ProfNet Wire: Business & Technology: Event Marketing/ID Theft

ROUND-UP: FOREIGN TAX HAVENS (continued)

We've added the following to items posted previously at http://profnet.prnewswire.com/organik/orbital/thewire/lst_leads.jsp?iLRTopicID =6120

**1. ALAN R. EBER, tax and asset protection attorney at the LAW OFFICES OF ALAN R. EBER, is an expert in the asset protection field, as well as an author and speaker on wealth protection. He practices law in the fields of foreign and domestic trusts, business structuring, and U.S. and international taxation and wealth protection. Eber provides offshore and domestic asset protection and estate preservation consulting services to individuals and corporations. He specializes in forming offshore structures designed to provide U.S. residents with access to investments programs unavailable in the U.S. as well as other structures.

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LEADS

**1. BUSINESS: LEVERAGE ASSAULTS WILL BECOME MORE COMMON. ROBERT L. SICILIANO, personal security expert for SAFETRAVELSECURITY.COM: "Recent kidnappings and home invasions of bank executives in Ireland shine a light on the vulnerabilities of those in key company positions. Executives with keys to the safe or passwords to the data are likely to be a target for a 'leverage assault,' when criminals prey upon the values of a businessperson in an authoritative position and they use leverage to get what they want. The recent kidnapping of a Swedish home electronics heir is a perfect example. With terrorism on every CSO’s mind, corporations are hardening. Usual targets are becoming difficult to penetrate. Leverage assaults will become more common."

**2. MARKETING: EVENT MARKETING CONTINUES TO BOOM. FRANK GOLDSTIN, CEO of XA Inc., an event marketing, design and production firm: "Event marketing is now one of the largest growing segments of the advertising and promotion industry. Companies spent an estimated $234 billion last year in an effort to reach target consumers, and business-to-business marketing represented an additional $120 billion. Events can complement existing ad strategies and put a company in direct contact with potential customers. It allows companies to target specific groups or demographics in a live setting." Goldstin's clients include GE, Motorola and McDonald’s.

**3. MARKETING: FOCUS GROUPS FAIL TO PREDICT PRODUCT, ADVERTISING SUCCESS. JACK GORDON, CEO at ACUPOLL: "Focus groups have their place, but leading-edge marketing executives and brand managers have abandoned the archaic practice for faster and more accurate testing methodologies. The way focus groups have been conducted is a Model T compared to newer programs that are significantly more predictive and can evaluate quantitative and qualitative data to establish a true emotional connection with a product or brand. Advertising agency leaders must update this arcane practice, and clients need to understand there are much better options than focus groups."

**4. TECHNOLOGY: STOPPING ID AND CREDIT CARD THEFT. EMILIAN ELEFTERATOS, CEO of SIVAULT SYSTEMS: "Identity theft and forgery is rampant in the U.S. Too often, the person who purchases a product is not the actual credit-card holder, but an impostor. Identity stealers have created a multi-billion dollar consumer fraud problem for businesses here in the U.S. and overseas. The U.S. government estimates that American companies spent approximately $3 billion in 2004 in anti-counterfeiting and anti-fraud systems." SiVault has developed a technology that authenticates a person’s signature and also verifies in real time that the person who signed the sales slip is not an impostor.

**5. TELECOM: SBC-ATT MERGER WILL KICK OFF ANOTHER CONSOLIDATION WAVE. CHRISTOPHER STERLING, professor of media and public affairs at GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: "The announced SBC-ATT merger will probably kick off another wave of telecommunication industry consolidations as companies scramble to assemble the right pieces to better compete in coming years. While it's sad to see the demise of an independent AT&T after 130 years, it's been coming for a long time. It seems clear that AT&T's current management has been cutting costs (chiefly personnel) to better prepare the carrier to be an attractive takeover target. That strategy appears to have worked. But this is only the beginning -- others will now have to take similar actions to remain in contention as across-the-board competitive entities."