Planetaki Planet example

Hasbro and Zynga make a deal, toys and games incoming

2012-02-11T06:48:44Z

Hasbro has struck a deal with Zynga to produce toys and games based on the social developer's catalogue of rich, nuanced IPs, which is great news if you've ever found yourself wishing you could somehow continue to give Zynga all of your money, even when you're away from your computer and smartphone.

Now, Hasbro's definition of "games" is more board-oriented than Zynga's, and while the licensing arrangement allows for "co-branded merchandise," it doesn't allow Zynga to make games based on Hasbro brands. The first products will hit store shelves sometime this fall, and while no specifics toys or board games have been announced we've got a feeling that My Little Ponyville and Ouija With Friends aren't that unlikely.

Continue reading Hasbro and Zynga make a deal, toys and games incoming

Hasbro and Zynga make a deal, toys and games incoming originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dennis Santiago: FDIC Shutters Banks in Illinois and Indiana

2012-02-11T06:48:02Z

On Friday, February 10, 2012 the FDIC shifted bank closure activity from the South to the center of the country this week failing Charter National Bank and Trust in Hoffman Estates, Illinois and SCB Bank of Shelbyville, Indiana. SCB at $200B assets was the larger of the two and began to hemorrhage significantly in the 2nd quarter of 2011. It will reopen as part of First Merchants Bank, National Association on Monday. Charter National Bank and Trust was down to $98M in assets as of 3Q2011 and had been living with elevated stress indications from Institutional Risk Analytics (IRA) since March of 2009. Like SCB, Charter also experienced an increase in operating loss rates beginning around the 1st to 2nd quarter of 2011. Charter will reopen as part of Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association on Monday.

Complete forensic reports can be found here,

Police raid on Occupy DC

2012-02-11T06:48:10Z

Quinn Norton's first-person account of the police raid on Occupy DC for Wired is riveting and scary. The Occupy camp that was demolished was riven by a deep disagreement on tactics and politics, and the police raid was a dramatic change from the good relations the camp had enjoyed with local law enforcement.

Screams of anger, panic, and pain began to cut through the grey air, and I managed to get back into the crowd a bit, away from the police. In the midst of the pressed and screaming crowd I saw two occupiers, Mo and Georgia, find each other, and hug. They stayed there, oblivious to the cacophony around them, both their eyes glassy and vacant and a little too wide open.

I grabbed a woman I recognized from the info tent and pointed to them. “Get them out of here,” I told her. She just looked at me for a moment in the chaos, and I repeated, “Get them the fuck out of here.” She nodded and grabbed them, still hugging. I spun around, and the riot line was on me. Pushed from every direction, I tripped over something behind me which turned out to be a person on the ground. The officer in front of me screamed “Move back!” but other people were falling on the fallen, and there was no way to move back without trampling them, and no way to stay without being trampled.

Occupy DC Evicted From a Winter of Communal Discontent

brokep on the entertainment industry

2012-02-11T06:48:10Z

Peter Sunde, the notorious and entrepreneurial "brokep" who co-founded the Pirate Bay, writes in Wired about his view on the entertainment industry's corruption and the cluelessness of the lawmakers who side with them: "Evidently, Warner Brothers felt that the investigation was taking too long. The studio contacted the police officer in charge of the investigation (one person that worked mostly by himself) and before I had even been questioned by him, he interviewed for a job with Warner Brothers."

Lorena Sarbu: My First Lincoln Center Collection!

2012-02-11T06:48:02Z

When I think of Lincoln Center, I think about culture: fashion, music, dance. I never imagined that I would be thinking about my own Fall 2012 eveningwear collection there.
Read More...
More on New York Fashion Week

DanRad Encourages Young Authors With 500 WORDS!

2012-02-11T06:48:47Z

Famous for playing a book character, Daniel Radcliffe doesn't mind taking time out to encourage young authors.

500 WORDS is a short story competition for children 13 and younger in England. Winners get several free books as well as 500 books for their school!

DanRad gave his tips on how to succeed in the competition as well as his favorite book growing up.

What's his fave?! Holes by Louis Sachar!

Check out the video above and the pics below to see DanRad support young authors!

Future Soldiers Could Go to War Wearing Fish-Scale Armor [War]

2012-02-11T06:47:57Z

Piranha have a well-earned reputation for being able and willing to eat just about anything in their path. One of the few exceptions is the Arapaima, a six-foot long, 300-pound Amazonian predator with bony scales capable of withstanding the toothy onslaught. Researchers are now working to adapt the Arapaima's defenses to protect our own squishy bits. More »

This weekend on pay-purr-view:

2012-02-11T06:47:44Z

This weekend on pay-purr-view: lolcat vs. orly owlClick “Select” on your remote or throw a cornish hen at your TV to subscribe

itz teh battlol ob teh decayd!

LoL by:

TooManyCats

Picture by: Unknown

Hong Kong, China: Cross-border Self-drive Tour Instigates Fear and Anger

2012-02-11T06:51:11Z

Tension between Hong Kong and mainland China has mushroomed in recent months. While small conflicts, such as a train scuffle, have ignited fury, the recent introduction of a cross-border self-drive tour scheme, signed by the Hong Kong and Guangdong governments without public consultation, has instigated a new round of social panic and anger among Hong Kong people. Some netizens even compare the situation of Hong Kong to Tibet and Xinjiang, where ethnic conflicts have developed into separatism and repression.

The image below, which has been shared more than 130 times via Facebook, is a re-creation of a photo taken recently in Tibet. The slogan on the military vehicle was originally “Han Chinese and Tibetan are one family” (漢藏一家親. It has been widely circulate via micro-blogs to mock the central government's policy in Tibet that the “family” is united by military force. The Hong Kong version of the photo was produced a famous blogger, Kay Lam & Fokguy remix team. The background of the photo is the busiest commercial district in Hong Kong, Causeway Bay and the slogan on the military vehicle has changed into “China and Hong Kong are one family” (中港一家親).

The photo's subtitle states [zh]:
‎

2015 年 SOGO 門口．自駕遊 X 中港一家親幻想圖（來自 2012 年駐西藏的解放軍車）

Taken in font of SOGO in 2015. An imaginary photo of ‘cross-border self-drive tour’ and ‘China and Hong Kong being one family’.

The image is a mockery of the newly announced “Self-Drive Tour” scheme, which allows private cars from mainland China to enter Hong Kong without having a local license. User, Bay area, posts [zh] an article at inmediahk explaining the background of the scheme:

近日驚見到沒有港人看的左報新聞，原來林瑞麟及鄭汝樺已在毫無諮詢的情況下私自與大陸簽訂了「私家車自由行」的條款，未來三月內地私家車就可直入市區，橫衝直撞每個角落，意象可怖。我們可以預視到，深圳廣州現時的交通文化，將會嚴重衝擊全港的交通系統：我們香港第一個小悅悅亦將會很快誕生。

Recently Hong Kong people are surprised by the pro-Beijing's newspaper's news that Stephen Lam [Chief Secretary of Hong Kong government] and Eva Cheng [Head of the Transportation and Housing Bureau] had signed an agreement with mainland Chinese government on “Private vehicle visit scheme”. Within three months, private vehicles from mainland China can ride into the city, reaching every corner at full speed. Imaginating such scenes is horrifying. We can predict that the driving culture from Shenzhen and Guangzhou would crush our transportation system: Xiao Yue Yue [a baby girl killed by hit and run driver in Guangzhou] will soon appear in Hong Kong.

Dictionary of Politically Incorrect Hong Kong Cantonese has translated some discussions among Facebook users:

Chan: Individual visit scheme isn’t enough and there will even be self-drive tour… Don’t fool me! Mainlander drivers don’t follow rules. When I was in China, I dared not to cross roads. Their driving skill and unfamiliarity with the roads of Hong Kong, I really afraid that the no. of traffic accidents are going to surge.

Cest la Vie: Population density, usage of road, parking, driving attitude, environmental problem, law enforcement problem, life risking problem…There are so many problems. Why do self-drive tour have to be implemented? Crazy?

Everybody should protect the remaining freedom of Hong Kong. Left handed drive and right handed drive will harm many innocent citizens. Besides, reckless Mainland Chinese drivers really make people shivering. Hong Kong citizen have to object that. Put everybody’s safety to the first priority. Please!

Apart from road safety, air pollution and traffic jams, people are angry about the under-table arrangement of cross-border policy. As by Land Justice League, a civic group advocating social justice and democracy, pointed out :

中港跨境政策一直是本地政治團體和社會運動鞭長莫及的「黑洞」，整套操作完全排斥市民﹝其實是兩地人民﹞，甚至是立法會的參與。由議題設定、研究、制訂政策，市民全不知情，無從過問，每次都是見到曾蔭權或唐英年或林瑞麟與國內官員排排企簽約，市民才透過愈來愈麻木的主流記者得悉，「阿爺又俾著數啦/中央又挺港啦」。

Cross-border policy is like a “black hole” and local political parties and civil societies do not have any say in the process. The negotiation has excluded all citizens, both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese citizens. Even the Legislative Council cannot participate in the discussion. There is no way for us to know about their agenda and considerations. Only when mainstream media reports about Donald Tsang of Stephen Lam signing the agreement with mainland officials, do we know that “grandpa [meaning central government] is offering policy favors to Hong Kong again”.

我們每次都是看人家在簽我們的條約，我們從來沒有一次屬於香港人的、可以引以自豪的「簽約儀式」。香港這個不斷「被簽約」的命運共同體要自主，第一步是要離開、違背、拒絕、撕毀綑綁着我們的條約、協議和遊戲規則…

They are signing all these agreements for us, but the agreements do not belong to Hong Kong people. There is nothing to be proud of. Hong Kong needs to be independent from all these “unequal treaties”, the first step is to walk away, reject and tear apart from all these agreements, treaties and political games that trap us in unequal relations…

China: Half of the journalists imprisoned are Tibetan or Uyghur

2012-02-11T06:51:12Z

The Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) reports that more than half of the 27 journalists imprisoned in China are ethnic Tibetan or Uyghur.

Gelmania

2012-02-11T06:46:24Z

via http://brettgelman.tumblr.com/

Wucius Wong — The New Graphic

2012-02-11T06:46:24Z

via http://www.thenewgraphic.com/2011/06/wucius-wong/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNewGraphic+%28The+New+Graphic%29

Super Mario Converse, low-top editions

2012-02-11T06:48:11Z

Converse will release two different styles of Super Mario low-top in Japan in March 2012 -- I like the overall look, though I think I'd prefer them in canvas over leather.

It comes in a black and a white premium leather version, with the Converse star logo being replaced with the star icon from the iconic video game. Furthermore the colors of the sneaker have been adapted to the signature colors of the Super Mario character and the Super Mario Bros., Mario and Luigi, are printed on the heel of the sneakers.

Converse One Star Super Mario Bros. OX (via Geekologie)

Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ Turns 1 on a Friday: What’s Your Favorite Memory?

2012-02-11T06:48:28Z

A year ago, Rebecca Black’s unforgettable viral tune “Friday” first appeared on YouTube. Since then, the massively autotuned “Friday” music video has reached millions upon millions of eyes, spawned countless parodies and caught the attention of many celebrities.

To honor the jam, which eventually became Know Your Meme‘s top meme of 2011, we’re looking back at the high-profile musicians and famous tech personalities who have supported Black, covered the song or parodied it for its comedic glory (see list below).

Although released on Feb. 10, 2011, “Friday” exploded onto our radars in March as the song started attracting Justin Bieber-esque YouTube fame and much ridicule for its simple lyrics, low-budget music video and apparent autotuned vocals. Dust began to settle on the song as 2011 came to a close. However, in November, it returned for a reprieve in Kohl’s Black Friday ad.

Black acknowledged the 1-year anniversary Friday night in this tweet:

i just can’t believe how different life can be in just a year. #thankyou #humbled

— Rebecca Black (@MsRebeccaBlack) February 11, 2012

SEE ALSO: Rebecca Black’s Second YouTube Single Gets 10 Million Views in 3 Days [VIDEO]

What has been your favorite “Friday” memory — whether that be an experience hearing it offline or a moment discovering a funny online spoof? I remember jamming out to it on a Saturday during a vacation in Phoenix and then again poolside the following day. Whomp.

5 Memorable Celebrity-Infused ‘Friday’ Moments

1. Lady Gaga Calls YouTube Star Rebecca Black a Genius: “I say Rebecca Black is a genius and that anybody telling her she’s cheesy is full of sh*t,” said Lady Gaga during the Q&A portion of “Google Goes Gaga” in March. Even after Gaga called then-13-year-old Black a “genius,” the ridicule toward the song still hit a fever pitch, causing Black to leave middle school.
2. Conan Takes on Rebecca Black With “Thursday”:
3. Startups and VCs Parody Rebecca Black’s “Friday”: Startup founders and employees have just put their spin on the Internet’s biggest hit of 2011. We spotted these startups (let us know if you spy any others): 33Across, AppNexus, Birchbox, Bitcasa, Cabana, FanBridge, Get Satisfaction, GroupMe, Hotel Tonight, Jelli, Kiwi Crate, Mashery, MemSQL, ModCloth, Monetate, Path, RockMelt, SinglePlatform, TaskRabbit, Turntable.fm, Warby Parker and Xobni.
4a. Katy Perry Video Features Rebecca Black Cameo:
4b. Katy Perry Covers “Friday” in Concert:
5. Glee Covers “Friday” on TV:

More About: celebrities, conan o'brien, Entertainment, Friday, katy-perry, Lady Gaga, memes, Music, parody, Rebecca Black, spoofs, Startups, viral videos

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In Case You Missed It….

2012-02-11T06:48:47Z

CLICK HERE to catch up on all the celebrity juice you may have missed this week!
CLICK HERE to catch up on all the celebrity juice you may have missed this week!
CLICK HERE to catch up on all the celebrity juice you may have missed this week!
CLICK HERE to catch up on all the celebrity juice you may have missed this week!
CLICK HERE to catch up on all the celebrity juice you may have missed this week!

Instagram Now Automatically Beautifies Your Snapshots [Apps]

2012-02-11T06:47:57Z

Rejoice iPhone photogs, the newest version of Instagram is now available! The immensely popular app has just updated to version 2.1 and boasts some impressive new features. More »

tumblr_ls8x10Zdfw1qhlnuqo1_1280.jpg 600×900 pixels

2012-02-11T06:46:24Z

via http://testosteroneboy.tumblr.com/post/10772781804

WRUP: All the Reckoning

2012-02-11T06:48:44Z

So much Reckoning this weekend.

What's everyone playing?

Continue reading WRUP: All the Reckoning

WRUP: All the Reckoning originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook Already Knows What You'll Be Listening to the Next Time You Get Dumped [Facebook]

2012-02-11T06:47:57Z

Facebook knows when you've met someone and it knows when you break up. We tell Facebook these things. For some, a relationship doesn't officially start until it's reflected in the Relationship field on Facebook, and it's not really over until Facebook says it is. More »

Scarlett Johansson’s In A Bikini

2012-02-11T06:50:57Z

I don’t normally post at 11 o’clock on a Friday night, but when it’s People Who’ve Had Sex With Sean Penn’s Penis Yet Somehow Still Look Great In A Bikini Day, all bets are off. So here’s Scarlett Johansson and her new boyfriend Nate Naylor (actual name) in Hawaii this afternoon which means Ryan Reynolds Read More ...

Ryan Phillippe Gets The Lead In CBS Drama Pilot

2012-02-11T06:48:47Z

Ryan Phillippe is coming to TV!

He will play the lead in an untitled CBS drama pilot, previously titled Golden Boy.

Ryan will play supercop Clark, who shoots through the ranks to become police commissioner at a young age.

The actor has been sought after tv roles so it's good to seem choose one he likes!

Chi McBride and Kevin Alejandro are also tapped to be a part of the series.

We're interested to see how this cop drama turns out!

[Image via JLN Photography/WENN.]

Open Thread for Night Owls: Why-o-why do the Bishops care so much?

2012-02-11T06:48:31Z

Adam Kotso writes:

To many observers, the Catholic hierarchy’s opposition to birth control seems nonsensical — they might as well oppose ice cream. It seems like a win-win: the liberals are happy that women get reproductive freedom, but meanwhile if you’re anti-abortion, it seems like avoiding unwanted pregnancies in the first place is the best possible solution. What’s not to like? Or more to the point: why are they making this, of all the many Catholic moral teachings, the cross they’re willing to die on, even as the laity has long since stopped caring?

Adam Kotsko

I don’t think we can explain this simply through misogyny or fear of feminine sexuality, etc., because there are plenty of misogynists in the world who don’t make a point of picking a fight with the president of the United States over birth control. This birth control issue seems to be almost exclusively a Catholic “thing,” so it has to have a Catholic-specific explanation. I propose that the answer can be found in a historic compromise set forth by one of the most influential thinkers you’ve never heard of: namely, Clement of Alexandria, a second-century Christian philosopher. [...]

The point at issue was of course not birth control, but whether marriage should be permitted for Christians. This question makes sense in light of the fact that Jesus and Paul, the two major founding figures of Christianity, were themselves celibate — and in the Roman world, counterintuitive as it seems to us now, there was a huge attraction in celibacy. The sects of Christianity that required celibacy actually grew much more rapidly than the more moderate versions.

At the same time, a celibacy requirement obviously presented a huge obstacle if Christianity was to be a mainstream movement, since it automatically excluded many people (including many of the rich and powerful, whom Clement was eager to court). Possessing the Catholic instinct for having things both ways, Clement came up with a solution: celibacy would be the elite path, but marriage would be permitted for the average believer.

Unlike Paul, who permitted marriage purely as a release of sexual tension, Clement’s rationale for permitting it was to limit sex to reproductive purposes. [...] He believed (or at least said) that there was a real danger of a slippery slope and claimed that there were some Christian sects that allowed a total sexual libertinism, which was throwing the movement into disrepute. Hence the need to limit sexuality to its obvious and natural purpose: reproduction.

This compromise obviously had its influence in the East as well, but its effects were arguably more intense in the West, where all clergy were eventually required to be celibate. Over the course of the Middle Ages, the stigmatization of non-reproductive sexual activities (including homosexuality) picked up speed, resulting in the invention of the category of sodomy. (Fun fact: Tertullian, a theologian writing at roughly the same time as Clement, argued that the sin of Sodom was indulging in marriage.) [...]

Fast forward to the aftermath of Vatican II, where a spirit of reform and openness to the modern world dominated — and one of the innovations of the modern world was of course The Pill. A council of experts recommended that the Catholic Church change its anti-contraception stance, but in 1968 the pope rejected their recommendation and reaffirmed the status quo in the infamous encyclical Humanae Vitae. In retrospect, this moment could appear to signal the premature death of the “spirit of Vatican II.”

This is strange: in the wake of Vatican II, the Catholic hierarchy was willing to make radical changes to the liturgy, to dethrone Thomas Aquinas as the standard of all theology and philosophy, to rethink its stance toward other religions, etc., etc. Why go to war over such a small and seemingly harmless issue? [...]

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:

The 9-11 Commission writes a report detailing security lapses in the runup to 9-11.
In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission [...]

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system.

Tweet of the Day:

Santorum topping Romney on the first night of our Michigan poll. This may be the biggest surge yet
— @ppppolls via web

High Impact Posts are here. Top Comments are here.

tumblr_lhjso4eGhZ1qdm5s7o1_1280.jpg (546×714)

2012-02-11T06:46:24Z

via http://luckymag.tumblr.com/post/3641220784/luckys-april-2011-cover-girl-zooey-deschanel

The Gown Made from a Thousand Roses

2012-02-11T06:48:34Z

To promote its floral products, the Walmart-owned supermarket chain Asda commissioned this amazing dress made from flower petals. Joe Massie, an award-winning florist, and his team assembled it using roses, chrysanthemums and gerberas:

The gown, designed for the upcoming Valentine’s Day, involves more than 170 hours of labor and reportedly weighs just under two stone.

The gown features petals from 1,000 Naomi red roses all over the dress, fifteen Carmen roses and 200 chrysanthemums, decorated with gold-leaf, around the hip and skirt of the dress, and petals from 150 Purple Power roses, 75 gerberas and 300 carnations, all picked from Walmart’s Valentine’s bouquet collection, to flush this creation.

You can view more and larger pictures at the link.

Link | Video | Photo: Press Association/Yahoo

7 Marketing Lessons From RIM’s Failures

2012-02-11T06:48:28Z

Alex Goldfayn is CEO of the Evangelist Marketing Institute. His new book is called Evangelist Marketing: What Apple, Amazon and Netflix Understand About Their Customers (That Your Company Probably Doesn’t).

You remember, don’t you? The emails magically appeared while you weren’t looking. That blinking light turned us into addicts. And that keyboard — copied often, but never matched.

It was the BlackBerry, the glorious, beloved, and life-changing BlackBerry. It made us feel good, and it never let us down.

Long before the iPhone the took the world by storm, and before Google even dreamed about getting into the phone business, Research in Motion was on top of the consumer electronics mountain.

Today, sadly, it is buried under it, and industry insiders everywhere wonder whether RIM will survive.

What happened? Harmful strategy. Unforced errors. And, mostly, really bad marketing. On this, RIM is in good company in the consumer electronics industry, where so many manufacturers market poorly. But few have made so many marketing mistakes so quickly.

Here are seven marketing lessons from RIM’s dark and difficult journey.

1. Make Great Products

Consumer electronics success begins with excellent products. The BlackBerry was once perceived as the very best smartphone — or, at least, “emailing phone” — available. It was exciting, emotional and it made people feel good. RIM sold BlackBerries on the strength of word-of-mouth recommendations. BlackBerries were aspirational, and people wanted to own one because friends and colleagues were so passionate about them.

Now, fast-forward to today.

Consider the excitement and energy around the iPhone and all those Android handsets. RIM enjoys none of that today. Not one percent of it. In part, it’s because it stopped making good smartphones in favor of a poorly received tablet called the PlayBook.

Successful marketing begins with having a tremendous product or service to market. Nothing happens without this.

2. Build on Strengths Instead of Improving on Weaknesses

I’m constantly telling clients that they should build on strengths instead of trying to improve their weak areas. For RIM, the BlackBerry was a great strength, and they all but abandoned its development and marketing for a year or longer to create the tablet. RIM did this to try to prevent the world from passing it by in the tablet space — which it did anyway. Tragically, as a result of diverting talent, attention, resources, investment and innovation from the BlackBerry to the Playbook, the consumer smartphone world has also passed RIM by.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. If you focus on developing weaknesses, your strengths will atrophy due to neglect. If you want to market well, identify your strengths — products, services, techniques, approaches, relationships — and exploit them relentlessly. This technique overcomes nearly all weaknesses.

3. Gravity Pushes Backwards

If you’ve attained a measure of success, you must continue innovating your products, services and your marketing just to maintain your position. Because you can bet the competition is innovating aggressively, and they’ll pass you by in three seconds if you stop doing the things that brought you success. RIM not only stopped releasing new BlackBerries while focusing on its PlayBook, it basically stopped talking to its customers about them for an extended period. We’ve seen this story before with Palm and many others. Gravity pushes backwards in business. Consistent and aggressive innovation is required not only to attain success, but to maintain it.

4. Know Precisely Who Your Customer Is

RIM’s management famously disagreed on who their customer was. Then co-CEO Mike Lazaridis felt the customer was the corporation. Others, probably including his counterpart Jim Balsillie, wanted to aim BlackBerry products at consumers. If you don’t know exactly who your customer is, it is impossible to market. Language, messaging, platforms, branding and public relations change completely depending on the customers you target. So identify your customers as precisely as possible, and aim all of your marketing efforts at them.

5. Executives Set the Marketing Tone

Consider the most successful companies in consumer electronics (and two of the most successful companies in all of business): Apple and Amazon. Their chief executives set their marketing tone, and everyone follows. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch this YouTube video of Steve Jobs introducing the iPad, and listen to how everybody who followed him on stage used exactly the same words.

This is no accident. The next day, thousands of articles used the same words to describe the amazing, remarkable and awesome iPad. Amazon’s Bezos is the same way. The best marketers have high-level executives setting the tone. They not only teach the rest of the company how to talk about their products and services, but the customers, the media, and the market itself. Obviously, RIM’s co-CEOs did not set this tone. They couldn’t even agree on who the customer was.

6. Avoid Unforced Errors

Most marketing problems are self-made and entirely avoidable. Consider the major developments from RIM’s recent past:

It voluntarily stopped focusing on the BlackBerry to make a product it had no experience with.
It could not identify its customer.
It stopped marketing to consumers, allowing competition to roar past.

Not convinced? Consider Netflix’s recently concluded horrible-terrible-no-good-very-bad year:

A dramatic price increase.
An extended period with no action to placate angry consumers.
Spinning off something called Qwikster and then spinning it back in.
A remarkably poor response to it all by the CEO, Reed Hastings.

None of these things happened to these companies. They did it to themselves. Don’t try to outsmart yourself. Avoid unforced errors.

7. Keep Talking to Your Customers

My work with clients often involves conducting qualitative conversations with their customers to deeply understand how they feel about what the company is doing and what the company is thinking about doing. If RIM had talked to its customers like this, it would have quickly learned that they probably weren’t particularly interested in a BlackBerry tablet without built-in email, messaging or contacts!

If you’re not talking to your customers, you’re just guessing from a conference room.

I believe RIM has enough of a corporate and government customer base to sustain it through this most difficult period. To recover, the company must precisely identify its customer, make terrific products for it, and orient all of its marketing and messaging toward it. In the meantime, we can all learn from the mistakes that brought the BlackBerry maker to this point.

You remember the Blackberry, don’t you?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter

More About: blackberry, Business, contributor, features, Marketing, Mobile, RIM, Tech

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