Charlie Sheen’s use of technology and web 2.0 has earned him big dollars and a ‘winning’ formula for his own personal brand.
The Two And A Half Men star has greatly benefited from his own ability to embrace the internet, exploring all the marketing tools available to him. From breaking a twitter record, to hosting his own internet show on Ustream, the actor has done what few in Hollywood have ever achieved. Parody videos created by fans and websites dedicated to his one-liners are giving the actor non-stop free promotion and this in turn has created an audience of marketers for Charlie Sheen.
His infamous ABC interview gave birth to many of the viral video spoofs we have seen of his ‘radical’ behavior, which in turn, has fueled his twitter fan growth, and other media interview requests. With so many people discussing and sharing his antics, his own brand of controversy has been implanted onto the web, and has helped him sell tickets for his tour dates.
On top of that, Sheen’s regular updates with his fans on twitter provide a direct relationship and route to market. Sure that sounds a little cold, but he does have a following he can reach out to about his products.
Looking at what he did this week, Sheen took the next step in his own web fueled marketing campaign by making a self-parody video. This clever twist gave yet another viral hit to his name, as bloggers and social media re-posted and discussed how outrageous it was to see him spoof himself.
With many dates left on Charlie Sheen’s tour, the actor has a non-stop ‘Bi-Winning’ 24/7 marketing campaign, and other celebrities in the entertainment industry should learn from his online success.
Charlie Sheen’s use of technology and web 2.0 has earned him big dollars and a ‘winning’ formula for his own personal brand.
The Two And A Half Men star has greatly benefited from his own ability to embrace the internet, exploring all the marketing tools available to him. From breaking a twitter record, to hosting his own internet show on Ustream, the actor has done what few in Hollywood have ever achieved. Parody videos created by fans and websites dedicated to his one-liners are giving the actor non-stop free promotion and this in turn has created an audience of marketers for Charlie Sheen.
His infamous ABC interview gave birth to many of the viral video spoofs we have seen of his ‘radical’ behavior, which in turn, has fueled his twitter fan growth, and other media interview requests. With so many people discussing and sharing his antics, his own brand of controversy has been implanted onto the web, and has helped him sell tickets for his tour dates.
On top of that, Sheen’s regular updates with his fans on twitter provide a direct relationship and route to market. Sure that sounds a little cold, but he does have a following he can reach out to about his products.
Looking at what he did this week, Sheen took the next step in his own web fueled marketing campaign by making a self-parody video. This clever twist gave yet another viral hit to his name, as bloggers and social media re-posted and discussed how outrageous it was to see him spoof himself.
With many dates left on Charlie Sheen’s tour, the actor has a non-stop ‘Bi-Winning’ 24/7 marketing campaign, and other celebrities in the entertainment industry should learn from his online success.
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NFL owners, union resume mediation in Minneapolis
The NFL and its locked-out players have completed their first day of mediation under a court order and will meet again Friday as they try to resolve their labor dispute.
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Great <b>news</b>: Working population percentage drops to three-decade <b>...</b>
Great news: Working population percentage drops to three-decade low.
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Groundwater radiation level at nuke plant rises: TEPCO | Kyodo <b>News</b>
The concentration levels of radioactive iodine and cesium in groundwater near the troubled Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have increased up to several dozen times in one week, suggesting that toxic ...
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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said in an interview this week that he would consider returning to an active role at the company he helped start if asked.
During an interview in England this week, Wozniak said, "I'd consider it, yeah," when asked whether he would play a more active role if asked, Reuters reports.
Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer in 1976. Wozniak left his full-time role with the company in 1987, but remains an employee and shareholder of Apple.
Since leaving Apple, Wozniak has been involved in a wide range of entrepreneurial and philanthropic endeavors. He currently serves as Chief Scientist for storage company Fusion-io.
Meanwhile, Jobs is currently taking an indefinite leave of absence to focus on his health, though he remains CEO of Apple and continues to be involved in strategic decisions.
Wozniak, who has widely been acknowledged as the technical genius behind Apple's early success, believes that he has a lot to offer the company he helped start, which went on to become the world's second-largest company in terms of market value.
"There's just an awful lot I know about Apple products and competing products that has some relevance, some meaning. They're my own feelings, though," Wozniak said during the interview.
When asked his opinion on Apple today, Wozniak praised the company for its track record with recent products. "Unbelievable," he said, "The products, one after another, quality and hits."
Even so, Wozniak admitted that he'd prefer Apple's devices to be more open, so he can "get in there and add [his] own touches." Last December, Wozniak revealed that he had purchased a DIY kit for the iPhone 4 and "modded" the device into the as-yet-unreleased white version.
"My thinking is that Apple could be more open and not lose sales," said Wozniak, while adding, "I'm sure they're making the right decisions for the right reasons for Apple."
Wozniak has been committed to openness since the beginning. In December, Wozniak told reporters that he didn't design the original Apple I to make a lot of money and had given the designs away for free after his former employer HP showed no interest in the computer.
As rumors of a later-than-usual iPhone launch for 2011 persist, a new report reveals that the notoriously secretive Apple is being even more careful than usual when dealing with overseas suppliers.
"Apple is keeping its iPhone 5 cards extra close to the vest on this launch to avoid a falloff in iPhone 4 demand ahead of a refresh, especially given the February launch of the CDMA iPhone 4 with Verizon," Analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities said in a note to investors on Friday. He believes that the iPhone 5 could still launch in June or July, as previous models have.
White noted that various rumors have pointed toward a launch later than June this year for the fifth-generation iPhone. One report from March alleged that Apple has not even begun ordering components for the anticipated "iPhone 5," and the device is slated to arrive in the company's 2012 fiscal year, which begins in late September.
And a third report alleged that Apple is working on a major revamp of iOS, its mobile operating system, for version 5.0. New features like cloud-based storage of music, photos and video are rumored to arrive in the update this fall, likely alongside new iPhone hardware.
But despite all of those reports, White isn't yet convinced that the iPhone 5 will be introduced later than its typical June or July timeframe.
"Although we do not have a smoking gun that definitively rules out a delayed autumn unveiling or one that supports a launch this summer, there is a pattern of activity in motion with the supply chain that makes us question a delayed launch," he said.
White also cited sources who indicated that iPad sales could reach up to 40 million units in calendar year 2011. And supply chain sources also indicated that disruption from the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan will actually end up benefitting Apple, as suppliers will "rush to support Apple at the expense of competitors."
The analyst already revealed earlier this week that Apple has been offering upfront cash payments to component suppliers in order to secure components in the wake of the disaster in Japan. Apple has apparently also been using a "three cover guarantee," referring to capacity, stock and price, to block out competitors and prevent them from building ample supply of devices.
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The PPIC study Kolko co-authored sheds light on why historically California’s economy has grown on pace with the national economy even though it usually ranks low in surveys of states whose laws are favorable to business.
While the research suggests many factors that determine long-term economic growth lie beyond the reach of policy makers, Kolko cautioned that policy could still someday trump warm, sunny days on the Pacific coast.
“If California loses its ability to incubate and encourage fast growing industries to be here, that would be unfortunate” in the long term, she said.
Kolko identified two policies in particular, a simpler tax structure rather than a lower tax rate, and a lower share of government expenditure on welfare and transfer payments, as means of hastening economic expansion.
(© 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Over the years, entrepreneurs and corporate executives have devised any number of clever ways for getting rich off the working poor, but you'd have to look long and hard to find one more diabolically inventive than the RAL. Say you have a $2,000 tax refund due and you don't want to wait a week or two for the IRS to deposit that money in your bank account. Your tax preparer would be delighted to act as the middleman for a very short-term bank loan—the RAL. You get your check that day or the next, minus various fees and interest charges, and in return sign your pending refund over to the bank. Within 15 days, the IRS wires your refund straight to the lender. It's a safe bet for the banks, but that hasn't stopped them from charging astronomical interest rates. Until this tax year, the IRS was even kind enough to let lenders know when potential borrowers were likely to have their refund garnished because they owed back taxes, say, or were behind on child support.
Hewitt didn't invent the refund anticipation loan. That distinction belongs to Ross Longfield, who dreamed up the idea in 1987 and took it to H&R Block CEO Thomas Bloch. "I'm explaining it," Longfield recalls, "but Tom is sitting there going, 'I don't know; I don't know if people are going to want to do that.'"
Tax-prep shops are as common as fast-food joints in many low-income neighborhoods—there are at least half a dozen on one three-block stretch of South Broadway in Yonkers, N.Y., where these photographs were taken. A few offer reasonably priced accounting, while others charge hundreds of dollars for 20 minutes of work. But Longfield knew. He worked for Beneficial Corp., a subprime lender specializing in small, high-interest loans for customers who needed to finance a new refrigerator or dining-room set. His instincts told him the RAL would be a big hit—as did the polling and focus groups he organized. "Everything we did suggested people would love it—love it to death," he says.
He also knew Beneficial would make a killing if he could convince tax preparers—in exchange for a cut of the proceeds—to peddle this new breed of loan on his employer's behalf. Ultimately, Longfield persuaded H&R Block to sign up. But no one was as smitten as John Hewitt—who understood that people earning $15,000 or $20,000 or $25,000 a year live in a perpetual state of financial turmoil. Hewitt began opening outposts in the inner cities, Rust Belt towns, depressed rural areas—anywhere the misery index was high. "That was the low-hanging fruit," he says. "Going into lower-income areas and delivering refunds quicker was where the opportunity was."
Customers wanting a RAL paid Jackson Hewitt a $24 application fee, a $25 processing fee, and a $2 electronic-filing fee, plus 4 percent of the loan amount. On a $2,000 refund, that meant $131 in charges—equivalent to an annual interest rate of about 170 percent—not to mention the few hundred bucks you might spend for tax preparation. "Essentially, they're charging people triple-digit interest rates to borrow their own money," says Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.
In 1988, the first year he began offering the loans, Hewitt owned 49 stores in three states. Five years later, he had 878 stores in 37 states. And five years after that, when Cendant Corp.—the conglomerate that owned Avis, Century 21, and Days Inn—bought Jackson Hewitt for $483 million, his earliest backers received a $2 million payout on every $5,000 they'd invested. Today, with 6,000 offices scattered across the country, Jackson Hewitt is more ubiquitous than KFC, and has about as many imitators.
THERE WOULD BE NO refund anticipation loans, of course, without tax refunds. And by extension there would be no RALs without the Earned Income Tax Credit, the federal anti-poverty initiative that served as the mother's milk nourishing the instant-refund boom. Welfare reform was the catalyst for the EITC, which was aimed at putting extra cash in the pockets of low-income parents who worked. What motive does a single mother have to get a job, conservative thinkers asked, if there was scant difference between her monthly take-home pay and a welfare check? It was Richard Nixon who first floated the idea that led to the Earned Income Tax Credit; Ronald Reagan dubbed it "the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress." In 2007, the US Treasury paid out $49 billion to 25 million taxpayers.
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ABC <b>News</b> Exclusive: Pat Tillman's Mom Wants General Stanley <b>...</b>
ABC News' Jake Tapper reports: President Obama named retired General Stanley McChrystal to co-chair a White House commission on military families this week, but according to perhaps the most prominent military family of the last decade, ...
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Google <b>News</b> Blog: New Google <b>News</b> for Opera Mini
While the Google News team has been hard at work redesigning our service for smartphones, we've also been thinking about our milllions of users around the world who access the web not from a smartphone, but from a feature phone, ...
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