Groupon to be investigated by Office of Fair Trading-

Advertising watchdog refers daily deals website after it was found to have broken UK ad regulations 48 times in 11 months

The Office of Fair Trading is to launch an investigation into Groupon after the daily deals website was found to have broken UK advertising regulations almost 50 times in less than a year.

Groupon, which offers promotional deals to subscribers on anything from restaurant meals to beauty treatments, has been referred to the OFT by the Advertising Standars Authority. 

It has emerged that the OFT secretly launched its own investigation into Groupon in July – although it has only become public knowledge today following the ASA's decision to refer – to see if the company is "complying with consumer protection legislation, including in relation to certain of its advertising practices".

The advertising watchdog has made 11 formal rulings of code breaches against Groupon, which it has published. There have been a further 37 informal breaches that the ASA has addressed without publishing details.

Groupon's most recent breach came last week when the ASA banned a promotion email offering discounted cosmetic surgery, ruling that it "pressured" consumers into hurriedly making potentially life-changing decisions in just a few hours.

In a statement the ASA said that it was referring Groupon over three specific concerns: "failure to conduct promotions fairly, such as not making clear significant terms and conditions"; "failure to provide evidence that offers are available"; and "exaggeration of savings claims".

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US-based Groupon offers coupons to its subscribers, which give them discount deals on anything from restaurant meals to spa treatments.

The OFT has previously shown an appetite for investigating new online business models in order to evaluate their impact on consumers. In 2009, the competition regulator launched an investigation into behavioural online advertising  to see how the habits and personal information of web users are used to target internet advertising.

Groupon uses E advertising to promote goods and services using the Internet but there are some regulations that must be respected. the goods and services must be pomoted fairly otherwise people may buy them and be disapointed. Website designers are responsible for reviewing the information used to substantiate ad claims so that consumers must be able to notice, read or hear, and understand the information. That is why I think that refunds must be made to dissatisfied consumers. 
Actually, the FTC Act already prohibits unfair or deceptive advertising in any medium. That is, advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers. A claim can be misleading if relevant information is left out or if the claim implies something that's not true. Claims must be substantiated, especially when they concern health or safety. 

 Ads should qualify broad environmental claims - or avoid them altogether - to prevent deception about the specific nature of the benefit. 

Internet is not enough, I think that written reports must be printed and signed by both the advertiser and the customer before the transaction is done. This will avoid misunderstandings and false or exagerated claims. 

This problem does conern E-marketing/ advertising in general since people do not trust internet transactions: Many people still hesitate to do any financial transactions online because they simply don’t trust it.
Indeed, everybody knows someone who has never purchased online because they feel the internet is full of thieves, hackers and unethical people. The truth is that the risk is not only about  giving personal and financial information but also about being well informed about the good/service we are willing to buy.

Can the Pope and Barack Obama save Benetton?

 

The Vatican has vowed to take legal action against the Italian fashion chain Benetton in retaliation for an advertising campaign that features an image of the Pope kissing an Egyptian imam.

Lawyers acting for the Vatican were told to "take the proper legal measures" to stop any use of the doctored photo, despite an announcement made by Benetton on Wednesday saying it would pull the image from its campaign.

A spokesperson for the Vatican said the picture is "damaging to not only to dignity of the pope and the Catholic Church but also to the feelings of believers", but it is unclear on what grounds the Vatican is proposing to sue.

Other adverts in the campaign feature France's Nicolas Sarkozy kissing Germany's Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama kissing the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez – world leaders who do not share the closest of friendships.

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For a long time, Benetton has felt too broad in comparison, targeting everybody and nobody, losing its place at fashion's forefront. The newest ad campaign, is a prime example; referencing and paying homage to the iconoclasm of the earlier ads, it depicts the Pope kissing Ahmed al-Tayeb, Sheikh of the al-Azhar mosque. But it could be a case of "too much": a brazen attempt to bandwagon us back into believing in the relevance of the brand. 

UNHATE is United Colors of Benetton's new worldwide campaign that invites the leaders and citizens of the world to combat the "culture of hatred". thus, they chose shocking images that attract people's attention. Nevertheless, the images they chose to get the audience's attention are considered as too exaggerated by some people such as the Vatican's followers. Will this new campaign work? Will it save Benetton?

On the other hand, Benetton's main goal is to drive the desire for participation and change especially the young. in this way, the want to motivate them and convince them to actively take initiatives. so, the UNHATE campaign can be viewed as a positive way of communication that calls for action. Personaly, I defend this campaign for it represents freedom and democracy, and banishes physical, political, social or ideological boundaries.
Last but not least, we do not have to omit the fact that Benetton finances a communication research center called Fabrica that was created in 1994. the main purpose of the center is to combine culture with industry and especially offering to young people the opportunity to develop their creativity as well as cultural and social communication projects. That means that they do give importance to their communication and they are interested in the future generations social and cultural welfare.

Australia: Newspaper circulation falls 3.5 per cent

Australian newspaper sales have continued their decline as readers move to digital platforms, a report says. Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) data showed Monday to Saturday newspaper sales fell by 3.5 per cent in the three months to September 30, compared with same period last year. The Newspaper Works, a non-profit body set up to promote the industry, said the decline was less than the 4.2 per cent fall the previous quarter and came in "testing retail conditions and shifting consumer confidence". "The ABC printed newspaper figures only tell part of the story because smartphone and tablet newspaper apps are not yet measured," The Newspaper Works chief executive Tony Hale said in a statement. "There's no doubt that newspaper audiences are expanding and newspaper content is being delivered how, when and where consumers want it, and it's working." Mr Hale noted that during the three-month audit period, Fairfax had released figures showing more than 200,000 apps had been downloaded for its The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers. The Newspaper Works said the Audit Bureau of Circulations was working on new rules to calculate both print and digital sales.

Although some people believe that printing will never die, the statistics are there to prove that people move from the printed information and entertainment to a digital form of communication. Thus, it is quite normal to assist to a decrease in the newspaper circulation. Actually, i made some research about the subject and here are my findings:

According to the 2008-09 MPHS, 72% of Australian households had home internet access and 78% of households had access to a computer. Between 1998 to 2008-09, household access to the internet at home has more than quadrupled from 16% to 72%, while access to computers has increased from 44% to 78%.

So, even though smartphones and tables applications are not yet measured they do play an important role in the newspaper circulation variation. 

"At Sony Music, a Plan to Dominate the Industry" by BEN SISARIO

A huge self-portrait of Bono hangs in the Madison Avenue office of Doug Morris, the new chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment, and on a nearby table sit his snapshots, arm-in-arm with Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. Along with a determination to dominate the music industry, Mr. Morris brought them from his last job as head of the Universal Music Group.
Mr. Morris, one of music’s reigning patriarchs, took over Sony in July, after 15 years at Universal. He is widely seen as the most capable hand to steady Sony’s music division, which has been plagued by internal quarrels since its merger with BMG in 2004. So far he has been aggressive in trying to remake the company, the home of artists like Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and Usher.

“He is a master at attracting and developing executive talent,” said Jon Landau, Mr. Springsteen’s manager. “No one is better at picking the people who pick the hit artists.”

Mr. Morris is also an embodiment of one of the unchanging realities of the music business since he is working on the fact that, despite all the changes in technology, there is still money to be made in hits, and staying successful means holding on to a bigger piece of a shrinking pie. This is a very important step in the music world since it protects the basic origin of hits making them even more succesful than modern technologies as Mr. Morris achievements prove.

Disney TV heads north to reach millennials

The California-based global media and theme-park giant announced a new, 24-hour network in Canada called ABC Spark targeting that age group - like the successful ABC Family cable channel does in the United States.

As partnership between Disney/ABC Television Group and Canadian media company Corus Entertainment, the new network will broadcast ABC Family shows such as “Switched at Birth,” “The Lying Game,” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Corus also will provide Canadian original programming, as regulations require 15 percent of Canadian content. 
The network's launch is set for spring 2012. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.


Disney knows a growth opportunity when it sees one. There are more than 1.7 billion millennials on the planet, with 85 million of them in the United States and 10 million in Canada. If the company reaches its goal in 2012, this partnership would be a real success to the developpement of the Disney company. The use of the Tv medium is verry strategic since Tv is considered as the world's most powerful medium of communication. It is an extensively medium in the moderne lifestyle, especially young people from the Generation Y. Hence, Disney can easily and quickly reach its target segment.