Though my response was that making sweeping statements about behaviour according to gender was a difficult thing to do – and isn’t entirely useful – it is fair to say that in the US at least, women retain a lot of control over buying decisions.

I’d still take the stats below (based on US data) with a pinch of salt, there are nuances in demographic, platform, network – but there are some interesting findings within. Particularly the point about biological programming and the colour pink…

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Yesterday, we blacked out the default start page in Firefox and redirected visitors to the Mozilla sites to a special action page. We also sent direct messages to members of the Mozilla community through multiple online channels. All these steps were aimed at informing and mobilizing millions of people on the poorly drafted anti-piracy legislation – SOPA and PIPA – pending in Congress.

The result: Mozilla reached over 40 million people who, in turn, generated 360,000 emails sent to Senators and Representatives in Congress.

Here’s the breakdown of the stats from yesterday’s remarkable campaign

• Approximately 30 million people in the US who use the default start page in Firefox received the blacked out page with our call to action
• We sent messages out to almost 9 million people via Facebook, Twitter and our Firefox + You newsletter
• Our messages were retweeted, shared and liked by over 20,000 people (not counting MC Hammer’s tweet to his 2.4 million followers!)
• 1.8 million people came to mozilla.org/sopa to learn more and take action on the issue
• 600,000 went on to visit the Strike Against Censorship page, hosted by the EFF
• Ultimately, 360,000 emails were sent by Mozillians to members of Congress, contributing a third of all the emails generated by EFF’s campaign site.

Go to Mozilla News to read more of this article

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Some executives and business leaders understand what branding is all about. Most don’t. It’s got to be one of the most misunderstood concepts in business and I have no idea why. It’s not really complicated. Still, if you ask 10 business people to define a brand, you’ll get 10 different answers.

Is it a promise of product performance, an assurance of quality or service? Or is it the perception of value or satisfaction through association with a company or product? Is it a sensory, emotional, or cultural image of a company? And is it really a source of lasting competitive advantage?

It’s actually all of those things, and more. I know that sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. Let me explain. The concept of branding has evolved quite a bit since the days of the branding iron, mostly because the business world has changed a lot since then. Modern day branding works sort of like this. Every company has stakeholders like customers and shareholders. Brand reputation is what those stakeholders think and feel about the company.

It’s a function of all the experience those people have with the company, its products and services, and includes influence from lots of different sources, including product features and performance, customer service and satisfaction, PR and the media, even online search results and social media, as well.

If people are aware your company exists and sells a certain product, they might consider it for purchase. If your company has a strong positive brand reputation, eventually you end up with loyal customers, the holy grail of branding.

If you want to get technical, you can talk about brand strategy, platform, positioning, promise, personality, perception, identity, hierarchy, metrics, all sorts of arcane stuff. But frankly, I’d leave all that for folks that do it for a living.

To boil it down to a simple concept, a brand is very much like an image or perception of a company or product. As a result, it’s a function of a considerable number of factors, which is probably why there’s so much confusion and, as you might expect, loads of myths. Here are my top ten:

Myth #1: Naming and logos are expensive and worthless. Yes, some companies go way, way overboard on naming and logos, but in my experience, just as many, if not more, under-scope it and screw it up. Since you’ve got to have company and product names and there are a ridiculous number of pitfalls, it’s a good idea to do it right, but that need not be expensive and it’s certainly not worthless.

Myth #2: Big brand loyalty is dead. The Internet killed it. While it’s true that the Internet is a great equalizer in many ways, in other ways, it has the opposite effect. For example, Google isn’t really a superior search engine to Bing, and yet Google is one of the most highly valued global brands, primarily because it’s become an internet verb. Apple has tremendous brand loyalty and value because it makes consistently great products. Big brand loyalty is still very much alive and well.

Myth #3: Branding only matters for consumer companies. No, no, and no. Most companies don’t market to consumers but to other businesses. Lots of companies are ingredient companies, meaning they’re products or services are technologies, ingredients, or components in products sold to consumers. Regardless, if you’ve got customers and other stakeholders like shareholders and employees, your brand is important and you should manage it… read more

The winning creation is the Good Neighbor. It  sends text messages when neighbors need a hand with errands or tasks. I can see this being wonderful app for aging communities where assistance is sometimes hard to come by.

Other feature apps from the hackathon include:

AnonyMissing, an anonymous location-based app to report missing persons.

Corrupt, an app for tracking and reporting corruption in your area.

GoChipIn, which allows users to find volunteers for events they’re organizing.

GovContrib, a browser tool that helps users find information on government contributions to charities and lobbies.

IGotUGot, a food exchange for home gardeners.

PDB, which stands for “personal daily brief,” the kind current and former U.S. presidents receive. These briefs are tailored to each user’s locations and interests.

Picketline.us lets would-be activists share the word about boycotts.

Piece of Mind aims to create a Kickstarter-funded mosaic of stories from veterans.

Safehood lets users keep an eye on their neighborhoods through web and mobile interfaces.

ShoppingAdvisor shows users how their decisions as consumers might be affecting the rest of the world.

GreatDebate helps community leaders and activists get connected with policy and decision makers.

WhatsaboutmyCity is an app for identifying and fixing finite, local problems in a community.

AdWords is a PPC, Pay Per Click, advertising service offered by Google. When most people think of PPC, AdWords is the program they think of. It has set the bar and remains the most popular PPC program advertising available to business owners.

Here’s how to set up a Google AdWords Campaign.

Step #1 – Sign up for an account. It’s free. Visit adwords.google.com/ and sign up. If you already have a Gmail account, analytics account or other account, you can simply log onto your account, visit “Advertising Programs” or “Business solutions” and follow the links. To read more of this article please click here

The project brief called for a design that would represent the idea of past to present and that would support the tag line “Weaving a Tapestry of Community”. It also had to incorporate images that speak to the beauty and history of the county. This list would include; waterfalls, mountains, historic buildings, railroad and community.  It had to reproduce in black and white and be able to reduce down to business card size. A lot of information had to be conveyed with this logo after all it was a big a birthday.

After the logo was finally completed, we had to begin work on all the merchandising pieces, brochure and signage around downtown Brevard and the county.

A QR code generator is a software or online application that allows you to create QR codes. QR codes are probably the most popular and flexible two-dimensional barcode that is used by most businesses and individuals for anything from their marketing campaigns, education and even in ordinary lives and lets not forget just for fun!

As QR codes gain popularity, more and more Web sites are offering free QR code generator services. With all the choices, and because they are all similarly free, most people just use the first QR code generator they find. But how do you distinguish one service from the other? How can you be sure that you are using the best QR code generator there is? Here are five tips:

1. A QR code generator should be flexible. The best thing about QR codes is that it can contain a lot of different types of information behind it. So your QR code generator should be able to handle all these various types of information, but still be very convenient to use.

2. Your QR code generator should be easy to use. On the other side of the spectrum, there are generators that try to incorporate as many types of information possible, but the resulting interface is too confusing to use to be of any help at all. On top of being able to let you easily input your desired information, you should be able to find your way through your QR code generator easily. A tabbed and properly indexed QR code generator can work wonders if you are working with different types of URLs, data, social media platforms, and graphics.

3. Choose a QR code generator that allows you to download your codes in different file formats. While most services that allow you to create QR code allow you to download the generated codes in graphic format, it certainly helps to have the code in vector format such as a PDF file that doesn’t lose its resolution when enlarging. This would be very helpful if you need to print large versions of your QR code for printed materials.

4. To read the rest of this article  go to www.beqrious.com.

Imagine for a moment that you moved to a new home located right next door to a train station. It’s noisy at first. But after a while, you get used to the noise and barely notice it. That notion captures “exactly how consumers feel about marketing and advertising — as if it’s not even there,” said Tim Suther, chief marketing officer of Acxiom, the world’s largest processor of consumer data, at a recent Wharton Marketing Conference. Such consumer numbness has profound consequences — $112 billion in major brand advertising is wasted every year, while eight out of 10 online ads fail to reach their desired audience. “A truly awful, awful performance,” noted Suther.  Read more…

Knowledge@Wharton

Whatever their financial woes, print newspaper advertising is still a trusted source of information for consumers planning their shopping decisions, according to a phone and Internet survey of 2,502 U.S. adults performed for the Newspaper Association of America by Frank N. Magid Associates.

The study highlighted the effectiveness of a couple of key print ad categories, including endemic display ads, preprint inserts and newspaper-distributed coupons.

The NAA-Magid study, titled “How America Shops and Spends 2011,” found that 52% of adults surveyed identified newspapers as the most important medium informing their purchase decisions. Fully 79% of respondents recalled taking some kind of action in response to newspaper advertising in the preceding month. To read the rest of the story visit Mediapost.com.