March 21, 2007 by admin.

Have a “white-knuckle” ride into work this am? According to Lee Romanov, President of the Insurance Hotline.com, the way you drive has alot to do with your astrological sign.
Check out her findings from her new book “Car Carma” to see what kind of driver the stars say that you are…

http://insurancehotline.com/a10.html

Posted in Fun Stuff, Uncategorized | No Comments »

March 21, 2007 by admin.

Thanks to Xerox, there are a number of free PowerPoint templates available on their website to spruce up your next presentation. These are meant for Microsoft Windows users, but apparently will work with the Mac version of PowerPoint as well. Happy downloading! I’m not sure how long Xerox will keep this offer on their site, so if you are a PowerPoint user, you may want to take advantage of this offer before it’s gone.

http://www.office.xerox.com/small-business/resources/microsoft-powerpoint-templates/index.html

Posted in Free Stuff | No Comments »

November 13, 2006 by admin.

This is probably the coolest marketing concept I’ve seen in quite a while.
How many prospective buyers do you think asked the magic question,
“Should I buy the Silver VW or the Black VW?”

http://www.eostarot.com/?ic_id=promo_eostarot

Posted in Fun Stuff | No Comments »

November 13, 2006 by admin.

There is no doubt the largest marketing demographic has arrived! The Baby Boomer Generation (those born between 1946-1964) were born during the economic prosperity post-WWII. Now this group that comprises 26 percent of the US population (according to the US census Bureau) is approaching retirement and no doubt will have a major impact on the economic landscape for years to come.
How well do you understand the Boomer market? How has your business adapted to meet the needs of the this generation? Below are some links to interesting articles to help you improve your Boomer knowledge. And a fun quiz just to make sure you were paying attention…way back when…

“Every crowd has a silver lining.” - PT Barnum (Legendary entrepreneur)

Learn about the Cultural Impact of the Boomers

The Baby Boom and the Future of the Economy

Take The Boomer Multimedia Quiz

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November 13, 2006 by admin.

If you are planning a trip across the “pond”… this looks like a great way to spend a London afternoon. As a museum, this suggests that the epitomy of advertising ideas are on display. Don’t you wonder what brands have achieved such iconic status to be included? If you were the curator, which brands would you choose? Would you choose those that are most recognizable? Or those most financially successful, the most visually appealing or have stood the longest test of time?

Hmmm…Coca-Cola, Campbell’s Soup, Morton’s Salt, Gerber Baby Food, Coppertone, BrylCream, Maxwell House, General Electric, Volkswagen, Nike, Apple…I hope there is enough room…the possibilities are endless……

The Museum of Brands Website

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November 13, 2006 by admin.

Remember the “The Jetsons”? If this technology takes off (see article below), just think…no one will never have to deal with another “bad hair day” at the office ever again!

“The world is so fast that there are days when the person who says it can’t be done is interrupted by the person who is doing it” - anonymous

From the Wall Street Journal:

Avatars at the Office
More Companies Move Into
Virtual World ‘Second Life’;
Ugly Bosses Can Be Models
By EMILY STEEL
November 13, 2006; Page B1

Ad agency Leo Burnett is building a facility to encourage collaboration among its 2,400 creative staffers around the world, but employees won’t have to leave their desks to get there. The company’s new “Ideas Hub” is located in Second Life, a popular three-dimensional online computer world.

Increasingly, businesses, particularly in the advertising and media industries, are opening virtual offices in Second Life as an internal communications device, a way to keep their fingers on the pulse of the fast-changing digital landscape — and as a tool to recruit tech- savvy employees. By using Second Life, agency staffers, especially older ones or those who may be uncomfortable online, can experience the virtual world first hand, making it easier to respond to clients looking to design campaigns for new media platforms.

“To explore the new world, you have to live in it,” says Mark Tutssel, chief creative officer of Leo Burnett Worldwide, a unit of Publicis Groupe.

Meetings on Second Life can be bizarre. Essentially an elaborate online videogame a little like “The Sims,” Second Life users create a computer-generated image of themselves — known as “avatars” — which interact with fellow users, also called residents, on the service. The computer imagery allows virtual makeovers so that a fat man can look like a male model on Second Life or, if he wants, some kind of animal. Residents communicate by typing on their computer keyboard as though they were instant messaging each other, which produces subtitle-like text along the bottom of a screen.

London-based ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty conducted video business presentations at the agency’s newest office on a virtual island. (YouTube)

New-media marketing firm crayon has its primary office on a Second Life island called crayonville. Avatars of the company’s nine employees — which were created to resemble their real-life forms — sit around a table in a brick-walled meeting room in the virtual office, complete with an agenda screen. At the same time, employees sit in front of their computers in their real-world offices, located around the U.S. and in England, talking to each other using Skype Internet-calling technology. The conference call allows employees to have voice as well as text communications with one another.

Any avatar that visits crayonville island in Second Life is free to visit crayon’s meeting room, but the meetings are closed if employees are discussing private client matters. The company also has started to rendezvous with clients in Second Life but is still figuring out whether or not a get-together in the virtual world takes double as much time. “That is part of our experimentation,” says Neville Hobson, crayon’s vice president for new marketing. “How does it actually work? How comfortable are we?” Crayon president Joseph Jaffe and his avatar

A growing number of companies, especially those in media-related areas, find it makes sense to work on Second Life. Ad agencies and other media companies have come under pressure in the past few years to show they can keep pace with developments in the digital world. Advertisers want to follow consumers as they spend more time on sites such as YouTube and MySpace. “For an agency, it is really more of a showcase, a bit of self-indulgence, a way to promote yourself to marketers that might be on Second Life,” says Jeff Lanctot, vice president and general manager Avenue A/Razorfish.

For example, Magna Global USA, an Interpublic Group-owned research firm that tracks trends in the media sector, this week plans to host a presentation in Second Life about the changing media landscape. And London-based ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty assembled its leadership team in New York this fall, then showcased work from the London office via a video presentation on the agency’s virtual island in Second Life.

Ben Fennell, managing director of BBH Europe, says the service is “such an extraordinary concept, it takes something to get your head around it.” He says the event was a statement about new media and a great learning experience. But for now, “in terms of presenting creative work, it is not a brilliant mechanic.”

Fast becoming the hot new online destination — growing from 105,000 users last December to 1.3 million now — Second Life is popular among people around the world (about half its users are outside the U.S.). Users join free but pay extra to buy clothes for their avatars or other goods and services, such as virtual “land” to house their avatars. Second Life has drawn attention from big marketers like Intel Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp.’s Scion. Each have paid Second Life’s owner, Linden Lab, a closely held San Francisco company, for space on the site to promote their wares or sell goods to users.

It isn’t clear if Second Life will be more than a passing fad. Despite its rapid growth over the past couple months, Second Life’s resident count pales next to the 70 million users on News Corp.’s MySpace. And unlike that social-networking site or the video-sharing site YouTube, Second Life requires installation of special software, which may limit its appeal.
Still, some media outlets are trying out operations in Second Life. Global news agency Reuters recently stationed a full-time reporter in Second Life, Adam Pasick, to file real stories about subjects relating to the virtual world. Mr. Pasick, who spends about three hours a day in Second Life as the avatar Adam Reuters, considers his biggest scoop so far to be a story he wrote about how real-world authorities are looking into taxing virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft, which generate transactions worth millions of dollars a day. “It has been a reporter’s dream beat,” he says. “There are so many unique issues.”

Building a Second Life presence costs around $20,000, industry executives say. The commitment requires that agencies not only purchase and develop “land,” but also figure out the logistics of operating and updating a virtual office, says Amanda Van Nuys, executive director of corporate marketing and alliances for digital marketing agency Organic, an Omnicom Group unit. “Just like any online business, you can’t build it and leave it. It must be a new line item in your marketing budget,” she says.

Organic has a six-member team developing its Second Life presence. Team members are required to spend time on the site, although Organic encourages all its staff to experiment with the virtual world. “It is important for everyone not to just understand Second Life but to understand how it can change behaviors,” says Chad Stoller, Organic’s executive director of emerging platforms.

Leo Burnett hopes its creative staffers will use its Ideas Hub on Second Life like a “creative lounge,” where they can meet and mingle to share ideas, according to a spokeswoman for the firm. The hub also will host agency functions previously held in the real world, such as an event every spring where industry professionals predict which ads will win the Cannes
Advertising Festival competition held in June. Mr. Tutssel, the creative chief at Leo Burnett, predicts the agency will eventually hold news conferences on the site. “It is our home, so let’s be as creative as we possibly can be,” he says.

Ad executives also see Second Life as a recruiting tool, at a time when Madison Avenue is unable to fill demand for new-media talent. Second Life provides agencies with access to people who are on the leading edge of online communication, says Tom Bedecarre, CEO of San Francisco interactive agency AKQA. “They still will have to show up in person, so we will see if they are really a troll with green legs, a man, a woman or anyone in between, once we meet them in the real world,” he says.

Posted in Computer Technology | No Comments »

November 13, 2006 by admin.

Well…not really, but I did find this article (below) interesting. It seems the online world is changing our offline world even more rapidly than ever. Remember when people were shocked at the thought of buying airline tickets and automobiles online? Lately, these concepts seem as common as listening to your favorite radio show podcast or downloading a TV show to watch on your PC. The advertising world is tossing it’s hat into the arena as it seems Google is venturing into the realm of selling PRINT newspaper advertising space from their website. These opportunities will likely benefit large corporations looking to purchase ads across the country at first. In the future, who knows what publications might jump on board to offer their space for sale? Surely, this opens doors for buyers to quickly and easily place ads, and I assume, purchase space at a great discount. But does the lack of human interaction make it more difficult for ad buyers to make good informed decisions about the ad space that they are buying? Surely the concept is not “one-size-fits-all.” But you can be certain, as recent World Wide Web history has dictated, this concept will branch off quickly if it proves to be a success.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Google Targets Print Realm in Ad Push
Publishers Embrace — for Now, at Least –
Test of System to Broker Newspaper Space
By KEVIN J. DELANEY
November 6, 2006; Page B6

Google Inc. this week plans to let businesses start buying ads in more than 50 daily newspapers through its Web site, a move that ratchets up the Internet company’s efforts to broker advertising in offline media.

Under the three-month test effort, a group of more than 100 Google advertisers will be able to place bids for space in newspapers including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer. The move is designed to make it easy for the hundreds of thousands of companies already buying online ads through Google’s system to begin or increase spending on print ads, a prospect hailed by newspaper executives as a new revenue opportunity at a challenging time for the industry. The newspaper
industry’s struggle with reader defection and rising competition for ads from the Web and other media has recently worsened, underscored by the latest round of mixed earnings results and broadly lower circulation numbers.

The print ad test comes as Google ramps up efforts to broker ads beyond the Web, an important initiative for increasing its revenue. The Mountain View, Calif., company has said it plans to target print, radio and television advertising. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt last month told reporters that Google would eventually have 1,000 people working on its radio ad brokering effort alone, which compares with about 9,400 total workers as of Sept. 30. “Anything that we can do to improve the economic efficiency of the old model
[of advertising] transfers money from the old model to the new model,” he said in
an interview.

The newspaper publishers’ participation in Google’s test shows how declining ad revenue and uncertainty about the future are forcing newspaper companies to explore new ways of doing business. That is especially notable because Google has sometimes been identified as a threat by some media companies, which view its online ad brokering and services such as Google News and Google Finance as competitive to their own print and
Web offerings.

Google began experimenting with brokering print ads last year but had mixed results. In May, Google’s senior vice president for product management, Jonathan Rosenberg, told analysts the effort “hasn’t taken off as fast as we would like.” Google executives decided to give publications more control over the system and focused on those that published frequently, such as daily newspapers.

Newspapers traditionally have staffs of sales representatives who, working from a pricing rate schedule, negotiate orders for ads and handle any follow-up with advertisers. The Google system automates the process, allowing advertisers to see what ad sizes, sections and days a given newspaper is offering, and then bid based on those criteria. Publishers can view any bids and can select when they want which ones they want. Advertisers submit ads digitally through the system, which is linked to Google’s existing Web-based interface for Internet ads, and receive online confirmation after the ads have run. Google isn’t taking a commission on the ad sales during the test but plans to eventually.

Google’s system provides “an ability to tap into a group of advertisers we don’t currently get,” particularly among small businesses, said Denise Warren, chief advertising officer for New York Times Co.’s Media Group. The New York Times, which recently has tested some limited advertising brokered by Google, will focus on selling smaller ads or ones grouping together a number of small advertisers through the system.

Google had more than 400,000 advertisers that bought online ads using its system, according to an internal company document from last year. Advertisers such as eBags.com, which is participating in Google’s latest test, typify what many newspapers hope to reach. The Denver specialist online retailer spends more than $10 million on marketing annually but practically none of it on print. Peter Cobb, co-founder of eBags.com, said he is attracted by possibly targeting specific groups of consumers through
newspapers and tailoring ads for cities where certain types of bags or luggage are
more popular.

At the same time, eBags.com has seen the cost of Web advertising through Google — which is priced via competitive auction — triple or quadruple in some cases amid big increases in online ad spending by rival retailers. “Costs are going up online, efficiencies are decreasing — we’re looking for other opportunities,” Mr. Cobb said.

Mr. Cobb and other advertisers believe Google’s systems will better enable them to quantify how print ads boost sales and quickly tweak ads to improve effectiveness, addressing a complaint online marketers often level against offline media.

Newspaper executives played down any risks of letting Google handle their relationships with advertisers, and any possible conflict with their existing sales forces.

“We need to figure out whether the upsides outweigh the downsides, and we won’t know that until the test is done,” said Tara Connell, corporate communications vice president for Gannett Co., which has eight of its 90 daily newspapers, not including USA Today, participating in the test. “We go into this with both eyes open,” said Mike Lemke, senior vice president for sales and marketing at Seattle Times Co.

Posted in Computer Technology | No Comments »

August 3, 2006 by admin.

Here is an exciting new way to make the transfer of large files to and from R.Beck Associates faster and easier! Recently I’ve set up an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Site. Sometimes referred to as an “extranet”- this secure web-based site will allow for the transfer of files that up until now- would have been too large to e-mail and thus require them to be saved to a CD or zip disk. The file sizes that can be transmitted are basically unlimited (it will hold up to 5 Gigabytes of files in all!). Of course- the larger the file the longer it will take to upload or download- but in situations where “time is of the essence” this new tool could prove to be a real life saver, I’m sure!
In order to use the site-
PC users will need to have Internet Explorer version 6.0 or higher installed on their computer (should be on computers that have Windows XP installed)

Mac Users will need to use software called Fetch which can be downloaded at http://fetchsoftworks.com/mdownload.php?filename=Fetch_5.1.dmg (15 day free trial)

I’ll be happy to walk customers and vendors through the steps involved to utilize this site as certain projects may require.

Posted in FTP Site | No Comments »

July 22, 2006 by admin.

BTW- Ever get an e-mail from someone and wonder what all those strange web acronyms mean? Well, IYKWIM here is an interesting site that’ll take the mystery out of it all!

Posted in Web Acronym Key | No Comments »

July 22, 2006 by admin.

Ok- I do confess- I do not miss the daily DRIVE to Albany. And if you live in the Capital District, you’ll understand- the more our region grows, the more we find ourselves dealing with traffic headaches- and it continues to consume a larger part of our day. If you’ve ever wondered why you hadn’t thought about taking a shortcut- or how you could ever plan ahead to avoid road-work or back-ups that always seem to be in our path (especially when we are running late-!) Here is a handy site that everyone should keep bookmarked for everyday use!

Posted in Local Traffic Reports | No Comments »