It's a book:  BERLITZ COMPLETE GUIDE TO CRUISING & CRUISE SHIPS 2012
It's the cruise expert - who has spent most of his life on the water: Douglas Ward
It's the 27th edition: the first 26th were effective.

October 19th --it's here. With an App.

Now in its 27th year, the eagerly awaited guide is the only cruise book you need –while the Berlitz Cruise Ships 2012 App provides easy search among 285 ships

Douglas Ward, as always, provides the industry with the list of highest ranking heavy hitters -- which ships are best in class? And then he goes on to reveal, in practical terms, as he provides guidance to all kinds of people -- families, singles, those seeking culture or just some good times, about how to make the best choice for your cruise vacation.

With an economy as turbulent (and unpredictable) as the waves themselves, it's become clear that a cruise vacation is a first choice for Americans watching their finances.

But it's also a first choice for families who want to enjoy vacation time together without having to slave over a hot stove while missing time at the beach. And... cruising has become a top choice, for adventure and luxury, providing trips through exotic waters (like the Amazon and Gambia Rivers), once-in-a-lifetime excursions; and chefs with many stars.

As Americans book cruises in record numbers, the cruise lines work hard to provide fresh choices in salty water, such as more theme cruises, language-specific ships, family reunion and occasion options, and freestyle dining. There are butlers and suites and the Royal Shakespeare Company, orchestras, rap music, so many kinds of bars and grills, and some lines will even pick up your bags from your home and you can find them in your stateroom when you board in another country.

The Complete Guide, filled with lively, no-holds-barred text and vibrant color photos (including maps of principal cruise destinations), is independent and is in no way subsidized by advertising or sponsorship

Cruising has become a very imaginative business. And with Mr. Ward spending up to 200 days a year on the seas researching first-hand what’s best (and worst) in all aspects of  cruise travel, we always look forward to his book. He's spent a lifetime sniffing out the new and different, and can tell you at the snap of a finger what's improved, where quality has taken a dive, and which ship has the best selection of delicate pastries.

Simply put, Ward says, the guide provides “a wealth of information and evaluations about the ships, life and services aboard them and how to get the most from the cruising experience.”

If your preference is to “cruise for your cruise” digitally, the Berlitz Cruise Ships app (US $9.99), which has enjoyed high ratings in its first year, allows users to instantly search though the array of cruise ships with just a couple of taps. The 2012 version features an enhanced interface, which helps lead the cruise-goer to his/her best possible cruise match-up, and is loaded with every ship review, current background on cruise lines, ship photos and a new design.

Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising & Cruise Ships 2012 can be purchased from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powells.com, independent bookstores and wherever fine books are sold for $24.99. The Berlitz Cruise Ships 2012 App can be purchased on the iTunes App Store for $9.99.

Feel free to write me - and I'll pass it on to Douglas: what is the most memorable detail of a great cruise experience you ever had? (I'll tell you mine and maybe if we're lucky, Douglas will give you some really interesting anecdotes about his adventures.) He has a great one about Antarctica.

In a Media Post piece, The Fast-Paced Future by Rick Bruner, posted on September 30, 2011, he said:
"In the few days since I was invited to write this, Google+ went public, Facebook announced Timeline, Amazon debuted its tablet, Fire, and its cloud-based browser, Silk, and the IAB reported ad spending on the Internet grew by 23% in the first half of 2011 compared to last year. The pace and scale of change in media we are witnessing is difficult to fathom, much less summarize in a few hundred words."

He highlights the trends - which we saw at OMMA - this way:

More media fragmentation. How many ways can you watch your favorite TV show? Pirated, DVD, DVR, streaming, VOD, downloaded to mobile, tablet, and on and on. And, oh right, broadcast. The landscape of media is undergoing radical, frenetic change. And beyond an explosion of new technological channels for consuming professionally produced media, a sea-change is the increasing popularity (and competition for professional media makers) of amateur social content, such as blogs, Twitter, homemade YouTube videos, Facebook and so on. This trend will continue. A limited counterbalancing trend is media aggregation platforms, such Facebook, where people browse media from all those channels in one spot. But the main impact for marketers is more work required on the part of media buyers combined with more technology attempting to reaggregate audiences, such as advertising exchanges. Complexity reigns for the foreseeable future in targeting audiences for appropriate brand messages.  

More intelligent personalization. Facebook, FlipBoard and Amazon (both as a marketing and in the form of its new Silk browser) are all good examples of how media companies and marketers are harnessing knowledge about people's interests, based on algorithmic analysis of digital media and shopping data exhaust, to better customize unique and hyper-relevant experiences for media consumers. Expect this to continue. The next most powerful shift we should expect is services able to aggregated such data from across siloed data stores presently to improve knowledge of people's tastes across media and shopping experiences. Imagine a service that mashed-up everything Facebook knows about your tastes with everything Amazon does, plus your account info from NetFlix, iTunes, Pandora/Spotify/LastFM, Yelp, IMDB and so on. Rather than hoarding this knowledge in secret for use only in behavioral targeted advertising, a winning service will deliver this as a direct user experience, with superior recommendations for a range of consumer desires. 

Advertisers will become "ROI Managers, managing ROI against sales impact. Advertisers are only beginning to get the upper hand on the blizzard of data generated by all of the new media and marketing systems that drive consumers' lives today. Mostly those programs remain disconnected and reactive. Winning marketers of tomorrow will excel at changing their perspective on ROI from simple campaign measurement to iterative, integrated, cross-channel management. At the heart of succeeding in that transition will be spend-to-impact analysis across and among marketing programs, providing an equalized basis for evaluating the impact of every marketing investment from television to direct mail to billboards to search advertising to social media programs. 

To this last issue, my fave Social Media expert, Steve Goldner, aka Social Steve, says:
"For the better part of two years, I have been suggesting the importance of the social media marketing funnel within social media. Today, I am here to say it has past its relevance. Key issues are 'sales' and 'ROI'. A marketing funnel has always had a 'sales' stage. I am suggesting that sales NOT be something that is measured for social media. Thus we should not look for social media ROI, but rather social media ROE (return of engagement).

This is not another loose definition of measuring the relevance of social media for business, but rather I provide some concrete parameters that really show a return to the business. Check out his article, “Social Media Model that Defines the End of the World as We Know It” at http://wp.me/pxjrG-k5 and add your thoughts."

What Steve is saying reminds me of how some clients view PR activities as they are practiced through traditional media placements (and now, social media). Small-to-mid sized companies want sales from PR. Corporate communications wants ROI based on reports generated by companies like Cision that have complicated dashboards that measure how much a company is talked about -- where the article appeared-- how many words etc. 


There are two things wrong with this:


1. A company's customer may be talking about his/her experience and refer to that company once in a front page article of say, The Wall Street Journal. Cision will weigh the value of that article (which was generated behind the scenes by the PR company) based on the client being mentioned only once -- and the article not being fully about that company. In fact, getting a third party endorsement from a customer in print is the most valuable PR any company can receive. It's real life anecdotes that engage readers' interest and build Reputation and Influence for the client. 


2. If some of the most credible, hard-working journalists were aware that their articles are being referenced and rated in ROI shekels, they would not be too happy. As a PR person and sometimes journalist, I always thought this was not only an inefficient way to rate the value of placements, it's also not smart. It means putting CONTENT AND ENGAGEMENT in a numerical system --- and what comes out the other end is garbage.


Yes, I know you need SOMETHING, but I would judge an article by its LEVEL OF ENGAGEMENT AND INFLUENCE, much as Steve has suggested for social media. The same principle applies to traditional media placements.

Celebrity Click; Tamara Lackey Talks Photographing the Famous

Don’t think of it as celebrity chic, but rather celebrity click.
When you sit down with Tamara Lackey and talk about photographing the famous, you get the expertise of a globally renowned pro, the passion of an educator, and some fairly impressive celebrity recollections.
It’s one thing to shoot the likes of Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU), Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie), Katie Brown (Katie Brown Workshop) and Christa Miller  (Cougar Town) at a summer charity event in the Hamptons, where time isn’t especially precious and their kids are less interested in sitting still long enough for a pose than giggling, munching on potato chips or running around amid the circus-like activities. “With a reluctant child, I can wait them out and still get what I’m seeking.” Tamara says. “When I’m granted 15 minutes with a high-profile individual who cannot veer two minutes off their schedule, then I need to make it work in that time period.”



How HIGH a high-profile subject? Try Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain, on the 2008 campaign trail. “What remains the same is that you’re simply approaching people, and it’s really as plain as that. I will definitely feel the sensation of ‘I want to get this right’, but I rarely feel intimidated photographing the famous because I have yet to meet one person who doesn’t feel the all of it – the hype of their branded name is there, sure, but the other side of what makes them human doesn’t show up in the glossy press---the discouragement, the embarrassment, the disappointment, the loneliness. We all share that lower range of our emotions, and it is the great leveler between us. Since I see so much more of the emotional body of an individual rather than anything formally written up about them … well, I just shoot what I see.”


That prompts me to ask her how exactly she adapts her shooting style in a fast-paced, fluid atmosphere.
That’s where improvising comes in, she says. “When I photographed Ty Pennington on the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition set, it was between takes, I couldn't grab any additional lighting, and we had to make do with shooting as cleanly as possible. When I photographed Maya Angelou and Michelle Obama together, I had a grand total of 10 minutes to get the shot, as handlers waited behind me impatiently to move them onto the stage. You get used to working in a quick, focused manner and learn to hone in on your subject with the equipment at your disposal.

When it comes to politicians in particular, she says, “one thing I find is that they aren't always captured in the most appealing way. From my perspective, I don't believe in dropping that aspect of portrait photography just because the images are more photojournalistic in nature. One of the more unique aspects of photographing celebrities on location is simply being able to cleanly photograph them away from the distractions of those clamoring for their attention, and engage them in a way that brings their attention to your conversation and the photographs vs. the swirl of elements that surround you both.”


Tamara is quick to add that photography is her career—but only a part of her life. Her acclaimed edutainment book + DVD set, Capturing Life through (better) Photography, is presently in book stores, and she says that her most personal (and influential) book achievement may well prove to be Envisioning Family: A Guide to Making Meaningful Family Portraits of the Modern Family, scheduled for publication later this fall.
And then there is her web-based interview show reDefine, featuring entrepreneurs and artists whose “inspirational advice is as important as their innovative methods.” It’s all about chasing your dreams, and as Edie Falco told Tamara in the Hamptons: “You find out what you want to do and how to do it and you go for it. You don’t let anyone tell you you can’t, or let anyone tell you all the reasons it shouldn’t happen.”
Certainly Falco hasn’t been dissuaded. She’s a three-time Emmy winner, and is going for her fourth win (at the Sept. 18 Emmy Awards). Mariska Hargitay is competing for her second win.
Having photographed both, who’s Tamara rooting for? No need to be diplomatic here. As Falco and Hargitay are competing in different categories, Tamara’s answer is easy: “Both

Rich Text
Article first published as Celebrity Click; Tamara Lackey Talking Photographing the Famous on Technorati.

It was just announced that Amy Winehouse's parents plan to convert her London home into the headquarters for the Amy Winehouse Foundation, a charity organization to help children in need. It was also reported that the singer died from withdrawal from alcohol. 

For further information on TARP, Inc., contact William Perkins at 718-909-8034, or visit his school at www.ACTTC.com.