Rethinking the Oreo for the Chinese market
NPR’s website has a story about Kraft Food and their reinvention of the Oreo cookie for the Chinese market.
Kraft launched Oreo in the Chinese market in 1996. And it was a dismal failure. It was almost pulled out of the market by Kraft.
However, Kraft decided to do some research and learned some unexpected lessons. The company learned that the Chinese consumers found the Oreo ”a little bit too sweet and a little bit too bitter.” Kraft changed the Oreo recipe to make the cookie more more chocolatey and the cream less cloying.
Kraft also learned to change the shape of the Oreo to please the Chinese consumers. They created Oreo with a green tea filling, and another with mango and orange flavor.
The sales of Oreo kept rising in China and now it is the best-selling cookie in China.
NPR quotes Lorna Davis, who is in charge of the global biscuit division at Kraft:
“Any foreign company that comes to China and says, ‘There’s 1 1/2 billion people here, goody goody, and I only need 1 percent of that’ … [is] going to get into trouble. You have to understand how the consumer operates at a really detailed level.”
See more here.
Can humans fly?
The above video shows some radio-controlled “flying humans” in the skies of New York City. It was a publicity stunt by some filmmakers to promote their new movie, which, for all we know, may not be anywhere near as much fun as the video itself.
How hard is it for a real human to actually fly? For that check out the video below:
Salad: The most hilarious food ever!
Is salad the most hilarious food ever? At least according to the Stock Photo agencies it is.
Source: reddit.
Yahoo homepage stories’ popularity visualized
Click on image above to go the interactive site visualizing the popularity of stories on Yahoo’s front page.
Periscopic, a visualization firm, worked with Yahoo to come up with an interactive look at the popularity of stories on the Yahoo homepage. One of the fun features of the visualization is the ability to view popularity by demographics; clicking on the female icon revealed that the most popular stories were cooking recipies, whereas clicking on the male icon led to a story about failed Sony gadgets.
You can use the buttons on the left and right to breakdown stories by age groups or by categories. You can also use the slider at the bottom to go back in time and see what stories were popular in the past 24 hours. Real fun.
Source: flowingdata
U.S: The Second Most Underrepresented Democracy In The World
Source: fairvote.org
What’s happened to Sesame Street?
Source: reddit.
Mika explains Avatar
You haven’t lived until you have heard Mika’s explanation of the movie Avatar. Her two-minute overviews are out of this world. English is not her native language, but that is what makes her explanations so special.
More of Mika retelling Inception, Titanic, Matrix and Spiderman.
Source: boingboing
Seconds since last OCD attack
I don’t know about you but I can certainly relate.
Source: Reddit.
The state of RIM
Source: nationalpost.
The human cost of our gadgets
Apple’s last quarter generated sales of $46.3 billion, making it one of the most profitable quarters ever for any U.S. company. Last quarter Apple sold 15 million iPads and 37 million iPhones. My first reaction to numbers like that is always, “Wow! Someone has to make those 37 million iphone first.”
I think in our minds there is some factory in some far off country which just spits out iPhones and iPads from the mouths of large, automated machines. These gadgets just come rolling off the assembly lines like a bunch of Oreo cookies while the workers pack them into pretty white boxes.
The truth is far from it. These gadgets are not made by robots on assembly lines, but by human beings who are sitting there, hour after hour, performing the same tedious task over and over again under awful work conditions.
Foxconn, a collection of factories that makes most of Apple products has long been under fire for its labor practices. Apple has repeatedly addressed the issue but not many are convinced.
NYTimes has a detailed and heart-breaking article about the human cost of iPhones and iPad manufacturing. Numerous deaths amid concerns of safety hazards and horrible work conditions are detailed in the Times article. The article also quotes a few Apple executives–anonymously of course:
“We’re trying really hard to make things better,” said one former Apple executive. “But most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from.”
Of course, Apple is not the only company doing business in China under such inhumane working conditions. Many other companies such as Dell, HP, Sony and many others etc are equally guilty of averting their eyes from awful labor conditions. But as one of the most successful company in the world Apple could start by setting the right tone. According to the Times article:
“Every company wants to be Apple,” said Sasha Lezhnev at the Enough Project, a group focused on corporate accountability. “If they committed to building a conflict-free iPhone, it would transform technology.”
With so much buying power Apple can throw its weight around with just about any manufacturer and hold their feet to the fire. But of course, that is unlikely to happen if we don’t hold Apple’s feet to to the fire first. As one of the executives at Apple is quoted in the article:
“… right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”
