Chipotle - Blog# 7

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. is multinational company running a chain of restaurants in the US, UK, Canada, Germany and France among other developed countries. It services fall in the hospitality and catering industry and specializes in burritos and tacos as food delicacies whose origin is Mexico. The company has been using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to interact with its clients and popularize its services on these social platforms. However, on July 2013, Chipotle intentionally fooled Twitter users by creating an impression that its Twitter account had been hacked. The company ran a stream of tweets on this platform, which confused its followers and other users of Twitter some of which seemed to indicate that an unknown individual was misusing their account. One of the tweets read, “Hi sweetie, can you please pick up some lime, salt and onions? Twitter” (ARC Co., 2013).

Chipotle later admitted that it had deliberately forged the hacking incidence as part of their unexpected campaign, which sought to popularize the chain restaurants. Many Twitter users were annoyed by the incidence terming it as online social interference. It was unethical and unprofessional to create such an impression aiming to find more followers (Bruce & German, 2011) The incidence indicated poor understanding of the professional ethics in when using social sites such as posting indecent photos, untruthful comments and making false statements in with the aim of catching user’s attention (Rogerson & Gotterbarn, 2014). While no legal action was taken for Chipotle’s actions, many people felt that advertisement or campaigns should have been publicized first. It would be fair if the company announced the start of an advertising campaign and specify the duration to avoid online social infringement and negative response from existing and potential clients.

 References

ARC Co. (2013). Social Justice: Chipotle’s Pathetic Misuse of Social Media. Retrieved: 18/9/2014 from http://arcompany.co/social-justice-chipotles-pathetic-misuse-of-social-media/

Bruce, D. & German, K. (2011). The Ethics of Emerging Media: Information, Social Norms, and New Media Technology, New Jersey, NJ: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Rogerson, S. & Gotterbarn, D. The Ethics of Software Project Management. Retrieved: 18/9/2014 from http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/staff/Srog/teaching/sweden.htm

CISCO - Blog# 6

           Enterprise 2.0 is the use of social networking sites and software by business organizations to boost interaction between companies and their clients. The emerging trend shows that companies are adopting the new technique for communication and advertising (Cook, 2008). CISCO, a multinational corporation dealing in networking equipment, has largely employed social networking sites in launching products and popularizing them. By initiating a proper framework of social networking, an organization would enjoy great financial benefits.

Since its involvement with social networking sites in 2008, CISCO opened what researchers called virtual offices; blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts, YouTube Video broadcasting channels, Flickr and Second Life. Within 4 years, the corporation was able to attract more prospective clients which made the launch of their products less costly. Particularly, more than 9000 people attended their product launch after launching it on social media which experts argued it was 90 times the previous attendance, generated great attention from article writers, attracted more than 40 million online viewers and led to the awarding of CISCO as the Best Marketing organization. In addition, the total cost of these operations was a sixth of the total costs incurred when using traditional methods. The company mobilized its management personnel and crafted the policies that were distributed across its branches (Hibbard, 2010).

             CISCO’s use of social technologies helped them to save over $100,000 on each product launch. These ROI stats result from pre-launch of products on social sites and enhanced interactions. Through these social networks, an organization could increase sales by more than 27% each month and in a span of 3 months sales could be up by more than 100% compared to old methods of product marketing (Fisher, 2014). One of the greatest challenges of this project is getting people to engage in the new emergent social networks but the financial gains are phenomenal.

 

 References

Cook, N. (2008). Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work. New York, NY: Gower Publishing, Ltd.

Fisher, L. (2014). The ROI of Social Media: 10 Case Studies. Retrieved 12 September 2014 from http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/07/16/the-roi-of-social-media-10-case-studies/

Hibbard, C. (2010). How Social Media Helped Cisco Shave $100,000+ Off a Product Launch Retrieved 12 September 2014 from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/cisco-social-media product-launch/

Coles - Blog# 5

            Coles Supermarket is one of the leading retail supermarkets/groceries in Australia headquartered in Collingwood, Melbourne. The supermarket, founded in early 1914 by Ian J. W. McLeod, operates more than 700 stores across Australia and New Zealand today. Coles Supermarket has five distinct levels of private or generic label brands including Coles Smart Buy, Coles Green Choice, Coles Finest, Coles Organic, Coles Simply Less, and Coles Clothing. Both brands introduce and sell different products that are offered under the Umbrella of Coles Supermarket.  The products range from home appliances, to foodstuff and clothing.

            Coles Supermarkets, like other retail stores, widely uses social technology to conduct its operation as well as offer products and services to their customers. For example, Coles Supermarket uses social networks such as Facebook to market its products to some of its clients. Presently, the company has 803,723 likes on Facebook. This means that the company has a strong presence on social networks. Coles Supermarket has also implemented social network such as twitter in order to attract more consumers.

            Coles Supermarket has largely invested in social networks. Through this social technology, McKinsey value levers could be realized through effective communication. Through the social networking platform such as Facebook, Coles Supermarket is able to communicate directly to its consumers. Consumers can air their concerns directly to the management, and, for that reason, the management is able to ensure that their products and services matches the taste and preferences of the consumers. In conclusion, social technology has helped the company realize effective communication as well as increased productivity because it is able to listen to its customer then introduce products that reflect the needs of the customers.

 References

Coles’ official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/coles?ref=br_tf

Coles’ official website: http://www.coles.com.au

Chui, M., & McKinsey and Company. (2012). The social economy: Unlocking value and             productivity through social technologies. New York: McKinsey & Company.