Businesses spend a lot of time and money building their brand identity, according to this Marketing Profs article, and brand identity is one of the most valuable assets that all organizations seek to protect. But ease of employee access to the Internet from work exposes the corporate network, which is your brand identity online, to every website your employee visits. One way to circumvent that threat is to completely protect enterprise users' Internet identities through an identity-management Web-surfing system when the network connects to the virtual world, the article notes.
The global advertising market will start to stabilize next year, following double-digits declines in 2009, but more-established markets such as the U.S. won't gain steam for some time, according to business forecasts. Fallout from the global financial crisis will linger in the U.S. ad market in 2010, the forecasts say. For example, Interpublic Group media agency Magna predicts that U.S. ad revenues will grow just 0.2% to $162.7 billion and reach low-single-digit growth rates by 2012.
In this Q&A, Lee Aase, manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic, talks about which healthcare brands will thrive in the future, how social media has effected the way Mayo does business, challenges the organization has faced, and the top lessons learned for implementing a social media strategy.
Signature Healthcare, which includes Brockton Hospital and the 150-physician Signature Medical Group, has become the second Eastern Massachusetts healthcare provider in the past three weeks to form a clinical affiliation with Tufts Medical Center in Boston and its Floating Hospital for Children. The new clinical affiliation will expand existing ties in pediatrics, cardiovascular disease, orthopedics, surgical services, obstetrics, and gynecology, and build new partnerships in bariatrics, neurology, and cancer care, the Boston Globe reports.
President Barack Obama announced he will allocate nearly $600 million from the $787 billion economic stimulus plan to help create jobs at 85 community health centers. The White House said nearly $600 million would be awarded to help pay for major construction and renovation projects at 85 community health centers across the country and assist networks at the centers to move to electronic records.
Buried among the healthcare reform legislation are dozens of lesser-known provisions—from work breaks for breastfeeding moms to a requirement that chain restaurants disclose how many calories are in the fries, USA Today reports. Many of the ideas have failed to gain traction in the past but supporters hope to better their chances this year by hitching them to health reform. "This is the kitchen sink train leaving the station," Neil Trautwein of the National Retail Federation told USA Today. "Every idea, good, bad or otherwise, that has ever been out there has to find its way in."