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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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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BABY AVERY LYNN GOES VIRAL

By Syazana Saraa Abas Bt. Abas 2009728197

The story begins
When others babies are learning to walk and talk, Avery Lynn Canahuati, 5 month old, is fighting for her life with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) which affects the spinal cord and brains causing her slowly becoming paralyze. Her parents was told that she only have between now and the next 18 month to live. In order to make their daughter’s feels doing normal stuff like other kid, Mike and Laura Canahuati have created a blog to help Avery’s fulfilling those wishes.

Apart from that, it gives them a platform to help and educate the public on the awareness of SMA. From time to time, they will update the blog (http://averycan.blogspot.com/) showing Avery’s journey in crossing out their bucket list of wishes. Avery’s story has become viral through the internet overnight and has touched millions of hearts just by reading her story. In every post posted on the blog, they will not forget to share and promote SMA and encourage the public to donate to help children with SMA disease.

Spreading the SMA awareness
While spreading the awareness of SMA, Avery’s story has catches many attention such Ellen DeGeneres Show as her parent says its Avery’s favorite show and ABC News who gives a positive feedback and supports the cause they are doing. Right now, their blog has reached more than 1 million views and growing day by day. Many other independent bloggers has also response to Avery’s blog and helps spreading the awareness to their readers and followers.

Using social media
With easy access to social media, Avery’s parent decided to use various social media in spreading the awareness by using blog, Facebook, Tweeter, Tumblr, YouTube and linked them to Fight SMA and Muscular Dystrophy Association webpage so that the public can learn more about the disease. The usage of social media is to attain broader target audience and intimately communicate with the public directly. The public can keep up to date on what is happening and feels close to them.

Creating awareness is important to educate and inform the public about the problem faced. By providing enough information and outstanding interest to gain public attention, an ordinary person definitely can bring huge changes. Right now what Mike and Laura Canahuati hopes is for their child to get better and they are just another parent who are trying to shower Avery Lynn Canahuati with lots of love in limited period of time.

This is one of Avery’s video in fulfilling the wishes.




References
http://averycan.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/AverysBucketList
https://twitter.com/#!/AveryBucketList
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/avery-lynn-canahuati
http://www.youtube.com/user/averysbucketlist
www.fightsma.org
www.mda.org
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/04/parents-bucket-list-for-dying-baby-girl-goes-viral/

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Implications Of Internet Towards Public Relations Communicators

by Farhana binti Ibrahim 2009196565

“The smaller the company, the more frequently social media is used to improve external communication”
- Josh Gordon (2011)

For any organizations, one of the greatest inventions is obviously the Internet. Its continually increasing popularity opens up countless opportunities for improving the ability to practice one profession. The Internet facilitates nearly every imaginable form of communication that a PR practitioner could invade on. However, putting aside all the great things about the invention of the Internet, it is also welcoming a world without traditional gatekeeper as an opportunity to take our message directly to the public.

Nothing is easy in this world. We are being challenged every single day either we realizes it or not. With the advancement of technology that is at present now, it made the world more fragile than it was before. In line with what stated with PR Newswire (2011), public relations practitioners must commit to lifelong learning, since the state-of-the-art for public relations in new media is likely to continue evolving rapidly for years to come. The Internet has however taken into its place in accommodating every each of our lives.

i. Corporate and personal brandjacking
According to Owyang (2008), it has becoming more and more common that a brand or an individual can easily be brandjacked as others take their user name, domains, and assert themselves as someone else. Given there are hundreds if not thousands of websites to monitor one’s brand, squatting these names will increasingly become difficult over time. Every 60 seconds, 13 hours of content are uploaded to Youtube, and millions of tweets are generated every day. With so much content being created, how will one filter out what is accurate anymore?

ii. Measurement and Return-On-Investment (ROI)
Internet is the new present hip that can be penetrated by anyone in the world. According to Owyang (2008), it is a movement where anyone can participate which resulted in low or no revenues for most participants. For example, there are millions of blogger, and only a few of them can claim serious revenue and even smaller subsets have built media empires.

iii. Time
Besides its relationship with the public, PR practitioners also need to improve their time in responding towards the media or reporters who would call for information or giving comments. In the current situation now, a deadline is whenever a reporter feels he has enough information to go with the story, and that creates a danger to the PR practitioners.

Besides the all the challenges that PR practitioner needed to go through, it also give some beneficial implementation towards them. Internet has been a compact provider as it is filled with information. Everything is just at your fingertips, where you click and the answer pops out. Without realizing it, Internet has got the attention of every single person in this world. Everyone wants to penetrate into Internet as it is can be categorized as a powerful source towards the modernization that we are facing right now.

i. Using the Internet for Research
It is undoubtedly that every each of organization today has its own websites where it provides valuable information for the public to obtain. Besides using the Internet for research, it also can be useful for PR practitioners to obtain news coverage. News has been transformed into Internet in order to make it easier for practitioners or public at large to retrieve any updates in the world as local news can be generated globally for everyone to retrieve.

As stated before, the Internet is conversed into a two-way communication style. It is where Internet gives opportunity for public to voice out. It acts as a grassroots opinion where people chatter in newsgroups and electronic newsletter. It is making it easy for PR person to detect any comments over the 100 million voices being spoken.

ii. Using the Internet to Speak Your Piece
From the Web, one can create a website for the importance of your clients, or your practice. A website should be an interactive component; therefore, it is not advisable for PR person to only post the corporate brochure. It also permits one-on-one communication, so don’t just broadcast but instead narrowcast and if it is possible, one should create an online community in order for public to ask questions or so. Having a broadcasted newsgroup is also very beneficial towards the PR practitioners. You can visit, listen and speak towards any comments. One must bear in mind to apply good public relations principles where do not falsified the content or spread information that can confuse the public. It is also good for one to dialogue with truth-seekers who have an open mind on certain subject matters.


In conclusion, the presence of Internet has affected millions of people around the world. It has becoming a necessity for every organization and of course a PR practitioner needs to be more aware and conscious on the whereabouts of their companies.

References
Armano, David (2009). Five Challenges Social Media Will Bring to Business. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/08/a_recent_ survey_conducted_by.html. Accessed on 23 April 2012.

James, L. Horton (2009). PR and Social Media. Retrieved from http://www.online-pr.com/Holding/PR_and_Social_media.pdf. Accessed on 24 April 2012.

Owyang, J. (2008). The Many Challenges of the Social Media Industry. Web Strategy. Retrieved from http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/08/07/the-many-challenges-of-the-social-media-industry/. Accessed on 24 April 2012.

PR Newswire (2011). White Paper Mastering Public Relations in Social Media: Engage Opportunity Everywhere. PR Newswire Association LLC.

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The Best Social Media Strategies: Starbucks

By Wan Nur Amirah bt Wan Yahaya 2009771731

 (MC22S5A)  

“Starbucks is one of the most admired companies in America.”

 - Fortune (2003-2010) -

According to TechRunch.com, Starbucks has been considered as a company which has implemented the best social media strategies (2010). Starbucks took the advantage in the social network ‘craziness’ by position itself in Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, Starbucks has penetrated the smart phone industry by being part of Blackberry, iPhone and Android applications. To stimulate the interest of its customers, Starbucks initiate My Starbucks Idea (www.starbucksidea.com) for customers to share their ideas and Flickr to share pictures.

Facebook 
With almost 26 million fans, Starbucks successfully promotes its brand and latest product in the Starbucks’s Facebook fan page. According to Porterfield (2010) Facebook is still leading contender of social networking sites with unique audience of 125.2 million visitors. In this page, customers are also given a space to express themselves in relations with Starbucks services. Eventually, a viral marketing is formed through these connections. Viral marketing or commonly known as marketing buzz is an internet version of word-of-mouth marketing (Armstrong & Kotler, 2005) that spreads like a virus. When the customers tag Starbucks name in their status, they are letting their friends to know the brand, thus promoting Starbucks. With the existence of this page, Starbucks has promoted its brand to various people with just one click. In order to continuously be part of Facebook phenomenon, Starbucks should create more promotions via Facebook, such as online coupons and sharing ideas.

Twitter 
At the same time, Starbucks has positioned itself in microblogging, Twitter with over 1 million followers. Through Twitter, Starbucks promotes and alerts its followers on products, promotion and cause. They are also actively responding to users. But, what is actually Twitter? Twitter is actually a free service bending instant messaging, social networking and wireless communication through computer and cell phones to distribute 140 characters message about what is someone is doing (Horton, 2007). The usage of Twitter has increased because it is an appealing method. It is new, has a focused communication, brief and fits easily into computers and mobile phones (Horton, 2007). Twitter also creates a platform for Starbucks to reach its customers thus establishing a two-ways communication. In order to keep up with Twitter, Starbucks should consistently updates its account with the latest news and link it with its Facebook page promotions.


Mobile Applications
In addition, Starbucks has involved in iPhone, Blackberry and Android™ applications. According to Starbucks.com, the application can be used as a store-locater navigator that provides the directions plus the details on the menu, nutrition facts as well as designing customer’s own favourite drinks. The application also functions as Starbucks Card, a digital form of reward card that is used during the purchase of Starbucks items. The application is able to help customers to register their cards, check Starbuck Card balance, reload the card, track the stars in My Starbucks Reward programme and send a friend with an eGift (Starbucks.com). Since there is an increase in using smart phones (which is up to 60% in U.S. alone) (Lunden, 2011), it is important for Starbucks to stay ahead. Besides, by providing an easy and fun access to Starbucks services, Starbucks’s customers will feel ‘closer’ to the brand. As to evoke more interest, Starbucks could create Starbucks games within its smart phones applications.

Online Partnership
Online partnership creates a much effective access for companies who plan to reach greater audience. Starbucks has established a digital network partnership with Yahoo! that can only be connected when customers are using Starbucks wireless connection. According to Starbucks.yahoo.com, Starbucks Digital Network provides news (The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA) and entertainments in its network hub at http://starbucks.yahoo.com which can be accessed for free. According to Brownlow (2011), Yahoo! reported that there are 302 million users who are using Yahoo! account. This shows that Yahoo! has a wider coverage of Starbucks target audience. Besides maintaining its relationship with its customers through this method, Starbucks could also reach the new potential prospects. To reach greater audience Starbucks could also be part of Google’s and Mozilla Firefox for other online partnership.

Flickr
Flickr is a photo-sharing website where anyone can upload and tag photos, browse other photos and add comments and annotations (Educause, 2008) in which customers could share Starbucks experience by uploading their favourite drinks or simply share their experience in Starbucks. Starbucks has created a Flickr Starbucks group that currently has 7 million members. Basically, Starbucks has created a venue for sharing experience and building the relationship between Starbucks and its customers.

Community Website
Starbucks has also developed its own community website that encourages its customers to share, vote and discuss idea for the improvement of Starbucks services. By doing this, Starbucks are creating a mutual relationship with its customers. It basically positioned Starbucks as a company that concern over its public and appreciate their views. Starbucks could also include competition to enhance the interest of visitors to visit again the website.


Conclusion
Starbucks has basically design an effective communication plan by using this channel. It is beneficial for Starbucks business because more and more people are turning to the usage of the new communication media. Starbucks must respond and connect with the customers consistently so that the relationship will improve and maintain. Therefore, Starbucks made the right move by involving themselves in Facebook, Twitter, mobile application, online partnership, Flickr and community website as these tools have become a phenomena among the internet users. At the same time, Starbucks should explore more on these channels so that it can reach the public efficiently thus position Starbucks as one of the best brand.

 References:
www.starbucks.com http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/17/how-social-media-drives-new-business-six-case-studies/ http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7034.pdf. Armstrong, Gary & Kotler, Phillip. (2005). Marketing: An Introduction. International Edition. Perason Education International. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Horton, James L. (2007). Twitter. Retrieved from http://www.online-pr.com/Holding/Twitter.pdf Lunden, Ingrid. (2010). Smartphone Usage Up 60 Percent; Android Makes Biggest Gains. Retrieved from http://moconews.net/article/419-smartphone-usage-up-60-percent-android-makes-biggest-gains/.

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Raising awareness for a new text-messaging phone

by Eni Farhani Binti Abu Malek 2009136697
Text is surpassing talk, that is the new generation’s mobile phone culture which not only happened in US but also it happened around the world. LG aware this new communication revolution which made this Korea based company would like to reinforce a campaign that fully focused on text messaging to their target audience to promote enV, the new text messaging phones. Because of that, in 2007 LG has initiated the LG National Texting Championship, the first national US text-messaging competition. This competition launched in Los Angeles and the final stage happened in New York.



To promote the competition, LG use an aggressive publicity which include strategic media exclusives, pre-event teasers, and publicize it through trade, entertainment, business, and consumer lifestyles press. Instead of traditional media strategies, LG also applied new media that is online and offline calendar listings, recognizing popular blogs, email to colleges, and post at social networking sites for instance FaceBook and MySpace.

The results of such aggressive publicity is remarkable, thousands of people participate to win the National Texting Champion title. It was a successful competition and LG successfully made the competition as trendsetters and technology influencers. Most importantly, its target youth consumer aware the competition and create a buzz among media especially mobile phone media. Good Morning America, TODAY Show, The Early Show, FOX News, Last Call with Carson Daly, Reuters, Associated Press, NPR, ESPN Cold Pizza, New York Post, New York Daily News, TIME, Yahoo!, In Touch Weekly, MSNBC, and the Los Angeles Times are among the top media placement that cover the competition and the main objective to promote the enV mobile phones is successful because LG has become one of the Verizon’s highest selling mobile phones.

LG National Texting Championship still continues and in fact the competition has reached its fourth annual and become the most important text events in United States. This renowned text-messaging competition has reach into another level where international level LG has introduce LG Mobile World Cup. In 2011, LG Mobile World Cup took place on Jan. 26 in New York City at the historic Gotham Hall where 16 countries including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Korea, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Portugal, South Africa, Thailand and U.S has participate it. Cristina Sales Ancines, age 20, and Jennifer Sales Ancines, age 15, from Panama as the “World’s Fastest Texters and they won $100,000 USD. So, who says texting is such a wasteful skill?

References: OgilvyPR (2012). How do you cut through the clutter of cell phone publicity and raise awareness for a new text-messaging phone? Retrieved April 20, 2012, from http://www.ogilvypr.com/en/case-study/lg-electronics-mobilecomm-usa-inc

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Social Media in China: Another One of China’s Great Walls

By Ainur Asyiqin Bt. Zulkifeli 2009026569

China is most famous as the manufacturing capital of the world. Also famous in China for these past few years, is the censorship of the social media imposed by their government. The Chinese government have came up with their own system of censoring and blocking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube through a system in which they called, the Great Firewall and most commonly known as the Golden Shield.

But how does the Chinese communicate with each other through the Internet without the help of these social media? The Chinese government’s answer to that question is the birth of their own local social networking websites. Websites like Renren and Kaixin001 acts as their personalized version of Facebook, while Sina Weibo is used as Twitter and Youku is the main video hosting website equivalent to Youtube. Another successful social networking site is Jiepang, a Foursquare – like website which allows you to tell others your exact location. 

Other than blocking social networking websites, the Chinese government has also taken a further step in implementing heavy filter on the Internet to filter various keywords in articles such as the English word of Freedom, including those in which the government deem may bring stress to the government. As of 2010, the Chinese government have blocked up to one million articles each day.

The censorship of various social networking websites, and other resources on the Internet may be seen as a precautiounary move by the government. Many perceive the censorship by the government as a step by the government to control what the people of China would think and say about their government, not advocating democracy among its people. Jens Thraehart, the president of a China based marketing company, Dragon Trail says that the Internet is more influential in China rather than in other countries like the United States. This may be one of the few reasons why the government have imposed such abundant law.

Sources: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/china-censorship-social-media_n_1347297.html

http://mashable.com/2011/11/30/china-social-networking/

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/internet_censorship/index.html

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Role of Traditional and Online Media in the 12th General Election, Malaysia

By Elliana Mellisa bt. Mohd 2009910425

Social networks are not new phenomenon on the internet as people began to socialize with one another frequently. The most popular social networks these days are Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Blog. Online social networks focus on building and reflecting social relationships among people who share interests, in formations or activities. Social media is being used by everybody including Prime Minister and other politicians.


The participation of citizens in the news and information industry however, is not a new phenomenon. Writing letters, providing observations, giving information and submitting personal or group photographs, audio or video to the mainstream media have been common practices that predate the Internet. Many analysts believe that by using new media, it can help to overcome the lack of media freedom. The new media is being use by the politicians to update and to share thoughts, information or opinion on what really is happening to them daily. By doing this, it can enable the politician to promote themselves and to get a fast feedback from their followers.

The Internet definitely is a medium that can be used to challenge a regime that does not respect democratic practices and to weaken the traditional print and broadcast media that are controlled by the government or companies who close to it. The Internet, especially through blogs and Internet news portals, has given civil society and Malaysian people a new hope to be able to access informed, critical views that challenge the government, information that is hardly to be heard by the government and the dissatisfaction of the among community through Internet.


In Malaysia, the politician and the social media appear as activities of individuals and civil society groups that aimed at correcting political bias in the mainstream media. The arrival of the Internet in the country has allowed various users in one way or another to use new media to correct the imbalance. The mainstream media features prominently in how the opposition is put together in Malaysia in terms of its public image and outreach. Without any fair access to the media, electoral success for the opposition is also impossible to promise. Hence, the mainstream media is seen as one of the very important barrier that can delay the development of the individual democracy.

Reference: http://search.taylors.edu.my/journalonline/Vol%201/SEARCH%20Vol%201/Usha(k)(SP)33-58.pdf

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Effective Social Media Campaign

by: Nur Naqiah binti Jalaludin 2009198131

So you want to increase sales or promote your new product or brand? Social media campaign is one of effective ways in doing so.Social media sites make great tools to engage prospects and customers as well as share content and messages about your brand. It is a great way to increase brand awareness, engage with customer, gaining long term loyalty, generate a short term boost in sales, etc. We have seen successful social media campaign that help in promoting a business or an organization as seen with social media campaign by Chester Zoo.

However, one does not simply engage into social media campaign without planning it wisely beforehand. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Here are some suggested key questions that one can consider before planning for a social media campaign:
1. What is your company's marketing objective?
2. What results do you wish to achieve?
3. Who on your team will be responsible for monitoring your firm's online presence and interacting with prospects and customers?
4. How much time will this employee be able to devote exclusively to social media?
5. Which of the social networking tools are best for your business?

Organizations must also take account the consideration that social media enable two-way communication which allow customers to give feedback, receive information from the organization through various social networking sites.

Effective social media campaigns consists of these characteristics:
1. Targeted
Set of clear objectives and success criteria. Target audience must be considered based on the objective of the campaign. Set achievable objectives and target specific audience.

2. Focused
Ensure that your campaign is of the direct response variety. Campaign are not spammy and don't just promote site links. Share something interesting and not just the same message to the audience.

3. Measurable
Creating a clear objectives and defined actions will provide straightforward message to the audience and this will make a clear and measurable success of the campaign.

4. Great Content
The cornerstone of any effective social media campaign is great presented in an interesting and engaging way. Social media campaign must be well organized and consistent. Updates on site must be consistent or audience will be confused. They must also interact with audience who leave replies and comments.

5. Simple and The Right Medium For the Message
Think about the actions you want your audience to take and match the medium to the message. For a campaign to be successful, do not register on every social media site. You might not be able to control every site and this will lead to fruitless campaign.

6. Memorable
Social media site must also be user-friendly and build relationships to increase perception of value and builds loyalty. Campaign shall also be as honest as possible. Trust is very hard to earn back once lost. To create a memorable campaign, innovative value is a must-have in a social site.

7. Profitable
There are plenty of siren voices that will say you can't put a price on customer engagement.

Social media marketing takes time in terms of results. Planning and carry out the social media campaign does not take that much time but audience would not be able to change behavior overnight. If within few months, the results aren't shown, changing strategy might work.

Reference:
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29272/5-Awesome-Examples-of-Engaging-Social-Media-Campaigns.aspx
http://sem-group.net/search-engine-optimization-blog/how-social-media-influences-consumer-behavior/
http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/203359
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/effective-social-media-campaigns.html

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