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More than 75 countries have enacted legislation prohibiting workplace sexual harassment as a violation of human rights. Still, it remains a pervasive - and blatantly underreported due to retaliation concerns - phenomenon that lowers workplace productivity and job satisfaction, thereby increasing absenteeism and quits.

In a recent IZA World of Labor article, Joni Hersch of Vanderbilt University surveys and compares the available international evidence. She states that "despite being illegal, costly, and an affront to dignity, sexual harassment is pervasive and challenging to eliminate." While the legal frameworks vary by country, sexual harassment is generally regarded as "unwelcome and unreasonable sex-related conduct." The author finds that sexual harassment is much more common than one might think: On average 30 to 50 percent of women have experienced sexual harassment, with rates ranging from 11 percent in Denmark to 81 percent in Australia. These striking differences, however, are not entirely due to cultural differences as survey methods differ by country.

What does the evidence tell us?

Although men experience sexual harassment as well (on average about 10 percent in countries where this has been measured), the typical victims are young females holding a lower-rank job in a male-dominated environment. The harassers, on the other hand, are predominantly males who work at the same or higher hierarchical level. Organizational characteristics play a role as well, especially when it comes to large power differentials in the hierarchical structure and the organization's tolerance for sexual harassment.

Tolerance seems to vary by industry. The construction industry, transportation and utilities are especially prone to sexual harassment in terms of charges filed. Yet, this evidence might grossly understate the problem since, for instance, 90 percent of US government workers who had experienced sexually harassing behaviors did not take formal action, possibly fearing retaliation and a worse working and health situation subsequently.

Costs of sexual harassment are likely to be severe and occur in form of lower job satisfaction, worse psychological and physical health, higher absenteeism, less commitment to the organizations, and a higher likelihood of quitting one's job. For the US, estimated costs of sexual harassment over a period of two years accounted for about $327 million. A second source estimated an individual cost of $22,500 per person affected by sexual harassment, both numbers primarily driven by reduced productivity. It is thus, damaging and costly to both the victims and the organizations where it happens (apart from productivity losses also internal and legal costs resulting from dealing with complaints).

Sexual harassment at the workplace is still there - what should be done?

Despite sexual harassment being costly and illegal so far legal and market incentives have not been successful in eliminating it. Joni Hersch argues that these incentives may be weakened by monitoring and enforcement costs as well as the underreporting of sexual harassment. The institutional tolerance is a decisive factor for the occurrence of sexual harassment.

Although empirical evidence on the efficacy of workplace policies in reducing sexual harassment is limited, there is a consensus that emphasizing prevention, issuing strong policy statements of no tolerance, and providing safe complaint procedures protecting against retaliation can be considered best practices. Policies aiming at increasing reporting strengthen legal enforcement and increase costs to organizations for example if they are publicly recognized as tolerant of a sexual harassing environment. Trainings for appropriate behavior might also help since workers who become more aware of what behaviors constitute sexual harassment may be motivated to avoid such behaviors as well as to enforce that norm in their workgroup.

However, one should be careful not to define sexual harassment too broadly to include behavior intended as collegial or friendly, potentially creating an atmosphere of distrust and ambiguity as feared by many male co-workers in the US. Also, not all countries worldwide have legally acknowledged sexual harassment to begin with. Especially many countries in the Middle East, but also Japan, currently do not possess a law that makes sexual harassment an illegal practice.

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Showing simple signs of appreciation often amounts to more than signing a check. Here's how to properly thank those who consistently deliver for your company.

A. Offer Qualitative Value

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Employees have several motivators: security, growth opportunities, ownership, freedom, camaraderie, excitement and even protection from business chaos. Not every houseplant grows best in direct sunlight, nor does every friendship thrive on the same ideals. Money is one basic quantifiable motivator. However fulfilling the longings that are unique to each employee offers unquantifiable value. - O. Liam Wright, True Interaction

A. Reward With a Compensation-Based Salary

Keeping employees motivated is important. When your base salary isn't enough for your top employees, increase their motivation and efforts by offering a bonus commission or compensation when they hit certain sales or performance levels. Not only will this reward your best employees, it will also keepeveryone else on their toes! - Zac Johnson, Blogging.org

A. Give Public Recognition

If you can't afford a raise, find other ways to recognize their hard work, such as publicly thanking them and getting them a small gift in front of the entire company. Depending on how much you want to keep them, you should also consider a small amount of equity, vested over four years. - Lisa Curtis, Kuli Kuli

A. Communicate With Your Employee

Speak with them, and find out what value most. You might be surprised to find that money is not the most coveted means to show gratitude. Try offering a few days working from home, leaving work early to compensate for traffic or getting a longer lunch break. Communicate your gratitude, and express that you want to offer them other means of appreciation. - Jessica Baker, Aligned Signs

A. Offer a Stake in the Company

Making sure your employee feels appreciated is a great first step. Do they know the extent to which their actions help your business? Let them know. Further, if you're looking to directly reward them, consider giving a stake in the company with stock options or restricted stocks. - Steven Buchwald, Buchwald & Associates

A. Give Simple Perks

Verbal recognition can do wonders, but I also like to offer simple perks and gifts. For example, I'll try to buy lunch for team members or share client perks, such as gift cards and tickets to events. - Steven Newlon, SYN3RGY Creative Group

A. Learn Their Language of Appreciation

I recommend reading "The 5 Languages of Appreciate in the Workplace" by Gary Chapman and Paul White. Everybody is different when it comes to forms of appreciation. You may find that monetary compensation is not one of their languages of appreciation. People are all motivated by their own unique ways, and you may find that they work hard to afford more time off or just to be acknowledged in front of the whole organization. Start by asking them. - Cyril Agley, Talon Ventures LLC

These answers are provided by members of FounderSociety, an invitation-only organization comprised of ambitious startup founders and business owners.

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Shortly after taking over the helm at Yahoo! in 2012, Marissa Mayer declared that employees could no longer telecommute. Her edict sent waves of outrage across Silicon Valley and opened a broad debate about the merits of collocated teams, and the appropriate use of leadership power.

The upset was understandable given the tone-deafness with which it was delivered -- Mayer built an expensive personal nursery adjacent to her office before making the proclamation. But many of us who've led and coached tech teams understood, at least in part, where she was coming from.

Colocation can be valuable even when it's expensive and inconvenient. Technology has made communication easier across distances, but studies nonetheless continue to demonstrate that people working remotely tend to communicate poorly compared with those who work in the same location.

One such study in 2008 found that distributed teams experience greater and more diverse conflict compared to collocated teams. I've personally seen teams suffer problems, whether they are located in different parts of the same building or seated near each other but depending primarily on digital means of interaction.

We live in an increasingly fast-moving and complex world, where "speed is the new IP."

Quick, accurate, and nuanced communication is a must for any organization that wants to become or stay relevant. On complex projects, a single skipped step or overlooked email can result in bugs, project delays, and even project failure.

Preventing bad communication is important, and there's also huge value in unplanned contact between co-workers. This is why Steve Jobs insisted that the Pixar headquarters have only one set of bathrooms and that they be centrally located. He wanted to force employees to bump into each other because he knew that this would create connections that otherwise might not happen.

In digital environments, unplanned communication often doesn't happen and we can even balkanize -- talking only to people who look like ourselves. See the Wikipedia entry on the "splinternet" for more on this.

But that doesn't mean colocation is always or even most often a good thing.

The influential and prolific team at 37Signals (now called Basecamp) are proud of and vocal about the benefits of a distributed team -- they even wrote a book about it (REMOTE: Office Not Required). Susan Cain (in her influential book, Quiet) points out that open offices can make introverts feel like the "eyes of predators are on you," leading to lowered morale and performance. As an introvert myself I'm very familiar with this feeling.

These and other critics make excellent points and are themselves backed up by research. A 2014 Gallup report tells us that almost half of American companies allow some employees to work remotely and that the people who do log more hours and report higher levels of engagement than their office-bound counterparts.

With all this conflicting data and our own good and bad office experiences, it's no wonder we have a somewhat schizophrenic relationship with workplaces. Nowhere is this more obvious than in popular culture. In the classic '80s movie Working Girl, our hero gets her own office in the triumphant finale. But as the camera pans back we see floor after floor of identical windows, and our hearts sink a little.

The office was our heroines' liberation from oppression of the cubicle. And the much-derided cubicle was actually Herman Miller's attempt to deliver us from a Mad Men-era typing pool. And offices, somewhat ironically, have come full circle with open-office floor plans, touted as the newest thing.

The Perfect Office
It's clear that where we work can have a powerful influence on how much we enjoy our time on the job and how productive we are. Space is intrinsic to culture, and culture is intrinsic to performance.

We know this, but the intense amount of conflicting data around colocation makes it hard to uncover what to actually do about it.

This isn't because either side is wrong; it's because a focus exclusively on space is incomplete. Instead of focusing just on where people work leaders need to take note of four interlocking issues:

WHAT physical location will we work in?

HOW will that space be designed?

WHO will decide?

HOW will we work together?

To help understand how these issues interact, we need to understand what makes people tick.

Neuroscientist Dr. David Rock points out that humans tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain in a few specific ways, and understanding them is key to incentivizing behavior in the workplace.

Dr. Rock's SCARF model tells us that we primarily seek status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness; and avoid their opposites. According to Rock, it's the interplay between these five characteristics that determines how engaged -- and therefore how productive -- we'll be on the job.

At Yahoo!, Meyers' attempted to create more relatedness, but did so by removing autonomy and status. Conversely, the expensive nursery adjacent to her office emphasized her own autonomy and status, and destroyed any sense of fairness. In order to improve one factor of engagement, she diminished the other four.

Anyone trying to make a large change in an organization would do well to ensure that as they diminish one or more of these factors, they also create dramatic improvements in others.

Change will be resisted unless it offers some kind of visible, immediate, and personal reward to the people required to make the change.

In the case of forced colocation, you can consciously add increased autonomy concerning what gets worked on -- emulating the very successful gaming company Valve -- or move to a flat pay scale to increase fairness, like they have at GitHub.

There's one more factor to engagement that may override all of these, and that is the work itself.

We know that people are capable of doing excellent work in bad environments, for bad bosses, and even in life-threatening situations. Most likely you've done it yourself and have seen it happen on your teams. Harvard's Teresa Amabile found the answer to this paradox in a now famous study. She and her team discovered that making visible progress on meaningful work was the single most important indicator of whether or not people would report liking their jobs.

Amenities, office layout, and how you feel about your boss and coworkers are certainly contributing factors to job satisfaction. But what engages people most, it turns out, is how they feel about the work they are doing -- the meaning it creates for them and whether or not they feel like they're making progress.

Occupational psychologist John Seddon sums up this way of thinking: "If you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do."

If we want to engage smart, capable people in work, we need to think about the work first and the space second. Is it meaningful? Challenging? Interesting? Is the purpose of the work clear and, most importantly, can I actually make visible progress on it?

For complex knowledge work -- and that's everything today -- your focus should be to frame the work as clearly and compellingly as possible, and then give teams autonomy to work within those guardrails and reach the desired outcomes.

Grant wide swaths of autonomy, and then structure agreements around space and work styles to encourage relatedness, fairness, and open communication.

Try not to be prescriptive about space, but instead to ensure that you follow a few simple principles when setting up teams.

Team size has far more influence on relationships than where someone works. Structure projects so people are dedicated to one team at a time. I mean a small team -- 10 people or less. This keeps the culture informal so people are able to learn each other's communication styles and feel a deeper connection to the team's success.

Process and policies can then be kept light.

Also everyone on a team must be clear about what they are creating, who they are creating it for -- the end user or customer -- and understand how success will be measured. This means they can exercise maximum creativity in getting there.

Rather than debate about the perfect office, leaders must challenge ourselves to structure teams well, give them good jobs to do, and the tools and information they need. Then get the heck out of their way.

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By Ryan McConville, COO at Kargo

You may not realize it, but you are a cyborg.

At least according to Dilbert comic Scott Adams. If you are one of the average Americans who checks their phone 220 times a day, you are already completely reliant on your mobile "exo-brain"--an internet connected external hard drive that augments your knowledge base and transforms what it means for you to be human in the 21st century: 24/7 access to all the world's information, near limitless memory, instant communication across time and space, and better navigation than even the most directionally savvy among us could muster on his own (and of course the ability to send Snaps!).

And that's just the beginning. Smart watches, smart contact lenses, smart nano-robots are all a present and growing reality. Man is ever melding further with machine.

There is no question that the world we live in is changing radically. The question for our industry? Is our marketing changing fast enough to keep up? Overall, I would say no.

Our industry remains focused on the 30-second TV spot. It worked so well for so long, it's not hard to imagine why we're having trouble letting go. But jamming this legacy format onto a forward-looking medium like mobile not only doesn't work well, but actually turns off consumers. Consider that the ad blocking industry was first born because consumers didn't want to see 30-second pre-roll before 2-minute videos. Yet this type of behavior continues. We talk about "responsive design," but what could be more disrespectful to the uniqueness of mobile than the idea that you can shrink down a digital banner and run it on a smaller screen just as effectively?

These practices aren't going to cut it in the mobile world. As an industry we need to ask ourselves three important questions: what is a mobile-first format that works on these devices? Where should we be running these ads? And finally, how should mobile ads be bought and sold, especially in light of the growth of efficiency tools like programmatic? Let's look at each individually:

1. What formats work best for mobile?
Thanks to smartphones, the human attention span today is about eight seconds (that's a second shorter than the average attention span of a goldfish). We know that the average mobile user session is 60 seconds. So a 30-second spot takes up 50% of a consumer's time on mobile. To risk stating the obvious, that's not good. Ads need to be shorter and punchier. They need to work faster and conform to the format of the phone. New native formats and vertical videos are a step in the right direction.

2. Where should we run these formats?
People use their phones in all sorts of ways, but not every one of them is appropriate for marketing. On average millennials spend 95 minutes texting, 49 minutes responding to emails, 39 minutes watching videos, 38 minutes checking Facebook each day... but that doesn't mean that you should drop your marketing message into each of these places.

Recently we conducted an internal research study to examine how scroll velocity differs between a social feed like Facebook and a content-rich property like The New York Times, for example. We gave participants 15 seconds to interact with each type of site the way they normally would, and the findings were quite interesting: users scrolled through a news feed at 230 pixels per second, passing an average of three ads, while the same users scrolled at about 50 pixels per second when reading editorial content. This means that time spent with your ad is only about 1.5 seconds in a social feed, compared to 5 seconds when paired with content.

What this example illustrates is that we need to dig deeper into how consumers actually use different platforms in order to understand how that behavior influences the effectiveness of our marketing.

3. How should we buy (or sell) these ads, especially in light of the growth of programmatic?
Publishers today have to account not just for an almost endless number of screens--TV, desktop, tablet, mobile (and now watch!)-but also for different platforms on those screens - like Snapchat Discover, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News... Each of these environments has unique ad tech piping and creative formats, making it increasingly difficult to activate a consistent brand campaign across the entire ecosystem. We need new programmatic tools to support ad creation and deployment across multiple platforms--what we think of as Programmatic 2.0.

Until we think more deeply about (1) what type of ads to run on mobile devices and platforms, (2) where best to run them, and (3) how best to buy and sell them, "mobilegeddon" will continue to be more of a challenge than an opportunity.

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It isn't every day that AT&T mentions my name in an official 'objection' that requests that I be prohibited from seeing the 'special access' data recently compiled by the FCC.

What's AT&T hiding?... was my first thought when I received this letter.

Click to Read AT&T's Objection Letter.

What is Special Access? I'll get to that in a second. After reading this story, if you think I should be allowed to see the 'special access' data collected by the FCC, as an independent analyst, with the goal to protect the Public Interest - that's you - and doing it 'pro-bono', (meaning at our own expense) as well as representing, en masse, the independent companies, non-profits, schools & libraries, etc. and competitors that use these services, then:

Write the FCC: specialaccess@fcc.gov, and write AT&T's lawyer from Sidley Austin LLP, that wrote the letter at rchhatwal@sidley.com with the caveat that what you write will be 'public'.

This letter has kept me laughing all day. My personal favorite is this:

"Given that New Networks Institute has never participated in this proceeding and has no obvious interest or expertise, it would be incumbent on Mr. Kushnick to demonstrate that New Networks Institute has the means and the capacity to submit material comments - i.e., comments that could make use of the voluminous data here in ways that could make a meaningful contribution to the Commission's analysis in this proceeding.

"The data submissions here contain some of these companies' most sensitive competitive information, and in recognition of that fact, the Commission's protective orders strictly limit access to the smallest possible circle of outside counsel and consultants. Providing access to those data to any individual that simply shows up and says "I want to file comments" would eviscerate those protections and would result in over-broad dissemination of critically sensitive business information that the parties submitted with the good faith understanding that their dissemination would be extremely limited by the governing Protective Orders."

We will be filing a formal response with the FCC.

Who knew I had no 'expertise' and just showed up? We've filed over 70 times at the FCC, starting in 1994, where we discussed the issue of 'access fees' and the problems with the FCC's data not matching other sources. And in 2004 we filed the first Data Quality Act complaint at the FCC, and it pertained to proposed increases of the FCC Line Charge, which is an "access fee", that appears on every local phone bill, and can add up to $6.50 a month extra to the cost, (not counting the hefty percent of taxes, fees and surcharges that are applied). And in 2014, we even filed a report, "It's All Interconnected", which has a large section on special access, in multiple FCC proceedings, (and its quoted multiple times in various filings in the special access proceeding in question).

Who Can See the Data? Probably those Who Shouldn't. Here is the List.

For the most part, those who get to see the data are those who are the real concern -- lawyers for the phone companies, consultants for the phone companies, not to mention the phone companies themselves, including the competitors, as well as AT&T and even the Sidley Austin lawyer who wrote the letter for AT&T. There is only a light sprinkle of those who represent the public.

Special Excess Is Not Special.

In 2015, the FCC is finally releasing a database of collected information about special access lines and services, which, according to the FCC, has hit $40 billion.

The FCC writes that special access lines are broadband/data lines used by business.

"Special access lines are dedicated high-capacity connections used by businesses and institutions to transmit their voice and data traffic. For example, wireless providers use special access lines to funnel voice and data from cell towers to wired telephone and broadband networks. Small businesses, governmental branches, hospitals and medical offices, and even schools and libraries use special access for the first leg of communications with the home office. Branch banks and gas stations even use special access for ATMs and credit card readers. The FCC has the obligation to ensure that special access lines are provided at reasonable rates and on reasonable terms and conditions."

The FCC left out: the companies don't just rent the line; they pay 'access fees' of using these networks.

Why We Care?

The FCC stopped publishing almost anything about special access lines in 2007, so there is no accounting of these lines, anywhere.

The trend line is that these lines have had major increases, including those based on copper wires. This directly contradicts the tales Verizon and AT&T tell about 'losing lines'. Special Access lines aren't counted, but they are the majority of lines. For example, in 2007, Verizon NY's FCC data showed about 47 million lines, but only 7 million were dedicated to 'basic phone service'. Today, when Verizon shows 'losses', it is only local phone service; these data lines are NOT included.

I note that the FCC's last comments about revenues in 2013 pegged this market at12-18 billion and yet, somehow, it went to40 billion in 2015, but with no information to substantiate the number. (We even wrote the FCC last week to find out where they got this number from.)

Special Access is rumored to have obscene profit margins and according to many of the commenters, it is a monopoly service with severely inflated prices.

AT&T also wants to shut down or limit the rights of competitors to get access to these networks.

We even wrote some recent articles for Huff Po about the size of the market based on our analysis of Verizon NY, and detailed the special access line accounting issues.

Caveat

In order to see this FCC data we had to sign a confidentiality agreement that restricts the use of the information in anything except what is filed in this original FCC proceeding, Docket Number 05-25. However, it will give us insight into a marketplace that is now totally obscured, hidden from view.

We agree that some of this data is competitor-sensitive, but the problem becomes - the FCC stopped collecting the data and did not mandate that the incumbent phone companies, like AT&T, disclose basic information about the number of working access lines or the pricing, which is now based on contracts and does not have to be made public.

And the stakes are very high -- $40 billion high, but more importantly, almost all of service prices, wireline or wireless, you pay monthly, are controlled by the pricing of special access networks, and most competitors state that AT&T et al have a monopoly and control the marketplace. Yet, AT&T's exparte letter of October 13th, 2015 makes the claim that "the real world data will show that competitors have many alternatives".

"The complaining carriers have a good reason for trying to jump the gun on the Commission's review of the special access data: the real-world data will show that they have many alternatives to price cap LEC offerings. The shift from legacy TDM services to Ethernet continues to accelerate. Indeed, evidence abounds that special access competition has become even more intense since the carriers last raised these arguments."

(And there are nuances a plenty, to numerous to discuss here.)

Considering we filed a petition for investigation against AT&T in 2015, pertaining to AT&T's claim that it completed 100% coverage of broadband in 22 states by the end of 2007, yet in 2012-2015 made contradictory statements that 25% of their territories had no broadband in rural areas -- we have the right, not to mention the obligation to investigate the special access data, even at our own expense.
An independent, objective, analysis about special access is an imperative, and it certainly doesn't exist today.

And others seem to care. Law360's headline reads: "AT&T Tells FCC to Block Analyst's Access to Data".

Finally, we will be filing a formal response, but the question now is - What is AT&T hiding? I guess they believe I will find it if I'm given a chance to look.

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Sales promotions are incentives aimed at prompting buyers to buy quicker. They often include discounts, rebates, coupons, or free items to incentivize buyers to purchase by a deadline. Technically, sales promotions also include strategies for motivating sales people to sell quicker. The focus on this post will be on buyers since sales promotions aimed at buyers are much more prevalent in most marketplaces.

Types of Sales Promotions.

There are many different kinds of sales promotions. The following is a list of options that are commonly employed:

Discounts. A reduction in price is offered if the prospect orders by a certain date.

Coupons. The face value of the coupon is typically offered as a discount if the buyer purchases by the expiration date listed on the coupon. While some coupons may not have an expiration date, this is not recommended because the incentive to buy quicker is lost, and the company could get in trouble if it is no longer able to offer a redemption value. Coupons are also used to (1) measure the effectiveness of an ad, (2) generate leads, and (3) collect other valuable information for your Marketing Information System.

Rebates. Money is refunded back to the buyer some time after the buyer purchases the product. Typically, the buyer has to complete a rebate form, provide proof of purchase, and mail the package to the manufacturer. Because many buyers are not willing to "jump through the hoops" required to satisfy the requirements of mail in rebates, immediate "point of purchase" rebates are much preferred by buyers.

Premiums or bonuses. Desirable items are given to customers at no charge if they buy a particular product (or group of products) by a deadline.

Sales promotion Do's.

When running sales promotions, there are certain things that good marketers should do. Some of the more important of these are provided below.

Care and Taste. When selling serious products, sales promotions should be conducted with great care and taste. The company should avoid any sales promotions that might appear to be cheap, low-class, or in bad taste. Sales promotions should be in harmony with the company's positioning strategies.

Have a Good Reason For Doing. There should be a good reason for doing a sales promotion, and this reason should be communicated clearly to buyers. Good reasons include: inventory or seasonal clearance, holiday special, seminar or trade show special, new product introduction, discontinued product clearance, end-of-year or end-of-quarter special (to meet sales quotas or lower inventory taxes). The inherent problem with sales promotions is that buyers may think that the product is not in demand. Their rationale is that if it is in demand, why could your company be discounting it or offering special deals?

Assign a Time Limit. To be most effective, sales promotions should have expiration dates. If they don't, the incentive to buy quicker is lost, and the company may not be able to afford the same offer it at a later time. These are a couple of the downsides of sales promotions. If sales promotions prove to be very successful, they can always be extended. The reason for the extension should be clearly communicated to prospects and customers. Good reasons might include...(1) "Due to the heavy demand..."; (2) "Because many customers didn't receive the discount notice..."; (3) "Since we still have a couple of discontinued models remaining...".

Sales promotion Don'ts.

When conducting sales promotions, there are approaches marketers should avoid. Some of the more important ones are provided below.

Don't do anything to cheapen your product or company. A misguided sales promotion can undo a good position and hurt the image of the product and company. Any promotional ideas should be reviewed by several marketing and sales personnel before they are implemented. The problem

Don't insult the intelligence of your publics. Too many promotions are really insulting. They treat intelligent adults as if they were mindless morons. These are often associated with Infomercials that say "If you buy today, we will send you a second one for free. That's not all, if you call to order in the next 5 minutes, we will throw in Product X." This approach won't work with serious products. Sales promotions should be in line with the product's positioning strategy.

Don't make it open ended.Sales promotions should have a time limit clearly stated. This point also has a legal foundation. You don't want a customer calling up a year after the promotion ended and demanding the advertised discount because there was no time limit listed in the ad. Time limits avoid these legal problems.

Don't use bad taste. As with all marketing, good taste should be used in all sales promotions. If mugs, pens, or calendars are given as "freemiums" they should be attractive and not look or feel "cheap." The ads that provide information about them should similarly be done tastefully.

Online sales promotions

Because they are easier to offer and redeem, online sales promotions tend to have higher redemption rates than those provided in more traditional printed coupons. The downside is that marketers have to allocate larger budgets to coupon redemption. In other words they cost more.

Advertising value and redemption rate

Whether redeemed or not, coupons have an advertising value. In the United States, the redemption rate for physical coupons (in non-recession economies) averages about 2.5%. A comparable rate for online coupons would be those delivered by email, which (according to a 2015 report by CodeBroker) averages 2.7%. Once buyers are on sites and ready to buy or are actively looking for a product, these rates could be significantly higher.

Budgeting for coupons

To develop a budget for redemption of coupons and other sales promotions, marketers should check current redemption rates for their industry, distribution method, and product type. While using the redemption rates above is a good starting point, additional factors should be considered if better budget accuracy is required.

Effective sales promotion

If implemented properly, sales promotion can be a very effective tool to achieve sales quotas, clear the shelves of discontinued items, and generally speed up sales. To help insure success, marketers need to...

Create effective sales promotion content;

Select the right media;

Time the sales promotion;

Control costs.

Best of luck.

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"There has never been a female CEO of a big pharma company."

Wait, what did the journalist just say?

How can this be possible? Women make 80 percent of the healthcare decisions for their families, according to the US Department of Labor report. They use more healthcare than men. More caregivers are women. Harvard reports that women now drive the world economy, controlling "about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending."

And we still have not had a female CEO of a big pharma company?

After the interview was over, my colleagues and I discussed this statement over dinner, and one of them, Najoh Tita-Reid, another incredible woman in leadership, said something that stuck. She said, 'From great results, great opportunities are given, more women are getting a chance to show what they can do."

She's right. Looking around at female leaders like IBM's Ginni Rometty, Linda Boff, the CMO at GE, and our own Erica Mann, who leads the second largest consumer health company in the world, we are showing what we can do. And we can do everything.

So now the only question is, who will be the first female CEO of a big Pharma company? I cannot wait to find out. And I will be waiting in line to give her my support to help deliver great results, and open more doors for more women in our industry, and in all industries. And hopefully, by the time my little niece is finishing school, there won't be any doors left to open.

You can read the full interview with myself, Najoh and Ute here.

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Fitch just downgraded Brazil (EWZ) to near-junk.

Brazil's economy is the 7th largest in the world at $2.4Tn - that's above Italy, India, Russia, Canada, Australia and just under France ($2.8Tn) and the UK ($2.9Tn), yet Americans know very little about Brazil, who had their credit rating dropped to BBB- by S&P last month as well. Having one credit agency mark you down is a warning, having two mark you down triggers massive cash outflows (tune in next week!).

Obviously, things are pretty grim in Brazil, who's economy is close to 60% of South America's output. Is this just another thing the markets will choose to ignore as they rally back to new highs? Frankly, I don't know as this week's move is already insane - so we don't bet on irrational markets to suddenly behave rationally but TG we're in CASH!!!

Cash has let us have a really fun week at PSW, playing the Futures in both directions while our portfolios were generally locked in neutral. We flipped a bit bearish overall but our Long-Term Portfolio (LTP) is still bullish (and 90% cash) and gained a whopping $3,400 this week while our paired Short-Term Portfolio (STP) lost $3,200 so, all in all - a week we could have just taken off.

But we didn't and, as I noted, we had a great time playing the Futures with all our sidelined cash and, as I detailed for you in yesterday morning's post, we shorted the Russell Futures at 1,150 (1,145 if you got started in the morning) and rode that down to 1,130 for a $1,500 per contract gain and we flipped long again at 1,130 in our Live Member Chat Room (as planned in the morning post) and caught the run all the way to 1,160 for a $3,000 per contract gain, where we're now short again.

You don't have to hold a lot of stocks to make really good money in your portfolio - just a couple of well-timed Futures contracts can make enough to satisfy all but the greediest investor. People think Futures trading is complicated but it's not - you are simply betting whether an index or a commodity will go up or down from a certain point. We will be giving a FREE Live Futures Trading Webinar next Tuesday at 1pm, EST - tune in that morning for a link.

I sent out an alert this morning updating our lines and you can see that here (3 hours later!). Keep in mind that we are in CASH!!!, so we don't give a Friday but, aside from Brazil (the World's 7th largest economy) we had TERRIBLE news out of India (the World's 9th largest economy), where both Imports and Exports are 25% BELOW LAST YEAR's LEVELS.

How many bits of bad news can we ignore? Well, the answer has to be more than that because I'm not even done with this morning's bad news yet. It seems that Japan (the World's 3rd largest economy) has had to halt trading in several Nikkei Index Funds due to liquidy concerns that are destabilizing the index. As now noted by Bloomberg:

Can the same thing happen in the U.S.? The two biggest leveraged ETFs in the U.S., according to XTF data, are: the $2.7 billion ProShares Ultrashort Barclays 20+ Year Treasury (TBT), which aims to double the inverse of a long-dated government bond index; and the $1.8 billion ProShares Ultrashort S&P 500 (SDS), which doubles the inverse of the S&P 500.

We are long SDS, it's one of our primary hedges in our Short-Term portfolio and obviously we're not alone in our grave concerns over the sustainability of the valuations in the S&P 500 as we barrel headlong into the thick of earnings season next week. So far, the early earnings season action has been back and forth but back and forth doesn't cut it when your index is trading at record highs!

Have I mentioned how much I like CASH!!! lately?

This morning we're waiting for a terrible Industrial Production Report at 9:15 but, as noted above, we already placed our bets on that one. Expectations are for a 0.2% decline but I think worse and the worst part is the Capacity Utilization Number, which was just 77.6% in August, where 82.5% is healthy. If you think about it, imagine owning an office or a manufacturing plant where 22.4% of your space is just equipment gathering dust and no employees. That's not a good thing, is it? THAT is the current state of our economy!

Of course, they don't teach basic economics in school anymore, lest people realize that Republican economic policies are just bat-shit crazy... Instead we extend and pretend and we are taught to believe in a higher power (the Fed) who, in their infinite wisdom shall call forth money from heaven.

Yesterday it was the Fed's Bill Dudley and Loretta Mester's turn to conduct the Sermon of the Dove, assuring the faithful that:

"At the end of the day people are exaggerating" the divisions, Dudley said in response to a question after a panel presentation in Washington on Thursday. "We are all pretty much on the same page."

"We try to be as clear as possible about the rationale behind our decisions," Mester told a New York University audience on Thursday, calling Fed communications "a journey." "Given the cross currents in the economy, different people can have different views ... which is really reflective of what the committee's decision-making is."

Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world." Then they said to Him, "Lord, ALWAYS give us this bread." -- John 6:32-35

Don't forget to say your prayers!

Have a great weekend,

- Phil

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Where they overlap in meeting the needs of consumers, I could find only one situation where the HELOC might work better than a HECM. In all other situations where both could be used, the HECM worked better for the borrower. In addition, the HECM can be used for purposes that the HELOC cannot touch at all. The downside of the HECM is that you must be 62 to qualify.

Definition of HELOC

HELOC stands for home equity line of credit, or simply "home equity line." It is a loan set up as a line of credit for some maximum draw, rather than for a fixed dollar amount. For example, with a $150,000 HELOC, the borrower receives the lender's promise to advance up to $150,000, in an amount and at a time of the borrower's choosing.

HELOCs have a draw period, during which the borrower can use the line, and a repayment period during which it must be repaid. Draw periods are usually 5 to 10 years, during which the borrower is only required to pay interest. Repayment periods are usually 10 to 20 years, during which the borrower must pay off the entire balance. HELOCs can be first mortgages or second mortgages, which the lender typically retains in its portfolio without insurance.

Definition of HECM

HECM stands for home equity conversion mortgage, because it is designed to allow elderly homeowners who have equity in their homes to convert some or all of it into spendable funds. They can draw the funds at closing, intermittently as needs arise, or in the form of monthly payments for as long as they reside in the house or for any specified shorter period. Repayment of a HECM is not required until the borrower dies or moves out of the house permanently. To qualify for a HECM, however, borrowers must be 62 or older. HECMs are always first mortgages, are insured against loss by FHA, and are almost always sold by the lenders originating them.

HELOC Credit Line Versus HECM Credit Lines

Credit Line Differences: Both HELOCs and HECMs provide borrowers with credit lines using adjustable rate mortgages. Upfront fees are substantially lower on the HELOC, but the HELOC borrower must pay interest on line usage immediately and must repay the entire balance within the repayment period. In contrast, HECM borrowers who draw on credit lines are not obliged to make any payments so long as they reside in the house.

There are also important differences in how credit line amounts change over time. With a HECM, the portion of the credit line that is not used grows month by month at the interest rate on the HECM. The lender has no discretionary control over this process. With a HELOC, in contrast, the amount of the initial line does not change unless the borrower can negotiate an increase, which is uncommon. But lenders reserve the right to freeze lines that have not yet been fully used, and they do so when adverse information emerges about the borrower's credit or the market in which the borrower is involved. These differences affect how the different lines can be used for various purposes.

Meeting Intermittent But Temporary Expenses: A borrower 62 or older faced with the need to finance outlays that will occur intermittently over future months -- financing additions to a home, for example -- can finance them with either a HELOC credit line or a HECM credit line. In both cases, they will be borrowing with an adjustable rate mortgage that exposes them to the risk that interest rates will rise during the draw period.

If the borrower intends to repay the balance shortly after the outlays have been completed, the HELOC probably will be more cost-effective, because the initial interest rate and upfront fees are lower. However, over extended periods borrowers are more exposed to interest rate increases on HELOCs because rate maximums are higher and there are no rate adjustment caps as there are on HECMs.

Managing Fluctuations in Income: Both HELOCs and HECMs can be drawn against when income is low, and repaid when income is high. With a HELOC, however, this can be done only during the draw period.

Protecting Against Adverse Future Contingencies: Because unused HECM credit lines grow over time, they provide insurance against a wide range of adverse contingencies, including loss of pension income resulting from the death of a spouse, and exhaustion of the financial assets that were supposed to last a lifetime but didn't. HELOCs don't have this capacity.

Other Uses of HECMs That Are Not Available With HELOCs

With a HECM you can buy a house and not repay the mortgage used to finance the purchase so long as you live there. You can't do that with a HELOC.

With a HECM you can supplement your monthly income by borrowing a set amount each month, with no required repayment for as long as you reside in the house. This is called a "tenure" payment if it continues for as long as the borrower resides in the house, and a "term payment" if it terminates after a specified period. Neither is available on a HELOC.

You can explore all the HECM options applicable to your personal financial situation using myReverse Mortgage Calculator.

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The U.S. government avoided a shutdown on October 1st with a continuing budget resolution now set to expire on December 11th. Then Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced a deadline that was even sooner: unless Congress takes action on the debt ceiling by November 5th, the government could shut down or default at that time.

This Congress-created showdown may be resolved between now and then, but these few weeks of uncertainty provide an opportunity to review the numerous misconceptions about debt and money creation, and to consider potential improvements to the monetary system. At the heart of the matter is whether society will have enough money to solve the problems we face as a nation and planet.

Some people believe the national debt is a serious problem. They argue that we are spending beyond our means and leaving unacceptably high bills to be paid by our grandchildren. But this is based on an incorrect metaphor. A sovereign nation is not a household. Instead, according to the UK group Positive Money, a sovereign nation can just declare "let there be currency," spend it directly into circulation, and avoid the need for bank-issued debt. The national debt, in this view, is simply an accounting mechanism that explains how much money is in circulation, and is not something to fret over or worry about burdens to future generations. In fact, fiscal conservatives' goal of paying down and retiring the national debt would take money out of circulation, causing an economic contraction and impoverishing people.

Even so, there are plenty of harmless technical solutions to the national debt (if you still consider it a problem). For example, since a large part of the national debt, in fact, is "debt service," in which the U.S. Treasury pays interest on securities held by the Federal Reserve, Congress could allow the Federal Reserve to retire those U.S. Treasury securities instead of letting interest on the debt continue to accumulate. Or Congress could allow the Treasury to spend money into circulation directly, or use debt-free instruments in its money creation process.

One such instrument is the trillion dollar platinum coin. The idea of the trillion dollar platinum coin emerged during the previous debt ceiling debate in 2013. A legal loophole allows the U.S. Treasury to mint a high value (trillion dollar) coin, and deposit it at the Federal Reserve, where the Treasury's account would be credited, allowing government borrowing to continue. Austerity-driven politicians tried to dismiss the coin as a joke, but it received some attention from serious economists including Paul Krugman and others.

If the debt ceiling causes a default or government shutdown and becomes a campaign issue in the 2016 election, there are some signs that the coin could be taken seriously by the Democratic front-runners for president. Before he became a candidate for president, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders hired one of the premier experts in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), Professor Stephanie Kelton, for his Senate Budget Committee staff. Dr. Kelton is said to be the originator of the hashtag #MintTheCoin, which was trending during the debt ceiling debate of 2013. On the Hillary side, a recent article in Vox argues that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is less averse to powerful though controversial moves that confound her adversaries (the article use the impolitic term "Hillary Clinton DGAF"). The article speculates this trait could make her open to implementing ideas like the coin.

The coin's ability to circumvent austerity budgets may be required for ambitious government action on climate change. The UN climate change conference in Paris this December is ostensibly about climate change, but under the green mantle it is really an economics conference. Climate change is a symptom of an out-of-control, carbon-addicted economic system. One of the rallying cries for NGOs heading to Paris will be "leave the fossil fuels in the ground."

But what will happen to the economy if a major input to economic growth, fossil fuels, becomes limited by a global carbon cap? In a debt-based monetary system without growth, the debt will outpace the ability to pay, and default becomes inevitable. New forms of money designed for a carbon-constrained world will need to be created. The trillion dollar coin could be a first step toward ecological monetary reform.

Permits representing emissions under an economy-wide cap could be sold to fossil fuel companies. The revenues generated could be returned to people as a climate dividend. This could be the first part of a universal basic income , and could be supplemented by other policies such as quantitative easing for the people.

Because oil prices are so low right now, oil companies and OPEC could potentially benefit under a carbon cap that allows them to charge more for their product. However, this system, called Cap & Share, would be organized by a Global Climate Trust, and would return that scarcity rent to the people.

The debt ceiling may be back in the public discourse in early November and perhaps into 2016, raising questions about monetary reform, sustainability, and austerity versus prosperity. The existing debt-based monetary system may not be compatible with a carbon-limited economy. Luckily, the monetary system is created by humans and it can be changed by humans. The debt ceiling debate is mostly a waste of time, but perhaps the one benefit is it provides the opportunity to discuss the trillion dollar coin as a teaching tool for ecological monetary reform.

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The rolling hills of the coffee farms in Brazil looked something like I had imagined: expansive, lush with green trees and bright berries, winding dirt roads. It was beautiful scene. But I can't say that before I went to visit the plantations a few hours outside of São Paulo I had any real in-depth knowledge of the coffee business, or spent too much time thinking about the how it lands in our cups every morning. I only knew that I needed it to survive and hoped to find that I could feel good about my daily brew choices. I try hard to be a conscientious consumer and have long wondered what Fairtrade and Direct Trade really mean, as well as how they compare - and for that these visits were hugely educational.

Coffee beans drying on a farm in the APAS community. Photo: Stephanie Keller

Through extensive conversations with the farmers who live coffee every day and trips to some regional plantations, the nuances and differentiators came to life. Starting with Fairtrade, I learned that it's a large organization with a mission to support a sustainable and financially stable standard of living for the farmers. It involves a cast of characters including farmers (producers), importers, exporters, and roasters (distributors). To be eligible for certification, producers must meet certain requirements, apply for the program and pay a fee to be licensed as a Fairtrade company. In return, they receive exposure to a large market of consumers who seek out the label and receive discretionary funds designed to help advance their business.

Direct trade, on the other hand, is not run through an overarching organization and there are only two parties involved: farmers and roasters. The process is largely based on interpersonal relationships, venerable farming practices and a desire to produce artisanal-grade coffee. Unlike Fairtrade, there are no formal requirements from a sustainability perspective, but many of the farms are compliant at those levels regardless. The guiding principles are high quality, social responsibility, and pride in their work. The batches are also generally much smaller than Fairtrade.

Ok great, you say. So how does that affect everything down the line?

"Fairtrade, through the premium it offers, helps us carry out activities and projects that allow the association to provide more and better services to its members," explains Alessandro Hervaz, a founding member of the APAS coffee co-op in São Gonçalo do Sapucaí. His organization is made up of about 40+ farm families, who take their award-winning coffee very seriously and appear to like each other a whole lot. He also makes honey on the side.

Farmers of APAS. Alessandro Hervaz is the one in the cowboy hat. Photo: Joel Shuler

"Before we became Fairtrade certified, APAS was already developing activities to educate growers about sustainable production. The Fairtrade premium...has helped us to expand and improve these activities, in addition to allowing us to make the association more professional by hiring new people and implementing training courses." The premiums have been a big part of what's enabled them to make their product great, win coffee competitions, and grab the attention of smaller buyers willing to pay even more than the Fairtrade minimum for craft beans.

The Fairtrade model, however, does have some significant drawbacks. For starters, the premium funds work well to benefit APAS because it is a tight knit and well run place, but when co-ops aren't as stable it can lend itself to poor use or distribution. Fairtrade products can also be sold on the shelf to consumers at a much higher price than what importers pay for them and the farmers don't see a proportional profit. Finally, and perhaps the most significantly to us coffee snobs, Fairtrade buyers are generally more concerned with quantity versus quality, according to Hervaz. While Fairtrade guarantees farmers a minimum price for their coffee, they are not compensated for particularly great beans or motivated to constantly improve them. In this model, producers often make the same amount whether the product is at the passable level or of the highest quality.

Yellow and green coffee cherries. Photo: Lisiane Saúde Shuler

Direct trade is where specialty quality and true value for the farmers come into play as the tight connection between the producers and roasters affects almost every aspect of the business. Coffee purchased in smaller amounts means producers can work to create particular flavor profiles and roasters can seek out the best beans. To decide on a price, farmers and roasters come to an agreement about what the crop is worth based on an intricate tasting process determined by Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) scoring. The farmers are then compensated based on the true value of the product, which ultimately makes them more likely to extend quality measures to those lots. The roasters are then also transparent about the price the coffee is sold at to consumers.

"We are great friends and business partners," said Joel Shuler, founder of a roasting company called Casa Brasil that deals exclusively in direct trade, who was visiting APAS too as part of his purchase process. He has been working with the farmers at APAS for years now and demonstrated a cupping slurp so loud during the tasting process (a sign of aptitude in the coffee culture, apparently) it scared the crap out of me.

How coffee is scored: Joel Shuler of Casa Brasil smelling the brew as part of the cupping process, right before he slurps it like a pro. Photo: Stephanie Keller

"Our goal is to work together with the growers to identify the best coffees on the farm, ensure they are processed, dried, stored, and transported in a manner that maintains the quality, and then roast them to perfection here in the US...Coffee is traditionally based on commodity pricing, which has little to do with a grower's cost of production or our price of sale here in the US," he further explained. "Rather than be subject to commodity market oscillations, we pay set prices based on quality that are far above commodity and Fairtrade prices. This is a win-win for both growers and coffee lovers."

These relationships, transparency and human-to-human elements also make for a more gratifying overall exchange. "Direct trade is the best type of trade for producers because it guarantees the best price and gives us the personal satisfaction of knowing where our coffees are going and who is drinking the coffees," adds Hervaz. "It is a good feeling and "fair" to earn money producing something that, besides quality, brings health and pleasure to people."

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Coffee berries of different grades getting washed and separated at Fazenda Recanto. Photo: Stephanie Keller

This type of business model is most desirable for both small co-ops and for much larger businesses, who have no trouble producing on a grand scale. Alfranio Paiva and his family, for example, run a 432 acre farm called Fazenda Recanto that supplies to well respected coffee giants like Illy and Nespresso. About a third of their land is a natural reserve and although they incorporate a gamut of sustainability practices, they are not part of the Fairtrade program (they are Rainforest certified). During the peak season, harvesting the crop takes the help of about 60 workers and a piece of specialty equipment that looks like a coffee tree Zamboni machine.

"Since coffee has a high production cost, direct trade rewards us by paying a fair price, which allows us to maintain our production," Paiva said. "It's the closest form of fair negotiation; actually, it is really what is considered a true fair trade. "

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Coffee Tornado (Zamboni) collects fruit from the trees and shoots it into a truck bed moving alongside it on the next row. Photo: Stephanie Keller

It was illuminating to see what these terms really mean on the other end of the supply chain and intriguing to think about how the differences play out in other commodity markets. The concepts and all their dependent parts were nothing if not complex, but ultimately my clear takeaway emerged: Fairtrade does a lot of good work for sustainable practices, but the care and quality integral to the direct trade philosophy are where it's at for me. That, and coffee farming is some seriously hard work. I left Brazil not only with a 360° java education but also feeling completely fine about spending $15 on that dark roasted specialty blend.

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Marketers have been in uproar over iOS 9 ad blockers. But ad blockers aren't an impediment to marketers; they're a wakeup call to use data to create better consumer experiences.

By Michael Endler, Marketing Content Manager, Quantifind

It's no surprise ad blockers dominated discussion at Advertising Week, factoring into dozens of panels and eliciting commentary from heavyweight speakers such as Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. Marketers have been suffering a collective anxiety attack since June, when Apple revealed that iOS 9 would support ad blocking apps. This anxiety bloomed into full-blown hypertension during September, as iOS 9 adoption soared and ad blockers rose to the top of Apple's app charts.

But if we look at this differently, ad blocking is actually an important wakeup call for digital marketers. After all, modern data methodologies and natural language processing technologies empower marketers to fix the problems that make ad blockers popular in the first place. Rather than objecting to the rejection of our content, why not get curious about why're getting rejected... and change it?

Most Ads Are Obnoxious

As marketers, we shouldn't whine about ad blocking. It's not like we can blame consumers for not wanting to see most of the stuff they're subjected to. Like it or not, not all advertising rises to the level of the award-winning campaigns we celebrate at Cannes.

That's not say consumers are adverse to advertising in principal; some watch the Super Bowl just to see marketers' best efforts, others get cranky if they don't get to the movies early enough to watch the trailers, and others still seek out their favorite ads on brands' YouTube channels so they can watch them again and again. Many consumers appreciate the role ads play in larger projects. If you're excited about Google's autonomous cars or enjoy the Android OS, you basically have ads to thank for these advances.

The problem is, even if ads aren't bad on an intrinsic level, they're frequently aggravating on a practical one. Everyone knows what I'm talking about: the modals that pop up; the videos that block us from the content we actually want to see; how all of it bogs down browsers, increases data usage, and drains battery life; etc. Even if the substance of the ad is clever, the presentation is so ostentatious and intrusive, it's no wonder millions of iOS users have begun installing ad blockers.

Industry pundits and analysts are currently debating the scope of the ad blocking dilemma. The estimated damage ranges from about $1 billion in lost ad revenue, which is substantial but not catastrophic, all the way to a punch-to-the-gut $22 billion, enough to take down a few ad-reliant companies. The true damage will involve several factors--how ad blockers affect consumer consumption habits on browsers versus on blocker-free social media, for example. But really, the answer is simple: The more regularly advertisers piss off consumers, the more regularly those consumers will use technology to eliminate the ads.

Data + Creativity: An End to Ad Blockers

Obviously, most marketers would love to create content that delights and persuades consumers. But doing so is easier said than done. And perhaps counter-intuitively, the secret is to redesign the alliance between creativity and data.

Yes, we often treat data like some magic marketing elixir that will turn everything to gold, telling us whom to target, when and where to target them, what platform to use, and what to say. It hasn't worked out yet, but that's because the marriage between creativity and data is a young one. Just as consumers want to eliminate annoying ads from their experience, marketers must work to remove potentially misleading metrics from their analysis. We need to block bad data, if you will.

When assessing social media data, for example, many of us judge our success according to retweets, shares, followers, likes, clicks and so on. This is fatal, because without a lot more information, these metrics offer virtually zero explanatory value--that is, they don't explain why certain creative decisions will actually lead to more revenue or a lift in sales.

For example, suppose you're a Swiss watchmaker that recently observed an uptick in social media activity: more organic mentions, more people sharing content that mentions the brand, etc. If you measure your success according to "buzz," you've done a great job. But have you really helped your brand? Have you created experiences that make consumers want to see your ad instead of download a blocker? It's impossible to say. Buzz might have ticked up simply because consumer discussion about Apple Watches led to increased chatter about watches in general, with few of the conversations actually reflecting consumer purchase intent.

How do we get closer to actionable intent data? As the adage goes, consumers vote with their wallets. Ultimately, a click or a like costs a consumer nothing, so the consumer's not very discriminating--far less than he or she would be with the real spending dollars that brands want. For that reason, any worthwhile marketing metric has to tie to revenue. A page view by itself means nothing--but a cluster of page views that correlate to movement in revenue can mean a great deal.

Revenue-driven metrics keep us accountable to what customers actually care about, in other words. Counting likes and clicks leads to superficial consumer insights and ads that consumers want to block, but using revenue-based data that reveals true consumer motivation helps to create dialogues that consumers actually want to be a part of.

Still, revenue-based analysis is only part of the equation; marketers also need to know why certain data trends align with revenue movement. The recent rise in sentiment analysis products in a small step in this direction, but it's not sufficient.

Suppose a beer brand partners with a music icon for an ad campaign, the resulting social buzz is "positive," but little of the new chatter aligns with revenue, which has been falling. In this case, the sentiment analysis is misleading and the revenue analysis is incomplete. Did revenue fall because core customers don't care about the musician? Did the musicians' fans drive buzz without driving beer sales? Is music a bad partnership bet, or was the problem just this genre or artist? And when people do buy the beer, what's actually driving them, and how can it be maximized? A revenue-based sentiment analysis model can't explain how to answer these questions.

The Future

Several of the Advertising Week panelists, such as Mars Chocolate brand director Kerry Cavanaugh and marketing legend Jim Stengel, noted that successful ads stand for something that people can feel-- a principle, an experience, and so on. How does this relate to data? By correlating consumers' organic, unaided online language patterns to movements in revenue, brands can understand which specific language trends are driving sales. Whereas a consumer says very little with a retweet or like, he or she can say a great deal in his or her own posts. Unfortunately, many of us look for the retweets and ignore the actual substance of what consumers say. This has to change.

When it does change, the shift will empower marketers to tell the stories consumers want to hear-- the ones that resonate, rather than annoy, and that are delivered where consumers want them, rather than where advertisers think they can force their way in. Marketers will discover unexpected ways to stand for things their customers care about. It might be a wine brand that discovers its customers care more about how the wine fits into family gatherings than about the wine's Napa heritage. Or it might be a beverage brand that's been pouring its money into football sponsorships but learns that soccer offers more resonance with fans and more revenue upside. Whatever the insight, an explanatory data approach that ties to revenue is the key to better storytelling-- and to a world in which marketers and consumers are in engaged conversations, rather than some adversarial stare-down on opposite sides of an ad blocker.

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The ever-growing foreign exchange market, with a daily trading volume surpassing $5.5 bn in 2014, comprises an opportunity for profit for banks, international payment providers, brokerages, and other liquidity providers.

The way these financial institutions profit from foreign exchange is via taking a certain markup off the mid-market rates. Their fees alone accumulate to billions of dollars in revenues costing end-clients billions of dollars.

What is an FX markup?

If the current interbank exchange rate for EURUSD is 1.112, and a certain bank has a bid price of US $1.082 for 1 Euro, the markup which is charged stands at $0.03 per Euro.

It is synonymous to say that for each EURUSD transaction conducted through this facility, the direct currency exchange costs would be 2.69%. That's $269 of each $10,000 sent, before service fees, and additional commissions.

How much does it really cost?

When sending currency abroad or receiving international payments, larger high-profile corporates, conducting high-volume payments frequently, could be paying several pips of each exchange in mark-ups, while small-volume international remittance transfers to certain locations could cost immigrants 30%, according to World Bank.

These charges vary to a large degree in different situations. According to the top money transfer companies, making educated choices on international payments could save clients 80% of the cost.

Banks or commercial foreign exchange?

Globally banks still dominates foreign currency transfer market. In the UK, over 80% of private clients use banks for international wires. Elsewhere even more people rely solely on banks as the default option.

With lucrative status, combined with the lack of awareness, banks' default rates are not inline with the client's interest. They often advertise a "no commission" policy, but charge $25-50 or equivalent as fixed transfer fees, and an additional 2.5-4.5% in markups. If American client buying an overseas property in the UK, which costing about $300,000 or £200,000, could be paying more than $10,000 in transfer fees.

Banks are large and complex organizations, offering multidisciplinary financial services. It's unreasonable to believe a client (not representing a large corporate or owning a HNWI account) would be able to negotiate much better terms.

In contrast to banks, commercial foreign exchange firms are more personalized, more approachable with tighter margins.

With smaller personal transfers clients can use services like Transferwise, Azimo, Worldremit, or CurrencyFair, for best rates. The markups they take are fixed, and almost always below the 1% mark. Potential clients can visit any of the websites mentioned in this article to get a live quote, even without signing up.

With larger transfers (property, large payments, immigration, or business transactions), or frequent ones (remittances, pensions or mortgages), clients can sign up with traditional foreign exchange firms to get a quote. Companies like World First, Moneycorp, HiFX, Currencies Direct, TorFX, or Afex offer a different type of service authorizing dedicated currency consultancy.

Personal guidance enables the client to transact at the most favorable time (using tools like Rate Watch), (SEPA payments are sent in tranches of EUR 50,000 introducing lower fees from recipient banks in the EU). These two benefits represent a hard to amount savings, but in current volatile economy have the ability to save dollars when conducting high-volume transfers.

The actual markups used by these companies are not pre-set, and could range anywhere between 0.1% and 2%. Unlike banks, most of these companies will not charge upfront wire fees above a certain threshold. The markups they will depend on the volumes the client will be transferring, the currencies exchanged, and the type of contract required (spot or forward).

A payment for a UK property of $300,000, which can cost US 10,000 using banks, is likely to cost no more than $2,000, representing a cost reduction of 80% in comparison.

Alternative transfer methods and their fees

Companies like Moneygram, Western Union and Xoom have dozens of offices and agents all around. Their biggest advantage is cash to cash payments is developing economies where banking system is inefficient, expensive or corrupt. The biggest disadvantage is often poor exchange rates, representing a markup of up to 10%.

Another option is to carry cash with you across the border. With risk and complicacy (travelers in or out of the USA carrying more than $10,000 in cash must report so to FinCen), it's also costly. Exchange money through a high-street foreign exchange office could cost 8% in various fees.

A third option is to use an eWallet, like Paypal or Skrill., but fees are extreme. Paypal charges 2.5% for the currency exchange, and an additional 2.9%-7.4%, and Skrill charges 2.5%-4.5% on the currency exchange and 1.9% on the payment, according to this comparison. If a client would transfer an average payment of US 3,000 through these channels he could end up paying $200 to $300 in fees.

A newly introduced option is move Bitcoin between wallets. The biggest advantage is that it doesn't cost anything to send bitcoins to another account (though exchanging them with USD does cost 0.25%-1%). The biggest concern is the high volatility of this currency.It could depreciate by dozens of percents by the time it is exchanged to a non-crypto currency.

To conclude

Awareness, research and comparison can help clients save up to 80% in foreign exchange. For clients sending more than 10,000$ abroad, it's recommended to seek for expert guidance which ensures payment is made at the right time to maximize saving.

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A new report finds that the largest oil companies are set to cut spending on exploration by at least half, potentially leading to very few new oil discoveries in the years ahead.

The report from investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Hold & Co., and reported by Fuel Fix, estimates that exploration budgets among the oil majors will drop to $25 billion in 2016, down from $50 billion from just a few years ago. Obviously, low oil prices are taking their toll, forcing deep spending cuts in a desperate attempt to shore up profitability. But the cuts have large implications for the energy sector, increasing the chances that some large oil fields remain undeveloped for years.

"Many (exploration and production) companies are virtually abandoning exploration altogether, especially in the U.S.," the report concluded.

Several once-promising frontiers for exploration have failed to attract the oil majors. Mexico's two auctions this year for acreage in the Gulf of Mexico have largely disappointed. An auction held by the U.S. government earlier this year for Gulf of Mexico holdings in American waters also saw scant interest from the industry, the worst showing for the region in three decades. And last week, Brazil held an auction for some offshore blocks in the Atlantic Ocean, once a highly sought after region, and the results were an utter failure. Despite the fact that Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Statoil, ExxonMobil, and BP were all registered for Brazil's auction, none submitted bids.

Shell also withdrew from the Arctic in late September, another area that the industry had believed would be a huge source of new supply. Shell decided to pull the plug for good, potentially killing off Arctic oil for decades.

Cuts to spending make sense in the short-run, but they also set up the oil industry for stagnant production in the years ahead. Once the backlog of projects currently under development begins to clear, there will be very few, if any, major sources of new supply to replace them. The Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic, and offshore Brazil - that is to say, deepwater projects - take years to develop. Not drilling now means oil won't be coming online in 2020 or 2025.

Add to that the natural decline of existing oil fields, which will cut into supplies on an ongoing basis, depleting production by an average of around, say, 5 percent per year (with wildly different decline rates depending on where the oil is being extracted). Despite the seemingly unending glut in supplies, the markets could tighten pretty significantly in the years ahead.

There is an argument that says that shale resources, so abundant around the world, could provide enough new sources of supply for a very long time. As soon as oil prices rise, new shale projects will come online, responding much quicker than the conventional fields of the past.

But even if that is true - and the extent of shale potential over the long-term is up for debate - it is not necessarily good news for the oil majors themselves. The largest companies, such as ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, or BP, thrive in areas that are difficult for smaller companies, such as deep offshore. Shale production, on the other hand, can be done by hundreds of smaller drillers.

The oil majors have had mixed experiences with North American shale. Shell had to write-down some of its shale assets in the U.S., after spending $24 billion on a bet that failed to pay off, with company executives regretting ever having made the investment. ExxonMobil was late to the shale gas party, overpaying for XTO Energy when it bought the company for $41 billion in 2010. And the experiences in shale basins outside of North America (Poland, for example) have also disappointed.

In short, the prospects for the oil majors are uncertain. Megaprojects are no longer in fashion, with costs that are unjustifiable. Shale projects, with shorter time horizons and lower upfront costs, are not the exclusive purview of the oil major. Deep offshore, where these companies have traditionally excelled, appears to be too expensive at this point.

How the oil majors pivot going forward is unclear. Meanwhile, low oil prices are putting significant pressure on these companies, potentially threatening their coveted dividend policies. Slashing dividends, which could become unavoidable if oil prices remain low, will tarnish the oil majors' reputation with Wall Street. There are few good options right now.

Source: The End Of The Oil Major?

By James Stafford of Oilprice.com

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Work: It is how we spend most of our days. Our careers are made up of the hours which turn into weeks and then years. Life goes by. We're in the middle of it. Yet have you ever stopped to think, what am I actually working for?

Modern society is so fast-paced. Technology has ramped up the speed of everything. We can get more done in less time, and we are. But what is the price we are paying?

In the pursuit of efficiency and achievement I believe the majority of us are actually losing ourselves. We're getting lost in the chaos of modern life. We go on with the daily grind because that is the way it is. We work long hours because that is what is expected of us. We keep climbing the ladder of success because we've unconsciously bought into the notion that life is about getting to the top.

But to the top of what? What is the proverbial mountain that you want to climb? And why do you want to climb it?

Most of us are just going through the motions, never stopping to question the "why". We do what we do because that is the way it is. That is the path we have committed to, so we keep going.

The majority of us don't ever stop long enough to get to the heart of the matter. We aren't assessing whether the path that we are on is actually filling us up and giving us the life we truly want. We aren't stopping to consider whether we are living in alignment with our deepest desires and fulfilling the needs that will secure our true happiness. Most of us are either too busy for that, or the thought of living anything other than what we already know is simply too scary to consider.

Yet the truth is, we do have the power to do things differently, and that is the bit we are forgetting. We don't have to buy into the model of success and striving that we have been born into. We don't have to live our lives stuck on a treadmill, and I for one don't believe we were created to do so.

We have forgotten that if we give ourselves the space and moments of peace, we are all infinitely wise. We know the answers to the big questions deep in our hearts if we allow ourselves to truly connect. But in our quest to keep up with the pace of modern life, we have become caught in the incessant stream of chatter in our minds, and are forgetting to step back to contemplate. We are forgetting to dream, to consider and to question. We are stuck in the doing, and many of us are going around and around like a rat on a wheel with no end in sight. We have forgotten that we are the creative agents in our lives and we have a say in how it goes.

Just for a moment, I encourage you to contemplate the end of your life. It is a sobering exercise, but it works. If all of a sudden you woke up tomorrow knowing there were no more days left, would you be proud of the life you've been living? Or would you want to give yourself a little slap and say "you had the power to do it differently you know." Would you consider your life to be one well lived? Would you feel there had been enough living in your days?

Don't put off asking yourself these big questions. These are the questions of real power that make a life meaningful. These are the questions that will help you know just what you are actually working for. These will be the questions that you will be relieved your asked yourself when you finally do get to the end of your life. It is these questions that will help you live a truly full life in alignment with yourself.

Kate is an Executive & Life Coach at www.thrive.how. She helps people who want the good stuff out of life, get it. Through her individual coaching programs, she enables her clients to clarify their thinking, grow into their potential and re-gain balance. You can learn more about Kate by following her on Facebook or Instagram, or can sign up to her mailing list to get a copy of her free guide 8 Steps Towards a Thriving Life.

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When it comes to designing essential brand elements, such as a logo and website, start-ups and small businesses today can either create their own or hire someone to do it for them. Most choose to have it professionally done--either by an agency or a freelance designer. And while there is usually a drastic difference in price between the two, a shared similarity is that they are limited in terms of flexibility.

In most cases, you get a set number of designs to choose from and, if you don't like any, you're forced to simply pick the one you hate the least. Not exactly ideal--especially considering so much of a business's success hinges on it.

Fortunately, there is a third option--the crowdsourcing marketplace. To learn more I interviewed Rahul Aggarwal, Co-founder of Designhill.

Recently featured on Forbes.com for their infographic on the factors that influence start-up success (see graphic at bottom), Designhill is an online design crowdsourcing platform that helps business owners source high-quality, custom designs at affordable prices.

Rahul says their objective is to "serve before we earn"--and it is this mentality that has allowed he and his brother Varun to grow what was once a 6 person company (2 designers and 4 developers) into one that now offers over 25,000 designers worldwide.

How would you explain crowdsourcing to someone who has never heard of it before?
Basically, it is the process of involving a crowd of people for particular work within a stipulated time frame. Crowdsourcing, especially in the graphic design industry, provides a lot of benefits to customers where they get a large number of options to choose from, more creativity, more value for their money, and quick solutions.

How do you think the industries of graphic design and branding/marketing have changed in the last decade or so?
In the present day and age, where everything is so digital, graphic design and branding are the cornerstones of any business. Customers can see a brand everywhere from social media platforms to mobile ads to TV commercials and, hence, quality graphic designs have become much, much more integral to any marketing strategy.

What are some of the biggest branding mistakes you've seen new businesses make?
When it comes to business branding, quite often customers go for the cheaper option and, though it might seem like a good choice at the time, almost always they have to spend much more in rebranding their businesses. And the cost for rebranding is much higher than the cost of getting a quality and professionally made design the first time.

How does your company help correct and prevent these mistakes?
We make it a point to help them understand the importance of a professional design. We provide dedicated 24/7 customer support to all our customers to help them get the best out of the marketplace and value for their money.

What made you want to start Designhill?
There were too many limitations and frustrations with working a single design agency. There was a lack of creativity beyond a certain point, saturation of ideas and options since you only work with one or two designers. We also wanted to create a marketplace website that offered better timely delivery and eliminated the risk of prepayment with no refund options.

Exactly how does it work?
Our crowdsourcing platform connects businesses and designers from around the world on one common platform. Businesses that have specific design needs, for a logo, website, etc., can run a design contest and choose from dozens of designs submitted by designers from all over the world.

Many of our clients are new to crowdsourcing, so we make sure they are properly guided, informed and assisted throughout the process. It is an interactive platform, meaning the clients have the ability to rate, comment and provide feedback--as well as ask for unlimited revisions.

A client can hold a contest and get as many as 80-90 designs in less than a week. The client then gets the source files for the winning design, as well as all copyrights.

What unique benefits does your crowdsourcing platform offer clients?
There are many benefits to crowdsourcing your design. They get more flexibility, control and options for a better price--and without sacrificing quality. On an average, our clients receive 3 times more designs for every dollar they spend with us. We are also more than 30% cheaper than any other competitor and our design received per dollar spent ratio is much higher. As a result, we have a much higher contest success ratio.

We are completely risk-free since we offer 100% Money Back Guarantee to all our customers (though, despite this, we still have had only two refunds to date!). We do take the money upfront from our customers, but it is only as a security to help prevent any fraud against designers. Designers only get paid once a customer chooses a design and receives the source files from the designer.

How does it benefit the designers?
It is a mutually-beneficial relationship. We strive to help freelance designers not only earn but also improve and learn, but we also offer them a platform to create their portfolios and showcase their creative work. It's a way for them to grow their own skills and business, as well as learning from each other. We created a blog not only to provide start-up and new business owners with useful insight, tips and resources, but also to provide designers with free UI kits, resources and tutorials.

What role do you think crowdsourcing will play in the future of advertising and marketing for businesses?
It will play a much, much larger role in the coming years as the need for graphics is only increasing by the day. With so much emphasis being given to digital marketing, businesses will need a larger number of graphics regularly whether it is for banner ads, social media promotions, or branding needs.

What advice do you have for new start-ups and entrepreneurs?
Be Patient, persevere and never give up. It's important to understand and learn about your own business before you can try to sell it to others. Also, it is important for any entrepreneur or new business owner to understand the value the business is offering to its customers; that should become the focal point of any marketing and sales strategy.

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I recently had an uninvited guest stay with me. He was small. He was furry. And despite his cute little whiskers and love of cheese, my wife and I very much wanted him out of our house. I thought it would simply be a matter of laying down some mouse traps. I was wrong. The problem, as explained to me by the exterminator, was that our mouse was so domesticated he had developed an incredible ability to identify and avoid traditional traps. It took the exterminator 12 days, and an approach he had never tried before to catch him. It made me realize... we are facing a similar problem with traditional research.

There is much discussion and debate today, as traditional research methods like focus groups, polls and surveys struggle to deliver the accuracy, clarity and actionability that organizations require. I think I know why. People, like my furry little house guest, have learned how to spot the 'traps' researchers have been using for the past 50 years and they have learned how to outsmart them.

As consumers, we have no desire to be interrupted from our daily lives to answer questions online or over the phone. And for those few subjects who do get lured into that occasional focus group, we are expecting a lot if we believe these people will share their deepest and sometimes darkest desires in front of a room full of strangers. Sure, these people may tell a moderator what they do. But a focus group or survey will always struggle to get to why they do it.

As a result, the organizations that hire research firms to help them solve business challenges end up having to work with incomplete and very rational information. You will know where someone goes, what they do, what time they do it... but you won't know why? It all comes down to the why? Without it, a company can't feel confident that the insights they have access to is any different from what most of their competition also has.

Traditional research serves only as a mechanism to level the playing field. Nothing more.

There was a time when research delivered a competitive advantage. That time is gone. Because everyone uses the same tools, the same panels, the same survey channels, the same analysts, the same home visits and they all yield the same results.

This is why the research industry is in desperate need of disruption.

And the solution lies at the intersection of three magical words.

Observational. Scalable. Beliefs-driven.

Let me explain.

Observational: We need to stop asking consumers why they make the decisions they make because as human beings, we are incapable of articulating the emotion behind our decisions when asked. It's biology. To circumvent this problem, we need to adopt observational methods where trained eyes (typically trained sociologists and cultural anthropologists) are able to discern meaning in the things people do without having to ask them. Interestingly enough, such methods have existed for a long time (known commonly as ethnographic research). But have lacked the scale - typically observational research involves at the most, a few hundred people. Which brings me to my next point.

Scalable: Research has to scale and allow us to examine thousands of people in a given geography (think country, state, even cities, towns and communities). It is only then that we can allow organizations to truly understand people and how their motivations differ from one place to another. Better yet, scale is the only way we can also begin to identify emerging trends in consumer culture, before they hit the mainstream.

Beliefs-driven: For decades, research has segmented people based on their age, income, lifestyle and more. We still continue to talk about "Millennials" and "Gen Xers" as if their age alone makes them share the same beliefs, values, affiliations and behaviors. The reality is that in today's hyper connected world, it doesn't matter how old one is. What matters is what one believes in, and whether one shares those very beliefs with thousands of other people. Because understanding people's underlying beliefs is the path to uncovering their real motivations.

The future in market research will belong to those who'll figure out how to sit at this intersection point. These are the ingredients needed, for us to build a better mouse trap. With it, we will deliver an understanding of consumers, voters and culture itself, that will shine a light on the 'why' that eludes our clients. This disruption is needed. It will bring clarity back. And with it the competitive advantage our clients deserve.

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Alternative Finance is on the rise, and it is set to conquer a 3.3 trillion market opportunity. It includes crowdfunding, peer to peer lending, equity crowdfunding, financial technologies, or fintech, invoice trading and more.

The rapid evolution of regulations, associated technologies and support structures that were ruled out in the past for alternative finance are now currently possible. Thus, Crowdfunding is increasingly gaining traction in the space.

Key Crowdfunding Trends

The scope for investment and access to private equity is growing by leaps and bounds. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has undertaken a number of pathfinding regulations in this arena. The new rules for investors in September 2013 under title Title II of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act has opened the doors to equity crowdfunding for accredited investors. It also enabled the creation of new financing models for angel investors, early-stage companies as well as smaller businesses local in size and scope.

The sheer variety of available opportunities for investors is expanding rapidly and this can be seen in the growing number of niche online platforms. Accredited investors can now access previously unavailable opportunities in a number of different asset classes and business sectors such as consumer products, healthcare, film, entertainment and real estate. Moreover, the increasing popularity and interest on these sectors are forcing issuers to provide levels of transparency and disclosure to private placement of equity, which was seen only for public companies raising capital from the public. Consider this potential in the space - self directed IRAs currently hold something like $146 billion in assets which can easily be shifted to other avenues of investment.

The explosion in transparency and communication means that small investors using these online platforms are able to gain information and thus, more access to institutional quality deals. They can structure debt and equity deals for their individual portfolios which would have been unthinkable in the past except for large institutional investors.

Changes in regulation and technology should accelerate the shift to alternative finance providers, from traditional sources of finance like banks, especially for personal and small business loans. The two largest peer-to-peer lenders, Lending Club and Prosper, grew by 65 times from $26 million in 2009 to $1.78 billion in 2014. Both investors and borrowers would be particularly interested in tapping the assets in retirement accounts which are estimated at over $7.3 trillion.

A growing Equity crowdfunding space offers investors ownership in business enterprises with the possibility of exits through an IPO or a merger or acquisition. Peer-to-peer lending, as opposed to peer-to-peer investing, puts individual borrowers in touch with investors and is expected to gain in popularity. There is another boom which is quickly gaining traction - real estate crowdfunding. Times Realty News is tracking real estate crowdfunding platforms around the globe. A more detailed information including trends in this sector is discussed in a report released by Times Realty News.

Read more on the developments in the Alternative Finance Sector in The Soho Loft News. It is also monitoring crowdfunding platforms around the world.

Crowdfunding may have begun as a financial phenomenon, but its impact is now much wider and deeper than its relatively humble beginnings. In my book on Crowdfunding, I discussed how crowdfunding began as a link between two worlds: the crowd and global capital, but now it has grown and now a respected phenomenon that continues to change the playing field every day.

Photo credit: pixabay.com

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Recently, I asked Co-Founder and CEO of Kuli Kuli Lisa Curtis her opinion on how to develop a new product because she is currently operating a successful startup that is in the process of developing a new healthy energy drink. Lisa and her team crowdfunded $50,000 to launch their first product, Moringa Superfood Bar, and were featured in Forbes and Fast Company. Chelsea Clinton supports the work of Kuli Kuli--me too, because Lisa and I were colleagues at the White House.

Tip 1: Beta test your product--even prototypes, if capable--with real users and potential customers.

Marquis Cabrera: What is Kuli Kuli? What was your main reason for starting?
Lisa Curtis: Kuli Kuli is the first company to sell moringa food products in the US. I started working with moringa in the Peace Corps and found that the plant helped to improve my own nutrition. I founded Kuli Kuli to help more women in the developing world use moringa as a tool to improve nutrition and livelihoods, by eating it locally and earning a sustainable livelihood by selling moringa to the US market.

Marquis Cabrera: What are the benefits of moringa bar to the customer?
Lisa Curtis: Our Moringa Superfood Bars contain half a cup of leafy greens in every bar and are packed with calcium, iron, vitamins and a complete plant protein. It's like a multivitamin in a bar, except it tastes good.

Marquis Cabrera: How did you get your first product off the ground?
Lisa Curtis: We spent a lot of time in the stores [such as, Whole Foods] sampling our products to introduce it to customers and get their feedback in order to help us continue to improve the product.

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Tip 2: "...Indiegogo is a great way to get a new product off the ground and gain a lot of new customers."

Marquis Cabrera: Why are you growing your product line with a drink, instead of another bar of sorts?
Lisa Curtis: We've found that there is a growing number of people who are seeking natural, low-sugar versions of caffeine to help power them through the day. These people are also the same people who are drinking green juices and green smoothies to get their greens on the go. We created the Moringa Green Energy Shots as the perfect solution to help those who want to get a healthy, natural boost of energy while also getting vitamin-rich moringa greens.

Marquis Cabrera: What stage of development are you in your new product development cycle?
Lisa Curtis: Kuli Kuli is currently fundraising [$100,000] to help make the product happen. We're getting really close to hitting our goal and just need a few more people to pre-order our Moringa Green Energy Shots to make it happen. [Note: If you would like to support Kuli Kuli's campaign, click here.]

Marquis Cabrera: Is IndieGoGo and crowdsourcing the best way to go get a new product funded?
Lisa Curtis: We've found that Indiegogo is a great way to get a new product off the ground and gain a lot of new customers. We've also found lots of investors appreciate seeing the market validation that crowdfunding provides. Brad Feld, a famous venture capitalist, learned of our crowdfunding success and, after trying our products, became an investor.

Tip 3: Leverage your communities to build a village that will help bring your new product to life.

Marquis Cabrera: What is the biggest lessons and/or barrier you learned while building a new product?
Lisa Curtis: The biggest lesson is that it takes a village to bring a new product to life. We've solicited ideas from all over the world to help us create the perfect product that consumers want.

Marquis Cabrera: What advice would you give to an entrepreneur on new product development process?
Lisa Curtis: Start talking to your consumers as early in the process as you can.

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Want more secrets, as well as profiles and survey results of successful home-based entrepreneurs? Then, download The Modern Entrepreneur: Secrets to Building a Thriving Business from Home. See if you have what it takes to start and run your own business from home.

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