Nov 6, 2009
As a marketer, PepsiCo appears lost. As a company, it might be in trouble.
While there is something to be said for experimentation, PepsiCo has canned more marketing misses than hits in the last year. In an effort to continually target the next generation, it seems to have forgotten how to be a business. In fact, if it wasn't for its salty snack holdings being considered a staple, we suspect its fizzy drink section might start to dry up.
In some ways, it has. In October, PepsiCo Americas Beverages unit reported a 6 percent drop in volume and a 9 percent revenue decline. According to some analysts, the result reflects a change in buying habits as consumers shifted toward juices and teas and away from soft drinks. That might be true, but 6 percent is twice the drop experienced by Coca-Cola.
Oct 26, 2009
Social Search just went live in Google Labs. Google announced that it was working on this Social Search feature at the Web 2.0 Summit last week, but at that time, Google's Marissa Mayer announced that it would only be available "in a few weeks." Social Search taps into a user's social network profiles and displays relevant links and status updates that members of a user's own social network have shared at the bottom of the default search results page. According to Google, Social Search will enhance the search experience on Google by providing users with more personally relevant search results.
Oct 14, 2009
When Google's renowned visual design lead, Douglas Bowman, left the search giant at the end of March, he wrote a passionate blog post about his reasons for quitting.
He claimed that the company's reliance on data was so extreme, it prevented it from making any daring design decisions, and quoted one instance when a team couldn't decide between two blues, so were testing 41 shades between each of the choices to see which one performed better. Bowman's post sparked a heated debate on the web.
Irene Au, Director of User Experience at Google, acknowledges that Bowman is an extraordinary designer who made huge contributions to the company's products. However, she insists there's a clear logic behind Google's approach. "It's very much a culture of experimentation," she explains.
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