Posted by truecreek on November 17, 2010 under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them. | 
Just yesterday, General Motors announced a 31 percent increase in the amount of shares the company is going to issue in common stock for their IPO tomorrow. It very possibly could become the largest IPO in history. This dramatic increase in issuance is due to the demand generated by the buzz associated with the offering. And it’s a buzz that is not all about just the financials. UPDATE FROM AP: GM’s landmark stock sale is now set to raise up to $22.7 billion, the biggest IPO in history.
I think it says a lot about the product offering. Dropping Saab, Saturn, Pontiac and Hummer has allowed the company to FOCUS their attention on their four remaining core brands: GMC, Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac. GMC trucks are some of the best in the world, the Chevrolet and Buick brands are on fire and Cadillac is staying strong.
According to the company, year-to-date, combined sales of the Chevrolet Equinox, Chevrolet Camaro, Buick LaCrosse and Regal, GMC Terrain and Cadillac SRX and CTS Wagon are up 323 percent.
And today, even more good things to say. The highly anticipated VOLT has been named Car of the Year by Motor Trend and Automobile. I’m sure Car and Driver won’t be far behind. Without a single car having been delivered. Now that’s confidence in a product. Add to that, GE’s decision to buy 25,000 Volts by 2015 and you have a winner here.
The quality of the GM build today is second to none. Factories are in the best shape ever, utilizing build and production techniques that will assure buyers of a high quality product with minimal defects. Reliability and quality engineering is now a part of the overall message for all the brands. Take a look at some of the new GM advertising. Best in a long time.
So, tomorrow will be a good day, maybe even a great day, for GM. And they deserve it.
(Chevrolet’s SS concept, from GM’s North Hollywood Design Center.)
Posted by truecreek on November 16, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
2011 is set up to be another exciting year at the movies. There’s guaranteed to be something for everyone with plenty of thrillers and comedies. Just throw in some romance, a little horror, lots of drama and exciting action and you have another great year in cinema.
It also looking to be the biggest year ever in 3-D.
Here are just some of the blockbusters you’ll see in 2011:
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
The Hangover 2
Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom
The Dark Fields
The Green Hornet
The Rite
Scream 4
The Green Lantern
Cars 2
X-Men First Class
Transformers 3
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II
The Three Musketeers
Twilight Saga
Happy Feet 2
Mission Impossible 4
Sherlock Holmes 2
Posted by truecreek on October 18, 2010 under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Now, I’m no fan of the Jackass series of TV and films, but you just cannot argue the fact that they can get the eyeballs. And 3-D had to help.
Jackass 3-D grossed a whopping $50 million in its debut weekend, setting several records and setting punditry tongues wagging in the process. First of all, the film bested the $48.1 million opening weekend for Scary Movie 3 in 2003, taking the October opening weekend record. Second of all, the opening figure is far and away the best opening weekend for any kind of non-fiction/documentary film in history. If you count this series as a documentary franchise (which I do), then the third entry is now the fifth-highest grossing documentary in history in just three days. It stands behind Jackass: The Movie ($64 million), Jackass Number Two ($72 million), March of the Penguins ($77 million), and Fahrenheit 9/11 ($119 million).
While the franchise has mediocre legs (part one had a 2.9x weekend-to-total multiplier in 2002 and part two had a 2.4x multiplier in 2006), thus making $100 million+ not quite a sure thing yet, there is little doubt that the film will end its domestic run as the second-highest grossing documentary/non-fiction film of all time. Still, 3-D films seem to have better legs than average (witness the useless My Soul to Take dropping just 53% in weekend two, as well as the inexplicably strong holds of Legends of the Guardians, now at $46 million), partially because they keep the bigger auditoriums for longer periods of time. If it can manage a mere 2.4x multiplier, it will in fact surpass the Michael Moore anti-Bush epic.
More here.
Posted by truecreek on under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Personally, I’m not a fan of Southwest. Just not my cup of tea. But obviously, they have done a wonderful job of positioning themselves as the champion for the little guy/gal. The bag cops campaign was a good one, hitting the major airlines hard with a message that highlighted their collective greed in such a humorous manner. But for a lot of people, this is no laughing matter. Fees are killin’ them.
From AP:
Southwest Airlines is giving its “bag cops” a break.
Southwest has been running a heavy dose of TV commercials boasting that unlike most other airlines it lets passengers check two bags for free.
But the airline said Friday it will launch a new TV commercial designed to boost sales on its website. The ad, featuring singing and dancing employees in Chicago, is important to Southwest because its flights don’t appear on online booking websites such as Orbitz and Travelocity.
Also, Southwest is seeking actors for commercials that will target airlines that charge customers up to $150 to change their itinerary. Southwest doesn’t charge a fee for changing flights on a ticket.
Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins said the airline hasn’t decided when or how widely the new campaign will run.
Brett Snyder, who blogs about airlines as The Cranky Flier, said the change-fees ads will probably be less effective than Southwest’s long-running “bags fly free” campaign. He said travelers know that they will get charged for checking a bag on other airlines, but they don’t know if they’ll ever need to change their itinerary.
Posted by truecreek on under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
My father, Joseph E. Young Sr., died last month after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He had just turned 81.
To say we had a wonderful relationship is really an understatement. He was a great man, hard-working, loyal and dedicated. I learned so much from him. I will sorely miss our time together but know that some day, I will once again sit with him under a tree on beautiful summer day.
As you would expect, his death took my eye off the ball for a while. For some strange reason, I just didn’t see the need to post or update. I remember reading Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ “On Death and Dying” back in high school. If true, the five stages seemed to all happen at once. Part of me understood the situation and the rest of me didn’t.
Yes, you do feel numb.
What I didn’t expect was the impact small memories would have. Every day you see or hear something that stokes the fire within. Just writing this post and looking at this picture reminds me so much of the fun we used to have together.
But for me to get back in the swing of things, it’s vitally important that I get back to doing what I enjoy most and that’s working hard in the ad business. It’s time to scour the Internet for interesting articles, compelling research and great creative work.
So if it’s OK with you, here we go.
Posted by truecreek on July 14, 2010 under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Yesterday, a federal appeals court decided that the policy of fining broadcasters for ‘indecent language and the like’ was unconstitutionally vague. The policy caused a huge issue for broadcasters because they had no way of knowing what would pass muster with the FCC, and what wouldn’t.
I have to agree with the court entirely. Here’s copy from the actual decision by the UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT. Simple and too the point.
We now hold that the FCC’s policy violates the First Amendment because it is unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here. Thus, we grant the petition for review and vacate the FCC’s order and the indecency policy underlying it.
Posted by truecreek on June 24, 2010 under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
Some fodder for those who are looking to justify moving dollars over to social marketing. A very interesting set of statistics, without a doubt. At the very least, every company should realize that social media can really support and communicate your message when you are in crisis mode. Just make sure you get your facts straight first.
By Michele Gershberg
Brands that use microblogging sites like Twitter to provide real-time responses to the public are winning a higher degree of trust from consumers, according to a study by a leading public relations firm.
Some 75 percent of people surveyed said they view companies that microblog — sending short, frequent messages on sites like Twitter or status updates on social networks like Facebook — as more deserving of their trust than those that do not, according to a survey by Fleishman-Hillard, conducted with market research firm Harris Interactive.
The second annual Digital Influence Index study, released at the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit in New York, researches the extent to which the Internet affects consumer behavior.
The findings on Twitter are particularly notable in a year where many leading corporations found themselves in crisis mode, from BP’s role in the Gulf oil disaster to recalls from Toyota Motor Corp and Johnson & Johnson and a viral campaign against new diapers from Procter & Gamble on Facebook.
“What really matters here I think is that the rules of crisis engagement that we’ve known for years and years still apply, but they still apply in a much more accelerated way,” Dave Senay, Chief Executive of Fleishman-Hillard, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Part of the lesson is “not to overreact, but also to react with factual information, and don’t get beyond what you know,” Senay said. “And do so not in a 24-hour news cycle, but in minute-to-minute monitoring.
Companies also need to be well set up in the digital world well before any potential problem arises, building a relationship with their customers so that trust can help them manage a crisis, said Brian McRoberts, senior vice president of digital research at Fleishman-Hillard.
More about Consumers Say: “In Tweets We Trust.” here.
Posted by truecreek on June 22, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
There is so much research on this topic already and more seems to come out every day. There needs to be a greater focus on advertising to combat this horrible trend. It will have to be powerful stuff, like Marsteller’s “Crying Indian” that featured Native American actor, Iron Eyes Cody. It was one of the most successful campaigns of its kind, with some suggesting it reduced litter by almost 90% in 300 communities.
Now that’s how you do it.
By Mary Madden and Lee Rainie.
Adults are just as likely as teens to have texted while driving and are substantially more likely to have talked on the phone while driving.
In addition, 49% of adults say they have been passengers in a car when the driver was sending or reading text messages on their cell phone. Overall, 44% of adults say they have been passengers of drivers who used the cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.
Beyond driving, some cell-toting pedestrians get so distracted while talking or texting that they have physically bumped into another person or an object.
These are some of the key findings from a new survey by The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project:
- Nearly half (47%) of all texting adults say they have sent or read a text message while driving.
- Looking at the general population, this means that 27% of all American adults say they have sent or read text messages while driving. That compares with 26% of all American teens ages 16-17 who reported texting at the wheel in 2009.
- Three in four (75%) cell-owning adults say they have talked on a cell phone while driving. Half (52%) of cell-owning teens ages 16-17 reported talking on a cell phone while driving in the 2009 survey.
- Beyond driving, one in six (17%) cell-owning adults say they have physically bumped into another person or an object because they were distracted by talking or texting on their phone. That amounts to 14% of all American adults who have been so engrossed in talking, texting or otherwise using their cell phones that they bumped into something or someone.
More about Adults Text While Driving Too here.
Posted by truecreek on May 20, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Joseph Young
They have been all over television over the past few years. You’ve seen them before. The beautifully art directed HD spots from BP. All those bright green and yellows flying around to that perfect music. It’s easy to find outstanding animated spots in just a few minutes on the web. And from what I have heard within the business, there were some spots produced recently that were in the $3 million per range. All of that backed up by a substantial national media buy.
All concepted and produced with one thought in mind: to position BP as a friendly, “we’re here with you” company that is working hard to make the world a much better place.
What a crock.
How long do you think it will be before the millions of dollars spent by BP to position themselves as the savior of our collective energy future just melts away?
When a brand screws us all like this, they become lepers. We cringe at the very thought of doing business with them. We now look at their brand as a ‘taker’, not a ‘giver.’ And in the case of BP, I suspect you will see a growing disdain for the company as the days wear on.
So I wonder when the first round of new TV spots will start up? It must suck for the agency that is responsible for producing what comes next from the company. If it were my shop, I would really have to do some soul searching before anyone spent another minute behind the lens on behalf of BP.
Posted by truecreek on May 4, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Summer is almost upon us, a time when the cinema industry generates over 40% of their total annual box office revenue. It’s a time when people go out to the movies in droves, choosing to watch the hot new movies of the summer rather than stay on the couch and sit through another season of reruns on television. According to Nielsen, the shift is dramatic, with a 13% tick up for cinema in share during the summer months.
Last year, the industry experienced a record-breaking summer, with huge hits like Transformers, The Hangover, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and many others. Coming up this summer there will be another 13 blockbusters and remakes scheduled for release on the big screen.
Here’s just a few of the flicks you can expect to see this summer at a theater near you:
Iron Man 2
Shrek Forever After 3D
Sex and the City 2
Marmaduke
Toy Story 3D
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
For most consumer marketers, cinema is the place to be this summer. And throughout the year, cinema advertising is a fantastic complement to any broadcast TV schedule. So if you are in the theater, consider yourself a smart marketer. If you’re not, give True Creek a call and let’s fix that.
Posted by truecreek on April 26, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
We recently commissioned several of our very talented writers to concept some headlines for a organization that has dedicated itself to combating distracted driving. Here are just a few. If you have a favorite, please comment and let us know.
Posted by truecreek on April 14, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
By Erik Sass
A new report from the Cinema Advertising Council and NewMediaMetrics details consumers’ emotional attachment to different media, as well as brands appearing in various media contexts. The findings suggest that cinema advertising can compete effectively with television for video advertising dollars.
Movies fared better than most other media in terms of emotional attachment, reflecting their immersive quality, and the fact that consumers will pay a fair amount for such an experience. CAC found that 44.5% of consumers that buy health and beauty products reported emotional attachment to movies, versus 29.6% for magazines, 21.2% for radio and 20.6% for magazines. Similarly, 43.9% of survey respondents who buy consumer packaged-goods and foods said they were emotionally attached to movies, compared to 28.9% for TV, 20.5% for magazines and 19.2% for magazines.
The data, summarized in CAC and NewMediaMetrics’ “360 Cross Platform Study,” were gathered in a survey of more than 3,000 people ages 13-54, categorized by the type of products they consume. It asked them to rate emotional attachment to media and brands in media on an 11-point scale, with 9-10 considered “emotionally attached.” The survey compared consumer ratings for TV, magazines, newspapers, Internet, cinema and a variety of other out-of-home channels.
Across all consumer categories, the overall attachment rating of 41.5% for movies ranked ahead of televised sports and major entertainment events, such as the Super Bowl (39.7%), Summer Olympics (26.3%), World Series (22.8%) and Oscars (16.1%).
Last year, the CAC released a study from Integrated Media Measurement showing that cinema advertising plus TV more than doubled consumer conversion rates when compared with TV alone.
The digital out-of-home industry in general has been working to bolster its measurement capabilities with new, more precise metrics in the hope of winning spending usually allocated to cable and broadcast.
Posted by truecreek on April 8, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
So, if these stats are correct, one could assume that as much as 17% of the population that has not adopted broadband would do so if they understood the nuts and bolts of how it works?
By Susannah Fox
A new report released today by John B. Horrigan, formerly of Pew Internet and now at the Federal Communications Commission, finds that 78% of adults in the U.S. are Internet users and 65% of adults have home broadband access.
Adults who do not have broadband at home fall into four categories:
Digitally Distant: 10% of the general population. Median age is 63. Half say that the Internet is not relevant to their lives or they lack the digital literacy to adopt broadband.
Digital Hopefuls: 8% of the general population. Low-income, heavily Hispanic and African American. Likely to say they want to go online, but lack the resources.
Digitally Uncomfortable: 7% of the general population. Likely to own a computer, but lack skills and interest in taking advantage of all the Internet has to offer.
Near Converts: 10% of the general population. Median age is 45. Cost is the biggest barrier to having broadband at home.
Posted by truecreek on March 26, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
My wife and I are getting ready for our annual celebration of the finer things in life, Loveapalooza. As part of the decorating committee of two, I was charged with arranging for the flowers.
Several weeks ago we received a gorgeous bouquet as a gift from our parents. The flowers were from ProFlowers.com. So I went to their site and found a perfect deal: two for one on roses. Buy a dozen, get a dozen. Now that’s the ticket. So the order was in.
When the flowers arrived two days later, I quickly looked at the roses and determined it was only a dozen, not two. So, being the ever vigilant consumer that I am, the call went out. Immediately, the ProFlowers customer service rep jumped all into my perceived floral quagmire and took control. Two dozen fresh roses were headed out the door to me for overnight delivery. With the most heart felt of apologies. And thank you so much for being a ProFlowers customer.
A minute or so later, a very professional HTML email hits my box repeating the apology and giving me the tracking number of my complimentary order of two dozen red roses. Now that is the way you handle it.
Unfortunately, it was a call I should never have made. Later that evening, my wife discovered that there actually were two dozen roses in the package, they were just stacked in a way that only showed the tops of a dozen or so. Everything was there and they looked absolutely beautiful.
Ugh.
So this morning, I sucked it up and sent an email to customer service. Yes, I blew it and you actually did send the correct amount of flowers. And please don’t hurt Gabriella, the woman who packaged the gorgeous roses. And the email was off.
Five minutes later their reply. You’re very welcome!
I suspect the flowers will arrive shortly and will be just amazing. Plus, there will be another note inside with some sort of coupon for a future purchase. Trust me, that is one coupon that will never be used.
But I can tell you that ProFlowers has a customer for life.
Posted by truecreek on March 12, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Tongue-in-cheek, but valuable none the less.
By Steve Cuno
We rarely hear about the fourth law of thermodynamics. In brief, it states that whenever a server says, “Careful, this plate is extremely hot,” an invisible force compels the customer to touch the plate. The compulsion grows as the cube of the number of decibels with which the server pronounces the word extremely.
It seems that, given a choice between heeding a voice of experience and sabotaging ourselves, many people do not just opt for, but positively execute, a mad dash for the latter. This can be as true of marketers as it is of other human-like creatures. So, for those who prefer wasting time and money, I offer the following personally witnessed, surefire shortcuts to screwing up your marketing. (I should add that narrowing it down to 12 wasn’t easy.)
Sabotage Tip 1: Don’t set firm objectives. You’re much safer stating that your goal is to “get your name out there” or to advertise because the competition does. That way, even if sales tank, you can sit back and say, “I did my job.”
Sabotage Tip 2: Put the goal where the ball lands. With a little practice, anyone can learn to retrofit objectives to results. Soon after a VP of marketing proudly showed me a new sales video, it became apparent that the video appealed to employees, but offended customers. No problem. The VP promptly claimed that the video was never intended for sales, but for training. George Orwell would have been proud.
Sabotage Tip 3: Write and design for internal approval. Authorize as many people as possible to revise or, better yet, outright veto creative work. This will ensure that creative people avoid trying to connect with the market. Instead, they will focus on creating what is sure to fly internally.
Sabotage Tip 4: It’s all about what YOU want. A major coffeehouse chain lost customers for years by refusing to fill the demand for lattes made with nonfat milk. Why did they resist? Because the CEO liked coffee the way it was made in Italy, and Italian baristas don’t use nonfat milk. Darned customers. What makes them think they should have a say in what they want in their coffee?
Sabotage Tip 5: Misuse research. Herd a bunch of people into a focus group and ask them to evaluate your campaign. Treat their comments, especially the ones you like, as if they’re statistically valid. You can also phone 5,000 people and ask them what they do, don’t, would and wouldn’t buy, and why. Assume they know.
Sabotage Tip 6: Don’t listen to your salespeople. The only thing that salespeople do is interact face-to-face, every day, with real customers who use your products. What would they know about marketing?
Sabotage Tip 7: If it’s wild and creative, go with it. If you have a killer concept that’s destined to take top honors at the next awards show, it would be a sin not to back it with your budget. Who cares whether it’s effective? It deserves to be shared!
Sabotage Tip 8: Avoid valid evidence. Proper testing and analysis let you reliably predict a direct mail strategy’s outcome before risking big bucks. But if nature had intended for us to conduct valid, predictive tests, we wouldn’t have hips to shoot from. Showing the concept to coworkers, friends, family and people in a mall, though not predictive, is faster and easier. And, only in the short run, cheaper.
Sabotage Tip 9: Don’t trust your agency. Your agency may have experts on staff, but you can still hobble them by overruling their expertise with your intuition. You can also focus on minutiae. For instance, make the art director change a border on that mail piece from black to dark blue.
Sabotage Tip 10: Trust your agency. Not trusting experts is self-sabotage, but so is trusting non-experts. Many agencies, figuring they can affix stamps as well as anyone, list “direct response marketing” as a core capability. If you are firmly committed to failure, this is no time for due diligence. Just hand them the checkbook.
Sabotage Tip 11: Mistake a slogan for a brand. Imagine a person who is fast losing friends. This person might do well to take an honest look, figure out what alienates people and make changes. But substance is such a bother. Surely this person could more easily regain friends by learning to say something like, “Hi, I’m Alex—where coolness is Number One.”
Sabotage Tip 12: Disdain proven techniques. For nearly two centuries, direct response marketers have amassed information on what works in the marketplace. Moreover, experience shows that what worked yesterday works today. But learning all that stuff is tedious, and using it might hamper your creativity. Mustn’t let that happen.
There are many ways to sabotage marketing, but this should give you a good start. If you fail to implement these recommendations, don’t come whining to me if your marketing succeeds.
Posted by truecreek on March 2, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
From Nielsen.
In a demographic view of social networking activity on mobile devices, women were found do use their phones to “tweet” and “friend” 10% more than men. And while social networking is commonly thought of as something for “the kids,” the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group.
Posted by truecreek on January 29, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
My clients know this very well by now. I love cinema advertising and think it is a great place for them to advertise. There are over 125 new movies scheduled for release between now and the end of 2010. Movies from directors like Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Oliver Stone, Jon Favreau, Ridley Scott, M. Night Shyamalan, Tony Scott, The Coen brothers and you guessed it: Sly Stallone.
Then, you have Marmaduke. Releases 6/4, starring Jeremy Piven, Ron Perlman and Amanda Seyfried.
Posted by truecreek on January 26, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
Very interesting research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It’s a hot topic of discussion here at True Creek, for sure. The premise was also the theme for a recent episode of ‘Modern Family’ on ABC.
By Margaret Shapiro
We’ve heard about the gender divide in knowledge and use of technology. It seems the gap may start with the simplest of technologies — cellphones — and at a fairly young age — middle school.
For a study published in December in the journal New Media and Society, University of Alabama at Birmingham sociologist Shelia Cotten asked nearly 1,000 middle school students to rate the different ways they used their cellphones.
The results showed boys much more than girls used their phones to play games, share photos and videos, listen to music and send e-mails. Girls tended to use their phones primarily for talking and or text messaging.
To the researchers’ surprise, the boys used the phones for talking and texting just as much as the girls — in other words, they didn’t use the “complicated features” instead of socializing, but in addition to it. “We would’ve expected that girls would use cellphones for talking and texting because females are socialized to communicate more with others than males,” said Cotten in an online video presentation of her research, “but there were no differences.”
“By these study results, we aren’t saying that parents should buy phones with fewer features for girls,” she said. “But it does point out how much more needs to be done to teach girls” about technology. “Females traditionally have perceived themselves as less skilled in terms of technology, especially with regard to computers.”
Cotten said that 60 to 70 percent of middle school kids report owning a cellphone.
More about Boys vs. Girls on Cellphones here.
Posted by truecreek on January 25, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Olga Kharif
Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — Clear Channel Communications Inc., the largest U.S. radio broadcaster, said it may be interested in signing shock jock Howard Stern, whose five-year contract at Sirius XM Radio Inc. expires at the end of 2010.
The company’s interest hinges on whether Stern would be willing to work “within the limitations” of free over-the-air radio, said John Hogan, chief executive officer of the radio division of San Antonio-based Clear Channel.
“We clearly have both the willingness and the financial wherewithal to consider high-profile talent,” Hogan said in an e-mailed statement. “We would be the most logical company for him to optimize his exposure and financial return.”
Sirius XM, which averted bankruptcy last year after John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. bought a 40 percent stake in exchange for $530 million in loans, may not be able to afford to renew the radio talk-show host’s existing contract, worth $500 million, said Tuna Amobi, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
Hogan’s remarks represent one of the first public expressions of interest after Stern, 56, said on air yesterday that he’s fielding calls from companies that want to hire him.
“Even if (a new contract) were half of what it was before, it would still be a major financial burden for Sirius,” Amobi said. “It’s a totally different game.”
Posted by truecreek on January 22, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Great article by Henry Blodget.
A few years ago, when Google announced its decision to agree to censor its China site, it was savaged for selling out.
The company had violated its own “don’t be evil” motto, critics yelled, and it was tacitly supporting the Chinese government’s outrageous censorship policy.
The critics were wrong.
Google made the right decision to build a business in China a few years ago. And it’s making the right decision now, by threatening to pull out of the country if China doesn’t relax its censorship demands.
Google’s decision to make a big public threat now, when it controls 15% to 20% of China’s search market and is known to most Chinese internet users, will put far more pressure on the Chinese government to relax its policies than a boycott of the country five years ago would have.
Google matters in China now. The announcement that Google was threatening to pull out spawned public support for the company in China. It got Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into the act. It forced the Chinese government to respond with a statement. It has grabbed the attention of investors, as well as the hundreds of other companies that do business in China and are forced to play by Chinese rules. It will focus more public attention on the reality of China’s censorship policies than any boycott ever could have.
In short, by playing ball with China until it had some real leverage, Google has a much better chance of actually forcing the government to change.
More about Google Has Played the China Situation Brilliantly here.
