Innovation

Radian6 adds to monitoring services

Rowser — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:19:20 -0300

Author

John Pollack

Source

Telegraph Journal, Published Monday June 29th, 2009

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/713020

Image

Image Caption

Marcel LeBrun. Photo by: David Smith

Body

New Brunswick company gives customers more ability to track return on web investment

Radian6's latest addition to its social media monitoring service brings marketers one step closer breaking down the professions biggest barrier, a leading Canadian marketing professor says.

The New Brunswick firm is now giving its customers more ability to track its return on investments, at least online, by incorporating web analytics.

"We're integrating the social metrics we collect about how many people are saying what about you (on blogs, YouTube, Twitter and other similar sites) with activity on your website," Radian6 chief executive Marcel LeBrun said. "Now you know which articles drove which people to cause which actions on your website."

This will allow marketers to more effectively spend their time and energy, he said on the phone from Boston last week where he made the announcement at an enterprise 2.0 conference.

"This is the kind of idea that social media really needs right now," Queen's University marketing professor Ken Wong said.

While the new service will allow companies to know how publicity on the web translates into online sales, anonymous in-store customers who may have been sold on the product online still aren't easily traceable.

Because of this Wong said the service isn't a complete solution because there isn't one, as marketers won't ever likely know exactly what customers are thinking. But he said every step towards it is worthwhile if companies can afford it.

"If they're doing something to enhance the response ability, then that's a step in the right direction," he said.

Though companies have been tracking click activity online for years, LeBrun said the Internet has changed and web analytics should follow.

"It used to be that your website was your embassy on the Internet," he said. "But now you have outposts on all these social networks."

"We're producing that picture of what's happening not just on your website but everywhere," he said.

And it's not just being shown to marketers and executives.

Radian6 also made additions to the service that allows sales and customer service agents to leverage the power of monitoring the social web.

By integrating a popular customer relationship management system with its social media monitoring service companies can know more about their customers.

"They'll be able to see who they are online. Not just here's their account number and here's their phone number, but here's where they blog, here's where they tweet, and this is what they've been talking about," LeBrun said. "You have a better context to build a relationship and to connect with the customer."

Radian6 struck a deal with Salesforce, a popular customer relationship management system, but LeBrun said he plans to collaborate with other systems in the future. Wong said this addition is also great as it connects the conversation between a customer and company on both the marketing and customer service sides.

"It brings social media closer to delivering on its potential," he said.

NB Innovation Forum 2009: Call for Proposals - Extension of the deadline

Rowser — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:26:15 -0300

Author

Source

Source Url

http://innovation2009.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/proposals_e.html

Image

Image Caption

Body

EXTENSION OF THE DEADLINE TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

Please note that the deadline to submit a proposal for the New Brunswick Innovation Forum 2009: Your Fast Track to IT Opportunities has been extended to Friday, June 26 at noon. The Forum will be hosted by the National Research Council Canada Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT) on October 27-28, 2009 at the Saint John Trade and Convention Centre, Saint John, New Brunswick.

To submit your proposal, please visit the New Brunswick Innovation Forum 2009 website.

This event is designed to complement and immediately precede the Think NB ICT Showcase.

Medical info sharing system now province-wide

Rowser — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:22:14 -0300

Author

John Pollack

Source

Telegraph Journal, Published Tuesday June 2nd, 2009

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/686060

Image

Image Caption

Wayne Chamberlain, vice-president of marketing with Anyware Group Inc., says the province-wide system helps address the shortage of specialists in rural areas, by virtually making them closer and more accessible. ‘The province now has the ability for these centres of excellence to reach out to all the outlying areas through this system,’ Chamberlain says. Photo by: KâtÈ LeBlanc/Telegraph-Journal

Body

Service AnyWare Group Inc.'s Roam system contract worth $4.29M

A Port City technology company has helped New Brunswick become the first jurisdiction in North America to implement a province or state-wide information sharing system for health-care workers, the provincial government announced Monday.

General practitioners, specialists, administrators and other health professionals can now access almost any medical information, that they are authorized to see, from any computer with Internet access because of AnyWare Group Inc.'s Roam system.

The contract is worth $4.29 million and secures the service for the next five-and-a-half years.

Wayne Chamberlain, AnyWare's vice-president of marketing, said the province-wide system can help reduce waiting time for treatment by making health-care providers more efficient.

"They're able to have specialists do consults remotely using the system," Chamberlain said.

This means a Miramichi doctor with a heart patient can more quickly consult a specialist in Saint John without having to wait for files to arrive or send the patient to another hospital.

Chaimberlain said the systems helps address the shortage of specialists in rural areas, by virtually making them closer and more accessible.

"The province now has the ability for these centres of excellence to reach out to all the outlying areas through this system," he said.

Chamberlain also said the system will help avoid expensive, unnecessary decisions that are made as a precaution.

A head injury victim in Woodstock could get scanned locally and get a consultation from a neurologist in Moncton to decide if the patient needs to be sent there.

"If he doesn't then you save that whole transportation cost and treatment cost," he said.

Roam allows doctors to use any of the software they would normally use to view files, such as x-rays, blood results and health records, from any computer or smart phone with a web browser, eliminating the need for the applications to be installed on every device.

This is a huge benefit to the IT division, which can add new applications to the system quickly and easily.

"You can imagine if you had one system to roll out provincially and you had to go install a piece of software on every health-care worker's PC or laptop, you can imagine how long that would take," Chamberlain said.

With Roam most new applications only take about a day to install on a master server.

"Then 15 seconds after that it can be rolled out to hundreds of health-care workers across the province," he said.

Chamberlain said the province hasn't provided him with an estimated time and cost savings Roam will bring, but suspects they won't know for some time.

Health Minister Mike Murphy was not available for comment Monday afternoon.

The system had been installed at each of the former eight regional health authorities since 2004, but now all health-care workers and their files are connected province-wide. More than 70 per cent of the doctors in New Brunswick are already using the system so Chamberlain said he doesn't expect a long transition period.

"With the province leading the way on this, it will give other prospects we're talking to a lot more confidence that this does work and the benefits are going to be real for doing it," he said.

Chamberlain said every jurisdiction in North America will eventually implement a similar system.

"This is something that all the health-care systems in Canada and eventually in the U.S. we believe are going to have to resolve," he said. "How do we get our health-care workers the information they need when and where they need it?"

He said he thinks an information-sharing system will eventually be build across Canada.

"They're starting by building systems at the provincial level and planning that these will connect together," Chamberlain said. "I definitely think Roam will have a big part to play in that."

More ideas will generate more capital

Jeff Roach — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:33:34 -0300

Author

John Pollack

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Wednesday May 27th, 2009

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/679971

Image

Image Caption

Marcel LeBrun, chief executive of Radian6, a New Brunswick company that has become a global leader in social media monitoring, says attracting large companies to the province won’t likely create the human capital necessary for developing a cluster of new innovative businesses. LeBrun says the province just needs the people that are here to bring their innovative ideas to market. ‘I’m a believer that the more good ideas there are the more capital will come.’

Body

Technology Executive favours attracting entrepreneurs to province, not big companies

New Brunswick needs to stop promoting the province as a place to do business if it wants to encourage new innovative startups, a leading technology executive says.

"If they're setting up here because they can get access to low cost call centre workers than no, it's not going to do anything for the tech sector," LeBrun said of a large technology company hypothetically opening operations here. "If they move their research and development here that would be a different thing, but I don't think that's what's being sold to them at the moment."

He said idea generation is usually kept close to the leadership of a company that won't likely move its headquarters here.

LeBrun will be the keynote speaker at Propel ICT's annual general meeting today in Saint John. His speech to the technology association crowd will focus on how web 2.0, particularly social media, provides new opportunities for businesses and further breaks down geographic borders.

Though the Internet has connected people around the world for about 20 years, LeBrun said in an interview, he will argue in his speech that the more recent popularity of the social web makes virtual proximity more important than physical proximity thereby eliminating geography as a factor for many businesses.

LeBrun said attracting companies to New Brunswick may make sense on an economic development agenda, and acknowledged discouraging the job creation efforts is controversial, but he, like many others involved with Propel ICT, feel the province needs to have a strong focus on entrepreneurship.

LeBrun sees value in inspiring creative home-grown business ideas that can use new Internet tools to compete in a world-wide market.

"It's a global world and we need to build globally minded companies," he said. "When you're in a flat world where geography doesn't matter you can't take your geography and use it as a differentiator."

He wants to see New Brunswick develop a technology cluster that will breed creativity, such as in California's Silicon Valley. Similarly to the popularity of a sport, LeBrun said a successful regional industry will come from people seeing it done and wanting to give it a try.

"If you come to bat enough times you're eventually going to hit something," LeBrun said. "I think the number of times we swing our bat is the key metric we need to be focused on."

Though New Brunswick doesn't have the population or money that Silicon Valley does, he said the province just needs the people that are here to bring their innovative ideas to market.

"I'm a believer that the more good ideas there are the more capital will come," he said.

LeBrun argues consumers don't care where a product or service is from - if it is interesting and stands out enough to generate discussion online it will likely sell.

"If you're a little jewelry company in Fredericton and you've got a product that's remarkable, that people will talk about, there's no reason why you can't really figure out how to grow that business," he said.

54Hour StartUp Weekend Launches 3 New ICT Companies

Jeff Roach — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:20:42 -0300

Author

Source

Source Url

Image

Image Caption

Body

Saint John, NB, May 13, 2009: On May 8th, 9th, and 10th local developers, designers and entrepreneurs gathered together for a community building startup event in the uptown of Saint John, NB. “We intended the event to be a networking opportunity for the local software development community, and hoped that we might be in position to launch one new software a company by the end of the weekend,” says Michael Wilcott, one of the organizers of the event, “But we have managed to exceed that goal”.

Three different teams, which formed during the course of the event, are now in the process of incorporating in order to continue the development and marketing of the ideas that brought them together starting on Friday night.

GeoCure is a product that seeks to leverage the tremendous growth in adoption of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter in order to track and present infection rates for many communicable diseases. “Young people like me don’t watch the news, read a paper, or even visit online new sources like CNN to get our information.” said Robert Foley, who pitched the idea of GeoCure, “We get all of our information from social media, a form of news which is more immediate and less filtered than traditional sources.” GeoCure seeks to collect content from various social media sources and use it to track the spread of infections in order to assist consumers in evaluating their risks. “We also think that there are potential applications for various public health organizations, as well as private enterprises that are in the health care space” stated Robert.

Another product that caught participants attention was ‘eCeipts’, an electronic receipt system that holds the potential to completely transform the way people shop and buy goods. “After every transaction at any retailer the final step in the process is for the cash register to print a paper receipt.” says Alex Scott who presented the eCeipts idea at the event, “Most of us simply throw the paper receipts away, or we lose them. For those who need to keep their receipts for the purposes of tracking expenses, losing them is a major hassle”. eCeipts looks to save consumers these hassles by capturing the information from traditional paper receipts and instead sending it to a database that sits behind a website. The website can be used to store and organize an individual’s receipts in a convenient and powerful format. The eCeipts team is in the process of incorporating and has launched a website at www.eceipts.ca as the first step toward building their eCeipts solution.

The final group that is moving toward incorporation is working on a web-based game called ‘Karmundi’. “We all believe we have an idea that creates a whole new genre of game that we call Progressive Social Gaming”, says Michael Wilcott, spokesman for the six member team that launched www.karmundi.com as part of the 54Hours weekend event. “I’d describe it as part Pokémon, part scavenger hunt, and part social networking” said Wilcott. “We are targeting families who are looking for fun activities that they can do together, that also allows parents to teach positive social values to their children while leveraging the tremendous power of the web to create communities”. The Karmundi team, whose slogan is “Karma. For The World”, is looking to launch a pilot of their new service by September of this year.

Jeff Roach of propel said the event is a perfect activity for stimulating entrepreneurship and new business formation at a grassroots level. “Many people have good ideas but very few are able to visualize what that idea looks like as a business.” says Roach. “This weekend event allows people to have fun expanding their ideas and having others share in building on their idea and growing a team of shared interests. We appreciate the efforts and enthusiasm of Jason Richard and Michael Wilcott who organized this event and are proud to sponsor this and future weekend events”. Roach said the propel Accelerator supports startup companies like these to help them grow rapidly to maturity and profitability with the support of a broad provincial network and hopes to see companies enter the program from events like this.

As to the 54Hours event itself, Matt Doherty, who joined the eCeipts team, summed it up this way, “…54hours was an experience akin to throwing a handful of seeds in a garden and seeing what grew. To have such a talented cross-section of people come together and create three businesses with actual opportunities is such a great outcome. Everyone who attended brought something different and being surrounded by these people showed me how myopic we can become in our day to day life. It was refreshing to be able to learn from and to interact with such a varied group. If I had to
pick one word to describe the weekend, it would be 'intense'”.

Organizers of New Brunswick’s first 54Hours event have already been approached to hold additional events in both Fredericton and Moncton over the coming year. For updates regarding these events and other 54Hour activities visit www.54hours.com and www.propelict.com.

Media Inquires:
Michael Wilcott, (506) 647-3269
Jeff Roach – (506) 642-9029

- end -

Technology Sellers hope mobile wireless will appeal to young drivers

Rowser — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:12:54 -0300

Author

Source

Source Url

Image

Image Caption

Sean Adams, chief marketing officer for Red Ball Internet. His firm provides wireless mobile broadband in partnership with three Moncton car dealerships. The firm focuses on corporate and government Internet solutions with iBurst technology manufactured by Japan's Kyocera Corp. Photo by: Adam Huras/Telegraph-Journal

Body

Technology Sellers hope mobile wireless will appeal to young drivers

Just as North America's big three automakers look to overhaul their business models, three Moncton car dealerships are offering Internet solutions on the go to appeal to a tech-savvy generation of drivers.

Ford and Saturn are in the process of launching in-car mobile wireless broadband service while Honda is offering customers the ability to track cars remotely - both solutions by Moncton's Red Ball Internet.

With the same iBurst technology Red Ball has used to track and bring mobile Internet service to Moncton's city buses, the company is now reaching out to new corporate clients in the auto sector.

For Saturn's general sales manager, Sean Kavanagh, offering in-car Internet to younger customers will give his dealership an edge.

"Those in their mid-30s will appreciate their kids being able to be on the Internet in the backseat," Kavanagh said.

"It just becomes a way of life and they can't live without Internet so why not have it in their car?" he said.

Red Ball is promising its mobile Internet access within the Greater Moncton and Greater Fredericton areas will be consistent for drivers and passengers of cars, and has successfully tested the service to speeds of up to 250 kilometres per hour, according to the company.

Honda will soon begin marketing Red Ball's vehicle-tracking service under the name Guardian Angel as a way for parents to keep tabs on their teenage drivers.

John Brushett, owner of Moncton Honda, said Red Ball's solution will allow a new car buyer at his dealership to watch their vehicle travelling in the Greater Moncton area on an online map and receive email updates on how fast the car has travelled.

As a father of four, Brushett can see how other parents would find the service valuable.

"I know what kind of stress it is when they don't show up on time with the car," Brushett said.

"We really think that there's a strong possibility that parents who have vehicles, especially those with substantive value, and they're passing their keys over to their younger teens, it would be a great safety feature to just dial into the Internet and see where your son or daughter has the vehicle at a particular time."

Sean Adams, chief marketing officer for Red Ball, said the company first tossed around the idea of designing solutions for car dealers last year to get ahead of the curve after Chrysler LLC announced it would be offering in-car Internet in 2009.

Internet and tracking are just two solutions possible with the iBurst technology, though.

Adams maintains that iBurst - manufactured by Japan's Kyocera Corp. and licenced to Red Ball for use in Canada - is superior to WiFi in that it was designed specifically to handle high bandwidth data and video rather than voice, and is more reliable and secure.

"Comparing iBurst and WiFi is like comparing apples to oranges," Adams said, explaining that WiFi was created years ago by telecommunications companies using the same technology used to develop cell phone networks.

He explains that WiFi operates on a public spectrum, "like a drinking fountain in the park" and can be accessed or tapped into easily, even when protected by a security code.

RedBall "takes it to the next level," Adams said, because it has its own band - or spectrum - for the province of New Brunswick, offering more secure service.

Red Ball provides Interac banking to two cab companies in Moncton with iBurst and envisions offering in-car live video - which would be streamed over the Internet - as a safety measure for cab drivers at risk of being held up by passengers.

Once iBurst is installed in a car, voice-over-Internet, video, tracking and banking are all possibilities.

The company is also working with several public utilities on a trial project that would see power meters and water meters checked remotely with iBurst, which could save time, manpower and costs.

And the National Research Council Canada's Institute for Information Technology is helping Red Ball market its Internet and fleet management program for buses nationally.

The company set up shop in 2004 initially with the aim of providing Internet to rural communities but found there was too much market competition.

Now, they are the only Internet provider and infrastructure company in the world to focus entirely on corporate and government deals, Adams said.

In an interview in his company's downtown Moncton office, Adams points out the window to Red Ball's antenna on the top of the Assumption Life tower - the tallest building in Moncton.

The antenna and four others that loop Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe provide a ring of service of up to 12 kilometres at its widest.

The company's goal for 2009 is to expand its current service beyond Moncton and Fredericton and into Miramichi, Saint John and Bathurst.

"We plan to go across Canada eventually," he said.

'54 Hours' StartUp Weekend Announced

Jeff Roach — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:15:28 -0300

Author

Source

Source Url

http://www.54Hours.com

Image

Image Caption

54 Hours

Body

Saint John, NB, April 25, 2009 - On May 8th, 9th, and 10th developers, designers and entrepreneurs from around the province will gather together for a community building startup event in uptown Saint John at the Delta Brunswick Hotel. Similar to other startup weekends that have been held in cities across North America, the 54Hours event seeks to take business ideas from concept to launch in just one weekend.

Participants begin by Sharing idea pitches beginning on Friday evening and will then divide into teams to work on bringing the ideas to market by the following Monday morning. “The entire weekend is meant to be a fun way for members of the ICT and business community to interact and network with one another at a deeper level than is generally possible at a traditional industry event,” says Michael Wilcott, an ICT project manager based in Saint John who is one of the organizers. “54 Hours will be a lot of fun, and will hopefully result in the creation of several web-based enterprises that will enrich New Brunswick's ICT environment”.

There is no cost to attend the event and the only requirement is a little skill, a positive attitude and a willingness to roll with the punches. The atmosphere is meant to be fun and the entire process organic. “We’ve adopted the slogan 'No Talk. All Action.' for the event and we are intentionally keeping the agenda loosely defined. We want to the weekend to be like the early days of a startup, where creativity and frenetic energy are the norm and there aren’t a lot of rules”, says Wilcott.

So what happens when the weekend is over? Above all, it is hoped that a strong community bond will form but beyond that, it depends on the group. Some groups work beyond the weekend and continue to build and market their products; some may incorporate as companies and even engage in angel rounds. Issues like ownership and shares are determined by the members of a team over the course of the weekend and 54Hours will not retain any ownership of any company that might be formed over the course of the event.

"We strongly support these grassroots, creative activities that help people visualize what their ideas might look like in the shape of a business." says Jeff Roach of propel ICT. "There are plenty of good ideas but few people give their ideas legs. We are as interested as everyone else to see what might come from this weekend."

To participate in this fun, unique networking event, please visit www.54Hours.com and sign up for this free event!

-end-

Media Contact: Michael Wilcott, (506) 647-3269

Stimulus - Creating Cash Flow in a Recession

Jeff Roach — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:21:19 -0300

Author

Rizwan Kheraj

Source

Bootup Labs Blog

Source Url

http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2009/03/12/stimulus-creating-cash-flow-in-a-recession-by-riz/

Image

Image Caption

Rizwan Kheraj, Industrial Technology Advisor at NRC-IRAP, Vancouver

Body

The Government of Canada has increased their support of NRC's IRAP Program. For more information, view presentation slides below:

Riz's IRAP Slides

View more presentations from dannyrobinson.

Casting call for entrepreneurs

Rowser — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:18:43 -0300

Author

Source

Telegraph-Journal, The, Published Tuesday March 10th, 2009

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/597994

Image

Image Caption

Body

CBC Television's Dragon's Den will begin national auditions for a new season this month. The show's casting crew touch down in Moncton on March 31 and Saint John on April 2. Dragon's Den gives budding entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of wealthy businesspeople, otherwise known as the Dragons, on national television. The prize is money and investment from the Dragons' pockets. Visit www.cbc.ca/dragonsden for tips on pitching a business.

Social media exploitation

Rowser — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:30:27 -0300

Author

Brett Bundale

Source

Telegraph-Journal, The, Published Saturday March 7th, 2009

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/594108

Image

Image Caption

B.C.-based tech whiz Tod Maffin will touch down in Fredericton this May to offer insight as a panelist at the New Brunswick Securities Commission’s annual Fullsail Summit. He will explain to delegates how to use online technologies to advance business goals, save cash and tap into the next cohort of talent. ‘Once I walk them through how it works they immediately recognize how effective it can be.’

Body

Generation Facebook Companies need to harness online tools to successfully recruit

Tod Maffin is teaching top executives how to recruit the Facebook generation.

As employers scramble to understand what makes the tech generation tick, Maffin walks companies through the new world of young talent: Where to find them, how to attract them and how to keep them engaged.

"The 18 to 32 year-old generation is different," he said during an interview from Vancouver. "Their whole raison d'etre is revolutionary."

The B.C.-based tech whiz will touch down in Fredericton this May to offer insight as a panelist at the New Brunswick Securities Commission's annual Fullsail Summit. He will explain to delegates how to use online technologies to advance business goals, save cash and tap into the next cohort of talent.

"The Facebook generation wants to change the world," he said. "They want to make sure the company they work for is committed to the environment or involved in the community."

Some companies have environmental policies and follow sustainable practices in the office, like recycling or trying to use less energy, while others make donations or volunteer within the community. These companies tend to appeal more to the Facebook generation, Maffin said.

"There is a real sense of advocacy among these youth and companies have just been extraordinarily lousy at articulating these values to them."

Many organizations stumble through a minefield of mistakes when trying to groom their future leadership and recruit the best and brightest from the new talent pool, he said.

"If companies are relying on placing stale ads in papers and using old-school recruiting techniques, there's a nasty shock in store for them," he said.

Maffin's foray into the world of technology and business took off in the 1990s during the heady days of the dot-com boom. In 1999 he launched MindfulEye.com, an artificial intelligence firm that went public in 18 months.

"I was a young executive sitting on shares worth a little under $10 million in my company," he said. "I learned quickly how to run a business and recruit the people I needed."

Maffin now spends most of his time as a national technology broadcaster for the CBC and giving media-savvy presentations to business leaders around the world.

To be successful at recruiting, Maffin said companies need to exploit the networking forces of social media websites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

These tools are used not only as a way to tap into a younger generation and find new recruits but as a way to encourage discussion and debate as well as company brand recognition.

Some organizations have launched Facebook groups while others broadcast messages about the company to potential employees on YouTube.

"It's not that hard a sell to get companies interested in harnessing these online tools," he said. "It's just fear of the unknown that stops them."

"I'm a nuts and bolts person," he added. "I don't want to turn these people into computer nerds or experts. People are smart and they get (why the technology is important for recruiting) right away."

However it's not just about using online social media tools, Maffin said, but using them effectively.

"A lot of companies have somebody in the organization that starts an account with the intention of poking around and seeing what there is to do," he said.

But Maffin warns of disastrous effects if companies jump head first into social media networking without a basic understanding of how it works.

Candy-maker Mars Inc. recently turned Skittles.com into a Twitter search results page. Instead of the regular website, Skittles.com became a live feed of any comments made about Skittles on Twitter.

Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows users to create individual profiles and post status updates - called Tweets - which can be viewed by anyone who follows that user.

"I think the idea was to say 'Hey look at us, we're into social marketing so we're cool,'" Maffin said.

"It's a pretty bold move but as a strategy it was just terrible because less than 20 per cent of the feeds were positive. So they pulled it off right away. But I would venture to say that sales did go up, so it was still effective."