The World of Chocolate!

I am a chocolate fiend. However, I am not the type of chocolate fiend that follows the happenings of my favorite chocolate companies. So when I logged onto MSN today, one particular headline caught my eye rather quickly. Who knew that Hershey is trying to buy Cadbury? I sure didn’t, so I had to look into it!

On the Hershey website, it is stated that Hershey holds a license to manufacture British-based Cadbury products in the United States. They have actually held this license since 1988, and have introduced three new products to the Cadbury line since that time. Note that the license is only for the US; Cadbury Global manufactures the Cadbury products for the rest of the chocolate-loving world.

On CNN Money, Kraft Foods is listed as the front runner for acquisition of the Cadbury company. However, there is an Italian company called Ferrero, and everyone’s favorite Hershey company that are also listed as top contenders, although neither one has said publicly that they are in the ring.

A little bit of background about Ferrero (since we all know what Hershey is): They are a family owned company that has been around for 60 years, and has never initiated a takeover of any company. The owner, Michele Ferrero, is the richest man in Italy. They are the makers of the Rocher chocolates (think delicious and not so very nutritious).

The UK Takeover Panel asked both companies to solidify their intentions after the Cadbury stock reached its highest point ever in the last month! Who knew that rumors of a takeover made stocks soar?! Apparently the people are expecting great things to happen after a new company takes over Cadbury.

What they probably don’t know is that even though Hershey would seem like the logical choice (they’ve already been manufacturing Cadbury products for over 20 years), Kraft is the more stable choice. According to Reuters, Hershey is in a world of financial hurt. In order to take over the Cadbury company, they would significantly add to their already significant debt load. Their bid is rumored to be nearly $17 billion!!

Even though it would add to their debt load, I personally hope that Hershey is able to come out on top on this one. Having a chocolate legend like Cadbury (think crème eggs) owned by Kraft (think macaroni and cheese) just doesn’t seem appropriate, does it?

What I couldn’t find on the internet is what happens to the license that Hershey currently holds to manufacture Cadbury products if they get outbid. Does it continue, even though Cadbury is held by a different parent company? Or does the contract become null and void after Cadbury is no longer the company in charge? If you are a better search engine user than I, and can find the answer to this question, let me know!

The Dark Side...of Social Media

Although this class was supposed to show us both the up and down sides of social media, I think we all have to admit that we’ve seen a lot more of the up than the down. It’s only natural for us, well for me, to focus on how change and innovation is going to make my life better, easier, and more organized. It is all too natural to gloss over those things that perhaps make an innovation or change hard to swallow. After yesterday, I am seeing beneath the glossy veneer of social media. After reading my blog for this week, you may too…

I have found the down side of social media, and it’s not what anyone may think it is. The down side of social media is how quickly bad news spreads from person to person, across states and over the ocean. It spreads more quickly via social media than it can from one human being connecting with another.

Yesterday (Monday, November 16), a woman left work to go home for lunch. As she warmed up leftovers in the microwave, she logged onto Facebook to post a message to her three grown sons’ pages, something she typically does on Mondays. On her youngest son’s page, she sees hundreds of messages that read, “RIP Ryan,” “I’m glad you were preparing to do something you love,” “Much love from all your boys,” etc.

As she grabs for the kitchen counter, her mind reeling I’m sure, the doorbell rings and she hears a key in the lock. It is her middle son Brady, who walks in. He has come to tell his mom in person that Ryan is dead. You see, Ryan was cleaning his gun at his house in Bismarck sometime on Sunday or early Monday (we’re not sure exactly what time yet) when it went off and he shot himself in the head. When he didn’t show up to go hunting with his buddies on Monday morning, they went to his apartment and found him. Not wanting to tell his mom this horrible news over the telephone, Brady jumped in the car and drove the five hours to his mother’s house to tell her in person. However, he was too late; Facebook had already broken the news to her.

Who is Ryan? A boy I went to high school with…

I cannot possibly imagine learning of such a life shattering event in this way. It is horrible enough that something like this happened; it is truly unspeakable to think of finding out in such a cold, impersonal way. My first thought was anger toward those people that posted on Ryan’s page. How could they be so callous? Why couldn’t they have waited? But of course the rational side of me quickly takes over. How could they not post those nice messages to someone that was a friend to everybody? How would they have known that Ryan’s mom hadn’t been told yet, and that she habitually posted to his page every Monday? They couldn’t have; they were just expressing sympathy and memories in the way most readily available to them.

The long and short of my blog is that no one posted to his blog as a way to hurt his mom and his family, but they did. They posted to show how much they loved him and how much they will miss him, and their posts will mean that to his family later on. It’s just that right now, Facebook probably isn’t at the top of their list of friends, but it will be, when they’re ready…

Happy Birthday Sesame Street!

Through this class we have all been exposed to many new and exciting things. Beyond this exposure we have had the opportunity to explore these new things, research their past, discuss their present, and speculate on their future. As I think back about the comments I’ve made throughout this course, I realize that all my posts that address the future of social media tools all sound the same.

In each post, I say that the tool will probably be around for another two or three years, at which time it will be replaced by something better, something more technologically advanced. Some of my classmates agreed with me, saying that is only a matter of time before things like Facebook go the way of the mimeograph.

With the thought that all things slowly die or are replaced before their death by something better swimming in my head, I was amazed by what I saw on MSN today. Did you know that Sesame Street turned 40 today (11/10/09)?! I remember watching Sesame Street when I was a little kid; Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers were the best!

So tell me, how does something like Sesame Street survive for 40 years? What is it about that program that made it capable of withstanding years of changes? Could it have something to do with Caroll Spinney, who has been playing Big Bird since the beginning? Is it because parents who watched Sesame Street let their children watch it because they know it’s age-appropriate? Or perhaps it is the long laundry list of celebrities that have had a cameo on Sesame Street (First Lady Michelle Obama is one). Or maybe it is the simple fact that nothing and nobody can ever replace the quality television baby-sitter / pre-school teacher that many parents rely on Sesame Street for.

If you ask the crew members, the show’s success has to be at least partly attributed to the fact that they stay with the times. The show has discussed birth, death, marriage, shootings, natural disasters, 9/11, and now the H1N1 flu. Perhaps this is what keeps people coming back…

Whatever the case, Sesame Street is indeed 40 years old and 122 Emmys strong, and it doesn’t sound like the crew has any plans of stopping. Although this season started with episode number 4187, there are many adventures left for the characters that live, work and play on Sesame Street.

Perhaps social media creators need to use Sesame Street as a case study to learn how their tools can stand the test of time while retaining a very large, very visible presence. In this new age, it would appear that Sesame Street doesn’t just offer lessons to pre-school children anymore!

I want to know: who is your favorite Sesame Street character and why? Mine is Cookie Monster because I feel like we’re kindred spirits; both fighting our addiction, and more often than not losing, to cookies!

Counterfeits are NOT the Answer to our Economy!

Last Thursday night was an ordinary evening. I met two girlfriends for drinks at the Green Mill, we talked, we laughed, we ate fattening foods, and we came home. Wait; there was one more thing that we did that night: we picked up our counterfeit merchandise from the UPS warehouse and shared secret smiles about the amount of money we had just saved.

Did anyone else think that my last paragraph was a little strange to announce so nonchalantly? To be honest, that is the way I thought about our counterfeit purchases until about 30 minutes ago when I opened the MSN homepage. That is when I learned that over 750,000 jobs and billions of dollars are lost to counterfeiting each year in the United States. Check out the "Spot the Fake" quiz!

I hadn’t realized that the fake Coach and Burberry purses that I ordered from China twice a year were putting people out of work. I thought I was being a wise consumer and saving myself some money during hard economic times. Okay, maybe that’s a bit over the top, but I really didn’t think my purchases were negatively impacting our economy in such a huge way.

On the flip side, the Chinese economy has benefitted a thousand fold from the increased demand for counterfeit products. China is where almost 85% of counterfeit goods come from and where nearly 35 million people are employed by manufacturers of counterfeit goods. Manufacturers of fake goods have been able to provide jobs to people that used to work for companies that manufactured the real version of the products they’re now copying.

Counterfeit does not just apply to purses anymore. Shoes, watches, jewelry, electronics, even medicines and other health products are available in the fake variety, often at a deeply discounted rate. The fact that companies are offering fake medicines and other health products are deeply concerning to me, and I can see why counterfeiting is more and more in the public spotlight.

Fake medicines are something that have the potential to kill you. It’s not like a fake purse that looks nice without costing you an arm and a leg. Real medicines are not something to be messed with, so I cannot imagine who thought throwing fake medicines in the mix would be a good idea.

The United States FDA estimates that over 10% of the global medicines market is comprised of counterfeit medicines. Up to 25% of the medicines used in poor or third-world countries are counterfeit. This puts the earnings of counterfeit medicine manufacturers over $32 billion a year!

As so many of the articles that I found about this topic said, we really need to address this problem with the consumers. The only reason the manufacturers are still making fake products is because the consumers are demanding them, in ever-increasing quantities. If we can educate the consumers about the harm these fake products are causing, perhaps we can strike at the manufacturers that way. If we can couch the argument in terms of the dollars we will save in the long run by buying real, perhaps that will tip the scales slightly. I know it’s just a small step in the big scheme of things, but the purses I picked up last Thursday will be my last designer bags, both fake or real!

What are your thoughts on counterfeit products, both accessories and medicines? Do you think we’ll be able to curb the spending on the fake and bring those billions of dollars back into our suffering economy?