Yearly Archives: 2009

VTEA a special needs acronym

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Special needs children are associated with a large number of acronyms, both to describe their condition and to identify the different educational opportunities that are available.

One acronym you may not be familiar with is VTEA. That stands for Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association.  It provides therapeutic horseback riding or hippotherapy to children with special needs.  Given the cost of such therapy, there is a constant search for additional funding so it is important that this charity be as visible as possible.

Those who are familiar with the work of VETA know well the extreme satisfaction that children with special needs have when involved in the VTEA program.  In publicizing these programs, how can this ‘brand’ be best presented.  Does the acronym work or is it better to spell out the full name, Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association?

Acronyms As Brands

There are many examples of companies and organizations which have decided to downplay their full name and use an acronym in their marketing efforts.  One of the most venerable is that for IBM, or International Business Machines as it was known even some fifty years ago.  Having made the switch there has been no turning back and the acronym IBM is now the only company identification for many years. 

IBM is not the only company that has ditched a longer name in place of a catchy acronym.  Here are some others to test your acronym skills.

  • 3M
  • CVS
  • ESPN
  • CBS
  • DKNY
  • IKEA
  • fcuk
  • BMW
  • AT&T
  • GEICO
  • QVC
  • MGM

These are taken from a company acronym quiz, where you will find any answers you are not sure about.  Why would so many companies go for acronyms?

Acronyms Are Perfect Brand Hooks

Using an acronym provides much more marketing opportunity than just being a shorter way of identifying the company.  Whereas a company name using words may suggest certain associations, the acronym is often almost a set of gibberish symbols.  It brings with it no particular associations and the company can through time build up the associations that the acronym suggests to the average prospect or customer.. 

The other advantage of an acronym, is that it may well be possible to buy the associated domain.  The traditional company name may present all kinds of problems in choosing which domain would be appropriate.  In many cases the company name is so long that it would produce a very inconvenient domain name for visitors who wish to type in the URL address.

IKEA a great example of a brand hook

An IKEA Store along Alexandra Road in Queensto...
Image via Wikipedia

Perhaps the best example of this acronym approach is IKEA.

What does IKEA stand for?  It is not an acronym derived from some long forgotten complex company name.  In fact it stands for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.    Ingvar Kamprad was the IKEA founder and he was brought up on a small farm called Elmtaryd close to the small village of Agunnaryd in Sweden.  As you might imagine, IKEA has the various domains associated with that name and this ensures anyone can find the website in any country very rapidly.

Over the years the company has developed a very clear image so that anyone seeing the acronym knows immediately what is on offer.

VTEA may use the brand hook principle

Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association could well use the full name in its publicity, but the VTEA acronym is much more powerful since the associated domain, vtea.ca, does belong to the organization.  The full name may not be clear to some people since it does not highlight that the service is designed largely for children with special needs.

The advantage of the acronym is that with a little effort it can become the simplest way that people refer to this therapeutic riding service. It can also appear relatively quickly as the top ranking in a search for its name.  For that reason, you can expect to be seeing a lot more of the acronym VTEA in the months to come.

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UK State Pension Values Confirm The Frozen Inequity

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Half of the UK pensioners who have emigrated must now await the deliberations of the European Court of Human Rights on whether their pensions will continue to be frozen or whether they will be increased in line with inflation. The decision is likely in March 2010.

An excellent source for all the background on this case can be found at the Pension Parity UK website. The inequity of the situation is apparent to anyone who studies the figures. The callousness of the British Government in this dossier is even greater when one considers that the National Insurance Fund, into which all these frozen state pensioners have contributed to fund their pensions, has a massive surplus.

Some figures recently added to the Pension Parity UK website bring out the unfairness of the situation in even more graphic detail. The page on Our Pension Rights now includes the total pension payments made to all countries. From these values, you can calculate the average pension paid out in each country, which is shown in the table below.

Average UK State Pension being paid
Great Britain £4,968
Spain £3,699
France £3,696
Barbados £3,626
Jamaica $3,563
US £2,057
South Africa £1,955
New Zealand £1,686
Australia £1,643
Canada £1,403

The clear division among countries is very revealing. Those countries with the yellow backgrounds are those where pensions are indexed exactly as in the UK. Those countries with the blue backgrounds are where pensions are frozen. These values are for 2008/2009. Thus we see that the average pension paid out in Spain, France, Barbados and Jamaica is more than 2 1/2 times the average pension paid out in Canada.

As year follows year, the disparity will grow even bigger. Those in the ‘blue’ countries will stay essentially the same. Those in the ‘yellow’ countries will rise in exactly the same way that pensions in the UK rise.

How much longer will this unfairness, which affects over 500,000 UK state pensioners, be ignored and perpetuated?

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Special Kids Need Your Support

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If there is any group that needs as much support as we can give them, then that would be children with special needs. They may be suffering from conditions such as Cerebral Palsy, Muscular Dystrophy, Multiple Sclerosis, Autism, Scoliosis, Spina Bifida, Down’s Syndrome or Blindness. They and their parents have a most challenging existence.

As the world very slowly pulls out of the global recession, agencies that try to help such children find it difficult to get all the financial support they need when money is so much tighter. President Obama had a most appropriate message during the summer with his summer service initiative: United We Serve.

But we cannot do this alone here in Washington. We can rebuild our schools, but we need people to be mentors and tutors in those schools. We can modernize our health care system, but we need volunteers in our hospitals and communities to help care for the sick and help people lead healthier lives. Economic recovery is as much about what you’re doing in your communities as what we’re doing in Washington – and it’s going to take all of us, working together.

I’m calling on all of you to make volunteerism and community service part of your daily life and the life of this nation. And when I say “all,” I mean everyone – young and old, from every background, all across this country. We need individuals, community organizations, corporations, foundations, and our government to be part of this effort.

That approach strikes a sympathetic chord among many people and organizations.

Here in BC Canada, Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association (VTEA) provides therapeutic horseback riding for children with special needs and relies heavily on donations to continue its programs.

empowering special kids

Recently VTEA was the beneficiary of a major donation of donor management software from the SalesForce Foundation, which is a division of SalesForce.com. SalesForce.com is a world leader in customer relationship management (CRM) and cloud computing. The Foundation provides software support to qualified nonprofits and educators. This allows such social change organizations to focus more time on their missions and less time dealing with technology infrastructure. It donates 10 licenses of Salesforce Nonprofit Edition and a further 80% discount on any additional licenses that may be needed. This is a most powerful way of improving the organizational effectiveness of non-profit groups and over 5,500 groups around the world are now benefiting from this support.

Pete Thomas

Another example of the support being given to children with special needs children comes from the UK. Pete Thomas is a very well known professional saxophonist with an illustrious career. One of his first professional gigs was with Fats Domino and he was probably one of the first British musicians to feature with this 11 piece New Orleans band both as a soloist and as a member of the legendary horn section.

He has now launched a new website, Cafe Saxophone, which is a Fundraising site for charities and includes a Discussion Forum. Currently the site is raising funds for Band On The Wall, and specifically for the Gorton Education Village project. This aims to help with music education for children with special needs with an emphasis on how disabled and non-disabled musicians can work together in music and dance, as well as audio-visual production work and the creation of a Steel Band Academy. The Gorton Education Village project in East Manchester has created a single-site campus on an eight acre site providing 900 co-educational spaces and 110 specialist support SEN places.

Such examples help to make more people aware of these special needs children and hopefully volunteers and donors will rally round.

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Langley Horse Capital of BC

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As the Official Tourism Site of British Columbia points out, Langley is known as the “Horse Capital of BC,” and the Township has a population of some 7,000 horses to back up that claim. The setting is ideal with greenery and endless acres of rolling farmland.  You can get involved or watch horseback riding, show jumping, dressage competitions, hayrides and much, much more.

spirit of the horse garden

One unique place to visit is the Spirit of the Horse Memorial Garden located at 1200 208th Avenue in Campbell Valley Park. It is just on the right as you turn into the main equestrian parking lot in the Park.  There are more than 300 plaques commemorating beloved, deceased horses, and equestrian statues and granite benches help create a tranquil, contemplative atmosphere.  Given the great pleasure that so many experience through riding, it is fitting that their faithful friends can be so remembered.

therapeutic riding

Another very worthwhile activity is the Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association. They provide therapeutic horseback riding or hippotherapy for children and adults with special needs.  If you want to savour how empowering for a person with special needs that can be, just read the poem, I Can!  It will open up a whole new perspective for you.

There is always something going on in the horse world in Langley.  Two useful websites for more equine information are the  Langley Horse Federation and the Horse Council BC, which is located in Aldergrove, in the south-east part of Langley Township.

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BWelford’s Monthly Round-Up For August 2009

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This is the online version of the SMM Newsletter. It offers a summary for the month and a selection of the most popular posts written by Barry Welford (online name BWelford) during the past month.

Launch of the Marketing Right Now e-book

August was a somewhat quiet month in Internet Marketing but late in the month, SMM launched the Marketing Right Now e-book. It provides the critical advice that entrepreneurs and SOHO workers need to successfully grow their businesses in this Internet age.

Top Twelve Posts

We hope you will find this round-up of a dozen of the most popular posts instructive and in some cases thought-provoking. You can receive an e-mail version of this if you prefer. In that case, please subscribe via the field in the middle of the right sidebar.

The blogs in which the posts appeared are indicated by the following abbreviations after the date: BPW = BPWrap; SGL = StayGoLinks; SMm = Senior Money Memos; SEP = Search Engine People blog; TOBB = The Other Bloke’s Blog
Website Audits Replace Website Reviews – 08/31/2009 SGL
A website review may comment on appearance: a website audit evaluates the key parameters that contribute to achieving website objectives.
Marketing Right Now e-book – 08/27/2009 BPW
Marketing Right Now is offered as a 55 page e-book (PDF file) and expands on the series on the Cre8tive Flow blog in Fall 2008.
Is Your Retirement Plan In The Red – 08/24/2009 SMm
Jim Otar describes the grey zone that many retirement plans fall into where they may be insufficient for retirees if investments underperform.
Taming the flood – with RSS Or Twitter? – 08/21/2009 SEP
Many suggest that Twitter will replace the reading of RSS news feeds. The news feeds have many advantages for serious readers and will survive.
Wills and Probate To Safeguard Your Heirs – 08/19/2009 SMm
A will should ensure that your assets are distributed to your heirs after all debts have been paid. The probate process ensures that your wishes are followed.
Guy Kawasaki Repeats Tweets: So Do It – 08/19/2009 SGL
Although repeating tweets was originally considered bad etiquette on Twitter, it is almost essential now given the volume according to Guy Kawasaki.
Canadian Cell Phone Rates Throttle Mobile Web Innovation – 08/14/2009 SGL
Canadian cellphone rates as set by Bell, Rogers and Telus, throttle investment in the Mobile Web, one of the strongest growth technology sectors.
Internet Explorer 6 kthxbye – 08/13/2009 BPW
Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 is seeing increasing and violent opposition calling for its death but Microsoft extends its life.
Mind Maps Organize Thinking – 08/13/2009 OBB
Mind Maps are a graphical way of organizing your thinking that is currently very popular. FreeMind is a free software that is very effective.
Google Caffeine Update – Energy Boost For The Brain – 08/11/2009 OBB
Google is updating the infrastructure of its search process, now codenamed caffeine. It should deliver faster more reliable results.
Stop Your Email Newsletter Being Junk – A Case Study – 08/08/2009 BPW
Junk determination is done by the receiving ISP and evaluates the IP reputation and the message content. AWeber provides a email publishing service that avoids problems.
Financial Abuse of Our Elders – 08/01/2009 SMm
Financial abuse to elders is increasing with the severe recession. It is often committed by family members and seniors may be reluctant to prosecute.

As always, if you need creative help or ideas for important blog posts for your own blog, why not check out the SMM Title-Plus Service. You will be amazed how little it costs.

Barry Welford

Footnote: If you are looking for more information on how to run your business more effectively, why not check out these Top Selling Business Books from Amazon. This is an affiliate link but if you do buy a book the small commission does help to underwrite a small part of the cost of providing these newsletters and blog posts.

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