Santa Clorry

   I was lucky to find Coca Cola Santa Clause lorry at North Greenwich last week. The lorry with the licence plate "SANTA 1" really looks like sleigh with Santa.

   Coca Cola's campaign with the lorries seems to have a long tradition and is promoting Coca Cola's reputation by giving out free drinks and inviting celebrities at the opening ceremony. In the UK, two lorries visit 100 towns and supermarkets from Ireland to England, Wales until 23rd December. Want to find out where they are? Coca Cola recommends you to click the website "keep on trucking" (Nice rhetoric). There are lorries in Japan as well.
   In order to stand against the criticism about the vehicles' fuel and emission, the company offsets carbon emission which means buying the right to drive and emit gas. The money paid for the right will be spent for activities to reduce carbon. It turns out the company can demonstrate the sincere attitude towards environmental problems seriously. I believe nobody would feel bad when they come across the lorry because it's Christmas and people become more generous. Pepsi could not paint the lorry in the way Coca Cola does. In this sense, Coca Cola is taking advantage of the image of brand.
   Again it's Christmas. I don't feel like criticising the campaign this time. Maybe next time.

Manufacturing buzz on Twitter

   Adecco Group offers students a chance to win tablet PC in exchange of manufacturing tweets with the link to the company's website. After the company sent out email to those who have already applied for the summer jobs during Olympic Games, Twitter is now filled with "spam" messages repeating "London2012 needs 100K students! Register for a paid SUMMER JOB OF A LIFETIME & win an AcerTabPC".

Email from Adecco

   I am one of the students who received an email from Summer Job for The Games, an organisation recruiting temporary staffs for London 2012. The organisation is run by Adecco Group UK and Ireland and seems to be looking for more security officers for the venues. The only things you have to do to join the competition for Acer Tablet PC is tweet the advert and then follow "@jobsforthegames". After several hours, @jobsforthegames was satisfied with so many tweets and tweeted back "Good response to the competition guys. Well done! Get your friends to register too"
   This case made me think about the ethical issue concerning a company using social media as a means of advert. Your friends may be annoyed with irrelevant tweets when they accessed to their account. The company spent a little money out of the budget on a cheap tablet while the tweets spread out by words of mouth with no cost.
   Adecco is clever, but I think it is ethically problematic for two reasons; it used applicants email address to ask tweeting, it is abusing twitter. It is open to question. I am curious what other people think about it.