Fake Steve Jobs

Dear valued Apple lovers,

I want to begin by saying how truly sorry I am about the confusion concerning the iPhone's sudden drop in price yesterday. I understand how shocking such a large drop in price must have come across to those of you who paid full price. We here at Apple appreciate each and every one of you that purchased your phones early and I want you to know that we are just as committed to you as we are to the are to the quality of our products. I also want to thank those of you who voiced your concerns about the drop in price. We realize now that we may have made a mistake and that we owe it to you, our dedicated customers, to make it better. In order to do so I want to first explain why we decided to drop the price down so suddenly. Our hopes were that in dropping the price more people would be able to enjoy this wonderful, groundbreaking technology. But we also realize that we may have been a bit hasty. After realizing how upset our customers were we have decided to offer early adopters a $100 rebate for the iPhone as a peace offering. I hope this will show how sorry we are here at Apple and how dedicated we still are to our loyal customers. I also want to make this promise to you: we will work harder next time to take care of our early adopters. You deserve better and we know this.

Steve Jobs
Apple CEO

Glengarry

I watched the movie since there were no more tickets to the play. I really wish I could've seen the play though. It is obvious, when watching the movie, that it was originally a play. The long monologues and fast-paced back and forth dialog lends itself better to the play setting. I enjoyed David Mamet's style. His dialog is quick and clever. I can see why Dr. Lambiase wanted us to see this play/movie. It's hard to believe that companies were so unethical back in the 1960s. I wonder how many of these unethical practices still take place today. Mamet is obviously poking at the unethical behavior of both the higher ups (Mitch and Murray, the owners) as well as their employees. By setting up a competition in which employees either succeed greatly (earn a Cadillac) or fail miserably (lose their job) Mitch and Murray are not being fair to their employees. This competition strains the relationship not only between the owners and the employees but also between the employees, making for a seriously terrible work environment. The way in which they hand out the leads is also unfair to the salesmen. They continuously give out bad leads to those who are doing poorly and the valuable leads to those who are already succeeding. This has led to an unbalanced and unjust system of profit for the employees. Mitch and Murray are setting up their employees for failure and then punishing them when they fail. This, in turn, begins to affect the sales force. The men are forced to make a sale by any means necessary, even if that means lying to, bribing, threatening and intimidating clients. Roma is the best example of this behavior. He lies to his client and purposefully avoids his client in the hopes that his sale will go through before the client realizes he's been screwed over. Moss begins planning to steal the good leads to sell them to another company so that he can make some money since he can't make any money with the bad leads Mitch and Murray keep handing down. In the end though, it is Levene who steals the leads and sells them so that he can take care of his sick daughter. Mamet saw the unethical practices that plagued marketing strategies of the 60s and decided to make a movie, perhaps in the hopes that he might be able to change those strategies. I can't say whether or not his play/movie helped any but I doubt it hurt. He helped bring attention to some of the unethical practices taking place in business. I would absolutely hate to work at such a place; I don't know how any of the characters could handle working for such an unethical company. I wouldn't last a day there.

JetBlue vs. Southwest

Corporate apologies are a tricky thing. Its very important that they are done quickly and correctly in order to negate some of the negative publicity that has sprung up. I read the apology sent to Kyla Ebbert from SW CEO Gary Kelly after Ebbert was asked to leave her SW flight because her skirt was too short. I have to agree, her skirt was pretty short. (I saw an interview she did on youtube.) But, then again, those types of skirts are pretty common nowadays. The apology, which was requested by Ebbert and her lawyer, seemed anything but sincere. It sounds faked and somewhat like a sales pitch.

"From a Company who really loves PR, touche to you Kyla! Some have said we've gone from wearing our famous hot pants to having hot flashes at Southwest, but nothing could be further from the truth. As we both know, this story has great legs, but the true issue here is that you are a valued Customer, and you did not get an adequate apology. Kyla, we could have handled this better, and on behalf of Southwest Airlines, I am truly sorry. We hope you continue to fly Southwest Airlines. Our Company is based on freedom even if our actions may have not appeared that way. It was never our intention to treat you unfairly and again, we apologize." (http://www.southwest.com/about_swa/press/prindex.html)

This apology sounds more like a letter to an acquaintance. Its a non apologetic apology. If I were Ebbert, I would be offended by this pathetic excuse for an apology. Seriously. Now, SW has gone on to use this incident to boost sales. At the same time they issued this apology they announced new "mini-skirt" fares. They are attempting to turn it around for their benefit. Maybe they'll turn Ebbert into one of their new spokespersons, or maybe she'll model her skirt in their commercials.

On the other hand, JetBlue did a wonderful job with their public apology in March. After the cancellation of over a thousands flights, Founder and CEO David Neeleman issued a public apology. In this apology, Neeleman agrees with customers complaints saying that, "Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue’s seven year history." The long apology goes on to make promises to its customers, saying that JetBlue is going to work hard to fix any problems that arose during that time period. (http://www.jetblue.com/about/ourcompany/apology/index.html)

Neeleman also recorded his apology and released it on youtube. In this video, Neeleman does a great job sounding truly apologetic and sincere. The apology itself comes across as sincere and heartfelt. He takes responsibility for the companies mistakes and promises to never let it happen again. Neeleman is a genius. His apology will save JetBlue millions I'm sure.

Speaking of Democracy...

While reading the article Speaking of Democracy by Maud Schaafsma and Charlie Cray I was reminded of a documentary I was watching just the other night. This documentary, entitled The War on Democracy, discusses the changes that are taking place in countries such as Venezuela and the stance that America's leaders have taken against these changes. To explain, Hugo Chavez was democratically elected into office but many of the wealthier people were upset by his determination to spread the wealth coming in from the sale of oil. Hugo Chavez began refusing to sell the oil to countries such as the U.S. because he felt that the U.S. was taking advantage of "his people." Political leaders, including Colin Powell, and mainstream media began to speak out against Chavez and Venezuela, saying that Chavez was not a democratically-elected leader and that Venezuela was becoming just another Cuba. Watching this documentary made me realize that the U.S. is not really concerned about democracy at all. As far as I can tell, (and obviously I can't say I've been to Venezuela and seen for myself what the situation is) the people of Venezuela seem to love Chavez. Much more than I feel we as Americans love Bush. (That said, I am a liberal, so that has to be taken into consideration.) Our political advisers seem more concerned about oil prices and the fact that Hugo Chavez is going against the U.S. than whether or not Hugo Chavez is doing what is best for his country. The same goes for how they make decisions about what is going on within America. Often our government makes decisions based on how they will affect the large corporations and the wealthy, forgetting to take into consideration how their decisions will effect the larger population. I definitely agree with the article Speaking of Democracy with respect to the idea that we need to watch out for democracy. We have to be careful what rights we let the government take away, whose rights they are emphasizing and what information they are altering. The media isn't unbiased. At least not all of it. And we really have to be careful what information sources we put our trust in.

PRSA Code of Ethics

Just finished dissecting the PRSA Code of Ethics. The principles are pretty vague but the examples were helpful in trying to understand them. The preamble itself addresses what seems to me to be the main focus of the PRSA's member code of ethics, stewardship. Maybe I'm not getting what I'm supposed to out of it but I feel like this code is filled with rules created in an attempt to protect the PRSA and the public relations profession. I feel as if I'm being lectured so that I don't screw up and make the profession look bad. But what do I know? The specific quote I am referring to in the preamble is, "The value of member reputation depends upon the ethical conduct of everyone affiliated with the Public Relations Society of America." This valuing of stewardship brings me to the conclusion that the code is of a utilitarian nature, although I will agree there are some parts that attempt to address the more communitarian principles. I found that the code includes the principles of truth and freedom by supporting the free flow of information and the disclosure of information (both of which I would file under truth) as well as the principle of competition (which I would file under freedom). I'm not really sure how to label the ideas of safeguarding confidences and avoiding conflicts of interest.