German Exports at highest level ever

German exports surged in March to their highest level since records began, as the growing global economy lifted demand for its products and services.The country's exports for the month totalled 98.3bn euros ($142bn; £87bn), 7.3% higher than February.
Its imports also reached an all-time high, up 3.1% to 79.4bn euros. Both imports and exports are the most since data started to be collected in 1950.

Germany is the world's second-largest exporter.
Only China exports more than the European nation, and the latest monthly figure for German exports was much higher than market expectations.

"Germany is on the verge of a 'golden decade'," said Christian Schulz of Berenberg Bank.
Fellow analyst, Carsten Brzeski at ING, said the German economy was now "cruising along smoothly".
The latest German export figures provide yet more evidence of a "two speed" eurozone, with the German and French economies continuing to grow strongly, while others, such as Greece and Portugal are struggling against a backdrop of high national debt levels.

Labour Relations Terms explained

So just what is collective bargaining?


The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines it as the:
Method whereby representatives of employees (unions) and employers negotiate the conditions of employment, normally resulting in a written contract setting forth the wages, hours, and other conditions to be observed for a stipulated period (e.g., 3 years). The term also applies to union-management dealings during the term of the agreement.

Collective bargaining agreements are the contracts between a union and an employer. Employees have much more power when it comes to negotiating their employment if they can do so together. And unions are where this togetherness takes place.

"Collective bargaining creates a certain level of due process and equal protection for employees," said Ellen Dannin, a professor at Penn State's Dickinson School of Law and a former trial attorney with the National Labor Relations Board.

The fanfare surrounding collective bargaining has its roots in the National Labor Relations Act, which was passed in 1935 after Congress looked at the Great Depression and decided that the "inequality of bargaining power" between nonorganized employees and their employers was keeping wages down and generally depressing business. (Read more about the National Labor Relations Act here.)

Today, destroying collective bargaining rights is a means of taking power from unions.

Walker has said his bill is necessary to balance Wisconsin's budget by giving local governments the ability to single-handedly make changes to public-sector pay and benefits. Opponents say it's a political attack on Democrats, who are generally supported by unions.

"[The bill] has greatly weakened a major financial supporter of the Democratic Party," said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a professor at Cornell University's Industrial and Labor Relations School. "This is clearly just a political action."

Evidence pointing to this is the fact that the bill does not apply to police and firefighters, who tend to support Republicans.

Binding Arbitration

A key ingredient in union-employer relationships is binding arbitration. When the two sides cannot agree on certain aspects of a discussion, they will often be required to present their cases to an arbitrator (or panel of arbitrators), who then decides on a course of action.

"A common understanding by the parties in all cases, however, is that they will be

bound by the opinion of the decision maker rather than simply be obligated to

'consider' an opinion or recommendation," according to the Office of Personnel Management.


Without this mechanism in place, the employer in the situation may only be held accountable to itself and could decide unilaterally to approve its own offer.

In Ohio, a bill that would eliminate binding arbitration for police and firefighters is being considered in the state House of Representatives after it was passed in the Senate. Police and firefighters are already banned from striking there, leaving them with little bargaining power.

However, "there is no evidence that arbitration has led to higher wages than would otherwise be the case," Ehrenberg said.

'Last in, First Out'

"LIFO," as it's known by its acronym, is the policy of firing the most recently hired first, also known as seniority. Most union contracts require seniority rules for layoffs. LIFO generally refers to teacher contracts.

Battles over LIFO are ongoing in several states nationwide. In New York, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pushing Gov. Andrew Cuomo for a reprieve from LIFO. And Florida, Idaho and Utah all passed bills eliminating LIFO this month.

Opponents of the policy say it gives undue priority to those who have been around longest, potentially requiring the firing of better teachers.

Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, former chancellors of the New York City and Washington, D.C., public schools systems, respectively, explained their opposition in an editorial in the New York Daily News in January:
The policy has three major negative impacts: first, it removes many high-performing tenured and non-tenured teachers from the classroom, while retaining those that are less effective but have more years in the system; second, it causes a higher number of layoffs, since junior teachers are paid the least; and finally, it disproportionately impacts the lowest performing schools, which have the largest number of new teachers.

But proponents of LIFO, including teachers unions, say seniority is necessary to encourage teachers to enter and remain in the profession.

"From an economic point of view, there is some sense to it because if you are a senior person and you have job protection, you are likely to share with your younger colleagues everything you know," Ehrenberg said. "The cost arises if the old workers are not performing at satisfactory levels relative to what we'd like them to be performing at."

But even if that does occur, there are methods for removing unsatisfactory teachers through our old friend arbitration.
"Historically, people have gone into teaching because, though pay was lower, there was job stability," Ehrenberg explained. "And now we're talking about -- at least in some states -- taking it all away."

Merit-Based Pay

Several proponents of education reform are big fans of merit pay, by which an employer determines an employee's salary based on performance, not seniority, as is the case with many union contracts requiring step increases based on time in the job.
"In public education, the concern arises because our students just aren't doing as well as they used to do and we're just desperately trying to find a way to improve our system," Ehrenberg said. One of those ways is to encourage high performance by linking it to better pay.

But there are downsides to a seemingly simple idea. Employers can use merit pay to squeeze out individuals who would otherwise be hard to fire by reducing their salaries, for instance. And for teachers, a switch to merit pay would destroy yet another incentive to sticking around in a low-paying, difficult profession if sticking around longer didn't necessarily ensure a higher paycheck each year.

Value-Added Assessment

Another issue with merit pay is the question of how to assess an employee in the first place. How can you be sure than an objective evaluation is "stable"? Ehrenberg asks. Similarly, how can you be sure a subjective evaluation isn't biased?

And if your employee is a teacher, the question is even harder to answer.


Sponsored LinksIn the education debate, a new process is being touted as a method of evaluating teachers. Value-added assessments look at the progress of each individual student over time to determine how much he or she has learned in one year.

Each student takes a standardized test at the end of the year and the scores are compared to the year before. The progress the student has or has not made can then be attributed to the teacher.

The trouble with this model, say opponents, is that it encourages teachers to teach to tests and ignores mitigating factors that are external to the teacher's control -- factors such as economic status, familial involvement and just plan bad luck.

Preventing another world food crisis

The author of the following piece published in China Daily is director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute based in Washington DC. It is definately worth reading.

Preventing another food crisis


Food prices are soaring to new highs only three years after the 2007-08 food crisis. The international prices of wheat, for example, increased by 85 percent between June 2010 and January 2011. Domestic food prices are also rising in many countries. In China, food inflation rose 10 percent between December 2009 and December 2010, driven mainly by higher prices for meat, dairy, vegetables and fruits.

Global food prices are being pushed up by some of the same factors that lead to the food crisis of 2007-08 - expanding biofuel production, rising oil prices, US dollar depreciation, export restrictions, and panic purchases. However, today's world food situation is quite different in some important ways. Overall food production and grain stocks in developing countries are still plentiful, and the international price of rice, the main staple in Asia, has not increased that much compared to three years ago.

There are concerns about new production shocks due to extreme weather events, such as the recent drought in Northern China. But, while the drought could lead to production shortfalls of wheat, the major winter crop in the region, it is not likely to push prices higher. China has sufficient wheat stocks and the government has taken some important steps to alleviate the impact of the drought and to secure wheat supplies.

However, these actions should be supported by further measures to prevent price hikes. Additional grain stocks, for example, should be released and targeted to the poor.

High and volatile food prices are particularly harmful for the poor, who spend a large proportion of their income on food and have a limited capacity to adjust to sudden price shocks. Evidence has shown that large increases in food prices considerably reduce both food consumption and food security. The food security of poor people and vulnerable groups, particularly women and children, is again at risk due to the steep food price increases. For poor agricultural producers, high food prices are not necessarily harmful if they are net sellers of food, but increased price volatility can significantly undermine their income and thus food security.

When global leaders convene for the G20 meeting, discussions should focus on adopting a comprehensive approach to prevent the re-occurrence of another food crisis.

First, social safety nets should be established to protect the most vulnerable groups, including women and young children. Safety nets should be combined with intervention that increases production capacity and improves the nutrition and health of vulnerable groups. Indeed, combined social protection and agricultural support can have a greater impact on food security than any intervention implemented separately. To effectively tackle undernourishment, direct nutritional intervention targeted at adolescent girls and the 1,000 days from conception to a child's second birthday should be scaled up.

Second, transparent, fair, and open global trade should be promoted to enhance the efficiency of the global agricultural markets. National governments should be encouraged to eliminate existing export restrictions and refrain from imposing new ones. Although export bans may help to secure domestic food supplies, they tend to exacerbate global price hikes, particularly in food-importing countries. Similarly, the import tariffs and non-tariff barriers of large importing countries should also be reduced. A quick and favorable completion of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round is essential.

Third, a global, emergency grain reserve should be established to address food price volatility. Owned and managed by an institution like the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), such a reserve should be established through donations of grain stocks from large food producers such as the United States, China, and India. This reserve should be strategically positioned in these food producing countries and, more importantly, in food importing poor countries, such as Bangladesh and the countries in the Horn of Africa, for easy and fast access in times of crises. Regional shared reserves for specific commodities, such as the ASEAN+3 emergency rice reserve currently under discussion, are also critical for responding to adverse weather.

Fourth, policies and investments to promote agricultural growth, in particular smallholder productivity, in the face of climate change should be put in place. To help smallholder farmers increase their productivity and income, investments should be scaled up to improve their access to inputs such as seeds and fertilizer, as well as financial and extension services and weather-based crop insurance. New agricultural technologies suitable for smallholders should also be strongly promoted and rural infrastructure should be strengthened to increase access to markets. Also important are investments in climate change adaptation and mitigation measures that use the full potential of agriculture.

Fifth, an international working group should be created to regularly monitor the world food situation in a coordinated, transparent and timely fashion in order to prevent excessive price volatility. This working group should be made up of key institutions, such as the International Food Policy Research Institute, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Bank, the WFP, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the WTO. The working group should pay close attention to food production, consumption, trade, stocks, prices, policies, and speculation. It could also provide guidance on the optimal level of grain reserves to be held for food security emergencies, when and how to release them, and at what prices.

To enhance sustainable food security, these actions need to be taken now. Both developed and developing countries have crucial roles to play.

.

Japan vis a vis China

The Asia-Pacific countries, which together account for more than half the world's total economic output, will explore ways of reaching agreement on a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, as well as closer economic integration across the hugely diverse region.


This agenda aims to build a sense of inter-dependence and shared interests through the common benefits of open trade, investment and what is called "human security". But as this week's G20 summit in Seoul showed, core issues like adjusting international currency values and dropping protective trade barriers multilaterally, are fraught with difficulties. Increasingly, economic and security problems have become intertwined and barely distinguishable from each other - especially in Asia where the interests of the US, China, Russia and Japan converge.

Japan has much to lose if a peaceful new order cannot be established in its own neighbourhood. So does it have the ingenuity and strength to help bring it about?
'Paralysed'

Many experts in East Asian affairs say that the Japanese have only grown more inward-looking as the challenges have multiplied. A territorial row with China has raised nationalist tensions on both sides Foremost among those are the inexorable rise of China, North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons, and Japan's own clumsy handling of relations with its main ally, the United States. Andrew Oros, an American political scientist and author on Japanese security issues, says the Japanese now appear overwhelmingly pessimistic about the future.

Speaking at a conference last week, Dr Oros said that recent events had shown Japan's political leaders were "more or less paralysed" in the face of hard strategic choices. The current Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government led by Naoto Kan has failed to resolve a long-running dispute over the planned relocation of a large US Marine base to a less crowded part of Okinawa, in the face of strong hostility from the local population to any American military presence.  Mr Kan's predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama, resigned in June amid confusion over the base issue, as well as charges that he was edging Japan's strategic stance away from the US and a bit closer to China.

Japan's economy has experienced several years of lean growth Japan's perceived diplomatic weakness was exploited by Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev in early November when he made the first ever visit by a Russian leader to the Kuril islands, which the Japanese call their "Northern Territories". The trip underlined Russia's intention to ignore Japan's claim to recover the islands which the Red Army seized in the closing days of World War II.  At home, a rapid series of government collapses mean that Mr Kan is Japan's fifth prime minister in only four years. And a recent clash with China over the Japanese-held Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, which China also claims and calls Diaoyu, showed how far Japan is from a relationship of trust with its giant neighbour.

Japan arrested and then released the crew and captain of a Chinese fishing boat which collided in September with two Japanese patrol vessels. But the Chinese, far from dampening down the row, encouraged mass displays of popular anti-Japanese feeling, banned exports to Japan of rare earth metals vital to Japan's hi-tech industries and started a diplomatic chill which will be tested at this weekend's summit.

For its part, Japan is anxious about Washington's decision to open a US-China "strategic dialogue", and there is so much talk of the United States and China becoming the world's most important decision-makers, a so-called "G2".

Tomohiko Taniguchi, a former Japanese foreign ministry spokesman turned strategic analyst, says China's vast size, super-fast economic growth and expanding naval power mean that Japan faces the prospect of Chinese dominance for the first time in more than 1,000 years. Nothing would be more humiliating for Japan, he says, than "having to kowtow to the rulers in Beijing".

The Japanese government insists that it has a sound overall strategy. It continues to rely heavily on the 50-year-old US-Japan alliance while itself maintaining a defensive "posture" in line with Japan's postwar "peace constitution". But Japan is also seeking a wide consensus for more meaningful security ties with other democracies like Australia, India and countries in Southeast Asia - and even with the Atlantic alliance, NATO.

Japanese officials point out that the country is still in the top five among the world's givers of development aid, despite its recent years of lean economic growth at home. It is the number one aid-giver to India. Japan's advanced technology is also vital to the joint programme with the US to develop ever more sophisticated missile defence systems - something that is crucial for Japan's homeland defence against North Korea's repeated missile tests in the sea close to Japanese territory. This policy mix involves many levers, but it leaves Japan open to the charge that it seeks to be "all things to all people".The core reality for Japan is that the 50-year era of its amazing ascent, under American protection, to become an economic superpower is now being challenged by strong global power shifts. An even greater challenge for Japan may be to cast off the inward-looking mindset of its leaders that has evolved during the years of plenty, and start to show political leadership to match its economic power.

Ads from the past

Pepsi Godfather Ad

Cost of Cotton

Cotton may climb to the highest price since 1995 as rising demand in emerging markets for everything from shirts to bed sheets forces textile makers to restock inventories that are the tightest in 13 years.


Export sales by the U.S., the largest shipper, are off to their fastest start since 1993 as apparel demand in China, the biggest consumer, increased 24 percent, government data show. Cotton may advance 13 percent to a 15-year high of 94.9 cents a pound before new supplies are harvested in October, according to 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg on Aug. 12 and Aug. 13.

The commodity is projected to extend its gains because demand is growing in Asia’s developing nations, even as signs emerge that the U.S. economic recovery may slow. While the rally is enriching some cotton investors, it’s also boosting costs for Levi Strauss & Co. and Hanesbrands Inc., the maker of Hanes underwear and the Wonderbra. The last time cotton traded above 90 cents a pound, in 2008, some merchants including Paul Reinhart Inc. were forced into bankruptcy.

“Global consumption is exploding,” said Ron Lawson, a managing director at Logic Advisors, a commodity consultant in Sonoma, California. “We just can’t get enough cotton in place to meet the growing demand.”

Cotton for December delivery on ICE Futures U.S. in New York reached 85.71 cents on Aug. 13, the highest level since April 28. The 31 percent gain in the 12 months through Aug. 13 was the third-biggest in the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 commodities, trailing the 64 percent jump in hogs and the 44 percent surge for wheat. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U.S. equities rose 6.6 percent during the same period.

Production Deficit

Production by the world’s cotton farmers will fail to keep up with demand for a fifth straight year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s eroded inventories that merchants were reluctant to expand during the past two years.

U.S. stockpiles totaled 3.1 million bales at the end of the marketing year on July 31, the lowest level since 1996, USDA data show. Supplies in warehouses monitored by ICE have plummeted 98 percent since the end of May to 25,504 bales as of Aug. 12. A bale weighs about 480 pounds (218 kilograms).

Global demand probably will grow 2.7 percent this year to 120.87 million bales as China boosts imports by 14 percent to 12.5 million bales and Pakistan’s surge 53 percent, the USDA said Aug. 12.

U.S. export sales of upland cotton, the most common variety it grows, totaled 5.41 million running bales for the marketing year that began Aug. 1, more than twice as much as a year earlier and the most since 1993, according to USDA data as of Aug. 5. A running bale weighs 500 pounds, or 227 kilograms.

Shrinking Supply

Worldwide stockpiles will drop 4.1 percent to 45.61 million bales, or about 38 percent of demand, the lowest ratio since 1994, data from the USDA show.

“During the recession, everyone got rid of inventories,” Logic Advisors’ Lawson said. “Yarns, woven goods, textiles, clothing, you name it. There was tremendous purging, and now everyone is trying to rebuild inventories.”

Stockpiles are slipping as emerging-market economies expand at more than twice the pace of the U.S. and six times the rate of the euro zone. India will grow 9.4 percent this year and China’s gross domestic product will increase 10.5 percent, the Washington-based International Monetary Fund forecast on July 7.

Indian Clothing Demand
India’s Arvind Ltd., the world’s biggest maker of denim and a supplier to U.S. clothing companies including VF Corp. and Levi Strauss, says its sales will rise about 23 percent to 40 billion rupees ($855 million) in the year to March.

“I see good times for textiles in India,” Sanjay Lalbhai, a managing director at Ahmedabad-based Arvind, said on Aug. 12. “The middle class is growing. They have started spending more money on grooming better and on wardrobe. Things are changing and this trend will continue for another 20 years.”

Mill use in India, the world’s second-largest cotton consumer, will increase about 8.9 percent in the year ending Sept. 30 to 20.7 million bales, the Cotton Advisory Board said on July 30 in Mumbai. An Indian bale weighs 170 kilograms. Total demand will rise 26 percent to 33.3 million, it said.

Retail sales of garments, footwear, hats and knitwear in China jumped to 38.8 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) in July, bringing the total to 314.1 billion yuan for the first seven months of the year, the Beijing-based National Bureau of Statistics said Aug. 11. Both the monthly and the annual figure represented a 24 percent climb from a year earlier.

"Strong’ Harvest Expected

A “strong” cotton crop in this month and September may curb the rally in cotton, according to Eric C. Wiseman, the chief executive officer at Greensboro, North Carolina-based VF Corp., the maker of Lee and Wrangler brand jeans.

The global harvest is expected to jump 14 percent to 116.85 million bales in the year that began Aug. 1, the most in three years and the biggest increase since 2005-2006, the USDA estimates. U.S. output will surge 52 percent to 18.53 million bales, with the bulk of the harvest starting in October, the department said.

“The August and September cotton crop is expected to be strong,” Wiseman said on a July 22 conference call. “That could provide some relief next year.”

The new crop will be reaching the market amid growing signs that the U.S.’s recovery from the longest recession since the Great Depression is deteriorating.

Economic Outlook
U.S. unemployment claims unexpectedly rose in the first week of August and sales at U.S. retailers increased less than forecast last month, reports showed last week. The Federal Reserve said on Aug. 10 that the pace of recovery will probably be “more modest” than forecast.

"When you look at the world economy and you look at all of what’s happening, you wonder if you’re going to see the demand for cotton as strong as some people say,” said Sid Love, the president of Joe Kropf & Sid Love Consulting Services LLC, a commodity adviser in Overland Park, Kansas. “You need food, but you don’t necessarily need new clothes. You can use 1-year-old, 2-year-old clothes and make do.”

Cotton prices may remain “historically high” until at least the U.S. harvest, said Cliff White, a senior vice president at Singapore-based Olam International Ltd., the world’s third-biggest cotton trader, behind Cordova, Tennessee- based Allenberg Cotton Co. and Minnetonka, Minnesota-based Cargill Inc.

Crop Damage

Floods and landslides during the past two months have destroyed crops in China, which grows almost a third of the world’s cotton. Output may drop 5 percent to 10 percent, said Li Qiang, the managing director at Shanghai JC Intelligence Co.

In Pakistan, the fourth-largest grower and importer, the deadliest floods in decades destroyed 30 percent of its cotton crop, according to Khursheed Ahmed Khan Kanjo, president of the Kissan Board of Pakistan.

Higher cotton costs are squeezing clothing makers, who have passed along some of the expense to consumers.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Hanesbrands will spend $33 million more on the fiber this year than in 2009, as the per-pound costs rises to 79 cents in the fourth quarter from 61 cents in the second quarter, Chief Financial Officer E. Lee Wyatt Jr. said on a July 21 conference call.

“It’s a pressure on the business,” John Anderson, the chief executive officer of San Francisco-based jeans maker Levi Strauss, said July 13 on a conference call with analysts. “We have already taken some price increases for the second half of this year.”

Bankrupt Merchant
The last time prices topped 90 cents was more than two years ago. Paul Reinhart Inc., one of the biggest U.S. cotton merchants, filed for bankruptcy in October 2008 after losses tied to volatility in the futures market. In March 2008, cotton touched a 12-year high of 92.86 cents before plunging to 39.23 cents by November.
"Supplies of cotton are at all-time lows,” Hanesbrands Chief Executive Officer Richard A. Noll said on the company’s July 21 conference call. “While I can’t predict the price of cotton on any given day, I do think over time, long term, you’re going to see the price of cotton continue to rise.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer A. Johnson in Chicago at Jjohnson133@bloomberg.net; Elizabeth Campbell in Chicago at ecampbell14@bloomberg.net.

The 5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Aug 11, 2010 (20 hours ago) The 5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

from Influential Marketing by Rohit

5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization:

1. Increase your linkability Create shareable content - Four years ago I focused on linkability because the main currency that could drive up your traffic was how many people were linking to your content. Today content can be liked or tweeted and it is about more than links - it is about creating content that is shareable. The better your content is, the more people will want to share it with their entire social networks whether they link it, like it, dig it or share it.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy Make sharing easy - Following from the previous point, tagging and bookmarking only scratch the surface of the many ways that people can share content with others. They can post a short link to their profile, embed a video, send out a tweet or create a hashtag for a conversation. Limiting the ways of sharing to just tagging or bookmarking doesn't make sense anymore. The core of this rule, however, was the point about making it easy and that is still at the heart of this new rule. Once you have shareable content, it has to be one-button-easy so people will do it with minimal effort or thinking.

3. Reward inbound links Reward engagement - In 2006, the main thing most marketers were concerned about were inbound links. It was a time when Technorati was the standard by which we all measured the performance of our content and many bloggers focused more on their number of inbound links than their readership or traffic numbers. Today the real currency is around conversation or engagement. While there are a million definitions for "engagement" ranging from comments and discussion to posting or sharing content - this is the behaviour that matters most in the social web and the one that we should all focus on rewarding when it happens.

4. Help your content travel Proactively share content - This was the weakest of the original 5 rules, as the original rule simply talked about publishing your content in other formats such as PDFs or videos and submitting them to other sites. Instead, the essence of the new version of this rule is all about proactively sharing content in a different way. This encompasses everything from creating slides to post on Slideshare or documents to share on Scribd - as well as tweeting about your content or offering embeddable versions of it, or using RSS feeds to syndicate it. Proactively sharing even includes posting your content to social networking profiles or creating profiles on video sharing sites.

5. Encourage the mashup Encourage the mashup - The last original rule of SMO is the one that I would leave intact. The concept of the "mashup" where people take and remix your content by adding their own input and voice has only grown over the past four years. The mashup will be around to stay, whether the term continues to be used or not. Allowing people to take an ownership over the social content you publish will continue to be a key way that you can optimize your content for the social web.

On the original 5 rules, several other smart folks jumped in to add 12 more rules to the list ... it only makes sense for me to try and invite the same input this time around. What do you think of these updated rules? Are there others you would add to the list?

The world of billionaires Infographic

Marketing budgets

Competitive advantage in a recession

Marketing competitive advantage- Coke

Public sector interactive ad

This public sector interactive ad is a wonderful example of teaching the population at large how to respond to a situation in which they are unsure if they can make a difference. Please watch.

Lays Potatoes on the Ceiling?

This certainly gains attention but will it sell potato chips?