The world's CEOs believe the worst of the global economic crisis has passed and are looking forward to a growth-focused 2010, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' Global CEO Survey.

management-issues says the study of over 1,000 global business leaders indicates that 63 per cent believe 2010 will be the starting point for economic recovery.

The study also claims that 80 per cent of CEOs are confident about the year ahead.

In terms of business growth, the researchers say that around 50 per cent of CEOs in Australia, the Asia-Pacific and Canada expect to increase the size of their workforce this year.

CEOs in Europe appear to be more cautious. Only 30 per cent of firms in France, Italy and Spain plan to hire new staff, while only one in five CEOs expects to increase staff by more than 8 per cent.

If you're not monitoring what's being said about your brand online you could be headed for a reputation meltdown, according to a recent Age story.

The article claims a number of high profile brands have been damaged after disgruntled consumers headed online to voice their complaints at sites like notgoodenough.org.

Web commentators say brands generally find themselves with online facilitated reputation problems after failing to respond appropriately to consumer problems both online or off.

To help keep brands up-to-date with as many comments as possible a number of monitoring tools are recommended, including Google Alerts and Monitor This.

It's also suggested that companies take the time to develop a reputation policy, address complaints in an honest and timely manner and encourage satisfied customers to leave feedback.

A London-based company has launched a board game to help innovators discover new ways of redesigning everyday objects in order to make them more sustainable, Springwise reports.

According to the article, PlayRethink's 'The Eco-Design Game' comes with a multicoloured game wheel, drawing cards, key cards and an instruction sheet on how to innovate with a green twist.

To play the game participants spin the wheel and are prompted to consider how a range of objects, such a dining chair or vacuum cleaner, can be made more eco-friendly.

And if you're proud of the new ideas your game play uncovers (and not concerned about someone taking inspiration from it) you can upload your drawing to the PlayRethink website.

This year could turn out to be known as the 'year of the app' with a new US report indicating there is intense business interest in mobile and social media software applications, emarketer reports.

The report by DM2PRO and Quattro Wireless found the top one third of advertisers and agencies currently using mobile apps planned to up their investments by 75% or more in 2010.

Reasons behind the growing popularity of using apps as a marketing channel include greater engagement with audiences, growing standardisation of app platforms and consumer demand.

According to the study, the leading mobile app platform last year was the iPhone, followed by Google's Android; the most popular business channel for social media apps was Facebook.

The phenomenon of cloud computing is accommodating a range of new voice-based presentation tools for professionals, a recent BusinessWeek article claims.

One of these tools, SlideRocket, is said to make it seriously easy to record your voice directly to slides and then share these presentations with colleagues or clients.

It's claimed marketing types have understood the power of voiced presentations for years and that professionals from other industries are now catching on.

Ultimately the trick to getting it right is less about the software, than it is about the quality of your voice itself. To help you improve your delivery, the article offers a number of tips. These include:

• Smile – it may feel strange smiling to yourself when recording but it's a trick employed by many successful voiceover artists
• Punctuate – pick out key words and emphasise these to keep the attention of your listeners
• Moderation – as you listen to back to your voice evaluate your performance to ensure you're not reading too fast or too slow
• Dry-run – avoid coffee and sugary drinks before recording; they can dry up your mouth and compromise the quality of your voice
• Practice – make sure you read the script several times before you record to ensure the script flows and that you're comfortable

The environment is set to play a leading role at a supermarket near you this year according to a new survey on product marketing trends, Marketing magazine reports.

Datamonitor's 'Product Launch Analytics' also suggests that meat and poultry products that are the result of more humane farming processes will be popular with consumers in 2010.

Key trends identified by the survey include:       

• Greener plastics – get set for a new generation of plastics that biodegrade faster than current versions
• More high energy products – the energy drink market will continue to expand with milk drinks emerging as the next frontier 
• Just add meat – if recent product launches in the US are anything to go by expect to see meat-flavoured vodka and lollipops soon
• Bamboo everywhere – this fast growing raw material is set to find its way into more products, such as packaging and cleaning products
• Gluten-free goes mainstream – it's claimed growth in this market is a response to an increased incidence of food-related allergies

BMW has embraced the discipline of scent marketing with the company using its famous 'new car' smell to market vehicle finance products, Marketing Canada reports.

The company's ad agency in conjunction with the scent marketing company Scentisphere has developed the new car fragrance for use in flyers at Canadian car shows.

The new car smell, which has been named 'Joy', reflects the brand's global marketing platform.

The leather scent is said to offer a 'visceral' experience at events like car shows where visitors are generally more interested in car engines than finance matters.

New research out of the UK suggests people-centric leaders are more likely to display outstanding performance than tough bosses during difficult economic times, management-issues reports.

The study by the research group the Work Foundation focused on differences between leaders who were perceived as good and those who were seen as outstanding.

Researchers concluded that outstanding leaders were more likely to focus on people, attitudes and engagement; they also sought to understand the motives of their workforce.

Other characteristics of top leaders included the ability to display self-confidence without arrogance and a desire to use their influence to benefit their organisation and its people.

It's official. James Cameron's Avatar is now the highest grossing film in Australian box office history. Clearly the story of a wheelchair-bound former solider taking on a virtual reality personality, or avatar, to fight the bad guys has captured the nation's imagination.

While Avatar is a clearly work of science fiction, what if the possibilities it so elegantly presents spilled over into the business world? Could lead character Jake Sully not just shape the future of the fictional world of Pandora but also influence the real-life world of work?

This month's Whitespace investigates the adoption of avatars in business-focused virtual worlds, a development some believe is a workplace eventuality.

Closer than you think?
The film Avatar may be set in the future but for many firms small 'a' avatars are part of the here and now. According to the Harvard Business Review, an impressive collection of organisations – including BP, Boeing, Wells Fargo and IBM – currently encourage the use of virtual worlds at work.

It's claimed avatars are being embraced for staff recruitment, training, brainstorming, conferences, meetings and teambuilding exercises in established virtual worlds like Second Life or private worlds developed using applications like Project Wonderland or ReactionGrid.

Stanford University communication researcher Byron Reeves believes the reason why avatars are edging towards their tipping point is that game-like environments have the potential to address a number of real-world problems.

An obvious benefit of performing collaborative work activities using avatars is that it's often cheaper to meet virtually than physically. It's also a greener approach that reduces the greenhouse gas footprints left behind by globe trotting professionals.

But ultimately the main advantage of avatar-based communication revolves around mental stimulation. According to Reeves the killer application of avatars, its 'secret sauce', is fun.

Fun + immersion = engagement
Speaking recently to the Stanford Report, Reeves claims: "For a lot of jobs right now, work sucks. It's boring. It's repetitive. It's dull. The tools that we've been giving people to do their jobs are not particularly engaging even though we know engagement at work is necessary and valuable for job productivity and satisfaction."

By comparison avatars can provide a more immersive way for employees to perform routine duties with Reeves' research indicating that people's hearts beat faster and their brains work harder when controlling a virtual self. The fun aspect is derived from the innate sense of creativity or even fantasy exhibited in virtual worlds.



Of course there's bound to be some resistance to the idea of fun and gaming at work. But this attitude may soon be a dated one when avatar use reaches its predicted critical mass. Recent studies suggest virtual world populations are booming with market research firm Strategy Analytics estimating that 640 million people will inhabit virtual worlds by 2015.

The next big thing? Really?
The latest predictions about the enterprise opportunities of virtual worlds are nothing new. A few years ago Second Life was receiving a lot of media hype with companies like Telstra pouring funds into virtual world marketing before realizing the people behind the avatars simply weren't interested in sales pitches.

Selling products in Second Life may not have been so successful to date yet activities such as training and collaboration are still bubbling along quietly and, as a result of their low development and use costs, could be worth experimenting with.

As Byron Reeves notes, in the modern enterprise 'work' is not necessarily the opposite of 'fun'. So why not have a little? You never know, maybe some of James Cameron's success will rub off on your organisation's collaborative processes.

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Avatars: an organisational primer
If you're keen to investigate whether there's a place for avatar facilitated communication and collaboration in your organisation, ThinkBalm's report on how to choose workplace 3D world software could be a good place to start. You can also download a chapter of Reeves' book Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete here or purchase it from Management Books.

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Is your brand 'fascinating' enough to survive today's cluttered media landscape?

Sally Hogshead answers this question in her new book by arguing that marketers need to do more than just impress customers, they need to fascinate people 'beyond the bounds of rationality'.

Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation describes a number of cues - including mystique, power and trust - which can help marketers develop profound consumer relationships.

According to Inc.com, Fascinate describes seven triggers using an impressive amount of quantitative research, cool graphics and lively case studies.

For example, the case study for 'mystique' chapter describes the success of an LA restaurant that intrigues customers with a garlic crab dish that's made using a secret recipe in an off-limits kitchen.