Tag: marketing

Is Globalization finally saying “STOP!” to the Catholic Church?

https://i0.wp.com/www.catholicworldreport.com/Content/Site140/Articles/05_01_2009/724PopeBenedict_00000000427.jpgAfter only seven years as Head of the Catholic Church, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is an astonishing news.  This may be a message on how Globalization affects such global organization.  The election of Pope Benedict XVI followed all the rules of the Church but did not listen to the “new” rules imposed by globalization: which include good advertisement, global awareness, and above all intercultural appealing to standards of ‘universal friendliness and empathy’, among others.  I wrote an article titled “Parishes Fail to Market Catholicism to Hispanics (pdf available here)” (National Catholic Reporter, Vol. 43, No. 12 2007) discussing how the Catholic Church has failed to Market Catholicism among Hispanics.

Benedict XVI was elected on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave, celebrated his Papal Inauguration Mass on 24 April 2005, and took possession of his cathedral, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, on 7 May 2005. Today, February 11, 2013, Benedict announced that he would resign the papacy, effective February 28, due to age and ill health.

His health may be have been an issue.  However, it seems to me that the real problem started when the Papal conclave of 2005 elected him above the other contestants for the Pope position without taking notice of all the changes that institution has gone through centuries.

Currently, Catholics are 17.77% of the total population in Africa, 63.10% in the Americas, 3.05% in Asia, 39.97% in Europe, 26.21% in Oceania and 17.09% of the world population. (Further information: Catholicism by country)

Distribution of Catholics by World Region, 2004, 2025, and 2050
Note: Percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding.
Source: Author’s calculations based on data from PRB’s World Population Data Sheet 2004 and accessed at http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org.

Globalization is slowly forcing them to adapt to this new demographics and the election of a Latin American (a Mediterranean look would suffice) or African Pope could bring some new Fresh air to this archaic institution.  The Latin America region already represents 42 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion-strong Catholic population, the largest single block in the Church, compared to 25 percent in its European heartland.

In 2005 among the “popeable” (one who might become pope) where also the cardinals Carlo Maria Martini, who died last year and obtained 40 votes in the first ballot versus the popular Italian cardinal Camillo Ruini who also was a contestant for the position in that initial ballot.  Cardinal Ruini has been very active in the mass media and was one of the cardinals who most often appeared on Italian television, newspapers and magazines.  I would suppose that his election as a new Pope in the Conclave of cardinals that will choose the next pope in mid-March is very high.  Camilo Ruini is very popular among the “Reformer” side of the Catholic Church as the news inform (he is also more photogenic and could appeal to the Hispanic followers easily).

Lets see what happens in March, 2013 with the new Papal Conclave.  Meanwhile, I share with you a documentary on the new face of this Eurocentric organization that is finally (slowly) changing its own look!

The Catholic Church and Africa

The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.

via Open Culture by Dan Colman,

Matthew Might, a computer science professor at the University of Utah, writes: “Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is. It’s hard to describe it in words. So, I use pictures.” It’s September 26. That means fall is here again, and it’s time to bring you an encore presentation of Matt’s Illustrated Guide to the PhD. Have a look, and you’ll see the whole undertaking in a less hubristic way:

Imagine a circle that contains all of human knowledge:

By the time you finish elementary school, you know a little:

By the time you finish high school, you know a bit more:

With a bachelor’s degree, you gain a specialty:

A master’s degree deepens that specialty:

Reading research papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge:

Once you’re at the boundary, you focus:

You push at the boundary for a few years:

Until one day, the boundary gives way:

And, that dent you’ve made is called a Ph.D.:

Of course, the world looks different to you now:

So, don’t forget the bigger picture:

You can find Matt’s Illustrated Guide hosted on his web site. This guide/reality check is published under a Creative Commons License. You can also buy a print version for $6.50. (The money goes to charity.) Matt offers more insights for Ph.D. students here.

The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. is a post from: Open Culture.

Interview: How Procter and Gamble Learned To Love YouTube

“Action is purposive conduct. It is not simply behavior, but behavior begot by judgments of value, aiming at a definite end and guided by ideas concerning the suitability or unsuitability of definite means. . . . It is conscious behavior. It is choosing. It is volition; it is a display of the will.” Ludwig von Mises

As a former employee of P&G I am always proud to learn from the future of one of the greatest companies on Earth.  P&G provides with hundreds of consumer goods to millions of human beings at competitive and wonderful prices.  Indeed, companies like P&G are the result of team working leaders who create a better future by giving irreplaceable experiences to its consumers.  In the following video, Melanie Healey (P&G Group President, North America) and Filippo Passerini (Group President, CIO, P&G) explain how success is about networked technology, big data analytics and 1-to-1 marketing.

As Passerini asserts, what we need right now is “business people that have passion for technology but (who don’t forget) that they are businesspeople”. Further, Healey elaborates on how global channels are currently working in global scale.  As Healy explains, they create plans that “deliver strategies faster, cheaper and better” in order to create business plans in order to fulfill the business needs.

Indeed, in a globalized world opportunities appear logarithmically while strengths are developed by giving always an added value for consumers.  Indeed, as philosophers like Ayn Rand and economist Ludwig von Mises so wonderfully elaborated as it is the philosophy of the entrepreneur what allows him to pursue successful projects.  What gives the entrepreneur the ability to succeed are market signals, which are necessary to determine what people might want and how well it was provided. Even the smartest person can’t learn if a teacher uses black chalk on a blackboard in a dark room. No entrepreneur can succeed in isolation.

Entrepreneurs and successful men with values like them are what we need in the world! People ready to create something better and work hard!