Where Is Sony Vulnerable Essay Example for Free

Where Is Sony Vulnerable Essay Sony started as a radio repair shop, founded by Masuru Ikura and Akio Morita after World War II. The company began its long history of producing compact consumer electronics in 1957, when it introduced the world’s first pocket-sized all-transistor radio. The company’s name, Sony, was taken from sonus, the Latin word for â€Å"sound.† Sony went on to invent a series of transistor-based TVs and increasingly smaller audiocassette recorders. In 1979, the Sony Walkman introduced the world to a new, portable way of listening to music. Sony became a world leader in consumer electronics and was the first Japanese company to have its shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In the late 1980s, Sony began expanding into media, purchasing a U.S. record company (CBS Records for $22 billion in 1988) and a major Hollywood studio (Columbia Pictures for $4.9 billion in 1989). The purchases made Sony a major force in the entertainment industry. The importance of marketing at Sony started with Akio Morita, who said that for a company to be successful, it must have three kinds of creativity: creativity to make inventions, creativity in product planning and production, and creativity in marketing. Creativity in marketing at Sony means not just clever ads, but deep insight into its customers. For example, Sony knows its PlayStation customers like to find clues and to decode things. So Sony’s ads for PlayStation 2, like â€Å"Signs,† feature a young man walking the streets of a city where he encounters various signs foreshadowing the events. Mannequins appear in a store window, arms outstretched, and point enigmatically to something that’s about to happen. â€Å"The lead character is almost in the midst of his own role-playing game. He needs to follow clues to save the heroine,† said Andrew House, Sony’s executive vice president of marketing. In the ads, â€Å"we were essentially trying to tap into a range of emotions that we think we deliver in the games—intrigue, foreboding, excitement, panic, relief and achievement at the end.† Sony’s marketing also includes careful measurement of each campaign’s effectiveness. Fo r example, Sony runs 30-second commercials for its PlayStation as part of the previews in more than 1,800 theaters and on 8,000 movie screens. The ads appear before such films as â€Å"The Cat in the Hat.† Sony Computer Entertainment America has been running movie ads for six years. â€Å"Cinema advertising has been very effective for us,† said Ami Blaire, director of product marketing. â€Å"The reason why we have committed to cinema every year is the tremendous unaided recall shown by our own research and Communicus commissioned ad tracking.† Another example of measurement is Sony’s GenY youth marketing efforts. â€Å"The online program promoting the NetMD, ATRAC CD Walkman and Cybershot U30 ran July 1 through September 30 2003, and we found that more than 70 percent of the clickthroughs were spurred by rich media ads via Eyeblaster, versus static banners,† said Serge Del Grosso, Director of Media and Internet Strategy, Sony Electronics. In fact, Sony has even developed a direct-marketing solution which it sells to other companies who want to measure marketing effectiveness. The product, called eBridge[TM], allows marketers to use video, measure the effectiveness of the campaign, and gain insight into the target audience, all in one package. Sony expects that the next big breakthrough will not come from a single new electronic device. Rather, Sony president Kunitake Ando says that the future lies in making a whole range of devices more useful by linking them in a networked home-entertainment system. The company believes that its clout in consumer electronics, combined with its media content, will allow it to steer that convergence in a way that suits it. Whether the future of convergence resides in TVs or PCs or devices, $62-billion Sony makes every one of them—with a strong brand name that gives them an extra push off retail shelves around the world. Discussion Questions 1.What have been the key success factors for Sony? 2.Where is Sony vulnerable? 3.What should it watch out for? 4.What recommendations would you make to senior marketing executives going forward? 5.What should they be sure to do with its marketing? SONY Sony started as a radio repair shop, founded by Masuru Ikura and Akio Morita after World War II. The company began its long history of producing compact consumer electronics in 1957, when it introduced the world’s first pocket-sized all-transistor radio. The company’s name, Sony, was taken from sonus, the Latin word for â€Å"sound.† Sony went on to invent a series of transistor-based TVs and increasingly smaller audiocassette recorders. In 1979, the Sony Walkman introduced the world to a new, portable way of listening to music. Sony became a world leader in consumer electronics and was the first Japanese company to have its shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In the late 1980s, Sony began expanding into media, purchasing a U.S. record company (CBS Records for $22 billion in 1988) and a major Hollywood studio (Columbia Pictures for $4.9 billion in 1989). The purchases made Sony a major force in the entertainment industry. The importance of marketing at Sony started with Akio Morita, who said that for a company to be successful, it must have three kinds of creativity: creativity to make inventions, creativity in product planning and production, and creativity in marketing. Creativity in marketing at Sony means not just clever ads, but deep insight into its customers. For example, Sony knows its PlayStation customers like to find clues and to decode things. So Sony’s ads for PlayStation 2, like â€Å"Signs,† feature a young man walking the streets of a city where he encounters various signs foreshadowing the events. Mannequins appear in a store window, arms outstretched, and point enigmatically to something that’s about to happen. â€Å"The lead character is almost in the midst of his own role-playing game. He needs to follow clues to save the heroine,† said Andrew House, Sony’s executive vice president of marketing. In the ads, â€Å"we were essentially trying to tap into a range of emotions that we think we deliver in the games—intrigue, foreboding, excitement, panic, relief and achievement at the end.† Sony’s marketing also includes careful measurement of each campaign’s effectiveness. Fo r example, Sony runs 30-second commercials for its PlayStation as part of the previews in more than 1,800 theaters and on 8,000 movie screens. The ads appear before such films as â€Å"The Cat in the Hat.† Sony Computer Entertainment America has been running movie ads for six years. â€Å"Cinema advertising has been very effective for us,† said Ami Blaire, director of product marketing. â€Å"The reason why we have committed to cinema every year is the tremendous unaided recall shown by our own research and Communicus commissioned ad tracking.† Another example of measurement is Sony’s GenY youth marketing efforts. â€Å"The online program promoting the NetMD, ATRAC CD Walkman and Cybershot U30 ran July 1 through September 30 2003, and we found that more than 70 percent of the clickthroughs were spurred by rich media ads via Eyeblaster, versus static banners,† said Serge Del Grosso, Director of Media and Internet Strategy, Sony Electronics. In fact, Sony has even developed a direct-marketing solution which it sells to other companies who want to measure marketing effectiveness. The product, called eBridge[TM], allows marketers to use video, measure the effectiveness of the campaign, and gain insight into the target audience, all in one package. Sony expects that the next big breakthrough will not come from a single new electronic device. Rather, Sony president Kunitake Ando says that the future lies in making a whole range of devices more useful by linking them in a networked home-entertainment system. The company believes that its clout in consumer electronics, combined with its media content, will allow it to steer that convergence in a way that suits it. Whether the future of convergence resides in TVs or PCs or devices, $62-billion Sony makes every one of them—with a strong brand name that gives them an extra push off retail shelves around the world. Discussion Questions 1.What have been the key success factors for Sony? 2.Where is Sony vulnerable? 3.What should it watch out for? 4.What recommendations would you make to senior marketing executives going forward? 5.What should they be sure to do with its marketing?

Treatments for Depression Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

Treatments for Depression Clinical depression is a disease that involves feelings of sadness lasting for longer than two weeks and is often accompanied by a loss of interest in life, hopelessness, and decreased energy. (3) Depression affects 340 million people in the world today. One in every 4 women and one in every 10 men develop depression during their lifetime. About half the cases of depression are untreated and about 10 to 15 percent of all depressed people commit suicide. (4) There are many different types of depression including major depression, Bipolar Disorder, Dysthymia, and Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and there are different degrees of depression ranging from less severe to major severe. (3) There are various ways to treat depression, but what most people do not know is that depression is one of the most treatable mental illnesses. There are a variety of drugs called antidepressants which help to increase certain neurotransmitters in your brain. There are also various types of counseling, psychotherapy, self-help techniques, and alternative therapies to help a person overcome depression. In many cases, doctors combine different forms of therapies and treatments to produce the best result in depression cases. (1) The most widely used therapy today is antidepressants. Antidepressants are usually divided into three categories: Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI), Tricyclic Antidepressants (TCA), and Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MOAI). (1) SSRIs raise the level of serotonin in the brain because low levels of this neurotransmitter have been connected to depression. TCAs increase the level of norepinephrine in the brain. MOAIs increase the levels of epinephrine, norepinephrine, and serotonin in ... ... because of the many dangerous side affects associated with them. Maybe one day there will be a cure for depression just as we are searching for a cure for cancer or AIDS, and then people will not have to deal with this disease that causes them to lose 10 percent of the productive years during their lives.(4) References 1)Depression Treatment and Help http://www.about-depression.com/treatments-for-depression/treatment-overview.php 2)50+Health-Home/Treatments for Depression http://www.50plushealth.co.uk/index.cfm?articleid=461 3)Other Treatments for Depression http://www.ehealthmd.com/library/depression/DEP_other.html 4)Depression- Net, Info on Depression http://www.depression-net.com/ 5)Major Depressive Disorder: Treatment http://www.mentalhealth.com/rx/p23-md01.html#Head_2 6)Depression Treatment http://www.apa.org/journals/anton.html

Don Haskins on Racism Essay

The final buzzer rang off in Maryland’s Cole Field House basketball court. Many watched a game of Texas Western Miners and Kentucky Wildcats on March 19th, 1966, and yet most didn’t realize they just witnessed sports ethics redefine itself. It was a championship, an all or nothing statement for the players of Texas Western. The coach of the Miners, Don Haskins, had just won the NCAA title with five African American starters. They won a mere sports game, but it would prove to be much more than that. A hero of integration, Haskins revolutionized college basketball by the way he indentified a player, by skill and not color. The 1960’s was a time of many cultural controversies that aspired to what America is today. It was not only about Vietnam, the hippie escapades, or the latest eight-track of the Beatles. The decade has been dubbed the civil rights era. Culture was starting to see African American integration from the help of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. However not all heroes are recognized immediately, and Don Haskins, whether he planned it or not, helped pave the way to equality in sports. Before Haskins started to coach at Texas Western, the college recruited and played African Americans when it was typical for teams to have full-white roster and oppose integration into basketball (Schecter, 1998). No one imagined the day when five blacks would start at a pre-dominantly white college. Many whites actually did not want to have African Americans on their team at all in fear that it would cause integration through all civil aspects. Frank. Fritzpatrick, author of And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, concurs, â€Å"When Negroes and whites meet on the athletic fields on a basis of complete equality, it is only natural that this sense of equality carries into the daily living of these people† (1999). Once they got on the court, the blacks were still held back and treated unfairly. One of the seven black Miner players, Harry Flournoy, stated â€Å"All the best players on the team were black, but there was this unspoken rule that no more than three blacks could play at once. It was rough, but that’s the way it was† (Schecter, 1998). However, once Haskins came to Texas Western he followed its footsteps of recruiting black players; he sought out only the best players while ignoring the color of the players’ skin. Gathering players around the country, Haskins found skilled African Americans such as David Lattin, Harry Flournoy, and the five other players of 1966 title game. Fitzpatrick explains â€Å"they wound up being the core players for a basketball backwater team from El Paso that would force the all-white team from â€Å"pedigreed Kentucky† to crack† (1999). For four years, Haskins coached the Miners and played black players. With the fifth season being wildly successful, Haskins struck awe in white crowds as he started all black players in the championship. â€Å"I remember walking out that night listening to the Kentucky fans saying, ‘We have to get some of them,'† today’s Maryland coach Gary Williams said. â€Å"That’s what they called the black players ‘them’ but they had to admit that they could play. † Haskins changed the game of basketball when he started those five black players. Whether he knew that it was going to change civil rights from then on, he played them to prove Kentucky Coach Adolph Rupp wrong. â€Å"Coach Haskins told us that Rupp has said in a press conference before the game that five black players couldn’t defeat five white players. Coach Haskins decided only the African American players would play that night, said Litten. † (Championing Divsersity, 2006). Contrary to the public eye, Haskins stated â€Å"I wasn’t trying to make a statement,† he often said about beating Kentucky. I was trying to win a game. † However, Feinstein argues, â€Å" of course he was trying to make a statement. But Haskins had made it long before that night. He’d made it when he got to Texas Western in 1961 and began recruiting black players from everywhere† (2008). Some believe that night did not move Americans until it was brought up years later. Lattin just wanted to win a title, but neither he nor Haskins could have g uessed it would help alter history. It never seemed to cross their minds until approached later as addressed in this newspaper article, â€Å" ‘it wasn’t a big, overwhelming event until years later when people looked back and said it was the sports equivalent of the board of education decision. The racial connotations and overtones weren’t really played out all that much at the time but I still think it was one of the most notable games I ever covered’, said photographer Rick Clarkson. †(Championing Diversity, 2006). With there being truth in what Clarkson said, it did not take until the event’s movie, Glory Road, for integration to ensue in the NCAA. Haskins and the Miners pushed the motion ever further that March night. â€Å"If you want to get down to the facts, we were more white-oriented than any of the other teams. We played the most intelligent, the most boring, and the most disciplined game of them all† (Fitzpatrick, 1999). No one could have said it better then the Miner’s Willie Worsley. They deserved the title. Haskins set out to be a basketball coach, not a hero. He recruited the best players he could find, knowing others would object their presence, but didn’t care. Haskins wanted to win.

Analysis Of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry By Ralph Waldo Emerson

When thinking of an American poet a person’s first thought will be of Walt Whitman. This is no accident or act of fate. Whitman purposely aimed to become a True Poet for America, as described by Ralph Waldo Emerson’sâ€Å"The Poet†. He did this through his elements and themes of his poetry which transformed him into an eternal man, and speaker of all people. Whitman’s poem â€Å"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry† not only portrays these aspects of him but also shows how he is a Transcendentalist through the themes of time, human connectivity, and beauty. In â€Å"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry† time is an important theme. Time is constantly moving forward and flowing like the river. Nothing can stop it and it is what divides people from the rest of their fellow humanity. The ferry represents Whitman in which it is the only thing that can go back and forth across the river to allow ideas to be shared and people to connect. Whitman recognizes that everyone is joined by certain ideas and ideals and because of this his work will remain everlasting since it will always be relevant to the human soul. In this poem Whitman tries to persuade the reader that there are more things that connect humans than divide them. He also wants to reassure the reader that they are not alone and that he is â€Å"...with you and know how/ it is† (Whitman 3.3) Even something as massive as time cannot severe human bonds because it is the universality of human experience and ideas that create them. The True Poet is also an eternal man,