Miffed by the Vikings home game schedule? Then grumble to a hometown company. The National Football League has hired a company that uses so-called optimization software created by Fair Isaac, the Minneapolis company best known for its credit score, to come up with the best playing schedule for its regular season.
Inside track: Fate of NFL set by Fair Isaac
April 21, 2008 at 3:49AM
Optimal Planning Solutions of British Columbia uses Fair Isaac's Xpress-MP tool to create the schedules for more than a dozen professional sports leagues, including the NFL and Major League Soccer. The tool essentially uses mathematical models to help businesses increase efficiencies, reduce costs and maximize profit.
For the NFL, it creates schedules based on stadium availability, televised games meant to score the biggest audiences and equitable travel schedules.
Businesses in financial services, insurance, retail and manufacturing use optimization technology, too.
This is a new sport for Fair Isaac. It acquired Dash Optimization, the British company that created Xpress-MP, in January.
Fredrikson branches out Fredrikson & Byron has launched a new advertising, marketing and trademark practice group headed by veteran advertising and trademark attorney Stephen Bergerson. The seven-attorney group works with the creative folks in the advertising world to keep them out of legal trouble such as false claims and copyright infringement as they develop ads and select trademarks.
But Bergerson says that no "is a word of last resort."
The new group, separate from Fredrikson's media and entertainment group, works with agency agreements, talent contracts, ad copy and disputes with competitive advertisers.
Top honors Minneapolis ad agency Colle+McVoy won "best of show" honors for its advertising campaign for implement manufacturer New Holland North America by the National Agri-Marketing Association.
It was the second year in a row that Colle+McVoy walked away with top honors.
The 73-year-old agency also won 13 first-place awards for campaigns involving New Holland and other agribusiness clients, including Cenex and Novartis.
KARA MCGuire, David Phelps
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California-based Better Place Forests bought 112 acres in Scandia to offer more eco-friendly memorial options, an industry Emergen Research expects to generate $1.2 billion a year by 2030.
