Featured

When the Olympic flame on Feb. 12 lit the cauldron at BC Place Stadium, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, it symbolized peace, hope, inclusiveness, equality, joy and fraternity to viewers around the world. To Coca-Cola and RBC, presenting sponsors of the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay, the flame represented all that and more: the challenge of carrying it safely 45,000 kilometers across Canada for 106 days to more than 1,000 communities and touching more than 90 percent of the Canadian population along the way.

LAST YEAR COULD BE CALLED the year of the handout. For eight hours on Feb. 3, Denny’s restaurants gave away two million free Grand Slam Breakfasts—two pancakes, two eggs made to order, two sausage links and two strips of bacon. Snack-cake maker Little Debbie last fall gave away one million cupcakes (125,000 cartons holding eight cupcakes each. Yummy).

No, your procurement department (or strategic sourcing, strategic spend management, purchasing or marketing services), isn’t going away. If anything, especially in daunting economic times, its influence is growing as companies seek to cut costs and reduce waste. While its role varies depending on the company, procurement most likely is involved in the RFP and RFI process. Other roles include managing and sourcing vendor lists, benchmarking agency rates, negotiating contracts and more.
What’s a marketer to do?

This is the story of the maiden voyage of Virgin Spaceship Enterprise and how the company known for being ahead of the curve showed 800 VIPs and members of the press on Dec. 7, in Mojave, CA, that it wasn’t restricted by anything—even the curvature of the Earth.

For all of its events, Microsoft has a security and health mitigation plan in place. Until last year, it had rarely ever needed to put it into practice. Then came a case of the swine flu just days before its Imagine Cup 2009 event, held July 3-8 in Cairo, Egypt. Students from all over the world participated in a yearlong software design competition for a shot at presenting their ideas at the event and then traveled to the foot of the pyramids for the finals.