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The Good
News About
Transparency
PRODUCT SAFETY
JANUARY 2015 •
PPB
• 71
The Upside Of
Peer Pressure
PROMOTIONS
75
79
Can A Robot Do
Your Job?
Chronic labor shortages have spurred
Japanese retailers to use humanoid robots as
sales personnel in retail stores. Nestlé has pur-
chased 20 robotic “salespeople” to represent
its line of Nescafé coffee machines in 20 home
appliance stores, and it’s planning to use the
robots nationwide in around 1,000 stores by the
end of 2015. The robotic “staff” can chat with
customers and aid them in selecting coffee
makers to fit their needs. The line of robots,
named Pepper, were invented by tech conglom-
erate SoftBank Corp., which was the first to
“hire” the robots for its 70 mobile phone stores in Japan. The company unveiled the waist-
high robots this summer and claims they can express human emotions, answer questions and
understand 80 percent of human conversations.
HUMANOIDS REPLACE SALESPEOPLE IN
JAPAN.
You just can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.
—ISAAC ASIMOV
“
”
BIZWORDS
Facebook Zero
noun:
The inevitable demise of measurable reach for organic,
unpaid content posted by brands.
Late last year, Facebook announced new controls over the content its
users see in their news feeds. The changes seek to encourage high-
quality content by limiting the reach of purely promotional messages
posted by businesses, including pushes to buy products, install apps,
or enter promotions and sweepstakes. The new guidelines are widely
viewed by marketers as more proof that opportunities for free market-
ing on the site will eventually disappear completely.
BE A WINNER!
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