Iran, where a woman convicted of adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning, is likely to become a member of the board of the new U.N. agency to promote equality for women, prompting outrage from the U.S. and human rights groups.
Some rights groups are also upset that Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive and are barred from many facilities used by men, is also vying to join the governing body of UN Women.
The General Assembly resolution adopted in July that merged four U.N. bodies dealing with women's issues into a single agency with greater clout to represent half the world's population calls for a 41-member executive board, with 35 members chosen by regional groups and six representing donor nations.
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The Asian group has put forward an uncontested 10-nation slate that includes Iran, U.N. diplomats said, and Saudi Arabia has been selected for one of two slots for emerging donor nations.
The 54 nations on the U.N. Economic and Social Council are expected to elect UN Women's board on Nov. 10, and it is possible that other Asian nations or emerging donor nations could become candidates though diplomats say it's not likely.
Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. Mission, said Wednesday that Iran's membership "would send the wrong signal at the start of this exciting new initiative."
"UN Women is a vital new agency tasked with promoting gender equality and women's empowerment worldwide," he said. "We and many other countries are concerned by the negative implications of Iran's potential board memberships, given its poor record on human rights and the treatment of women.
"There are many qualified countries that would make positive and constructive contributions as board members," Kornblau said.
The stoning sentence against the 43-year-old woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, has raised an international outcry, embarrassing Iran.
A resolution adopted by the General Assembly last year expressed "deep concern" at Iran's increasing use of executions, death by stoning, torture, flogging and amputations, and its increasing discrimination against religious, ethnic and other minorities.
Philippe Bolopion, U.N. advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said "it's puzzling that Iran would have the nerve to be a candidate for the board of UN Women, and even more puzzling if the Asia group lets Iran get away with it."
"Having on top of it Saudi Arabia, a country with a track record on women's rights as horrendous as Iran's, would add insult to injury," he said.
Bolopion called their potential membership "an affront to women around the world who are placing their hopes in UN Women," but he expressed hope that the board's overall composition will ensure that neither country will be able to use their position to undermine the agency's work.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon chose former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet to head UN Women, an appointment greeted with overwhelming approval by governments and women's groups who campaigned for four years to streamline the U.N.'s activities promoting the status of women.
The framework for UN Women's work is the platform to achieve women's equality adopted by 189 nations at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing. It called for governments to end discrimination against women and close the gender gap in 12 critical areas including health, education, employment, political participation and human rights.
Bolopion and Jose Luis Diaz, Amnesty International's U.N. representative, were critical of regional groups pre-selecting candidates instead of allowing a contested election in which countries choose candidates and reject ones they deem unqualified.
"Sadly, the issue is not just an individual country's track record on women's rights, dismal though that may be," Diaz said. "A clean slate guarantees countries a seat in the executive body, regardless of their record in protecting women's rights or promoting gender equality. The failure to ensure competitive elections is the responsibility of all member states."
Cora Weiss, president of the Hague Appeal for Peace, said that if board membership "helps to influence Iran's attitude toward women then fine, but if Iran uses it to hold back our dreams and vision for equality then it's a disaster."
According to U.N. diplomats, the 10 countries selected by the Asian group for the board are Iran, Bangladesh, India, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. Eastern Europe and Latin America have put forward contested slates, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the lists have not been made public.
The resolution earmarks four seats from the 10 top donor nations and diplomats said the candidates are the United States, Britain, Spain and Norway. It allocated two seats to contributors from developing countries and diplomats said the candidates are Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
Channel 4 and FilmFlex have announced the launch of Film4oD, Film4’s online on-demand service.
Film4oD will house a large selection of films available to rent online, with many available on the same day as their DVD release. There will be more than 500 films available at launch, available to rent from between 50p and £3.99.
The move signals part of the broadcaster’s strategy to broaden its VOD service and experiment with alternative payment models.
"Sarah Milton, Channel 4’s head of VOD content, said, “It represents a different business model to our current ad-funded structure, and film lends itself well to payments.”
Channel 4 will experiment with a variety of payment models in the coming months, said Milton, adding, “Film4oD will provide us with good insight into the willingness of people to pay for content, and their viewing habits.”
This will help it determine whether to launch Film4oD on other devices, such as the PlayStation3, for which it’s soon to launch 4oD.
“Initially it’ll be an online proposition, but once we understand the level of demand for the service we’ll look at other platforms and devices,” said Milton.
The broadcaster is also eyeing closer tie-ups with social networks. “We’re definitely focused on expanding our presence on social networks, and will be looking at all options in the coming months,” she added.
Andrew Keyte, CEO of FilmFlex, said, “We believe streamed movie rental is becoming a much more satisfying choice for many movie fans. The industry has been waiting for a mainstream, mass-market and legitimate online movie service. We’ve built one that has the widest choice of new titles and is as easy to use as 4oD.”
FilmFlex carried out two years of development and consumer research to deliver the service, which allows users not only to browse by genre, title and new releases, but also watch trailers and view box office details.
To celebrate the premiere of In Bruges on the Film4 channel in November, Film4oD will host a season of crime movies under the banner ‘Partners in Crime’, featuring Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Down Terrace and Seven."
Excerpt:
"The implications of this finding cannot be overstated. Let’s compare TV to digital for a moment. This year, a :30 spot in the World Series will reportedly cost an advertiser $450,000. As is nearly always the case with large TV investments, a vast majority of these ads will go through rigorous pre-testing before they see the light of day. In fact, advertisers pre-test multiple strategies and executions to determine what resonates best with consumers and what will likely provide the strongest sales impact. To juxtapose that, in the digital space, a homepage takeover on a major portal can now cost upward of $1MM on a key date (and routinely above and beyond the $450,000 World Series investment). Sure enough, most of these ads are developed without any kind of pre-testing at all. The question is why?
The answer, I believe, is simple. Despite advertisers’ increasing investment in digital media, copy-testing is simply not yet an accepted discipline in digital. This primarily lies in the way digital ad effectiveness research has been historically funded. Unlike television pre-testing (which is funded and owned by the “client-side”), digital marketing effectiveness research has typically been carved out of media plan budgets. This is a result of three key factors:
1. Historically, a small proportion of total ad budgets have been allocated to digital. With a relatively minimal investment in digital, the importance of getting the creative “right” was simply not a high priority on the client-side.
2. The use of ad formats such as static banners has historically meant that production costs were low and so the cost of being wrong was minimal. As the use of rich media and video increases, so do production costs, which, in turn, means that the cost of not having an effective ad becomes material.
3. Because so much of digital advertising has been (and in many cases still is) transacted and evaluated in strictly quantitative terms (i.e. where impressions are bought and sold on exchanges and delivered through complex targeting algorithms), it can be easy to overlook the impact creative quality can have on the overall effectiveness of a campaign. Many digital creatives know this all too well...."
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Droga5 continues to man the decks 24-7 as the Jay-Z scavenger hunt unfolds
By: Ann-Christine Diaz, Published: Nov 02, 2010
Earlier this month, Droga5 launched a campaign for Jay-Z as audacious as the performer himself. To promote his upcoming memoir Decoded, the agency defied publishing convention and decided to put every single page of the book out in the real world before it hit the shelves, via traditional—and sometimes very unconventional— out of home placements as well as an online scavenger hunt with Microsoft's Bing.The campaign made an opening splash at the Delano in Miami—a page was fully reproduced on the bottom of the hotel pool, with footnotes imprinted on towels strewn across the surrounding lounge chairs. While the words appear for real on the street, those who don't have access to the locations can find them via a unique application/game that Droga5 developed using Microsoft's Bing. Visitors to the site get daily clues, research-able via a Bing overlay, which will lead them to where the pages are, albeit virtually in Bing Maps.
Every day, about five to ten of the book's pages are unveiled, both in the real world and online—the result of a massive, 24-7 collaboration between agency staffers and vendors. With about two weeks and several pages to go until the book launches on November 16, the agency remains on a 24-7 schedule keeping players in hot pursuit.
Creativity talked to Droga5 creative director Neil Heymann and senior interactive producer Andrew Allen about how they kicked off the campaign and have maintained its momentum both on and offline.
Can you tell me about the origins of the campaign and how Bing got involved?
Neil Heymann: We had worked with Jay Z before on a commercial (Rhapsody). That had been successful and something he was personally quite fond of, and the opportunity came up with the new book and for us to work on a promotion of it. On a parallel path, we had been talking to Bing for quite some time and they were looking to do an integrated campaign with us. When we found out the name of the book was going to be Decoded, it seemed to fit perfectly, we approached Bing about it and they were very excited about it as well.Did you decide from the outset that all these elements were going to be involved? How did you arrive at that decision?
NH: As we continued to work with Bing, we obviously needed to make a lot of decisions as to how we make this experience accessible to everybody. The core part of the idea was these real, tactile pages. We wanted every page to actually physically live in the world. Then it became a matter of creating a compelling experience for people who couldn't actually get there. That's where Bing comes in. Through their product, we've been able to build this experience that allowed people to decode Jay-Z's lyrics and actually have the experience of finding the pages on their map. So the location is still at the core of the idea. But whether you're playing in Norway, or passing by it while you catch the bus to work in Brooklyn, you're still interacting with content and actively seeking it out.Delano Hotel Pool
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