Paris Hilton ad too hot for Brazil

It all started with her February 2010 advertising campaign for the launch of the Brazilian beer Devassa, but Paris Hilton's sultry appearance in the commercial is too hot for television, a spokesperson for Brazilian Government's Secretariat for Women's Affairs said. Now the Secretariat wants the ad spot removed.

As you can see in the short video clip above, the advert features the hotel heiress Hilton in a short black dress with a can of Devassa, to the delight of onlookers watching through the glass window. Devassa is made by Grupo Schincariol and its ‘Bem Loura’ - ‘Very Blond’ campaign also features an internet campaign with Hilton wearing lingerie and high heels.

Hilton was in Brazil last week during the Carnival (in Rio de Janeiro), which is considered one of the greatest shows on Earth, in the cabin of the Devassa for the opening of the ad campaign. Paris Hilton’s photos in Brazil’s local newspapers showed her crawling on the floor in a VIP room during the extravagant samba parades.

It may be recalled that in December 2007, Hilton campaigned to promote Rich Prosecco, a canned version of an Italian sparkling wine, and she traveled to Germany to promote the drink, appearing in various print ads for the product.

It all seems funny, as in the ‘land the postage-stamp-sized bikini’, the ad campaign may not be outrageous, but Brazil's laws say beer commercials cannot treat women as overtly sensual objects. The trouble started when the Women's Secretariat had received numerous complaints.

‘It's an ad that devalues women - in particular, blonde women,’ according to a spokeswoman for the Women's Secretariat, who spoke on Thursday to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because she was not allowed to discuss the case with the media.

Eduardo Correia, a spokesman for the regulator Conar, said that ‘many Brazilian beer ads feature women in bikinis, but a key difference is that those are set on the beach’. Conar has initiated three separate investigations into Paris Hilton’s ad campaign. Conar, which is a private agency, cannot legally force a company to remove an advert. But according to Correia, in 23 years Conar has conducted more than 7,000 investigations and not one of its recommendations has been ignored by the government.

"The problem with the ad isn't a lack of clothing, but its sensual nature… A woman in a bikini on a beach isn't necessarily sensual; it depends on the context," Correia said.

Hotel heiress Paris Hilton, best known for her appearance on the television series The Simple Life, has engaged herself in occasional business pursuits too, apart from working as a model, actress and singer. Beginning modeling as a child, later she has appeared in numerous advertising campaigns, including Iceberg Vodka, GUESS, Tommy Hilfiger, Christian Dior and Marciano.

Hilton was also instrumental in designing a collection of purses for the Japanese label Samantha Thavasa and a jewelry line for Amazon.com. Also Hilton was involved in the creation of a perfume line by Parlux Fragrances, a line of hair extensions in partnership with Hair Tech International, a signature footwear line ‘Paris Hilton Footwear’ with Antebi, and a line of tops, dresses, coats and jeans at Kitson boutique in Los Angeles.

A user-friendly email marketing software

In spite of the extensive usage of new marketing tools like social networking applications and other evolving technologies, email marketing continues to be the backbone of marketing campaigns. So the need for email marketing keeps on growing and it is expected to grow at a faster pace in the future.

I have compared the services provided by many companies and find iContact is one of the best options out there for anyone who wants to start email marketing campaign. It is an easy-to-use email marketing, surveying, autoresponder, and blogging tool that allow small businesses, non-profits, and associations to easily communicate online with their customers, prospects, and members.

Currently the company has over 15,000 customers and 100,000 users. Their email marketing software is used primarily by small businesses but they also have a number of Fortune 500 companies such as Bank of America, Ford, Nissan, Super 8 Motel, International Paper, and political campaigns like Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign. The company, founded by Ryan Allis and Aaron Houghton in 2003, is based in Durham, NC.

They have great inbox deliverability, a very easy-to-use interface, lots of templates, and also include surveying, autoresponder, and blogging capability from the same application at no additional charge. The prices are great too starting at $9.95 per month, and scaling upward based on list size. They also have an Enterprise product for larger organizations that starts at $660/month.

iContact offers a choice of over 300 professionally-designed email newsletter templates to make your campaigns attractive and easy to launch immediately. The application allows you to track the opens and clickthroughs on your emails, add a sign-up form to your web site, segment your list, and manage your subscribers. Additionally, they take care of managing bounces and unsubscribe for you.

Deliverability is the key to any email marketing tool. Through their ISP relations, feedback loops, and white list status, iContact also take care of making sure your message gets to the inbox of your recipients. If you are currently running into deliverability issues with your existing newsletter sending method, they will be very helpful and ensure inbox delivery of your messages.

Also, iContact is working to change the way businesses and non-profit organizations communicate online by making it really easy to manage all online communications from a single web application. If you are looking for any easy and inexpensive way to put your emarketing on autopilot and get great deliverability, check out this company and the marketing software they offer. You can even sign up for try a 15 day free trial.

New survey shows blogging is less preferred by young internet users

If the outcome of the recent US survey by Pew Internet and American Life Project is any indication of the future of social networking, blogs are less preferred by the younger generation. The study shows that the young bloggers of the age groups 12-17 years and 18-29 years have come down drastically, with the former having halved to 14 per cent since 2006. The study also showed that about 55 per cent of 18-29 year-olds and 27 percent of 12-17 year-olds prefer to access the internet from mobile phones. The possible reason quoted is the preference for short and snappy updates, text messaging and similar features, while blogging requires typing longer text and text blogs which are content-driven needs patience to read the blogs.

Interestingly, the study also shows that there is a small increase in blogging by those who are 30 years or older, whose numbers had increased from 7 per cent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2009. The study suggests that this trend is responsible for the prevalence of blogging among overall grown-up internet population and their numbers remaining steady at about 10 per cent.

In recent times there have been tremendous technological improvements in the tools and other features showcased in social networking sites because of which such sites continue to grow at very fast rates. Because of this the younger generation seems to be exchanging macro-blogging for micro-blogging with status updates, which has made blogs less preferred by them. Any way, Twitter is not to be blamed for the new trends.

Twitter has emerged as a revolution in micro-blogging with those 140 characters, but it is not the reason for the reduced interest in blogging by the younger generation, as teens are not using Twitter in large numbers, although teens have been the biggest users of almost all other online applications, but Twitter is an exception, the study says. On the other hand, there is a surge of tweets from men and women of older age groups tweeting away on all possible topics or grabbing attention to what they find interesting with 140 characters.

PayPal suspends personal payments and local bank transfers in India

The online payments and receipts service provider PayPal has suspended personal payments and local bank transfers in India, informs Anuj from the communications team at PayPal, in a blog posted at the PayPal Blog. This includes transfers to and from local banks in India.

He wrote, ‘I’m writing to let you know that personal payments to and from India and transfers to local banks in India have been suspended while we work with our business partners and other stakeholders to address questions they have about the service”. As per the post, ‘during this time, customers can still make commercial payments to India but merchants cannot withdraw funds in Rupees to local Indian banks’.

PayPal is trying to resolve the situation at their earliest and regrets the inconvenience that this may cause PayPal customers in India and around the world, the blog post says. If you are the one affected by the suspension of services you can check for updates on this problem from PayPal Blog.

I hope the problem is resolved soon as many thousands of Indians who depends on PayPal for online payments will be affected, especially the small guys like bloggers and small businesses using PayPal services for collection and transfer of payments using their services. As it looks, transfer of funds to your PayPal account may not be affected but getting the money back to banks located in India will be on hold till the problem is resolved.

10 Tips to tide over your financial problems

10 Tips to tide over your financial problems

Deciding about how much one should spend at times like this when the flow of income is unduly restricted and we do not find easy, effective and legal ways to supplement the sagging income is rather difficult. While we rue the fact that the income has come down to uncomfortably lower levels, when spending we tend to follow the trends that used to rule us during the periods of surplus cash. It happens so because, the spending habits take time to change. While shopping, for anything for that matter, we conveniently forget our reduced financial status and spend as usual. Possibly, we remind ourselves that it was over-expenditure or a wasteful one only after parting with the cash. And, again possibly, we resolve to ourselves that we have to change the pattern of spending to strike a balance with the income levels so that all on a sudden we are not confronted with deficits in our home and personal budgets.

While we reconcile ourselves to the reduced income levels, it is a bit difficult to curtail the spending habits. It is a psychological riddle. Sometimes, especially in the presence of others, no matter the other person is an outsider, a friend or even a member of the family, we spend as before simply because our egos do not permit us to spend less. We may even be assuring ourselves that it does not matter much this time and the excess spend can be set off with a budgetary cut next time. But it never happens.

For the above reasons and many other reasons, a proper balance is not maintained between income and expenditure and it creates all the problems. Here are a few ways that can help you sail through the times of recession, or situations of low incomes, without much of heartburn.

01: Review your budget

The first step to restore comfortable spending habits is to review your personal or home budget. If you are a person who has never drawn up a budget, do it now. List all your incomes and expenditures and add them up. Draw the balance. If your income is less than your expenditure, it is certainly a cause for worry. If the gap is very wide, you are in for a bigger financial collapse. In that case, check each item of expenditure and strike off those spends that are not essential now. Such items may include expenditures that can be classified as avoidable luxury or other types that can easily be postponed for a future date, or for all times. In most cases, this first step itself will put you out of the red.

02: Cut on nonessentials

Expenditure on food, education, healthcare, etc. are mostly unavoidable, though one can reduce expenditure by avoiding expensive restaurants, costly partying and expenses of similar nature. But, if you have enough clothing and accessories you can comfortably avoid the temptation to add more on such expenses. We can indulge in them when the income levels are back to normal. By doing so, we hardly face any problems and mostly no one will notice them. So, while thinking of purchasing any nonessentials, ask yourself this question, “Do I need it now?” If the answer is NO, do not purchase that item. Remember, money not spend is as good as money earned.

03: Save something for the rainy day

Recession or no recession, income levels are very high or low, building on your personal savings is the key to your happiness and boosting your confidence levels. It not only keeps you out of monetary troubles, but also helps you earn more because of higher confidence levels and by investing the saved money in growth-oriented, income-generating investment opportunities. Building a good amount of savings also takes care of very bad situations like losing a job, unforeseen financial pitfalls, and loss of business incomes in the case of persons depending mainly on businesses.

04: Keep your savings above possible inflation levels

Inflation is a fact of life, wherever you are living, whether in a rich country or in a developing nation. In many economies, inflation ranging from 5-10 per cent is considered normal. In many developing economies inflation of even 20 percent or thereabouts was experienced in 2009. So, if you save $100 this month, the next year by this month, for the same goods and services you have to pay $110 if the inflation is 10 per cent. Generally, people save to pay for expenses on a future date or for building wealth of a permanent nature. It makes no sense to save now and pay more later with borrowed money.

05: Invest your savings wisely

In order to take care of situations of inflation, do not keep your savings in unproductive accounts or at home. Invest them wisely in portfolios that bring in returns more than the bank rates, inflation, etc. Some options can be stocks/shares, gold, and real estate if you have sizable savings. Always study the market trends and the rate of return on investments (ROI), before you invest. If you are not good at understanding these trends, seek the opinion of professionals or friends who are knowledgeable in such matters.

06: Avoid borrowing to spend

Well, everyone knows it is bad, but most people overlook the financial implications of borrowing to finance current spending, especially in today’s consumerist culture and overdependence on credit cards. Borrowing can hardly be justified unless the money borrowed is spent on some assets that will generate income now or in the future, for example, for investing in business. Other occasions when one has to borrow, though not prudent but cannot be avoided, are if a person is trapped in a harsh financial situation and do not find any other way out for survival.

07: Learn to live in the current situation

There is no fun in blaming the general cash crunch of the whole economy, employment levels or your own situations. You have to live with the current situations. Though it may sound harsh, the best option to avoid future financial troubles is to tighten the belt now. Always spend within your current means.

08: Invest in insurance

Put aside enough money to pay for insurance including personal accident insurance, and against investment losses, health insurance and other options available. It will take care of unforeseen circumstances you and your family may have to face in the future. Unless it is only to cover unforeseen expenses, most well-planned insurance policies will take care of your future financial needs too. Some of them even help you to retire comfortably without any financial worries.

09: Find emotional support

Do not hide your current financial situation from your family or the dearest ones who may have to face the problems with you. Discuss your budget with them, tell them about the financial problems and seek their opinion. It will sometimes help you to plan better than you yourself can do. Additionally, they will give you emotional support and the courage to brave the situations comfortably. They shall, many a times, treat your problems as their own and make you more confident and brave.

10: Hide your financial status where required

Yes, you have to hide your financial status at many places, from many people, not only in recession, but in affluence too. If you are super rich and keep on trumpeting about it, may be your enemies, burglars, and others may trouble you in many ways. If you are in financial trouble and keep on telling all the people around, again, it will be inviting your enemies or jealous people to trouble you as there can be people who look for a ‘poor you’ to settle some personal score or enmity. But you never know who such a person can be. So, the best thing is to disclose your financial status to only those people to whom you must disclose for one reason or the other, including legally required disclosures.

So, finally, from now onwards, start living in the real world. Stop dreaming about opportunities and projects that are not real. Weigh your options; discuss with professionals about your business or personal finance plans. There can be many people out there who can help you out of trouble without burning a hole in your pocket. There is nothing wrong in accepting help from others. Similarly, be helpful to others.