Business and Marketing

Has Heartbleed been exploited for marketing purposes?

The entire world's been bugging out over Heartbleed—what it means to brands, to personal security, to the Internet at large. But now that it appears most companies are taking steps to deal with the OpenSSL flaw (affected sites, including Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook, Tumblr, Yahoo, and YouTube, have all released patches), and everyone's become used to the idea that the Internet has had a massive security hole for the last two years that no one seemed to know about—the discussion has shifted a bit.

Yesterday TechCrunch called Heartbleed: “The first security bug with a cool logo”—a cynical sentiment echoing around the Internet right now. Not only could you download the Heartbleed logo right from the Heartbleed website, Codenomicon, the Finnish company that first discovered and brought attention to the flaw, has been called out for capitalizing on all the brouhaha. And brands have also gotten in on the action. Hey, Heartbleed is hot right now.

Here's the buzz:

Heartbleed sucks but that name and logo are pretty cool. What marketing firm did they use?

— Matt Kristek? (@ScubaHey) April 11, 2014

If the security departments of tech companies got on this Heartbleed thing as fast as the marketing departments have then we should be fine.

— forgottentowel™ (@forgottentowel) April 11, 2014

Yay the heartbleed themed marketing pieces have begun!

— keith (@6nak6) April 11, 2014

The new badge of honor: "We were not affected by Heartbleed". Marketing guys, go crazy..

— Chris Kaknevicius (@edwolb) April 11, 2014

1Password is having a Heartbleed 50% off sale. I am told it's worth it. https://t.co/liK34VJll5 (HT @tinahender)

— Laura Brady (@LauraB7) April 11, 2014

@ochsff @thegrugq Timing (whitehat save the world stuff). Cool name. Pretty webpage. Nice bug (remote noauth)

— twiz (@lazytyped) April 11, 2014

Jeez, companies are using heartbleed as an excuse to send marketing mail.(Spam) Blah blah wasn't affected by heartbeat - buy some crap! BLEH

— skullaria (@skullaria) April 11, 2014

WTF @Etsy. You just sent me an "In Full Spring" marketing email (https://t.co/VPJXa1xjXE) but no mail re #heartbleed, and you were affected.

— Steve Schneider (@scschneid) April 11, 2014

Waiting for the announcement that Heartbleed was just a brilliant marketing campaign by Yahoo.

— Shibli (@PieceOfShib) April 11, 2014

Business Breaking News: Creativity Doesn't Always Lead to Profits, Study Finds

Creativity and innovation are crucial to businesses' growth, new research suggests.

If companies fail to integrate creativity and innovation into their business, they could be preventing themselves from reaching their full potential, according to a study from Rice University, the University of Edinburgh and Brunel University.

Creativity and innovation are complex, multilevel phenomena that pan out over time and require skillful leadership to maximize their benefits, the researchers said. Jing Zhou, a researcher at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business and one of the study's co-authors, said the vast majority of companies operating today are not doing a good job of translating creative ideas into solutions that improve the firms' performance.

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