Climate change: newspapers unite - 7 Dec 2009

Fifty-six newspapers, a number of them South African, have taken the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice - albeit in 20 languages and from 45 countries - and issued the same editorial calling on world leaders, meeting in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, to set aside their differences and decide on an effective plan of action to combat global warming. As the editorial states: “...humanity faces a profound emergency” and so far, the world's leaders' response to the growing crisis has been anything but impressive.

On a more positive note, last year, the International Marketing Council of South Africa hosted a tour of American bloggers as part of a marketing and PR campaign. This week, 24.com's Matthew Buckland is the South African representative of Travelling Geeks in Paris, France. “The goal of the tour is to collaborate with innovators and influencers, and then share that knowledge and insight to a collective global audience through blogging, video, social media tools, traditional media and meetups,” explains Buckland in his blog. Follow the travelling geeks on Twitter at #tg09, on their Facebook fan page, on Flickr and the web.

Last but not least, congratulations go to TimesLIVE for reaching one million total unique browsers in November 2009 and News24 for cracking 1.5 million unique domestic browsers, according to Nielsen Netratings, and to South Africa for Friday night's 2010 FIFA World Cup Final Draw in the Mother City, which appears to have gone off like, well, the mother of all parties.

Bring on 2010!
Simone Puterman & Rod Baker

PS In this week's Ornico Ad Showcase, we feature TV ads for Coca-Cola, Debonairs, Toyota, Kalahari.net and Windhoek Lager, and radio ads for Maq, Motorola, MTN, Nando's and Halls.