MBJ_Dec20_2013

www.msbusiness.com

December 20, 2013 • Vol. 35, No. 51 • $1 • 16 pages

» BUSINESS PERSON OF THE YEAR

Hu Meena

C Spire CEO has taken the company to new heights — begins, Page 8

NEWSMAKERS

Wiseman stepping down Stennis leader will continue teaching Page 13

2 I Mississippi Business Journal I December 20, 2013 HEALTH CARE

The company ride » Camellia Home Health and Hospice launches a new fleet of vehicles

By WALLY NORTHWAY I STAFF WRITER wally.northway@msbusiness.com

C

F OR OR S LE AL AS E E

AMELLIA HOME HEALTH and Hospice has flourished over the last 39 years, even through the recent downturn in the economy and deep reimbursement cuts. Now, Hattiesburg-based Camellia has rolled out a new fleet of 125 company-owned cars aimed at cutting expenses while also increasing its brand awareness.

“Transportation costs are our thirdlargest expense behind salaries and benefits,” said Abb Payne, Camellia president and CEO. “Like every health care provider, we have been affected by reimbursement cuts, and we see the new fleet as a way to cut our expenses.”

Payne added that the new fleet of cars,

“Our certified nursing aides do a tremendous job, and probably 99 percent of them cannot afford a brand new car. How can offering a new car to an employee who perhaps could never afford one be a bad thing?”

Abb Payne, Camellia president and CEO wrapped in the company’s logo, will offer “advertising you just can’t buy.”

Camellia Home Health and Hospice, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year, has grown from five locations to 40 stretched across

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Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia including the metro areas of Knoxville and Chattanooga in Tennessee and Atlanta. That has meant more drive time for its workers. Its field staff alone racks up approximately 2.2 million miles annually while total miles traveled by all of Camellia’s approximately 1,000 employees rings in at 4.1 million miles.

“That’s like going around the world 169 times,” Payne said.

Faced with increasing transportation costs and dwindling reimbursements, Camellia began looking at the option of launching a fleet of company-owned vehicles as opposed to reimbursing employees for their travel expenses.

The company’s search led it to Enterprise Fleet Management, owned by the Taylor family of St. Louis, who, through regional subsidiaries, also own and operate Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Enterprise Fleet Management targets medium-sized fleets that do not have a dedicated fleet manager and offers most makes and models of cars, light- and medium-duty trucks and service vehicles across North America.

The two companies would subsequently negotiate a deal that calls for a fleet of 105 new eco-boost Ford Focus models and 20 Ford Escapes.

Rachel Baker, account manager for Enterprise Fleet Management, said, "As the population ages, the demand for home health care services will continue to increase. For Camellia, having dependable vehicles for its team members is a key factor in its ability to serve more patients

and achieve continued growth."

Payne said Camellia chose Enterprise Fleet Management because of its proven track record, size (5,500 U.S. branch offices) and its offerings, which includes providing maintenance, insurance, vehicle registration and reporting services to company workers as well as a fuel card program that automatically monitors fuel purchases and miles for each vehicle. In addition, Enterprise Fleet Management assisted Camellia in determining how best to distribute the vehicles across its service footprint.

The company is expecting a hefty return on its investment — approximately 19 cents per mile traveled.

In addition to cutting travel expenses, the fleet will provide “moving billboards” as each vehicle will wrapped in the Camellia Home Health and Hospice logo.

Payne admitted that some workers were not enthused by the move, seeing mileage reimbursement as a salary boost.

But he said “80 percent are ecstatic” about the new fleet concept, and added that many of his employees do not have the means to purchase a new vehicle.

“Our certified nursing aides do a tremendous job, and probably 99 percent of them cannot afford a brand new car,” Payne said. “How can offering a new car to an employee who perhaps could never afford one be a bad thing?”

Camellia Home Health and Hospice, which has been named one of the Best Places to Work by the Mississippi Business Journal, should see quickly whether its investment was a wise one as it plans more expansion. The company, founded in 1974 by Abb Payne’s father, chairman and advisor W.A. Payne, continues to look at potential new markets, and the company is planning to launch two new service lines to go along with its flagship home health and hospice offerings. That announcement could come as early as the start of the new year.

“We have great people and core management team,” Payne said. “We believe in hiring good people, getting out of their way and letting them run with it. You can expect to hear about more growth at Camellia soon.”

December 20, 2013

I

Mississippi Business Journal

I

3

TAXES AND FINANCES

A tax reform lump of coal » Democrats, Republicans far apart on any overhaul of the tax code; Or are they?

I

t’s the most wonderful time of year!

Everywhere you look, children are anticipating the arrival of Old St. Nick. The lights are up, and the stores are packed. Everyone is hoping to be judged as nice, not naughty, and receive a stocking full of presents instead of a lump of coal.

But, when the Jolly Old Elf makes his final list for 2013, coal will likely be the order of the day for the politicians tasked with making tax reform a reality.

For several years now, there has been a move afoot in Washington to reform and simplify the tax code. This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the federal income tax, and the 30-word brevity of the 16th amendment now stretches into a 4,000-page behemoth of small print.

The regulations, rulings and cases interpreting the tax code dwarf that number.

So, some simplification would be a nice

present – at Christmas time, or any time.

Both the Republican - led House Ways and Means Committee and the Democratled Senate Finance Committee have held substantive hearings John Scott on the topic in 2013.

Both broadly state that the path forward should include a reduction in tax rates for individuals and businesses in exchange for eliminating certain deductions and tax credits.

The President concurs.

There’s where the agreement ends.

The Grinch is in the details.

Republicans would like to tie spending cuts with a reduction in tax rates to the 2528 percent range. They also favor entitlement reform to slow the rate of spending

increase in programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Lower tax rates, the thought goes, would help stimulate economic growth and generate an increase in tax revenues. When pinned down on which deductions and credits they are willing to eliminate, things get sketchy fast.

Democrats, on the other hand, would like to generate additional revenue from tax reform to cover increased spending, with little mention of entitlement reform. Some slight reduction in current rates would be more than offset by changes to and/or phase-outs of a number of deductions and credits targeted at specific industries and high-income individuals. Other taxes, such as on capital gains, would likely increase, not decrease.

The two sides are now far apart and reform and simplicity appear a lost afterthought. So, why is this even worth discussing?

Well, because in 1986, the last time there was a complete overhaul of the tax code, the arguments and positions were strikingly similar. And, once the ball started rolling, broad agreements were reached and compromises made, eliminating or reducing many deductions and credits while slashing both individual and business tax rates.

Many of these decisions were difficult and controversial, upsetting both Republican and Democrat core constituencies.

They required political leadership from President Reagan and Congress and the ability to put the common good before party politics.

So, who thinks we could have a repeat today?

Coal, all around.

John Scott, CPA, is a tax partner at HORNE LLP and has more than 25 years of public accounting

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4 I Mississippi Business Journal I December 20, 2013 AGRICULTURE

State pecan crop falls short this year

By LISA MONTI I CONTRIBUTOR mbj@msbusiness.com

This year’s pecan season is winding down and the crop has been a small one thanks to weather and the growing cycle. “A lot of factors were involved,� said Max Draughn, president of the Mississippi Pecan Growers Association. “We had a cold spring, we had a large crop last year and the wet weather this year made disease pressures higher than normal. Fungus is much worse in a wet year than a dry year.�

The yard tree crop was even worse, he said. “They made a horrible crop this year, very thin. There are 14 states in the Pecan Belt in the Southeast and it happened pretty much all the way across. Everybody’s short this year.�

Draughn said last year’s warm spring produced the largest crop in a decade in his older orchards. “This year’s crop is only 60 percent of what we have in a normal year,� he said.

Older trees have genetically programmed to alternate good crop years with off years, he said, giving them a rest after expending so much energy producing large crops. Younger trees 10 years or less haven’t gotten into that pattern yet, “so they had a good crop.�

To avoid huge crops and help keep the crops level year after year, farmers will lend a helping hand if they see their trees producing too many pecans. “We go in late July or early August and shake some nuts off the trees when the nuts are small. Like apples, they have to be thinned.�

The season starts in late September or early October but this year’s unusually cool spring delayed the trees budding out by three weeks, he said. “We usually finish harvesting 10 days or two weeks before Christmas.�

Pecans are for the most part a healthy crop, subject only to scab among tree diseases and aphids and stink bugs among insect enemies. The bigger problem for farmers or homeowners is posed by squirrels and crows. “The rule of thumb is a typical squirrel will eat a pound of pecans and hide a pound per day,� he said. “When the first trees drop nuts, crows will descend on them every year.�

In 2002 Draughn bought a farm and remnants of an old orchard in soil-rich Raymond that’s now 140 years old. Every year since 2004 he’s planted new acreage with improved tree varieties and now he’s up to 300 acres, making his one of the larger pecan orchards in the state. In 2006 he bought Bass Pecan Co.’s retail outlet and tree nursery and later opened two outlets of his own.

Draughn knows the ins and outs of his industry and the pecan itself, including its history in the state. “The Mississippi Coast is the birthplace of the U.S. pecan industry.

A lot of the pecans developed in nurseries

from Jackson County up to Lumberton supplied the pecan industry with trees from the 1880s through the 1950s. This was the hotbed of pecan innovation.�

Among the varieties that came out of Jackson County, he said, are today’s favorites Desirable and Stuart.

Bass was big part of that innovation starting back in the 1920s and it was the largest nursery in world for about 75 years. “We’re in the top three or four container grown pecan nurseries in the world now,� he said.

In the mid 1960s Mississippi produced in excess of 30 million pounds of pecans a

year. “Last year was 5 million and this year will be 2 million to 2.5 million pounds.

Camille (in 1969) basically destroyed the pecan industry in South Mississippi,� he See

PECANS, Page 6

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A member of the Mississippi Press Association and the Alliance of Area Business Publications www.mspress.org www.bizpubs.org

200 North Congress, Suite 400 Jackson, MS 39201-1902 Main: (601) 364-1000 Faxes: Advertising (601) 364-1007; Circulation (601) 364-1035 E-mails: mbj@msbusiness.com, ads@msbusiness.com, photos@msbusiness.com, research@msbusiness.com, events@msbusiness.com

MBJPERSPECTIVE December 20, 2013 • www.msbusiness.com • Page 5

» RICKY NOBILE

Website: www.msbusiness.com December 20, 2013 Volume 35, Number 51

ALAN TURNER Publisher alan.turner@msbusiness.com • 364-1021 ROSS REILY Editor ross.reily@msbusiness.com • 364-1018 WALLY NORTHWAY Senior Writer wally.northway@msbusiness.com • 364-1016 FRANK BROWN Staff Writer/Special Projects frank.brown@msbusiness.com • 364-1022 TED CARTER Staff Writer ted.carter@msbusiness.com • 364-1017 LISA MONTI Contributing Writer mbj@msbusiness.com • 364-1018 BOBBY HARRISON Contributing Writer mbj@msbusiness.com • 364-1018 TAMI JONES Advertising Director tami.jones@msbusiness.com • 364-1011 MELISSA KILLINGSWORTH Sr. Account Executive

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No material in this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written consent. Editorial and advertising material contained in this publication is derived from sources considered to be reliable, but the publication cannot guarantee their accuracy. Nothing contained herein should be construed as a solicitation for the sale or purchase of any securities.

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Entire contents copyrighted © 2013 by Journal Inc. All rights reserved.

OTHER VIEWS

All children need pre-K education

T

he anticipated awarding of grants this week to communities working in cooperation and collaboration with other entities to operate early childhood programs creates the perfect background for discussions of additional state funds for early childhood/pre-K education made available statewide this year for the first time.

The usual pre-session legislative budgets from Gov. Phil Bryant’s executive department and the Legislative Budget Committee don’t have additional funds for expanding the program started in the 2013 session.

However, legislators can change the proposed budgets in the course of the 2014 session, and it’s certain that the strong response to the competition for the first state funds for pre-kindergarten will raise demand.

Under the program set in motion with this year’s funding, the state Department of Educa-

tion has set standards for pre-kindergarten consortiums that could include local school districts, Head Start centers and private childcare providers.

State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright, meeting last week with the Daily Journal’s editorial board, expressed her preference for a prekindergarten program housed within schools, which she said would make teacher certification a more ensurable process.

The broadest issue is to move deliberately toward the widest implementation, which means a steadily increasing state funding as the efficacy of pre-K education proves itself.

For the 2014 legislative session pre-K backers said $34 million would be required for a statewide program covering 15,000 children.

Pre-K is new in Mississippi as a statefunded venture, but it is not new in other southern states and nationwide. Mississippi does not need to reinvent the wheel, but being last among state peers in moving toward a

statewide program allows the kind of hindsight that can avoid mistakes made elsewhere and the ability to choose the methods producing best results and bring them to our state’s own pilot programs.

The universally respected Pew Trust programs evaluation for pre-kindergarten reached a broad statement of support with great clarity: “High quality pre-k can no longer be considered a luxury for upper income families or a special program for the disadvantaged. Based on what we now know about children’s brain development during these crucial years, pre-k has become just as necessary as kindergarten or first grade … While targeted programs in some states have served at-risk children for more than a decade, experts believe that all children need the benefits of a high-quality pre-k education in order to succeed.”

Reputable voices of experience with no partisan or special interests should be heeded because they seek what’s best for young children.

—NortheastMississippiDailyJournal

6 I Mississippi Business Journal I December 20, 2013

In search of the perfect written planner W

HEN IT COMES to written planners, I am a maximizer, not a satisficer. It seems that I am in constant search of the very best when just any one of them would do.

Why written, and not electronic? And which one do I always come back to?

Read on to learn the answers to these profound end-of-year questions.

Planners are wonderful productivity tools. Most contain an appointment calendar, a task list section and a notes section. Many business planners have a section for expenses. Electronic versions are known as personal information managers the most well-known of these being Microsoft’s Outlook.

I use both a written planner and an electronic planner. Each has its own advantages and shortcomings. Electronic planners are superb for searching for items in the past, present or future. In my case, I need to make several reports about my activities and work. If I want to know how many presentations I made during the past year I simply enter “presentation” in the search box. If I want to know how many meetings I attended at the State Capitol or John Doe’s office, the PIM cannot be beat. It is, of course, de-

pendent on entering the proper information to be retrieved.

So-called tags have made that process even easier. So why even bother with a written planner?

First, research has Phil Hardwick shown that when we write something by hand we learn it more effectively and usually produce a better result. A study, headed by Virginia Berninger, a University of Washington professor of educational psychology who studies normal writing development and writing disabilities, looked at children’s ability to write the alphabet, sentences, and essays using a pen and a keyboard. An article by Gwendolyn Brown in the October 5, 2010 issue of the Wall Street Journal entitled “How Handwriting Trains the Brain - Forming Letters Is Key to Learning, Memory, Ideas” reported on several studies that handwriting increases cognitive skills and learning in adults as well as children.

Therefore, writing a daily summary in my planner seems better.

Second, writing is more expressive than

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typing (keyboarding). Sure there are exclamation marks and capital letters and ways to make smiley faces using the keyboard, but writing allows for more variation and expression.

Third, although most PIM’s allow for notes they do not provide for sufficient space for a journal or diary.

Fourth, written planners provide a way for a person’s legacy and life to be better understood and appreciated. For example, there is nothing to replace picking up a handwritten personal journal of a greatgrandparent and reading and account of a business conference in Chicago, a theater play (with ticket stubs taped to the page) or a Christmas family gathering. Personally, the legacy factor is the most important reason for using a written planner.

I will concede, however, that keyboarding is a more efficient and faster way to get thoughts in print, so to speak, than handwriting. Keyboarding is replacing cursive writing in many schools. From the website of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity comes this: Many educators have ultimately concluded that keyboarding is a far more effective and relevant skill for a modern-day education. .. Many experts predict that cursive will ultimately become an art form rather than a common means of written expression.

Oh well.

Nevertheless, I'm still looking for that perfect calendar/planner/journal. The one that I keep coming back to is the Moleskine large calendar. It lets me customize. It is also the right size, 5 inches x 8.25 inches. Also, it contains some useful information such as time zone map, international holidays and more. The daily page, which is lined, allows me to create my own format. I use the top one fourth of the page for my appointments, the next fourth of the page for my task list and the bottom half of the page as my journal. On one of the blank pages near

PECANS

Continued from Page 3

said. The top producing states are Texas and Georgia.

Draughn said demand is “super high” because of China’s taste for pecans. “About one third of the U.S. crop is being exported to China,” he said. “The Chinese are coming in buying the highest quality nuts and paying premium prices. That puts pressure on the domestic market especially in a short year like this.”

Draughn doesn’t export his products.

“We completely consume all the nuts we grow plus we buy other nuts mostly in Mississippi through Bass. We sell more than

the beginning of the planner I list my goals for the year.

Speaking of goals, research also reveals that the keys to accomplishing goals are to write them down, share them with others and be held accountable. The writing it down part is what speaks to me. It also spoke to Jim Carrey.

In an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show Carrey he shared what his life was like in the 1980’s. It was not very good. He was virtually homeless. He would drive up to Mulholland Drive, look down on Los Angeles and visualize what his life was going to be in the future. It was then and there that he wrote himself a check for $10 million, dated it Thanksgiving 1995 and wrote on it, “for acting services rendered.”

He put the check in his wallet and referred to it often. It was his version of writing down his goal. You know the rest of the story. He became a successful highly paid actor. What you may not know is that just before Thanksgiving 1995 he received $10 million for his role in the movie, “Dumb and Dumber.” The segment can be found online at: http://www.oprah.com/oprahslifeclass/What-Oprah-Learned-fromJim-Carrey-Video At the end of the calendar year, it is a good time to pick up the written planner and look back at the goals for the year. To contemplate the ones that were achieved and those that were not. To consider, if you will, the ones that were written down with your own hand.

This method may not work as well for you as it does for me. One system is not necessarily better than another. The best system is the one that works for you. So as this year draws to a close, here’s hoping that it was a good one for you and your organization and wishing that the coming year will be even better.

Phil Hardwick is coordinator of capacity development at the John C. Stennis Institute of Government. Pease contact Hardwick at phil@philhardwick.com.

we can produce.”

The large or mammoth halves sell for $12.95 a pound retail. It takes 251 or fewer halves to make a pound of shelled pecans.

His wholesale price for pecans in the shell is $3 to $3.50 a pound.

Studies showing the health benefits of eating nuts should help pecan growers but there is a downside to the popularity.

“We’re finally seeing the domestic consumption of all nuts on the upswing and we’re seeing pecans put into a lot more products like cereal,” Draughn said.

“But it could hurt if the price goes so high you lose consumption. We’ll sell more nuts long term if we can get the price down.”

Best wishes for peace in our world, our homes and our hearts. Regions Bank wants to extend the warmest wishes for peace and joy. We hope the coming year is a happy, healthy one for your family.

We look forward to serving you in the coming year – and for years to come.

1.800.regions | regions.com

Š 2013 Regions Bank.

» MBJ BUSINESS PERSON OF THE YEAR

FORWARD THINKIN

Guessing Meena’s next move has been difficult in 20

By TED CARTER ted.carter@msbusiness.com

C

Spire’s Victor Hu Meena Jr. will tell you it’s not business anxieties that keep him awake at night but rather opportunities on the digital horizon.

In Meena’s world of wireless technology, opportunities come at hyper speed. If you don’t grab them the other guys will.

“I’m not good at sleeping anyway,” Meena says. “I’m always thinking about what we’re going to do next and where the opportunities are.”

That’s probably why he’s keeping the other guys awake.

Guessing his next move has been difficult to do lately.

As an acknowledgment of the bold moves Meena has made in this and other years and the resulting elevated profile the moves have provided both C Spire and Mississippi, the Mississippi Business Journal has named Hu Meena “Business

Person of the Year.”

“He’s had a hell of a year, and put Mississippi on the map in a progressive and enlightened way,” said Ross Reily, MBJ editor, in announcing the annual award.

As president & CEO of Ridgeland-based C Spire, Hu Meena is busy guiding an effort to extract pioneering uses from a fiber optic network for which C Spire’s predecessor companies — Cellular South and Franklin and Delta telephone companies — laid the foundation decades ago.

With each new C Spire announcement of a digital-based product or service, the spotlight on Mississippi as a generator of tomorrow’s technologies grows brighter. By the end of the last decade, the nation’s largest privately held wireless provider — estimated by Forbes’ analysts to have reached sales of $578 million in 2011 — served notice to the telecom sector that it and the state it calls home intend to be aggressive and innovative players in the digital marketplace.

Slightly more than a year ago, C Spire completed a fiberoptic infrastructure upgrade that brought 4G LTE service

to wireless phone customers and data term Mississippi and set the stage for a soon-to-lau sion of the service to its Florida and Alabama the meantime, the company has expanded data transmission capabilities by adding a $20 millio cial data services center in Starkville to com downtown Jackson data center.

More recently, C Spire started an initiative to fast 1 gigabit-per-second fiber to the home, se Mississippi cities for the nation’s first and on roll out of an Internet service the company says broadband speeds 100 times faster than natio broadband speeds.

Two years ago the company made clear its pla sify beyond its life as a wireless telephone servi changing its name from Cellular South to C Sp

See M

NG

n 2013

data terminals across oon-to-launch expand Alabama markets. In anded data storage and $20 million commerle to complement its

nitiative to bring ultrae home, selecting nine rst and only statewide mpany says will provide than national average

clear its plans to diverphone service provider, th to C Spire, with the Hu Meena at his ofďŹ ce in Ridgeland.

See MEENA, Page 10

10 I Mississippi Business Journal I December 20, 2013

MEENA

Continued from Page 9

“C” denoting “customer” and the “Spire” denoting “Inspired.”

“With a name like ‘C Spire’ we can do anything in the wide world of technology,” Meena says. “So we have been busy working on some things.

One of these is making sure we get the most out of our fiber optic network. We’ve done a lot on the business side and now fiber-to-the-home is a big business for us.”

Meena says his 1,250-employee company headquartered in Ridgeland’s Renaissance at Colony Parkway is on the verge of becoming ground zero for the arrival of a Silicon Valley of sorts, citing the strides it is making in developing useful data analytics applications for businesses, “We’re doing some cutting-edge things in the data analytics space.”

That work, he expects, will draw digital innovators from all over.

They emphasis is on draw, Meena says. They’ll have to come here, he says, because C Spire is staying put.

Why, when relocation could prove very lucrative?

The short and simple, Meena says, is that Mississippi and improving the state’s fortunes occupy a top spot in a company operating plan that he and founders Wade and Jimmy Creekmore developed long ago.

“We need businesses … where the decision makers are here,” he says.

“If you’re doing business in Mississippi it is not number 50 to you. It is ‘Number One’ if you are headquartered here,” adds Meena, a 56-year-old Clarksdale native and University of Mississippi education major.

Cotton to telecom As a youngster growing up in the Delta town of Clarksdale, “everything was cotton,” Meena recalls.

But cotton was not the kingly economic staple it could have been, he concluded. The Delta grew and ginned the cotton but shipped it to textile and garment factories out of the region. “We didn’t have the textile mills or the garment factories. We have plenty of land. Why don’t we have them here?” he recalls asking.

“That was one of the lessons learned as a kid growing up in the Delta.”

And a lesson he acted on years later when he came to a crossroads as head of Cellular South: “Why not be a fullservice wireless and technology company as opposed to just a wireless company?”

To answer “yes” he had to overcome what he says is “a mindset in Mississippi that we can only do this” or that but not more.

Meena says his decision was helped along by the knowledge that Mississippi “had some of the sharpest people anywhere.”

A life outside of football

On his way to becoming CEO of the nation’s eighth largest wireless carrier, Meena coached a year of football at Greenwood’s Pillow Academy. “I found out that probably wasn’t going to work,” he says, indicating his won-loss record told him his fortunes lay elsewhere.

Business opportunities led him to Dallas which he followed with a return to Mississippi, where he married Ashley Creekmore in 1986. By 1987 he was venturing into a less-than-4year-old technology called cellular phone communications.

Wade and Jimmy Creekmore had won the right to buy federal wireless licenses for Mississippi through ownership of the Delta and Franklin phone services companies, a pair of landline companies established in 1959 in rural areas thethen Southern Bell declined to serve. “Wade and Jimmy were working on this cellular stuff. I didn’t know what they were talking about,” but “it sounded intriguing,” Meena says.

Thus, he became general manager of a fledging wireless company on the Mississippi coast called Cellular South. “I wasn’t

C SPIRE ‘ALL IN IT’ AS DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY ACCELERATES, EXPANDS INTO NEARLY ALL OUR LIVES » Rooted in wireless, Ridgeland telecom out to make every other corner of the digital market its domain

By TED CARTER I STAFF WRITER ted.carter@msbusiness.com Hitting age 25 in the wireless telecommunications sector may get a company classified as a graybeard, but age doesn’t mean you have to be less adventurous.

Executives of Cellular South a couple years ago saw the quarter century mark ahead and decided to celebrate it with a name change to C Spire (Customer Inspired). At the same time they declared that wireless telephone service would be a C Spire mainstay but every other corner of the digital market would be its domain as well.

The domain would include space for digital data analytics, ultra-fast Internet and commercial data storage and transmission and a host of other uses and services.

Whittled to its basics, says C Spire President & CEO Victor Hu Meena Jr., the idea is to take many, many series of “ones” and “zeroes” and do many things with them.

All those “many things” require wireless spectrum, however. Acquiring spectrum can be a donnybrook when you’re a regional-sized telecom trying to get shares that the giants such as AT&T and Verizon feel they have dibs on.

The most recent fight has been over 700-MHz spectrum — a commodity critical to next generation of digital wireless services such as 4G LTE and 1 gigabit-persecond fiber to the home. C Spire spent $200 million getting spectrum in various parts of the 700-MHz area, said David Miller, C Spire spokesman.

It needs much more to meet its market goals and has had to confront continued hesitation by AT&T and Verizon to allow C Spire and other smaller players to use Whittled to its basics, C Spire President & CEO Hu Meena says the idea is to take the lower bands of the 700 spectrum to run the devices many, many series of “ones” and “zeroes” and do many things with them. to which they provide services. It’s called 700 MHz interoperability and C Spire and others of like size such as T Mobile and US Cellular want it. They are not required to provide it so they haven’t – until recently.

Just ahead of an expected Federal Communications Commission ruling on the issue in September, AT&T relented in and agreed to allow interoperability.

“That was a huge win for us,” Miller said. “We expect the other biggies to come along.”

A key benefit is that with interoperability wireless device makers will be more willing to build the devices because they can be used across all spectrums, not just the lower bands, Miller noted.

Meena expects he and C Spire will continue to engage the issue. “There are more battles to come,” he said.

In another victory for C Spire and other smaller players in their effort to preserve market potential, the FCC recently rejected a proposed Verizon and T Mobile merger.

Like the fight over spectrum, the sector expects more battles over consolidation.

The bigger the giants get, they feel it more likely they can get regulatory policies most beneficial to them, Miller noted.

The past year brought another key achievement for C Spire with the nation’s first statewide rollout of 1 Gbps fiber to the home, a move made possible by C Spire’s widespread fiber optic infrastructure. A home subscriber will get Internet speeds up to 100 times faster than today’s standard broadband, as well as digital television and home Internet phone, C Spires says.

With the customer’s cellular phone included, the package becomes a “quad play,” Miller noted.

Miller conceded getting going on the 1 Gbps ate into the company’s bottom line but hardly as much as it would have without the infrastructure already in place.

As CEO Meena said, the fiber was there. “We had all this fiber running everywhere. The next logical place to go was the home.”

The expense and regulatory issues and permitting makes it a slow go for now but C Spire is determined to go beyond the nine Mississippi cities recently selected for the service, the company says.

Miller said it is difficult to understate the importance of the 1 Gbps and the transformative benefits to the communities that will have it.

“This is the largest deployment of 1 Gbps Internet service to the home in any place in the country. In little ol’ Mississippi…. These cities are going to become attractors now for technology companies.”

Having lived the ups and downs of achieving C Spire’s recent milestones, it is of little surprise that Meena can easily recite them and note how one led to another: “We’re doing wireless. Why don’t we get involved in the Internet? OK, we are at 1 Gbps.… Why don’t we connect businesses via fiber optic See C SPIRE, Page 12

See DELTA, Page 11

December 20, 2013

DELTA

Continued from Page 10

guiding anything. I was just trying to make it,” he recalls.

By 1990 he and Ashley were in Jackson, where Meena became company vice president of operations and development and by 1997 president, a point at which he began exploring an expansion of Cellular South out of state.

At the same time, Meena and the Creekmore brothers weighed the potential synergies of the telecom infrastructure they had in place. That led to creation of parent company Telepex Inc. and the start-up of fiber optic-based broadband company Telepak Networks Inc., which further established a network of buried fiber-optic cable that today totals 4,000 route miles.

The fiber capacity set the stage for C Spire’s current 4G LTE wireless offerings and its soon-to-be-built 1 Gbps fiber-to-tothe-home network as well as the continuing growth of CSpire Business Services, which handles data storage, data transmission and Voice-Over-Internet services for businesses.

“We had all these fiber optic cables running everywhere. The next logical place to go was the home,” Meena says.

Telepak Networks Inc. is now C Spire Fiber and will be adding an additional 1,200 miles of fiber optic cable in the next 15 months. “It will give us the ability to offer the opportunity for more communities to participate” in the 1 Gbps ultra-fast Internet initiative, said David Miller, company spokesman.

veal its total market value. Analyst Kagan says he couldn’t venture a guess, though he adds he is certain “they are much more valuable today than just one year ago because they have been involved with so many innovative, industry reshaping ideas.”

Kagan emphasized that he has no reason to think C Spire is heading down the IPO path, but he noted the company would very likely get Wall Street’s interest should it decide to go public. “They are building their brand name in this industry,” he says. “A couple years ago no one knew about C Spire.

Today they do. And over the next couple of years they will continue making a name for

themselves in the industry.”

Raising money hasn’t required much heavy lifting, according to C Spire’s David Miller, who says financial institutions and lenders across the country have “clamored to invest in C Spire because of our history and track record of growth and innovation.”

Meena brushes off the merger and IPO talk, saying he hears it often. Suitors pop up now and then, he says. The only answer they get is a “No, Thank You,” he says.

“We don’t merge; we fight.”

Likewise, an IPO would run counter to C Spire’s attachment to staying a Mississippi company and fostering economic growth

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Mississippi Business Journal

RESEARCH a key to new opportunities

No IPO, no urge to merge As a private company, C Spire does not re-

Encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation. Providing

increasingly global marketplace. Together, the universities

expertise to attract new and growing industries. Finding

annually bring in more than $400 million in research and

solutions to major health issues. Partnering with Mississippi

development—a direct contributor to better jobs, higher

companies to improve processes, potential, and profits.

wages, and improved quality of life.

Research at Mississippi universities plays a vital role in assuring the state is well positioned to be competitive in an

The return on investing in public higher education?

Mississippi’s future.

ADVANCING OUR STATE TOGETHER Alcorn State University | Delta State University | Jackson State University | Mississippi State University Mississippi University for Women | Mississippi Valley State University | The University of Mississippi | The University of Southern Mississippi

www.mississippi.edu

11

across the state, Meena says. “We’re not going to do an IPO – not unless we have to.”

The concern with an IPO is that decision making would be removed from Mississippi, according to Meena.

“The decision makers are all in Mississippi.

We’re very committed to this state and very committed to this building.”

Meena has plenty of company at CSpire in the way of contemplating new opportunities.

He gets a steady flow of ideas from the people around him and says he does what a good CEO should do – get out of their way.

“If I don’t mess them up, they’ll do really well.”

Setting the pace

Meena is not expecting his regional competitors in the digital realm to suddenly decide they want to join in the race to new markets such as 1 Gbps fiber-to-to-thehome. Most couldn’t even if they wanted to, according to Meena, who says C Spire’s vast fiber-optic network makes it a “have” and many of the others “have nots.”

Further, they are burdened by inertia, he adds. “What others have done is try to protect an investment they made decades ago.

They keep trying to get more out of it as opposed to going ahead and jumping into tomorrow’s technology today.”

Jeff Kagan, a 25-year technology industry analyst based in Atlanta, said in an email he has followed C Spire’s progression over the years and continues “to be amazed by the success” it has achieved.

“I think we can see that they are not satisfied with the wireless world only, but are really starting to punch their way onto the map in other industry segments as well.”

Hu Meena and C Spire, he says, “are two names that have punched their way onto the wireless scene and continue to show not only strong growth, but innovation as well.”

What of the risks of over-extending?

Kagan says he is inclined to advise caution but notes times come in an industry where rapid growth and expansion are the right path to take. “I believe we are in the early years of such a time in the telecom and wireless world right now,” he says.

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12 I Mississippi Business Journal I December 20, 2013 INSIDE TECHNOLOGY

Digital daredevils bringing new mojo to telecom world

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imagine a Washington, D.C., newsroom back in May 1844. The city editor gets a tip that a guy named Morse was about to use something called “electricity” to send a letter to Baltimore.

One lucky reporter gets grabbed as he passes the city desk on returning from lunch. Get over to Samuel Morse's place and find out what's going on with this thing called the telegraph, he's told.

Man o' Live! The reporter exclaims after Morse patiently details how this “transmission” to Baltimore will get through. It's all about opening and closing an electric circuit,” Morse tells the scribe, who says to himself: “Yeah, OK, whatever that is.”

This is 1844, after all.

In the next hours, the news guy struggles and strives until he gets a rudimentary understanding of what was about to happen and how it would happen.

It's all about the “zeros” and the “ones,” Morse would tell the befuddled reporter to try to get across how a written word can be in one place one instant and many miles away the next. You're using the “zeroes” and the “ones” to manipulate an electrical circuit, the soon-to-be telecom icon explains.

The reporter is still marveling as he writes the story, complete with the "What hath God wrought? “ digital-like message to neighboring Baltimore.

Today, as 2013 closes, it's looking as though our telecom world might be ready to commence a “What hath God wrought?” moment or two.

And when it does, we'll hear it's all about the “zeroes” and the “ones.”

At least that's how I expect Victor Hu Meena Jr. will explain it on that day.

The 56-year-old Clarksdale native heads CSpire, a 1,200-employee Ridgeland telecommunications outfit that has innovated its way to the edge of the digital frontier.

They've got some genuine digital daredevils

C SPIRE

working there who are set to shake things up in hugely positive ways – at least you'll see it that way if you are a fan of ever-faster and efficient-ways to instantaneously link together people, businesses and institutions and to transmit billions and billions of pieces of data in all its various forms.

Ted Carter

And more important for Mississippi, CSpire is T-totally rooted in the Magnolia State. It already gives Mississippi an economic engine with the kind of giddy-up other states envy.

The engine is set to take off fueled by some highoctane innovation.

The deliveries it'll make include an ever-expanding and diversifying CSpire as well as modern new

» And more important for Mississippi, CSpire is T-totally rooted in the Magnolia State. It already gives Mississippi an economic engine with the kind of giddy-up other states envy.

The engine is set to take off fueled by some high-octane innovation.

The CSpire crew and their investors like their odds — and why not: Who doesn't want Internet speeds 100 times faster than the broadband that's out there?

And what business wouldn't want a way to make sense out of a global data stream poised to start doubling in size every few years?

Consider this bit of market research from CEO Meena: In the last two years alone, the world created more data than throughout the history of man.

Continued from Page 10

cable? We’re doing that… Why don’t we connect to homes? We are… Why don’t we get into the video business? We are in the video business through our telephone companies (Delta and Franklin Telephone Services) and now through our fiber-in-the-home initiative.”

Where might Meena’s focus be five years from now?

Analytics, he says.

Some of that venture is under way with Vu Digital, a C Spire affiliate.

Miller said Vu offers the world’s first comprehensive online “personalization tool that delivers content users need, want and maybe didn’t even know existed straight to them without search.”

Vu Digital, Meena said, “is slow going right now because there is so much opportunity we can’t figure out what to do.”

On one hand there is the immensity of data and the other the opportunity it presents, he says.

“More data has been created in the last two years than in the history of

industries, many from the Creative Economy.

And thousands of jobs.

I’d almost be willing to bet a considerable fortune (if I had one) that when America's telecom sector has its next “What hath God wrought?” moment, the whole thing just might originate off Colony Parkway at the CSpire headquarters. » Ted Carter is staff writer for the Mississippi Business Journal.

C Spire to acquire cloud-based unified communications provider in $20M deal Ridgeland regional telecom company C Spire is ending the year with a growth spurt in its business services with the acquisition of Mobile’s Callis Communications, a fast-growing provider of cloud-based unified communications for businesses.

In announcing the planned $20 million acquisition, the privately held C Spire said adding Callis will strengthen its standing as a leading telecommunications- based diversified technology company.

Callis serves customers in key business markets across the Southeast and, for the sixth consecutive year, has been recognized as one of the fastest growing telecommunications and cloud communications companies on the Inc. 5000 list.

Dean Parker, president & CEO of Callis, said Callis and C Spire are a great fit. “For over 25 years, C Spire has built a large and highly loyal customer base with an unmatched focus on providing exceptional service and taking the business needs of its customers personally,” he said.

“That core value is what has defined Callis, and it’s why this is a great combination. We are confident our customers will continue to be in good hands as C Spire brings its customer-inspired approach to their business technology and communications needs.”

The acquisition, which requires FCC approval, is the latest in a series of moves by C Spire that signal the company’s accelerated and expanded focus on innovative business, government, and consumer technology solutions, C Spire says. In September, the provider launched the nation’s largest statewide initiative to bring 1 Gbps fiber-based Internet access to homes in nine Mississippi cities and last month the company broke ground on a new $20 million Tier III+ data center in Starkville, which will power a full suite of enterprise cloud services and solutions for businesses across the Southeast region.

“Like C Spire, Callis has a highly experienced team with a long tradition of serving its customers with excellence, making this a winning combination,” said Hu Meena, president & CEO of C Spire. “In addition to the cloud-based solutions available today, we plan to provide a greatly expanded and comprehensive suite of world-class cloudbased computing and enterprise application solutions from our new state-of-the-art tandem of data centers.”

— from staff and MBJ wire services

“More data has been created in the last two years than in the history of the world.

Somebody has to make sense of it all.”

Hu Meena the world,” he said. “Somebody has to make sense of it all.”

That would be C Spire, Meena said.

“You can analyze anything. Everything is data now. You can analyze a health profile; who is most likely to have a disease?... It can be used for

trivial things or for matters of life and death.”

Tap the data and you create the knowledge, Meena said. “None of this is going away. It will be bigger and even more important” in five years.

“Whatever technology might appear, we’ll be all in it.”

NEWSMAKERS Cadence promotes Seawright Cadence Bank has promoted Matt Seawright to branch manager of the bank’s Maben and Starkville Crossing locations. Seawright began his banking career at Cadence Bank in 2011 as a collections specialist and was later promoted to assistant branch manager of the Starkville Crossing location. Before joining Cadence, he was employed as an assistant branch manager for Tower Loan in Louisville.

In 2009, Seawright earned his Seawright bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in risk management and finance from Mississippi State University. He currently is a resident of Mathiston.

BMG adds directors Blake Management Group has added two new staff members.

Scott Stanford has joined BMG as executive director of The Blake at Flowood. Stanford’s previous experience includes eight years with McAlister’s Corporation as vice president of human resources and administration. He most recently served as director of the Stanford Human Resources, Compensation and Benefits Division at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Stephen Brown has joined BMG as executive director of The Blake at Township. Brown has 10 years of manager and director level experience with McAlister’s Corporation and most recently served as HR business partner for Brown academics and research at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Blackwood named chair Kelly R. Blackwood, a senior attorney in Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, LLP’s Jackson office, has been named chair of the board of trustees of The Nature Conservancy in Mississippi. Blackwood has been a board member for The Nature Conservancy’s Mississippi chapter since 2011.

A member of the firm’s Environmental and Litigation practice groups, Blackwood focuses her practice on regulatory and litigation work. She has a wide range of experience in environmental permitting and enforcement matters and works regularly with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Blackwood has represented clients before Mississippi state courts, the Mississippi Commission on Environmental Quality and the Mississippi Environmental Quality Permit Board. She has served as lead counsel in negotiating numerous enforcement settlements, and has routinely assisted with obtaining construction and operating permits and advising clients on associated compliance matters. Blackwood’s environmental practice also has included property acquisitions, due diligence matters, contaminated properties, brownfield redevelopment, natural resource damages, remediation and restoration and wetlands assessments.

Blackwood also has taught environmental law as an adjunct professor at the Mississippi College School of Law. Blackwood holds a J.D. from the Mississippi College

December 20, 2013

Wiseman announces retirement Dr. Marty Wiseman, executive director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government & Community Development at Mississippi State University, will retire Dec. 31.

Wiseman's work has focused on public administration and Mississippi government. A native Mississippian, he received his Ph.D. from Mississippi State University and has been at MSU since 1986. Professor Wiseman teaches specialized graduate courses in rural government administration and intergovernmental relations, the undergraduate Mississippi Government and Politics class and introductory American government.

Wiseman is also faculty adviser for the Stennis-Montgomery Association, which helps students to visit and intern in Washington, D.C., and he has been a frequent political commentator for various news organizations. Wiseman is also a long-time contributing columnist for the Mississippi Business Journal.

School of Law. She also has a B.B.A. from the University of Mississippi.

Taylor named to commission Todd Taylor has been appointed to the Planning Commission and Board of Adjustment in Corinth. Taylor replaces Jim Orr, who did not seek reappointment.

The appointment was made by the city's Board of Aldermen.

Pope named year’s best Mike Pope, principal of Lovett Elementary School, is Clinton Public School District’s 2013-14 Administrator of the Year. In March, the sixth-grade school’s roof was destroyed by baseball-sized hail, forcing students, faculty and staff to be relocated to another campus for the remainder of the school year. Despite this disruption, Clinton sixth-graders earned the highest state test scores of any other Mississippi school district’s sixth-graders in both math and language arts.

Pope is a 1995 graduate of Clinton High School. He holds a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Delta State University, and a master’s degree in educational leadership and an educational specialist degree, both from Mississippi College.

Pope began his career in education in 2000 as a world history, honors world history and history of the ancient Middle East teacher at Clinton High School. He began serving as assistant principal at Clinton Junior High in 2006, and was named principal at Lovett in 2012.

Pope was chosen for the honor by other principals and assistant principals throughout the Clinton Public School District. As Administrator of the Year, he will go on to represent CPSD in the state Administrator of the Year recognition program hosted by the Mississippi Department of Education in the spring.

Woodson joins staff The Dermatology Clinic in Columbus welcomes Dr. Anna Woodson. A fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology and the Women’s Dermatologic Society, Woodson is a Greenwood native and a graduate of Louisiana State University. She was trained in pediatric medicine at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine Woodson and in dermatology at Vanderbilt University.

Woodson recently moved to Columbus with her husband and two children.

Wiseman

Extension welcomes Sarver Jason Sarver was recently hired as peanut specialist by the Mississippi State University Extension Service and Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. Sarver is a native of Berea, Ky. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 2006 and a master’s degree in plant and soil science in 2009 from the University of Ken- Sarver tucky. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia.

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Mississippi Business Journal

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Murphy joins father Camp Murphy has joined his father, Bucky, as a partner at Corporate Relations Management and will provide clients with government relations and procurement services. Prior to joining Corporate Relations Management, Camp served as policy advisor to Gov. Phil Bryant, advising the governor on budget and criminal justice issues. Camp also served as the governor's liaison to the Mississippi National Guard and other state public safety agencies.

Previously, Camp worked at theLegislative Budget Office as support staff to theMississippi Legislature.

Auxiliaries install officers The Singing River Hospital Auxiliary and the Ocean Springs Hospital Auxiliary have installed their 2013-2014 officers. At Singing River Hospital, Jacqueline Chapman was installed as Auxiliary president. Gary Peek will serve as first vice President and Jackie Spires will again serve as second vice president. Gail Nicholson will again serve as treasurer with Karen German as recording secretary and Betty Richarde as corresponding secretary. Elouise Bell will again serve as parliamentarian and Ruby Alexander will be the group’s historian.

At Ocean Springs Hospital, Nettie Phillips was installed as president. Other officers include Sylvia Galuski, vice president; Donna Borries, recording secretary; Dortha Durso, corresponding secretary; and Pat Spear, treasurer.

Waggoner hires three

AWA appoints Whitfield

Waggoner Engineeringrecently welcomed three new employees to its team. Laura Rounsaville joined Waggoner as an environmental engineer, and is working for the Mississippi Gulf Region Water and Wastewater Program. She has vast experience coordinating with local communities and federal and state governments on Hurricane Katrina recovery projects. In addition to coordinating the environmental review of all 67 separate projects across the Gulf Coast region, Rounsaville serves as a liaison between the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the Mississippi Development Authority and Department of Housing and Urban Development environmental officers in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Anthony Jones joined Waggoner Engineering as a CADD technician in the civil department, bringing with him more than 19 years as a designer/draftsman, including his role as owner/designer of Jones Drafting and Cad Services in Jackson. Prior to joining Waggoner, Jones designed houses and small commercial buildings for clients, including planning and oversight of the construction, estimates and budget planning.

Justin Hill joined Waggoner Engineering as a construction review representative for the Mississippi Development Authority Housing Program. His career has included extensive experience in construction inspection for a variety of projects, including residential and commercial buildings, storm damage assessments, pavements and military installations.

Mary Morgan Whitfield has been named the 2014 president of the Association for Women Attorneys. A native of Tupelo and a current resident of East Memphis, Whitfield received her undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University in 1997, where she majored in human and organizational development. From 1997 to 2002, she lived in Boston and worked primarily in the financial sector. In 2002, Whitfield returned to the South to attend the University of Mississippi School of Law at Oxford. During that time, she received the Wright Law Firm Family Whitfield Law Award and served as a research assistant to professor Deborah Bell, author ofBell on Mississippi Family Law.Upon graduation in 2005, Whitfield was admitted to the practice of law in both Tennessee and Mississippi.In 2006, she joined the law firm of Shea, Moskovitz & McGhee, where she practices today, focusing exclusively on family law.

Whitfield’s first significant involvement with the Association for Women Attorneys was in 2009, when she served on the committee hosting the CLE luncheon for Tennessee’s three female Supreme Court Justices. In 2011, she helped create and organize the annual AWA golf tournament at Mirimichi Golf Course, which has become AWA’s largest fundraising event.

Whitfield is the daughter of Tupelo resident Lewis Whitfield, and Jane Finger of Fairhope, Ala. She is married and has a three-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.

MWTC chooses Arnold Hunter Arnold, Waggoner Engineering’s vice president of client services, has been elected board president of the Mississippi World Trade Center (MWTC). In this leadership role, Arnold will help drive the organization’s ongoing mission to promote international trade and global business development throughout Mississippi.

Arnold is the second Waggoner executive to hold the position with the MWTC since its founding in 2001. CEO Joe Waggoner served as board president for the organization from 2006-2008.

For announcements in Newsmakers; Contact: Wally Northway (601) 364-1016 • wally.northway@msbusiness.com

14 I Mississippi Business Journal I December 20, 2013 THE SPIN CYCLE

Pithy PRognostications from a recovering journalist f the Feds need a better barometer of the economy this holiday season, they need turn no further than the CPI – the Christmas Price Index – and focus on dancing ladies and leaping lords rather than consumer prices, GNP or the PPI! A huge spike in the price of nine dancing ladies and 10 leaping lords led to a 7.7 percent rise in the cost of the “12 Days of Christmas this year,” according to the PNC Wealth Management annual Christmas Price Index – or the CPI. The dancing ladies price tag vaulted 20 percent over 2012 to $7,553, and the lords-a-leaping jumped 10 percent to $5,243. Buying all the gifts mentioned in the core verse of the song will cost your true love $27,393 this year.

The U.S. government's Consumer Price Index increased only 1 percent for the 12 months through September.

I think St. Nick has an image problem, and perhaps needs a little reputation repair, before he fires up the sleigh this year!

Year-over-year increases since the Christmas Price Index began in 1984 have averaged 2.9 percent, the same number as

I

the U.S. inflation index.

The highest priced items after the dancing ladies and leaping lords are swans, pipers, drummers, gold rings, calling birds, French hens and turtledoves.

The only bit of savings on the carol's gift list this year comes from a 3.2 percent drop in price for the partridge's pear tree, which costs $184, the company said.

The overall price increase is the largest since 2010, when the index rose 9.2 percent.

Cyber Monday savings may save Christmas days but not money, PNC Wealth Management said. Buying one set of the gifts online would cost almost $39,763, or $12,300 more than making the purchases in person.

True loves intent on a real splurge will pay $114,651 in stores for the entire 364-gift tally that amasses from the traditional singing repetition of all the carol's verses, the analysis showed.

Advertising on Facebook reaches nearly $8 billion annually As the world increasingly turns to the digital domain for advertising, one of the leading vehicles on the landscape is social

media advertising. The big brands are increasingly turning to Facebook – and the other social media platforms – to reach their target audiences.

Facebook now makes $2 billion in revenue every quarter, and $1.8 billion of that comes from paid advertising.

Social media advertising is transforming the way companies build their brand, and the audience measurement data is still in its infancy. Currently, very little is known about whom Facebook’s largest advertisers are.

Facebook does not disclose ad impression information to the SEC, and its executives rarely talk about how much money individual clients spend on Facebook campaigns.

And, Nielsen doesn't measure Facebook adspend. Business Insider, though, currently tracks ad impression – and has knowledge from sources at Facebook as well as the social media site’s client companies.

According to a recent survey they conducted, let’s take a spin through the Top 10 FB advertiser rankings:

1. Samsung: $100 million There was widespread agreement that Samsung is one of Facebook’s biggest clients, if not the biggest client. Late last year, Samsung spent $10 million in a three-week period on Facebook just to launch its Galaxy S III phone, for instance.

2. P&G: $60 million http://www.msbusiness.com

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INTERNET SERVICES Q Comcast Business Class................................................................................ www.comcast.com Q TEC ..................................................................................................................................www.TEC.com

LAW FIRMS Q Victor W. Carmody, Jr. P.A. .............................................................. www.mississippidui.com

MARKETING Q Nuzu Net Media SEO SEM.............................................................................. http://nuzu.net/mbj

PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES Q Delta State University................................................................................... www.deltastate.edu

REAL ESTATE Q State Street Group........................................................................www.statestreetgroup.com

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TELECOMMUNICATIONS Q AT&T................................................................................................................................... www.att.com Q Comcast Business Class................................................................................ www.comcast.com Q MegaGate Broadband................................................................................ www.megagate.com Q TEC ..................................................................................................................................www.TEC.com

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Have your business listed here! Contact your advertising representative at 601.364.1000

Procter & Gamble is the world's largest advertiser and has a massive presence on Facebook, particularly among moms. Facebook ended a "free ride" for advertisers in late 2012/early 2013 by restricting the reach of some of their free page posts, thus encouraging more paid post promotion and ad spending at the time P&G made a big push out of traditional media and into social.

P&G will likely activate another huge social media campaign around Facebook for the Russian Olympics next year.

6. Verizon: $30 million Facebook has courted wireless carrier advertisers specifically with a new tool that shows Facebook mobile ads are nine Todd Smith times more successful than desktop media in getting people to switch carriers than other media.

7. Nestle: $30 million One example of Nestle's social media investment: It sponsored Grumpy Cat this year.

8. Unilever: $30 million Two of the Top 5 most shared ads in social media in 2013 were from Unilever, including its "real sketches" ad for Dove and a viral Turkish ad for Cornetto ice cream.

9. American Express: $25 million AmEx is a hugely social brand. Right now it's marketing a "member since" Facebook app that applies a badge to your page so you can show off how long you've carried a card.

10. Walmart As BI Intelligence research shows, Walmart is the top retailer on Facebook for a reason.

Golden Mic — Nelson Mandela

When Nelson Mandela spoke, the world listened. Mandela, the iconic champion of freedom, whose funeral earlier this month attracted the largest, most disparate and important leaders in the world, was the consummate voice for everyone, especially the less fortunate. He will always be remembered for speaking out against South Africa’s Apartheid system of institutional racism, and for becoming a beacon of liberty shining in the darkness – and across the ages. The world heard you, Mandela, and is 3. Microsoft: $35 million a much better place because of what you The company has a longstanding pact did. For that, you have earned this week’s with Facebook, which uses its Bing search engine. Facebook also acquired Microsoft's Golden Mic Award.

Each week, The Spin Cycle will bestow a Atlas ad server this year.

Golden Mic Award to the person, group or company in the court of public opinion that 4. AT&T Facebook is the biggest mobile app on the best exemplifies the tenets of solid PR, planet, and AT&T — as both a wireless car- marketing and advertising – and those who rier and a seller of mobile devices — knows don’t. Stay tuned – and step-up to the mic!

And remember … Amplify Your Brand! it must maintain a constant presence on it.

5. Amazon: $30 million The rumor is that Amazon will actually begin serving ads inside Facebook's ad exchange, FBX, soon. Amazon gets a lot of retail traffic from people liking or recommending purchases on Facebook.

Todd Smith is president and chief communications officer of Deane, Smith & Partners, a fullservice branding, PR, marketing and advertising firm with offices in Jackson. The firm — based in Nashville, Tenn. — is also affiliated with Mad Genius. Contact him at todd@deanesmithpartners.com, and follow him @spinsurgeon.

December 20, 2013

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Mississippi Business Journal

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15

» MISSISSIPPI LEADERS by Martin Willoughby

Baldwin gets it L CEO says leadership is about people

adership guru Dr. John Kotter noted in a recent Harvard Business Review article about the distinction between management and leadership, “The confusion around these two terms is massive, and that misunderstanding gets in the way of any reasonable discussion about how to build a company, position it for success and win in the twenty-first century.” In the article, Kotter went on to point out that we continue to incorrectly use management and leadership interchangeably; however, they are separate and distinct functions. He stated, “Leadership is about vision, about people buying in, about empowerment and, most of all, about producing useful change.”

Clay Baldwin, CEO of TALON Ordnance, understands this distinction. A native of Magee, Baldwin graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi and the Mississippi College School of Law. In between college and law school, Baldwin enjoyed a very successful career in the military. He shared, “My first leadership position was as a Platoon Leader. It is a humbling experience at age 25 to have 40 guys looking at you to make the decisions, and it is terrifying to think that they are all depending on you to make the right decisions.” Baldwin was promoted to command of a Detachment, which had a live mission that required them to man posi-

Up Close With ... Clay Baldwin

Title: CEO, TALON Ordinance LLC First Job: “I worked at Revco Drugs where I swept/mopped floors and stocked shelves.”

Favorite Books: The Challenge of Command (Roger Nye); We Were Soldiers Once and Young (Harold G. Moore); Outlaw Platoon (Sean Parnell) Proudest Moment as a Leader: “Leading my team in Afghanistan to accomplish a very difficult mission, and everyone coming home alive. Leadership under adverse conditions is the ultimate challenge with the greatest reward.”

Hobbies/Interests: Reading, shooting, designing weapons, and raising kids.

tions 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

He said, “I remained in command of that unit for two years, and I learned more about myself as a leader and about leading people than in any position before or since.”

Baldwin shared his observation, “Leadership is a term that is thrown around a lot in the business world, but rarely do those who use the term truly understand it.

Most people define good leadership in the same way they define effective management. The two are totally different, and until you understand the difference, you can never truly be a good leader.” Baldwin explained that managers allocate resources to accomplish a given task – they take a fi-

nite set of resources, and use them to achieve a goal. Interestingly Baldwin noted, “To be a good leader, you must be a good manager. But, you can be a fantastic manager and never be a leader.” Baldwin believes, “Leadership is about people.

Leadership, in a nutshell, is motivating the people within your group to not only accomplish a task, but to want to do it to the best of their ability, even when it is not necessarily in their personal best interest.”

I agree with Baldwin “Great leadership inspires people to work harder than they normally would to achieve a goal that is greater than themselves.”

Baldwin wisely noted that leadership

“To be a good leader, you must be a good manager. But, you can be a fantastic manager and never be a leader.”

Clay Baldwin

failures occur every day in almost every organization, public and private because those in charge focus more on the management of resources than on motivating Martin Willoughby the people that are critical to accomplishing whatever task that group is charged with. He shared, “my leadership philosophy is to take care of your people, give them the tools and resources to do their specific job, recognize and reward their efforts, and never let them (or especially yourself ) lose sight of the mission/goal and why it matters. That sounds simple, but it is the hardest thing in the world to do. That is why there are few great leaders.” I am inspired by Baldwin’s observation that, “For those of us who aspire to be better leaders, we must always measure our success and failure by the attitudes and accomplishments of our people, not ourselves.”

After returning to law school and practicing law for several years, Baldwin is back in a leadership position at TALON Ordnance. His vision for TALON is “to create a premium weapon for those whose life depends on its function, including our Nation’s military warriors, its law enforcement guardians, and its free and brave citizens who daily defend their families and our way of life.” I appreciate Baldwin’s clear understanding of the true meaning of leadership and the opportunity to learn from his insights and life experiences on this important subject.

Martin Willoughby is a business consultant and regular contributing columnist for the Mississippi Business Journal. He serves as Chief Operating Officer of Butler Snow Advisory Services, LLC and can be reached at martin.willoughby@ butlersnow.com.

The Kitchen House— a big, full story — is a page turner

G » The Kitchen House

By Kathleen Grissom Published by Simon and Schuster $16.00 softback

et ready for a big, full story when you read this book. There are lots of richly drawn characters set against antebellum days in Virginia, but it’s all about the story and this story grabs the reader’s attention and won’t let go.

The story begins in 1791 when a young white girl, Lavinia, is orphaned as she travels from Ireland with her parents. She is placed on a Virginia plantation as an indentured servant and assigned to the kitchen house under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate slave daughter. In a discussion about the book, the author says historical research reveals Irish whites serving as indentured slaves on Virginia plantations, a fact I didn’t know. The narration is told by Belle and Lavinia as we see events unfold from the perspective of each.

Lavinia learns to cook, clean and serve food while guided by the quiet strength and love of Belle’s family. As she grows older, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master’s opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous, yet protective, son. She attempts to straddle the worlds of the kitchen house and the big house, but her skin color sets her apart from Belle and the other slaves.

The story of how the author was inspired to write this

book is a story in itself. It started when she and her husband began renovating a plantation tavern in Virginia and discovered an old map with a notation, Negro Hill. She gained further inspiration upon learning of her father’s family history – an Irish family coming to America with two sons and a daughter. Both parents died at sea. The history of the little boys was traced but nothing could be found of the little girl.

With a story teller’s insight, Grissom figured out what happened to the child. Although she’s had careers in several fields, The Kitchen House is Grissom’s first novel. I hope it’s not her last.

Publishers Weekly says of The Kitchen House, “… provides a trove of tension and grit, while the many nefarious doings will keep readers hooked to the twisted, yet hopeful, conclusion.”

— Lynn Lofton, mbj@msbusiness.com

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