Likeonomics in the Food Industry

After reading the book “Likeonomics,” it became clearly apparent how much trustworthiness and honesty factor into a successful business being liked. Though it may seem like common knowledge, it’s become  obvious that many companies forget these simple rules.

Recently, Chipotle was an example doing it the right way with they announced their use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in their ingredients. With the announcement, they became the first fast food chain to voluntarily do so. Along with the news, they also pledged they were working on eliminating all GMO’s from their menu.

It sounds gross, but they went on to explain there use to be genetically altered plants that prevent pests from destroying them. Not so bad, right? After the announcement, there was no immediate drop to their stock.

This type of honesty leads to a likability factor and trustworthiness Taco Bell probably wishes they could’ve had. A few years ago, they dealt with an ingredient scandal of their own, but this was one that was brought up by lawsuit and not on their own doing. This lead to LOADS of crisis communication and reputation management; things that could’ve been avoided if they were upfront and honest.

I found these two cases to be really interesting when compared to each other, and Chipotle has shown that honesty is always the right policy.

Dwyane Wade Driven

Dwyane Wade is having a good week.

On Monday, just days after winning an NBA National Championship, and on the day of their celebration parade, Wade took a big step in social media by releasing his own app– Dwyane Wade Driven.

The new app is a collaboration with Driven Apps, and is a personalized workout and training videos from D-Wade himself. It also has workouts specifically for basketball players.

Wade created this app apparently to promote overall fitness, as he said getting to work out isn’t always the easiest for everyday people.

“”It shows people ways to work out, a lot of different ways to work out, whether it’s basketball drills or not,” Wade told The Associated Press. ”A lot of people work out at home. A lot of people don’t have access to a gym. A lot of people don’t have trainers. So it’s kind of like I’m the personal trainer for basketball and fitness and I’ll show them a lot of things I do with my body and for my body.”

Wade makes almost almost as much off the court as he does on ($17 mil/year), and it’s social media promotion like this that gets him there. He’s currently the second most followed NBA player on Twitter and is progressive in his social media usage in various other ways.

Clearly, Wade is one of the few that “gets it,” and has shown social media is more than just for fun.

Vine Doesn’t Bow Easily

With last week’s announcement of video for Instagram, the fresh fad of mini-videos has taken the social media world by storm. When looking at the whole picture, it’s actually quite sad for Vine, as they paved their own way with something innovative, only to get one-upped by Instagram. It almost seems like they got Winklevoss’d.

While the debate is still up as to whether Vine will survive or if Instagram will truly be better with the new video options (I’m not a fan), Vine made sure they were heard on the day of Instagram video’s debut.

They paid for a sponsored tweet, and as you searched for either ‘Instagram’ or ‘Vine’ on Twitter, their tweet was front and center, with perhaps the coolest Vine I’ve seen yet.

It was a great display of customer appreciation, and for me personally, left me thinking about not ditching Vine just yet as I updated my Instagram app.

Leon Sandcastle, Cliff Paul, and the Next Big Fictional Endorser

These famous names may ring a bell to you, but most likely not. Why?

……because they are not real people.

These are fictional athletes created by business, and they are the next big thing in advertising. While some companies are shelling out as much as $200 million to athletes like Derrick Rose, some have become smart enough to spend less and become more strategic. The result has created fictional campaigns around more amusing alter egos of famous athletes. Cliff Paul, StateFarm’s latest advertising superstar, is played by NBA point guard Chris Paul. Other companies like Pepsi, Nike, and the NFL Network are adding these stars and using the fake personas to make audiences to a double take.

The result is hopefully a viral video, which has become quite common with these characters. This in turn creates much cheaper advertisements, and much more entertaining videos as well. By getting these stars to tweet these videos, they’re also pushing out an audience of millions more. Hopefully more companies will catch on.

Using Social Media to Avoid Being Social

I like all of you, I really do.  But some people (not you of course), I just can’t stand.  In fact, I wish I could avoid certain people altogether.

Like say, an ex-girlfriend who dumped a tray of food on you at Wilsbach meal hall in undergrad.  Please dear god, tell me there is an app that will help me avoid her for the rest of my days here on earth!

Well your prayers are answered.  Meet Hell is Other People.  This fun, anti-social app integrates with your existing Foursquare to help you avoid old loves, new frenemies, or people you suspect to be zombies.

Right now the app just uses Foursquare geo-tagging to help with your dodging, but app designer Scott Garner told the Wall Street Journal that there is a possibility in the future to integrate other sites into the mix.

Now that our class is over, I hope to see all of you again sometime. But if I don’t, I promise I’m not avoiding you!

Have a great summer everyone!

– Rick

Can Square Make Twitter a Place to Shop?

Wired Magazine had a blog post today that caught my attention.  They write that Square – a company known for it’s unique mobile phone credit card reader – introduced Square Market today.  This is Square’s first endeavor in online retail, but for you shopaholics out there, Square Market has the potential to make Twitter a go to place to shop online.

According to Wired, here’s how it works:

Square’s register works by letting store owners input their inventory—description, price, picture—into the app. When someone comes to the counter to make an offline purchase, the cashier taps the item to add it to the total. In the latest version of the app, a switch to the input screen that lets stores choose the option of selling online. Toggling the switch to “yes” instantly (at least during the demo) posts the product to that business’ Square-hosted online storefront.

But the real-game changer could be is its ability to integrate with Twitter and other sites like Pinterest and Facebook.  Wired continues, writing:

You may not know that Twitter has something called a “product card” that turns a link to a product online into what amounts to a catalog listing embedded in a tweet. The product listings on Square Market don’t look much different than these cards, which is no accident. When a store owner—or anyone—tweets a link to a Square Market listing, the product card will include a buy button that flips right back over to Square. In effect, Twitter becomes the storefront.

Although it’s too early to tell if Square Market will catch on with sellers and buyers, or if Twitter users will adopt the feature, companies like Amazon, Ebay, and others will undoubtedly be keeping a close eye out.

– Rick 

Realizing I never posted my Live Blog from class

Morgan Spurlock Ted Talk

He begins by describing how he immerses himself into the dangerous situations to find their appeal, break them down and find out what they really mean. He goes on to talk about how he took out an ad to purchase the naming rights for the current ted talk to emphasis dangerous situations and the importance of risk taking and its unpredictable outcome.

He then transitions into his movie, which is, titled “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. The entire movie is funded by the product placement in it. The brands are part of your life, he argues. He’s focus is on how transparency is key. But the major brands and companies didn’t want anything to do with the movie, why? Don’t brands want to advertise? The brands were lacking in transparency, but what does transparency really means. He helps us by giving a definition and the misconception behind it. Spurlock emphasized that there are three sides to every story, your side, my side and “the story”. He decided to hit the street and ask people how they would describe their own brand because he needed help discovering brand personalities.

After talking to a brand personality guru, he discovered that his personal brand was both playful mindful brand, an up and down brand. There are 500 plus companies that were up and down brands but they didn’t want to do his movie because they were afraid of the movie outcome.

The overall message of the talk was to embrace fear, risk and most importantly embrace transparency. Be “ugly but honest”

Social Networking for Kids

With social media sites becoming more and more accessible to everyone we have to be concerned about children having social media presences. This can be scary to some, especially with all of the dangers that can be found on the Internet and through social media. To help keep parents calm, there has been an increase in social media sites that are solely dedicated to children, preteens and teens.

Whyville.com has been particularly popular amongst parents and is designed for kids ages 8-15. It involves playing games to earn virtual money (in this case, “clams”) for use in building an avatar. Rather than being represented as a cartoon animal, Whyville members create avatars that represent their physical selves. That’s one step closer to the vibe of more grown-up sites, but it’s still more a virtual world/gaming space than a true social networking site. The chat feature for members is restricted to prewritten phrases, but those who pass a “chat license test” (to show they understand online safety) have more freedom to type personal messages to friends. Some words are blacklisted. This site is more educational than the other children social media sites out there.

So to my fellow bloggers and classmates who have children or younger siblings please direct them to Whyville for some innocent social media fun!

The Politics of Vine

As this is my last class blog post, I have decided to bring it full circle and talk once again about Vine. The new Instagram video feature may completely overtake Vine, but as of now the Twitter supported app is still going strong.

This California congressman used a Vine video to record his “nay” vote for a controversial anti-abortion bill. He is the first congressperson to use the app to do so. The tweet accompanying his video read:

“When House @GOP try to roll back health protections for women, this is how I vote.”

In the past we have noticed that being relatable to the general public is key for the approval ratings of politicians. We saw this with Obama’s Reddit AMA.

This democrat California congressman used Vine to depict his strong sentiment about the bill, utilizing the video feature to illustrate a repeated punching of the “nay” key. His original and unique social media behavior in the political sphere may have gotten him attention from a demographic that would not normally be informed of his stance about abortion.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the bill or one’s political awareness, using social media to make a point and take a stance is a new concept that will only continue to evolve and impact politician likability. 

-Stephanie Saulsbury

RIP Social Media

Even with social media on the rise, some social media sites lack longevity and soon fizzle out. Here are a few that passed away peacefully.

iTunes Ping Launched: September 2010 – Finished: September 2012

This attempt of a social media music network from Apple’s Steve Jobs failed and never really kicked off. Built into Apple’s iTunes platform, Ping was designed as a place where music fans could connect over their favorite artists.

Ping failed to grab user’s attention with its clunky platform, and cutting off integration access to major social channels. The boom of Twitter and Facebook hindered any chances Ping might’ve had as music artists and bands decided to use more traditional social media channels over Ping.

Ultimately, Ping’s demise can be attributed to the success of Facebook and Twitter combined with the fact that there was no real demand for such a platform, especially as MySpace (which previously offered this) had already sunk into oblivion.

Gowalla Launched: 2009 – Finished: 2012

Gowalla was a location-based social network, where users could check into ‘spots’ in their local area. Users were able to score points by checking into venues multiple times, enabling them to win virtual prizes which could swapped or dropped on places to become a ‘Founder’.

Unfortunately for Gowalla, they launched on the same day as rival ‘Foursquare’, which turned out to be the winner of location-based networks. Despite an estimated $8 million of venture capital backing and a relaunch in a bid to differentiate itself from its major rival, it never managed to reach the same success as Foursquare.

However, it wasn’t a complete disaster as Gowalla was acquired by Facebook for undisclosed sum in December 2011.

Diaspora Launched: November 2010 – Still active

Dubbed as a Facebook rival, Disapora was created as the answer to Facebook’s much publicised privacy issues. Built on an open source social networking software, it was designed to be simple to use, whilst allowing you to control and own your personal data. It enabled you to connect Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts, however it only allowed you to post updates from Diaspora. A lack of functionality to import any external news feeds ultimately made it a quiet experience.