I had not heard about this yet and found it very interesting. The lack of comment on US involvement is suspicious and I look forward to hearing more truth of that as it comes out. Also, I'm curious about how effective this was in creating a disruption in Cuba, as well as how the site was marketed.
Seems like today social network is used for a million different things. This article displays it being used as propaganda, in a way, to aid in tarnishing Castro’s name” The plan was to circumvent Cuba's internet filters, build a young audience and then turn them into dissenters”. I personally think the estimated 1.6 million dollars spent of this 2 year project could’ve been put to much better use.
Awesome! As a big fan of James Bond, Jason Bourne, and spy movies in general, this sounds like a great pitch for a movie. It does raise some questions from a business and marketing standpoint. Do you know where your start-up money is coming from? How does unknown and sketchy financial backers effect your marketing strategy? I have no doubt that the U.S. government saw what an important role Twitter played in toppling various Mideast regimes several years ago and thought, "Hey, we could do that".
This is very interesting and I am very curious to see what happens. Cuba and the US usually are not on good terms and it sounds like some sketchy things are going on again. I am not exactly sure what this Twitter will actually do. Hopefully, in the end people will solve their issues.
Part of me is surprised by this because I haven't heard anything about it, but in all honesty, I'm not that surprised. From a purely marketing standpoint, this ZunZuneo sounds like a really good plan. As we have seen with Twitter, social media directed at the younger crowds can be one of the greatest marketing strategies out there. It's a fast, entertaining way to spread information to a large quantity of people and inspire interest in a product (or in this case, political cause).
As it seems is the trend, I had not heard of this expensive and questionable Twitter-like social media site. I think that points to the overarching issue in point. The U.S. government is clearly spending enormous amounts of money on unknown and unspecified causes, and we, as citizens, are oblivious. Even when these situations are questioned, as in this article, the mainstream media does not get involved. There is a clear collaboration at hand. While we can not stop these discrepancies, we can do our best to be informed and seek information outside of the mainstream to draw attention to situations like this.
While I am not surprised that the US government would pull a stunt like this, and keep it on the down low, I am surprised that they would have chosen to spend the money on a twitter like website just to get to Cuban youth. I haven't seen statistics, but I cannot imagine that the percentage of cuban youth heavily involved in social media is anywhere near what it is like in the United States. I hate reading things about our government using our money for worthless schemes like this, and even more when they are using offshore banking services to hide the paper trail. We are not in the cold war any longer, quit sneaking around!
In the whole scheme of things, 1.6 million dollars is not a lot of cash when compared to the amount of money we have and do spend on many other things: helping Mexico fighting the cartels, humanitarian aid, and war in the Middle-East, not to mention lavishly refurbishing structures in the US that are just fine, the list is infinite! Denying involvement is what the government has done for years in situations when they may make negative face, but nonetheless, it is clear who is and was responsible for this one. As for their audience, the youth, they chose wisely--smart move. Very impressionable, smart, young minds, and are probably more willing and wanting change at this time, especially post Fidel. All in all, they chose a perfect target market and supplied them with the product (marketing mix) needed to communicate and get their messages delivered as well as open up free communication among the people.
This is a very interesting article. I'm surprised that this stunt has not reached more news platforms. I was completely unaware of this. It's an interesting approach to get to Cuban youth although I'm not sure how good of an idea this was. Seems like a long shot.
This is the first time I have heard anything this story (not surprising). I hate to speculate but hard not to with our current administration. I do not like to openly give my opinion on our administration but to say the least I am not surprised.
I also had not heard anything about this "project". To me, it seems like a waste of money and time. They didn't receive the results they were after, and the plan went bust in 2012. So really it seems like another waste of resources by the US (allegedly). The fact that the US government seemed to not really be involved, makes this seem more of a stunt than anything serious.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the article is the fact that we as United States citizens are aware of this, but some how the Cuban government isn't? On top of that, the government refused to comment on the issue about whether or not they were involved, which makes it even more obvious. That should help the relations between our countries....
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the article is the fact that we as United States citizens are aware of this, but some how the Cuban government isn't? On top of that, the government refused to comment on the issue about whether or not they were involved, which makes it even more obvious. That should help the relations between our countries....
This is a crazy story. I agree it's like something out of a movie. Since so many kids are familiar and comfortable posting things on social media sites, I think this was a genius way of getting the youth to revolt. Whether it was legal or not is kind of iffy. We all want to know what are government is doing but do we REALLY want to know and what exactly is our plan when we find out?
It doesn't surprise me. We should do things like this more often. I'm sure there are media outlets that are created to create havoc in the U.S., or even towards other businesses. Rhian, the lack of US involvement is typical. Yes, suspicious but I don't think we will get the "truth" anytime soon. This helps me to see the power of social media.
15 comments:
I had not heard about this yet and found it very interesting. The lack of comment on US involvement is suspicious and I look forward to hearing more truth of that as it comes out. Also, I'm curious about how effective this was in creating a disruption in Cuba, as well as how the site was marketed.
Seems like today social network is used for a million different things. This article displays it being used as propaganda, in a way, to aid in tarnishing Castro’s name” The plan was to circumvent Cuba's internet filters, build a young audience and then turn them into dissenters”. I personally think the estimated 1.6 million dollars spent of this 2 year project could’ve been put to much better use.
Awesome! As a big fan of James Bond, Jason Bourne, and spy movies in general, this sounds like a great pitch for a movie. It does raise some questions from a business and marketing standpoint. Do you know where your start-up money is coming from? How does unknown and sketchy financial backers effect your marketing strategy? I have no doubt that the U.S. government saw what an important role Twitter played in toppling various Mideast regimes several years ago and thought, "Hey, we could do that".
This is very interesting and I am very curious to see what happens. Cuba and the US usually are not on good terms and it sounds like some sketchy things are going on again. I am not exactly sure what this Twitter will actually do. Hopefully, in the end people will solve their issues.
Part of me is surprised by this because I haven't heard anything about it, but in all honesty, I'm not that surprised. From a purely marketing standpoint, this ZunZuneo sounds like a really good plan. As we have seen with Twitter, social media directed at the younger crowds can be one of the greatest marketing strategies out there. It's a fast, entertaining way to spread information to a large quantity of people and inspire interest in a product (or in this case, political cause).
As it seems is the trend, I had not heard of this expensive and questionable Twitter-like social media site. I think that points to the overarching issue in point. The U.S. government is clearly spending enormous amounts of money on unknown and unspecified causes, and we, as citizens, are oblivious. Even when these situations are questioned, as in this article, the mainstream media does not get involved. There is a clear collaboration at hand. While we can not stop these discrepancies, we can do our best to be informed and seek information outside of the mainstream to draw attention to situations like this.
While I am not surprised that the US government would pull a stunt like this, and keep it on the down low, I am surprised that they would have chosen to spend the money on a twitter like website just to get to Cuban youth. I haven't seen statistics, but I cannot imagine that the percentage of cuban youth heavily involved in social media is anywhere near what it is like in the United States. I hate reading things about our government using our money for worthless schemes like this, and even more when they are using offshore banking services to hide the paper trail. We are not in the cold war any longer, quit sneaking around!
In the whole scheme of things, 1.6 million dollars is not a lot of cash when compared to the amount of money we have and do spend on many other things: helping Mexico fighting the cartels, humanitarian aid, and war in the Middle-East, not to mention lavishly refurbishing structures in the US that are just fine, the list is infinite! Denying involvement is what the government has done for years in situations when they may make negative face, but nonetheless, it is clear who is and was responsible for this one. As for their audience, the youth, they chose wisely--smart move. Very impressionable, smart, young minds, and are probably more willing and wanting change at this time, especially post Fidel. All in all, they chose a perfect target market and supplied them with the product (marketing mix) needed to communicate and get their messages delivered as well as open up free communication among the people.
This is a very interesting article. I'm surprised that this stunt has not reached more news platforms. I was completely unaware of this. It's an interesting approach to get to Cuban youth although I'm not sure how good of an idea this was. Seems like a long shot.
This is the first time I have heard anything this story (not surprising). I hate to speculate but hard not to with our current administration. I do not like to openly give my opinion on our administration but to say the least I am not surprised.
I also had not heard anything about this "project". To me, it seems like a waste of money and time. They didn't receive the results they were after, and the plan went bust in 2012. So really it seems like another waste of resources by the US (allegedly). The fact that the US government seemed to not really be involved, makes this seem more of a stunt than anything serious.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the article is the fact that we as United States citizens are aware of this, but some how the Cuban government isn't? On top of that, the government refused to comment on the issue about whether or not they were involved, which makes it even more obvious. That should help the relations between our countries....
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the article is the fact that we as United States citizens are aware of this, but some how the Cuban government isn't? On top of that, the government refused to comment on the issue about whether or not they were involved, which makes it even more obvious. That should help the relations between our countries....
This is a crazy story. I agree it's like something out of a movie. Since so many kids are familiar and comfortable posting things on social media sites, I think this was a genius way of getting the youth to revolt. Whether it was legal or not is kind of iffy. We all want to know what are government is doing but do we REALLY want to know and what exactly is our plan when we find out?
It doesn't surprise me. We should do things like this more often. I'm sure there are media outlets that are created to create havoc in the U.S., or even towards other businesses. Rhian, the lack of US involvement is typical. Yes, suspicious but I don't think we will get the "truth" anytime soon. This helps me to see the power of social media.
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