Did you know that the chairman of Samsung, Lee Kun-hee, was convicted in 2008 for tax evasion in South Korea? Or that he was convicted in the 90s for bribing politicians? A British journalist, Michael Breen, wrote a satirical column in a South Korean newspaper last December, and now the electronics giant is suing him for libel. If found guilty, Breen could face jail time. [More]
reputations
Hey Online Shoppers, Please Don't Agree To Withdraw Negative Reviews
By 3.9.10
Jessica Palmer at the blog Bioephemera recently had a bad run-in with a bookseller on Amazon, which she talks about at great length in a post. The mistake she made, she says, was that she didn’t exercise due diligence in researching the seller for complaints, and she didn’t read through all the many reviews on Amazon to see if the negative ones demonstrated a pattern. But her bigger issue is that there’s still no way to shame a bad retailer the way local news stations do with local brick and mortar stores, which is why it’s so important to stick by your complaints once you make them. [More]
Lindsay Lohan Sues E*Trade Over Talking Baby Commercial
By 3.9.10
Does the milkaholic baby named Lindsay in the latest E*TRADE commercial remind you of a certain celebrity? Lindsay Lohan says it’s supposed to be her and is a jab at her own milkaholism, and she’s suing the company for $100 million and seeking an injunction to get it off the air. I agree that the baby playing the milkaholic doesn’t give a very good performance, but I always assumed it was supposed to be Lindsey Buckingham. [More]
China Introduces "Made In China" Campaign
By 1.8.10
China has caught on to the fact that it doesn’t enjoy a stellar reputation over here as a manufacturer of quality goods, especially after the tainted food and product stories of the past few years, so it’s doing what any good profit-minded business would do: running an image rehabilitation campaign. [More]
Should Yelp Remove Reviews By Non Customers?
By 11.20.09
Lehigh Pub, the restaurant in Pennsylvania that had two patrons arrested for not tipping, was blasted on Yelp in the past 24 hours or so by angry readers. Many of them weren’t customers, but heard about the arrests in the news and came to vote down the pub. As of this morning, it had an average of one star out of five.
Kellogg's Brand Reputation Takes A Hit After Dumping Phelps?
By 2.24.09
Supposedly, Kellogg’s “brand reputation” is in the gutter after canning Phelps over the pot photo, slipping from #9 to #83 in a list of 5,600 companies. We’d believe it more if this “reputation index” chart from Vanno, a brand index company, didn’t look like someone was given PowerPoint and 3 minutes and told to produce some convincing evidence for a press release.
