Public relations and marketing professionals have dug themselves into a hole. With the overwhelming amount of PR spin and marketing messages flying at consumers on a daily basis, individuals are constantly on guard, trying to spot the underlying motives behind each claim, motto, message or deal that brands introduce. Many times the assumption by consumers is that marketing messages are motivated by greedy or deceptive intentions. This phenomena is what Ogilvy’s SVP of Global Strategy & Marketing, Rohit Bhargava, called a “believability crisis” during his presentation at Mashable Connect 2011.

“Affinity has become the new secret weapon — we believe in people and companies that we like,” said Bhargava. For those in the public relations and marketing industries, it is important to gain back the trust they’ve lost from consumers by understanding what makes people, ideas and organizations more believable.

Bhargava spoke about what he calls Likeonomics, which “explains the new affinity economy where the most likeable people, ideas and organizations are the ones we believe in, buy from and get inspired by.”

What makes a person or organization believable, then? Bhargava said that Likeonomics is based on being simple, human, brutally honest and emotional.

1. Simple

To be more believable, the first step is simple and based on personal relationships, said Bhargava. “Be genuine, be honest, be open.” He believes that this concept has powered the social media revolution and the brands that have embraced it.

Bhargava pointed to Ally Bank as an example of a brand that gets it. Using the slogan “Straightforward,” the bank sheds light on deceptive industry practices and aims for complete transparency on rates and terms. Says one Ally ad, “we make money with you, not off you.”

2. Human

If you’re trying to build relationships, it’s a good idea to be human. Simply said, but not easily done.

Bhargava pointed to Innocent, a UK beverage brand that puts a lot of initiative into showcasing the humanity behind its brand. Each winter, Innocent runs the Big Knit, in which Innocent fans knit and send in hats to place on top of its smoothie bottles that are placed in stores. For each hat knitted, the company pledges 25p to Age UK to help make winter warmer for older people across the UK.

This initiative not only illustrates that the company’s founders care about those around them, but it is also a genius marketing idea. Walk into any grocery store and take a look at the beverage aisle (or almost any aisle). Row after row, you’ll see similarly shaped and colored packages. Now place smoothie bottles with cute knitted hats into the picture — get the point?

3. Brutally Honest

After ranking last in a consumer preferences survey of national chains in 2009, Domino’s Pizza launched its humility-filled Domino’s Pizza Turnaround campaign, which featured consumers hating on the product. Consumers complained that Domino’s Pizza crust tasted like cardboard and its sauce tasted like ketchup, among other pitfalls. Domino’s listened and its chefs got to work, reinventing a “new pizza.”

Relationships of any type are based on trust — trust isn’t possible without honesty. Bhargava said that brands must practice “brutal honesty and extreme transparency” in order to “get people over that hump of ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t trust that what you’re doing is anything more than spin.’”

Bhargava noted that “disclosure is not the same thing as honesty.” Outing the naughty deeds that your company participates in on your annual report isn’t enough.

4. Emotional

Founded by eccentric millionaire Christian Ringnes, The Mini Bottle Gallery is billed as “the world’s first miniature bottle museum.” Having recently visited the museum in Oslo, Norway, Bhargava told the story of its founding and why its so unique.

Ringnes “treats the museum with a great sense of humor, because he realizes that he has built an entire museum around something that most people who might think of visiting consider silly or at least strange,” said Bhargava. As a result, he doesn’t take himself too seriously when he markets and promotes the gallery. “The museum itself features a built in slide, a monthly award for the “tackiest miniature bottle” and even a fake brothel with a collection of 40 custom bottles from the 40 legal brothels in Las Vegas,” explained Bhargava on his blog.

Because collecting the mini bottles is his personal passion, it’s Ringnes’ goal to get potential visitors emotionally invested in it, too.

What do you think of Bhargava’s theory of Likeonomics? Let us know in the comments below.

View Rohit Bhargava’s Mashable Connect presentation below:

Update: Skype says it issued a hotfix on April 14, 2011 to address this issue, the company just didn’t prompt users to download the fix.

Mac users may want to be extra careful when using Skype, thanks to a nasty zero-day vulnerability in the Mac OS X version of the client.

Security researcher Gordon Maddern from the firm Pure Hacking discovered a flaw in Skype that allows a skilled individual to gain remote access to another’s machine simply by sending a Skype message.

UPDATE: Skype has issued a patch for the vulnerability but hasn’t pushed it out to users. To get the updated, patched software, download Skype 5.1.0.992.

Maddern says the discovered the hole by accident but put together a proof of concept showing how potentially dangerous it could be. By simply sending a message, Maddern was able to take control of a user’s computer and execute a shell instance. Scary stuff.

The researcher contacted Skype more than a month ago, but despite assurances from Skype that a fix was on the way, the program has remained unpatched.

In fact, it appears that it was only after Maddern blogged about the issue — and others like ZDNet UK championed the cause — that Skype felt the need to see the issue as a major problem.

In a statement to ZDNet UK, Skype said, “We are aware of this and will release a fix early next week to resolve the issue. We take our users privacy very seriously and are working quickly to protect Skype users from this vulnerability.”

Mac OS X user are unlikely to be completely satisfied with this response. In Waiting more than a month before applying a hot fix, Skype has shown that it might not truly be “taking our users privacy very seriously.”

The Windows and Linux versions of Skype aren’t vulnerable to this zero-day vulnerability. In addition to this new “feature,” Mac users are also dealing with a new UI in Skype 5 that makes everything harder to use.

Realistically speaking, most users are probably not in any potential danger when using Skype — provided they don’t accept messages or calls from strangers. Still, we know we’ll be taking a Skype for Mac break until this thing is fixed.

What do you think of Skype’s response to this situation? Let us know.

Google has broken new ground in the personal finance realm with the purchase of UK price comparison website BeatThatQuote for $61.5 million ($37.7 million GBP).

BeatThatQuote, launched in 2005, provides price comparisons for UK loans, insurance, legal services, utilities and other financial products. It was named one of the UK’s fastest-growing websites by Nielsen in 2007.

“Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google,” BeatThatQuote Managing Director John Paleomylites said in a statement on the company’s website. “We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.”

It’s likely that Google will use BeatThatQuote as its foothold into the UK financial products market. Google has recently shown interest in price comparison technology as well, most recently utilized in the company’s mobile shopping apps.

By adding price comparison results to search, Google can get a piece of the transaction whenever someone starts searching for a home loan or a new car insurance policy on its search engine. The potential revenue from those transactions could make this acquisition quickly pay off.

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from Macworld UK. Visit Macworld UK’s blog page for the latest Mac news from across the Atlantic.

Hundreds queued on Friday morning as Apple’s best-selling iPad tablet device officially went on sale in China.

AFP reports Han Ziwen, 35, was first in line outside Apple’s flagship Beijing store wearing a “I buy iPad No. 1” t-shirt.

Han had camped outside the Apple Store for 60 hours to ensure he was first in the queue, buying two iPads, 16GB and 32GB Wi-Fi versions.

In China, the Wi-fi version of the iPad costs CNY3988 (around $589) for the 16GB model, CNY4788 for the 32GB model and CNY5588 for the 64GB model.

Ma Ya, 46, was first in the queue outside the Shanghai Apple Store, having waited since 1 p.m. on Thursday.

Analysts are predicting strong sales for the iPad in the world’s biggest internet market, despite being out the price range of many potential customers and Apple having no firm date when the 3G enabled version might be available, if at all.

“There’s a growing number of Apple fans in China who have proven their interest in the iPod and the iPhone and based on that demand, the iPad will do well here,” said Ted Dean, managing director of technology consultancy BDA China.

The iPad also went on sale in South America Friday, including Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru.

Apple notes, the iPad will roll out to many more countries later this year. Availability and local pricing for these additional countries will be announced at a later date.

Nokia has announced an official launch date and pricing for its Symbian^3 smartphone, the Nokia N8. The device will be available at the Nokia Online Shop “during the last week of September,” and it will appear in UK’s physical stores on October 1.

Nokia N8 touts a 3.5-inch, 640×360 pixel capacitive touchscreen, 16 GB of on-board storage memory, as well as a 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and Full HD capability.

The 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 256 MB of SDRAM memory are lagging (on paper, at least) behind the current top smartphones on the market, but the biggest selling point for Nokia N8 is the camera. Nokia recently hired actors Pamela Anderson and Ed Westwick to film, together with two lucky fans, a promotional short movie for the device.

The price for the device will be £429 ($662) SIM free, or with a contract starting from £35 ($54) per month. You can expect to see it at the Carphone Warehouse, O2, Orange, Phones4u, T-Mobile, Tesco Phone Shops, Three Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone. Pre-orders are available now at www.nokia.co.uk/N8.

YouTube has launched a fresh Movies category on its website, gathering about 400 full-length films for your on-demand viewing pleasure, all free of charge.

The renewed section, which is actually more like the next step in previously announced projects, comes courtesy of deals the Google company struck with U.S. studios like Lionsgate, MGM and Sony Pictures and UK service Blinkbox.

Update: Google checked in to clarify this is a UK announcement only and doesn’t affect the US Movies section announced last year (see link above).

In addition, the company wanted to make clear that the MGM / Lionsgate / Sony Pictures content is currently only available in the US, not in the UK.

What can you find there? Loads of Bollywood flicks, a bunch of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan films, obscure horror movies and cartoons, among many other sections.

“This is one of many efforts to ensure that people can find all the different kinds of video they want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to full-length films and TV shows,” YouTube head of video partnerships Donagh O’Malley told The Guardian.

“We hope film lovers enjoy the range of titles in this free library, whether catching up on a mainstream hit or delving into the vast archive of classic films from decades past.”

Personally, I haven’t spotted many mainstream hits or real classics in the catalog, but maybe it’s just me. Ah well, off to watch Teenage Devil Dolls.

Tags: iPhone, UK

Turn Your Blog Into An iPad Native With PadPressed

Posted on 28 July 2010 by Leo Pang

Created by Jason Baptiste, PadPressed is a WordPress plugin that makes any WordPress blog look like a native iPad app when accessed from iPad. PadPressed bestows upon your humble blog the iPad features we’ve come to know and love such as “swipe to advance” articles, touch navigation, accelerometer positioning and home screen icon support when you’re really jonseing for that authentic app feeling.

Baptiste started with WordPress because 8.5% of all websites (including our own) are WordPress, but has grander aspirations, “We did WordPress first because it’s the largest thing there is next we’re doing Tumblr, Posterous, Moveable Type, and then custom CMSs.” Exciting!

We demoed the app and while the sparse interface harkens to the web browser/news aggregator hybrid we’re starting to see more of on the iPad (ala Pulse, and Flipboard) we’ve noticed some issues with its touch functionality.

We had difficulty swiping article pages (you have to press down really hard and the pages tend to flicker) and accessing articles from images. Baptiste says he will address the flickering issue and the touch sensitivity in a minor update, “We don’t want it to be too easy to change, but we will do controls in the future to show how sensitive the touch will be. Right now you have to click on the title in order to access, but these simple things we can change.”

While not yet nearly as fluid and visually breathtaking a way to view content as native apps Flipboard and Pulse, the advantage to PadPressed is that you don’t have to direct readers to download anything. If you aren’t looking to use a prebaked solution Sencha, an HTML-5 based mobile framework is another way to circumvent the app store.

So If you’re a web publisher that wants to optimize your content specifically for the iPad as inexpensively and quickly as possible PadPressed is available now for a $49.95 one time fee which includes any updates to the theme. To try out on an iPad before you buy, you can check out Baptiste’s PadPressed personal blog here.

CrunchBase Information

PadPressed

Information provided by CrunchBase

Comments (279)

Tags: GB, iPhone, UK

Google Employees Explain What It’s Like Working at Google

Posted on 05 July 2010 by Leo Pang

There’s an interesting thread today over at social news site Reddit, in which Google employees are asked to describe their experiences working for the Internet giant.

The replies are anonymous, and should thus be taken with a grain of salt. But some seem genuine, revealing some fascinating tidbits about Google’s corporate culture, strategy and the day-to-day life of a Google employee. The experiences are vastly positive, but some of them describe the downsides of being a Googler, too.

Here are some interesting snippets from the thread:

CinoBoo: “I’ve been there for about 5 years. You can read about the good parts anywhere, so I’ll try to offer a counterpoint based on having worked at other software companies.

A common problem is that it’s easy to become spoiled by all the perks. Several offices have developed distinct cultures of entitlement, and people whine about the quality of the fudge on the free brownies. It’s embarrassing to be around people who’ve become like spoiled children.

An engineering-specific problem there is that there’s a lot of support for operations – that is, lots of people whose job it is to keep the systems running. Engineers don’t habitually carry pagers and are on-call relatively infrequently. The plus side is that they can focus on development, get adequate sleep, and be more productive. The downside is that they can easily lose touch with what’s really going on in the data centers and sometimes even their customers. It’s a trade-off. Google is at least aware of it and uses incentive programs to entice engineers to spend time in ops roles.

Last, the company is big into ‘generating luck,’ which means trying a whole bunch of stuff in the hopes that a few efforts will pay off.”

GoogleEmployee22k: “Google is a great place to work. These are the things I like about my job:

1) Everyone is super smart
2) 18 different cafes
3) Free Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
4) The food is gourmet quality (e.g. omelet bar, chefs that make custom sandwiches for you, sashimi, free drinks 24/7, free snacks of all sorts 24/7.
5) The 7 person conference bicycles
6) Every Friday, Larry, Sergei, or Eric takes questions from us (in person), and we get free beer (e.g. Downtown Brown)”

solyanik: “Management institute is awful. A typical manager has 50-100 employees, so even if they meet with their reports once a month for 30 minutes, that’s about 2 weeks worth of almost constant 1:1s per month (allowing just a bit of time for stretching in between ). That’s not a lot of time for interaction. As a result, managers aren’t empwered [sic] to participate in technical decision, they don’t have very much vote in performance reviews (these are done by committee), and not even hiring (which is also done by committee). I’ve asked older Googlers what the managers did there, and they universally said “I don’t know”. Almost all managerial decisions that I witnessed at Google (mostly around resourcing the new projects) were not great, and the only way I could explain them was by some sort of internal political struggles between different players in the management game. The good thing was that, as I said above, they don’t have very much role in day to day operations of the company. But if you LIKE being a technical manager, if that’s how you see your career, Google is definitely not for you.”

[via Google Blogoscoped]

Comments (4)

Tags: CEO, Segway Inc, UK

Well, That Didn’t Work: China Censors Google Hong Kong Site

Posted on 24 March 2010 by Leo Pang

In response to Google’s recent tactic of redirecting Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong site (Google.hk), the Chinese government began disabling certain searches or blocking the results, according to The New York Times.

In a way, it’s back to square one – for users in China, Google is still censored, just as it was before.

There will be further repercussions for Google; for example, China Mobile is expected to cancel a deal that was supposed to make Google its default mobile search provider. But one cannot escape the feeling that Google’s entire anti-censorship episode didn’t have much success, at least from the perspective of Internet users in China.

In its blog post from yesterday, Google said it hopes that the Chinese government will respect its decision, announcing it will be “carefully monitoring access issues.” Well, there’s definitely an access issue now; the question is: What will Google’s next move be?

Comments (161)