What a Saab Story

By: Staci De Leon

Saab dealers, owners and investors are experiencing what GM experienced in 2009, a downfall in the automobile sector of the economy.

Over 200 dealers called it quits when Saab recently announced it bankruptcy plans, putting them out of business or scrambling to find partners. Not only is it bad for the dealers, but for Saab owners. Now that the bankruptcy papers have been filed that means an end to Saab manufacturing, meaning a shortage of parts. And since Saab is a foreign-made vehicle, the price of getting it fixed will go up, or even worse, shops will turn you down because of the difficulty of finding Saab parts.

Although this is going on, some say the Saab brand may still have a chance since, "half-dozen parties are considering buying the business and restarting assembly, according to the court- appointed Swedish attorneys handling the bankruptcy."

To read more about this Saab story, click on this link:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-12/saab-dealers-driving-to-maserati-with-unfolding-bankruptcy-cars.html

TCU is now paying for some bad choice their football players and students have made. On February 1st, 82 of the players supposedly failed a surprise drug test leading to 19 current or former TCU students being arrested for allegedly dealing drugs. Four of those arrested were TCU football players- including Tanner Brock, the team's leading tackler in 2010 and an honorable mention on the All-American team, as well as defensive lineman D.J. Yendry, offensive tackle Tyler Horn and safety Devin Johnson.
And Johnson, thinking he was speaking to fellow students, told undercover police officers that a whopping 82 football players supposedly failed a surprise drug test on Feb. 1st leading the officers to be able to make the arrests. The four football players have all been accused of being involved with the selling of marijuana to undercover cops multiple times with the most recent time being Feb. 7th.
The university said that all students still registered at TCU who were involved in the arrests have been suspended.
The Horned Frogs, currently members of the Mountain West Conference, are slated to move to the Big 12 next year. Over the last four seasons the team has gone 47-5 and won the 2011 Rose Bowl. Until recently, the team had been one of the only teams ranked among the nation's top 25 that had players with clean police records. Which only makes one wonder how long they have been getting away with this scandal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/post/tcu-drug-arrests-a-stain-on-football-program/2012/02/16/gIQA9es2HR_blog.html

The Voice has found its voice

NBC's singing competition is a whisper away from achieving the unthinkable: unseating 11-season Fox juggernaut American Idol from its ratings throne, particularly among the key younger viewers that networks and their advertisers covet.

So how did the Voice do it?

It recruits contestants, rather than hosting open auditions, but has them perform for judges whose spinning seats are turned away to avoid the influence of singers' appearances.

Monday's episode drew 16.3 million viewers, just 13% shy of last week's Idol average, and matched those Idol episodes among ages 18-49 while beating it among the younger half of that group. A big help: NBC's season opener Feb. 5 enjoyed a record-setting Super Bowl lead-in, which delivered nearly 38 million viewers to the show.

When I heard the Voice would be on after the Super Bowl, I thought why not tune in to watch it. That was my first episode to ever watch.

But, no one is crying (yet) for Idol, despite declines of nearly 20% this season and an aging viewership. (The average Idol viewer is 47, up three years from last season, while The Voice's is 43.)

Though I would be sad to see Idol go, I haven't watched since Simon left. If that shows you were my loyalties lie! The Voice has a younger vibe, younger judges, fresher feel, which could be what the draw to the show is. Every one is always wanting something new.

Click Here to view story

"Love hath no fury like a flower customer scorned."

1-800-Flowers’ no good, very bad Valentine’s Day

1-800-Flowers flubs one of their biggest selling days of the year and quickly becomes flooded with complaints via Facebook and Twitter. To make matters worse, private messages to upset customers get tweeted by their social media expert, while competing florists capitalize on this massive upset.

This story cracks me up more than it should. Having witnessed first hand the poor customer service of 1-800-Flowers, I'm surprised they didn't have a better crisis plan ready. Their whole system seems sloppy and unprofessional.

But for local florists, this is a great story to help market their business.

Guyliner, Murses, Bromance: Why not Manentine's Day?

Click here to view the article.

Manentine’s Day, a new holiday on March 14 that is just like Valentine’s Day but celebrates the man in the relationship, was launched several weeks ago and just announced its plans to partner up with SpringLeap to start an online design contest.

The “Manentine’s Day Best in Swag Contest” runs from February 13- March 18 and is aimed at finding a “design that embodies the essence of what it means to love in a manly way.” The contest winner receives10% royalty off all of the product profits, as well as bragging rights. “Best in Swag” is not the first contest to be launched Manentine’s Day, however. There is also a “Why I Love Manentine’s Day” YouTube video contest still going on, which started February 4 and ends March 1.

From the looks of it, Manentine’s Day is off to a pretty strong launch with interactive contests, a witty concept, social media, press releases and branding. Clearly its creators have a strong sense of the important roles that public relations and fresh ideas play in a new business' survival.

I think Manentine’s Day is a great idea and will catch on like wildfire. I mean it’s the 21^st century, and everything is—or should be— 50/50 in a relationship. Why not dedicate a day to the men, also? ... Or give them an excuse to celebrate their single-dom with their bros!

Click here for History of Manentine's Day; Click here for Rules of Manentine's Day

Does PETA ad featuring a young, pantsless woman in a neckbrace promote veganism, or offend?

This article talks about how PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is known for its provocative ads, many of them featuring women in various states of undress that aim to draw attention to animal rights.

However, Monday's ad may have crossed the line for some viewers. It shows a limping, pantless women with a neckbrace, struggling to carry a bag of vegetables home from the store. "The woman suffers from 'Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom Out of Me,' a painful condition that occurs when boyfriends go vegan and can suddenly bring it like a tantric porn star," Kevin Nealon, the narrator of the ad said.

The ad even shows a clip implying that the couple is having raunchy sex. The boyfriend is then shown fixing a hole in the wall while the woman undresses. "Oh your feeling better?" he asks as she has a mischevious grin on her face.

The campaign is intended to promote veganism and animal rights by implying that men who go vegan have crazy sex skills and that women like it. But does it also promote violence against women?

Lisa Lange, a senior vice president for PETA says the ad is playful and the woman is happy. However, I agree with Michael Learmonth, digital editor at Advertising Age. Although PETA is going for shock value, I dont think showing a woman beat up is the right way to gain attention and promote animal rights.

I think this is bad PR for PETA and portrays their organization as sex crazed, women beating advocates. But its okay because they love animals right? Although their organization is for a good cause and is intended to stop violence against animals, its brings about the greater social issue of violence against women.

Furthermore, this is not the first time PETA has been accused of using sex to gain coverage. Prior to the Super Bowl, PETA released a "Girls Gone Wild"- style anti-milk ad that it said was banned from the broadcast. The Super Bowl is known for using sex to sell ads so the fact that they rejected PETA's ad must mean it was pretty bad.

There are other methods besides objectifying women to promote awareness against animal cruelty. I think by using their current methods, PETA is downplaying the severity of its main purpose to stop animal cruelty and therefore people will not take them seriously. They are sending a bad message to the public, which in turn is ruining the company's image.

For more information about the aritcle and to view the ad go to http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/does-peta-ad-featuring-young-pantsless-woman-neckbrace-222920818.html

Whitney Houston's Sudden Death

As many know or have seen the Grammy's, including all the festivities surroundiong the event, took place this past Sunday. To no one's surprise, british recording artist, Adele was the "Cinderella story" of the night, sweeping the award show with mutliple wins.

However, the show was overshadowed with the pressing of music icon, Whitney Houston's death just a day prior to the event. With media coverage of every level covering the ordeal, it was hard to escape the Houston frantic. Personally, I heard the sad news through Twitter while at the movies, viewing "The Vow." To see how the majority of the audience entered normally and when the movie ended buzzed of the Whitney Houston story was truly a sight to see.

The power of social media continues to grow and become the leading method in breaking hard news over traditonal media. I found the statistics on news breaking pertaining to Whitney Houston's death, when it broke, and how fast on "Media Culpa," a media and public relations website.

According to "Media Culpa," the news spread on Twitter at the speed of over 1,000 tweets per second.

Additional information was found on "Topsy Labs," a social media blog.

"Topsy Labs" reported new was first broken at 4:15 pm, by a relative of a hotel worker who reportedly found Houston.

"omgg , my aunt tiffany who work for whitney houston just found whitney houston dead in the tub . such ashame & sad :( "

The first full hour after the news broke saw 2,481,652 tweets and retweets, peaking at 61,227 tweets at 5.23 pm (all times are PST). That is over a thousand tweets a second, not quite as much as during the Superbowl but still a lot.

The most retweeted article after the news broke was from MSNBC, with 13 thousand tweets linking to it. Friends, musicians and celebrities tweeted out their condolences, each of them getting retweeted thousands of times: Rapper Lil Wayne has the record, with over 29,000 retweets as of the time of writing this post. Others who were widely retweeted include: Justin Bieber (15,000), Nicki Minaj (8,739), Katy Perry (8,394), Mariah Carey (6,305) and Christina Aguillera (4,321).

Hundreds of thousands of people mourned her passing away, posting to Twitter links to over 3,000 video recordings of Whitney Houston’s songs.

As more news developes, social will continue to buzz.

For more information:

Media Culpa
http://www.kullin.net/2012/02/whitney-houston-is-dead-twitter-user-beats-media/

Topsy Labs
http://topsylabs.com/2012/02/12/2-5-million-tweets-an-hour-as-news-of-whitney-houstons-death-spreads/