Two and half million people in India are HIV positive. But it is a subject people do not like to talk about.
The stigma associated with the illness means there is a lack of understanding about the virus. So India’s health authorities are using catchy commercials to spread a “safe-sex” message.
Al Jazeera’s Hamish Macdonald reports from New Delhi.
Los héroes en Colombia sí existen, or Heros in Colombia Do Exist, is a series of adverts on behalf of the Colombian Armed Forces that began airing on Colombian television in July 2007. The series continues to have a tremendous impact. One of the successes of the Uribe Adminstration has been the professionalization of the Colombian military. Under Uribe, the Colombian military is better trained and equipped. It has achieved a near total victory over the FARC and yet it is unlikely that the Colombian Armed Forces, as powerful as they are now, can achieve a final decisive blow.
The war against the FARC must be a cojoined one on poverty and social inequality. Only then can we eradicate the root causes of our interminable war.
New research shows that by the year 2010 and beyond, around one million deaths per year in India will be attributable to smoking, and the majority of these will occur in middle-aged adults. This will represent 10% of all deaths in the country–one in five deaths in men and one in 20 in women according to Dr Prabhat Jha who conducted a study on the impact of cigarette smoking on Indian health. “We estimate smoking will cause about 930 000 deaths in India in 2010, with one in five deaths in men caused by smoking and one in 20 deaths in women caused by smoking in the 30-to-69-years age group,” Dr. Jha warns. “During the 2010s, the annual number of deaths from smoking in India will be about one million, which is similar to the annual number in China.”
In India, tobacco is commonly consumed in the form of bidis, which are smaller than cigarettes and typically contain only about a quarter as much tobacco, wrapped in the leaf of another plant and sold in small packages. The smoking of bidis is concentrated in rural areas, among the poor. In urban areas, richer Indians tend to smoke cigarettes.
In October of 2008, the Indian Health Ministry banned tobacco consumption in all government, private buildings or public spaces. Public spaces include small cafes, restaurants, schools, pubs or discotheques, stadia, airports, hospitals and bus stands.
A new ad touting the advantages of windpower from the Pickens Plan. The ad is a 60 second spot.
Modeled on the ‘No God’ ad campaign in Britain, the Toronto-based Freethought Association of Canada has created its own ‘No God’ ad campaign. The ads have now been approved by the Toronto Transit Commission to appear on buses and inside subway cars.
Launched in a response to religious advertising on buses in the United Kingdom, the Atheist Bus Campaign began when comedy writer Ariane Sherine saw an ad on a London bus featuring the Bible quote, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find Faith on this Earth?” [sic]. A website URL ran underneath the quote, and when Ms. Sherine visited the site she learned that, as a non-believer, she would be “condemned to everlasting separation from God and then spend all eternity in torment in hell”. Heaven forbid.
Unsettled that religious groups were allowed to advertise websites which warned that the non-religious would face torture at the end of their lives, Ms. Sherine pitched and began to write a comment piece for The Guardian’s Cif (Comment is free) website, called Atheists – Gimme Five back in June of 2008. As part of her research for the piece, she called the Advertising Standards Authority, but was told that the website advertised wasn’t part of their remit. At the end of her article, keen to suggest a solution, she proposed:
[if all atheists reading this] contribute £5, it’s possible that we can fund a much-needed atheist London bus ad with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and [enjoy] your life.”
To Sherine’s surprise and excitement, the majority of reader comments under the article were very positive and enthusiastic about the idea, with dozens of commenters offering to contribute to the campaign.
Political blogger Jon Worth read the piece, thought the proposal was a smart and sweet idea, and emailed Sherine asking if he could set up a Pledgebank page, where readers could pledge to donate to the campaign. The Pledgebank link was placed in the comments of the original article, and although the piece was archived after three days, dozens of blogs picked up on the idea and it spread across the internet.
Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and last Wednesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.
“There’s probably no God,” the advertisements say. “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
More from the New York Times.
The question is name the top three advertisers of 2008. From CNN:
Presidential candidates are sold in much the same way a new product is: with an expensive, flashy, and ubiquitous television campaign.
And according to advertising figures provided by Campaign Media Analysis Group, CNN’s consultant on ad spending, Barack Obama’s campaign has spent more money selling its candidate on television than most major brand name companies do selling their products.
The Illinois senator’s campaign is projected to have spent $250 million on ads in the last four months — a number that is equivalent to $750 million in a full year. Only AT&T, with a yearly advertising budget of about $1.3 billion, and Verizon, which shells out $950 million a year on ads, spends more than the Democratic presidential nominee.
But most major companies spend far less than Obama, including McDonald’s ($588 million), Sprint PCS ($482 million), T-Mobile ($404 million), Target ($388 million), and Wal-Mart ($335 million).
John McCain is projected to have spent about $110 million since the general election began.
“This advertising spending by Obama is big, and not just in terms of presidential politics but in terms of all commercial advertising – he has spent enough to be a mega-brand,” CMAG’s Evan Tracey said.
Obama’s massive advertising budget is also a stark reminder of just how much it costs to finance a modern presidential campaign — and, predicts Tracey, it could just end the era of public financing.
“If Obama wins it is clear that the days of being on public financing are over and anyone thinking of running for president in four years will have to ask themselves one question before jumping in – Can I raise $600 million?” said Tracey.
The system is broken.
$30 Million versus $8 Million
I was wrong. Mea culpa. In terms of ad buys, I had estimated that the Obama campaign would outspend the McCain campaign on the order of 3:1 based on various reports I had seen and noted in my various daily Campaign Readers. I was simply mistaken because according to the New York Times, the differential is more like 4:1. That’s simply stunning. Even more remarkable, the gap is growing. Last Sunday over the nation’s airwaves, the Obama campaign outspent the McCain campaign 6.5:1. Historically speaking, only the McKinley campaign of 1896 has had a wider differential.
Not only is the amount stunning but the breadth of markets is something quite unprecendented. In the era of public financing of Presidential campaigns, campaigns have had to make tough choices as to where to allocate scarce resources as the race progresses. States that are deemed out of reach are often conceded and resouces are concentrated in order to maximize Electoral College votes sometimes in unexpected places. One of the keys to the Bush win in 2000 was running attack ads on Gore’s environmental proposals and his carbon tax ideas in West Virginia. From an August 2000 CNN report:
GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush unveiled a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that will air in 21 battleground states representing 227 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
The ads, highlighting Bush’s education proposals, exceed Bush’s previous biggest sweep by four states, aides said. They take on Gore in some Democratic strongholds like West Virginia, where the Bush campaign thinks the vice president is vulnerable.
Had Gore won West Virginia, Florida would have been irrelevant. Bush’s decision to invest in West Virginia proved the difference. Now the Obama campaign isn’t just spending heavily in the current crop of battleground states (Maine, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado and Nevada), they are expanding their ad buys into Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, North Dakota, Montana and Arkansas. They are also continuing to spend in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa and New Mexico even though Obama enjoys double digit leads in all these states.
The other aspect of the Obama ad campaign that is noteworthy is how focused it has been over the past six weeks. It’s jobs, it’s the economy, it’s health care and it’s McCain equals more of the same. Below are four Obama campaign ads from the last month and a half.
Below the fold more from the New York Times: (more…)
Living in San Francisco as I do, one runs into GAP employees all the time. I even had a roommate who worked at GAP long ago. In 2006, I got into an argument at a friend’s Christmas party with another guest who worked in the GAP’s global marketing department. It began innocently enough, he telling me he worked at GAP, me telling him that I was a former Wall Street retail anaylst. I tend to treat anyone I meet a source of information and so I did press him on more on GAP’s struggles. He was obiliging enough without giving away the store either but at one point and I don’t remember what exactly he said that led me to interject that GAP, Banana Republic and Old Navy are simply lost it if that’s the case. I went on a mini-tirade: you’re overstored, your same-store-sales are in rapid fire decline at Old Navy, tepid at best at GAP and probably slightly positive at Banana but you’ve got H&M taking women’s clothing away from you and if you don’t watch out Zara will take you both down. Your merchandising is just so frankly boring and bland that it’s blah. At that point it became a tit for tat. We’re doing this and this and I would counter H&M has done that already and Zara has opened a store a day this and their model works better because they are always testing. And then the kicker which caused him to just smile and walk away. I said your marketing obviously sucks (hey I was at a party not on the job and had been drinking) because Zara does 0 advertising and their same store sales are growing and yours are in negative territory. You guys have lost it.
Today I am happy to report that indeed Zara, a Spanish chain based out La Coruña in northwestern Spain, has overtaken San Francisco-based GAP as the world’s largest clothier. Zara works because they have a tight relationship with suppliers and they test their lines throughout the world. Logistics and communication throughout the chain are the keys to their success. If something is hot and it starts to sell, they then order up. GAP makes an executive decision based on marketing research on fashion trends and then orders massively from its suppliers. If it doesn’t sell, GAP is stuck with massive inventory write-downs. There was a time in the early 1990s when GAP could do no wrong but beginning in 1997-1998 the chain just lost its way.
Other parts of the Zara formula is that their stores are the centre of their advertising. Sharp crisp displays and mid-tier price points. Zara also only does larger downtown stores and no suburban strip malls, that came to be the undoing of the GAP. Zara’s lines are more limited. In truth, Zara is the Banana Republic-killer. That’s what Zara has killed. H&M, the Swedish clothier, in turn has eaten into Old Navy and the mainstream GAP sales.
From the UK Guardian:
Spanish fashion chain Zara has expanded so rapidly in recent months that it has overtaken its main US rival Gap to become the world’s largest clothing retailer.
Beloved by proponents of fast-fashion, Zara has spread its reach across the globe at a time when Gap has suffered from plummeting consumer spending in the US.
Inditex, Zara’s parent company, recorded a 9% increase in sales to €2.218bn (£1.7bn) in the first quarter of its financial year. It also benefited from the strength of the euro to edge slightly ahead of Gap which saw its revenues fall by 10% and recorded sales of €2.169bn in the same period.
The difference may be tiny, but Inditex claims it is significant: for the first time the Spanish group has inched past its American rival.
The group, whose high street store Zara has led the charge, hopes to consolidate its lead over rivals later in the year as it continues to expand overseas in spite of the economic downturn.
It is three years since Inditex overtook H&M, to become the biggest clothing retailer in Europe. But the rapid growth is nothing new to a company which first started in 1963 in the bedroom of chairman Amancio Ortega’s home in Galicia, northwest Spain, making bathrobes.
The first Zara store was opened in 1975, in La Coruña in Galicia. The 1980s saw rapid expansion across Spain, followed by the opening in 1988 of the first Zara store outside Spain, in Porto, Portugal.