Dancing With the Stars
March 07, 2010
You'd think after Tiger Woods that brands would be shying away from celeb endorsers. Well, think again. If anything, their use seems to be making a comeback. At high-profile advertising events like the Super Bowl, celebrities and popular music appeared in 40 percent of the commercials. Industry experts say the draw of big names is stronger than ever, partially because many stars have used social media outlets like Twitter to establish one-to-one connections with consumers. Plus, there's still no substitute for a famous face.
Metrics Are Killing Creativity in Advertising
_When the economy takes a nosedive, marketers get nervous. And when sales follow suit, clients stop approving creative ideas and start staring at numbers. No client ever will tell you that the creative way you waded through the fantastically distorted worlds of online branding and social media is wrong. But they can be nothing short of sanctimonious when telling you the numbers don't support the creative. As a result, we have become absolute geniuses in the field of metrics.
Most agencies today are helping clients adapt new technology solutions to better connect with consumers, to use and develop powerful tools that deliver a whole new level of metric sophistication. But have we gone too far? Recently, I had a wicked battle with a client determined to let the numbers fully dictate a new creative strategy._________
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The 'Model Notary Act' Takes On New Significance With 2010 Update
Click here to add text.Amid important legal cases involving Notaries, and with liability and compliance issues becoming a major concern for businesses and governments, the NNA has published a much-anticipated revision of its Model Notary Act — the landmark model that, for 40 years, has grown in importance as a guide for lawmakers to improve standards of care for Notaries.
The updated and expanded Model Notary Act of 2010, now in the public domain, features electronic and paper-based provisions to modernize and enhance the Notary office. The revisions culminated a four-year effort by an NNA-recruited, 26-member national drafting panel comprised of law professors, high-tech experts, mortgage industry representatives and government officials at every level.
The MNA is intended for state legislators and administrators who want to strengthen Notary laws to improve fraud-deterrent effectiveness in an era of rampant identity theft. An expanded Article III of the Act also allows the integration of electronic notarization provisions with traditional paper-based rules.
Lawmakers and industry officials for years have looked to the Model Notary Act for guidance in modernizing their Notary rules and statutes. But due to a groundbreaking Illinois Appellate Court ruling, Vancura v. Katris, the Act has taken on a heightened importance in American jurisprudence. The Court cited the Act as a “common law” standard which Notaries and their employers should rely on for guidance in instances where state law provides no direction.
“The Model Notary Act has taken on new significance with Vancura v. Katris,” said NNA Vice President Charles N. Faerber. “If a situation arises for a Notary where the state doesn’t provide guidance, the Notary, according to the court, can rely on the Model Notary Act.”
The MNA guidelines define a more proactive role for Notaries in securing documents, including updated fraud-deterrence rules for both electronic and traditional paper-based notarization. The new Act also adds new provisions for dealing with loose certificates, recognizing notarial acts performed outside a given state, and for defining a Notary-certified copy in a way that is adaptable to both paper and electronic originals.
Since its original publication as the Uniform Notary Act in 1973 — and subsequent updates as the Model Notary Act in 1984 and 2002 — more than 40 states and territories have adopted its provisions.
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Facebook may pull in an excess of $1 billion in revenues, according to estimates and poking around on behalf of industry blog Inside Facebook. That's an increase from the same publication's estimate of $700 million last year.
Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said last year that he projected the company would break $500 million revenue in 2009, and that it had the potential to be a billion-dollar company already, but that it was acting conservatively.
(Naturally, Facebook says that as a privately held company it doesn't disclose its financials.)
What can Facebook credit this big jump in revenue to? It's all about the Social Ads program. Facebook ditched banner ads altogether earlier this year when its longstanding ad partnership with Microsoft ran out and has chosen to focus on its edgier "engagement ads" program instead--and often these are sold by encouraging brands to promote their presence on Facebook with ad space.
However accurate these new estimates from Inside Facebook are, Facebook is certainly making money--and it's making money because the Facebook "fan page" and complementary ad space to promote it are the hottest ticket in brand marketing right now. They won't always be, and Facebook will have to maintain that front-runner status in plenty of advertising innovations down the road as the industry evolves faster than ever.
Plus, it's well-known that some of the biggest buyers of Facebook advertisements are social-gaming companies looking to pull in more players: how long can they, in turn, keep up their place in the sun? Critics have long since pointed out the number of third-party companies that are effectively dependent on Facebook for traction and revenue, but the reverse is likely true as well.
Facebook has a potentially lucrative new revenue stream emerging when its virtual currency system, Facebook Credits, launches in full--Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all proceeds. But the developer world isn't totally sold, and the product has grown far more niche from the days when it was rumored to be a "PayPal killer." As Inside Facebook points out, advertising is still the core of the company's business model. And here, it has to stay ahead of the pack more than ever.
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