Hubris at RIM.

Everything That's Wrong With Research In Motion -- An Ex-Employee Tells All

"The problem is that they brim with hubris regarding their success in the corporate market and are culturally blind to the gaping holes in their armour regarding consumer. They honestly think they understand consumer product, business, mentality, marketing - but they really don't," says our source.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-rim-employee-2011-6?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term&utm_content&utm_campaign=fanpage

I thought this was interesting - Klout

It looks like influence measurement startup Klout has completed the social networking trifecta. The San Francisco company announced Tuesday it now incorporates LinkedIn data into your Klout score, as well as Twitter and Facebook.

As the name suggests, a person’s Klout score measures their influence on social networks on a scale of 0 to 100. (When I was on a panel with founder and chief executive Joe Fernandez earlier this year, he said that Klout built its scale by setting Justin Bieber at 100.) For a certain kind of person (namely, me) this kind of measurement is insanely addictive, and I can’t stop checking my score. More importantly for Klout, it’s a way for marketers and advertisers to find the influencers who are worth reaching out to in their campaigns.

Klout started out by calculating people’s scores based solely on Twitter, and then added Facebook last fall. Now, with LinkedIn, Klout can claim persuasively that it’s providing a comprehensive view of social network influence. LinkedIn may have fewer members than Facebook or Twitter, but it targets a different, more professional audience — I know several people who are active (and influential) on LinkedIn without doing much with their Facebook or Twitter accounts.

On the flip side, I feel like I’m much more influential on Twitter, so I don’t see much incentive for me to connect my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. But maybe that’s just me.

Klout has been pretty busy recently. It recently redesigned its site to offer more data to consumers, and it alsoannounced a program called Klout Perks, which offers deals to influencers.

When you are online shopping do you take the time to read the reviews? Are they typically helpful during your shopping experience, or do you prefer to take the plunge and click "buy" without the consumer insight? The following article about Amazon shows us that they were one of the pioneers in using these customer reviews to draw in more business. In giving consumers a sounding board they created an opportunity for buy in and ownership. It allowed Amazon to give better service to their customers with the ability to hear exactly what the issues might be or which products people were unhappy about. We thought that this was a great tie in to the pieces that we read for class this week.
Another thing to think about is how this might relate to the popularity of social networking and how might we all try to incorporate this into our ideas for our value propositions and final projects?

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_43/b4152047039565.htm

This is another interesting article that we found that talked a little about ways that a company can incentivize their customers and in turn create a free work force to promote their business.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43344769/ns/business-local_business/

Week 4- Marketing Myopia

Successful products/services are a result of companies doing an effective job of understanding consumer values and creating products that fulfill a consumer need even as those values evolve and change over time. Alternatively, products can easily flop when companies only focus inwardly on their own needs instead of defining the needs of their customers, as described in the article Marketing Myopia. A related article we have attached here also identifies this concept and discusses the importance of thorough exploratory market research through several approaches.

Based on these concepts, can you think of any company or product campaign that has fallen prey to marketing myopia? And, what were the implications and consequences?

http://powerelectronics.com/mag/innovation-hazardfalling-falling-in-love-201005/

- Carolyn, Siena, & Shayna

Microtrends: the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes

We all have heard of Malcolm Gladwell and may have read his writing. The Tipping Point came off the press a decade ago sharing the idea that “little things can make a big difference.” Now take that concept as the launch pad into Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne’s Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes. Have you ever wonder who coined the terms “soccer mom” or the ever-growing breed of middle-aged women also known as “cougars?” These are just two of the 75 microtrends called out by the book chapter-by-chapter. It demonstrates the power of research and statistics.

Interesting videos related to this book:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/21347665 - Jim Cramer on Mad Money

http://pennschoenberland.edgeboss.net/wmedia/pennschoenberland/client1/abcnews_penn_09052007.wvx - Nightline’s coverage of the book

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hifihRzPevE – and of course an Authors@Google coverage

-- Team G (Nick, Jolie, and Chi)

Facebook Tagging: A Marketer's Friend or Foe?

Last week Facebook rolled out the option to tag products in addition to your friends in personal photos. In many ways this is a marketer's dream: natural product placement. Once someone tags the product it goes to the product's photos tab on their Facebook page. Facebook is taking viral marketing to the next level, and putting more branding control in the hands of consumers. In what ways can this create opportunities for brands? Does it pose any threats to how marketers want to control their image?

Check out more at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/facebook-opens-photo-feature-to-product-placement/238757/

- Team F (Rhea, Desiree, and Emily)

Brand Value Article

Team E (Mike Carey, Scott Rich, Tim Garrison) is responsible for the first posting and we have found the attached article interesting. This speaks to Brand Value and discusses Apple's brand as well as the top ten Brands with regards to overall value. Apple becoming the most valuable brand should not be too much of a surprise. They deliver products that are unique and come with a fantastic experience. Article also discusses a luxury pricing model that Apple follows. Higher the price of the product, the more coveted the product is.

Did you notice that 20% of the top 100 brands are from emerging markets ?

Brand Value.....?? What do you think.....

Link to article is :

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42954640/ns/business-consumer news/