Category: Other

Two things are sure in life. Death, and the fact that there are no secrets. With that in mind, should a company make fun of its competitors in an internal video? Probably not. Software company Autodesk produced a video for a reseller event in which it ridiculed its competitor SolidWorks, but the video leaked to YouTube where anyone could watch it. The company found itself in a very delicate position as consumers started to question the competence of the management. And there was more, the video contained music by the artist Beck, music that most certainly was not licensed for use in this video, exposing Autodesk to claims of copyright infringement.

A blogger also sent an email to Carl Bass, Autodesk’s CEO, asking about the video and got the answer “I have no idea what you’re talking about”. Strange, considering that Bass is in the video.

Lesson learned: always act as if internal information is external. The risks are now greater than ever that information will spread on the internet.

The video was later removed from both YouTube and Google Video, but can be found here. Via For Immediate Release.

Tags: video, PR, public relations, PR, video.

There’s been a lot of talk about Frédéric Rouzaud, managing-director of the Roederer winery which makes Cristal champagne, who was interviewed in the Economist. When asked if an association between Cristal and the bling lifestyle could actually hurt the brand, he replied:

“That’s a good question, but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.”

This led hip-hop mogul Jay-Z to announce that he will no longer serve Cristal in his 40/40 chain of clubs and will “lead a boycott in the world of hip-hop”.

“I view his comments as racist and will no longer support any of his products,” Jay-Z said.

The statement wasn’t very wise, but racist? I’m not so sure. Maybe Mick Jagger was closer to the real reason back in 2003:

“I know you don’t think I spend any money but I do,’ he says. ‘Anyway, those of us brought up in the 50s were taught to be frugal. We don’t like throwing computers away as soon as they don’t work – apart from out the window in frustration. We like cars to be repaired instead of junked. We’re not brought up like Puff Daddy to be taking 30 free-loading friends to the south of France and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on Cristal. The truth is, most English people, whether they’re rich or not so rich, just don’t behave like that.”

And they say watching television is not educating. I learned a new word last week, in Swedish: “Tvångstopsning”. It’s what the police do when you refuse to give a DNA sample. They take a cotton stick (“tops”) and scrape your mouth for DNA against your will.

I heard it in a documentary about a serial rapist in Umeå, Sweden that was caught when the police got a DNA match from a “tvångstopsning”. This word seems to be a googlewhack, i.e. a search in Google gives one single result (although a real googlewhack is supposed to contain two words, oh well…).

I don’t like to repeat myself, so I’m glad that this year I can’t say “I wish I could get a 4.5% raise, but then again, I’m not the Prime Minister.” A year ago I pointed out that Prime Minister Göran Persson got a higher raise than the average worker. This year Persson settles for a 4.3% raise, from 116,000 kronor to 121,000 kronor.

It’s good to see that Persson increases the gap to the voters. The estimated (pdf) actual salary increase in the local sector for 2006 is 3.8% and the increase in hourly wages in the private sector is estimated to 3.6% this year and 4.1% next year.

Update: In 2002, Gunnar Grenfors explained the strategy of Statsrådsarvodesnämnden, the committee that decides the salaries for the ministers: “The ministers shall be compared with the elite”.

This must be some kind of landmark in the history of Swedish online media. Expressen speculates in which Swedish player that leaked information about the locker room quarrel after the World Cup game against Trinidad & Tobago and posts a photo that is, well, 90% black. If they only could do the same with the texts, I might even start buying Expressen.

Footnote: The black square hasn’t stopped readers from trying to figure out who’s on the photo. The blog Bara Ben På Glenn Hysén (Bare legs on Glenn Hysén) points to Anders Svensson.

Tags: World Cup, media, media, fotboll, vm.

I apologize for the low standard of this blog recently, maybe it’s the heat or the World Cup, but this is too fun not to post about. ESPN in Brazil have created a World Cup soccer urinal. Photos can be found at AdFreak. [och jag tänker definitivt inte, alltså inte, dra något skämt om socker i…ja ni förstår]

Tags: World Cup, advertising, Brazil, reklam, fotboll, vm.