Mediaboss Marketing

WASHINGTON The Bronx, the only one of New York Citys five boroughs that is on the American mainland, once had a sociological as well as geographical distinction.

In the 1930s it was called, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, the city without a slum. It was the one place in the whole of the nation where commercial housing was built during the Great Depression.

In the third quarter of the 20th century, however, there came, particularly in the South Bronx, social regression that Moynihan described as an Armageddonic collapse that I do not believe has its equal in the history of urbanization.

Of the several causes of descent, there and elsewhere, into the intergenerational transmission of poverty, one was paramount: Family disintegration. Some causes of this remain unclear, but something now seems indisputable: Among todays young adults, the success sequence is insurance against poverty.

The evidence is in The Millennial Success Sequence published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies and written by Wendy Wang of the IFS and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and AEI.

The success sequence, previously suggested in research by, among others, Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, is this: First get at least a high school diploma, then get a job, then get married, and only then have children. Wang and Wilcox, focusing on millennials ages 28 to 34, the oldest members of the nations largest generation, have found that only 3 percent who follow this sequence are poor.

A comparably stunning 55 percent of this age cohort have had children before marriage. Only 25 percent of the youngest baby boomers (those born between 1957 and 1964) did that.

Eighty-six percent of the Wang-Wilcox millennials who put marriage before the baby carriage have family incomes in the middle or top third of incomes. Forty-seven percent who did not follow the sequence are in the bottom third.

One problem today, Wilcox says, is the soul-mate model of marriage, a self-centered approach that regards marriage primarily as an opportunity for personal growth and fulfillment rather than as a way to form a family.

Another problem is that some of the intelligentsia see the success sequence as middle-class norms to be disparaged for being middle-class norms. And as AEI social scientist Charles Murray says, too many of the successful classes, who followed the success sequence, do not preach what they practice, preferring ecumenical niceness to being judgmental.

In healthy societies, basic values and social arrangements are not much thought about. They are of course matters expressing what sociologists call a societys world-taken-for-granted.

They have, however, changed since President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed unconditional war on poverty. This word suggested a fallacious assumption: Poverty persisted only because of hitherto weak government resolve regarding the essence of war marshalling material resources.

But what if large causes of poverty are not matters of material distribution but are behavioral bad choices and the cultures that produce them? If so, policymakers must rethink their confidence in social salvation through economic abundance.

Reversing social regression using public policies to create a healthy culture is akin to nation-building abroad, an American undertaking not recently crowned with success. Wang and Wilcox recommend education focused on high-level occupational skills, subsidizing low-paying jobs and public and private social marketing campaigns, from public schools to popular media, promoting marriage toward the end of the success sequence.

Success is, of course, more complex than adherence to the sequence. Much cultural capital often is unavailable to poor people. In J.D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir of his rise from Appalachian poverty to Yale Law School, he recounts his experience in the recruiting process with prestigious law firms, during which he learned, among many other things he did not learn at home, use the fat spoon for soup and your shoes and belt should match. These may seem trivial matters; to upward mobility, they are not.

Much more important, however, is the success sequence. In Nathaniel Hawthornes day, as in ours, it was said that problems were so daunting that old principles must yield to new realities. Perhaps, however, unfortunate new realities are the result of the disregard of old principles.

Hawthorne recommended consulting respectable old blockheads who had a death-grip on one or two ideas which had not come into vogue since yesterday morning. Ideas like getting an education, a job and a spouse before begetting children.

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The sequence to success - The Exponent Telegram (press release) (registration)

Last week, Nixon made some adjustments to its internal structure that included a round of layoffs to reposition the brand for growth.

Although there wasnt much elaboration on the positions that were cut, the brand was able to share with us which areas of the business they are strengthening moving forward specifically, Nixon will be shifting its resources to digital in both the marketing and commerce sides of the business.

The changes we are working through arent dramatic, said Nixon CEO Nick Stowe. Weve seen our consumers changing, moving much more into digital in terms of where they go to discover and learn about brands and where they go to shop. What we are seeing is as much about marketing as commerce, lots of social and some real blending of the two on platforms like Instagram.

Nixon is mirroring the fast-paced digital growth they are seeing among their retail partners, and looking at ways they can lean on those partners many of whom command mass followings of their own while also driving consumers back to Nixons own e-commerce platform, explains Stowe. Were seeing consumers look to a range of sites when they shop: Amazon is clearly the largest, but our accounts like Zumiez and Nordstrom are really important, and consumers also want to go directly to the brand, to Nixon.com.

The brand is making a significant push to move from traditional practices to a more streamlined, all-encompassing approach when it comes to e-comm. Stowe shares how the brands strategy has been realigned to meet these goals.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In terms of restructuring the brand, can you speak to what areas of the business you are looking to strengthen? Can you also give us insight into the new positions you have created / will be hiring for?

Were adding positions mainly in digital. We have a search underway for a VP of e-commerce and marketing, and have set aside several positions for that person to build out the team we have, add some new roles in digital and social marketing and super-size the e-commerce team.

In some areas, well continue to use agencies to help us, and weve seen a benefit to the right blend of internal and external expertise. Were also looking geographically, and will be adding some more support to our business in Japan, working alongside our distributor partner there, launching Nixon.com in Japan and doing more in terms of digital marketing for that market.

Well also be strengthening a new area of the business, something were excited about in terms of reaching a whole new set of consumers, and will be announcing that more formally in the next few months.

Making cuts is never easy, especially with a close knit team like yours. How did you decide which areas of the business needed to be adjusted?

Its hard to lay people off and weve tried hard to avoid it. As we looked at the organization we tried to focus on positions, not people. Some of it was just about filling gaps in terms of getting the right capabilities in place and putting in some depth.

But it was also about looking at efficiency across channels and geographies. That has mainly been about making our US wholesale business more efficient, as well as improving our overall business in Europe. Explaining that to the people affected doesnt make the news any better, but its the analysis we did and it should serve us well as we look ahead in terms of having our people and resources focused in the right places.

How much will we see Nixons marketing strategy change over the next few months with this realignment? What types of marketing is resonating with the Nixon consumer and what strategies will the brand use to leverage this?

It wont really change in terms of what the brand stands for. But youll for sure see more in terms of how we publish on the major digital platforms, and that includes social platforms like Instagram and Facebook, as well as commerce-focused platforms like Fancy. And our investment in search is also ramping up, getting sharper in the terms we use. Our goal is to get better at how we target different groups of consumers, what we publish to them, where that takes them in terms of e-commerce landing pages (ours and our partners).

E-comm is an area that most companies are looking to ramp up and it sounds like this is the case for Nixon. Can you describe what your strategy currently looks like and how you plan to modify and build it to reflect your current audiences needs? How is Nixon attracting a broader audience?

Weve had a pretty traditional e-commerce strategy up to this point. We redesigned the site for more commerce, moved it onto Demandware to get that platforms robust performance, and weve added some better imagery and more recently with The Mission, customization, which has been a huge hit for us. Some of the changes we have coming are more evolutionary: for instance, changing up content and imagery to reflect what weve seen work on social.

But our ambitions are bigger than that. The big direction for us is to move away from hierarchical navigation and much more into search. Navigating using our drop-down menus is kind of like Yahoo! back in the day, and our consumers are much more likely now to use search on the site or enter the site straight from Google search. That means they want relevant results, strong recommendations, and reviews. They want a set of products that is more curated and specific than our hierarchical navigation. Think of many more curated landing pages than we currently have, some pre-merchandised, others created on the fly.

In terms of reaching a broader audience, some of that is about targeting our growing digital advertising to new consumer segments and backing that up with the right landing experience. But our retail partners are really important for growing our audience: individually many of them have much greater reach than we do as a brand, and collectively they have orders of magnitude. We want to extend what were doing in e-commerce to help them.

Weve focused very much on our in-store experience with retailers, and now we need to focus on the in-digital experience with them, as well. That includes simple things like better digital assets to represent Nixon and our product. It should include more commercial support, like helping them always be in stock with drop-ship programs: if youre shopping on Zumiez, and you search for The Mission but they dont stock it, it would be great if we served that up. And it should include extending more service offerings to them, giving authorized dealers post-sale service benefits like free battery changes for instance.

Along with the internal restructuring, will we see an outward realignment of Nixons brand image or focus in terms of who the brand speaks to outside of the core action / adventure sports demographic? If so, what will that look like?

Youll see some new approaches to campaigns over the next few months. I dont think we need to tell many of our core audience who we are and what we do, but well continue to work really closely with our athletes in our core space. But we need to introduce the brand more broadly, particularly with some of the product that we have that is very much on-trend (like our more simplistic Time Teller or Porter watches).

Were going to ramp up our digital marketing collaborations with friends of the brand who have an audience that overlaps with ours, but that stands more outside of our core demographic; we have a few people in mind in the music and art spaces outside of core action sports. Well use imagery that reflects how they see us, and product they want to represent and share. It means publishing more to their channel and audience than we have in the past. Weve occasionally blasted our voice pretty broadly, but this time its more like an introduction from a friend. That feels like a better way to grow and reach out.

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CEO Nick Stowe on Nixon restructuring, updated strategy - GrindTV

Nosy Floridians now have another outlet for their moral outrage. Now anybody in the US state can formally complain about books used in public schools, and schools are required to hear them out.

Last week governor Rick Scott signed a bill that allows any Florida resident to formally challenge new or old materials, like books and movies, available in public schools. In drafting the bill, lawmakers specifically added language that expanded the complaint process to include anyone, not just parents.

Original law:

Each district school board must adopt a policy regarding a parents objection to his or her childs use of a specific instructional material, which clearly describes a process to handle all objections and provides for resolution.

New law, with new language highlighted:

Each district school board must adopt a policy regarding an a parents objection by a parent or a resident of the county to the his or her childs use of a specific instructional material, which clearly describes a process to handle all objections and provides for resolution.

The law also lays out specific guidelines on how schools should field complaints to materials used in class, included in school libraries, and placed on reading lists. Previously the law said that when schools wanted to add new materials, parents had to file a petition within 30 days of the introduction, and that schools had to list the petition on their site and hold a public forum about it. The new version of the law adds that the petition can be filed by anyone, not just a parent; that forums will be overseen by a formal hearing officer, who cant be an employee of the school district; and that schools now have 30 days to hold the forums, instead of seven.

It adds three reasons that material can be challenged:

The purported goal of the bill is to create more transparency around what Florida kids are learning in school. But it effectively institutionalizes censorship, with broad criteria like not suited to student needs. Critics fear that the new legislation constitutes a big step toward the suppression of information on evolution and climate change. And it can be used as a formal process to keep out classics and new works that Floridians think are inappropriate.

According to the office for intellectual freedom (OIF), a part of the American Library Association, the added red-tape will ultimately be used to pressure individual teachers into sticking with safe choices. The goal of this bill is to tie up educators with so much process and challenge and review that they give up on trying to teach contemporary authors on difficult subjects, says OIF director James LaRue, And to intimidate anyone who crosses a political line.

He adds, This is not about education; its about politics.

Excerpt from:
Censorship: A new law in Florida lets any resident try to ban books ... - Quartz

Courtesy: Cairokee

Egyptian band Cairokee has announced that four songs from its upcoming album have not been approved by Egypts Censorship Board. In a Sunday statement on its Facebook page, the band wrote that the album will not be commercially released in its full form given the boards decision.

The censored songs include lyrics about everyday life, our problems as young people, social media and what we see on TV our usual topics, said 33-year old frontman and songwriter Amir Eid, who doesnt think any of the content is particularly controversial. If anything, I feel, as a songwriter, that I didnt say everything I wanted to say.

It is a standard practice for the Censorship Board to review songs before commercial release, but Cairokee, whose rise to fame came as a result of their politically-inspired music, has not had songs blocked before.

Set for release on July 11, Nota Beida (A Drop of White) will be the five-member bands seventh album, following 2015s Nas W Nas. The title track was released as a single in May and has been viewed over 880,000 times on YouTube.

On Wednesday, days after a sold-out show on July 1 as part of Londons Shubbak Festival that featured teasers from the new album, Eid told a maa Masr that the band was not given an official reason for the Censorship Boards decision.

We dont know the real reason, he said. Its possible the album wont be released commercially at all. He added that the matter is currently being handled by the bands lawyers.

While the Censorship Board has objected to the use of certain words in the past, in this case they objected to the release of entire songs, Eid said.

One of the songs that was not approved by the board, which is titled Al-Keif (The High), tackles youth drug use. Ironically, Eid says, the band was contacted by the Social Solidarity Ministrys drug use prevention and treatment program, which asked if it could use the song in an upcoming media campaign.

We will continue with our initial plan and release the full album online, said Eid, cautioning that he did not want to overstate the issue. We have our own parallel world in which we operate. Our fans are all online, and thats that.

The good news is that well keep going, and our music will remain free, read the the bands Facebook statement. It will be available on the internet and on digital stores, with visuals for each song.

Although formed in 2009, Cairokee became widely known during the 2011 revolution, after it recorded the song Sout al-Horreya (The Voice of Freedom), which some protesters took up as an anthem. The song was subsequently picked up by radio stations and TV channels.

The band has since collaborated with prominent figures in the regions music industry, including Algerian singer Souad Massi and late Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm.

Its latest album includes a collaboration with vocalist Abel Rahman Rushdy, who is known for his sufi style of singing.

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Censorship Board bans songs from Cairokee's new album - Mada Masr

Denali wolf (Photo courtesy of National Park service)

The state plans to suspend its largest wolf control program. The Upper Yukon Tanana area program, which has targeted wolves in an area of the eastern interior since 2004, is scheduled to cease after the 2017-2018 season.

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The States long running Upper Yukon Tanana wolf control effort is aimed at increasing Forty Mile caribou numbers for hunters by reducing the number of wolves on the caribou herds calving grounds, but Alaska Department of Fish and Game regional supervisor Darren Bruning said recent years field research indicates wolves are not the limiting factor.

Potential signs of nutritionallimitations were identified, including increased caribou birth rates and reduced calf weights, Bruning said.

A Fish and Game study published earlier this year said Forty Mile caribou grew from 13,000 in 1990 to over 50,000 at last count, but that the biggest growth was prior to wolf control. Since 2004, over a thousand Forty Mile area wolves have been shot from aircraft, under a state intensive management program thats cost millions of dollars. Bruning stresses the programs scientific value.

The information gained through the research activities associated with intensive management are the most valuable product of the program, Bruning said.

The Forty Mile area wolf control program demonstrates the problem with manipulating a complicated natural system, according to retired wildlife biologist Fran Mauer of Fairbanks. Mauer, a critic of predator control, said the state may find itself working in the opposite direction.

If a herd is reaching carrying capacity, its imperative to be ready to reduce the number of animals on the land to preventa precipitous collapse or crash, Mauer said.

Mauer, is frustrated that the state hasnt already curtailed the Forty Mile area wolf kill. Hunting can be used to thin the herd, but Mauer, said its ironic that the state may also end up relying on wolves to reduce the caribou to a sustainable number.

The concern is that weve already reached, or are approaching, carrying capacity, Mauer said. And if anything, we may need those wolves to help bring the herd down.

The Alaska Board of Game authorizes predator control based on Fish and Game recommendations. Board chairman Ted Spraker conceded wildlife management is not always a simple equation.

We all understand how complex and complicated these issues are, Spraker said. And it also takes time to understand if these trends are a one-year trend or is it just a blip. Or is this population moving up or down.

Spraker said environmental factors, like climate change, further complicate the situation. The state plans research over the next five years to look at what happens to Forty Mile caribou after wolf control ends. Wolves killed in the state program have included animals based in the Yukon Charley Rivers National Preserve.

While predator control took place outside of the preserve, it did have an impact on the population and the makeup of wolf packs within Yukon Charley, Spraker said.

Preserve Superintendent Greg Dudgeon said some of the wolves lost were part of a long running NPS study, which was halted due to the state wolf kill.

We did lose several years in what had been a 22-year-long for wolves with home ranges within Yukon Charley Rivers natural preserve, Dudgeon said. We wont get that back.

A recently published article on the Yukon Charley wolf study details impacts of state wolf control on wolves in the 2.7 million acre preserve. Dudgeon said Yukon Charley resumed wolf research this past winter, collaring seven animals to track.

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Interior wolf control program to end - Alaska Public Radio Network