[One (M7) General] BarryH_GEG:
And it was a year ago for the SGS3's launch. Here's the detail from the thread that it was discussed in. Using freelancers to promote products virally is risky and a lot of companies don't do it because it's so hard to control. HTC's using viral marketing heavily this year and the same thing could happen to them. In both cases it doesn't mean that Samsung or HTC endorse slamming competitors and most likely the agreements the freelancers sign strictly prohibit it. But the people posting aren't professionals and have no ties to the company their blogging to promote other than a one-time check. No company wants to sell products so badly that they'd intentionally risk their credibility and reputations by instructing their employees or contractors to slam a competitor. In Samsung’s case in TW you’re talking about selling an additional 2MM phone is 2012 when they sold 250MM which is less than 1% of their sales.

Wow. Pretty distorted representation. What Samsung did and apologized for was using viral and social media and making the opinions expressed by individuals look as if they were personal and not sponsored by Samsung. It was also for the launch of the SGS3 last year. The link you posted contains the 61 page PowerPoint deck prepared by OpenTide, the local marketing company Samsung engaged, explaining the viral campaign and not once in it is a competitor mentioned. It discusses the timing of various local events and the messaging the bloggers should use to hype various features of the SGS3.

The ethics of companies sponsoring viral programs that make the opinions expressed look unsolicited is kind of a grey area. HTC's said they plan on using viral campaigns to promote the One this year so they’re up against the same ethics questions. It's totally possible that some of the individuals posting on behalf of companies go off script and trash competitors but there's a big difference between that and the company sponsoring the program telling them to. Is there anything other than those links you posted that are more current or having anything to do with the One or SGS4?

Here's the action plan from the PowerPoint translated.

Here's a link to the 61 page PPT (in Chinese) if anyone wants to see it.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73155531/S3_Viral Plan_0629.pptx

The only reason this interested me is that it really didn't make a lot of sense. There are 9MM smartphones a year sold in TW. Because HTC, Asus, and Acer are the "home town" teams it wouldn't seem that Samsung being Korean would ever "own" the market. They had 29% of the TW market last year so what would they have to gain by potentially risking their reputation worldwide in a "controversy?" Selling 2MM more devices in TW when they sold 250MM last year?

There's huge risk for any company in using bloggers to represent the company as you lose control of the message and can't prevent individuals from potentially saying things that reflect poorly on you. The same thing happened in Mainland China with a couple of companies. Paying people to say good things about a company or product isn't wrong per se and with social being so important it's done all the time. Do the people we see in TV commercials actually use or care about the products their pitching? But since bloggers are freelancers and don't work for any specific company it's easy for the messaging to get out of control which is what the examples you posted show. Welcome to the 21st century. ;)

HTC and Samsung UK employees dissed each other on Twitter. I guarantee you the employees weren't speaking for HTC or Samsung corporate and were probably reprimanded. Trashing a competitor outwardly reflects as poorly on the trashor as it does on the trashee. And multibillion dollar companies know and respect that.

And this is pretty good representation of how the Taiwanese feel about non-Taiwanese phone manufacturers. Can you imagine if the head of the U.S. Treasury proclaimed that all U.S. citizens should buy Motorola phones? Manufacturers importing and competing in the U.S. would go nuts. "Free trade" is just that and protecionism isn't an answer to solving the ills of troubled companies or industries.

"HTC’s operations have weakened, impacting Taiwan’s export figures, resulting in 5 successive months of negative growth and seriously affecting Taiwan’s economic growth. In order to stop the decline, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang today (the 10th) called for his fellow countrymen to “Affirm and support HTC, starting with loving and using their mobile phones”. This statement prompted backlash on the internet,*PTT*saw countless posts slammed, criticizing HTC for considering themselves to be a mainland Chinese brand and belittling Taiwan, [with netizens] unable to agree with Shih Yen-shiang’s point of view.Shih Yen-shiang revealed that he and the Vice-Economic Minister both use HTC phones, that the government has a close relationship with HTC, provides assistance, and hopes that everyone will unite in supporting domestic companies. Netizens didn’t show any appreciation, wit some people with angrily digging out HTC chairman Cher Wang’s past statements, pointing to her having said “HTC is an indigenous Chinese brand”, so Taiwanese officials now calling for the masses to support a ‘non-Taiwanese brand’ is truly unpersuasive."​

http://www.chinasmack.com/2012/stor...ent-calls-on-citizens-to-buy-support-htc.html