constantly improve their products. Over 1 million Iphone 3G were sold within the first three days and an estimated $300 million was made as a result.

The chart below displays how much of an impact Apple products have influenced the world.