P’CONCEPT JOINS MCI FAMILY IN BERLIN, GERMANY

My team and I are thrilled about the new opportunities and growth potential the merger with MCI will provide. Together with the already existing Pharma Team, our goal is to further develop our live-communication business in the fields of corporate meetings, incentives and DMC-services. Our existing clients will be served with continuous quality and will benefit from the business network and the large global community MCI provides.

p’concept staff and operations will be fully integrated in to MCI Berlin offices, which are managed by Gunda Stickan (Managing Director). As Director of the strengthened Corporate Division, I will drive the Pharma-, Event- and Live-Communication business. The p’concept team will move into MCI Berlin’s Markgrafenstrasse offices end of September 2007.

Following the 2005 merger with the highly established PCO-company Congress Partner GmbH in Berlin, MCI, Europe’s leading company in the meetings industry, is continuing its expansion in Germany with the acquisition of p’concept Berlin, headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Together with the former Congress Partner they will operate as MCI Berlin Office.

p’concept Berlin (“The agency for congress & event management”), was founded in 1991. Initially planned as a Destination Management Company (DMC) for Berlin, it rapidly became a partner for local corporate clients throughout Germany. It then gradually grew to become a pan-European actor. p’concept Berlin has a particular expertise with clients in the banking and financial sector and has a strong client base from the US market. p’concept’s clients include, amongst others, DZ Bank, Vodafone Foundation, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, Bloomsbury Publishing, Bausch & Lomb, Berlin Tourism Marketing, General Motors Bank and American Chamber of Commerce in Germany.

Polo Looser, responsible for MCI Central Europe, mentions: “With the experienced talents of p’concept joining our MCI Berlin office, we now have a solid base for further growth. This step strengthens our position and our client base”.

About p’concept Berlin
p’concept Berlin was founded in 1991. It uses the slogan “powered by personality” throughout its operations. p’concept Berlin has a particular expertise with clients in the banking and financial sector and a has a strong client base from the US market The company counts 6 employees and reported a turnover of € 1.9 Million for 2006. For more information, please visit the company’s website http://www.pconcept.com/

About MCI
Founded in 1987 and with offices in Barcelona, Belfast, Berlin, Brussels, Dubai, Dublin, Geneva, Gothenburg, Lyon, Madrid, Paris, Petersfield/London, Prague, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Vienna and Zurich, MCI is the foremost global Association, Communication and Event Management company. Thought-leaders in building community around brands, products and services for companies and institutions, MCI holds a strategic alliance with SmithBucklin for a Global Partnership. MCI currently employs more than 615 talents and its turnover by year-end 2006, was €118M. For more information, please visit http://www.mci-group.com/.

The end of the CD is near

Turnover figures decrease rapidly. Finally the silver sound carrier really seems to fade away.

Three weeks ago two million readers found a CD in the "Mail on Sunday" of the musician, who today is called "Prince" again. "Planet Earth" as the current album was also presented at the entrance free of charge to the guests of his London appearance .

Now the extravagant publication methods of the dwarf from Minneapolis are as legendary as his early records. But obviously Prince again sharpened his sense of business: What is a CD worth after more than hundred years of recording? And after 25 years of digital self-destruction?

If even local bands do no longer sell CDs at concerts to not endanger their fan t-shirt business? What‘s a CD for 15 Euro worth, if a t-shirt brings 30 Euro and is produced in Bangladesh?

For years obituaries have been written about the CD. Now Robert Sandall who was Director of communication at Virgin Records during the crisis years from 1996 onwards is seriously singing the swan song so one can only comment: “It comes to an end”.

Sandall writes in the reputable "Prospect Magazine" that we are to blame.
In the 1982 CD rush nobody in the industry listened to Maurice Oberstein, Polygram boss at that time who said: "We are giving away our master tapes!"

The short term price duplication for CDs was followed by a disastrous decline in value. Musicians realised that concerts served no longer to promote CDs but the other way round.

The figures: In the first business quarter 2007, compared to last year, world-wide CD business again lost around 20%. Sandall writes about the German market: "82 million Germans converted into a nation of bootleggers, who are spending cents on albums, which did cost 40 DM in former times.

The once largest market of Europe today is not larger than the Dutch." The "Prospect Magazines" does not event count the percentage for Germany anymore. France went down 25 percent, Great Britain 20, America 15. The record store chain HMV halved its business within only a year. More severe than the numbers however are the conclusively voiced concerns about the future.
Robert Sandall thoroughly destroys exaggerated hopes that losses can be adjusted by an exploding download trade (40 percent growth in Germany). For him the download boom is hardly more than a proof for the fact that the music consumption changes and recorded music rapidly loses value.

One accumulates music pieces as rumbling files in cheap devices. CDs and MP3s are what musicians distribute for free, what sticks on magazines or falls out of Sunday newspapers.

In April “Mail on Sunday” was already delivered with "Tubular Bells" to the readers. An album, which established Mike Oldfield’s fame in 1973, above all however it established Richard Branson’s conglomerate Virgin, today a part of the EMI.

While canned music loses out, live performances seem to be moving very dynamically in the opposite direction and are experiencing a renaissance.

If even conservative music buyers, i.e. Heavy Metal fans use free download offers today in order to save their money for journeys to live festivals there is not much to promise to the old CD.

Translated from an article from Michael Pilz, published in the Berliner Morgenpost Newspaper on August 9, 2007.

Ice Lounge in Dubai, Cool?

I got this piece of information today from a German marketing agency promoting Dubai.

Looking at ever decreasing energy resources this bar in Dubai is surely not on the energy conservation side of things.

But then again if you think about it that Dubai is willing to host one of the next WINTER OLYMPICS this icy bar is just the "icing" on the cake of energy consumption.

What comes next? Air-conditioned motorways? Frozen beaches? Ice skating on the Persian Gulf? Beach resorts at the north-pole? Here ist the article:

Dubai has a new attraction: a chill-out bar entirely made of ice. Patrons step into a sub-zero environment with the walls, tables, chairs and even their own personal glass with a cool mocktail made out of ice.

Chillout will be the first Ice Lounge in the world serving a selection of cold sandwiches and salads apart from a range of beverages such as Asian Mount Everest, Canadian MT Logan, The Chillout Mix, Lawrence of Arabia amongst others.

And it's not easy to build. The ice for the Chillout restaurant will be shipped in freezer trucks from Canada to freezer containers aboard ships in Montreal that will embark on a 6,500-nautical-mile voyage to Dubai. In total, four containers, each holding about 23,000 kilograms of Ontario-made ice, will set sail to the Middle East. It will take nearly a month to get there, and the $150,000 worth of ice will take eight Iceculture workers about seven days to assemble into an 1,800-square-foot eatery. But how will they stop it from melting in the searing heat of Dubai I hear you ask? Chillout will be constructed in a large freezer.

Said Ibrahim Sharaf, chairman of the developers, Sharaf Group, “There are a very few ice lounges in the world, and those mainly at places with a cold climate. So, the idea of building an ice lounge in Dubai was not only intriguing but also challenging.”

When guests arrive at Chillout, they are provided with thermal clothing – a designer parka with hood, one time use hand gloves, and protective footwear.
Next, guests step into an air lock, close the door, and open another door that leads into the Chillout’s frozen inner sanctum. To prevent body heat from damaging the pristine surface of the ice blocks, it has a maximum capacity of 45 visitors.

The ice used in Chillout is made by a special process so that it is crystal clear with no opaqueness providing an immaculate look to the entire lounge. Other ice features at Chillout include a seven feet high chandelier, ice curtains, a coloured ice portrait of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and the skyline of Dubai along with other points of interest.