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I got two feedbacks from my column yesterday on McDo vs. Jollibee.
The first came from a certain Jay Villaranda. He
wrote:
“That’s a nice PR job for McDo. I thought
being in the forefront of one of the best business magazines ever
published in the recent past you won’t be biased in your articles.
But things have changed.”
The other reaction came from Mandy Datuin, a
market research and business consultant, who even gave his cell
number. He said:
“I fully agree with your observations on
Jollibee.
“I have another bad experience with Jollibee
Cainta store near Makro.
“Thinking that I will be bringing my daughter
some pasalubong after shopping at Makro one Saturday, I brought
discount coupons which Jollibee had distributed in the malls and
streets.
“To my surprise, the sales crew told me that
the coupons are not valid on weekends and pointed at the fine prints
in them.
“What a deceptive promotion gimmick! Don’t
buy Jollibee shares in case they offer you ‘buy-one,
take-one.’”
I response, I wrote Jay this:
Thanks for writing. What I said in my column is
not bias but personal experiences with Jollibee and McDo. You should
try eating at Jollibee Megamall where you line up twice to get your
meal, Jollibee Greenhills where there is no coffee refill and have
breakfast, at McDo Greenhills where there is unlimited free coffee
brought to your table by cheerful attendants. After that, tell me if
I was biased.
Speaking of promotions, did you know that the
world’s most powerful nation was named after a bum?
That’s the conclusion one invariably makes
after reading The New York Times review of the book written by
Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to
America.
Reviewer Nathaniel Philbrick says that Fernández-Armesto’s
previous books about world history and exploration—The Americas,
Civilizations and Pathfinders, among them—are must reading in
these globally minded times. But even a historian of Fernández-Armesto’s
learning and reach might have chosen to ignore the fact that 2007
marks the 500th anniversary of the naming of America.”
“America, the continent discovered by
Christopher Columbus is named for a decidedly second-rate
Johnny-come-lately of an explorer named Amerigo Vespucci. Like Columbus,
Vespucci was an Italian who sailed on occasion under the flag of
Spain. But unlike Columbus, Vespucci was more at home in a counting
house than a sailing ship. (Even Ralph Waldo Emerson, normally a
booster of all things American, dismissed him as a mere “pickle
dealer.”) What Vespucci did have, according to Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s
wonderfully idiosyncratic and intelligent new biography of the
explorer, was a gift for chicanery and self-promotion, along with an
aching need to be remembered. As it turns out, America—this
nation of notorious hucksters, dreamers and spin doctors—was named
for just the right guy.”
According to Philbrick, citing the author, “it
was business that brought Vespucci to Seville just around the time
that Columbus was mounting his famous voyage across the Atlantic. By
the time Columbus returned in triumph in 1493, Vespucci was
intimately connected with the group of merchants that supplied the
explorer’s subsequent, far less successful voyages.
By the late 1490s, with Vespucci’s financial
prospects deteriorating and with the example of Columbus’s sudden
fame offering apparent inspiration, Vespucci (now in his late 40s)
opted for a career makeover. He would go to sea. Even though
Columbus had so far failed to find the westward route to Asia,
Ferdinand and Isabella were still willing to follow up on
Columbus’s discoveries—as long as it didn’t involve Columbus,
who was now in disfavor with the court. Into the breach leapt
Vespucci.”
“Vespucci earned what reputation he has as an
explorer by participating in two trans-Atlantic voyages between 1499
and 1502. It was during the second voyage, this time under the
Portuguese flag, that Vespucci ventured to the coast of modern-day
Brazil and claimed to have discovered a new continent—what he
called the New World.”
“Several years earlier, in 1498, Columbus had
sailed past the mouth of the Orinoco River and reasoned that this
huge outwash of fresh water could come only from a landmass of
continental proportions.”
In claiming that South America was a continent,
Vespucci was only confirming what his mentor and role model Columbus
had already established.
“Vespucci was driven, like many explorers
before and since, by a desire to establish a lasting name for
himself.
Vespucci wrote an account of his most recent
voyage so he can leave “some fame behind me after I die.” In
these narratives, Vespucci depicts himself as a navigator par
excellence.
Much like that of the medical doctors of his
day, Vespucci’s science appears to have been more about deception
and bluff than actual results.
biznewsasia@gmail.com
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