Ged Carroll

Search results for: “privacy”

  • Coca Cola marketing stunt

    Coca Cola, the troubled beverage company is in the midst of a major marketing promotion to try and bolster sales of its signature drink. Throughout the US, Coca-Cola has put 120 special cans into multipacks of original Coke. These cans look like a Coke, feel like a Coke, but instead of the secret formula contain a GPS device and a cell phone courtesy of Airtel.

    You find the can, you activate it and the marketing team can show up at any time in a Bell Jetranger to drop a giant 4WD off for you – with surprise being the operative word. This is in a country where security is verging on paranoia since 11/9/2001, has the highest number of gun nuts, conspiracy theorists and gangbangers.

    Now, not that I am prejudiced or anything but why would you want to be surprised by a bunch of Coca Cola marketers playing at being the NSA a la Sneakers or Enemy of the State?

    Big Brother Awards

    Privacy International tackles some of the most prevalent civil rights abuses currently occuring in the West. The decline of the right to privacy. Here is details of their forthcoming Big Brother Awards to be held at the London School of Economics. More marketing related content here.

  • Plaxo Is the New Google?

    Plaxo is a useful addition to the arsenal of the knowledge worker. We go through lives developing thousands of connections but probably only keep in regular contact with a couple of hundred. (This is broadly in line with the Dunbar number proposed by anthropologist Robin Dunbar.)

    Plaxo vs. Google missions

    Where Google plans to organise all the world’s information, Plaxo seeks to organise all our address books.

    With Plaxo you complete an account and update it if you move jobs, that way your looser network can keep up to date if they are members of Plaxo too.

    Pros

    – Cheap, free software, you only pay for support. That also means limited growth

    Cons

    – Only works with Outlook at the moment, so not great for people orientated businesses like the creative industries, how about conduits for Lotus Notes, Entourage and Apple iSync?

    – Privacy concerns, where there’s data there’s risk and businesses are increasingly using online services to run their businesses; it makes sense for consumers to use similar services to run Me, Inc. Privacy restrictions makes it harder for Plaxo to monetise customer data held

    – Is reliant on a critical mass of users; Plaxo only updates less than 9 per cent of my contacts and its user base does not seem to be expanding at the rate of Friendster or LinkedIn

    Anyway, make up your own mind by watching an interview on CBS Marketwatch with the founders. More technology related content here.

    More information

    Dunbar, R. I. M. (1992). “Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates”. Journal of Human Evolution.

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