How companies figure the new trends out?

This is an interesting videos about how companies read the customers , how do they use all the resources available in media to get to customers and deliver the desired messages .
It also talks about how the companies know about the new trends and how do they prepare to respond based on the trends .

Media Relations

Media Relation 

The last decade has been bringing up a continuous and tremendous amount of changes with regard to the media  in all its aspects,indeed,the Corporations were not exception to catch up these developments. 

The media is considered to be a very strong driving force at all levels, it has the potential to enhance the image or the otherwise!.

Regarding to business, the question is being raised why do we need media relations and what does it do? . the answer is easy and requires another question which is : why do we do businesses? to whom we produce products or provide services? . 

Corporations whether big or small run businesses and produce products and services to sell out to the consumers everywhere,thereby,generate the money it needs to satisfy the shareholders in these corporations who contributed by their money to receive inducements that exceed or at least equal the amount of money that was given as contribution.Therefore, when we talk about media relation we need to talk about the purpose of existence for a corporation . 

These corporations in all sizes , are indeed, trying to reach customers , these customers differ in many regards . They differ in their preferences , their tastes , their ages , their attitudes , their orientations, their perceptions , their geographical locations , their martial status  , their social positions , simply they are different from each other. In order for a company to better display and portray the message it wants , it needs media tools to be able to market and promote its products and services . 

The media is significant , its absolutely one of the most important forces to be accounted for from the corporations and we have been discussing so many cases where some corporations failed to catch up with media and failed to keep their customers therefore. 

Why the companies spend millions and millions on advertising? and why do they choose specific shows or social media channels to promote their products and services? . Its the game of competition , corporations have to spend this money and otherwise they would have left the race and got beaten. 

The big media sources play significant role is the business field , for example , if a company wants to produce new products and at the same time was not able to inform its consumers and other targeted potential segments  , then how come it is going to success and how it can survive ?! .  independent influences, such as Wall Street analysts and business media, compare and contrast companies and their leadership to help individuals and audiences stay informed and develop correct perceptions, opinions and judgments.  

Some of the main goals of public relations are to create, maintain, and protect the organization's reputation, enhance its prestige, and present a favorable image. Studies have shown that consumers often base their purchase decisions on a company's reputation, so public relations can have a definite impact on sales and revenue. Public relations can be an effective part of a company's overall marketing strategy. In the case of a for-profit company, public relations and marketing should be coordinated to be sure they are working to achieve the same objectives.

Another major public relations goal is to create good will for the organization. This involves such functions as employee relations, stockholder and investor relations, media relations, and community relations. Public relations may function to educate certain audiences about many things relevant to the organization—including the business in general, new legislation, and how to use a particular product—as well as to overcome misconceptions and prejudices. For example, a nonprofit organization may attempt to educate the public regarding a certain point of view, while trade associations may undertake educational programs regarding particular industries and their products and practices.(Read more : http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/public-relations.html). 

The first and most important communication to economically essential individuals and audiences is an accurate description of what the company is anddoes.  Some marketers call this the “brand.”  It is the culture, strategy and execution of an enterprise based on the facts of what the enterprise does daily.
The challenge of creating a “brand” message is that there is no absolute truth  about a company or its leadership that all accept.  Facts are interpreted positively or negatively about any person or organization, but a “brand” message is  more of an operational statement than marketing communication.  A “brand’s” essence may not change for long periods, but expression of it might, given  shifts in culture, technology and scale of a business.(read more on:* Spencer Stuart Annual Route to the Top Study.  Available at www.spencerstuart.com ).

A corporation’s media relations efforts also have the potential power to change the thinking of its members as well. Just by employing strategic media elements and implementing a follow-through system, corporations have the potential to make a huge impact in the media relations world. One such example of this, and an example that I mention often on this blog, is the effects of social media through sites like Twitter. Corporations who take the time to develop their Twitter presence can make a difference to consumers. The American Corporation, Ford Motor Company, a part of The Big Three and in tough times right now, has developed a Twitter front that rivals any competitors and gives them an edge among consumers. Although financially they are in need of assistance, they also know that these tough times won’t last. They are turning to their customer base for answers, suggestions and discussions on giving the customer what they want.(read more on : http://www.corporate-eye.com/blog/2008/11/the-impact-of-media-relations-on-corporations/). 

Jet Blue case

   JetBlue case study . 

           1. The company had a long time to simulate and evaluate all the possible scenarios of such event, therefore, it could have put plans and prepare very well to respond to the crisis.

In such communication emergency situation, the company could have if – Then scenario, the company would have used all the available resources at that point of time to maintain and keep the communication channels functioning (securing the entire internal communication channel first of all to stay in control over any potential situation such that that occurred). 

For example , the company could have used back-up system , which would have enabled the company at least , to keep in touch with its customers regarding to the reservations and the flights numbers , the flight time , arrival and departure timing , delays , and all the related issues , by using such system , the company could have retrieved all the data about the passengers from the protected and backed data base .

It also could have used advanced software technology, which maybe would have cost more but at the time it would have allowed the company to quickly respond and take actions, and resolve the urgent problem.

The company also could have benefited from the smartphones that its employees have at that time, using these phones which are well-equipped and have support systems of communication tools the company could have communicated the airplanes staff and therefore, keep in touch with them regarding to the directions, the needed information, letting the passengers feel safe by feeling that they are in contact with people on the ground.

2.      It could be yes and it could be no, yes if the talk show goes in a way that the public want and like, I mean if Neel man has a strong character, good speaker, quick response, strong appearance, and if he is good in addressing the viewer’s then it could be beneficial for the company to regain trust and giving the appropriate and beneficial apology.

No, if not because it could be worse.

3.      It would focus on all the customers with some personality importance for each one; this means let the customers feel that the company will certainly satisfy them whatever it takes.

Using letters, discounts, points on the customers’ cards, adding new free to air entertainment channels on the planes, offering new movies, seasonal offers. And, involving all the employees in a new orientation of the way is needed to let the customers feel happy and satisfied by training the employees, giving them real examples. 

4.      First of all , I would say to learn the lesson , then taking into considerations all the customers ‘comments , using online services to get the customer involved at all the services’ stages (ask the customer) . Also Make the Bill Rights of customer appear on their website and so everyone knows what the company did. Using all the new and improved marketing and advertising tools that also includes some points which are mentioned in the Bill Rights list 

Image , Identity , Reputation .

As we were discussing very interesting topic , which is the Image , Identity , and Reputation of a corporation , I just wanted to share this article which is from entrepreneur magazine .
In this article , the author talks about Bank of America and Netflix , and Dunkin' Donuts too  . Mainly , Dr.Moore explained very excellent idea how does this work out , when for example , Bank of America decided to charge customers on their debt cards and after a massive social media negative reactions from the customers , they had changed their minds . so the companies are really scared and afraid when things go publicly especially on the social media because they care about their Image and Reputation from their consumer's perceptions .
You can find the article here : http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220657

Corporation reputation and identity

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Rebuilding_corporate_reputations_2367 . 
This article was published in Mckinsey Quarterly Magazine on june 2009 , after the financial crisis hit in 2008 , most of the companies -big corporations- , were affected by the unethical practices by some of these corporations ( Enron , Arther and Anderson , Lea mans brother ) ,however , the authors focused on how should the government response on the one hand , by re-regulate the industries in which these companies were running a businesses , and on the other hand it also focused on how should companies rebuild their reputation .
I recommend that you read this article , it is really interesting and has many benefits especially for us as students and studying in the next few chapters the reputation and the identity of the corporations .

Strategic communication plan

This is a video from YouTube that is likely a seminar about the need to have a plan , strategic plan for communication in order for a company to success in doing business .
I found it interesting for you guys if you have time to watch it .

Strategy Framework

Johnson & Johnson: the first step would be to make sure that the product is really the main reason; the company should first announce that it’s working on these cases and cooperating with all concerned departments to investigate each case (this should be done publicly).

Regarding to the resources that are available to the immediate use , we as Johnson have all the necessary resources to take immediate steps but what is more important is the time and the channel of communication , it will likely use the internal channels to communicate with all the internal employees as immediate response to the current event .

Structuring message in three directions: first one is to the consumers, as I said make it clear that we are not sure yet that the product itself was the reason of the death, secondly and in the same statement to public, there has to be a message to be delivered that the company is working with all other concerned and searching and investigating in depth and all details the cases of death.

The best communication channels for each concerned party, there will likely be a team that has already been formed for this emergency case, and this team will be in charge of communicating with all parties (consumers through mass media, board of directors through the traditional channels although there could be one part from this entity in the emergency team that was formed, the government and its concerned departments.

In such cases the following figure illustrates in general the way that a corporate responds to any crisis might occur in terms of communication and the strategy that is to take place:

 

According to this figure which clearly shows how corporations respond in any crisis, Johnson has to deal with circumstances in those regards mentioned in the first page.

Openness and immediate response publicly has to be taken as the first action to let the public feel good about the company that is , the company’s most important concern is its customers as we are dealing with drug that are being used across the country . This message should clearly and publicly be sent and delivered using all the available resources at the company’s

disposal; thereby the company can maintain its reputation which is more likely the key in terms of maintaining the market share that the company has.

An emergency team should be working around the clock to keep controlling the situation and stay in contact with all the related parties including the government departments, the hospitals, the specialists, the experts, the media, and the victims’ families   .

The company has to remove all the reasons or the potential threats , this means it has to recall any suspicious drugs in the market and not to wait until an evidence has been obtained because this would likely result is losses in all regards . This action requires immediate and around the clock communication channels that have the ability to quickly achieve the desired goal, the social media are one of the most effective tools that can be used.

Meantime, the company should assure all the consumers that this will never occur again, by acting quickly and taking all the ethical responsibilities, this also to be done by using all the available resources including the social media channels.

Let the consumers feel and believe that the company is sacrificing so many costs to ensure its consumer’s safety , this is a message should be mainly adopted and be taken care of from all the members in the corporations and this will eventually result in fast recovery for such event . 

Marwan Alshammari .  

Yesterday , we were discussing a very interesting ideas and topics . In the class , Professor Moore introduced interesting video regarding to whether CEO's should have blogs or not . I am grateful to professor Moore for the link that he just sent to us about the anti-trust law .
In this regard , I would like to say that as Google keeps growing and gaining more market share ,almost 2/3 of the industry , it would likely face more challenges especially from all those who are in the industry
In 2004 , Google's founder stated " Serving our end users is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority" ( for more information , http://www.google.com/competition/) . This does make sense to me as Google takes into account its users , then it would mainly rank the results and give the answers that the users want not what the other rival want.
For example , Android mobile came and still as open source and any user or manufacturer can use it or benefit from it for free ( http://www.google.com/competition/).
Google has very good justifications for all the inquiries that could be discussed in the hearing and when I took a look at what and how competitors introducing their claims about the unfair competition , I was wondering and looking for significant points that I can find in it but I could not .
Even the advertisers do believe in what Google says , Craig Macdonald , CMO , Covario(search engine marketing firm) stated "Google is quite transparent when it comes to how they determine Quality score , and advertisers who do not benefit from this understanding either have not put in work,or are simply unhappy with the results " . 

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_human_factor_in_service_design_2922

I just read this article , I think it deserves to be read .

Google Case

Google Case in China 

“When the human rights come first”-analysis Watch this it should be enough :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGJoaHr2QdM . This is one among hundreds of thousands that are banned from being viewed by public in China.

1 – History and current goals: Google is now the most dominant search tool on the web, setting the standards that others try to follow and better, as yet unsuccessfully. It was founded in 1998 - relatively late compared to many of the popular search engines - by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were graduate students from Stanford University.

Page and Brin were working together on search engine they called "BackRub" in 1996 , they received a considerable help from Yahoo co-founder David filo and they started looking for outside investors to help them improving their project. They established Google, Inc. on 1998. By the way their initial steps in business started in their friend’s garage.

Co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin created Google's core PageRank technology to archive and organize Internet webpages and develop a searchable database. The basic tenet of PageRank is that when one website links to another, the first website is endorsing the second. Pages are then "ranked" according to the ecosystem of all web pages archived by Google. While the company has since utilized numerous other ranking systems, PageRank still remains a central technology. Google also creates search products for photos, videos, and specific websites types such as blogs. Google does not charge consumers for its search capabilities, receiving most of its revenue from advertising and a small portion from licensing its search technologies to enterprise companies.

Press coverage , awards and praises were being given to this growing business , it quickly gained good reputation by its speed , effectiveness , reliability , all that has contributed to spread the usage enormously .  In 2000 they replaced their yahoo provider and since then they started doing much better, furthermore, they became providers search data to all other parties and competitors in the industry.

 2 – Assessment of environmental changes, opportunities, threats, and constraints: 

The internet market has been growing rapidly, the flow of information has become unimaginable than ever before, it was very quick when the whole world became a small village in the internet era. Under these circumstances all internet search websites founders were under a lot of pressure to come up with a strategy that could work and adapt the growing opportunities, threats, and barriers that they could face in their race to benefit from all the resulted opportunities.   

In Google case, the company has been growing, its image was very good in all social aspects as it adopted DON’T BE EVIL principle, the company was trying to maintain this strategy to better serve and meet its users and customers’ needs and expectations, to keep the free flow of information, to keep its customers privacy protected. At the time, business environment is constantly changing and there always could be something that undesired comes up and represent a barrier and a challenge for the company whether to adapt and compromise or just avoid and maintain the main principle.

In 2005, “don’t be evil”, faced the challenge when department of justice requested all major search providers to submit users information in an effort to investigate child pornography cases.

Whereas Google decided to fight against the request and not to give any information that was requested, all other competitors preferred to quickly comply with the government request. Such a decision was made and acted based on Google’s main and ethical principles and values. At that time they didn’t know that they are going to do so in the near future when they decided to enter the Chinese market.   At that time the decision was based on the main strategy.

3 – Critical variables:  growing market opportunity which is the Chinese market, desired global position especially in the Asian countries which are growing and emerging economies and the near future of internet usage was expected to grow enormously, competitors advanced steps had already been in place when Google was planning to enter the game.

In this case, Google’s strategy and principles, and its values that they gave in all their public statement, all were the same, in my opinion; they should change a little in their strategy when they decided to go globally and when they set new goals to be achieved. whenever you have goals added this means you need means and tools to get these goals achieved ,where are you going to get these means and tools from is the first question you are to ask when reviewing the strategy after adding these goals : the answer indeed , is from the external and internal environment . In Google case in china the external environment is all parties that could be interested in the service or have a claim on it whatever is the extent to which they are interested. Linking those goals to the strategy that Google had before was significant to better determine the way they should have gone through.

Another variable was playing a role that the critics that Google had to deal with, given the fact of the Chines government bad record with regard to the human rights and freedom, Google also, had to deal with pressure from major political figures in the United States who’s known by opposing any investment in such dictatorships arena.

However, given the fact  that in business everyone is looking for the money , especially after the most recent crisis , meantime everyone should maintain at least a minimal level of applicable principles and ethics that should be properly , conveniently , profitably , linked to the company’s strategy in order to have clear vision in case of “what- if” scenario .

They used benefit vs. cost analysis and justification defending the decision to enter the Chinese market which has successfully contributed to the overall performance of the company.

  I would say that they would have more than one plan when deciding to enter a market in which they have to obey the state rulers and comply with local business regulations. it is very true that this is a pretty much good decision but at the time, as Google is trying to be successful at all levels they could better create more communications channels with the Chinese government to enhance and create a common ground on which they could base their win-win situation and more importantly could contribute into reaching agreement for any exist or emerge variances. 

Minimize the damage is another policy could have been adopted , meaning try to force the Chinese government as much as possible to give up some restrictions on the freedom of information using anything at Google’s disposal to get this done .

They would also work on improving an innovative tools that could be passed to their consumers in China that enable the Chinese users from getting access to whatever they want without the government being able to determine and identify the user (technical solution).

And finally, I would say not to withdraw from the Chinese market. Google’s rivals have already entered the market even before Google decided to enter that market. In terms of business, to survive in this world you need to be aggressive and make tough decisions sometimes when you have to. And in this case I think it was Must-Decision as everyone else did the same.

The Business – Ethics, Social responsibility, and all other related topics have been arising as major topics as the aftermath of the financial crisis was major concerns for everyone , we all, are watching the dilemma is being discussed at all levels , however, those who defend and I myself think that be in china as a decision has been made was right as everyone else did , this is said in terms of business , and in terms of social responsibility , being there is better than not being there as the people of china would at least benefit from Google in other fields .

Therefore, Google should work hard to keep all the channels open toward each side, Chinese government, and the public everywhere especially those who are concerned such as the users in china and the followers and supporters of Google there and everywhere. This would help Google regain the good image socially in additions to its financial gains. It could also do more in the sake for people as social responsibility; I mean social initiatives that could be for building schools or hospitals and so on.