COSTA IMC Blog

“Touch Wall” is a term that refers to touch screen hardware setup and runs on software built on a standard version of Vista called Plex. The TouchWall system is a 4×6 foot plexiglass screen, a rear projector, an infrared camera, and the three infrared lasers. Touch Wall is currently being developed by Microsoft’s R&D labs and aims to have an accessible price tag for consumers. In addition, Microsoft’s Office and Windows division are building capabilities to work with the technology,” said Bill Gates.

In 2007, Microsoft launched Touch Wall’s cousin partner, “Microsoft Surface,” which is currently being used in AT&T phone stores. Customers set their phones on Surface, and the software in the table recognizes the phone, displaying various calling plans and phone models that customers can choose.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Microsoft’s new innovation? Do you think this technology will revolutionize any industry in particular?

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COSTA IMC is a multicultural integrated marketing communications firm that is passionate about tapping into consumers’ minds and influencing their drive to buy. With access to world-renowned marketing experts, COSTA IMC engages a multinational team to achieve profitable results. The firm specializes in advertising and promotions; brand experience; media planning and buying; public relations; consumer insight and strategic planning; relationship marketing; interactive; and measurement.

Wal-Mart announced new mandatory safety standards Friday for all of its toy manufacturers following a series of incidents that hurt the industry this past season. These regulations go beyond government regulations. Nationwide, several test results have shown children’s products with high lead levels in store shelves. California sued Wal-Mart, along with 19 other toy makers and retailers in November for allegedly selling toys whose lead content exceeded federal limits.

This action will now force toy makers to find alternative materials and pressure overseas factories to implement higher standards, ensuring adequate metal and chemical content. Of course, the cost of these additional regulations will equate to higher prices at the register for consumers.

Are these tests and regulations monitored efficiently? Will parents pay more for products whose materials still remain dubious?

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COSTA IMC is a multicultural integrated marketing communications firm that is passionate about tapping into consumers’ minds and influencing their drive to buy. With access to world-renowned marketing experts, COSTA IMC engages a multinational team to achieve profitable results. The firm specializes in advertising and promotions; brand experience; media planning and buying; public relations; consumer insight and strategic planning; relationship marketing; interactive; and measurement.

On April 14th, USPS launched their green web site with 5 different sections: eco-friendly products and services, greening your mail, recycle, innovation and direct, and green. The site also promotes stamps that have been issued in the past promoting conservation and nature. Moreover, the site also has resources of 15 eco-friendly business practices for direct marketers.

USPS also includes the “Mail Back” program encouraging customers to recycle small electronics and inkjet cartridges by mailing them free of charge. The company aims to help customers to make more eco-friendly choices. “As one of the nation’s leading corporate citizens, the Postal Service is committed to environmental stewardship, this program is one more way the Postal Service is empowering consumers to go green.” said Anita Bizzotto, chief marketing officer, USPS.

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COSTA IMC is a multicultural integrated marketing communications firm that is passionate about tapping into consumers’ minds and influencing their drive to buy. With access to world-renowned marketing experts, COSTA IMC engages a multinational team to achieve profitable results. The firm specializes in advertising and promotions; brand experience; media planning and buying; public relations; consumer insight and strategic planning; relationship marketing; interactive; and measurement.

A recent poll by an online marketing consultancy, Prospectiv, based in Woburn, Mass., showed that 62 percent of the nearly 800 online social network users said they preferred ads from their favorite brands; 87 percent of those online users said that few or no ads matched their interests or preferences. Evidently, marketers are not targeting users as efficiently as they could be.

“These users want, and welcome, information about new products, savings and other offers, and they’re clearly stating that if the ads were more targeted and relevant, it would be worthwhile to them,” said Jere Doyle, CEO, Prospectiv.

A vast quantity of inventory is not handled by sites themselves, but by media buyers. Most sites have little or no research about their consumers’ needs and rely on third parties to reach their audiences.

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COSTA IMC is a multicultural integrated marketing communications firm that is passionate about tapping into consumers’ minds and influencing their drive to buy.  With access to world-renowned marketing experts, COSTA IMC engages a multinational team to achieve profitable results. The firm specializes in advertising and promotions; brand experience; media planning and buying; public relations; consumer insight and strategic planning; relationship marketing; interactive; and measurement. 

“Guerrilla” is a term that brings to mind a small group of armed soldiers. In the case of guerrilla gardening, the soldiers are gardeners, their weapons are shovels, and their mission is to transform an abandoned lot into a thing of beauty. An environmentalist’s desire for inner-city renewal, now spreads throughout the world.

Most of the gardening occurs under the cover of the night, where ‘guerilla gardeners’ sow and tend to new vegetable patches or flower gardens. Others engage the community more openly in their endeavors to help the environment.

Adidas also promotes guerilla gardening through a contest and supplies the prizes. Bilboards are displayed with trees and flowers that bloom in the shape of sneakers. Moreover, a video of a gardener’s night out has been presented by Adidas to support these green efforts.

How will these efforts impact the green movement?

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COSTA IMC is a multicultural integrated marketing communications firm that is passionate about tapping into consumers’ minds and influencing their drive to buy. With access to world-renowned marketing experts, COSTA IMC engages a multinational team to achieve profitable results. The firm specializes in advertising and promotions; brand experience; media planning and buying; public relations; consumer insight and strategic planning; relationship marketing; interactive; and measurement.

A new advertising trend is gaining momentum in the virtual world, and it doesn’t involve expensive billboards. Many online sites are now enabling small and medium-sized business owners to make their own ads and place them in destinations like Facebook and MySpace. These companies are part of an increasing number of self-service ad tools. AdReady Inc. and AdBrite Inc. also offer do-it-yourself ads that marketers can tailor to individual interests on social-networking sites.

Google and Time Warner have also been proactive in their efforts, tackling the opposite side of the trend-web publishers who want to attract advertising to their sites. Due to mass competition for consumers’ eyeballs, web sites like Facebook will find it difficult to raise  prices for their ads. The cost for reaching a thousand web visitors can be as little as a few cents on Facebook or MySpace. Reaching the same number of viewers of a prime-time TV show can cost $30. 

Do these virtual ads truly target the audiences marketers are pursuing? Will prices increase with demand?  

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COSTA IMC is a multicultural integrated marketing communications firm that is passionate about tapping into consumers’ minds and influencing their drive to buy.  With access to world-renowned marketing experts, COSTA IMC engages a multinational team to achieve profitable results. The firm specializes in advertising and promotions; brand experience; media planning and buying; public relations; consumer insight and strategic planning; relationship marketing; interactive; and measurement. 

In 1948, Polaroid introduced their first instant camera, a large stainless steel camera with the film on a roll. Now that the industry has gone completely digital, Polaroid has confirmed they will stop making films for instant cameras starting next year. Instant cameras will be nothing more than a memory, a piece of history, or an anecdote that opens with: “do you remember when…?” Polaroid has developed a substitution, a pocket-sized printer that will connect to any PictBridge enabled digicam via USB or to a compatible camera phone via Bluetooh and print out a 2 x 3″ print on sticky-back paper in about a minute.

The most innovative part of this process is that it does not require ink. The printer uses patented zinc-based paper embedded with yellow, magenta, and cyan dye crystals. Polaroid has seen the evolution of technology and has decided to keep pace with new market trends. Flickr digital cameras and many other web sites have also decided against the need for instant cameras. Consumers won’t have to print their pictures right away-they can view, delete, alter, and store pictures at the click of a button.

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COSTA IMC is a boutique integrated marketing communications firm that is passionate about tapping into consumers’ minds and influencing their drive to buy. With access to world-renowned marketing experts, COSTA IMC engages a multicultural and multinational team to achieve profitable results. The firm specializes in advertising and promotions; brand experience; media planning and buying; public relations; consumer insight and strategic planning; relationship marketing; interactive; and measurement.

Nokia has come up with an alternative of their own with the new “Morph” cell phone. It’s made with an insulin derivative that still retains many of the silicon, metals, and synthetic materials we use today to make electronics. “Morph” wraps around your wrist like a bracelet when you’re not using if for calls. It also kills germs and looks out for germs by analyzing the surrounding air and your sweat. IBM, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, and many other companies are starting to pursue this sampe path. “Morph is a dream based on real technology, nothing in this product is science fiction,” says Mark Welland, head of Nanoscale Science Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, which is collaborating with Nokia on insulin research.

Scientists have said that this innovation will be available in approximately 10 years. This concept is intended to demonstrate how mobile devices in the future will be stretchable and flexible, letting consumers reshape their mobile devices into something practical that meets their needs. Nonotechnology might be the source of flexible materials, self-cleaning surfaces, and transparent electronics.

Is this Nanotechnology truly effective? Luckily, Earth will benefit from this innovation.

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COSTA IMC is a boutique integrated marketing communications firm that is passionate about tapping into consumers’ minds and influencing their drive to buy. With access to world-renowned marketing experts, COSTA IMC engages a multicultural and multinational team to achieve profitable results. The firm specializes in advertising and promotions; brand experience; media planning and buying; public relations; consumer insight and strategic planning; relationship marketing; interactive; and measurement.

The shift in how consumers get their music has forced the entire music industry to find other ways to make money. This has led to the rise of co-branding and celebrity endorsements. Some endorsements make more sense than others, but here’s a new example of a partnership that works well.

Shock rocker Marilyn Manson has done his best to keep taboo intertwined with his lifestyle and stage show. Now, his endorsement of absinthe, a controversial adult beverage a.k.a. “the green fairy,” is available for consumption. Absinthe was outlawed in the U.S. for retail due to its hallucinogenic effects. Minds of artist and authors like Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh have been bent while consuming absinthe– some even citing the concoction as “inspirational.” In recent years, absinthe makers have produced a beverage with similar qualities, but without the hallucinogenic effects. The FDA relaxed the ban, and the drink is now commercially available across the nation.

Marketing genius brought absinthe and Marilyn Manson together. Both possess reputations known to be mind-altering, controversial, and shocking. A source reports Manson to be an avid connoisseur of absinthe. Manson is said to have had a high involvement in the production of Mansinthe, his absinthe label.

Do you think the marriage of Marilyn Manson and absinthe to form Mansinthe is a perfect match? Would you be more or less inclined to try absinthe after Manson’s endorsement? Are you more likely to try Mansinthe specifically? What other product and musician pairings could make good matches?

For more information about Mansinthe, check out these sites:
Mansinthe Official Site
Denmark Product page

On April 28th, Warner Bros announced the launch of TheWB.com, a website that targets 16 to 34 year-old viewers with shows such as, “Gossip Girl, The O.C., and Terminator 4.” TheWB.com is a free, video Web site featuring various WB hit series, including “Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Everwood, and Friends.”

In a recent interview, Schwartz from Warner Bros said he is developing a new show for TheWB.com that “takes viewers to the front of the line and behind the soundboard of a fictional Hollywood rock club.” In addition to TheWB.com, Warner Bros also unveiled a KidsWb.com, centralizing the world’s largest collection of Looney Toons, Hanna Barbera, and many other popular cartoons.

Through this launch, media companies aim to attract younger viewers who currently spend most of their time watching television while sending text messages on cell phones and watching online videos.

Do you prefer to watch your favorite WB hit series online or on TV? Now, you won’t ever miss an episode.

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