... strategic frameworks and guidelines via surveys of chief marketing officers [CMOs] in Europe, Asia and Latin America. 

The study, Marketing2020 - Organizing for Growth, will be overseen by consultancy EffectiveBrands, with further input from global executive search consultancy Spencer Stuart and business information supplier Forbes.com.

Interviewed by Marketing Daily, the ANA's president/ceo Bob Liodice explained that although the ANA has much disparate survey data on brand marketing structure issues, the Marketing2020 study is its first coordinated, holistic effort to derive a 'Whole Earth Catalog' of marketing strategies that work.

Admits Liodice: "We have a good inventory of insights and perspectives, but there has never been a 'universality' of opinions, no commonality in thought."

"It was all very ad hoc. Since our committee and conference structure did not address this area head on, we decided to take a more direct and active stance."

The program's advisory board is impressive. Chaired by Unilever chief marketing officer Keith Weed,other board members are Antonio Lucio, CMO and Head of Human Resources at Visa; Beth Comstock, CMO at General Electric and Jon Iwata, senior vice-president marketing and communications at IBM.

Study data will be collected worldwide from forty CMOs and senior marketers across industries in business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

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

... to increase compatibility among devices and make the communication process seamless, the need for professional support will increase as more devices join the connected home ecosystem.”

Adds Ms Samuels: “The growing ecosystem of devices in consumers’ homes has fueled the tech support, home networking opportunity for reasons which include consumers’ desire to have their devices synched to the home network and to have devices on the home network communicate with each other.”

Currently, most people have to rely mostly on their own wits when it comes to setting up new devices.

According to Parks Associates' research, 81% of US broadband households that have purchased a new device have set up a new tablet on their own.

Seventy-two percent set up their own smartphones and 60% set up their home wireless networks. This do-it-yourself ethos, however, is not particularly popular, as only a slim majority (51%) said they would prefer the method for their next setup.

What’s more, nearly three-quarters (72%) of those who expressed a desire to have some professional support wanted that service to be comprehensive in its ability to help with technology setup and workability.

The category is ripe for growth, as Parks estimates tech support revenues in the US will exceed $8 billion by 2017.

Read the original unabridged XXX article.

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

... the year 2030. 

China's ambitions are high. By 2020, it aims to double its 2010 GDP and per capita income both of urban and rural residents.

The nation's economic track record has been impressive. It now has a middle class population of more than 300 million and has experienced the fastest ever economic growth over the past 30 years.

But it may not be able to maintain this momentum unless it overcomes one of its core policy challenges: water, both in terms of quantity and quality.

China's economy runs on water. Water is needed at one stage or another to generate energy. China's industry is the second largest water consumer - it consumes 139 billion cubic meters of water a year - with only the agriculture sector consuming more. And by 2030, Chinese industry's water consumption is projected to increase to 265 million cubic meters.

China is running out of water, which could soon curb its growth unless immediate countermeasures are taken.

The vast nation does not have much water to begin with. It is home to almost 20 percent of the world's population but has only 7 percent of its freshwater reserves. Water is one of its scarcest resources. And it is extremely inefficient in the use of water and a world leader in water pollution.

What exacerbates this shortage is the vicious circle of energy and water - if power-generating plants need water then water treatment and supply facilities need energy.

The Third World Centre for Water Management estimates that the water sector consumes as much as 25 percent of the electricity generated globally.

Though China's water sector is not yet among the country's most energy-intensive industries, it will gradually become so with new hubs of growth emerging in the water-scare western region and the increasing demand for wastewater treatment.

Already, about 52 percent of China's economic output comes from water-scarce regions.

Read the complete unabridged ChinaDaily article.

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

... "Cloud computing is a game-changer for our economy. Without EU action, we will stay stuck in national fortresses and miss out on billions in economic gains. We must achieve critical mass and a single set of rules across Europe. We must tackle the perceived risks of cloud computing head-on."

Key actions of the strategy include: 

• Cutting through the jungle of technical standards so that cloud users get interoperability, data portability and reversibility; necessary standards should be identified by 2013.
   
• Support for EU-wide certification schemes for trustworthy cloud providers.
   
• Development of model 'safe and fair' contract terms for cloud computing contracts including Service Level Agreements.
   
• A European Cloud Partnership with Member States and industry to harness the public sector's buying power (20% of all IT spending) to shape the European cloud market, boost the chances for European cloud providers to grow to achieve a competitive scale, and deliver cheaper and better eGovernment.

According to Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship: "Europe needs to think big. The cloud strategy will enhance trust in innovative computing solutions and boost a competitive digital single market where Europeans feel safe.

"That means a swift adoption of the new data protection framework which the Commission proposed earlier this year and the development of safe and fair contract terms and conditions."

Read the full unabridged article.

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

... American and European companies into relocating their manufacturing operations.

This combination of multinationals' corporate greed and Chinese guile caused millions of US and European jobs to move to China, and manufacturing became the underpinning of China’s growth and prosperity.

But rising labor costs, concerns over government-sponsored intellectual property theft ... and production time-lags are already causing companies such as Dow Chemicals, Caterpillar, General Electric, and Ford to start moving some manufacturing processes back to the US.

Google recently announced that its Nexus Q streaming media player would be made in the US, thereby putting pressure on Apple to start following suit.

But political pressure and rising costs aren’t what’s going to rapidly change the equation. The disruption will come from a set of technologies that are advancing at exponential rates and converging.

These technologies include robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and nanotechnology. These have been moving slowly so far, but are now beginning to advance exponentially, reflecting the growth trajectory of computing overall.

Computing has advanced to the point at which the smartphones we carry in our pockets have more processing power than the super computers of the ’60s — and how the internet, which also has its origins in the ’60s, went on an exponential growth path some fifteen years ago and rapidly changed the way we work, shop, and communicate.

That’s what lies ahead for these new technologies.

Read the original unabridged article here.

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... around $1.1 trillion annually in worldwide revenues.

"Compared with last year's cloud professional services forecast, IDC predicts higher spending during 2011 and 2012 but lower spending over the remaining forecast period," says Gard Little, IDC's research director, IT Consulting and System Integration Research.

"IDC believes increased spending is due not only to acceleration in the adoption of cloud services but also to the buildout of cloud application platforms and infrastructure." 

Three trends are behind the job boom:

• Mobility:
  Apps have found a home in the cloud. With tablet sales going strong and speculation that TV apps will become available in the not-so distant future, the need for cloud services will only increase.
   
• Social Networking:
  Social networks, too, are proud cloud residents. Now that social networking has gone mainstream, look for more companies to connect employees and customers on popular sites or on social networks of their own.
   
• Big Data:
  Currently users worldwide store about 329 exabytes of personal data – photos, videos and yes, even old-fashioned text. That number will balloon to 4.1 zettabytes in less than five years and a third of it will be stored in the cloud. Big Data, the business of storing, securing and making sense of digital information in its myriad forms is expected to balloon in size and become a $40 billion business in just three years.

Among the more promising careers will be in data analysis, which can include trawling through the mountain of consumer information that companies collect and store in the cloud. Data analysts look for patterns in customer data that can boost sales or generate customer loyalty.

Online travel agent, Orbitz.com is only one of hundreds of companies using data to increase sales. For example, Orbitz recently discovered that Mac users spend as much as 30% more on hotels than those accessing the site on PCs. With that in mind, Orbitz started to capitalize on this information and recommend more luxurious hotels to Mac users.

To read the unabridged Forbes.com article click here.

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

... Ava, as the digital Delilah is named, has no need of lunch or bathroom breaks, eschews overtime pay and never needs a vacation!  

The body responsible for the three airports - the New York Port Authority [NYPA] has been running a customer care program for over twenty years, but now plans to increase the number of red-jacketed Customer Care Representatives by twenty percent during peak hours.

To expand on its current program, the NYPA has created an innovative pilot plan featuring virtual customer care representatives - the first time such  technology has been used at a US domestic airport.

Currently, 350 human customer care agents provide information to help travellers navigate the airport and public transportation options. Easily identifiable by their red jackets, they staff the airport’s welcome centers and other high-volume terminal areas like checkpoint entry and exit points. Between them they speak a total of 27 different languages, with English and Spanish most prevalent.

The computerized, hologram avatars will provide automated, basic information to travelers in LaGuardia’s Central Terminal Building, Newark Liberty’s Terminal B and JFK’s Terminal 5 when they are installed in early July. The pilot will run for a six months trial period at a cost of around $180,000.

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

...the smartphone and aerospace industries. 

But as Forbes.com points out, although fourteen million new jobs is a significant number, "when compared against the size of the global workforce (more than 3 billion), it’s in the neighborhood of half a percent, a small drop in the bucket".

Moreover, only 1.17 million of these jobs will be in North America. A majority will be in emerging markets — with China, India and the Asia-Pacific region accounting for ten million such posts.

Forbes.com attributes this regional bias to the "immense size of these country’s workforces — 1.2 billion workers in China and India alone" — although it omits to factor-in the commercial appeal of sweatshop pay levels.

But as the study’s author, John Gantz, observes: “A common misperception is [that] cloud computing is a job eliminator, but in truth it will be a job creator — a major one. And job growth will occur across continents and throughout organizations of all sizes because emerging markets, small cities and small businesses have the same access to cloud benefits as large enterprises or developed nations.”

IDC points out that since jobs are being created as a result of increased business revenue from cloud, the jobs will be across the breadth of enterprises, in areas such as marketing, sales, finance and administration, production, and service.

As John Gantz opines: "We may not have even imagined yet what job titles may emerge. And many non-IT people may have the cloud to thank, at least indirectly, for their opportunities. I’ll bet it will be more than 14 million that have career opportunities tied to the cloud."

IDC also predicts revenues from cloud innovation could reach $1.1 trillion annually over the next three years. The analytics firm estimates that last year alone, IT cloud services helped organizations of all sizes and all vertical sectors around the world generate more than $400 billion in revenue and 1.5 million new jobs.

In the next four years, it predicts, the number of new jobs will surpass 8.8 million.

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

... Rooney acknowledges that providing those tools across an entire enterprise is much more complex.

Explains Huddle ceo Alastair Mitchell: “Enterprises have to sync not just an individual’s data, but that of everyone across the organization and make it securely available offline on multiple devices.

“Consumer sync tools lack the security, scalability and intelligence required for the enterprise. They’re a time bomb of costly data loss waiting to happen. What Huddle has done is to take a simple computing technique, a shared drive, and brought it up to date. 

“A shared drive is a shared space on the network where everyone can post their files. Most companies have them. But if you are outside the [corporate] firewall you can’t access it. What people then do is to use their personal email, or perhaps other tools which are designed for individuals, not enterprises.”

Effectively what Huddle has done is to put a shared drive in the cloud. Users can see all of the data on the drive, but the system only downloads onto a user’s laptop or tablet the files that he or she needs to work on.

Asks blogger Rooney rhetorically: "How does it do that?" In reply, he quotes ceo Mitchel verbatim.

“We figure out what is the most important information to you. We use learning algorithms to determine what you need. It uses the same concepts as Autonomy. It learns who you are, who you are working with, what workspaces you have access to, which folders you use, and who you work with.

“It works out those documents you need based on that. In the background it pushes it to your device encrypted, so that when you get on your plane and you need to work on, say, a spreadsheet, it is already on your iPad.”

All data is encrypted and the system has a remote wipe capability so that should a device be lost, data can be deleted and access denied.

The system, which recently received clearance from the UK government to handle official classified data, launched this week (21-Feb-12) in public beta.

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

... Ogilvy & Mather, JWT, Grey, Y&R and Wunderman.

The partyline, according to a WPP spokesman is that the agencies "have decided to seek greater efficiencies in their companies and presently plan to have 'non-client' facing services delivered from an offshore specialist center in India.

In most cases, the positions affected are in New York, but finance department staff in other North American offices may also be impacted. WPP's partyline: "The total number of jobs under consideration represent less than one percent of overall staff (including associates) and the job transfer will happen over the coming months."

Toeing that line at Ogilvy & Mather -- which will bear the brunt of the cuts -- was O&M Worldwide chief marketing officer Eleanor Mascheroni who claims: "This action will reduce overhead costs while maintaining the quality and level of support we provide to our clients and partners.

"We have entered into an agreement with a top-tier business-process outsourcing services provider specializing in this kind of service delivery at lower costs to handle the processes. Many of our clients have been working with this model for many years."

Ms Mascheroni, however, curiously failed to mention that the jobs will go to outsourcing giant Genpact which -- by one of those odd coincidences -- also happens to be a major client of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

Genpact is an offshoot of GE Capital and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It operates in seventeen countries and supports over twenty-five languages.

Which begs the question as to when the New York cull will be extended to other WPP locations?

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