Boycott United Airlines

I tweeted “Seriously, enough is enough. I will never fly @United again!! #BoycottUnitedAirlines #fail” with the above widely shared photo and I meant it. And I tweeted “(CBC News, 10 minutes video) Gabor Lukacs, an air passenger rights advocate, calls @United’s behaviour ‘unacceptable’“, here (CBS News), here, here, here, and retweeted the following videos and photos. (see below) This United self-created mess has now become a viral talking points in news (in Chinese in Apple Daily) and chat shows around the world in multiple languages and cultures. This is million times worse than the United Breaks Guitars moment as not everyone has a guitar but no one wants his/her head bloodied and bruised!

News stories like “United CEO says removed passenger was ‘disruptive and belligerent’” and “Not so friendly skies: United Airlines’ public relations disaster” further highlight United and its CEO just doesn’t get it. United CEO Oscar Munoz doesn’t get that passengers and potential passengers can all see for themselves no human beings should be treated like this. (see videos for yourself) And ultimately, a global company’s weakest local links can bring the reputation down and costing million dollars of lost revenues.

Have a watch of this funny segment “Jimmy Kimmel on Passenger Dragged Off United Flight” that includes a re-imagined United Ad! #funny #fail

More headlines: WaPo, “The full timeline of how social media turned United into the biggest story in the country“; CNN, “Backlash erupts after United passenger gets yanked off overbooked flight“; HKFP “‘Shameless!’: China internet users in uproar over United passenger fiasco“; BBC, “United Airlines: Chinese and Vietnamese anger at passenger removal“; Financial Post, “United shares tumble as passenger-dragging social-media storm spreads worldwide“; CNN Money, “United Airlines shows how to make a PR crisis a total disaster”

@United overbook #flight3411 and decided to force random passengers off the plane. Here's how they did it: pic.twitter.com/QfefM8X2cW

— Jayse D. Anspach (@JayseDavid) April 10, 2017

@united A gentle suggestion: pic.twitter.com/VhvFIc4QO3

— Jon Spaihts (@jonspaihts) April 10, 2017

Officer who forcibly removed United Airlines passenger placed on leave https://t.co/tTIotb75Yj pic.twitter.com/tC554bh9dL

— TIME (@TIME) April 10, 2017

Charles Mok, a HK legislator, even shared a video of him cutting up his United Mileage Plus card.

Watch of this funny segment “Jimmy Kimmel on Passenger Dragged Off United Flight” that includes a re-imagined United Ad! #funny #fail

Update: UK Daily Mail some info on the 69-year-old Vietnamese-American Dr. David Dao “PICTURED: The internal medicine specialist father-of-five who was beaten and dragged off an overbooked United flight as CEO pens ‘tone deaf’ email DEFENDING staff Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4401444/Name-man-hauled-United-flight-Chicago-revealed.html#ixzz4dxgfMTes Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook“.

Apr 12, 2017 update: This is totally damage control stuff and

Defending Kevin Roberts, Saatchi & Saatchi Chairman, in Social Media Mob Trial – re Business Insider report

request to release full unedited video, audio interview for transparency

I’m saddened this morning after reading AdWeek “Saatchi Chairman Kevin Roberts Placed on ‘Leave of Absence’ Over Gender Comments – CEOs of the agency and Publicis have disavowed him“. The controversy (the gender comments) started two days ago in a July 29th Business Insider interview/report “Saatchi & Saatchi chairman Kevin Roberts thinks the gender diversity in advertising debate is ‘over’” by Lara O’Reilly (tweet).

Kevin Roberts, Saatchi & Saatchi chairman, is a big boy and doesn’t need defending by anyone especially by an independent reporter. Kevin and I’ve never met once and  will likely never meet in person! But I dislike all forms of social media mob trial. Yes, I dislike this mob trial of @KRConnect @PublicisGroupe by social media as much as I dislike #genderbias!

At the end of the day, all reporting must rest on fairness. I’ve asked Business Insider reporter Lara to post her full unedited video/audio interview for the sake of transparency since Kevin has now been placed on ‘Leave of Absence’ because of her interview.

Until Lara can provide us the full unedited video/audio interview to watch/listen to judge for ourselves, I can only base my critique on the written interview. I have excerpted all of Kevin’s quotes from the report and added my emphasis and brief commentaries afterwards.

Oreo Super Bowl Power Outage Twitter Ad campaign – Chat & Analysis

“This is an opportunity. The entire world is watching and there is nothing on. So  quickly, everyone pull together a design, a caption, the folks from Oreo were in the room, and we got something out in just a few minutes [kempton’s note: 360i was ready in only 5 mins after the power outage but waited for 5 more mins to confirm that people were safe before they tweeted].“ – Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i (WSJ Video interview, Feb 4th, 2013)

I LOVE smart Ad campaign . I especially love one of them during the Sunday surprised/not-so-surprised Super Bowl Power #fail. Great job @Oreo with its Super Bowl Power Outage Twitter Ad campaign! As I was telling a prospective client recently, the best ads are often the ones, once you paid to initially get it made, you pay very little or nothing to get it spread because people are sharing it as content!

It was my pleasure the Monday morning after Superbowl to host an event to have an insightful chat with Kim Beasley and Trev Warth to specifically talk about the very successful Oreo’s “Power Out? No problem.” tweet campaign. Here is a video of our chat. See my reference notes below for more detailed research.

Oreo Super Bowl Power Outage Twitter Ad campaign – Chat & Analysis

References:

Official blog post post account by 360i: “How Oreo Won the Social Media Bowl with a Single Piece of Content”

– WSJ Video interview, Feb 4th, 2013: ” How Oreo Stole the Super Bowl Spotlight – A quick response from Oreo’s social media turned a timely tweet about the power outage into the brand’s most successful social media message yet. Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i, joins digits.“

– Oreo’s “Power Out? No problem.” tweet

– 360i Company site

– 360i leadership

– Cool tweet by Adam Kerj, Chief Creative Officer of 360i

Belated Happy 102nd Birthday to Prof. Ronald Coase with special #PDFtribute

Happy belated 102nd Birthday to Nobel Economics Laureate Professor Ronald Coase. Wishing professor Coase good health and all the best in 2013!

In 2009, I took the initiative to spend a few days to download, process, upload, transcribe (small part of), and time-code professor Coase‘s 2003 Coase Lecture (a massive .mov file) to share on YouTube (6 clips in a playlist) to allow interested people from around the world to watch and learn as a way to celebrate professor Coase‘s 99th birthday.

Here is the 2003 Coase Lecture by Ronald Coase – Part 1. Watch the other 5 parts via this YouTube playlist.

For the last few birthdays of professor Coase, I mainly reshare the above video clips (with a new text interview in 2011). This time around, I’ve taken a new initiative to honour professor Coase‘s 102nd birthday. You see, a few years ago I went to the University of Calgary Law Library to conduct some US patent research for a client. As a bonus/treat for myself, I spent some time to download quite a few academic papers by professor Coase.

To celebrate professor Coase‘s 102nd birthday, I’ve uploaded the following three important papers plus a bonus paper as a special gift to readers of professor Coase‘s ideas.

Here are the PDFs of the academic papers
– 1937 – Nature of the Firm
– 1959 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
– 1974 – The Lighthouse in Economics

Bonus academic papers
– 1947 – The Origin of the Monopoly of Broadcasting in Great Britain

In the wise words of professor Coase,

“The only support I got was from my contemporaries. […] If this tale has any general significance, it is that new ideas are most likely to come from the young who are also the group most likely to recognize the significance of those ideas.”

I was inspired to upload these academics papers by the #PDFtribute movement to honour the 26 years young Aaron Swartz (1986 – 2013) who died partly as a result from his fight with the outdated and outmoded JSTOR system to make academic papers available for free for all.

For me personally, I received these important papers for free from the Law Library. And I see them (Firm, FCC, Lighthouse) deserve to be read by as many people as possible instead of under the messed up limited JSTOR manner. The bottom line, to me, by having these papers available by a single click here is that this save people’s physical travel time to go down to their local university libraries where these papers can be downloaded for free anyway!

It has not escaped my attention and noticed the paradox that The Lighthouse in Economics is a paper that disprove, with facts, the incorrect belief by many people (including my former MBA classmate who has a B.A. degree in Economics) that Lighthouse services cannot be charged thus has to be made freely available by the governments!

*** Concluding thoughts ***

I want to emphasize that I totally agree with the many academics in the #PDFtribute movement and Aaron that it is about time we in Canada and US require academic papers to be made publicly downloadable for FREE in perpetuity if any part (or whole) of their research funding come from any level of government (thus tax payers’ money, our money)!

Happy 102nd birthday professor Coase!

Goodbye Aaron, you left us far too soon!

Goodbye Aaron Swartz (1986 – 2013)

Hi Aaron,

I wish I had the opportunity to know you before you left us. In the words of George Bernard Shaw,

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

You were one of the brightest & most unreasonable men we had. With your sad & tragic passing, it is up to us to carry on your work and do our part.

May the tears

in our collective eyes

help energize us

to clear our collective minds

to see injustice better &

to try to make progress in this world

for the limited time we have.

Goodbye, Aaron.

In the words of Aaron in “F2C2012: Aaron Swartz keynote – “How we stopped SOPA”“.

Note: This also my first post to tumblr and the reason I created my tumblr account.

For more, see articles & posts from Cory Doctorow, Larry Lessig, Guardian, TorStar, CBC, and “ongoing posts about Aaron, his memorial service, his death, and the malicious prosecution brought by the DoJ against him“.

2013 Jan 17 update re: Twitter #PDFTribute to Aaron:

– Washington Post video interview with Eva Vivalt, the woman behind the campaign, tells us why she launched it, “Aaron Swartz honored with #PDFTribute”

– TechCrunch, “PDF Tribute to Aaron Swartz Attracts Roughly 1,500 Links To Copyright-Protected Research”

– Fast Company, “Researchers, Academics Remember Aaron Swartz with #PDFTribute”

– PC Magazine, “Twitter Campaign ‘#pdftribute’ Roars to Life In Tribute to Aaron Swartz“

Why are @IKEACanada and Leo Burnett silent in global trending Twitter #ikeamonkey?

I wrote humourously about #ikeamonkey in my article “Top 10 Reasons why Monkey Darwin shops at Ikea & No charges by T.O. police!” so I won’t repeat those points here. In this article, I will take a more serious look at the business side of things.

I’m first of all puzzled and wondering “Why is @IKEACanada silent during global trending Twitter #ikeamonkey ?” I see people from around the world on Twitters write and write about #ikeamonkey. And the media outlets not just in Canada but from around the world are also turning this into a viral discussion! But then paradoxically, I see the @IKEACanada account (yes, the official verified IKEA Canada Twitter account) being completely silent on #ikeamonkey! Why is the IKEA Canada social media tweeting nothing about #ikeamonkey? And, more seriously, why is the Toronto-based Leo Burnett, IKEA’s creative agency of record (since March 2011) NOT convincing IKEA Canada to do something creative and fun to engage all the people tweeting about IKEA!

Questions for Leo Burnett & IKEA Canada

Why is Judy John, chief creative officer, Leo Burnett and her team doing nothing? Are there heavy resistent from IKEA Canada? Now, may be they are doing something but in the Twitter age inside a perfect viral storm, one viral #ikeamonkey day is easily more than 100 human days! Since monkey Darwin was first spotted by shoppers at 2 p.m. ET Sunday, so one viral #ikeamonkey day (100 human days) has officially passed without something fun or engaging from @IKEACanada or Leo Burnett! What a waste of social media positive energy.

Lets have some fun IKEA Canada & Leo Burnett

There are many ways to engage and have fun. I spent a few quick minutes to come up with a few. Feel free to post and share yours in the comment.

Here are my free #ikeamonkey ideas/advices 2 @IKEACanada & @LeoBurnett #hint #youshouldreallypayme4myideas #yyc #canada

Some fun ones:

How about: You’r right! @IKEACanada our furnitures are a ton of fun to monkey with! #ikeamonkey

How about: Yes, @IKEACanada We let you monkey with your furnitures with no extra charges! #ikeamonkey

This one is just a nice way to thank monkey Darwin for all the positive & free publicity (good karma):

How About: Thx #ikeamonkey 4 your visit @IKEACanada We are donating $1,000 to your new home Storybook Farms Primate Sanctuary in Sunderland

At this point, some thoughtful social engagement by @IKEACanada about #ikeamonkey will tremendous good for IKEA as a global brand.

Now, I don’t mean to criticize Leo Burnett (Toronto) too harshly as I think they have done some great work over the years like this one, “Ikea’s Cardboard Outdoor Posters Fold Down Into Moving Boxes Take one and start packing.” But I just can’t help but think about the wasted positive worldwide fun & positive attention to IKEA (not just IKEA Canada). What a waste! I feel like someone dumping tons and tons of preciously liquid gold randomly into ocean, once lost, they can’t be found again! It sucks!

Update: I rethink a little, since this is an article about social media, I will wait & see if @IKEACanada or @LeoBurnett see my Twitter tags re this article or do anything today. If I have time or want to do a followup article on this, I will then call up Leo Burnett and see if I can get a comment.

Note: This post is cross-posted by me at examiner.

Video interview with Oscar Shortlisted doc director Alison Klayman, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

The insightful, fun, and sometimes deadly serious documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (艾未未：道歉你妹; title in Taiwan 艾未未：草泥馬) has been Oscar shortlisted from 126 films down to 15, coming out ahead of films like “The Central Park Five” by the legendary Ken Burns et al, and “Head Games” by Steve James (director of the amazing Hoop Dreams).

Alison Klayman, director of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, was very nice and cool to do her first post-Oscar-shortlist video interview with me on the day after she came back from a Bangkok film festival trip. Here is my video interview with Alison.

Video interview with Oscar Shortlisted Alison Klayman, director of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry trailer (Official selection Sundance 2012 Film Festival)

I just noticed on the back wall in the following film still, the pictures are the concept drawings that lead to the Remembering (2009), an installation for the Façade of the House of German Art.

Alison and I talked about the middle finger salute in the interview. To me, it is a show of defiance to the powerful, be it the one-party ruled Chinese government or any other governments or powerful institutions.