Archive for the ‘Digital media’ Category
Nike judged on 10 year-old brand name
July 18th, 2008
Those of you reading this in the UK will know that knives are hot news in the British media at the moment, due to a spate of stabbings mainly focused in the London area. It’s an unfortunate and horrible youth culture issue which has reached the highest level of Government and is covered daily by all the major news outlets.
So, on reading that Nike has had to withdraw its shoe range oddly titled ‘Air Stab’ i was a little surprised to say the least. Not that the range had been withdrawn, but that it existed in the first place. Surely no brand could be that callous or stupid to actually try and benefit from this horrible situation? Well no, of course not, but the headlines may have already done the damage.
On further investigation, according to the BBC’s article, it turns out that the shoe was first launched in 1988 as a STABility running shoe, which led to the name: Air Stab. The range was then relaunched two years ago, and Nike made the decision to remove the range from its London store in the light of recent issues. Some might argue they should have removed it earlier, but it’s not quite the story that one might first assume.
However, and unfortunately for Nike, the story doesn’t end there. Nike also has a shoe range called Pocketknife, and the discussion around whether this should be removed as well is gaining pace, check Brand Republic’s forum as an example.
From my perspective i certainly don’t think the name of a sports shoe will affect crime, but it could be argued that the names are ill-advised. I expect Nike’s UK PR team have been busy over the last few days.
Chris Littmann’s post on the Sporting Blog tells the other side of the story.
Google’s Pirates vs Viacom’s Snoops
July 4th, 2008
No, i’m not talking about a sponsorship-crazed football match; I’m referring to the Google v Viacom lawsuit in the U.S., which, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, has stirred up a whole load of privacy and data issues for us all to argue about over the coming weeks and months.
However, for me, the issue is why request this data in the first place? What is Viacom trying to prove? According to the ruling, Viacom apparently needs access to the personal data of more than 100 million people to build a case against Google’s (YouTube) alleged piracy of various Viacom content, originating from the likes of MTV and Nickelodeon.
No matter how outrageous getting access to all that personal data to fight a court case is, do we really think Viacom has done this to conduct a detailed examination of the viewing habits of millions of people around the world, as some have suggested? Personally I doubt Viacom would be that obvious, but in the cold light of day, i’m struggling with the alternatives.
What can they do? Review all that data, win the case and disrupt the movement of content on the web just because they are fighting a losing battle against content sharing in the long term? Or, somehow use that data to gain advantage.
Seems very odd, especially when the data required to prove YouTube’s piracy, or not, is most likely available via other means.
Maybe Viacom is taking some sort of reverse privacy stand and showing us all how much data large web-based content providers hold on us all, and in fact succeeding where the U.S. Government failed in getting Google to hand over its data.
Maybe it’s just getting one over on Google.
Either way, Google is fighting to be allowed to clean the data of personal information. So we shall see.
Bobbie Johnson offers a good write-up of the story in the Guardian.
Top Followed Tech Twitters And Their Tag Clouds
June 20th, 2008
Today I have been delving into the top followed Twitters Twitter statistics to find out what they talk about and the best way to visually do this is via a tag cloud.
First off, in no particular order we have Robert Scoble or the Scobleizer as he likes to be called, his Twitter bio says “Bio Tech geek blogger”
Click on the tag cloud to see the full size preview:
Next up we have Guy Kawasaki his Twitter bio reads “ Alltop, Garage, and Truemors”
Chris Brogan is next, his Twitter bio reads” Social media type, but love the emerging enterprise tech space too”
Jeremiah Owyang Senior Analyst at Forrester Research: Social Computing.
Loic Le Meur serial entrepreneur & blogger
What do these tag clouds tell us:
After a quick review of the tag clouds some of the most popular words seem to be Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Friend Feed. Other prominent words were related to their own products e.g. Seesmic for Loic Le Meur. There was also a lot of @ loving between each other!
If you want to find out about other Twitter tag clouds go to Twitter Stats
June 19th, 2008
So who caught Mike Butcher commenting on the AP content issue on Sky News last night? Mike has linked to a recording on his post this morning. Well done Mike!
When digital content issues reach the broadcast media you know it’s either big, or has been going on for a while, and in this case it’s both.
To recap, Associated Press has announced that it doesn’t want anyone quoting more than four words from its articles without payment.
I’m sorry, before we go any further, have I just entered a time warp? Have we shot back a few years to the early days of blogging when all these arguments were vaguely relevant? Don’t get me wrong, I fully support everyone who is fighting AP on this, but why do it? Why now? What’s the deal? Surely this can only end one way?
Even if AP is successful in stopping everyone that uses more than four words without payment, which let’s face it is financially and practically impossible, what do they stand to gain? Hold back the movement of content? Freeze the evolution of open communications? Become the new hate figure for digital media?
Help me out here.
I’m not going to bang on about the ‘why’ this is so ridiculous - many high profile bloggers have already put the argument across very clearly and eloquently , such as Arrington and Jarvis and as Mike Butcher said last night on Sky news: “It’s absolutely pointless!” Oh and: “Bananas”.
The one good thing to come out of this situation is to see some of the highest-profile bloggers united in a shared cause. Just watch them go now! AP, i almost feel sorry for you!
May 21st, 2008
At Liberate Media we’ve been tackling one of the biggest issues facing the PR industry today, the skills crisis.
We thought it might be helpful to overview our thoughts on the subject in a podcast, which we’ve used to identify a few of the problems and share some insight into how we’re dealing with the matter.
Let us know your thoughts on the subject.
To Listen or to down load the podcast click here
