Goldman Sachs published a note Monday saying the U.S. economy is likely to slow down considerably in 2019.
U.S. stocks have gotten hammered in November. We've already had the longest bull run in American history. Whispers of a recession are emerging from many people in financials services.
But there are ways to keep a portfolio stable during hard times.
"Lightening up on equity exposure if you're overweight equities," would be a solid move, Mike Loewengart, vice president of investment strategy at E*Trade said. "Adding high quality fixed income has traditionally been a great way to cope with volatility, provide some balance in your portfolio," he added.
That doesn't necessarily means piling into treasuries, which may be under some interest rate pressure as the Federal Reserve is poised to raise rates. Dividends can work very well. "High yielding equities have traditionally performed as low beta options for equity investors -- those can be a great choice for coping with volatility," Loewengart said. Plus, companies that aim to grow their dividend rates over time can provide especially solid income. "Dividend growers, they've historically displayed lots of strength in the face of volatility," he said. Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM - Get Report) has a premium dividend to most companies, offering 4.22%. Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED - Get Report) offers 3.71%.
Banks and financials have gotten hit hard of late. Morgan Stanley (MS - Get Report) is down 17% this year. Citigroup Inc (C - Get Report) is down almost 15% this year. But rising rates are usually good for the sector. "As interest rates rise and the yield curve potentially steepening, that should be a highly conducive environment for bank stocks and other financial stocks," Loewengart said. He did remind that loan volumes could be a concern as rates rise, but history does say that rising rates help banks and financials.


Here is an alphabetical list by topic of books about Genealogy, Ancestors, Family History, Family Trees, Names, and some local histories and other titles of interest to genealogists, compiled by a librarian, that are currently available. Click on the image or title for additional information and availability (purchases are provided by Amazon.com). The list is frequently updated; so check back often.
Alabama Vital Records: Marriages 1808-1920, Selected Counties [CD-ROM] by Ancestry Inc.
Connecticut Vital Records: Marriages & Deaths, Selected Years [CD-ROM] by Ancestry Inc.
Maps of the District of Columbia and City of Washington, and Plats of the Squares and Lots of the City of Washington by Heritage Books Inc.
Even More Palatine Families: 18th Century Immigrants to the American Colonies and their German, Swiss, and Austrian Origins by Henry Z. Jones Jr.
Finding Oprah's Roots: Finding Your Own by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Slave Narratives [CD-ROM] by Ancestry Inc.
Wuerttemberg Emigration Index [CD-ROM] by Ancestry Inc.
Blue Ridge Heritage: An Informal History of Three Generations of the Family of John Nicholson Idol by John L. Idol Jr.
The Family of John Lewis, Pioneer by Mark W. Cowell Jr.
Fannie Blaine Elliott: Elliott Family History 1816-2003 by Earl S. Elliott Jr.
History of the Powell Families of Virginia and the South: An Encyclopedia by Silas E. Lucas Jr.
The Powell Families of Virginia and the South: Being an Encyclopedia of the Eight (8) Major Power Families of Virginia and the South in General by Silas E. Lucas Jr.
A President in the Family: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas Woodson by Byron W. Woodson Sr.
Ricketts Families, Primarily of Montgomery & Frederick Counties (Our Maryland Heritage) by William Neal Hurley Jr.
The Tafts of Rochester, Illinois by Justin Taft Jr.
English Parish Records: Middlesex by Ancestry Inc.
The Lives and Genealogies of the Welsh Saints by Welsh Academic Pr.
Royal Irish Constabulary Officers: A Biographical and Genealogical Guide, 1816 -1922 by Four Courts Pr. Ltd.
Scottish Parish Records: Scotland South [CD-ROM] by Ancestry Inc.
site owned by Books about Genealogy.


Androlic is the brand name for oxymetholone. Also know as Androlic or Anadrol It is without a doubt the strongest and most visibly active steroid to date. Not only does it act very rapidly, it causes a virtual explosion of mass. Gains of up to 10 pounds in 2 weeks are not uncommon.
The gains made on oxymetholone are not the leanest, you will note a drastic smoothing out of the muscle due to estrogen-related fat (lipolysis) and water retention. The water component resulting from oxymetholone use is not be under estimated either. The benefit of water retention is of course a lubrication of the joints, allowing the comfort of pain-free workouts even with extremely heavy weights, as well as the retention of more nutrients inside the cell, possibly leading to more permanent growth in muscle tissue. The downside to a massive water retention is that it gives you a rather puffed up look.
With the increase of estrogen there comes the increased risk of more side-effects, such as gynocomastia (growth of breast tissue in men). Therefore its always advised that a cycle of oxymetholone is accompanied by the use of an anti-estrogen such as Nolvadex. The use of oxymetholone should be strict and brief. While it is no doubt the strongest steroid, its also by far the most hazardous steroid to your health. Apart from the great risk of common steroid-related side-effects , it also has numerous other side-effects. Most notable is oxymetholone's hepatoxicity (damaging to the liver). There is also a number of intrinsic side-effects noted with the use of this steroid. Headaches, stomach aches, nausea, vomiting, insomnia and diarrhea are among common afflictions associated with oxymetholone use. Only strict doses of oxymetholone are used, only 1-2 tabs of 50 mg. The general rule of thumb is to use 0.5 or 0.6 mg per pound of bodyweight, Because of the negative effects on the liver, its often not used for more than a two or three weeks. The results are fast, but also fleeting and therapy is usually continued with another aromatizable compound, most likely a long acting testosterone like Sustanon. Under no circumstances should oxymetholone use exceed 6 weeks.
When using oxymetholone, one should always consult a physician on a frequent basis and get your liver values checked. The effect on the blood pressure is drastic so its recommended that you use a anti-hypertensive drug in conjunction, especially if you already have a fairly high blood pressure. The use of Clomid or Nolvadex and HCG is advised as well towards the end of your oxymetholone use. Lastly, oxymetholone also has an ill effect on the glucose tolerance5, causing borderline diabetic situations. Something to be weary of if you yourself have been diagnosed with similar problems already.
In conclusion: One can safely state that the negative effects on the system associated with the use of this hormone are rather drastic and that the use is therefore not recommended for beginners, women or people who have pre-existing afflictions. None-the-less oxymetholone remains a popular steroid among experienced users to kick-start a steroid cycle because of its magnificent increases in strength and size.


Google IS HELPING an organized disinformation campaign about the truths of the religion of Islam.
Google, like Facebook, strive to inform the masses only that which is aligned to their "culturally elite" beliefs.
Wouldn't it be great if all of the people who voted for President Trump, decided to no longer access/use the powerful organizations of the LEFT such as Google, Facebook and AMAZON.
Wouldn't our unity against these organizations bring them down a few pegs? Wouldn't our behavior based on our convictions detrimentally impact these moguls and their bottomline?
What will it take to unify us who believe in the founding principles of our nation such as that of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What will it take for us who believe in the 2nd Amendment to cease from purchasing from Amazon and/or to remove our "storefronts" from Amazon?
In my way of thinking, a conviction is only true/real if it is followed by the correct form of behavior. If it isn't, aren't we just convenient hypocrites?
Posted in Current events, Non Fiction, Uncategorized.Tagged 2 cents, culturally elite, government, islam, middle east, MSM, politics, security, society, terrorism, tptb, truth, USA.


"Morning Watering and a Stripe of Frozen Field"
When I drove upon this scene early one morning while exploring the back roads of southern Utah I was struck by the dynamic nature of this newly forming ice. Clinging instantly to whatever it touched. The tall grasses beyond the property line, the fence, the short standing crop, all catching first light looking like glass.


text:
Home>News & Publications>Articles>Middle-East>Syria: Idlib, targeted health facilities
Syria: Idlib, targeted health facilities
Since 28 April, the violence in Idlib province in northwest Syria has intensified. The civilian population continues to bear the brunt of persistent attacks that have forced more than 180,000 people to flee to the north of the country.
Targeted attacks on health workers and health facilities
Over the past eight years, the various parties to the conflict have regularly targeted health facilities and workers - 102 were killed in 2018 alone. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis deepens in Syria.
Eight years of conflict: a forgotten but all too real tragedy
Médecins du Monde – Doctors of the World fears this escalation in targeted attacks on health facilities and civilians initiated in Idlib province on 28 April will trigger a dire humanitarian crisis in the region:
15 health facilities and hospitals have been either partially or totally destroyed in targeted attacks.
By targeting these facilities, those involved in the conflict are denying civilians access to basic and essential services. The impact of these attacks on the provision of healthcare and drugs is catastrophic, particularly for the treatment of serious and chronic diseases and follow-up of pregnant women.
Liable to attack, health facilities are stretched to the limit, with staff working under considerable pressure to cope with the high number of displaced and wounded people.
"Given that the worst is yet to come, the international community must be unequivocal in its response. After eight years of uninterrupted conflict, the civilian population feels increasingly abandoned and people are at the end of their tether. Health facilities and NGOs providing assistance on the ground have neither the resources nor the capacity to respond to such huge influxes of displaced and wounded civilians," deplores Hakan Bilgin, President of Médecins du Monde Turkey.
Idlib: protect civilian against a new offensive
Civilians caught in the crossfire in Idlib
For the past eight years, civilians have been the principal victims of the conflict. And once again, in the densely populated province of Idlib where three million people live – 1.3 million of them already internally displaced by previous military offensives – it is civilians who are paying the heaviest price.
"This new wave of attacks may force the displaced to flee all over again. Idlib was the only place in Syria where they could find refuge, and we're worried there's nowhere left for them to go. The fighting has backed them into a corner and they're trapped. With each passing day, Syria becomes a forgotten crisis," decries Dr Philippe de Botton, President of Médecins du Monde France.
With each passing day, Syria becomes a forgotten crisis.
Médecins du Monde – Doctors of the World urges the international community to take bold and immediate action to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and respond to an unprecedented humanitarian and health emergency. As the crisis deepens, withdrawing humanitarian and financial aid in the short or medium-term cannot be an option.
AIDA calls on international community to reject US plan and demand accountability
Palestine : a new report on the obstacles to health in Gaza

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
History Brooklyn Boro
Kaufman's Brooklyn: Three photos of 'Buildings: 'New' and older'
July 30, 2020 Phil Kaufman
Photos courtesy of Phil Kaufman
My father, Irving Kaufman (1910 – 1982), was a professional photographer who started in Brooklyn in the mid 1930s working for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He captured thousands of images of Brooklyn through the 1950s. I have recently digitized a great many of them. My father's profile can be found here.
This week's theme:
I've called this week's theme "Buildings: 'New' and older." Since the photos I'm displaying were taken at least 80 years ago, none of them qualify as new today. But many of them were fairly new at the time these photos were taken. Since these "new" buildings are already old today, the other ones have to be called "older."
Once past my confusing attempt at accurate language, what remains is a display of interesting Brooklyn buildings from the 1930s. In most cases, the buildings were not incidental or in the background, but were the reason for the photograph. Some were meant for the Eagle, to display an interesting or important new site. Others were for a specific client who wanted a record of their property before or just after rebuilding or relocating. Finally, some shots were taken simply because they appealed to my father, as evidenced by his identifying many as taken on "One Sunday Afternoon."
Today's photos:
We're continuing to look at some interesting "older" buildings — buildings that were already old when these pictures were taken. In most cases I have been unable to get anything but the most basic information about them. I hope you enjoy them as attractive images of a time gone by.
Seems old to me: Anonymous Hebrew School, mid-1930s
All my father wrote on this and many other pictures was "Fed Bldgs," a shorthand for buildings of Jewish organizations. Most others identified that way are clearly very old, so I'm assuming this one is too, though it's hard to be sure. The words "Hebrew School" are carved in concrete at the top of the building. The only words I can make out on the big white sign are "Allan Chester," which leads nowhere useful in a search.
School's out: Probable school, mid-1930s
One kid walking, two kids sitting on the top of the steps, a rambling structure, caged-in exterior stairways, no flag on the flagpole and what seem like open areas on either side of the building – what could it be but a school that's not in session? The street sign says "Prospect Av," but that's too long a street to provide much of a clue about where this is exactly.
No sign of life, East New York Dispensary, mid-1930s
Another building with a prior Jewish identity carved in stone, but with no additional identification by my father. In this case its age is not extreme in years – the date on the top says 1909, not even forty years old – but from the look of the boarded-up adjacent buildings and the apparently abandoned dispensary, these buildings and maybe others nearby are waiting to be demolished.
An index of Kaufman's Brooklyn posts may be found here.
Irving Kaufman's profile may be found here.
I invite you to submit comments, memories, images of Brooklyn, and especially any additional background information you can supply about the photos posted here to [email protected] I'd also be glad to supply information about buying prints of any of the images seen here. Many of my father's images are also available for viewing and purchase at http://yourartgallery.com/irvingkaufmanstudios. All prints purchased will be the product of professional scanning and editing.
Weekly collection 13: Photos of 'Buildings: 'New' and older'
It's Time To Cancel `Snow Days'
January 19 | Tom Purcell, Cagle Cartoon's Syndicate.
TOP CARTOONS OF THE WEEK
January 18 | Daryl Cagle
Brooklyn duo collaborate on new independent film
January 12 | Raanan Geberer
January 10 | By Daryl Cagle
Frank July 31, 2020
The East New York Dispensary photo might best be explained by a 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/8014883/the-brooklyn-daily-eagle/
Alan Lasky October 13, 2020
131 Watkins St https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bb88da5f2987b8d8d77d03e3ae121e7d9f913437c210d3d4eaa02c99dc5e1efc.jpg
http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/s/mc0105
1252 Prospect Ave https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0672f7e899cce760899857ae6b8f3882b026006e3080ef3ce76c9d262544c9e4.jpg
http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/s/8u3k69
https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2020/07/30/kaufmans-brooklyn-three-photos-of-buildings-new-and-older-3/


text:
Q: Using PS4/XB1 in a country before release date? As the title says, can the PS4 and/or XBOX One be used to play online and/or offline in a region where they have not yet been released? I am thinking of ordering a system from the US and play in a country (Thailand) where neither have been released yet.

A: I am using a Xbox One in Luxembourg where it wasn't released and never will as the country is not supported by Live. I am using an UK account and am fine. I hit the rare IP locked content but using a VPN I can get it anyway. The worst you could have to suffer is migrate your account to a region supported by Live.

A: you should be fine, Games for at least the PS4 are Region Free, however multiplayer with both will need a subscription to their services.
While i don't think there is any problem with getting a console from the US and fixing up an account in Thailand and using that keep in mind that there maybe some stuff in the US Playstation Network or X-Box Live meant for the PS4/X-Box One which you wont be able to get in a Thailand account until the consoles have been released, there may also be a problem with console registration if your using a Thailand account when registering your console.
Keep in mind however that DLC is still region locked to the same region as that of where you brought the game, so if you get a US Game you will need a US Account in order to get DLC, DLC from a Thailand account will most likely be incompatible with US Games (though with that said, UK and Australian DLC is interchangeable but Nintendo counts them both as PAL)

A: I live in the Netherlands, where the Xbox One is still not sold, but I bought one in Germany.
One thing I had to do was migrate my account from the Netherlands to the US and set my Xbox One to the US as well. (Any country will do, as long as they match) The problem with this was that my Microsoft Points from my X360 didn't migrate along, so I had to use them up on my X360 before migrating (I could not use them on the Xbox One).
After that everything works fine and I can play online, download and buy new games with my PayPal account, etc.
Microsoft Netherlands has officially made a statement that they fully support imported Xbox Ones, so that's an added benefit for us.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The world's best cyclists sweating in their lycra: six races through SA towns, with the grand finale in downtown Adelaide. A world-class event.
Annual axefest with a whole lotta rock, classical, country, blues and jazz goin' on. 'Guitars In Bars' brings the festival into booze rooms city-wide. Held in July (when there's not much else to do).


In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein the creature created by Frankenstein demands that humanity take their fair share of responsibility for their abusive treatment making him as much a monster on the inside as he appears on the outside: "Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humanity sinned against me? . . . .I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice." How different things would have turned out for him (and most of Switzerland!) if, after his "father" Victor spurned him, the creature had been taken in paw by my cats Natasha and Rosalind. They have nothing but tenderness, friendliness, and courtesy for the "monsters" – although mice are another matter. Look at this adorable face!
Here is Natasha proudly keeping company with her new monstrous acquaintance. No contumely or spurning can be seen on her furry countenance.
Of course 'Tasha is always solicitous of her companion's well-being. A well-timed nuzzle is just the thing to make a creature forget all about those nasty villagers and their pitchforks or flaming torches!
Most important of all, Natasha Rose knows that it's important to listen and learn from others. You can expand your horizons, and you build others' confidence by validating that they have something valuable to teach you! Here, she attentively follows the observations of a friendly Halloween death's head.
And of course, sometimes it's nice just to have a relaxing sit down with a screaming good guest in the parlor.
Or perhaps Natasha is giving him therapy. "Tell me how you feel about people chasing you with flaming torches and pitch forks." Dr. Bob Hartley would be proud.
Not to be outdone by her big sister, Rosalind (aka Rosie Roosevelt Yang) makes the Scream feel at home with a lively game of hide and seek. Play therapy?
So, whatever kind of human or inhuman you are, try not to be too quick to call those you don't understand monsters. Instead,– follow the leads of Rosalind and Natasha – except when it comes to mice.
Happy Halloween to you, too! I love the cats on your page!
They really are adorable – and great buddies. Natasha is curled up in the chair that is next to me while I grade papers. Last night, Rosie curled up in my lap and kept me company watching two wonderfully strange Bela Lugosi movies. Ah well, back to grading.
What a wonderful way to combine cats, literature, and Halloween all in the same breath.
Thank you, Carol. This is my favorite holiday, and the kitties love it, too! I also treat myself to watching eerie films as well.


text:
Underwater Marvels
Check out these amazing creatures that inhabit the liquid universe of planet Earth's oceans and rivers. Only the first one is a fish.
Aquatic hunger games: Archerfish spit the distance for food (Science Daily): "Described as nature's sharpshooters or water pistols, archerfish inhabit the mangroves of southeast Asia and northern Australia." Experiments show they can shoot distant targets, but prefer the closer ones.
Marine animal colony is a multi-jet swimming machine, scientists report (PhysOrg): Tiny jellyfish that hang together are inspiring multi-engine underwater propulsion systems. The jellyfish, called siphonophores, use a propulsion mechanism that is "relatively rare in the animal kingdom"—squirting from multiple identical orifices. It allows them to "turn on a dime, very rapidly." Science Daily adds, "This is a highly efficient system in which no developmental stage is wasted…It's a quite sophisticated design, for what would seem like a simple arrangement."
Giant sea scorpion found in Iowa (Science Magazine): Fragmented fossils of a human-size sea scorpion were dug up in northeastern Iowa, presenting a conundrum for evolution: "Either eurypterids diversified quickly during the early stages of the Ordovician period (which began about 485 million years ago), or their lineage, including yet-to-be-discovered ancestors and kin, evolved more slowly and originated even further back in time during the Cambrian period—possibly during the Cambrian explosion, a period of evolutionary diversification sometimes called 'life's big bang,' which began about 542 million years ago." Euryptids are arthropods like trilobites.
First cephalopod genome contains unique genes involved in nervous system, camouflage (PhysOrg): The genome of a California octopus surprised scientists with its complexity, comparable to the human genome. A one-minute video clip in the article shows the octopus undergoing rapid color changes to match its surroundings, even creating half-and-half patterns. See also Evolution News & Views on the findings; also here.
Rare nautilus sighted for the first time in three decades (Science Daily): The beautiful chambered nautilus (another cephalopod) once graced the seas in large numbers and huge sizes. Now, they are rare. Peter Ward (U of Washington, co-author of Rare Earth) was glad to find a couple of them in the South Pacific after 3 decades without any sightings. "This could be the rarest animal in the world," he commented.
Do whales get the bends? (National Geographic): There's no reason they wouldn't, except that they have specialized fat that can absorb the nitrogen bubbles that naturally form when a mammal rises to the surface too quickly. "Researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington investigated how marine mammals' tissues—specifically, fat deposits in the jaws of toothed whales that are used in echolocation—absorb nitrogen gas, one of the gases that contributes to the bends. They found that the makeup of the fat affected how much nitrogen gas dissolves in it—and that different species had different fat compositions."
If you haven't yet seen Living Waters: Intelligent Design in the Oceans of the Earth, by all means obtain a copy. It's available on DVD (click the link) and will be coming out in Blu-ray this month. This film delights the viewer with great stories and facts about sea creatures while simultaneously demolishing Darwinian explanations. Filmed in Bermuda, Honduras, Canada, California and other locations, it is loaded with spectacular imagery (including great overhead drone shots), beautiful music and cutting-edge science.
Tags: archer fish, bends, cambrian explosion, camouflage, cephalopod, genome, jellyfish, nautilus, nitrogen, octopus, propulsion, scorpion, sea sapphire, sea scorpion, whale
Categories: Amazing Facts, Darwin and Evolution, Dating Methods, Fossils, Geology, Intelligent Design, Mammals, Marine Biology, Physics


Formal Summary: If they are to survive, web analysis tools need to focus on business questions, not technical counting and simple reporting. There are 7 major areas that web analytics tools have continued to fail to deliver in over the past 13 years. These 7 areas are interdependent, and represent needs of both the advanced analyst and the basic business user. These areas reflect changes in the web and how interactive technology is used for marketing and overall business, the need for simplification of results sharing, the rise of large-scale data processing capabilities, and the simple fact that web analysis innovation has stagnated.
In this extended post, I explain the issues, give examples, and recommend solutions.
d) keep the evolution going in areas like analytics, segmentation, customization, visualization, and other -tions.
Read on to see just what I mean.
Recently, as part of my job, I've reviewed the current state of affairs of the "web analytics" space. I looked at over 20 tools, from the traditional guys to startups, from BI vendors and marketing analytics guys all the way to open source. And what I've seen is, frankly, disappointing. I had other words, but I'm trying to keep this clean.
We have stagnated. We have gotten stuck in the weeds, and forgotten the face of our fathers (yes, from King's Gunslinger series, I like the sound of it). We have forgotten what we set out to do when we first moved these tools past "counts of hits".
I'm going to lay out the pieces that are missing, and some suggestions for filling in the gaps, but here's the thing: they all hang together. I'll try to make that clear by linking, but you need to understand: putting just one in and calling it a win is missing the point. Each of these is a different dimension to the whole problem.
And I'm not going to get hung up on measuring "engagement" or "the conversation" or AJAX or any of the other buzzwords. This post is on the more business basic stuff, the stuff people keep asking for and that I wonder why we, as a group, have so utterly failed to deliver. By basic, I don't mean simple or beginner. I mean, the real underlying reasons that someone uses these tools, the business problems they are trying to solve while we spin around methodology.
This stuff applies to every tool in the Web Analytics world (aka WA), from the top quad (Omniture, WebTrends, Coremetrics, Google Analytics) to the latest hot-to-trot tool (CrazyEgg this week, you-name-it next week) to the variety of starter tools and open source tries. (And yes, Yahoo! IndexTools currently suffers from many of these problems too… just because Yahoo! acquired them, don't think they get off any easier).
Yes, it's long. Print it out if you have to.
Writing this drove me to tears. Its just so depressing how bad we are. I don't want to hear any more excuses about "you can't boil the ocean" or "its still a young industry" or "we provide what the industry asks for" or really any of those silly weasel-outs.
It's not like the field is new; I've been working around tool deficiencies for over 10 years. We've already boiled all the small ponds, tidal pools, and freshwater lakes. It's time to start on the big problems.
So, yes, tool company, I'm talking to you, be you big or small, US or not, open source or closed. And analysts, consultants, tool users, agencies, publishers, etc., we need to work together and vote with our wallets to make these wishes come true.
Its time to fix it.
Web Analytics is stuck on what people do instead of who they are. That is, we are forgetting that there is a person behind all those behaviors, and that the value of the behavioral tracking is to understand that person and meet their needs. Focusing on the behaviors instead of analyzing them to get at the person behind them is the mistake all the WA tools have made.
And is that bad? After all, I pay for behaviors (clicks) for my search ads, and I make money when people click on ads on my sites, or buy things. Shouldn't I be focused on that? If I optimize towards behaviors, and I get paid for behaviors, why should I even worry about the soul inside the black box?
Years of marketing research (and even more years of psychology) will tell you that you can't achieve your business goals in this world if you focus on behavior instead of the person. As a marketer or publisher, you are optimizing stimuli to drive a response, but you don't have the luxury of a conditioning lab. You have to use everything you can to understand the person: emotional needs and fears, expectations and social norms, the whole WHO they are. Those of you who've been doing this a while may call this psychographics, but no matter what name it is, its about what's driving the person to make the behaviors that are oh so easy to track.
And its not the overused shortcut of "intent". Intent is session based. Understand a person's overall interests, needs, expectations, wants, likes, desires, fears, hopes and/or dreams and you've got a customer for life.
But our current WA tools do little to nothing to help us with this. Sure, some have some simple filtering based on some IP-based geo data. Some let you pass in variables, such as the type of ad that drove the user (he clicked on the "fear" ad, while that other guy clicked on the "low cost benefit" ad). But where is the clear thought leadership that helps guide users to understanding how important it is to collect this data, and to USE this data? Where is the technology and guidance to help me build a picture of who my visitors and customers are, instead of just what they are doing?
Differentiate "State" vs. "Enduring" metrics so we can split a session/visit from a user's entire experience. While I may want to roll up every visit, how about rolling up "per user"?
Show state change: how many people transitioned from looker to booker? Suspect to Prospect? Or Custom1 to Custom2?
Summarize user comments, forum postings, reviews in linguistic analysis (license it). Are they positive or negative? Frequent contributors? (See Too much Web, not enough Analysis; Understand my Site).
My business (every business) is predicated on providing what people want to pay for. To understand that, I need to understand them, and make sure I have the stuff they want to buy. If I don't understand that, then I lose. I expect my WA tool to help with this, not hide it in the database somewhere.
BTW, I am not saying that behaviors are bad, nor that derivations from behaviors (like Behavioral Targeting (BT)) are bad, or that we should ignore behaviors. But we've gone too far in the other direction: we ignore the person, and just count the behaviors.
Ok, need a sample? Here we go. Simple question. What kinds of people are visiting my blog? What tool or report will describe their interests for me? Well, there isn't one… but let's do what the tool guys want us to do. Let's look at the most popular content. That would describe the interests of the visitors, right? After all, the uninteresting content will never show up, and the most interesting stuff might tell me about their interests and needs.
Here are the top 10 pages on my site in July. (Ok, so it doesn't seem like tons of traffic, but I have a very long tail of interesting posts. No, really! Anyway, back to the example).
Actually, even that's not true. You see, the tool I used doesn't even have a report by visitor. It only gives me PVs. I had to customize the report to count by visitors. See what I mean? The reports default to behaviors, not people, and no report like this is in my "Visitors" menu of reports.
So, of course, it's obvious. The people who visit my site love Ubuntu Linux, the R Statistical package, and the Nero CD burning tool. Right?
Wrong. And you can't really use the tools to get at this. Instead, either by pulling raws, or through custom tagging, you can get a list of cookies who visited each page. From there, a set of crosstabs of co-occurrence per session, or binary-biased correlation, or binary-adjusted clustering all reveal the same thing: There are 4 different groups represented in this chart. (See also Too much Web, not enough Analysis).
Group 1 is the Ubuntu Linux guys. Group 2 is the analysis world, who reads the R and SPSS stuff. Group 3 is the Windows/PC users who need help with stuff (besides Nero, they also like some of my excel posts). Group 4 are also analysts, but they are less statistical and more marketing/databasey (hence the BI and SQL links). While there are some overlaps, these are the basics.
So, there are 4 audiences I appeal to. I try to mix my posts up to appeal to each group, and every once in a while, I throw something out calculated to go beyond these groups. But this is a SEGMENT POV, not a page-popularity or even content-popularity POV.
So, Mr. Business Owner, if you aren't thinking about the audience, the people behind the behaviors for everything you do, then you are just bit twiddling, and often coming up with the wrong answers. It's not your fault, however; the tools force you into doing this. And that's plain bad.
Too much Web, not enough Analysis.
For a group of tools called "Web Analysis" tools, we sure do have a strange view of "analysis".
I'm trained as a Social and Quantitative Psychologist, so I have a pretty clear definition of Analysis. It involves turning data into answers and, wait for it, "insight". This means looking for patterns in data, and then understanding what those patterns mean in the real world, as well as why certain groups don't follow those patterns. If you think for moment, every problem you are trying to solve for your business will follow this same logic. You don't need to be a psychologist to figure this out.
So, we all, analysts, marketers, business owners, financial officers, bloggers, all spend lots of time analyzing. Why don't these web analysis tools help? It's as if they were hiding in a rock for the last 40 years, and completely missed the rise of computational statistics and data mining. Yes, instead of calculating "sums of squares" by hand, it turns out you can use computers for this.
But all the current WA tools are glorified reporting tools. They just print lists of behaviors, sometimes with filters. Where are the actual summaries, where you explain in ENGLISH (or language of your choice) what is happening in the data? Why do your reports never give distributions or confidence intervals? Where is the trending and predictive expectations? Where are the exception finders and analyzers?
Or, given that there is so much data, where is the clustering and variable reduction? Where's the part where you help us reduce our data to something useful? I expect to see not only clustering of people (see More Who, Less Do) but clustering of pages, clustering of content and items I sell, anything to help me see the patterns. Let me see co-occurrence, let me see islands, let me see what's defining the experience I am providing my users.
I mentioned linguistic analysis. This means reading my sites (see Understand My Site). Read the content I create, the content my users create, and help me profile and understand the users creating their content and their response to mine (See More Who, Less Do). And as the "conversation" moves into 3rd parties who host aggregation, give me ways to understand that: work with Disqus, Twitter, Friendfeed, whatever ways you need to integrate things that are part of my site but occur off site (ala widgets, etc.).
An even simpler thing… how about scoring of behaviors to create "engagement scores" (or call it whatever you want)? Lots of people have scoring formulas, so give the user freedom to configure their own. And license the existing ones as a starting place.
Though there has been some scratching of the surface, there is a minimal set of tools helping with data-driven conversion attribution across media for traffic driving. And that little bit dwarfs the big vacuum around analysis driving ad performance on my site (see Publisher-side Business Assistance). This one will get it's own post at some point, but the level of analysis around attribution is completely weak. You don't give strong tools to facilitate optimal distribution of revenue across "assists" and direct drivers of action across channels and medium, nor do your tools help with media mix optimization or allocation.
BTW, you tool vendors all give some nice metrics… but you do little to allow me to create my own metrics or ratios. I have to export and stick things in spreadsheets to work around this. As you start borrowing from stats packages and from other BI tools, consider allowing custom metrics (ratios, etc.) to be first class citizens. And every metric should be available as a dimension (and vice versa, see how Excel Pivot Tables handle this very seamlessly).
And don't get me started on how much these tools ignore the fact that a site is actually a "web". Graph theory and network analysis, anyone? Yes, it's more than making a pretty web chart.
You can add capabilities from open source tools like Weka, Yale/Rapid-i, or the R Project. You can license capabilities from SPSS, SAS, Kxen or Insightful or Angoss or a myriad of others. You can make up totally new algorithms if you want, reflecting the modern work of social and network analysis. You can mix and match from data mining, pattern detection, AI, evolutionary/genetic algorithms, frequentist statistics, Bayesian statistics, and even parametric statistics. Do whatever you want.
But you can't just sit there and do nothing.
Start with the easy stuff: clustering. Help us understand how our content hangs together, how our users hang together. You can cluster content via the words themselves (see Understand My Site) or how people read them. Then start doing some predictive work: help me see how things will trend out, and start adjusting for seasonality. Help me predict how much money my ads will make for the next two months, and give me a goal to shoot for. Also let me know if I'm going below the 2 SD mark and should get worried.
Clustering, by the way, is not the same as Page Groups. Document groups is just aggregating pieces which add up to some larger unit. The cluster may be things that are related, but don't add up to some obvious grouping. Which brings me to Page Groups: helpful idea, but poorly implemented in most tools (See Understanding My Site). Good idea, but needs more help.
(At this point, I would dive into "start giving me Test Design tools so I can measure the change on my site", but Google is giving them away now, and the rest of the large independent players have been purchased. Even with all this, they are barely on the radar of most people I talk to. Even analysts I talk to have not heard of this capability, which was surprising. So, if you are an analyst, go to Google Website Optimizer after you read this post and learn some more. Also good is Microsoft's work, see my post MS Experimentation team makes another winner).
If you call your tool a "Web Analysis" tool, it should at least provide some analysis. What we have now is sadly lacking.
As it turns out, shiny-but-useless is actually not what the visualization field is all about (though they now have a great name for this s-b-u, "chartjunk"). First off, CLEAN UP your act: no drop shadows, pseudo 3d, or fades. Have you guys even read any Tufte or Stephen Few? Second, learn what visualization is all about. The focus is on analysis: helping you derive meaning from the data, like the analysis portion we just discussed.
So, make it easier for the user to understand what's going on. Phrase the results in terms of the problem, not as an abstract. (See Understand My Site and Understand My Business). For each type of business focus, or for different roles, reduce the amount of stuff you are showing, and give an English paragraph about the trend. Imagine if the tool said things like "Note: your visits per UU is going up, but PVs per UU per month is declining, which means users are coming back more but visiting fewer pages in general. This change happened around May 3, 2008. Did something change on the site?" Yes, you can visually present this, but now you've told the user what to look for, put context around it, and turned a mere report or chart into an answer.
Another sub topic in analysis, here are things that should just be fixed; I'm sort of surprised that these haven't been put to bed by now.
Any metric should also be available as a grouper, especially as a count or range. Any grouper should be aggregatable as a metric. We should be able to set counts of "groups" of actions: How many people did any 2? any 3? Any 4 of these items?
Any "Action" should be available for the same things we do for pages. So, I should be able to see paths and groupings of actions, just like I can for pages. Note that most people count actions, and let you segment by them, but doesn't make them available for other analyses. At the end of the day, its really a "level of analysis" or data granularity issue… but the future is one where I look at sequences of events, be they PVs, "configurations" in page, etc.
In fact, the artificial separation between "actions" and pageviews has to end. PVs should die, only to be reincarnated as an "action" or "action bundle". Dennis Mortensen of IndexTools fame suggests that page views was never what it was all about, and suggests the term "content views": this nicely puts the emphasis on the real reason you were tracking the page or AJAX event. Now, there is still some work on level of granularity: some folks want to know about every click, others just want the click lump or "completion" action for each step of a process, and others just want to know daily counts of sales. We need to provide ways to bundle or aggregate clicks and have those bundles still be first class citizens. It's a scalability problem, but not unsolvable.
These tools do a TERRIBLE job of helping me understand my site. They are agnostic to the site: all they do is count the behaviors, and do nothing to model or correlate the structure of the site. All that log data just magically is generated by, well, something, but not anything the tool tracks or uses in its analyses.
The WA world seems to think that we can ignore the site itself in favor of the data traces the user leaves. It's as if I were a detective, and I was more interested in the clues outside the bank than actually looking inside at how the bank was robbed: "Hmm, the thief wore tennis shoes, very worn down… what? You arrested a guy carrying large bags of money labeled with the bank's name and a blowtorch? How did you know that was the guy?".
Some readers have suggested that the WA world doesn't have to worry about this stuff, that CMS (content management systems) deal with the structure of web sites. Perhaps. But most of them do a poor job of analyzing how the content is used. Editors make some decisions on which content should be highlighted or removed in order to meet some goals (persuade, sell, entertain, inform)... shouldn't they be provided some tools which would help them? Also, these CMS systems are just starting to provide ways for users of sites to provide content back into the system: that content needs some analysis, and the CMS usually ignores that.
Give me tools to tag and organize content or items, and provide tools to auto-tag and auto-categorize. Have the tools actually READ (content analyze) the content on my site to provide content tags. Either recognize it yourself, or give me tools to build the hierarchies of how I want to understand my site, the makeup of pages with Ajax Modules, etc.: I may not care about "home page" except as a collection of modules and their use. I may have a hierarchy clearly laid out on my site that your tool can recognize… and then its some hypothesis testing to see if users are using the site the way I think… or recommend changes!
I've mentioned the emphasis on behavior. I have clicks, and I have urls. You need to make sure that I understand what my readers are Seeing, not just what they react to (yes, More Who, Less Do). Simply seeing ads can cause brand change… and simply reading long posts like this one can change the world. Even if you don't click on a thing, I need to understand what you saw. For static content, easy; for dynamic, user submitted, personalized and customized content, content from other sites, well, the tools are still struggling. Better now than in the past, no question… but still a struggle to set up, report on, and understand.
Ok, it would be remiss of me, after all this venting, not to point out that some of the companies have started down this path, in part by backing into it. For example, Interwoven acquired Optimost to start making the content more fully defined and integrated to the analytics suggesting optimal combinations. Other content management groups are similar analytics in their apps, and some analysts have gone as far as to say that basic analytics will be integrated into all of our apps, so standalone analytics approaches, for the basics, will be a dinosaur. Perhaps, but until open source blogging and publishing systems like Drupal and Wordpress include strong integration with the tools, or until the tools are smart enough to scrape what they can without requiring technical innovation, then I think we still need a lot more improvement.
So, there is a wealth of data about how I see the world and what my site is trying to achieve. And my users are actually telling me what they think about it, both by behaviors (clicks) and actual text. Why not take advantage of it?
Ok, this is a huge one, almost as big as segmentation. The WA tools basically assume that my site is, well, a site, same as every other one: it's on the web, it has pages, images, and links. Oh, there may be minor changes in functionality of the tool based on if I appear to have e-commerce (conversion funnels) but at the end of the day, every report looks the same no matter if I measure my corporate intranet or my store. Coremetrics has a few specialized ecommerce reports (the others do as well, but I found CoreM had put slightly more thought into theirs), but even they don't care if I'm an online grocer or a seller of baseball cards.
The tools need the ability to customize to how I run my business. You need to use the terms I use in my business (widgets, work units, RFPs, whatever). You need to understand the buying cycles my customers face, and let me customize reports by those time frames. Understand whether I keep evergreen listings and order inventory on the back end, or I list perishables which change every week. And you need to understand my goals. What is my site supposed to do for me, long term and short? This is what you need to report on, not the site behaviors themselves.
Organize what you are tracking around what I think is important. Help me help you get out of page mode, and let's all get thinking about events and how I need to understand them and their impact on my business.
How can any one tool do this? Well, here's a thought: the wrong answer is to not try at all. Give an interview to the user and let them self categorize. Let them customize "units" and cost factors. Let them describe basic parts of their business. Do your homework to have predefined approaches for small service industries, catalogers, ebay and yahoo storefronts. Spend some time looking for the repeated patterns, and focus on solving the user's business problem, not their web problem.
And while you are looking at the user's business problem, consider helping them organize their business. Give much more emphasis on traffic generation and customer acquisition. Split out "paid vs. non-paid" traffic generation, and segment this (see More Who, Less Do). Allow a variety of "dependent variables" for counts in the paid vs. non-paid. Recognize return visitors so we can segment by "pay every time they visit" vs. "paid first time, organic every other time".
I know, all you tool vendors will swear that you integrate with banners, search marketing, and email. That you track affiliate links. Yada, yada. Companies like e-Dialog continue to thrive because you vendors do such a poor job of making these tools relevant to the users that they pay others to read them so they don't have to. I appreciate you supporting the consultant economy, but perhaps now is time to get with the program.
How about customer service within a company? Why no reports which help us understand which products or purchases are driving repeat visits to the "help" or "support" sections of my site? There is no post-sales report section built into any of these tools. Which searches are people doing in my forum? What types of questions are they posting? HDTV returns were cut by 33% when Costco realized that no one told people they needed to have HD coming into their home independent from the TV buy. A sign placed on each TV saved them millions in returns. I expect to be able to do the same for my business.
"This is impossible: everyone's business is too different. This is why we have domain experts and business leaders and analysts: they understand their business, and we can't tell them how to run it!" is a common tool vendor refrain. Funny, but last time I looked, everyone in the hardware store world runs their business in very similar ways. In fact, many industries have very broad industrial structures that companies need to fit into. The ERP vendors recognized this years ago, as they develop specific functionality and bundles to address the somewhat obvious needs that each vertical has. Look at SAP, Oracle, Lawson: you can buy the basics and configure yourself, but most everyone buys a preconfigured version to start with. While not every sale has been a success, it is undeniable that these guys are onto something with their vertical approach.
I call it publisher, but nowadays, almost everyone is a publisher. When a storefront like eBay or Walmart is selling adspace, when anyone can put a Google or Yahoo search ad on their site, its a "sponsored by" world. Yet these tools do nothing to help site owners understand what ads are working for us. What ads are getting clicked? Should I move their location or try different colors? Can you help me test different ad vendors or networks to join? Can you help me understand which of my content drives "profitable" traffic (See Understand my Site). Can you help me understand what types of users are coming so I can raise my rates (See More Who, Less Do).
No one other than Rapt (now owned by Microsoft, good call!) and maybe Nuconomy get this. But like Understanding my Business, if I make money from ads, then you need to analyze ad placement and performance from the balance of "what works well for my advertisers" and "what makes money for me". Those are correlated in the best cases, and if they aren't, help me mitigate the damage.
And don't just aim for the top of the heap; instead, consider helping tail and torso. Heads have specialized needs, but the tail and torso are the ones creating the buzz out there, and aggregate up to big bucks. Don't focus only on the Techmeme top guys, but provide tools which allow people who make money from ads… to optimize how they make money from ads.
Publisher analytics and monetization optimization is a very underserved area… and that means there is money to be made here if its done right. The fact that so little money is being made here (for publisher tools) is a clue… that none of you have done it right yet.
This post is long enough, I'll do another with a deeper dive on Publisher needs. But the point still stands: the WA world has missed the boat on this one so far, but its not too late to make some innovation.
The world is changing. I have widgets from others on my page. I have widgets I've created to spread my gospel. I send users between my sites, and I have partnerships with other sites. Why can't my web tool help with this?
Working with in-page elements is always a disaster with all of these tools, from poor summarization (see Understand my site, No Analytics) to very manual tagging. Why do you not have a big push to help standardize video widget tracking? Why not work with widget sets to provide standard hooks for behavior tracking? I would expect to find 20 page tech docs for every widget tool out there telling me exactly what I should tag, how to tag, and how to "one-button" enable this tracking.
Track the stuff in my site: are people using my flickr Widget or my MyBlogLog thingy? If I make the NetTakeaway RSS Headline widget, can you help me track that as an extension of my site? Look, if the link is on my site, I don't care how it got there, I want to know if people are clicking on it. Read the DOM, intercept the onClick event, do what you need to, but make sure I understand what people are seeing and clicking on.
How can I link data from two sites with totally different domains: you neither give me guidance, nor do you provide reports and tools to help me understand my users and their behaviors across both sites.
I need to understand what's happening via the dynamic content coming in from off site but displayed on mine. If a user clicks on a headline taking them off my page, tag it and store it. Run it through linguistics so we can build up an interest profile per user (see More Who, Less Do). What about the video and other aspects running on my site? How about tracking my videos, since they are promotion to my sites?
The Web 2.0 world isn't just "pages don't redraw any more!". It's about the interconnection of services to create content and functionality. The user doesn't see that its a mashup of 12 different sites, they just use it. The analyst shouldn't have to deal with that problem either.
By the way, my site is being used in a variety of ways. Besides me extending my functionality out to others via widgets, I am also being visited by mobile phones. Do they use my site differently? They must, they are seeing a different version. How about helping me with that, if by no other thing than making a segment out of them (See More Who, Less Do). But each medium has different aspects of interaction and experiences which combine to different metrics. Instead of everyone coming up with their own, how about making some out of the box to help us understand how our modern mashups are being received?
Bob Page brought up a point I had neglected to mention: Instead of asking for standardization just for video, let's work together to standardize all of the tagging.
So, we can all agree on certain types (broad though they may be) of events and where they play. Leave lots of room for customization, but have some lines in the sand that we can all work with. Make the tags themselves interoperable, b/c at the end of the day, all the js tags are the same. And with shared metadata, the mechanics of collection and sorting are genericized… and you can put your innovation in how to display the data and answer business questions.
I have mentioned the need to link up with any data I already own, and how to help me collect more (see More Who, Less Do and Too much Web, not enough Analysis). But as we find ways to make more mashups of functionality, instead of just being big reporting tools, WA systems will have to unleash the frontend from the back, and allow tools and systems to have easy read-write access to metrics. But you also need to allow alerts to flow into the systems, and allow programmatic configuration. Can I get a list of the top 10 pages or content items on my site in a widget from any of these tools? Not easily, and not always up to date. Can I load up a SQL query tool to dig into the data or export it in easy ways (easy meaning all data in ready to import forms) for advanced analysis? Again, not easily (though I quite liked Webtrends ODBC approach).
It is possible that all the tools are built this way before the front end is bolted on… but I think most tools have a ways to go before they will expose all their APIs.
BTW, the first ones can be really techie…. but later on, you will want to make sure any mashup tool or web services tool can work with your system, as well as simple scripters like Python. Make sure you provide ways to insert yourselves into custom dashboards that analysts may already be using. And provide ways for the front end (the site) to leverage the work. You should be providing recommendation engines (see Too much Web, not enough Analysis) and ways to leverage the knowledge in your systems in a live, per user (see More Who, Less Do) during their experience on the site.
Some companies, admittedly, may want to build their database around the WA silo. It's got all their visitors in it, after all… but the WA companies have not done enough yet to open the database to make it a full centerpiece to a business… and yet, the WA vendors also don't offer enough functionality on their own to manage many business functions.
If you try too hard to become the center of the marketing universe by forcing everything to work through you instead of offering to work with others, you may find that you actually become the center of "left-out-land".
Are things really so bad in web analytics land? There are literally hundreds of tools, and more and more people start to understand the phrase "visit count". Thousands of people around the world make their living using these systems, and thousands upon thousands see their output and make big business decisions based on what they see. The big tool names are recognizable (and some, publicly traded!) entities, and as a group, all the tool vendors have contributed to pushing web sites into making money while pleasing their users via optimization and other analyses. So, no, we aren't at armageddon.
But it's time to get our act together. We (analytsts, tool vendors alike) continue to talk technical metrics that have little correlation with the business at hand, and we get sucked into weeds of minutiae because the tools force us there.
Is there a pattern to my requests? You bet. Instead of making the request the center of the tool, make a person the center. A second emphasis can be about content objects. And then wrap all that in a model, a model of how various businesses work: how the content and the person come together in a commerce interaction, or a service interaction, or an entertainment experience.
We are talking about customers, and how they interact with my business. We are talking about what they feel and think about what I'm doing, and how I can help solve their needs. And you are providing ways for me to understand how my site is making me money, or helping my marketing, or just generally being a part of my business.
Because my business was never about the site. The site was just a part of my business. And finally, the tools start to see this, and work with me that way.
All because you addressed these 7 areas.
Ok, when I snap my fingers, you will wake up, and you will feel refreshed and happy. You will feel the world is a new and great place, and you will be energized to make some changes to make it even better.
Let this list we've just gone over be your guide. Time to get started.
Grateful thanks go to early reviewers including Bob Page, Dennis Mortensen, Eric Peterson, W Dave Rhee, Dylan Lewis, and Jim Sterne, though the doc may not reflect all of your wise suggestions and patience.
Comments and corrections are of course always welcomed.
Dennis R. Mortensen, Director of Data Insights at Yahoo!
Great article! Much appreciated insights.
Found via http://drett.com/ ("Monetize now?" What the hell?) Anyway, I haven't the foggiest how to use these tools, but I thought you might like to give it a check.
Debbie Pascoe suggested I give this a read (and I will thank her for doing so).
Very well stated. I believe we come at things from different paradigms, although having someone with your background stating what you have gives me hope.
This is a staggeringly good post, if you want to call it that. More like a book, as I got as much from it as from Eisenberg's Call to Action book. I think I need to go read it again, even. Brilliant.
A friend is in charge of external web properties for a large company. And he's always saying that the current crop of WA tools are ripe for getting taken out by somebody new who really gets what matters to people inside of companies.
I thought he was just venting, but after reading your post, I'm starting to grok the scale of the problem. Thanks so much for taking the time to write up your thoughts!
Thank you! for this useful post, we might post you as one of our favorite resources on our site! Keep up the great work!
That's a great way of explanation. Thanks for the great post.


text:
The man who's saying 'cheers' to Adnams after 25 years - and still not ready to call time
PUBLISHED: 06:00 25 May 2019
Meet the Boss: Andy Wood, CEO of Adnams. Pic: Archant.
It's a brand which has come a long way since being famous for its frothy pints downed by men in tweed jackets and bowler hats. Caroline Culot spoke to the man who's helped spearhead the evolution of Adnams over the past 25 years
Andy Wood, CEO of Adnams. Picture: Ella Wilkinson, Archant.
"I thought I would be here five years or so and move on but this place gets in your blood."
Andy Wood has worked his way up the ranks at Adnams from joining a quarter of a century ago after leaving his job at Norwich Union. He never dreamed he'd end up as the brewery boss.
He has succeeded because he recognised Adnams needed to change. A much-loved local brewery fondly remembered for delivering its beer on horse-drawn carts and appealing to a loyal customer base, it was missing out on a huge market - women and the young.
A man enjoying an Adnams pint on a delivery. Pic: Archant.
MORE: One of the oldest houses in East Anglia goes up for sale for £7.75 million
Now, Adnams is known for its gins, vodkas and low-alcohol beer, favoured by millennials of both sexes while still delivering the much-loved traditional pint.
And the transformation has happened while navigating the brand to compete with giant global names with huge financial clout as well as the growing number of micro-brewers with a strong local following.
Andy Wood, CEO of Adnams. Picture: Ella Wilkinson, Archant
Andy, who likes to wear an expensive suit to work with a white shirt but no tie, said: "The little guys can out-localise us and the big guys can out-market us, so we have got to have a really clear story, a really clear brand proposition.
"A decade ago we did some market research which told us the Adnams brand was very masculine so we have successfully reached out to those we weren't serving without disenfranchising our core customers. The female customer is as important to Adnams as the male. If you are growing a modern brand in this world, you have got to appeal widely."
But how? Adnams is tapping into a new market with its Copper House pink gins and low alcohol Ghost Ship '0.5' which is produced in the same process as its stronger big brother but with the alcohol stripped out at the end.
"Millennials are not choosing to drink in quite the numbers that I did at that age and people are choosing to moderate their consumption. Going forward, you are going to see more different flavoured gins and beers of the 0.5 variety but also continued product development of things we are good at be it cask beers, keg beers, craft beers."
Adnams' Copper House distillery looking out towards Southwold lighthouse. Pic: Ella Wilkinson, Archant.
The proof is in the figures - in the past decade, revenue has increased from £47.1m in 2008 to £78.9m in 2018 and in that same period, retail sales have doubled, take home sales quadrupled and export's grown by 83%.
Meanwhile, Adnams has continued to invest more than £20m in the business over the past decade and the community too - most recently £4.5m in the town's Swan Hotel.
It's a remarkable success story and Adnams now produces a vodka recently voted the 'best in the world' as well as opening the UK's first distillery on the same site as its brewery with its tour just voted as one of the country's top attractions by the Lonely Planet guide.
It uses locally grown rye and barley, 100% renewable electricity, reusable equipment saving water and electricity and its distribution centre in Reydon was the first in the UK to be built out of sustainable materials.
Adnams in Southwold. Pic: Ella Wilkinson, Archant.
But what drives Andy is his passion for the area. Hailing from London, his family moved to Norfolk when he was a young teen so his dad could work at Norwich Union while his mum worked as a nurse.
"I had several fairly humble roles at Norwich Union but somebody saw something, had faith in me and gave me more responsibility and ultimately I did an MBA, as I moved into management roles, that gave me a hunger to have a bigger impact on business.
"To do my job now, you need a very clear view of the future, you need to understand your markets, you need to have empathy with people who work with you and be pretty single-minded."
Andy lives in Norwich but has a crash pad in Southwold and believes in promoting the region. "I think businesses such as Adnams which are integral to the business of the economy face a number of challenges - how do we put the East of England on the map? I think the stars are aligning in terms of infrastructure, Greater Anglia are bringing in a lot of new trains, it's quicker to get here, but we need to get people to turn right when they come out of Stansted Airport instead of left and going to London."
Andy Wood back in 2006. Pic: Archant.
Andy has just run the Woodbridge 10k and rides his bike in his spare time but for the most part just likes being in Southwold.
"Southwold is the most fantastic place in the summer but also in the winter when the wind, rain and sleet is howling. We are perched here on the edge of England right by the North Sea ... when you get a sea surge, a spring tide - there's never a dull moment."
Andy Wood after receiving his honorary doctorate in Business Administration from Anglia Ruskin University. Pic: Archant.
Adnams, Southwold. PICTURE: Jamie Honeywood
The Copper House, Adnams, Southwold. PICTURE: Jamie Honeywood
Carts loaded up with beer ready for delivery to six pubs around Southwold in 1970. Pic: Archant.


text:
Avni is dead : Long live Humans and nothing else
Chronicle of a death foretold
Written by Hiranmay Karlekar
Created: 16 October 2018
The UN's report on climate change makes for a chilling read. The threat of global warming is very real and requires a mass movement else it may lead to the end of life on earth
The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at Incheon, South Korea on October 7, 2018, makes chilling reading. Most of the predictions made in it — or their almost identically-articulated equivalents pronounced elsewhere — have been heard before. If these are most daunting, much more so is the new and breath-taking statement that at the current rate, the global mean temperature — which is already one degree Celsius above the pre-industrial revolution level — is likely to rise to the 1.5-degree mark sometime between 2030 and 2052.
It is important to recall here that the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed on December 12, 2015, calls for holding the increase in global average temperature to well below two degree Celsius above the pre-industrial revolution level and to try to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degree Celsius above it, stating that this would significantly reduce the risks and impact of climate change.
The world has already warmed one degree Celsius since the industrial revolution, hence it is really a question of a difference of another half-degree. The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, however, clearly indicates that warming, even if limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, would not reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. Sea levels will continue to rise beyond 2100, threatening coastal ecosystems and infrastructure. Flooding, drought and extreme weather events will wreak havoc on communities around the globe. Many species will continue to be driven toward extinction and marine ecosystems could face "irreversible loss."
A warming of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would make things much worse with global sea levels rising 10 centimetres higher, and the Arctic Ocean being free of sea ice in the summers at least once per decade instead of once per century, as is forecast under a 1.5 degrees scenario. Coral reefs, which have been devastated in recent years by mass bleaching events, could decline by between 70 and 90 per cent with 1.5 degrees of warming, and by 99 per cent at two degrees.
The IPCC's Special Report enumerates several ways of pegging down global warming at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius). These require unprecedented reduction of fossil-fuel use by half in less than 15 years and almost total elimination of their use in 30 years. This means no gas or oil heating of homes, business or industry establishments; no running of vehicles by diesel or gasoline; closing down of all coal and gas power plants; wholesale conversion of the petrochemical industry to green chemistry; and heavy industry like steel and aluminium either using carbon-free energy sources or employing technology to capture Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions and permanently storing these.
Besides, the Special Report further states, that depending on the speed of reducing the emissions, between 0.4 and 2.7 million square miles of land may have to be converted to growing bioenergy crops and up to 3.86 million square miles of forests added by 2050. Even that would not be enough, the report warns. Every pound of CO2 emitted in the last 100 years will continue to trap heat in the atmosphere for hundreds of years to come. By 2045 or 2050 there will still be excessive CO2 in the atmosphere. More forests or some form of direct capture that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere will be essential to stabilize global temperatures at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), above the pre-industrial revolution level.
Even if the proposed cuts in the use of fossil fuels were to begin immediately, it would only delay, not prevent, a 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming. Worse, as of now it would seem impossible to achieve these goals. This is clear from the fact that the current pledges to cut CO2 emissions are so inadequate that that the global warming rate is set to rise by 2100 to at least 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (three degrees Celsius), risking natural tipping points such as thawing of large areas of permafrost. President Donald Trump's withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement has made things worse. While it would become effective from 2020, steps to dismantle measures to implement the goals set up by the Paris Agreement have already been initiated.
The question is: What is to be done? As long as Donald Trump is President, one can hardly expect the US to reverse its decision to walk out of the Paris Agreement or change its attitude toward global warming. He has been publicly dismissive about climate science and had even called it a "hoax". His initial observations about the Special Report, available at the time of writing, did not reflect any inclination to take it seriously, to say nothing of accepting it. Saying that the report had been given to him, he had added, "And I want to look at who drew it. You know, which group drew it. Because I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren't so good. But I will be looking at it. Absolutely."
In many cases Governments are stymied by the opposition, sometimes violent, by sections of the public to the implementation of measures critically important for impeding global warming. For example, it is known that post-harvest burning of plant stubbles in agricultural fields in north India is a major cause of air pollution in Delhi and the surrounding areas from roughly the time around Diwali to the end of winter. Nor is it a secret that it continues because farmers would not hear of ending it and Governments are unwilling to use compulsion.
The answer clearly lies in building up pressure from below to compel Governments to take politically-difficult decisions and groups of people to abandon their opposition to measures critically important for combating global warming, which affect their individual or sectional interests. This would require a mass movement. The latter is also necessary to persuade people to give up ways of living — such as compulsive use of air conditioners — that conduce to global warming, and adopt lifestyles — shifts to vegetarian diets — that hinder it. If it was possible in the pre-Independence days to turn Khadi clothes into virtually the uniform of freedom fighters, there is no reason why we cannot persuade people to adopt an environment-friendly lifestyle by showing that the alternative is the extinction of human and other living beings, including plants, through global warming.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
Zomato replies to their delivery psychopath killing street dogs
As many of us know one of the delivery boy of Zomato killed a harmless furkid for no reason. Psychos delivering food to your homes? Is that what you want? What's next? They will enter your home and rape and murder your loved ones if they get the chance. After a lot of protests, Zomato has done the right thing and also replied to my protest.
Developer response:
Anando, this is unfortunate and not in line with our beliefs. We have already terminated the delivery partner. Also, the partner's friend delivering in his stead is in violation of our policies.
We will work harder to sensitise our delivery partners on this and build stronger audit processes to prevent this from happening again
KERALA TRAGEDY: DELUGE AND AFTER
Mumbai: Stray dog with private parts cut found in Vile Parle, hospitalised


This entry was posted in Civil Rights, Corruption, Demonstrations & Protests, Government, Homeless, Human Rights, Immigration, International Agreements, National Security vs Police State, Racism, Refugee Issues, Social Justice, Women's Issues, Workers' Issues and tagged Atrocities, Civil Rights, Corruption, Donald Trump, El Salvador, Equality, Guatemala, Honduras, Human rights, ICE, immigration, International Agreements, Jeff Sessions, Protests, Racism, Security, social justice, U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, United Nations, Women's Issues, workers' issues on June 6, 2018 by MNgranny.
More than 5,400 minors from Central America applied to get in to US as refugees. All of them are still waiting.
Written by Nadia Prupis, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-5-2015.
After an irregular entry into Mexico near Ciudad Hidalgo, to move north through the country, to the US border, many Central and South American migrants begin their journey in Arriaga, Chiapas, Mexico, the railhead of the freight train known as 'La Bestia' (The Beast), climbing atop of the rail cars, exposed to the elements and extortion by criminal gangs lying in wait along the route. Vendors sell food, water and cardboard pallets to lie on for the journey.
A year after President Barack Obama launched a program to grant asylum to Central American children fleeing violence or seeking to reunite with family members, the statistics are in: not one child has made it to the U.S. through that initiative.
New analysis by the New York Times published Thursday reveals that the Central American Minors Program, established last December, received asylum applications from more than 5,400 children in countries like El Salvador and Honduras, most of whom are seeking to escape street gangs or sexual assault—but none of them have been accepted.
In fact, only 90 children total were even interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security, and only 85 qualified for any sort of refugee status and even they remain languishing because their paperwork has not been filed.
Obama announced his plan in response to the groundswell of young refugees making the dangerous and often-deadly trek across the U.S. border in massive numbers last year. But as immigration and human rights experts noted at the time, the program's heartening promises of assisting vulnerable children did nothing to address sluggish bureaucratic roadblocks and ignored the U.S.'s own role in fueling the refugee crisis.
[A]lthough the number of unaccompanied minors dropped in August, the 4,000 slots allocated for refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean for fiscal year 2015 is grossly insufficient.
In June alone, more than 10,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the U.S. border and in the ten months since October 2013, nearly 63,000 children have been identified at the border.
With so few spots and so many refugees, the Times wrote on Thursday, it's little wonder the program has failed so completely.
State Department officials defended the delays, saying it was important to move slowly to avoid making mistakes. And principal deputy assistant secretary of state Simon Henshaw said the department was preparing to interview more than 400 children next month.
But that means little to children who are stuck in a violent limbo while their applications wait for processing.
This entry was posted in Civil Rights, Government, Homeless, Human Rights, Immigration, Income Inequality, International Agreements, Refugee Issues, Social Justice and tagged Atrocities, Civil Rights, Guatemala, Homelessness, Honduras, Human rights, immigration, Income Inequality, International Agreements, Mexico, refugees, social justice on November 11, 2015 by MNgranny.


The Hostal Barcelona has the best location that facilitates and simplifies your holidays as you find in C. Roser 40 Barcelona, has 63 rooms distributed in simple, double and triple all with bathroom, TV, heating and air conditioned, the Hostal Barcelona offers to his hostesses breakfast buffet. The Hostal Barcelona, find in the zone of the theatres to 15 minutes on foot of the Ramblas, place touristic by excellence, to his time finds very near of the Paseo Maritimo and of the commercial centre Maremagnum that has a big diversity of shops of marks recognized. Like this as also of the Port Vell. In the pass of the years the Subway of Barcelona has converted in the means of transport of better quality and accessibility, by what thinking in this, the installations of the Hostal Barcelona find to few subways of the Season Paral.lel (Line 2 and3) gone out Sant Pau Round - Font Rodona. Is by all this that invited you to happen some full holidays of comfort and history of the hand of the Hostal Barcelona.


I have developed over two hundred mortgage, real estate and debt relief sites that have high placement on Yahoo, MSN and Google. Please email bd@bryandornan.com for a list of websites that were developed and managed by Bryan Dornan.
Just wanted to say hello as im new here and i hope i can learn more about SEO on your internet advertising forum!


text:
Żegluga Polska – powstałe w 1926 polskie przedsiębiorstwo armatorskie, działające w oparciu o kapitały państwowe. Na jego czele stał Julian Rummel. W 1932 przekształcono ŻP w spółkę akcyjną, ale nadal z większościowymi udziałami państwa. Uległa likwidacji w 1951.

Historia i flota

Pierwsze statki ŻP zakupione zostały w styczniu 1927 we Francji (stąd ich popularna nazwa: francuzy). Były to SS Wilno, SS Kraków, SS Toruń, SS Poznań i SS Katowice.

Obok statków handlowych ŻP posiadała też statki wycieczkowe. Najpierw kupiono zbudowane w Gdańsku SS Gdynię i SS Gdańsk, a nieco później Jadwigę i Wandę. Przystań statków Żeglugi Polskiej w Gdańsku znajdowała się na Brabanku. Jej największymi konkurentami było istniejące od 1880 Towarzystwo Żeglugowe Weichsel z flagowym bocznokołowcem Paul Benecke, utrzymujące połączenia z Długiego Pobrzeża m.in. do Mikoszewa i Świbna, oraz założone w 1924 przez braci Leszczyńskich Towarzystwo Żeglugowe Gryf z bocznokołowcem Monika.

Rozwijający się handel z krajami Bliskiego Wschodu spowodował, że w 1935 ŻP uruchomiła linię lewantyńską. Utworzono ją wspólnie ze szwedzkim armatorem Svenska Orient Linien, od którego wydzierżawiono trzy drobnicowce skierowane na Morze Śródziemne - SS Sarmacja, SS Lewant i SS Lechistan. SS Sarmacja po wygaśnięciu dzierżawy wróciła pod szwedzką banderę, a dwa pozostałe statki odkupiono i intensywnie wykorzystywano do 1939.

Do II wojny światowej flota ŻP urosła do dwudziestu statków pełnomorskich, które – obok żeglugi przybrzeżnej i trampingu – obsługiwały 10 regularnych linii na wodach okołoeuropejskich. Jednocześnie, w 1932, utworzony został wydział holowniczo-ratowniczy ŻP, który posiadał jednostki obsługi technicznej i holowniki.

Po wybuchu II wojny światowej ŻP, podobnie jak inne przedsiębiorstwo armatorskie Polbryt, znalazły się pod zarządem Polish Steamship Agency, a od 1944 GAL-u.

Po wojnie w miejsce ŻP powstało 2 stycznia 1951 przedsiębiorstwo państwowe Polska Żegluga Morska z siedzibą w Szczecinie.

Siedziba
Pierwsza siedziba ŻP mieściła się przy ul. 10 Lutego 4 (1926-1929), następnie w wybudowanym przez spółkę własnym budynku z 1929 w Gdyni przy al. Waszyngtona 44 (1929-1939). W okresie II wojny światowej zarząd spółki znajdował się w Londynie (1939-1946), początkowo pod zarządem Polskiej Agencji Statków Parowych (Polish Steamship Agency) (1939-1944), następnie GAL'u (1944-1946). Decyzją Prezydium Komitetu Ekonomicznego przy Radzie Ministrów z 9 lipca 1946 centralę ŻP przeniesiono do Gdyni lokując ją w budynku Polskiej Agencji Morskiej przy ul. Świętojańskiej 10 (1946), w b. budynku Bergtransu z 1937 przy ul. Portowej 13-15 (1946-1951).

Zobacz też
 Polska Marynarka Handlowa

Przypisy

Bibliografia

Byłe przedsiębiorstwa w Polsce
Gdyńscy armatorzy
Przedsiębiorstwa założone w Polsce w 1926
Przedsiębiorstwa związane z żeglugą
Spółki akcyjne

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Diane Morin's career as an attorney includes experience as a prosecutor and defense attorney. Through more than 30 years of experience, she has gained valuable insight into how judges and opposing counsel work and think. She also has extensive experience as a litigator.
When Morin started the Law Offices of Diane J.N. Morin in Palo Alto, she wanted to take a different approach to family law. Instead of focusing on a litigious battle, she wanted to find solutions for her clients that actually fit their needs.
Given this philosophy, Morin and her staff are dedicated to finding mutually agreeable solutions for divorcing California couples whenever possible. By approaching litigation as a last resort, she can save you time and money, while finding a solution that best fits your needs.
During her lengthy career, Diane Morin has won multiple awards for her work and achieved several legal certifications.
Contact us today online or call 650-473-0822 to find out how we can help you with your family law needs.


Healthy mouth and teeth are an important part of a child's wellness. Adding a dental professional as a resource to your support system can provide ongoing peace of mind for your entire family.
Anesthesia or Sedation for Your Child's Dental Work?


RICHMOND, Va. – It's every baseball players dream to get the chance to play for a Major League Baseball team. On Wednesday afternoon, VCU junior pitcher Kyle Haynes moved one step closer to reaching that dream.
The Stafford, Va., native was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 20th round on the final day of the 2012 MLB First-Year Player Draft. Haynes is the first player in VCU program history to ever be selected by the Pirates.
Haynes has been a mainstay in the Rams rotation since arriving on campus in the fall of 2009, making at least 10 starts in all three seasons.
In 2012, Haynes started off the year as the team's Friday night starter, a role coveted by college pitchers across the country. Down the stretch, the right-handed pitcher did whatever was asked of the coaching staff to help his team earn a berth in the Colonial Athletic Association tournament. Haynes served as the Sunday starter over the last four weeks of CAA play, helping guide the Rams to four-straight series victories and ultimately secure a spot in tournament play.
The junior's best performance of the season came in his last outing for the Rams in 2012, throwing 8 2/3rds innings in an elimination game against Towson in the CAA Tournament.
He finished the season with a 4.45 ERA, 4-4 record while throwing a team-high 93.0 innings. Haynes also led the team in strikeouts, with 73, and limited the opposition to a .280 average against.
Haynes is the second VCU hurler to be picked in the draft this week, joining classmate Blake Hauser, who was selected by the Seattle Mariners in the 13th round on Tuesday.


text:
Do you have any internships?
Unfortunately we do not have any internship vacancies at the moment. Please keep an eye on the website for any future updates.
What are your benefits?
Esri UK offers a wide range of benefits which you can find here. Most importantly though, we pride ourselves on recruiting people who are not only excellent at what they do, but who also make great colleagues for you to work with.
Do I need the right to work in the UK or Ireland
Yes. All of the roles are based in the UK or Ireland either at an office or at a home.
You need to already have a valid work permit or VISA for the UK or Ireland before applying for a role. We are unable to sponsor an applicant's right to work in the UK or Ireland.
Do Esri UK & Ireland accept speculative CVs?
Yes. We're always looking to identify high calibre candidates. If you don't see a job advertised at present, but have a specific interest or role in mind, please get in touch. We can't respond to all enquiries, but we will endeavour to get in touch if a suitable role becomes available in the future.
Information on local offices
Click on the below link to find out some information about the areas where our offices are located.


text:
Election Reflection
So, here is my letter to the editor of Newsweek regarding their election coverage, just in case it doesn't get published.
"I am a boomer and a conservative. However, when I pulled the lever for some Demorcrats and Independents in this past election, I certainly was not signalling my desire to return to the policies of Bush '41 and his "Rescue Squad". It is a mistake to read the results as either a rejection of conservative values (look at the state initiatives and the Democrats that were elected) or a desire to return to the old ideas of Bush '41 or Newt.
Both parties need to come up with a new contract with America- one that sets forth what our role will be in the future. One that recognizes that today's America, and today's World, is very different than even a decade ago. One that emphasizes the core values of freedom, liberty, enterprise and innovation that unite us, rather than the issues that divide us. One that emphasizes leading the world in solving problems, rather than ignoring them or creating new ones. One that walks the talk, instead of saying one thing and doing another. One that plays well with others.
Party leaders would do well to to bring younger people and newer ideas into the conversation, rather than rushing back to the false comfort of the "old hands" you profile in this article. Certainly there is a role for history and wisdom in troubled times, but there is also a need for vision and energy. Leaders look forward... not backward."
So, is it strange that a conservative is also concerned about the environment? That a conservative is also a conservationist? That someone who is concerned about industrial waste is also concerned about government waste? Or the waste of human potential due to poverty, ignorance and disease? (Clue- these are rhetorical questions).
Fundamentally, politics is not about the extremes. Too much time is spent arguing over positions, rather than making progress. (See "Getting to Yes" for more on this). To me, it basically comes down to the fact that liberals have a bit more faith in government, and bit less faith in markets. True conservatives are the opposite. Our system, ideally, allows for the battle of ideas, and the ebb and flow of debate. The best we can hope for is political leaders that do their best to do what they say they will do. Rarely do we see this any more. Instead, we see "conservatives" using government to advance social and international agendas from which our constitution is set up to protect us. And "liberals" pushing tired agendas of large government programs that will collapse from their own weight in time.
The recent Business Week cover story is much closer to getting it right. Government is less relevant by the day. Global economic forces are impacting monetary policy, labor markets, education and innovation. Power is moving, sometimes slowly, sometimes haltingly, but inexorably, to the individual. Richard Florida has said: "The real economic driver of this age is human creativity." Some may wait for government to solve the world's problems. Not me. Those that will harness human creativity and lead our society forward are less likely to be found in government, than in the ranks of activists and entrepreneurs.
My next post will return to BOPreneurs. Thank you for your indulgence of a somewhat tangential post.
Advice to Entrepreneurs about the Sustainability "...
Google.org- where are you?


Riccardo Ricci Curbastro carries on his family's tradition of making Franciacorta in a bracingly dry style that is sure to pique your palate. The farm has 25 hectares under vine near the village of Capriolo. All three wines see some time in barrique during their first fermentation and spend up to 48 months on the lees during the second.


There's nothing better than advertising and branding for a good cause! This work by BBDO Dublin was made for the National Children's Hospital in Ireland with a very specific cause – to help scared kids feel better about being X-rayed. To do so, they used X-rays of the main characters from Toy Story and put up these posters around the hospital, reminding children that it would be okay.
This entry was posted in Art Direction and tagged Art Direction, BBDO Dublin, Goodvertising, posters, print on April 13, 2018 by stellenboschacademy.
We love seeing big brands do good and this campaign by Lacoste in collaboration with Save Our Species is just spot on.
In order to raise both awareness and funds for Save Our Species, Lacoste did the unthinkable – they removed their crocodile from their iconic golf shirts and replaced it with 10 threatened species from around the world.
And the really smart part? Each run of shirts with that specific animal on it, is the exact same amount of those animals left alive in the wild.
This entry was posted in Art Direction, Inspiration and tagged Goodvertising, Lacoste, Save Our Species on March 5, 2018 by stellenboschacademy.
It's always so exciting to see new ways that brands and NGOs are encouraging people to do the right thing and be more responsible about social causes and charities. This initiative and accompanying site from Longfonds, a Dutch charity, show us how fun doing the right thing can be if we apply creativity.
Here, people are encouraged to hold their breath and donate money based on how long they could hold their breath for. The money then goes to a lung charity to help those in need.
Sadly we can't take part here in SA, but we can look at the videos of people trying their hardest to hold their breath, which to be honest is funnier than you would think!
This entry was posted in Multimedia and tagged Goodvertising, Longfonds, Multimedia on May 2, 2016 by stellenboschacademy.
Such incredible photo manipulation here by Grabarz und Partner, an agency based in Hamburg, Germany. This work is for Robin Wood, a German environmental advocacy group that specialises in raising awareness about the loss of environment.
Built from the line: Destroying nature is destroying life, these executions blend well-known animals facing environmental stress with imagery of the devastation their habitats are facing.
Powerful and moving – these really make you think!
This entry was posted in Art Direction and tagged Goodvertising, print, Robin Wood on April 1, 2016 by stellenboschacademy.
We love seeing how design can do good and this project which we set as a challenge to our students shows just how much we can do as the design industry for the good of our planet.
The Brief: Our students were required to collaborate with each other in groups and to create an effective visual communication campaign for our clients.
This project was developed from Peter Shrimpton's Heart Capital-campaign (that aims to develop local businesses in and around Kayamandi in Stellenbosch). The purpose of the project is to convince business leaders in Technopark to invest in planting Spekboom trees in the area to reduce their carbon footprint. Why? A Spekboom absorbs ten times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than any other tree and at the same time is an indigenous plant.
The goal of this project is to plant 10 000 trees by the end of the year to reduce the carbon footprint of the whole business park. Money for the trees will also go back to the people of Kayamandi by giving them business opportunities as "Spekboom-farmers".
Our winning team produce an amazing corporate identity and communications campaign to encourage local businesses in Techno Park to get involved in the project and we are incredibly proud. The work looks amazing.
This entry was posted in Academy Work and tagged Academy Work, Goodvertising, Stellenbosch Academy, Student Work on July 24, 2015 by stellenboschacademy.
This initiative by ISOBAR Poland (they have local offices too, so do check them out here) is really one of the most innovative uses of design to tangibly help people's lives we have seen.
The idea is so simple and yet so powerful: Helping people with crude, stigmatising tattoos that they got in juvenile detention centres or prisons to get new, better-designed (and much higher quality) tattoos to cover them up, so they can be better accepted into society. We all know that prison tattoos can mark people for life and seeing an idea like this is really heart-warming. What a great, great idea!
To learn more about the initiative, check out this link right over here.
This entry was posted in Inspiration and tagged Doing Good, Goodvertising, Inspiration, tattoos on February 13, 2015 by stellenboschacademy.
Giving a small Indie band a big break is not something you expect a car company to do, but this year – Honda threw us all for a loop!
After seeing how the band Monsters Calling Home recorded an entire music video in their Honda van, Honda decided to surprise them with an opportunity they never would have expected.
This is the kind of advertising we like – brands spending their money on doing good for their consumers, giving back and rewarding them for being loyal. We don't want to spoil the ending for you, so check out the music video below!
This entry was posted in Inspiration and tagged Goodvertising, Honda, Music Video on November 25, 2013 by stellenboschacademy.