This year’s UK Product Of The Year Awards winners have been announced and the votes have revealed that consumers, feeling the financial squeeze, are giving up luxuries such as beauty products and takeaway coffees, in favour of multi-tasking products.
More than 9,000 consumers voted to determine the results of the 2012 Product of the Year survey, [...]

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Columnist Doug Sacks rants from the USA. You can argue with him here: doug@focus-worldwide.com
Business seemed to pick up around September. Best results are for those having contracts and business with the federal government. Business in Washington, DC is booming – the rest of the country, not so much. DC building construction is rampant and traffic [...]

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Costa Rica has adopted a data protection law, putting it in line with six other countries in Central and Latin America with such laws – Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru.
The law, which aims to ensure privacy rights for any person, regardless of nationality, residence or domicile, applies both to automatic and manual processing [...]

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Take control and innovate or risk the wrath of both consumers and regulators, says Colin O’Malley (pictured).
The ePrivacy Directive has been hiding in plain sight for almost two years now, but marketers remain woefully uniformed of its implications. Many have held back from engaging with the law because they don’t like its requirements and they [...]

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Jonathan Walters has legal tips for companies about a great event taking place between 2011 and 2013!
Fans of UK television presenters Eamonn Holmes, Christine Hamilton and Michael Parkinson will have been perturbed to read that the ‘Great Exhibition 2012’, a cultural and social event taking place in London next year supported by them, has reportedly received [...]

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Nick Fuller (pictured) responds to recent research from Forrester about declining European email affinity.
Forrester’s recent report on consumer attitudes to email showed a trend across Europe for declining consumer attention and increasing likelihood to delete.  Although the reasons often vary by country (particularly around attitudes to privacy), the overall picture is pretty consistent and amply [...]

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CEOs and experts look ahead at 11th World Postal Business Forum during Post-Expo 2011
In the wake of a financial crisis and declining letter-post volumes, increased competition, the rise of digital communication and changing customer behaviour, Posts worldwide are facing a period of unprecedented change. What lies ahead for the postal sector in the near future [...]

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The President of Peru, Alan García, signed the data protection bill into law in July. The Data Protection Authority will hold a national register, on which all private companies will have to register their data. The law applies to personal information.  

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Sometimes, even the world’s biggest and most successful brands struggle to get a foothold in new territories . . . but perseverance can pay off.
Big Macs are now on sale in Marshal Tito Street, Sarajevo, Bosnia. Some 20 years after the break-up of Yugoslavia resulted in terrible conflict, the Bosnian capital has attained a true [...]

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The availability of new carrier-grade network switching is changing the debate, says Manish Sablok (pictured).
Outsourcing and in-sourcing of technology infrastructure have long been hot topics for major organisations and there is a definite flux between a preference for one over the other – based on cost, then on control.
The technology available today helps to create a [...]

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