Recently in Emerging Markets Category

Whilst browsing the web the other day I happened across a fairly innocuous-looking story that, at first glance, seemed nothing more than one of those "strange but true" tales that you mentally file away to impress your mates with down the pub after work.

However, something about it set a few alarm bells ringing for me and, on further inspection, this throwaway story turned out to be a nugget of pure viral marketing gold.

It also prised open a family-sized can of worms in my hardened TV researcher's brain and set them wriggling in the part of my cranium that exists to remind me that the web can also be a truth-hunters worst nightmare.

The story concerned Ralph Hardy, a 13 year old kid in Texas who had been arrested after he swiped his dad's credit card and embarked on an epic $30,000 spending spree. This misadventure wound up with him and his mates holed up in a hotel room with a pile of junk food, a brand new Xbox and two nubile $1000-a-night prostitutes procured from the local whorehouse. It also landed Ralph in the arms of the law when the hotel room was raided by the local Texan constabulary after being tipped off by a delivery guy who'd supplied the boys with snacks.

Apparently our young hero claimed he was funding this escapade through the winnings of a World of Warcraft video games contest and, when the high-class call girls questioned his age, he convinced them that he and his friends were in fact "people of restricted growth" who worked for a travelling circus. Even better he went as far to inform them that, if they refused his custom, they would be in direct violation of the state's disability discrimination laws. Only when the boys seemed more interested in playing Halo than getting to grips with their "hired help" did the penny finally drop.

In a strange twist of narrative the poor, misinformed sex workers were released without charge whilst young Ralph was slapped with a three year community order for fraud, presumably ruing the day he figured out his dad's pin number.

Unsurprisingly the story turned out to be complete hogwash. It was later revealed to be the result of a viral marketing experiment by Cornish social media marketer Lyndon Antcliff (aka Lyndoman) who unleashed the story on popular finance site Money.co.uk.

Lyndoman deliberately laced his Munchaussen-esque tale with every conceivable narrative trigger point needed to ensure its viral success.

Before I begin, I apologise for my inexcusable absence, a combination of too many ideas, not enough time and IT incompetence on my part. However, hopefully I will have learnt from the experience...unlikely!

China, China, China. I have never been and would like to, it seems a lovely place, or at the very least interesting after the latest report on pollution in Beijing.

With the Olympics, they suddenly seem to have become the country to be talked about. Whether it is pollution, human rights, sports, foreign investment, China is the country we want to talk about.

Or do we? Well you answer that question for me...but here are a few of my musings on the subject.

Specifically, one: do we have the right to lecture the Chinese on pollution?

If you'd have mentioned 'Scrabulous' to someone last year you'd have probably forgiven them for thinking you were talking about some kind of nefarious skin complaint rather than the Facebook-based unauthorized version of the traditional boardgame, Scrabble.

With more than 600,000 players using the Scrabulous application daily, game company Mattel has launched an official Scrabble application to rival the unauthorised version. Unfortunately for Mattel, early signs are that people are sticking with what they know with the official version only attracting 2000 daily views.

Have Mattel missed the boat or can they tempt users over to the official version? More importantly, should they be trying to best their rival or instead take advantage somehow of the renewed interest it seems to have generated in their product?

The last few months have been very gloomy across western economies. The US has been in meltdown and more remains to some based on most commentators.

Europe has continued to perform strongly but has suffered form a lack of structural change which has left cost structures in the Byzantine era. This is made worse by the newly found nationalist sentiment in France and Germany in particular.

So where is there any good news and what hope can we in the UK have for future economic growth?

Emerging Markets have long been touted as the key area for growth, with Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East being the preferred examples. This either because they have vastly growing middle classes such as in India and China or favourable locations for locating manufacturing facilities such has been the case in Eastern Europe.

The problem with all these assertions though is that they fail to understand the basic opportunities that emerging markets provide.