Whaouuuu it was AWESOME!!!

All the USA student away of life in the 6 Fest...

By TT


I could not make this blog without talking about the best experience that i lived here in Athens: the 6Fest!!!

Just for French people or future international student from France, i am going to explain this event through its history. So, 6 Fest is the sixth installment of the premier college campus outdoor music festival. Since 2004, the Fest, which has grown exponentially since year 1, has become an Ohio tradition across campuses statewide. With the traditional site of Ohio University
already rolling out the marketing and promotional campaigns, our expectations and goals are set very high.


With considerable growth over the last five years, 6 Fest is expecting to substantially break attendance records from previous years. At the beginning they were just 4 000 students and in 2008 they were almost 15 000...


In other words, this event is a it is an outdoor concert in a field with thousands of students and delirium came to make a big party! And this year, it was different from the other times because it happened after the rain, so the mud and some funny situations as slides and fights in the mud... It was AWESOME certainly my best experience here!! So future OU french Students YOU MUST LIVE IT next year!! This message can be also for companies which want to increase their awareness, in student's mind, by the sponsoring...

The dark side of Spring Break!

Spring Break In A War Zone

By Seth Doane

Americans watch as war is waged along their southern border, at the same time they're seeing thousands of U.S. students getting on planes, heading to Mexico, on vacation.


Spring break has always pitted parents' worries against students' wants, but rarely quite like this.





"I know my mom wasn't going to let me come," says bikini-clad Kimberly Tobey, from Wakefield, Mass.


"My parents especially were really scared, they begged us not to come," says another young woman.


If anything could detract from the pictures of sugary beaches in Cancun, Mexico, it would be this: an ongoing battle among drug cartels and against government forces across the country, which in the last 15 months has killed more than 7,000 people.

They're headlines that caught the eye of Marisa Jetter, a junior at Fordham University, as she prepared for spring break in Cancun. She read about the travel alert in a student newspaper.

"I opened up one of the papers and I was like… Oh, the first article 'escalating violence on the border'," Jetter said.

Mexico's fight against the cartels led the U.S. State Department to issue a "travel alert" on their Web site encouraging citizens "throughout" Mexico to "excerise caution."


"I'm nervous," Jetter said. "But then I keep talking myself down like, 'you'll be fine… you'll be fine.'"

It's a public-relations nightmare for a resort town that depends on tourism as its biggest money-maker, Doane reports. While most of the violence is in border cities far from Cancun's tourist strip, just last month came a grisly example of an unsavory undercurrent here.


A retired Mexican army general had has hands, wrists and ankles broken before his body was riddled with bullets. He was in Cancun to overhaul the local police force, after it was believed to be infiltrated by drug cartels.


Cartels operate in the shadows just a few miles from the tourist zone. Where heavily armed federal police, and even the military, patrol the streets. It was a reminder that Cancun is an important smuggling route for drugs headed to the United States.

Meanwhile, back on the tourist strip, police tell CBS News they don't see problems and don't expect any either.

Mexico's $13 billion tourism industry actually grew by 3 percent last year, but with violence lurking in the shadows, one the biggest battles in this part of Mexico, is to keep tourists coming.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/18/eveningnews/main4875062.shtml


My commentary:
Before coming in USA i really wished to live the experience of American Spring break and guess what??!!! I did it!!!

This is an event in which, from mid-march to mid-april, hundreds of thousands of students all American students from across the U.S. go to Panama City Beach for the festivities of "Spring Break". This is the best season to visit this place if you like partying day and night in the middle of crowds of young people. And i could note that companies take advantage of this event by selling a lot of derivates or products in link with this event such as tee shirt, flags, and so on... People who live this experience want to keep souvenirs and companies know that!

But the Spring break also means violence, battles and drugs... But i was lucky i did avoid all this bad thing and my souvenirs are full of good things!!!

A good example to follow!

Toyota and Lexus Hybrids Top One Million Sales in the U.S.




TORRANCE, Calif., March 11, 2009: Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), USA, Inc., announced today that total combined Toyota and Lexus hybrid vehicle sales in the U.S. have topped the one million mark.


The sales milestone was achieved with an industry-leading six Toyota and Lexus hybrid vehicles including the Toyota Prius, the world's first mass-produced gas-electric hybrid and the all-time worldwide leader in hybrid sales.


With the expansion of its hybrid technology to a diverse group of vehicles, Toyota has commanded nearly 75 percent of all hybrid vehicles sales in the U.S. over the past 10 years. Overall, cumulative worldwide sales of Toyota and Lexus hybrids have exceeded 1.7 million vehicles through January of this year.


"One million hybrids in less than nine years indicates how quickly American consumers have accepted this important technology," said Jim Lentz, TMS president. "Toyota's hybrid leadership will continue to expand in the U.S. and around the globe. With 10 new hybrid models between now and 2012 in various global markets, we plan to sell one million gas-electric hybrids per year, worldwide, sometime early in the next decade."


Toyota pioneered modern gas-electric hybrid technology with the launch of the Prius in late 1997 in the Japan market. Its popularity in Japan encouraged the launch of Prius in the U.S. in July 2000. The first-generation U.S. Prius was a low-volume vehicle (12,000 produced annually) that gained an immediate following, particularly among environmentally conscious consumers.


The second-generation Prius launched in the fall of 2003 as a 2004 model year. With larger dimensions, all-new styling, and Toyota's new Hybrid Synergy Drive technology, Prius became an instant hit. By 2005 Toyota was producing over 100,000 vehicles annually for the U.S. market. Prius had propelled itself from a niche environmental car into a mainstream vehicle for everyday driving needs. With more than 107,000 sales in 2005 Prius became the third-best selling Toyota passenger car in the U.S. after the Camry and Corolla.


From its humble beginnings in the summer of 2000 through February 2009 more than 700,000 Prius have been sold in the U.S., making up more than half of the 1.2 million Prius sold worldwide.


The successful launch of the Prius encouraged expansion of its hybrid technology to existing models in both the Toyota and Lexus lineups. In April 2005, Lexus introduced the crossover RX 400h, the world's first hybrid-powered luxury vehicle. Two months later Toyota launched the Highlander Hybrid sport utility vehicle (SUV).


One year later in April 2006, the Lexus GS 450h made its debut as the world's first front-engine, rear-wheel drive, full-hybrid performance sedan. April 2006 also marked the debut of the Camry Hybrid, becoming the first Toyota hybrid to be built in the U.S.


For the third consecutive year, Lexus further expanded its hybrid lineup in July 2007 with the launch of the LS 600h L luxury hybrid sedan, the world's first vehicle to feature a full-hybrid V8 powertrain. July 2007 saw the arrival of the second-generation 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV. The all-new Highlander Hybrid raised the bar once again in the mid-size SUV segment with a complete redesign that was improved, refined and expanded in nearly every metric of comparison.


Ongoing improvement to its hybrid technology continues in 2009 with the summer arrival of the second-generation 2010 Lexus RX 450h. The all-new RX Hybrid will feature an updated version of Lexus Hybrid Drive that will improve fuel economy by up to 20 percent while generating 27 more horsepower than its predecessor.


Spring 2009 will mark the launch of the all-new and vastly improved third-generation Prius. The 2010 Toyota Prius will once again set new standards for innovative hybrid design and technology, raising its level of convenience features and performance to new heights, including a combined EPA estimated fuel efficiency rating of 50 miles-per-gallon.


Finally, late summer of 2009 will see the launch of the 2010 Lexus HS 250h, the world's first dedicated luxury hybrid vehicle. The HS 250h will be Lexus' fourth hybrid and the most fuel-efficient vehicle in its lineup.


"For Toyota and Lexus, 2009 can easily be called 'the year of the hybrid' with three new offerings including our seventh hybrid model with the launch of the Lexus HS 250h," said Lentz. "In addition to our growing hybrid presence over the next few years, expanded hybrid offerings from competitors will not only drive innovation and improvement for consumers, it will continue to help improve the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil."



Source: http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2009/03/11/453029.html



My commentary:



Toyota was pioneered in hybrid engines technology with the launch of the Prius vehicle in 1997 in the Japan market. At the beginning, during the first generation of Prius, in US the sale was low volume but little by little and thanks to the increase of environmental conscious consumer that expanded quite quickly. Thus, today the Prius is one of Toyota's top sellers in the United States, which combined with Lexus reached 1 million hybrids sold in the US, and 1.7 million worldwide by February 2009, and this in spite of the crisis.



And we note that more and more car companies began interesting in this new technology and had positioned on it such as Honda with the Accord or Peugeot which plan to launch the 3008 hybrid car for 2011. We note that if lots of companies try to position in this way it is because they know that the environmental friendly cars can also represent a crucial thing for the brand image.

Imagination has no limits!

Consumer habits make cellphone designers go crazy



by Nicholas Deleon on February 29, 2008



How many times do you say to yourself, “All I want is a phone that works”? So you wonder why companies don’t take that into consideration.


There’s a cute little piece in today’s Old Gray Lady about how cellphone companies go about designing would-be hit phones. They hire focus groups, host weekend retreats and go to all sorta of extremes to try to figure out what Joe Consumer wants in a phone. Do you want a touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, slider or flip? It’s a tough job trying to get consumers to buy the same thing over and over again.


But phone design isn’t all haptic this, holistic that. Nokia is currently designing a environmentally friendly phone, one that’s made out of recycled metal and other materials; it would sell well on the Upper West Side.


Nowhere in the piece is reliability mentioned. No one addresses that fact that, for example, I can’t walk up certain sections of Sixth Avenue without my phone cutting out. Even better, why I can’t use the phone in the eastern half of my apartment. How about we work on that.

Sources: http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/02/29/consumer-habits-make-cellphone-designers-go-crazy/

My commentary:
This is a kind of thing that show how business can be a strong tool of persuasion. Indeed remember those early days, the mobile was designed just to be contacted wherever we are and no one expected more. Whereas today, your mobile phone uses calendar, mp3, gps, and sometimes even computer ... Unthinkable to market a few years ago, designers and marketers come to sell us today! "Persuasion" i said or i should have said Marketers are a"power of persuasion" or "drem sellers"!!