A message from Andrew Saunders, VP Advertising Sales.

As the old saying goes: when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The recession has forced all businesses to ensure they have clarity of purpose and rock-solid strategies.

We know you're under pressure to find growth while squeezing all the juice out of every dollar spent. We're pleased to help you achieve your goals. As the economy improves, we will maintain our commitment to help you find marketing solutions that deliver... in spades.

Our brand consistency has secured continuing leadership in reaching more Canadians with university graduate education, household incomes of $100K+, personal incomes of $100k+, and senior managers and professionals than any other weekday newspaper. We are the most read online newspaper and have the largest combined newspaper and online readership at almost 3 million weekly (NADbank.)

Our investment for future means continual product improvement and innovation. Our new Editor-in-Chief, John Stackhouse, tells you more below as we continue our progress as an innovative, multi-platform media company that can reach your audiences with resonance.

Wishing you a productive and prosperous marketing season.











John Stackhouse was named Editor-in-Chief of The Globe and Mail in May. He first joined The Globe in 1989 and has held a number of key editorial positions including Foreign Editor, National Editor, and most recently Editor of Report on Business.

I became editor-in-chief at one of the most challenging points in our recent history. For me, the timing couldn't be better. If you know your readers and know what they want--and when they want it--you've got a clear path, in good times or bad.

We know who our readers are, and we know they actually read us. Their numbers are growing, too. In print, educated, informed and concerned Canadians come to us every day to make sense of what just happened. They want to know about our country, our economy, our society and our world. They want context and explanation, and most of all guidance, in words and visuals. Online, many more Canadians come to us for breaking news, multimedia features, search and interaction. They want to know about everything. And they want to engage with our content.

To take advantage of these opportunities, I'm leading two campaigns in the editorial department.

On the web, we're investing heavily in new franchises--notably finance, autos, small business and video. We're building strong user segments in these areas, which deepens our relationship with readers and creates more commercial opportunities. I've also created a digital innovation team, headed by Anjali Kapoor, who came to us from Yahoo Canada, to ensure that everything we do online is the best in Canada.
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Mathew Ingram is The Globe and Mail's Communities Editor and a leading expert on social media. His journalism career includes work with for the London Free Press, Alberta Report and the Financial Times and in his career with The Globe he has covered the stock market, business, and technology. He is a co-founder of mesh, the leading Canadian Web conference, which is holding its first meshmarketing event on October 22 in Toronto.

Q: What are your responsibilities as Communities Editor?

Ingram: My job is to think about, and implement or enhance, all the ways in which the Globe interacts with readers online--everything from comments on our news stories to blogs and interactive features, from Twitter and Facebook to wikis and live discussions.

I also help develop our official policies towards social media, and I do a lot of training and workshops for our journalists around how to use tools like Twitter and blogs.

Q: You have been engaged in social media from earliest days. What are the key changes you've seen over those years?

Ingram: I think the biggest change is probably the sheer number of people who are using these services, with more than 250 million people on Facebook and 25 million or so using Twitter, etc. and hundreds of millions reading and/or writing blogs. These things have all become part of the mainstream over the last few years.

Q: Best practices are emerging for using social media for marketing purposes. What would you highlight as key dos and don'ts?

Ingram: I think the do's and don'ts are pretty similar to what they would be for a face-to-face or group encounter in the real world from a marketing point of view. The important thing is not to trick people, to be as up front and transparent as possible about what you're doing, and to engage with people on a human level, because it is a social medium.
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Beyond The Numbers: Are Set-Top Box Stats Ready for Prime Time?
How many people watch a given show? For decades, advertisers have relied on Nielsen ratings for the answer. But now some research firms are eyeing the rich stores of data collected by set-top boxes. STB measurement promises to reveal much more about the size and habits of television audiences. Still, the practice must overcome several hurdles before it's adopted as an industry standard.
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Sandbox: iPhone Making Inroads Into Marketers' Corporate Worlds
Well, that didn't take long. Last quarter, the iPhone's share of the global smartphone market rose to 13%, up from 3% during same quarter in 2008. And, not surprisingly, adoption rates for Apple's innovative device are highest in companies that specialize in advertising, marketing or media.
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Everyone's a Guru: Ken Wong - Associate Professor & Commerce '77 Faculty Fellow in Marketing, Queen' School of Business
Ken Wong is a faculty member and the Commerce '77 Teaching Fellow in Marketing at Queen's School of Business, where he has held both teaching and administrative positions. Ken is also a frequent speaker and facilitator in conferences and executive development programs around the world.
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The Career Activist : The Recession's Over! Time to Quit? Exploring Your Career Options as Business Picks Up
Ah, those lovable folks over at the Bank of Canada. No mere economists mired in calculations and prognostications there, just a group of fun lovers who are whooping it up by declaring our recession's end.
Read More

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There are a many industry events in the coming months. Below are a few of the events scheduled in September. Check out our Fast Tracks section for complete listings and details.

Partnership Marketing Seminar
September 15: 9:00 a.m. Toronto, ON

Eco Marketing: Create, Innovate, Change
September 16-17: The Old Mill Inn, Toronto, ON

Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit is The Premier Search Engine Marketing
Conference
September 23-24: Los Angeles, CA

IAB Canada's MIXX Canada Conference
September 29: The Carlu, Toronto, ON

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Montreal: The Ultimate Focus Group
A group of enterprising admen and local boosters are betting the city's alleged drawbacks can actually be used to advantage. They're launching a campaign of their own, seeking to sell the largely French-speaking city as "the perfect human laboratory" for big global companies to come and test their advertising strategies, in large part because it is a small, self-contained, isolated market. "We looked at the Quebec market and asked what the next step should be," says Sébastien Fauré, the chairman of the Association of Quebec Advertising Agencies, which is running the program, and head of Montreal ad agency bleublancrouge. Click here to read the full Globe and Mail article on this initiative.

Canada: Happy to be #6
The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) recently surveyed citizens of 30 countries to determine where people felt most content in their lives; in other words, finding the world's happiest places.

Canada came in at sixth place, well-ahead of the U.S. in 13th, and the U.K. at 15th.
The top 10 were:
1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. The Netherlands
4. Sweden
5. Ireland
6. Canada
7. Switzerland
8. New Zealand
9. Norway
10. Belgium

The rankings were based on surveys about people's positive and negative experiences in the previous day:
- Well rested
- Treated with respect
- Chose how their time was spent
- Proud of something they did
- Learned or did something interesting
- Enjoyment
- Pain
- Worry
- Sadness
- Boredom
- Despair
- Anger

Thinking about your day yesterday, how would you've scored? Full report details can be found here.

IDEA 2009 Gold Award Winners
The recent International Design Excellence Awards named 30 products as the best designs of 2009. Top spot (the Best in Show Award) went to Nike for its Trash Talk shoe, made completely from recycled materials.

Other winners ranged from vibration-control gloves for industrial use, to the Havianas shoes flagship store in Brazil, to a home HIV testing kit in South Africa.

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To share your comments, feedback and ideas, drop the editors a line at mediacentral@globelink.ca.