recently, there has been alot of "heated" discussion between these two techno-leaders within the tablet market. the level of this discussion has elevated in recent weeks and has resulted in the creation of numerous law-suits all over the globe (20 cases in 10 countries) as both companies seek to undermine each other. these actions resulted in a temporary ban for the Samsung galaxy tablet in Australia and a potential ban from selling its product in the U.S. Apple claim a unauthorized use of their own technological intellectual property in the creation of the products, whilst Samsung claim the same on the other side, so who are we to believe? well it certainly seems that the legal systems worldwide are siding with Apple with bans on the tablet in Australia, potentially the U.S and the dismissal of Samsung's case within the Netherlands.
a look at the two products in question, the Ipad is seen behind the Galaxy. form this angle the resemblance is absurdly similar, but is this shape and design becoming an industry norm? this ruling has already been applied to 3G products in the Netherlands and was the basis for rejecting Samsung's intellectual property breach claim.
So as marketers what does this mean? a reduction in the amount of media to choose from within adverting on these products for us (through apps ect) but the loss of one of these products from the market (although lets be honest its looking more like the Galaxy rather than the Ipad) would be a massive blow for Samsung or Apple. these tablet devices are becoming increasingly popular, particularly with the release of the Ipad 2.0. the time for capitalizing on sales is now whilst the trend is in full flow and you cant really blame Apple for wanting to make it tough for its competitor who now looks in danger of missing large numbers of sales and losing a portion of its brand equity through these law cases.
Or Are they????
you guys tell me
Cheers
Jerry
If you didn't know, Google has recently been under intense scrutiny all over the world for unethical practices. Last year in November they came under investigation through a anti-trust probe launched by the EU in order to ascertain whether Google abuses its market position, similarly in June this year, US federal regulators issued a anti-trust probe in order to investigate the same thing, and then 4 days later, a French search engine 1PlusV issued a court action towards the search engine giants, suing over allegations that Google uses its dominant market position to guide users towards sites that are involved within their adsense programs, and through their sponsored links that appear down the side. Effectively, Google are able to eliminate sites and search engines that are legitimate within the search, in order to promote sites up the list that are involved within their advertising program. Of course, these allegations remain to be proved but have been increasing in their seriousness despite Google's claims for legitimacy. Depending on who you believe, this could be a legitimate use of large market share in order to push consumer towards you products, or an illegal use of power to restrict consumer choice in the search for more revenue although Google claim their ranking system is legitimate. Will marketers continue to use Google adsense capabilities despite the negative media attention they are receiving at the moment? I believe yes, because if you translate this into a real world example, companies with huge market share have capabilities to steer consumers towards their products, be it through large recognition through previous brand building or through extensive use of IMC a company that has taken large market share can rely on those who are part of their market share to use and be directed towards their products, why then cant Google do the same?
Imagine a world where 20 years down the track, on a Sunday afternoon, a family gets together in the living room to catch a few hours of Sunday televisions best programming. whats different from this situation from our normal one you ask? well in this world, mum and dad will begin with checking their Facebook pages, "ooohh" mum will say, "looks like Uncle David posted that Jersey on Ice (or some other generic reality T.V show) is a cracking watch!" and the family will then, having listened to Uncle Davids sage advice tune in to watch an hour of fake-tanned juice heads trying to party on ice-skates. the truth is, Facebook and social media is continually changing our lives and statistics prove that not only do Australia have a almost unbelievably high amount of Facebook saturation, but that we are the most fanatical users of Facebook in the world. This simple fact is that Facebook has opened the door for a huge opportunity for television. Now, by tapping into the resource of Facebook, marketers can effectively segment and target specific groups according to the general demographics of the platform itself. it also allows marketers to capture the thoughts of opinion leaders within groups and create value through their recommendations and status updates, i mean who among us has never had a show recommended to them through another friend on Facebook either through direct communication or through the reading of a status or a post on a wall, in fact manager of Ipad movie distributor "SeaChange" believes that "Social recommendations trigger much higher views than traditional context recommendations. That can really help operators to increase viewing which may help to increase the revenue stream." .
Some experts say that there is a downside to this seemingly perfect marketing tool. first and foremost, marketers have a lack of control over what is posted on a Facebook page as it comes straight from the consumer, ie "Saw planet of the apes, it was terrible", status's like this can have a vastly negative effect on a product. additionally, Anthony Rose, ex CTO of TV, internet company "YouView" believes that by focusing on social media, and targeting segments through social criteria, large chunks of market can be excluded from consideration. for example members of the older population probably wont receive the same sort of value through social media as younger more tech savvy consumers. Finally, often the internet becomes a mask for less scrupulous individuals seeking to appear under a different persona then there normal appearance or nature, which brings the problem of deception and whether we are hitting the right audience. to put it simply, a friend once told me "Ah the internet, where men are men, girls are men, and little boys are FBI agents"
Its no secret that everytime a blockbuster movie is released, a video game modeled on the movie will be soon to follow. Take the latest recreation of marvel Hero Captain America for example, released earlier this year, has already been followed up with the corresponding Video Game, "Captain America - Super Soldier". this is but one example of this phenomena, others include, X-Men Origins and the Wolverine game released soon after, Avatar and its video game and the catastrophe that was the movie Thor and its equally bad game Thor-God of Thunder. The fact is, many studio's and opportunistic game developers see these blockbuster movies as as the perfect opportunity to effectively "piggyback" on the movies awareness levels that come from being a new studio film. In my opinion, this represents excellent marketing on behalf of the game producers who have effectively identified the opportunity to create a game that will be largely backed up by the movies following (particularly if the genre of the film is reflective of the video gaming community, you couldnt make a "gone with the wind" game for example and expect it to sell), and poor poor marketing decision making in most cases on behalf of those who own the intellectual property of the movie. lets face it people, when it comes down to it, well known video gaming companies, those who are reknown for creating great games arent interested in borrowing ideas for games and are primarily interested in creating their own worlds and enviroments from scratch (world or warcraft for example), you simply never see large companies like Gearbox, Valve or Blizzard creating games based on movies. for the smaller game designers however, it represents a large opportunity. the problem however, is that usually their creative hands are tied by the movies characters and strict development constictions and therefore on average these games based on movies are usually rubbish, and therefore damaging to the creators of the movie and damaging to the brand of the movie itself. take thor for example, the game received a 3/10 on respected pc magazine IGN, and the game developer? Liquid Studios a miniscule player in the gaming community (http://au.ps3.ign.com/objects/900/900982.html). or take Avatar for example, no one could say that the movie was rubbish, but the game on the other hand, released soon afterwards? a 6/10 on IGN, passable but nothing special. simply put, not since the heady days of Bond classic Goldeneye and the game made from it, the timeless N64 classic Goldeneye, has the secret formula for movie-tie-in games been cracked and we will continue to see games released in future that are poor mirages of decent movies, potentially hurting movie brand equity.
p.s
thank god no one has made a twilight game
the horror that was Thor.
for those of you who have seen a game of thrones, this will make you laugh
Hey Guys
Watching the Gruen Transfer last week, I was struck by a particularly forceful viral ad. Starring Emma Thompson in a dual role were she plays either a young optimistic girl or a numbed out prostitute, the ad was hugely confronting and powerful.
It made me think "is this too much?" of course you will make the decision based upon your own principles. Truth be told i like a good controversial ad like the Nokia one where the cat gets flung by the ceiling fan
, but I think that advertisers can push it to far, and the Internet with its low policing (those of you who have visited 4chans infamous /b room will understand me) provides a perfect canvas for these advertisements. the question then is "is it wrong?" I believe not, fear is a legitimate tool for creating a connection through advertising and pushing the envelope too far is not what the advertiser wishes as it can devalue that connection. that being said, you will always find viral ads on the Internet that you will never see on regular television.
what do you guys reckon?
P.S
another ad you probably would never see on T.V
hey guys
recently i have been looking at social networking over the last few weeks.Social Media's rise to prominence and continual rise it has been enjoying for some time is leading to a rapid expansion of Internet connectivity, and some would argue privacy breach. in fact, on one social media carrier twitter, had Arch-terrorist Osama Bin Laden been paying slightly more attention to his twitter account he may have received a heads up of the mission that was disposed to apprehend him (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JDBm1lWS7A&feature=related) (for those of you who don't believe he's dead, or that maybe he died a long time ago i love a good conspiracy as well http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8444069.stm).
Lets face it, in the wrong hands, Social media and twitter can be a right pain in the arse. those of you who have been paying close attention to the riots in the UK will know that members of the rioting gangs were able to coordinate attacks with the use of twitter (http://www.nodeju.com/12840/englands-worst-riots-ever.html). The fact is, many people are concerned with their own personal security on social media connection websites such as twitter and Facebook, and in terms of E-marketing, companies have clearly latched on to the specific segmentation qualities these websites have in order to advertise more efficiently according to pre-stored personal information, (Google does this on Gmail) The question is is this ethical? Should companies be able to access private stored information to specifically target their audience?, (without the receivers consent or knowledge usually) (http://www.india365.org/facebook-and-myspace-spread-personal-information-says-wsj/) I believe no for two reasons, one - I believe that users are entitled to privacy and security regarding their own personal information, and should not be subjected without consent to advertising that may be specifically related to a personal trait (such as in Facebook) or through personal message sending (Gmail) and two - watching hours and hours of 80's - 90's Sci Fi flicks have led me to believe that Google will one day rise up, engulfing everything in its path until it represents something along the line of OCP (........or Apple - god help us!) from Robocop and we should do everything in our power to stop this.
what do you guys think
Cheers
Jerry
Clearly Robocop's producers had the future in mind when they created this in the late 80's
Hi guys,
Recently, in the e-marketing world I've noticed the rise of the digital remote distribution service program Steam (you can find the link to their homepage here http://store.steampowered.com/). Essentially, Steam provides gamers the opportunity to purchase and remotely download games from Steam servers without having to leave the comfort of your own home. in marketing terms this provides the opportunity for Steams parent company valve, who offer their own games through the program, as well as a host of other game creating titans such as Bioware and Infinityward as well as more emerging gaming companies seeking customer awareness, to effectively "skip out" on distribution and packaging costs whilst providing a remote one-stop shop for a PC gamers needs. As a direct result of this, more real PC stores are becoming increasingly isolated from the gaming community who prefer the seemingly random and endless sales promotions (such as the aptly named and regularly featured "midweek madness") on the Steam website as well as the accessibility it they offer. In fact it is my prediction, that Steam will continue to grow as more game developers realise the potential to directly cater to their target audience, rather than continually packaging, distributing and stocking games to real life games stores like EB games. This however gives rise to the importance of Internet security and infrastructure both of which are central to the success of any Internet marketing endeavour (particularly in an industry with customers as demanding as the gaming one). looking back on the events this year which saw Playstations online network go down as a result of the newly coined phrase "Internet terrorism" resulting in the loss of many of Playstations customers personal credit information and much frustration for PlayStation 3 players worldwide. The network was inaccessible for a month causing a high amount of damage to Sony's brand name and high a high amount of switching from customers to their direct rival Xbox in their eagerness to play online games. Personally, I think that particularly in the gaming community, we will continue to see more games marketed and distributed from remote online programs such as steam, and we will slowly see that real gaming stores (EB, Gamespot ect...) will go the way of the dinosaurs. what do you guys think?
Cheers
Jerry
