Vizio drops from No. 1 to No. 3 in HDTVs

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Though 2011 was a rough year for all HDTV makers, Vizio had a worse year than most. Vizio, once number one in U.S. market share, back in the fourth quarter of 2010, felt the bottom fall out with a whopping 44 percent drop in volume by the same period a year later.

Meanwhile, during the same year-long span, Samsung, LG and Sharp were all rewarded by an increase in U.S. market share, with bumps of 17.9 percent, 35.2 percent and 60.09 percent respectively.

While Panasonic, Sharp, Samsung and LG all make their own panels and assemble their own HDTVs,?Vizio?makes nothing. They buy LCD panels and parts from outside companies and relies on third-party factories, mainly those owned and operated by the Taiwanese company AmTran, to assemble these parts into TVs. Vizio earns thin margins for its dealers and itself, relying on warehouse clubs, Target and Walmart for sales volume.

?Samsung triumphed in the price war that raged in the U.S. LCD market in the fourth quarter of 2011,? said Tom Morrod, senior analyst and head of TV Technology for IHS iSuppli. ?The company was able to offer a range of price-competitive sets with a rich choice of features that U.S. consumers wanted. This allowed the company to outperform the competition during the all-important holiday selling season.?

The year ahead
We anticipate Vizio?s problems will continue this year. Out of around fifty HDTV models Vizio debuted in 2011, the company has chosen to carry over almost all of them for the 2012 model year. Samsung, LG and Panasonic revamped their respective lines with new features including enhanced Internet connectivity/apps, new thin styling, more LED and 3-D models, gesture and voice control (LG, Samsung), and even built-in HD cameras with face recognition (Samsung).

Sharp has found a new niche with its 60-inch and larger screens and continues to add features while offering very aggressive prices. Panasonic has finally entered the large screen LCD market with its own innovative 47- and 55-inch screens exhibiting deep blacks and outstanding viewing angles (review link). Newly introduced 2012 plasma models offer improved performance and new features as well.

With new features, sizes, svelte styling and other improvements from Samsung, LG, Panasonic and Sharp consumers won't have a hard time deciding whether they want the latest and greatest in HDTV or a carry-over from a failed 2011-model mix from Vizio. Consumers will once again vote with their wallets.

HD Guru has just begun to test the 2012s and plan to publish a number of reviews during the next few weeks.?Have a question for the HD Guru? Send an?email.

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Analysis: Facebook e-commerce: the next big thing?

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A group of e-commerce start-ups, backed by some of the tech world's most pedigreed financiers, are betting that Facebook Inc can become an e-commerce powerhouse to rival Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

As the world's largest social network hurtles toward a $5 billion initial public offering, it will come under more pressure from Wall Street to find new sources of profit growth and reduce its reliance on advertising, which accounted for 85 percent of its 2011 revenue.

Some entrepreneurs and investors increasingly think "f-commerce" - meaning e-commerce on Facebook - is the answer. Start-ups such as BeachMint, Yardsellr, Oodle and Fab.com are coming up with novel ways to persuade Facebook users to not just connect with friends on the social network, but to shop as well.

Backed by tens of millions of dollars from venture capital firms like Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and other big investors like Goldman Sachs, these start-ups are pushing out shopping apps, hosting online garage sales and testing out new business models on Facebook.

"E-commerce is a huge category with very strong tailwinds and it's a natural move for Facebook," said Sam Schwerin of Millennium Technology Value Partners, which owns Facebook shares and has a stake in BeachMint.

Amazon revolutionized online shopping by crunching lots of customer and purchase data to come up with relevant, personalized recommendations. In the same vein, Facebook's combination of data, analytics and payment technology could fuel the next generation of e-commerce, Schwerin said.

Facebook declined to comment, but investors said the company understands the importance of having an e-commerce strategy.

"It's a big imperative for them," said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta of Accel Partners, an early backer of Facebook. "They understand it's an important strategic benefit for them to make e-commerce players successful on the platform."

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Graphic: e-commerce's lure http://link.reuters.com/qac57s

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BIG BRAND STORES FLOP

Facebook had 845 million monthly active users at the end of 2011, far higher than Amazon's 164 million active accounts or the eBay online marketplace's 100 million active users.

But despite that huge base, Facebook is primarily a way to connect with friends, and not an online shopper's first destination. Big retailers including J.C. Penney, Gap and Nordstrom had previously set up stores on Facebook but shut them after generating few sales.

That has not stopped venture capital firms from pouring money into rookie companies they think have cracked the code.

There is a lot of buzz about Fab.com, a one-year-old company that has amassed 2 million users who broadcast their purchases via a "bought" button that advertises their shopping habits to friends. Fab built its user base in part by offering $5 a month to those who sign up - Chief Executive Jason Goldberg said "tens of thousands" opted in.

BeachMint co-founder Diego Berdakin said his company had set up a live video event called StyleMint.tv last holiday season featuring a brief appearance by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sister, Randi Zuckerberg. For about two hours, they showcased BeachMint products that people could buy with one click.

More than 50,000 Facebook users watched the show and a "huge percentage" bought something, Berdakin said, adding, "At the time, it was the biggest day in our history in terms of sales."

Yardsellr, started in 2010 by former eBay manager Danny Leffel, organizes people into 3,000 communities, or "blocks," based on common interests. When someone posts a product for sale, it is sent to the news feeds of people in that block and purchases can be made with a few clicks.

Gross merchandise sales, a measure of the value of products, has been growing about 30 percent a month, according to Leffel. "Social commerce could be bigger than eBay," he argued.

Then there's Oodle, a start-up headed by Craig Donato, who runs Facebook's official marketplace, which boasts more than 3 million unique monthly users. When buyers and sellers post items, their Facebook identities are attached, giving users more confidence in the transactions, Donato said.

MAKING MONEY

For now, Facebook is making money mostly by selling ads to merchants trying to target potential customers. But many experts say it is a matter of time before the eight-year-old social network will ask for a cut of shopping transactions, or seek other ways to profit.

They point to Facebook's relationship with online games developer Zynga Inc as an example. Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of revenue generated from the sale of virtual goods used to play Zynga games.

Gamers pay for those virtual goods using Facebook Credits, a virtual currency that could eventually be used to buy physical goods, according to some Internet entrepreneurs.

"Facebook has a huge opportunity to monetize e-commerce," said Christian Taylor, chief executive of Payvment, a startup that operates thousands of Facebook stores. "They have the infrastructure and team to pursue that."

Others downplay the potential for Facebook Credits, saying physical goods offer much thinner profit margins than virtual products.

"The 30 percent model is great for products with near-zero cost of goods sold," said Kevin Hartz, head of ticketing start-up Eventbrite, which works closely with Facebook. "But selling a TV with thin margins, that model will just not apply."

Nevertheless, if e-commerce on Facebook takes off, many expect the social network to find a way to make money off it.

"When you build on top of a platform like Facebook, there is always the risk that the platform provider decides to change the rules later on," said Laura Valverde of Beetailer, which runs more than 3,000 stores on Facebook.

"We have seen this with Facebook Credits and games. So, once social commerce fully takes off, it will only be natural that Facebook tries to benefit one way or another from it."

(Editing by Edwin Chan, Tiffany Wu and Bob Burgdorfer)

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Web 2.0 Case Study: Barack Obama's Use of Social Media ~ Social ...

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The Obama campaign is very instructive to business leaders because business customers are changing expectations of their leaders, as we?ll discuss in more detail below. As the Global Human Capital Journal is not primarily focused on politics, I am less interested in the fact that Obama was elected than?how he was elected. Moreover, I?ll go on record now as predicting that you will experience Obama?s use of social media increasingly in 2009, and I believe that the election will prove to be only the beginning: the Obama Administration will leverage social media in governing. Although Global Human Capital?endorsed Obama, I have no inside knowledge of the campaign or its strategies. Obviously, this is a huge subject, so I will use this post primarily as a way to frame an ongoing discussion so that it may prove valuable to business and government executives. Right now, ask yourself what emerging competitors or substitutes could emerge in your market space by using social media to change some of the assumptions about your industry, sector or company. This disruption is either percolating or actively happening right now, even though many executives are not aware of it yet. To whit, in Q1 2008, I covered the Executives? Club of Chicago?s ?Web 2.0 and the Presidential Election..? which makes fun reading now as much of its conventional wisdom was subsequently debunked by the campaign.

What happened and Why Obama?s Campaign Is an Excellent Case Study

The Obama campaign epitomizes the opportunities and threats posed by disruptive technology in its early market:

• The campaign was contending with established players that had far greater resources
• There were few alternatives to putting emerging social media technology and processes in the front lines of the contest (they were desperate)
• The campaign had little chance of success if it had only used legacy processes
• Obama was not on the radar screen at first because he didn?t look like a serious contender according to traditional metrics
• By using the technology, the Obama campaign was able to engage customers in fundamentally new ways
• Customers (voters) used the same technology to amplify the effect

However, this wasn?t only a story of a start-up taking on an established business by changing the rules: the Obama campaign knitted together emerging processes with ?traditional? political domain knowledge to create the winning bid. Barack Obama is by no means Mr. Social Media, having joined the major brands?MySpace,?Twitter,?LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. during 2007. He understood the promise and acted decisively to leverage it. His experience as a political organizer stressed community, and social media is mostly about creating online P2P communities in which people can connect and act.

Social Media Good Practices

Here are some of the key moving social media parts of the Obama campaign. Please understand that this aims to be illustrative, not exhaustive.

MyBarackObama

• According to Chris Hughes, the architect behind mybarackobama.com, the Internet served as ?the connective tissue? that helped supporters, volunteers and campaign workers to coordinate their offline and online activities. Supporters could reach one another. They used it to organize virtual phone banks, and the iPhone application brought the phone bank to the mobile phone, the ultimate in convenience.
• Here are some numbers from Wired?s?Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency: ?Volunteers used Obama?s website to organize a thousand phone-banking events in the last week of the race ? and 150,000 other campaign-related events over the course of the campaign. Supporters created more than 35,000 groups clumped by affinities like geographical proximity and shared pop-cultural interests. By the end of the campaign, myBarackObama.com chalked up some 1.5 million accounts. And Obama raised a record-breaking $600 million in contributions from more than three million people, many of whom donated through the web.?
• More snippets from?Wired: ?Obama?s campaign carefully designed its web site to maximize group collaboration, while at the same time giving individual volunteers tasks they could follow on their own schedules? and ?Obama campaign contacted hard-to-reach young voters through text messages, collecting thousands of numbers at rallies and sending out texts at strategic moments to ask for volunteer help or remind recipients to vote.?
• Designed to help Obama supporters, the site supported key business processes such as:
  • Sharing viewpoints and why voters support Obama via video, blog post, buttons?
  • Donating and encouraging others to donate
  • Getting out the vote; helping people to register and vote
  • Organizing and mobilizing people for initiatives that support key processes
• Enabling people to create groups, very similar to Facebook. Every person who joins the site has a profile and can create and join groups to hold fundraisers, knock on doors, make calls, etc. This harnesses emergent organization.
• The site significantly reduces the transaction costs involved in supporting Barack Obama; it enables you to integrate supporting Obama into your other workstreams; for example, you?re a busy manager whose flight is delayed; after doing work emails at the airport, you call three people and talk about the campaign; no longer necessary to go down to the community center phone bank!
• When you register, the site keeps track of your support activities and recognizes you for calls you?ve made, money you?ve raised, etc.
• iPhone application?provides the spontaneity of mobility, one-click calls to action that support key processes above.

Leveraging Major Social Media Brands

• MySpace: the largest social network by many measures, with over 250 million. Too many marketers and strategists entertain the false assumption that ?MySpace is for kids,? but it reflects many demographic groups and changes constantly. The Obama campaign also created custom MySpace profiles for key states, so he could focus his message effectively.
• LinkedIn: Answers targeting specific demographics and issues. I experienced this personally when I answered one of Barack?s questions in LinkedIn. He is participating in the P2P (peer to peer) world by enabling citizens to relate to him in the way in which they feel the most comfortable, at a low transaction cost. That means that, in a sense, I am one click away from the U.S. president elect. I?ve never been able to say that before as I?m neither a political operative nor a significant donor.
• Facebook: Facebook excels as a platform for supporting causes of all kinds. Along with MySpace, it is a huge community of 140 million. Also see voter-organized groups such as?One Million Strong for Barack.
• Twitter: Obama tapped into the major microblogging community, realizing some of the benefits of mobility and spontaneity.
• YouTube: Leverage personal video referral to the candidate?s content.
• Also see?BlackPlanet,?Faithbase,?Eons,?GLEE,?MiGente,?MyBatanga,?AsianAve?and?DNC Partybuilder. People active in social media understand that one can be active in several at once, so presence wasn?t mutually exclusive.
• SMS (short message service, testing): SMS is a broadcast medium that enables spontaneity and intimacy because it is conducted by mobile phone. The Howard Dean campaign in 2004 used SMS to great effect for fund-raising and emergent organization.

Strategy: Knitting Together Old and New

Politics is a very conservative proposition in this context, so, although I believe that Obama would not have won the election if he had not used social media, this is far from meaning that he won because of social media. Executives of established businesses can likewise combine the power and influence of ?legacy? domain knowledge with the new social media, but this is only effective when they unlearn past assumptions that are no longer true, or that may be partially true but in different ways. Confused? You should be; this is not a simple proposition, but working through it holds the key to 21st century customer relationships. Here is a summary of the salient points of each article:

• David Axelrod was focused on breaking through, on selecting video footage in which normal people were themselves, were not polished or coached. As?I have noted, big brands like GM are discovering that ?authenticity? often means lower production values. He also knew that they couldn?t run a conventional campaign; they had to break the rules.
• Even more on point is that they focused on selling leadership, not policies. This holds many lessons for business. Although I have limited experience covering politics, I can imagine that many consultants and campaigns sell their candidates like products, replete with features and benefits (?policies? and ?programs?). More profound, leadership and personal qualities and beliefs inspire more easily than policies.
• From David Plouffe, we read what may be the most revealing for the use of social media: the campaign?s combination of sophisticated data modeling techniques (Bill Clinton was a pioneer here) with on-the-ground implementation powered by social media. This synergy enabled Obama to mobilize with unprecedented speed and with great effectiveness. This showed up in the results in the caucuses.
• Obama flipped the spending model on its head. As Plouffe explained, usually TV advertising is the primary bucket, and ?the field? gets leftovers. Because the Obama campaign saw itself as a grassroots effort, and a key goal was to energize new voters, they invested in the field first, while TV accounted for somewhat less than half the total, a much smaller portion than normal. Another big lesson: YouTube enabled people to share and send videos to their friends, personalizing messages. In effect, it was ?grassroots with digital leverage.? All those hours of YouTube video viewing were better than ?free? advertising; many of them where forwarded by friends.
• Plouffe focused the campaign on P2P, and he organized around that reality. The Clinton campaign had most of the other advantages, of the big media attention and the legacy Democratic organizations. Obama was more focused on the ground, on running numerous local campaigns, where Clinton ran a big national campaign. Here again, social media enables people to self-organize and focus on what?s important to them when they have the tools?and the candidate gives them actionable ways to interact in a meaningful way.
• When Obama announced his candidacy in January 2007, he was an extremely long shot, and the campaign did not attract legacy Democratic players. The senior team was comprised of people who took substantial pay cuts, who weren?t really thinking about what job they would want in an Obama administration. They believed in the change, in doing it as an end in itself. This also meant less in-fighting and bickering within the campaign. Plouffe actually attributes their lack of pre-planning as an advantage: ?..the electorate changes and technology and techniques change so we weren?t wedded to any of the old ways of doing things.?
• Social media also enabled the campaign to bring a far more unified message to market because ?we were the main actor,? according to Plouffe. Individuals contributed a substantial portion of the total, so the campaign did not depend on the DNC to run things (read ?in-fighting? and ?legacy?).
• ?Donate? buttons were everywhere ,^)? I say that with tongue in cheek, but let?s say you watched an inspiring Obama speech; the campaign made it actionable for you to donate $20, $100 or $1,000 right on the spot. Each donation or call was another interaction between the person and the campaign, making it seem more personal for a greater portion of the people. When people put money in the kitty, they literally invested. They didn?t have to go to $500 a plate fund-raisers, they could contribute right from Facebook. It was grassroots meets mainstream venue.
• According to Joe Trippi?s remarks in?How Obama?s Internet Campaign Changed Politics, the Internet enabled Obama to organize supporters far more quickly and inexpensively than ever. The article did not mention the keyword ?emergent organization,? but this is a textbook case for it. Online social networks enable people to self-organize in any way that makes sense to them, very quickly.
• Trippi, Web guru behind Howard Dean?s 2004 campaign,?goes even further: Obama will use social media to garner support for key initiatives, potentially end-running Congress by going direct to the people. During Web 1.0, we called this ?disintermediation.?

Ancillary Benefits: Making It Easy to Participate

• This led to several influential cases of the Web 2.0?b?te noire?of marketing (and political) strategists: UGM/UGC (User-generated media/content). See Will.i.am?s?Yes We Can, Obama Girl?s?I Got a Crush on Obama?and?Hillary 1984.
• The?design of the Obama logo, and the campaign?s encouragement of groups to use it for their own acknowledged the recognition that brands should give up control. Give people tools. Yet the logo also can unify.
• Artists were recognized for designing t-shirts and other memorabilia (?Artists for Obama?). There were myriad voter-organized groups on Facebook and MySpace.
• A big lesson for brands: make it easy for people to make you their own. Using social media, people could act on their desire to get involved?at a low transaction cost, and very visibly. This increases leverage.

Takeaways for Business Strategy

Lessons Learned for Business and Government

• It is easy to think intellectually that ?the individual? now has scale, but it is difficult for market leaders (Clinton campaign) to imagine how the effects will manifest. Market leaders know the score, and they have had the advantages?but assumptions are built in, and social media changes enough of them to change the rules in most industries. Executives have to be rabidly focused on what will happen when their stakeholders self-organize, mirror each other?s interests, magnify the interests into passions and make a lot of noise. This can change expectations fast. Think it as ?grassroots? on steroids.? It is likely very applicable to your business.
• Web 2.0?s profound impact on the election?and the political process?happened far more quickly than?political and Web 2.0 experts predicted, including yours truly. Even the Obama team was surprised at the results. This is clearly an emergent phenomenon. I think it likely that change to business will unfold more quickly than expected as well. I will advise my clients to prepare for significant disruption in 2009. This is a no-lose scenario; Web 2.0/social media adoption will be pervasive, and organizations will have to learn how to realign their operations toprosumers. Why not do it earlier than required and derive more?relationship capital?from the effort? Doing so will increase your credibility with stakeholders.
• Beware legacy thinking in your organization; disruptive change virtually always presents as a fringe activity at first, as the Internet did in the mid-1990s.?The Facebooker Who Befriended Obama?offers this dismissive quote from Mark Penn, then the chief strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton: ?Barack Obama?s supporters ?look like Facebook.?? Harbor this attitude at your organization?s peril.
• WebProNews?s excellent?Eight Reasons article?is very much in synch with ongoing social media research: people increasingly trust ?someone like me? over some expert or organization representative. Bloggers and online media have eclipsed ?mainstream? media in many ways?and very quickly. Online sites and blogs are increasingly driving mainstream news. For grins, see?Global Human Capital?s reportage?of three political experts declaring at the Executives? Club in January 2008 that Web 2.0 would have a minimal impact on this election!
• The Obama campaign facilitated supporters? use of Web 2.0 tools and social media, but it tempered it by leveraging video, audio and text of Obama?s own thoughts. According to?Obama volunteer Joe Baker, the strategy was for supporters to send people to what?Obama himself had said or written, and social media made content available in any way imaginable. Think packaging and distribution options. Baker also built an Obama campaign headquarters in Second Life, where people could discuss anything with anybody.
• Joe Trippi: ?? millions of citizens sign up to help the president pass his agenda? If the president says, ?Here are the members of Congress who stand in the way of us passing health care reform,? I would not want to be one of those people. You?ll have 10 or 15 million networked Americans barging in on the members of Congress telling them to get in line with the program and pass the health care reform bill. That will be a power that no American president has had before.?
• Social media is global?and?getting things done will increasingly require global collaboration. The Obama campaign was and is an international phenomenon. This could have many kinds of surprising consequences for politics and business. For example, when the U.S. is negotiating a bilateral or multilateral agreement, what if supporters had conversations with citizens of those countries, and each citizen group pressured its lawmakers? I admit that this may seem farfetched at first, but it could be very disruptive to established interests. Established interests that think of themselves first and don?t add value will be disintermediated. We already learned during Web 1.0 that transparency and communication tools and processes drive disintermediation.

Considerations for Immediate Action

• Realize that Web 2.0 will prove to be far more disruptive than Web 1.0 because it changes how people find and relate to each other?and the speed of mobilization. It will prove core to relating to many of your stakeholder groups. Keep in mind that, just like the Internet, you will eventually move communications to social media, and you will let customers and other stakeholders participate in ?your? brand in new ways. The how, when, why are unknown to most executives, but you need to make it a priority to understand adoption milestones, so you don?t get caught by surprise.
• Carefully select a top member of your firm to champion Web 2.0. I can?t say it often enough: remember the mid 1990s when the prevailing wisdom was that the Internet was for geeks and no real business would do business online. Yes, the boom ended up discrediting itself as a get-rich scheme, but the Internet is like electricity now. Realize that many people in your management team will prefer the status quo.
• Social media digitizes word of mouth, and people talk most about exceptions, what bothers them most or what inspires them. Think about ways that you can:
  • Make it easier for people to talk by using social media to lower the cost for people to find others with their interests
  • Help them communicate at a low cost (social networks are largely asynchronous, so they fit busy schedules)
  • Act in remarkable ways, and give people tools to make it easy to talk about it. Participate in discussions, but enable stakeholders to own them.
• Adopt an ecosystem mindset. You need to create an implementation plan that facilitates stakeholder activity in major branded venues like Facebook, but also field your own venue when you can add unique value to stakeholders, support business processes you care about, and ask for stakeholder support. The Obama campaign story is an excellent example. The?Social Network Roadmap?is a structured approach (full disclosure, I designed it).
• Trust your stakeholders to discover and do the right thing. Your relationship with them is changing under your feet; smart organizations are becoming more cooperative by sharing ?control.? The Obama campaign could not have succeeded without supporters like Joe Baker and thousands like him. It energizes people to contribute in a meaningful cause?even more than if you had done everything for them.
• Consider the Obama Administration as a real-time case study. Social media is its O/S (operating system). Many of the United States? problems are the result of organizational sclerosis, and letting people self-organize and support is a force waiting to happen.?And people like it. All the Obama supporters got a taste, and many will be motivated to help even more (for some numbers, see?this recent Pew study.. thanks, Doug). It remains to be seen how Obama will reach out and ask for support.?Wired?s take: ?? many hope that Obama will bring this approach with him to the White House. Obama almost has no choice as he faces the task of rebuilding Washington?s credibility with voters.? Yes, you could write that off as hyperbole, but think about intractable problems like?U.S. healthcare, a dysfunctional system comprised of established interests, politicians and businesses. Many voters will conclude that it won?t change fast enough by itself, so it?s a prime candidate for disruption.
• As soon as possible get to transparency and cooperativeness with stakeholders. The more transparent and collaborative, the stronger your organization will be as a competitor. You can change your market position significantly by adopting faster than competitors and substitutes, but the window to be a market leader in many industries is closing fast.
• Lastly, think small. Industrial Economy marketing held that the only things worth watching were big numbers and big initiatives. Many people doing small things can have a big impact?when they are using digital social media?because it affords so much leverage. Many small numbers can roll up to a big number. Web 2.0 is many-to-many communication out of the box, where Web 1.0 was about delivering information on demand in a one-to-many pattern. Many-to-many means geometric growth and acceleration.
• What do you think? Will the Obama campaign impact social media adoption in your organization? Why or why not?

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About Asking Questions During Your Trademark Attorney meeting

There are many different types of legal professionals working in today?s society. One of the most popular types of attorneys or lawyers working in today?s society are trademark lawyers. Trademark lawyers are used by people all across the country understand different trademark laws. Primarily, trademark lawyers are used to help an individual who has an idea or invention that they want protected get the proper legal protection that they need from the government. Once a trademark case has been one the federal government will publish a detailed trademark on the company name. This means that no one else can use this name as their own for profit and if they do they will face serious legal repercussions for doing so. Trademark law is important because it keeps company?s and the consumers well protected.

When a case is first being filed a trademark attorney will have the responsibility of preparing and submitting trademark applications to the United States Trademark and Trademark Office.

However, many people do not understand how this process actually works and will want to find out more about the trademarking process and more about the attorney that is heading up this process for them. This is why when you first meet with your trademark attorney you will want to make sure that you ask plenty of questions.

As you prepare for your meeting with a trademark attorney make sure that you write down all of the questions that you think of and bring these questions in with you to the meeting. This is a great way to make sure that you ask all of the questions that you need to. It is also important to do this so you stay on task and so you can easily get through all the questions you have without wasting any extra time.

Questions can be on virtually any topic relating to trademarking or the trademark attorney that you are hiring.

Feel free to ask questions about their education, experience and certifications they have received. Ask how many trademarks they have written in the past and what type of success they have seen with their previous trademarks. Don?t be afraid to ask more in depth questions as well such as how many trademarks they have had challenged or over turned. If you want to ask personal questions as well about their own philosophies on trademark litigation you can do so as well. You should feel like you know your trademark attorney when you leave this meeting.

Finally, questions about finances will be very important to many people. Make sure that you are clear not only on the attorney?s hourly rate but on any additional fees that they may charge their clients and things such as retainers that you will be required to pay.
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Guest Post: Elaine Hirsch | Angela Maiers Educational Services, Inc.

If you?ve ever had trouble speaking in public, this post by Elaine Hirsch should be a wonderful tool for you! Enjoy, and speak up!

How to Develop Public Speaking Skills Online

Public speaking is one of the most effective ways to communicate ideas and
persuade people to understand your point of view. However, if you have
never spoken in public before, or just have anxiety towards doing so, you
may have trouble with the idea of giving a speech to a group of people. Now
you can let go of that fear because there are ways to learn how to develop
public speaking skills online.

One way to develop your public speaking skills is to look for an online class
devoted to the topic. If there is no in-person class in your area, find an
online class that teaches public speaking skills. Several colleges offer online
public speaking courses, including the University of Wisconsin. Its
Introduction to Public Speaking course covers speech composition, delivery
and effective listening skills and can help you gather the poise and
confidence to become a better public speaker. It requires you to be able to
record video clips and post them online with the use of a webcam, helping
you learn different methods of speaking in front of an audience. Although
the course may seem basic and lacking in content, prominent programs
such as traditional or online MBA programs value their students? abilities to
be able to speak in public and persuade consumers or shareholders.

If you cannot afford a college course, you can still take public speaking
lessons online for free. One such site, School for Champions, offers a full
spectrum of topics related to public speaking, including setting goals,
preparing to speak, showing confidence in your delivery, and satisfying your
audience. It even suggests ways to make money as a public speaker.

If you dislike the structure of a classroom, you can still learn to speak in
public by reading as many articles as you can about the subject. Stephen M.
Fournier?s website focuses on the art and science of rhetoric and how
speakers use their skills effectively. In addition, his site contains pointers
about body language, speech writing, vocal intonation, and how to
overcome nervousness.

Most importantly, you need to practice the skills you learn in order to
develop them and keep them sharp. Just as a photographer can only take
better pictures through practice, you can only become good public speaker
when you practice the skills you learn from one of these online sources. If
you want to practice using a pre-written speech, the Internet is full of
historical speeches you can use to improve your skills. The History Place
offers a collection of historically significant speeches, from Patrick
Henry?s ?Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death? speech to Winston
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Kate G. fires back at Anderson, ex 'DWTS' partner

By Marc Malkin and Brett Malec, E! Online

Adam Larkey / ABC

Tony Dovolani said he needed therapy after doing "Dancing" with Kate Gosselin.

Kate Gosselin is fighting back!

The reality-TV mama says she's surprised by the not-so-nice things her former "Dancing With the Stars" partner Tony Dovolani had to say during a recent appearance on "Anderson." Dovolani slammed Gosselin's dancing skills and joked that he needed "a lot of therapy" after their failed pairing...

More from E: Happy 37th birthday, Kate Gosselin!

"First, I think it is a shame that Tony has been left only with a negative impression of our time together, especially after we spent SO many hours, days, nights and weeks working hard together doing our best in the competition," Gosselin writes in her latest blog post for CouponCabin.com.

"Let's face it -- he didn't have a lot to work with as far as my dancing abilities were concerned," she continues. "I've admitted and laughed about this many times over the last two years!"

"Second, despite the many obstacles I faced at that time, I was left with a very positive impression of the entire experience!" Gosselin adds. "I very much enjoyed the challenge and the [camaraderie]. I made many lifelong friends, have tons of great memories, and learned a lot about myself, so I don't regret a single moment! I wish nothing but the best in future seasons for Tony and his prospective dance partners."

As for Cooper's cracks, Gosselin challenges him to try to compete on the show.

"To Anderson Cooper I'd like to say this: I'd love the opportunity to be a front row spectator for your first dance as a competitor on the next season of Dancing With The Stars," she writes. "I can only imagine how your view of the subject may change 180 degrees, not 360 degrees, if you are given the opportunity to cha cha cha!"

Now we want to hear from you: Should Tony Dovolani stop bad-mouthing Kate Gosselin? Should Anderson Cooper compete on "Dancing With the Stars"??Tell us on our Facebook page!?

Photos from E: DWTS' special guests

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Principles of Compliance Risk Management | Reputational ...

Michael Rasmussen

Understanding and Approaching Compliance and Ethics Risk

Historically the compliance function did not understand and model processes for risk management. Compliance documented and met requirements, and found and resolved issues. There was limited modeling of compliance issues and risk to determine business impact and prioritization of resources. Most often compliance was reactive, putting out fires instead of actively interpreting and predicting compliance and ethics risk issues, and developing treatment plans to mitigate or avoid damage to the organization.

The CECO in the 21st century must take a risk-based approach to compliance processes. This requires the organization to take in information from the external business and regulatory environment, understand the current and future context of a dynamic and distributed business, and model risk and business impact today and into the future. In some industries CECOs are best served to use risk models that support decision tree and scenario analysis to model risk in their environments, but can also benefit from heat maps, MARCI charts (mitigate, assure, redeploy, and cumulative impact), and even quantitative approaches such as loss distributions in Monte Carlo simulations to portray loss and impact (if there is enough data to make these meaningful).

Reputational Compliance

Regardless of the complexity of the analysis, the principles of compliance risk management are the same:

• Understand your risk:?An organization needs to have a risk-based approach to managing compliance and ethics. This includes a periodic assessment (e.g., annual) of the exposure to the organization for unethical conduct. However, the risk assessment process should also be dynamic, done each time there is a significant business change that could lead to exposure and incidents (e.g., mergers and acquisitions, new strategies and entry into new markets).
• Approach compliance based on proportionality of risk:?How an organization implements compliance procedures and controls must be based on the proportionality of the risk it faces. If a certain area of the world or a business partner receives a high risk score for ethics or corruption, the organization must respond with stronger compliance procedures and controls. Proportionality of risk also applies to the size of the business ? smaller organizations are not expected to have the same measures as large enterprises.
• Monitor the risk and regulatory environment:?Content and information on changes to risk and regulatory environments is critical. New laws, changed regulations, court rulings, and standards of practice all change what is required of the organization. The compliance function needs to have a defined process and be accountable to monitor risk of changes in the regulatory environment.
• Tone at the top:?The compliance risk management program needs to be fully supported by the board of directors and executives. Communication with top-level management must be bidirectional. Leadership must communicate what is both acceptable and unacceptable risk, and support the compliance and ethics program. Executives and the board must be informed about the effectiveness and operations of the compliance and risk management strategy to fulfill their fiduciary obligations.
• Know who you do business with:?Organizations need to know their business relationships. This requires that an established risk-monitoring framework is in place that catalogs the organization?s third-party relationships, markets, and geographies. Due diligence efforts must be in place to make sure the organization is contracting with ethical entities. If there is a high degree of risk of corruption, compliance, or ethical issues in a relationship, additional preventive and detective controls must be put in place. This goes beyond business partners: this means knowing employees, and conducting background checks where needed in order to understand if they are susceptible to corruption and unethical conduct.
• Keep information current:Due diligence and risk assessment efforts must be kept current. These are not point-in-time efforts, but must be done on a regular basis or when the business becomes aware of conditions that point to increased risk to ethics and compliance issues.
• Compliance oversight:?The organization must have someone responsible for oversight of compliance risk processes and activities. This includes the authority to report compliance and ethical risk to independent monitoring bodies such as the audit committees of the board.
• Manage change in the business:?The organization must monitor the business for changes that can impact its compliance and ethics program or introduce greater risk to corporate integrity. The organization needs to document changes required for business practices as a result of observations and investigations, and must implement changes through a deliberate program of change management. These changes must be monitored by compliance to actively prevent corruption.

Source: corp-integrity

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