Who is Johnny X?

I need help.
I don’t know who I am.
And I need to find out first.
- Johnny X

Would it be very interesting if you could sell your product in a form of James Bond-like and Bourne Identity-like movie with the additional elements of thriller and mystery? Well, that was what Sony Ericsson did in 2008. Sony Ericsson went viral with Xperia X1 marketing. The mobile company made used of the world wide web by creating a nine-part of "Webisode" which portray a mysterious character named Johnny X, who was trying to piece together his personality and identity (Ccsinsight.com). Each episode is from two to three minutes long which followed Johnny X as he used his X1 mobile phone to try and piece together elements of his life following a kidnap by a gang.

Audience was entertained with the “alternative reality thriller” with a number of action-packed chases which can be viewed in YouTube (Techindia.forumr.net). According to Ccsinsight.com, the theme of the video was relevant to Sony Ericsson as the company is seeking to redefine itself as it struggles to differentiate its product line up from those of rivals such as Apple, Samsung, and Nokia. The award-winning campaign had attracted many interests among mobile phone users as it is being viewed and shared by them.




Who is Johnny X Trailer
(The rest of the episode can be viewed in YouTube
As the competition between smart phones has become overwhelming, Sony Ericsson needs to design a marketing strategy that is different from others. Basically, Sony Ericsson had designed an interesting product campaign by enticing the public’s curiosity as well as connects with the “coolness” of Xperia X1. The webisode also relates with the company’s initiative to position itself again. By doing so, Sony Ericsson is able to create greater awareness about its latest product and eventually increase it sales.

References:
10 Social Media Campaigns That Rock! Learn How To Do the Same. Retrieved on 7 June 2012, from http://blog.thoughtpick.com/2009/06/10-social-media-campaigns-that-rock-learn-how-to-do-the-same.html
Sony Ericsson goes viral with Xperia X1 marketing. Retrieved on 7 June 2012, from http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/11/sony-ericsson-goes-viral-with-xperia-x1-marketing/ http://techindia.forumr.net/t184-sony-ericsson-goes-viral-with-xperia-x1-marketing
BusinessWeek: Can Xperia Redefine Sony Ericsson? Retrieved on 7 June 2012, from http://www.ccsinsight.com/press/media-coverage/870-businessweek-can-xperia-redefine-sony-ericsson

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Online campaign simply the best

by Syarifah Syameen bt Syed Johari 2009567623
What better way to create an awareness of a new product if not by using the new media. New media can be portrayed as the ‘21st century’s god’ and, thus it may be considered as a lost for an organisation with no interest on embracing this new technology. This is due to the fact that everybody across the world connects with each other by using new media hence awareness of any products, services, or causes can simply be made within a minute. Ever heard of the phrase ‘the fall of advertising and the rise of public relations’? The phrase were created due to the scenario whereby many organisations nowadays has replace advertisement with public relations since public relations is more effective and cheaper compared to advertisement. Online public relations campaign is time efficient and publics can simply identify about the product or service once it goes viral in the internet.

This can be seen on a case study by Beverley Hills in 2006 on promoting and creating awareness of their new ‘Shielding Lotion’. Beverly Hills is a skincare company and has come out with numerous skincare products. One of their products is 21st Century Formulations which has a skincare lotion that called Skin MD Natural. After the successful of Skin MD Natural, they had formulated a new lotion under the Skin MD Natural which is ‘Shielding Lotion’. However, consumers had no awareness of this new product category by Skin MD Natural.


One of Beverley Hills solution is by creating an online campaign and it was launched to aimed and reaches the online consumers. Part of their strategies is by creating high search rankings on specific keywords and phrases, articles, blogs, newsgroups and also forums. Their main objectives were to create a new search term which was ‘shielding lotion’ as well as to gain search engine visibility regarding the research keywords and phrase on:
• Shielding Lotion
• Dry skin
• Dry skin treatment
• Dry skin lotion and
• Eczema treatment

The strategy on creating the awareness involved the following tactics:
• Undertaken the keyword research and optimized the website’s pages for the chosen words and phrases
• Created a news section of the site with RSS Feeds
• Written and posted weekly articles on the subject of dry skin and related skin conditions to their site. Evert article page was optimized by using the previous keywords that had mentioned before

As a result, all the articles that had been published were picked up in Google News and other syndication websites. There was no mention of shielding lotions on the internet in January 2006 yet today, when you type and search ‘shielding lotion’ in Google, you will get more than 20,000 mentions as the results. Moreover, if you search for ‘Skin MD’ you will get more than 40,000 search results. Apart from the successful of the search result in Google, Beverly Hills’ articles also were published in numerous websites and have been included in many leading physician journals for aesthetics and wellness. Furthermore, the news pages also appeared in Google Blog Search and the feed was selected up on more than 1,500 in other websites and blogs.

In a nutshell, based on the case study; this had proved that online campaign is more effective compare to the traditional advertisement. Despite creating awareness of the new product or service through online, publics can easily know and obtain information from the internet regarding the product or the service. With the emergence of social networking site nowadays, new media is one of the most successful tools and can become one of organisations measurement on creating awareness to the public on promoting their brand and their product.

Reference
Eight Case Studies Showing the Power of an Online PR Campaign. (2009, May 26). Retrieved May 30, 2012, from Social Magnet: http://www.socialmagnet.co.uk/2009/05/eight-case-studies-showing-the-power-of-an-online-pr-campaign/

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"Groupon-ing Your Brand"

by ‘Ainul ‘Aziem Binti Rahiim 2009534884
Founded in November 2008 by Andrew Mason, Groupon offers members discounts on everything from meals at restaurants to shopping excursion. Groupon is an e-tailing discount service that offers subscribers daily discounts on all manner of goods and services focused on local markets. Groupon, a name that blends "group" and "coupon," presents an online audience with deep discounts on a product or service.

Using the principles of collective buying power, Groupon offers extraordinary discounts with popular businesses and shares them with subscribers via free daily emails. The deals are activated only when a minimum number of people agree to buy, encouraging subscribers to share the promotion with family and friends. Groupon has created a powerful new marketing medium for products and services worldwide.

Through their strategic planning via collaborating with other social media such as Facebook and Twitter, Groupon have won over millions of customers across the world and their expansion is set to continue at a rapid pace towards upcoming years. No doubt by using Groupon as an internet advertising strategy can be a great way to introduce our business; especially to our local community. In other word, Groupon symbolize a simple and lucrative business as they are expanding fast, though the market is increasingly competitive. It works like e-Bay that collects things from other entities and advertises it at the reasonable price accordingly.



Check it out!!! How Rihanna used a Groupon strategy on Facebook to launch her album
Based from Todd Wasserman (2012) via mashable.com, he indicates that Rihanna currently has 53.4 million Facebook fans which make her the second most popular musician on Facebook, behind Eminem. With Rihanna consumed by her tour, the challenge was to give all those fans something to do on Facebook, preferably something that promoted the new album. The app challenged listeners to “like” a page and then go on missions to uncover content. By using Groupon, her fans can easily buy her new songs without have to go out or downloaded it from somewhere else as Groupon provide special offers and trusted services.

Evaluation
Groupon had a lot of success in its early stages, but the model of group buying has limited barriers to entry. Whether it can turn its popularity into profit will be determined by the reliability acceptance by customers.

References:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/entrepreneurs-groupon-facebook-twitter-next-web-phenom.html
http://newmediapartners.co.uk/index.php?id=1023
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/will-groupon-really-boost-your-local-business/
http://mashable.com/2012/03/15/rihanna-unlocked-facebook/

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The Effects of Social Media Networks in the Hospitality Industry

by Nur Akmal Binti Abd Hamid 2009974829


Nowadays the significant utilization of the social media network has been seen as the medium of transmitting a message was tremendous. Often seen as the new Agora for this millennium decade new media held the most power in connecting people around the world. However, the hospitality industry somehow has not seen this technological change as the opportunities in penetrating the new segment of market. The preference to use the traditional media as a medium of promotions made them left behind than most of the industries. The function of the social media is basically to the marketing of products and services for the hospitality industry.




What are the platform provide by the social media? And what will be the significant of using them? Social network offers media technologies that can facilitate online functionality and monitoring perspectives wherein the data gathered can be used to develop their services for customer satisfaction. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blog and Twitter was made to help in downy the progress of the marketing strategies to expose themselves to the massive audience of the social media users. The hospitality industry can market themselves in social media and networking.

 Hospitality industry can use social media to engage customers and clients in dialogue and recognize their needs. Through these networking sites, hospitality industry can interact with consumers before, during, and after the vacation experience. Social media is relatively new and the advantages are abundance such as it is affordable, it is viral and has the potential to spread brand awareness quickly and far and it is said to be able to develop link baits, attention and massive amounts of traffic. However, it may not be appropriate for all hotel chains.

Ergo, the social media networks behold gazillions of opportunities that need to be utilized by the hospitality industry. Whatever the decision made by the practitioners in order to post on net made a huge impact on the ROI of the organization. The setup of implementing the social media channel will benefit both parties and engaging your clients and customers for past, present and future purposes.

ROI- Return on Investment
Source: http://digitalcommons.library.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1694&context=thesesdissertations

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StockTwits Evolves, A Must for Investor Relations

By Estee Aina Huslan 2009381481
As new forms of social media change society, corporate investor relations teams are changing their communications strategies. Investor relations departments are getting more active in using social media as a way to reach investors. Social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have become increasingly important tools for investor relations departments.

Organization use social media tools for marketing, branding purposes and customer communications, in addition to investor relations. In general, social media applications that target the investment community tend to be far less advanced compared with communication intended for a company’s customers.Early users of social media for investor relations have known other social media sites that don’t quite meet their business needs. But that is about change as StockTwits introduces the world’s first set of social IR services built especially for public companies.




StockTwits is one of the new of social media tools made for investor relations. The purpose of StockTwits was to let investors follow news and discussion about companies that originated on Twitter. StockTwits is gaining thrust within the investor relations community by encouraging companies to originate their tweets on their service, not on Twitter. One benefit is that messages originated on StockTwits are not only picked up automatically by Twitter but also by other prominent investor websites such as Yahoo Finance, CNN Money and Bing Finance. This helps resolve concerns about limited disclosure of information that is distributed through Twitter.


Investor relations departments at major corporations including Ford, Dell and HP have embraced StockTwits, especially since StockTwits began earlier this year to offer companies verified accounts, meaning that investors can know with certainty that messages are coming directly from official company sources. “StockTwits is now the world’s largest social network specifically for investors,” said Chris Bullock, StockTwits’ vice president of corporate solutions, in an April 2011 interview with the author. “We say Facebook is for friends but StockTwits is for investors.”

Like Twitter, companies use StockTwits to communicate earnings results, merger and acquisition news, and other corporate events. Since the audience is investor-specific, StockTwits works well for companies that wish to share information about speaking at investor conferences, hosting events at their headquarters or sharing results in near real-time from annual shareholders’ meetings.

In conclusion, internet plays an important role in investor relations. Besides assisting the practitioner in daily task or job it also helps to build strong relationship between the organization and the investors. According to Patel (2000), in a world of constant information flow where investors expect a reply within the next few seconds rather than the next few days, public companies have to go beyond the sporadic press release and quarterly earnings call to adequately meet investors’ needs for information. Two benefits StockTwits offer IROs are the opportunity to monitor what investors are saying about their companies and a channel for engaging in two-way conversation with investors that is in the open, unlike private email and phone messaging.

Reference: http://irwebreport.com/20110608/social-ir-dashboard-stocktwit/

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Revolutions without Social Media

by Mardiha Adzrina Binti Mat Rasid 2009541781
Social media and mobile technology has become one of permanent daily component in daily lives. As we go through our Twitter timeline everyday, tweet funny things and update our Facebook status can be difficult for some to understand the power that these social platforms seize as it being blamed for causing the riots in the United Kingdom and other flash mod in other parts of the world, including United States.

It is known that chain messages on Twitter, Blackberry messaging and Facebook are the fastest way to spread the information. It immediately gather people together and it appears to have been widely used to organize and motivate interest group of rioters firstly in London and then further spread to other cities in UK.

Source from Bloomberg says that the U.K’s intellectual property minister had declared for a temporary end to BlackBerry services a day after the riot as to prevent rioters from messaging for planning and organizing riot events. Thereupon, should the government somehow revoke the access to these services to avoid similar thing happened again in the future?

Even before the birth of social media and Blackberry chat people have been throwing stones and rioting. Hence prove revolutions don’t require social media to arise in any parts of the world. For example in countries like Egypt, only 5% of the people are on Facebook and less than 1% on Twitter out of 85 millions of it population for coup d’état to occur.

In the 1800's and in the 1970's United Kingdom had faced with massive riots, American Revolution and the French Revolution happened without any form of social media help such as Twitter, Facebook or BlackBerry messaging. Thus, taking into account for censorship and attempting to control communication is not an advisable action for the authority to act upon.

Taken from Washington Post article stated by a new technologies researcher and UCLA associates, describe on what happened in Egypt or Tunisia doesn’t start from Social Media, but from people’s rage. What is happening in London is not coming from Social Media, but from people’s rage.

Although that Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger are said use as the medium to cause riots, it is undeniable that Social Media are an awesome step forward for mankind. They are not enough to tell millions of people to start a revolution. Overall, was social media's role in the riots is a positive or a negative one?



Source: http://www.youngdigitallab.net/social-media/dear-social-media-its-your-fault/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/08/10/london-police-struggle-to-master-social-media-in-clamping-down-on-riots/
http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979951273
http://millionsofnerds.com/featured/how-social-media-broke-and-then-fixed-london/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/28/uk-riots-twitter-facebook

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Public Relations and Social Media

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows. -John Milton
by Noor Kamalia Abd Hamid 2009987351
Based on (Holton, 2009), social media present challenges, not the least because they break traditional categories of audience’s employees, customers, shareholders. The public and worldwide nature of social media means all audiences can read communications proposed for any one viewer. One can no longer classify audiences and messages. Matrices of targets and themes have become a blob with indeterminate relations and gaps.

However, to make the challenges more difficult, practitioners cannot assume importance in any one social medium will reach everyone. Social media are so patchy that an individual may or may not see information in a blog, on a Face book page or in a Tweet. Consequently a practitioner is challenged with getting the mass of an audience via media that a majority hypothetically can entrée but in reality might not view. In one way, this is no different than distribution of information in traditional media such as newspapers. Just because a story is in a newspaper doesn’t mean everyone in a planned audience has read it or even seen it. However, since there are less traditional media, the possibility any one individual has seen a story in a newspaper is higher precisely than considering the same story in one of a million blogs.

Yet, there’s still a challenges need to be considered:

Although the challenges may seem difficult for PR practitioners, there are rewards for penetrating social media successfully. You can reach these self-identified audiences with a laser-like focus to communicate client messages successfully and professionally. Successful bloggers, had build audiences of like minds and interests. The misuse that attends so much of media is largely eliminated if one is able to hit into groups that have a self-identified interest in the topics and messages you throw. There is as well a viral part to reaching the right group. They mix your messages on their own without your prompting thereby achievement a much superior audience than mainly planned for.

But, what are social media?
According to (Grunig, 1984), social media defined as user generated and published information. However, users often republish information they have discovered elsewhere, so user generation is loosely defined. Besides that, social media also considered as multimedia tools such as blogs, podcasts, video, photos, forums, internet messaging, and texting. The internet subsumes all audiovisual and print media because it can convey them cited by (McQuail, 1994). Social media, by extension makes use of all media forms. There is even a growing possibility of broad communication.

In a broader viewpoint, there is little difference between traditional media relations and social media relations. In traditional media relations, practitioners recognize reporters and editors and build relationships with them in order to get client news distributed. In social media, practitioners recognize important participants and build relationships with them in order to get client news disseminated. It is more difficult in social media because there are more participants and there is less clearness in shaping who are the audiences. If the past is a guide, over time influentials will unite within social media, and practitioners will have a clearer viewpoint on where to go. That is happening, but there are still large areas of social media open to examine.

References: Grunig, J. E., & Hunt, T. (1984). Managing public relations. New York: NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
McQuail, D. (1994). Mass communication theory. London: Sage.
James L.Holton (20019). Public Relations And Social Media
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/09/the-future-of-social-networks-communication/

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Success of New Media and Government vision

by Mohamad Khairul Azril 2009557759

The beginning of the advertising campaign using the 1Malaysia concept throughout the new media has been described as having profitably met its targets. Thus developments of new media in Malaysia were no longer rare news. It is very much reflect effort that been taken by the government where almost all the department in the government office and services using the new media as the portal and the medium to interact. Normally the use of the FaceBook, tweeter and blogs became very popular among them. It is very easy to interact with the customers (us) using the new media approach. This is suiting the vision of the Prime minister itself “People First Performance Now”.


According to Datuk Seri Kamaruddin Siaraf, there are three reason that been describe as a back bone of the successful of the new media and its technology. The first one would be the introduction of the Multimedia Super Corridor MSC in Malaysia. It is the biggest reason because its open a new path of the technology in Malaysia, which is indirectly give advantages for Malaysian.

Then second reason is second reason was the rise in political awareness between Malaysians, with a mounting number of Malaysians viewing a keen significance in democracy, human rights and good governance. It is very helpful using the new media as a part of the governance even it also have a pros and contras.

Last but least his talk about about the loss of trustworthiness among the traditional media due to press self-censorship. He believes that the readers nowadays are more particular when it comes to information and source. They are more to use the internet in order to get the information as well as news.

Reference: http://mynewshub.my/2011/07/21/success-of-internet-new-media-in-malaysia/

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New Media functional In Public Affairs Field

by Mohd Azim bin Zainalalam 2009740247

The scope of public relations works been divided into many section. Media relations, Crisis Management, Public Relation Plans, Event Management, Government Relations and many more. With the ongoing globalization era now days, the communications tools has been easier with the enhancing of new media. This advantages should been use wisely in public relations field in planning their objective and strategy to reach their target audience. Currently, there are many types of new media like you tube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blog and Website that can be medium of strategy that must be understand first their purpose of function. After their function been understood, the public relation practitioner can do their task precisely.



One of the well known subject that public relation practitioner must master is Public Affairs. Many definition that been given by scholar regarding the meaning Of Public Affairs. According to Rebecca Pearston, Public affairs is Public relations efforts of a firm that associated with government agencies, mass media, public interest and pressure groups. Obviously, Public Affairs practice creates programs to influence public opinion, promote regulatory and legislative initiatives, build reputations, position litigation and manage issues.

Usually the task in Public affairs is dealing with such a program of political campaign. In dealing with political and social movement campaign, public relation practitioners start with planning strategies and tactics by influencing policy through any medium that can reach their target audience. After the process of influences done, public relations practitioners will shape public opinion, raise awareness and change attitudes, promote social and policy initiatives, manage issues and build reputations. In this whole process new media function will offers a way to track and monitor conversations, and develop grassroots movement among like-minded peoples.



Although the public affairs scopes of work seem very similar toward government relation, it still showed comparison between both of them. Public affairs is associated with all the stakeholder and related subject but government relation is more detail on influencing government policy at all level like state, federal and publics. Maybe New Media will be very useful in both of them but in certain area this medium unsuitable to functional. Based on Malaysia scenario in regarding both of subject, the process to influence public by using new media might be useful but to amendment the government policy and law must be in the right procedures for instant bring it to parliament, tried in court and get agreement from the highest legislation.

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Malaysian Government Website Being Hack

by Sallehuddin Bin Saad 2010244566

A group referring themselves as anonymous have put a major threat to the Malaysian government website and some other corporate websites in the world where this group of hackers are mostly belong to an activist organization demanding on opposing threat or may even start an act of war between countries.

The anonymous group has succeed to breach the wall of Malaysian ministry website for duration of one day and gain access to restricted information by posting their organization poster telling that the website is under their control. The main truth about these government portal attacks is due to the censorship by the Malaysian government into gaining access in blocking the file sharing website such as Pirate Bay that might be their source of income

The Anonymous group call it as “Operation Malaysia” and urge members in Malaysia to join this group as an act to gain the freedom of speech while on the other hand it is also means you are against the government. To stop against the illegal hacking threats, the Malaysian government must construct a commission specialize in monitoring the hacking access by any individuals or organization because it concerns on the matter of national security.

To apprehend this threat, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission or MCMC should bring up the primary concern of preventing the misuse of new media by recommending special programs upon bringing the awareness to Malaysian and cooperate with the authority in detaining all the suspects involve in cybercrime. Moreover, website hacking is commonly happen on the internet nowadays as a censorship of access on websites are the government policies to ensure that Malaysia is safe from any outsource threat. Prevention access by anonymous person can be assured if a system that enables to detect from where the threats came from. In other words, the cooperation between countries into solving the issues are positive start to detect and detain the individuals who involve in the crime and bring forward to the court of justice.

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