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of critics accusing it of being antiquated and monopolistic, but Starcom USA last year managed to spur the beleaguered media to make changes.
At a speech to the Newspaper Association of America's annual conference last year, and at a series of meetings, Starcom executives urged publishers to start behaving like they had competition for local ad budgets. Monopoly tendencies, Starcom argued, had made audience data too hard to find and ads too hard to buy.
"Please make it easier," Starcom USA Chief Client Officer Andrew Swinand implored the publishers in a brief respite from excoriating them. "It's just too hard."
The message got through, and the result is likely to benefit newspapers as well as the marketers and agencies that place ads in them. "Starcom was responsible for the 'Aha!' moment," says Todd Haskell, VP-business development at The New York Times. "They shared how important papers are to their clients but how hard the...
Just the kind of results you'd expect from Advertising Age's Media Agency of the Year. Publishers of seven of the largest metro newspapers huddled with Starcom and other agencies and developed a universal template for stating all market, rate, demographic, online and other data in a common format. While the NAA was inv...
It wasn't that Starcom was just pouncing on a venerable ad medium under relentless pressure to modernize. The agency in 2006 also produced innovations that could revolutionize the way ads are bought on TV and the internet. Starcom, while adding a slew of new clients and defending two big accounts, completed an ambitiou...
"We have a very long history of innovation," USA CEO John Muszynski says. "And we do it so our clients can benefit from that."
Starcom reaped the benefits of that positioning with a series of new-business wins, landing a number of new assignments.
Despite an enviable record, the Media Agency of the Year distinction is less about Starcom's new business than its leadership in revamping both its internal structure and how it works with the media industry. While advertising and media agencies blustered about being "media-neutral," Starcom reshuffled its top executiv...
Under Starcom's new structure, unveiled last August, none of the four agency presidents reporting to Mr. Muszynski represents a single medium or discipline. A chief consumer officer (Steven Fueling) is charged with discovering insights into consumer behavior, passing those findings on to a chief activation officer (Chr...
The result, Starcom executives and clients say, is a structure that emphasizes marketer needs over agency fiefdoms.
"A lot of agencies haven't changed with the marketplace," Mr. Boothe says. "We needed to create a model that was a little more nimble and flexible."
Restructuring is all well and good, but the real test comes in getting calcified media such as newspapers and broadcast TV to meet advertisers' fast-evolving needs. And Starcom last year either offered innovations or successfully pushed for reforms that are likely to change the way advertising is purchased or evaluated...
In November, Starcom signed the first media-agency deal with TNS Media Research to offer second-by-second measurement of TV audiences. The data are limited to 300,000 homes served by Charter Communications in the Los Angeles market and don't account for time-delayed viewing on DVRs. But the deal should provide more gra...
"With the landscape changing, we knew we'd have to find more access to better and more actionable data," says Mr. Muszynski, who made news last April by declaring the death of the TV upfront. New-media opportunities and multiple-platform deals, he said at the time, are creating a "365-day-a-year upfront market ... that...
He said the way the upfront played out last year vindicated his prediction, as it was a wholly changed entity. "Almost every programmer came to us with ideas for video, podcasts, HD, mobile ... and we built these extensions into every single one of our advertisers' plans."
In January, after months of development, the agency announced another new measurement breakthrough, a tool called "multiple-attribution protocol" intended to measure the effectiveness of internet ads that don't lead to a click or purchase. Some ads, such as home-page takeovers, don't lead to clicks but create significa...
Starcom was similarly innovative in helping its clients reach consumers in creative ways. A Playtex-branded tape-measure inserted in O, the Oprah Magazine urged consumers to visit the Playtex website to see if they were wearing the correct bra size. (Playtex research found that 95% of women don't.) It staged street fas...
Starcom's clients say such novel approaches to promoting their brands work, in part, because the agency has become so adept at measuring their effectiveness.
"They're creating the future in the industry and bringing us along with them," says Jackie Woodward, Miller Brewing Co.'s VP-programming, media and marketing. "They're creating the future in the industry and bringing us along with them."
Wild Thyme vegetarian and vegan restaurant, which was damaged in a fire earlier this year, is set to re-open with a “fabulous new menu and fresh ideas”.
The restaurant, located in Labour in Vain Yard off Guildhall Hill, closed in April last year after a blaze which gutted the Rainbow Wholefoods Shop below caused smoke damage.
When owner Pip Wilkinson, aged 52 from Southrepps, walked into the shop after the fire she felt “devastated” as a layer of black covered her restaurant.
Wild Thyme has remained closed ever since, as most things had to be repaired or replaced, but the owner has announced it will re-open at the end of January to early February.
“It was horrendous for everyone and an unbelievable experience.
“I didn’t realise the magnitude of it until later when I came back into the city and it was just devastating and there was a layer of black in the restaurant.
“The insurance company said I just needed to give it a clean and it would be up in a couple of weeks but they didn’t realise how bad it was.
Whilst owner of Rainbow Wholefoods Richard Austin relocated to Lower Goat Lane a month later, Pip was unable to do that as all her stuff had been affected and she had just enough money to pay wages to her staff for two months.
She has also hired a loss assessor and even if she had a “magic wand” and the restaurant was repaired earlier, she couldn’t have opened anyway as the ceiling had to be torn down in the shop below.
“A few things have happened since we closed and veganism has gone nuts and Erpingham House plant-based restaurant has opened but competition is healthy.
“There has been so much interest and we still get people trying to book a table everyday even though it says we are closed on the website.
“I’ve got some of my old team coming back and alongside a new head chef we are bringing a fabulous new menu and fresh ideas”.
House for the poor in exchange for bribe?
The recipients of houses from the government's Jami Achhe Ghar Nai scheme under Ashrayan Project-2 in the district are happy at getting the houses, but they are also upset that they had to allegedly give bribe to public representatives and their men to get those.
The houses are being distributed countrywide among people who have land but no house, with the slogan Ashrayaner Adhikar Sheikh Hasinar Upohar.
Deputy Commissioner (DC) Shafiul Arif said a total of 3,953 homeless families have already been given houses in the district's five upazilas. Each house cost Tk one lakh to build.
Rahima Bewa, 55, of Balapukur village in Saptibari union under Aditmari upazila alleged that a female union parishad (UP) member from a reserved seat took bribe of Tk 15,000 for giving her the house. Rahima added that she borrowed the money from a local moneylender.
“The UP chairman's aide Abdul Hamid took Tk 15,000 from me for giving me the house,” said Abdus Salam, 50, of the same village. “I'm happy at getting the house but unhappy at paying the bribe,” he said. It was not possible to get a house without paying bribe, so he sold one of his two cows to get the money, he added.
Hashem Ali, 48, of Harati village in Harati union under Sadar upazila, alleged that his name was omitted from the list of beneficiaries as he could not pay the demanded Tk 20,000 to the UP chairman. “Many well-off families were given houses after giving bribe, but homeless poor people are deprived as they cannot give b...
Abu Bakkar, 56, of Purbo Tongbhanga village under Hatibandha upazila said he has a straw house on three decimals of land, but he did not get a house as he could not give bribe.
Saptibari UP Chairman Rafiqul Islam Alam's close aide Abdul Hamid of Balapukur village said he took some money as transport cost from the beneficiaries, but it was not bribe. “UP chairman knows about the matter,” he said.
Alam said the money taken from beneficiaries was returned to them and the upazila nirbahi officer (UNO) was informed. His aide Hamid did wrong by taking money for giving the houses, he said. Ninety homeless families in his union got houses, he added.
Aditmari UNO Mohammad Asaduzzaman told this correspondent that the Saptibari UP chairman assured him in writing that the money taken from beneficiaries was returned. “After hearing about the matter, I asked the UP chairman to give in writing that the money was returned,” he said.
The female UP member declined to talk with the journalists in this regard.
Harati UP Chairman Rafiqul Islam said it is a conspiracy against him as he did not demand bribe from anybody in the name of giving house. He kept silent when told that a recording was made when he was demanding bribe.
DC Shafiul Arif said the administration will take prompt action if he gets complaint of bribe taking for giving the houses to the homeless poor people.
“The upazila administration finalises the list of those eligible to get a house from Jami Achhe Ghar Nai scheme after checking and crossing-checking the information given by an applicant,” the DC said.
babble: Right and left...heart and head?
» babble » current events » canadian politics » Right and left...heart and head?
Author Topic: Right and left...heart and head?
First off, may I say what an excellent community this looks - I have searched for GOOD discussion groups and this one seems to steer as clear as possible, considering that we are all humans, from descending into name-calling and all the things that ruin discussions and make a community become less than it could be.
Prompted by Johnny Haggis' post I was thinking how often it does seem to me (a leftwinger here in the UK) that the left and right are a bizarre mixture of the head and heart. Let me try to explain, though apologies in advance if I fail, I can but do my best.
Sorry, I fear I am rambling. My point was that whilst some 'emotional' critics in the press criticise the 'intellectual liberal elites', and do it in a way that bizarrely implies people are dumb to be clever, the same could be said of the left, whose response to bombing is in part an emotional one ('don't hurt those in...
I wonder whether what is happening throws both the head and the heart so into confusion that both sides use both to explain and justify their actions and thoughts. Which of the head or heart will win, I wonder? Both perhaps?
These thoughts also occurred to me because people accuse liberals of being handwringing emotional people whilst the right are more hardhearted, yet this ignores the way the right also appeal to the heart and the left use the intellectual approach of what policies will work in their view.
This thinking is hurting my head, now, so over to you...thoughts please.
The left in America and Europe has historically been associated with reason and logical thinking, and the right with the irrational.
That is a broad statement, but, I think, true.
The left arose from a desire to critique all existing societies from the point of view of reason; from a desire to "ecrasez l'infame" of traditional, faithbased authority, whether it be the church, or the divine right of kings.
Movements such as romanticism and Freudianism did have left-wing adherents, but were much more easily absorbed into conservative thought.
And nationalism is a direct appeal to sentiment and tradition; the nazi slogan : "Think with your blood" is merely the outermost term on the spectrum, and excludes those of different experience and biology.
"Too many academics, secure in their ivory towers and insulated from the real-world consequences of the ideas they espouse, seem blind to the fact that non-rationality has historically been among the most powerful weapons in the ideological arsenals of oppressors. The hypersubjectivity that characterizes postmodernism ...
I agree as well. This lack of understanding of the powerful driving forces behind right-wing ideology and the success it has had among people is the chief thing that ties our hands on the left. We expect people to rationally understand that the tax system favors the rich, but instead we find that people just mindlessly...
This is why I believe if anything is to be accomplished, the left must cut this ground out from under the right. It is possible, in my view, to be a populist AND a leftist at the same time, and to effectively combine rhetoric and fact.
But what is to be done with religion?
It's certainly not rational; it does tend to favour the entrenched power-structure, and yet it appeals to the basic need of people for a sense of community and basic values.
Is it possible for progressive socialist thought to fill this need?
I guess i'll have to make up a new rational, socialist religion myself.
If the left is so logical, than why does it fail in North America and is being thrown out in Europe, like the Danes just did.
I always thought that the right was associated with the rational and the left with emotion.
It all goes back to that quote, If your a conservative at 20 you have no heart if you are a liberal at 40 you have no brain.
Exactly, now read my comment at the start of his thread and make a comment. That was also the impression I used to have until I thought about it, and realised we are both a mishmash of both but the right like to make out the left are emotional as if it makes them more sensible when they actually appeal as much to emoti...
And as for the supremacy or otherwise of the left, Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK) has been introducing anti-poverty policies and has just mooted tax rises to pay for health care, which have generally had a good reception, so I wouldn't count the left out yet!!!
Not necessarily. Social conservatives tend to be prone to emotional and half-baked rhetoric in pressing their cases, just as the economic logic of fiscal conservatives is sometimes... shall we say, needing of a little once-over.
I never have heard it associated that way.
An easily available work that takes this position is George L. Mosse's work on the rise of European racism. But there are literally thousands of books on this.
If you think about who values tradition, whether or not it is reasonable, who values the nuclear family and its structures of authority, who gives precedence to religion, you will generally be led in the direction of Stockwell Day.
Of course, the far right, the Nazis and their brethren, are explicitly anti-reason, which they found of less value than "blood and soil".
Surely both sides think they are the rational ones with thought rather than emotion governing their views, though both accept that things like patriotism (for the right) and say humanitarian issues (for the left) have an emotional element to them.
It just makes me laugh because the common complaint of bleeding heart liberals is made by people who expect hearts to bleed for the mother nation, whilst the left characterise Bush et al as bumbling idiots inciting emotional imagery to justify a war, yet they are against that war at least in part due to emotional reaso...
You're never going to find humans (or any other animal more advanced than, say, a lobster) that doesn't function with both emotion and intellect, in some kind of mix.
Without emotion, we'd eat our young; without reason, we couldn't find other food. We all simply have to deal with both in ourselves, in one another, in our social systems and in our world.
Sports team turns to viewsonic tablet pcs to outfit new stadium.
When the National Football Leagues Seattle Seahawks team was looking for ways to improve the ticket holders experience in its spanking-new Seahawk Stadium last year, it turned to technology, specifically tablet computers with wireless Internet access.
But rather than using the machines to improve the efficiency of some nontechnical process or bolster communications, the tablets were deployed exclusively as amenities—accoutrements, if you will—for the stadiums new 83 executive box suites.
With one season under its belt and the 2003-04 season just kicking off, the moves been spot on so far. Each of the ViewSonic Corp. ViewPad 1000s outfitting the stadiums executive suites were used in each of the teams 10 home games last season (which included two preseason games), far exceeding initial usage estimates. ...
Sound like a no-brainer business decision? Think again.
With executive suite customers paying $50,000 to $150,000 annually for 10 games, and others paying $7,000 to $15,000 per game, making those fans happy, or at least feel as though theyre getting their moneys worth, becomes critical.
"Our goal is, as much as we can, to add to the entire experience," said Ron Jenkins, executive director of marketing with the Seahawks. "Dining, general service, amenities, parking—things that we can control [to help] minimize the outcome on the field."
To accomplish that, the Seahawks knew that putting standard PCs with flat-panel displays in the suites and running Category 5 cabling between them wasnt going to cut it—especially when the team owner is tech luminary Paul Allen.
"If you were walking into a building operated by our owner, youd be expecting something—and you may not even know what that is—thats going to wow you from a tech standpoint," Jenkins said.
Still, Jenkins, who was impressed with the ViewPads sleek design and features, was initially leery about deploying such a nascent technology. He said preliminary research had shown him that if a user is unsure of a tablet, he or she will hesitate to use it "for fear of messing up or breaking it."
Jenkins, however, saw no other choice. If the team wanted the critical wow factor, it was going to have to go with the tablets. The next challenge for Jenkins group was to find a way to help customers overcome potential hesitancy. To do it, the group deployed a small team of eight IT people on game day to patrol the bo...
"There were people who were confused," but for most fans, the units were easier to use than theyd expected, Jenkins said. And after a quick tutorial, they were "off and running" surfing the Web and even taking digital pictures of their guests and mailing them, Jenkins said.
"If not for the on-site tech people for game day support, the launch wouldve taken a little longer," Jenkins said. He added that the Seahawks had hoped half the units would be used that first day. The team was pleased to learn that all 83 were used that day and every week thereafter throughout last season.
Part of the executive suite package allows ticket holders entry into the stadium 3 hours before kickoff as a courtesy to help them avoid stadium traffic. According to Jenkins, fans now spend that time before the game on the ViewPad 1000s doing things such as checking e-mail, surfing the Web and getting work done.
The 1000s are based on Microsoft Corp.s Tablet PC operating system and are linked to a Hewlett-Packard Co. server and the Internet via an 802.11b wireless connection. Also included are wireless keyboards. In addition, customers can access the wireless network with their own 802.11b-compliant hardware, whether its a PDA...
Going forward, the Seahawks are considering the possibility of offering video-on-demand capabilities that would be delivered through a separate source in the stadium and would let ticket holders call up a replay of any play at any time during the game.
Until then, the Seahawks of 2003-04 are a long way from where they were just two short years ago: playing in a college stadium while Seahawk Stadium was being built to replace the old Kingdome.
The growing economy and falling unemployment rate create a good environment for the growth of companies already established in Slovakia, but also for the arrival of new ones.

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