Why would it benefit Samsung to have random Indians bloggers demoing devices in Berlin?
Something about this story doesn't make any sense.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Even if the bloggers had agreed to work for Samsung, and then changed their mind, holding return tickets ransom would not have been an acceptable course of action.
There is no way that this is explained by stupidity, this is malice in its purest form.
But I'm sorry, threatening to leave a blogger (and then carrying this out!) with little money stranded in Germany is most certainly malicious!
Unfortunately, the bloggers were not told about the nature of the program and thought it is entirely different thing where the company invites independent journalists to write about their product. It totally makes sense to me that two branches of marketing don't communicate properly and get vastly different ideas about what the program is and then poor bloggers left at the whim of erratic and not very smart petty manager that threatens them when things not go as planned. For me, this madness totally makes sense in a general way things don't make sense in big companies.
That's not just "wearing samsung t-shirt". That's not what bloggers do.
P. S. I think that if you chose to piss off some people, then bloggers, whose main visible activity is conveying their thoughts to general public, is one of the least smart targets available.
So, Nokia is not very awesome++ at all, in my opinion, and in fact even though what Samsung did was very shitty, it kind of pales in comparison.
In all fairness, two and a half year later, a human rights lawyer contacted them and told them this was not okay, and they stopped doing it. Or, to quote someone on Metafilter: "Big company does something any sane, thinking person would automatically know is immoral. Film at 11."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/22/iran-n...
http://www.metafilter.com/82687/Nokia-Siemens-and-the-Irania...
http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/news-events/press-room/c... (this is their mea culpa, it almost sounds like they learned a lesson, except that it took over 2 years and a human rights lawyer before they stopped helping oppressive regimes with human rights abuse)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nokia+siemens+internet+filtering+e...
That said, this is exactly what happens when, as a journalist, you start to blur the lines. As a reader it's hard to feel any sympathy when reading paragraphs that try just a bit too hard to rationalize the behavior:
Again, a reminder – Behavior such as Samsung’s is not uncommon in the world of tech coverage. It’s perhaps considered more normal in some parts of the world
Not to mention your remark about being stranded in Berlin not being so bad.
I don't think that ever really worked out.
And Berlin is a fabulous city to get stranded in. It's not like it was Slough (UK) or Detroit (USA) or Grozny (RU)...
Right. I suppose Samsung could have dropped them off in the middle of the Atlantic during a major storm without even a liferaft.
In other words: Is that really the conversational tactic you want to apply here?
I've never experienced as much pressure as described here, but i guess the Indian Samsung subsidiary is managed by different minded people.
It was clearly just a communication problem. Samsung expects you to do things at these events and you get your trip and stay for free in return, sometimes a little cash on top.
Noone wants to use the word work, for all the red tape this would create...
Legal? - possibly. Ethical? - not to me. How is this not evasion of labor laws? That this is par-for-the-course is pretty dismaying.
It can be a lot of fun if you know what you're signing up for.
Surely Samsung aren't doing this for the work -- there have to be cheaper ways to get people to demo your product than flying folks from India to Germany, getting them uniforms, keeping close watch on their activities, daily update emails in the beginning, etc.?
Why not just have their own employees do it? Or just pay native German bloggers?
It sounds to me like Samsung was trying to buy enthusiasm, but failed to adequately communicate the work involved and then massively overreacted when it went wrong for them. With decent management, it could have been better the alternatives -- the 'booth-babe and slimy salesman' or 'bored employee droning through a script' approaches.
I still prefer Apple's approaches to product demonstration -- either a big on-stage demo followed by relatively unsupervised hands-on time for a large number of reporters at once, or a personal demo by a senior executive for certain lucky individuals.
I love Korea, but I avoid doing business in Korea because of this type of tomfoolery.
That hostage-passport can only hold if there is something else going on, like working without a permit (when the workers know their status and fear the punishment if they go to the embassy).
In the old days (a few years ago,) you couldn't even leave the country unless your employer released you from your visa. Trying to exit without a visa can get you detained an heavily fined. So keeping your passport has the practical effect of keeping you stranded because you can't get a replacement visa for the new passport without the employer's permission. Korean immigration is a mess.
Also you might actually want to stay and work in the country, and kicking up a fuss over a 'stolen' passport is a sure fire way to get your visa canceled.
If you're going to invoke racism and judge an entire nation's business practices, you could at least take the care to put together an argument that almost makes sense.
The article makes it clear that these bloggers dealt with Samsung's India subsidiary.
It seems it would be much easier to find people who are willing to be brand ambassadors and be up front about it if that's what you are looking for.
The whole story is entirely one-sided and to be honest if it sounds too crazy to be true, I suspect it probably is too crazy to be true.
If you're a tiny startup, your internal communication lines and org chart are small and simple enough that everybody is usually on the same page.
But if you're a huge company like Samsung, it's very easy to have situations where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. That may well be what happened here.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Kies
Having been forced to use this monstrosity to get files onto a Galaxy Tab, I don't see _where_ you get the idea that you're talking about a rational company.
I like The Verge's ethics statement, which they post publicly, for this reason.
http://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement
"We do not allow trips or any portions of trips (including but not limited to airfare, hotel, or car rentals) to be paid for by third parties (these are known in the industry as 'junkets')."
They make expectations for readers and device-makers crystal clear.
How does this "raise larger concerns" about these blogs? It seems like the blogger here has gone out of his way to ensure that his impartiality isn't challenged.
This sort of behavior - from Samsung or otherwise - is despicable. They need to be held to full account for this sort of fraud.
Of course, I only know the behavior of aforementioned services from my 'friends'.
Officially they were invited to live the games from the inside but in the end they worked as Samsung publicist for free.
http://int13.net/france/blog/i-won-a-contest-to-go-to-the-lo...
> As a Cheil member, I want to express my deeply sorry to make you feel that way. We’ll try to do our best not to make any inconvenience around this matter. And I promise that your comments will be reflected to upgrade and elaborate our Moilers program. I hope you to keep in touch with us and show your opinion at any time. Whatever it is, it will be welcomed
From Wikipedia:
>Cheil Worldwide Inc., is a global marketing and communications company headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.[1] It is South Korea's largest advertising agency and was ranked 16th in the world by Advertising Age in 2006... Internationally, Cheil has carried out communications campaigns for Samsung Electronics, including the “Imagine” branding campaign spanning 80 countries. It also provides marketing support for Samsung’s role as a Worldwide Olympic Partner
Overaggressive third party marketing company? I wonder how Samsung will respond to this article and other feedback.
No guarantee that they would deal with the issue promptly, of course, but some kind of threat or formal inquiry to whoever was in charge at Samsung probably would have made them back down.
Samsung Mob!lers is a voluntary community of active Samsung mobile device users, who are offered the opportunity to participate in our marketing events across the world. At these events, all activities they undertake are on a voluntary basis. No activities are forced upon them.
We regret there was a misunderstanding between the Samsung Mob!lers coordinators and the relevant blogger, as we understand he was not sufficiently briefed on the nature of Samsung Mob!lers’ activities at IFA 2012. We have been attempting to get in touch with him.
We respect the independence of bloggers to publish their own stories.
via - http://asia.cnet.com/should-samsung-have-stranded-a-blogger-...
That's not a "misunderstanding between the coordinator and the blogger", that is your coordinator fucking up.
I can't believe that a company still thinks that "we regret there was a misunderstanding" is any sort of apology when you should have said "we regret we made this mistake and apologize", trying to pin it on the blogger, damn...
Clearly this is not remotely as horrific as the usual connotations, but the structure of bait-and-switch coercion is very similar.
