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Panasonic orders staff to buy �1,000 in products – Times Online

Mark Blei — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:35:00 +0000

Its electronic gadgetry is gathering dust on the shelves of high street stores, nobody is buying new fridges and the mountain of unsold plasma televisions is growing by the day.

However, in desperation, Panasonic has hit on the perfect counter-attack against the consumer slump: it has ordered every member of staff to go out and buy £1,000 of Panasonic products.

Large swathes of corporate Japan are expected to follow suit, either by directly commanding or indirectly “pressuring” employees to divert part of their salaries towards the goods that their employers produce.

Toyota has already tacitly applauded a “voluntary” scheme in which 2,200 of its top brass decided to buy new Toyota cars, and the president of Fujitsu recently e-mailed 100,000 staff and gently pointed out how nice it would be if “employee ownership rates” of Fujitsu PCs and mobile phones were a little higher.

The 10,000 Japanese staff affected by Panasonic’s unorthodox strategy do not have long to consider their purchases.

Management insists that staff buy their Panasonic goods — whether they need them or not — by the end of July.

Upper-level managers, all of whom have been “encouraged” for years to fill their homes with Panasonic goods as a symbol of corporate loyalty, are being asked to spend at least 200,000 yen (£1,500).

A Panasonic spokesman said that because the “Buy Panasonic” request was made to management-level employees, the company did not expect refusal rates to be high.

Read The Rest—> Panasonic orders staff to buy 1,000 in products – Times Online

Google gives online life to Life mag's photos

Mark Blei — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:42:00 +0000

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Google Inc. has opened an online photo gallery that will feature millions of images from Life magazine’s archives that have never been seen by the public before.

The new service, available at http://images.google.com/hosted/life, debuted Tuesday with about 2 million photos. Eventually, Google plans to scan all 10 million photos from Life’s library so they can be viewed on any computer with an Internet connection.

About 97 percent of Life’s archives have not been publicly seen, according to Life.

The photos can be printed out for free as long as they aren’t being used as part of an attempt to make money. Time Warner Inc., Life’s parent company, hopes to make money by selling high-resolution, framed prints. The orders will be processed through Qoop.com.

Read The Rest—>Google gives online life to Life mag’s photos

Google Nears 72% of U.S. Searches in October

Mark Blei — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:30:00 +0000

Google had a large majority of search market share in October, accounting for 71.70% of all U.S. online searches conducted in the four weeks ending November 1, 2008, while Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 17.74%, 5.40% and 3.53%, respectively, according to October data from Hitwise, MarketingCharts reports.

Read The Rest—>Google Nears 72% of U.S. Searches in October

Google, Campbell Soup, J&J Tops in CSR – MarketingVOX

Mark Blei — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:09:00 +0000

Google, Campbell Soup, and Johnson & Johnson top the list of American companies that the US public sees as most socially responsible, according to the 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Index (CSRI), from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Reputation Institute, MarketingCharts reports.

Read The Rest—>Google, Campbell Soup, J&J Tops in CSR – MarketingVOX