Archive for February 12th, 2010

Shouldn’t a "jobs bill" create jobs ? … hmmm

February 12, 2010

Spend, spend, spend … sky is the limit !

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Excerpted from AP: Jobs bill won’t add many jobs, Feb 10, 2010

It’s a bipartisan jobs bill that would hand President Barack Obama a badly needed political victory and placate Republicans with tax cuts at the same time. But it has a problem: It won’t create many jobs.

Tax experts and business leaders said companies are unlikely to hire workers just to receive a tax break.

Before businesses start hiring, they need increased demand for their products, more work for their employees and more revenue to pay those workers.

“Right now, business owners just don’t have customers. Until you have work for the employee to do, there’s really less of a reason to hire a new worker.”

The bipartisan Senate plan would exempt businesses from paying a 6.2 percent Social Security tax on the wages of new employees, as long as the workers have been unemployed at least 60 days. The tax break would run through the end of the year.

A company could save a maximum of $6,621 if it hired an unemployed worker after the bill is enacted and paid that worker at least $106,800 — the maximum amount of wages subject to Social Security taxes — by the end of the year. The company could get an additional $1,000 on its 2011 tax return if it kept the new worker for at least a full year.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office … estimates that such a tax break would generate only eight to 18 full-time jobs per $1 million in tax breaks.

The Senate proposal … would add 80,000 to 180,000 jobs over the course of a year. The U.S. economy, meanwhile, has lost 8.4 million jobs since the start of the recession.

In addition to a tax break for hiring workers, the Senate package would extend unemployment payments for people without jobs for more than six months as well as subsidies to help the jobless continue paying premiums for health insurance they had been getting through their former employers.

It also would extend through 2010 about $33 billion in popular tax breaks that expired at the end of 2009, including an income tax deduction for sales and property taxes and a business tax credit for research and development.

But,  lawmakers in both parties still could claim tangible accomplishments in addressing high joblessness and the inability of Republicans and Democrats to work together to solve problems, both top issues among voters early in 2010 midterm election season.

Full article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100210/ap_on_bi_ge/us_what_jobs_11

Posted in Employment - Jobs | Leave a Comment »

Ford employees deserve a party after the Fiesta’s successful social marketing campaign

February 12, 2010

Key Takeaway: As many brand managers attempt to enter into the social networking space, the one focus tends to be on creating a viral effect.

Many managers believe a catchy video, jingle, or game will lead to both millions of hits and millions of dollars. This sounds like a great idea, but figuring out how to create this viral response has not been easy to crack.

Ford did something novel in its social media strategy for the Fiesta …let the consumer create this content.

Consumers who already had an online following were selected to test the Fiesta, complete different tasks, and create content describing their journey.

By going straight to the source that has the core competency of creating buzz, Ford was able to create a largely successful campaign.

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Excerpted from Harvard Business Review via Brandweek, “How Ford Got Social Marketing Right” by Grant McCracken, January 8, 2010

Ford gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. And away they went. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, “agents” used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

The campaign was an important moment for Ford. It wanted in to the small car market, and it hadn’t sold a subcompact car in the United States since it discontinued the Aspire in 1997.

And it was an important moment for marketing. The Fiesta Movement promised to be the most visible, formative social media experiment for the automotive world. Get this right and Detroit marketing would never be the same.

Bud (Caddell) said,

The idea was: let’s go find twenty-something YouTube storytellers who’ve learned how to earn a fan community of their own. [People] who can craft a true narrative inside video, and let’s go talk to them. And let’s put them inside situations that they don’t get to normally experience/document. Let’s add value back to their life. They’re always looking, they’re always hungry, they’re always looking for more content to create. I think this gets things exactly right. Undercurrent grasped the underlying motive (and the real economy) at work in the digital space. People are not just telling stories for the sake of telling stories, though certainly, these stories have their own rewards. They were making narratives that would create economic value.

Undercurrent was reaching out to consumers not just to pitch them, but to ask them to help pitch the product. And the pitch was not merely a matter of “buzz.” Undercurrent wanted consumers to help charge the Fiesta with glamor, excitement, and oddity — to complete the “meaning manufacture” normally conducted only by the agency.

This would be the usual “viral marketing” if all the consumer was called upon to do was to talk up Fiesta. But Undercurrent was proposing a richer bargain, enabling and incenting “agents” to create content for their own sakes, to feed their own networks, to build their own profiles…and in the process to contribute to the project of augmenting Fiesta’s brand.

The effects of the campaign were sensational. Fiesta got 6.5 million YouTube views and 50,000 requests for information about the car—virtually none from people who already had a Ford in the garage. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign.

Edit by JMZ

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Full Article:
http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jan2010/ca2010018_445530.htm

Posted in Social Media & Networking | Leave a Comment »