... the role of communications in brand building and social engagement.

The new division is in line with P&G's global strategic plan, announced in February, which aims to achieve efficiency savings of $1bn in marketing spend, part of the company's overall $10bn cost cutting strategy.

Global Brand Building Officer Pritchard explains his take on the art of marketing - often perceived “as traditional TV advertising, and maybe a little bit of promotion.

"Brand building is looking at the purpose of a brand. It’s about identifying how that brand can touch and improve lives with its benefits and how you can then take those benefits and express them at the store level, in public relations, in digital, TV and print. It’s how you create experiences for consumers that include services, information, education and entertainment, so you build that entire brand experience.”

The latest upheaval was prompted by the imminent retirement in June of global external relations officer Christopher Hassall. It affects the 1,200 strong ‘external relations’ division, although there will be no job losses as a result of the changes.

But a number of communications personnel working in regulatory and technical matters will be moved to P&G’s research and development function, and a number currently working on government affairs will transfer to the legal department.

According to a P&G statement: “These are the right changes at the right time to leverage our synergies with R&D, legal and the brand building organisation, to stay ahead of changes in the external communications environment, and to ensure we are organized and prepared to protect and build the reputation of P&G and our brands in the decade ahead and beyond.”

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... just 23%.

In comparison, General Motors plans to replace 25% of its vehicle range, followed by Toyota at 24%, Nissan at 23% and Chrysler Group coasting in first gear with a model lineup uplift of just 20%.

Most of these new models will be crossover utility vehicles, luxury sedans and light trucks.

Commenting on this restless trend, the report notes that consumers gravitate toward new models, thereby boosting automakers' market share, profits and stock price.

It also observes that automakers who replace the most models and had the "youngest" cars in their showrooms "generally gained market share" between 2002 and 2012.

GM and Chrysler replaced just an average of 13% of their vehicle models between 2002 and 2012, the lowest in the industry, followed by Ford at 14%. During that time, GM and Ford respectively lost market share of 8.7% and 5.1%. Chrysler maintained its market share for the decade.

Predicts Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at Edmunds.com, the industry as a whole will introduce 176 new auto models between 2013 and 2016 - about 19% more than were introduced between 1990 and 2012.

"Company turnarounds are not built solely on cutting costs but also on generating higher revenue on new vehicles," she said. "It's very simple, the company with the newest vehicles wins" [more sales volume and higher profits].

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

write or debug code whilst realtime logging information is returned from the connected hardware.

Translated from cyber-crap, this means that manufacturers of products such as coffee-makers, dishwashers, and other appliances — who traditionally lack strong coding skills — will more easily be able to connect their appliances to the internet, where users will be able to do Nest-like things remotely: for example, start the coffee brewing before they get home via a few taps on their smartphone.

With all objects in the world equipped with minuscule identifying devices, daily life would undergo a transformation. Companies would not run out of stock or waste products, as involved parties would know which products are required and consumed.

Mislaid and stolen items would be easily tracked and located, as would the people who use them. And ability to interact with objects could be altered remotely based on your current status and existing user agreements.

Electric Imp says its cards will sell at around $25 apiece, but is offering discounts on bulk orders.

Developer previews are shipping late next month with Imp-enabled consumer products coming later in the year from "a variety of vendors." 

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... spiralling upward. The report ranks countries on two indices:

1. Their "ecological footprint" — the natural resources used to supply their needs, including everything from animals and plants farmed or hunted for food, to trees that absorb CO2 emissions or are used in building.
    
2. "Bio capacity" — the area of land and water within each nation's frontiers.

The report is part of a push to include environmental health in calculations of economic growth in order to incentivize governments to "do more with less."

Russia is the 33rd "least rational" consumer-nation, needing about 4.5 "Earth hectares" of biologically productive land per person per year. That figure is generally in line with the EU average of 4.72 hectares per capita.

Most of the Russian footprint (58%) comes from land and sea areas needed to absorb its vast carbon emissions, followed by crop raising and forestry. The rest comes from areas used for grazing animals, fishing and building.

Experts say the greatest potential for reducing the country's footprint lies in energy efficiency. According to WWF director Igor Chestin: "Energy saving in buildings is the largest reserve for Russia to reduce CO2 emissions."

The least sustainable lifestyles are found in Qatar, whose residents have a footprint of nearly 12 hectares each, mostly accounted for by intensive carbon emissions.

The global average was 2.7 hectares per person in 2008. At current rates of consumption, it takes the Earth one-and-a-half years to regenerate the renewable resources that humanity uses in a single year.

The report predicts that by 2030 humanity will need the equivalent of two planet Earths to balance its annual consumption of biological resources.

On the [fractionally] brighter side, Russia has the fourth-largest reserve of bio capacity — 7.9 percent of the world's total, lagging only Brazil, China and the United States. 

Worldwide, the picture is less positive. The research reveals an alarming 30 percent global decline since 1970 in the health of species and biodiversity — seriously threatening the ability of ecosystems to provide services on which humanity relies.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... told by Microsoft's marketing and data policy privacy manager Lyn Watts in his address to this week's PII 2012 [Privacy Identity Innovation Conference] in Seattle.

Warned Watts: "While the innovation on Kinect apps is incredible, when it comes to privacy there are things that you can do that aren't necessarily the right thing to do."

His topic was biometric-aware advertising, which will become more common as sensor-based devices gain the ability to recognize the people using them.

He not only talked about the promise of the technology, but also its potential privacy pitfalls.

Watts examples centered around Microsoft’s Kinect sensor, which is expanding its potential applications into more commercial settings as it moves beyond the Xbox 360 game console to Windows PCs.

So how should companies making biometric-enabled Kinect apps approach the issue? Advises Watts:

"From a privacy professional’s point of view, there’s a big mountain to climb here. Biometric data, as we know from our customers, is something that is seen as really exciting. And also there’s a little bit of trepidation.

"I think Xbox did a really good job of rolling out Kinect and being very up front about the privacy implications and giving customers control over those implications.

"Those are the sorts of things that the privacy managers for these companies are going to have to think about, too. Boy, be up front about disclosure, about exactly what the data is going to be used for.

"Get clear, clear consent. In a lot of cases, I think it’s going to be opt-in, check-the-checkbox type of consent. There’s things that you can do that aren’t necessarily the right things, and I think that’s going to be foremost on the minds of a lot of the privacy managers that are going to work in this space."

The 3rd annual Privacy Identity Innovation conference at Seattle's Bell Harbor International Conference Center [May 14-16] explored how to protect sensitive information while enabling new technologies and business models.

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... takes the opposite view, called population ecology or organizational ecology, which [posits that] managers don’t really matter all that much. Their backgrounds - including education and career paths - have a big effect on how they see the world, various competitive situations and the choices they make. 

Moreover, says the Doc: "This view grew out of sociologists who’d taken to study organizations in the 1970s. They assert that organizational outcomes have much more to do with industry effects than who the Ceo is and the choices he or she makes. They study birth and death rates of populations of organizations, as well as the effects of age, competition and resources in the surrounding environment on an organization’s birth and death rate. Most of these organizational ecology scholars come out of the University of California at Berkeley.

"As I age and watch what’s happening in the world of internet and mobile, I can’t stop thinking of these ecologists though.

"More and more in the internet space, it seems that your long-term viability as a company is dependent on when you were born.
Think of the differences between generations and when we talk about how the Baby Boomers behave differently from Gen X’ers and additional differences with the Millennials. Each generation is perceived to see the world in a very unique way that translates into their buying decisions and countless other habits.

"In the tech/internet world, we’ve really had three generations:

• Web 1.0 (companies founded from 1994 – 2001, including Netscape, Yahoo!, AOL, Google, Amazon and eBay.
   
• Web 2.0 or Social (companies founded from 2002 – 2009, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Groupon.
   
• And now Mobile (from 2010 – present, including Instagram).

Jackson continues: "With each succeeding generation in tech the internet, it seems the prior generation can’t quite wrap its head around the subtle changes that the next generation brings.

Web 1.0 companies did a great job of aggregating data and presenting it in an easy to digest portal fashion. Google did a good job organizing the chaos of the web better than AltaVista, Excite, Lycos and all the other search engines that preceded it. Amazon did a great job of centralizing the chaos of e-commerce shopping and putting all you needed in one place.

When Web 2.0 companies began to emerge, they seemed to gravitate to the importance of social connections. MySpace built a network of people with a passion for music initially. Facebook got college students. LinkedIn got the white collar professionals. Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon showed how users could generate content themselves and make the overall community more valuable.

Yahoo is already a shell of its 2000 self. There is increasing chatter (including from me) about how Google’s facing a painful multiple contraction, once its desktop search business (still accounting for the vast majority of its revenues and profits) starts to fall off a cliff as users dramatically drop traditional search for new ways of getting information they want in a mobile world.

Is Amazon destined to decline? There seem to be no signs of it today and people will still need to buy stuff in a mobile world, but the new mobile platform will certainly open the possibilities for new entrants that Amazon can’t even imagine today.

Facebook is also probably facing a tough road ahead as this shift to mobile happens. As Hamish McKenzie said last week: “I suspect that Facebook will try to address that issue [of the shift to mobile] by breaking up its various features into separate apps or HTML5 sites: one for messaging, one for the news feed, one for photos, and, perhaps, one for an address book. But that fragments the core product, probably to its detriment.”

Considering how long Facebook dragged its feet to get into mobile in the first place, the data suggests they will be exactly as slow to change as Google was to social. Does the Instagram acquisition change that? Not really, in my view. It shows they’re really fearful of being displaced by a mobile upstart. However, why would bolting on a mobile app to a Web 2.0 platform (and a very good one at that) change any of the underlying dynamics we’re discussing here? I doubt it.

Read the original unabridged article 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... Sir John Sulston: "This is an absolutely critical period for people and the planet, with profound changes for human health and wellbeing and the natural environment.

"Where we go is down to human volition - it's not pre-ordained, it's not the act of anything outside humanity, it's in our hands."

The report's recommendations include giving all women access to family planning, moving beyond GDP as the yardstick of economic health, and reducing food waste.

Although the size of the Earth's human population used to be a main ingredient of environmental debate, it has fallen off the table in recent years.

In part that was because the Earth appeared able to support more people than predictions had suggested, and partly because developing countries came to view the population issue as a smokescreen to hide Western over-consumption.

However it is now back on the table, largely because of research showing that women in the poorest nations generally want access to family planning and that people benefit from it.

The United Nations "medium" projection indicates the population peaking at just over 10 billion before the end of the century, and then starting to fall, from a current level of seven billion.

"Of the three billion extra people we expect to have, most will come from the least developed countries, and the population of Africa alone will increase by two billion," said Eliya Zulu, executive director of the African Institute for Development Policy based in Nairobi.

"We have to invest in family planning in these countries - we empower women, increase child and maternal health and provide a greater opportunity for the poorest countries to invest in education."

The report recommends that developed nations support universal access to family planning, which it estimates would cost $6bn per year.

If the fertility rate in the least developed countries does not come down to levels seen in the rest of the world, the report warns, year 2100 could see a global population of 22bn of whom 17bn would be Africans.

The report will feed into preparations for the Rio+20 summit in June.  

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

...  marketers' agency remuneration models mirror, in many cases, existing US practices. For example:

• Fees are the dominant method of agency compensation, globally practiced by 57% of respondents. An additional 37% of respondents utilize fees in combination with commissions.
   
• Although many marketers use traditional media commissions in combination with fees, no respondents to this survey indicated that they use only traditional commissions to compensate their global agencies.
   
• New methods of compensation, like value-based remuneration, have not taken hold globally. Only 4% reported utilizing them.
   
• Half of respondents now employ performance-based incentives (46% percent in the US compared with 49% globally).

Important differences emerged in the survey, however:

• Far more global marketers employ a combination of fees and commissions than in the US (37% versus 6%). According to David Beals, president/ceo of R3:JLB, who worked with the ANA and analyzed the results of the survey, two factors contributed to this finding:
  
  
  • In markets like Japan and Brazil, commissions are still the dominant compensation practice.
  • In smaller markets, where client marketing investments are less predictable, marketing spending does not easily allow for ongoing retainer-based compensation.
     
• Global marketers are considerably more likely to base incentive criteria on metrics such as media delivery, brand perception, digital delivery and copy testing, and far less likely [than in the US] to employ sales metrics as a success criterion.

Comments ANA president/ceo Bob Liodice: “With this groundbreaking survey – the first-ever conducted on a global basis – the marketing community now has a vital benchmark to track worldwide approaches and innovations in how marketers compensate their agency partners.

“Global marketers will now be better able to understand how their peers are wrestling with the challenges of compensating agencies across diverse countries, cultures and conditions.”

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... cannot be continued for generations without major change".

The gloom continues: "Humanity has overshot the earth’s resources, and in some cases we will see local collapse before 2052 – we are emitting twice as much greenhouse gas every year as can be absorbed by the world’s forests and oceans.”

The Club is continuing its tradition of supporting work that raises fundamental questions and promotes far-sighted solutions. The report, by Professor Jorgen Landers of the BI Norwegian Business School, was launched to coincide with this week's meeting of global environmental charity WWF.

Published in the run-up to the Rio Summit, the Report to the Club of Rome: 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years looks at issues first raised in The Limits to Growth paper, forty years ago. This created shock waves by questioning the 'ideal' of permanent growth.

Commenting on the findings of it's latest '2052' report, Club of Rome Secretary General Ian Johnson said: “Professor Randers’ analysis of where the world could be in forty years has demonstrated that ‘Business as usual’ is not an option if we want our grand-children to live in a sustainable and equitable planet. It took 40 years before the full message of The Limits to Growth was properly understood. We cannot afford any more lost decades.”

Drawing on contributions from more than thirty thinkers in the field, Professor Randers concludes that:

• While the process of adapting humanity to the planet’s limitations has started, the human response could be too slow.
   
• The current dominant global economies, particularly the United States, will stagnate. Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and ten leading emerging economies (referred to as ‘BRISE’ in the Report) will progress.
   
• But there will still be three billion poor in 2052.
   
• China will be a success story, because of its ability to act.
   
• Global population will peak in 2042, because of falling fertility in urban areas.
   
• Global GDP will grow much slower than expected, because of slower productivity growth in mature economies.
   
• CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to grow and cause +2°C in 2052; temperatures will reach +2.8°C in 2080, which may well trigger self-reinforcing climate change.

The launch of 2052 is part of a broader eighteen-month campaign by the Club of Rome to stimulate ideas on future options to shape the world in a sustainable way, taking its context from The Limits to Growth Report.

The Club of Rome is a global think-tank, composed of individual members and over thirty National Associations. Its mission is to undertake forward-looking analysis and assessment on ways forward to a happier, more resilient and sustainable planet. 

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... a few dozen videos with content that slips down like an ice cream treat and makes the print editions of these magazines seem obsolete.

The initial line-up is a cornucopia of fresh content, offered five days a week, including such fodder as 'Big Girl in a Skinny World"'and 'Visible Panty Lines'.

To date, subscribers' reaction to the channel has been positive, though many don't understand its stockpiling of 'evergreen' content, a typical strategy for a monthly.

According to one comment posted on the site: "You guys need to stop posting like 10 videos per day... all i see in my subscription bar thingy is your videos...i like them but its too much!!" quoth a pseudonymous reader named nailsbeautyfashion, in a comment echoed by other viewers.

For what it's worth, however, MarketingTomorrow predicts the Hearst venture will prove a runaway success, emulated by all major womens' interest publications worldwise. And likely a raft of masculine titles as well!

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.