Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
Here is a guest post I wrote for my friends over at AdPulp, an advertising blog.
My rant is that most agencies hide their desire for a visitor to make contact. My point… ask for the order. Frankly, I think that this is something we all need to do in many parts of our lives. If you don’t ask, you might not get.
This Blog is going to migrate to a new subject: How communications marketing agencies (think ad, PR, digital and graphic design) can grow and prosper.
Stay tuned.
In “The lottery of life. Where to be born in 2013”, The Economist tells us what are the best countries to born in today. Switzerland is #1 and Australia is #2. USA is only #16. You will have to take a look at the criteria to find out why. But, I’ll go with any countries in the top 10. But, moving down the Economist list would you rather live in the UAE than in France or Italy? Yikes.
My primary take away is that, at least according to The Economist*, the USA isn’t the place to start out any more.
* The independent variables in the estimating equation for 2006 include: material wellbeing as measured by GDP per head (in $, at 2006 constant PPPS); life expectancy at birth; the quality of family life, based primarily on divorce rates; the state of political freedoms; job security (measured by the unemployment rate); climate (measured by two variables: the average deviation of minimum and maximum monthly temperatures from 14 degrees Celsius; and the number of months in the year with less than 30mm rainfall); personal physical security ratings (based primarily on recorded homicide rates and ratings for risk from crime and terrorism); quality of community life (based on membership in social organisations); governance (measured by ratings for corruption); gender equality (measured by the share of seats in parliament held by women).
Well, I guess that I am not surprised that the citizens of Massachusetts voted 51 to 49% to kill the assisted suicide measure.
Death With Dignity, the group that supported the measure, was outspent 5 to 1 by the opposition. But it was very close and I’d imagine that it will be back on the ballot soon.
One of the more effective anti assisted suicide messages offered by the opposition was that grandma could be offed by a greedy relative who would be one of the two people needed to witness a person’s request. So, if you are terminal, in great pain and want out… too bad. You can’t do it in MA because the opposition invoked granny. As I have asked on this blog and in the book “Boomercide”, don’t I have the right to control my destiny? Why is the Catholic Church involved in my personal decisions?
From the Boston Globe:
A Massachusetts ballot question that would have legalized physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill has been defeated by a narrow margin.
The measure voted on Tuesday was defeated 51 percent to 49 percent with 96 percent of precincts counted, and was the closest of the three questions on the Massachusetts ballot.
‘‘We believe the voters came to see this as a flawed approach to end of life care, lacking in the most basic safeguards,’’ Rosanne Bacon Meade, chairwoman of the Committee Against Assisted Suicide, said in a statement.
Religious, medical and disability rights groups fought the measure, saying it’s open to manipulation and relies on diagnoses that could be wrong.
Cardinal Sean O’Malley, leaders of millions of Roman Catholics in the state, called the defeat the best outcome for the ‘‘common good.’’
‘‘It is my hope and prayer that the defeat of Question 2 will help all people to understand that for our brothers and sisters confronted with terminal illness we can do better than offering them the means to end their lives,’’ O’Malley said in a statement.