Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

Ok, so there's a new phenomena hitting the world of cigarettes called the e-cigarette.  Canadian media outlets recently did a bunch of stories on e-cigarettes asking whether or not they are safe.  Health Canada's position on all this was... Health Canada told CTV News in an email "as the safety, quality and efficacy of these products remains uncertain, Health Canada continues to advise Canadians not to use electronic cigarettes as they may pose health risks." Now, I'm a smoker and I've tried everything... the patch, the gum, Chantix/Champix, cold turkey, count smokes per day and then trying to decrease the number over time, etc. About the only thing I haven't tried has been hypnosis. And nothing worked. Some things worked enough that when my motivation was SUPER high I was able to quit for a couple weeks, but that was about all. So for someone like me (for whom other cessation methods have not worked), when Health Canada says "do not use th...

The US State Department apparently spent $630 ,000 to generate increased likes on Facebook. The strategy resulted in the State Department's Facebook page being liked by two million people (up from 100,000 prior to the campaign's start in 2011). While they are being criticized for the ad spend, I don't think it's all that bad (at least for a government agency). You're looking at less than 50 cents to generate a like and ultimately up to two million people viewed your content. The value / hope behind the program, at least I would suspect, would be for those impressions to continue on long after the ad campaign ended.  If they were attempting to form a 'base' upon which they could build into the future, then an initial spend of half-a-mil isn't unreasonable. What is strange however is that apparently their goal was to reach an 'older and influential' target audience. If that's their goal I don't know why they would choose Facebook to...

Not often that meme's actually make me laugh, but this one did (PR folks will appreciate the humor)...

FP is reporting that Verizon is in talks to purchase Wind Mobile . My feelings on this are mixed. On the one hand, I haven't been too pleased with Wind Mobile as of late. They've got connectivity issues and their customer support is just horrible (another company using tech support out of India). That said, their pricing keeps me as a customer. So a take-over by Verizon would be good in that quality of service would likely increase and it would ensure that Wind continues to offer competitive prices for Canadians (offsetting the costs of Rogers and Bell, who charge customers the most they possibly can get away with). On the down side though Verizon is now synonymous to me with the NSA (National Security Agency) in the US. If Wind Mobile servers suddenly become Verizon servers are all my phone calls and GPS data being logged and stored by the US government? Not that I have anything to hide, but on principle I couldn't support a company that was spying on me (espec...

Blackberry (previously known as Research in Motion) crashed 27 per cent last week.  The drop came on the company reporting a 84-million-dollar net loss for the quarter. It's not that surprising to be honest. Leaving aside the technical aspects of the company and its products, Blackberry simply has not stepped it up on the marketing side. The launch of BB10 generated some coverage for the company, but fell far short of generating buzz in the market. The Blackberry website, which I've been critical of in the past, remains the same as it was when the company was named Research in Motion.  The marketing effort put into rebranding the company is nothing short of .... well, nothing. It's clear that Blackberry doesn't believe in marketing as a component to their future success and instead are hoping that being an alternative to the iPhone and Android will be enough to sustain themselves. My personal opinion is that start-ups can get away with sloppy marketing, bu...

A new CNN poll shows that Obama's approval ratings a mong Millenials (those age 30 or younger) has fallen off a cliff. The president once held a 76 per cent approval rating among Millenials, but currently holds only a 45 per cent approval rating (with a 17 per cent drop occurring just in the past month). The reason(s) for this isn't hard to deduce. Online News The primary reason is where Millenials are getting their news from. Most millennials are getting their news online - The HuffingtonPost, The Young Turks, DemocracyNow, Reddit, and the list goes on. These outlets are covering stories with very different narratives than NBC, CBS, FOX, and MSNBC. When it comes to Edward Snowden, the mainstream media uses terms like traitor, spy, criminal, cowardly, while the online media outlets tend to use terms like whistleblower, hero and courageous. Additionally, on outlets like Reddit misinformation is quickly corrected in the ongoing conversation that takes place in the ...

Obama's brand took a shellacking in Ireland last week...