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What Do Men Want? Unicast Has the Answer

posted on January 25, 2011

What do men want? It’s a question I ask myself every day and today Unicast came up with the answer! Men don’t want to have fun, they want to know what’s going on in the world. Really? That wouldn’t have been my first guess.

According to What Men Want 2011, 67% of men said they use the internet “primarily for news,” 65% said they use it to connect with family and only 51% said for entertainment. The exception to the rule was in the 18-25 age group, where game play and and watching TV or movies online was the primary focus. In all other age groups, those activities never ranked higher than 63% and dropped as low as 25% in the over 65 group.

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Consumer Product Safety Board Puts Complaints Online

posted on January 24, 2011

If you routinely scan social media for complaints about your business or product, come March you’ll need to add another site to the list. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is now beta testing a new website that will allow consumers to list their complaints publicly. The site is called SaferProducts.gov and AdAge calls it “Yelp with the imprimatur of government authority.”

The site will focus only on product safety issues and complaints will be screened before they go live, but don’t expect too many of the posts to get tossed. The CPSC says, all comments “that meet the minimum requirements for publication in the Database will be disclosed in the Database.” The legalese that follows is pretty extensive but it all boils down to what the screener considers to be reasonable. Which means, unless a consumer sends in a blatantly outrageous claim, it’s likely to get published.

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Girl Scouts Say Yes to Social Media, But No to Online Selling

posted on January 24, 2011

“Man I really want girl scout cookies ppl….. U juss dnt understand…..”

And so the cry goes up on Twitter and Facebook as people all over America begin craving those Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs. It’s Girl Scout cookie time and this year those little green moppets will be using social media to help them hawk those over-priced boxes of sugary joy.

The whole marketing concept behind Girl Scout cookies is pretty amazing. By releasing the product only once a year, they’ve cleverly created a seller’s market. It’s not just a box of cookies, it’s an event! The first Girl Scout cookies were sold in 1917, but the tradition as we know it goes back to the 1950′s, young girls going door-to-door, or setting up tables at the local shopping center, selling bakery-made treats. And it’s still being done that same way today but with a twist – social media.

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New Book Offers Marketing Advice Beatles Style

posted on January 21, 2011

When you look at the history of The Beatles, it may seem that their rise to the top of the charts was based on a series of fateful meetings and lucky breaks. But according to Richard Courtney and George Cassidy, there was nothing accidental about it. They say that every move, every junction was carefully planned and vetted with an eye always toward being a musical success. They say, that by following the blueprint set out by The Beatles, any company could rise to the top of their own industry chart and that is the premise of their new book.

Come Together: The Business Wisdom of The Beatles is a simplified, straightforward look at the steps that made The Beatles one of the most successful musical acts in history and how those same steps can be applied to business.

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27% of Americans Have Checked Facebook While in the Bathroom

posted on January 21, 2011

Have you ever checked Facebook while in the bathroom? 27% of the people AIS Media surveyed said they had. Granted, they only surveyed 500 people, but I’d bet that real percentage is even higher than that. Go into any women’s restroom  in a club in Los Angeles and you’ll see that it’s true – lipsticks and cell phones all over the place.

So what does this mean to you, the marketer? A lot, actually. It’s another example of how social media is changing the way we go about our. . . shall we say, daily business. We’re becoming input junkies who can’t go ten minutes without connecting to our friends be it through social media updates, check-in services or text messaging.

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Like Everything Else, Email is Going Mobile

posted on January 20, 2011

comScore’s latest study on email usage returned a result we already suspected was true – more people are using their mobile phones to access their email causing a drop in web-based email usage.

The shift is more about the advances in technology and less about the way we use email to communicate. Web-based email has always been about ease of access. If you’re only using Outlook then your work emails stay at work and home emails stay home. Forwarding emails from one computer to another was the only way to gather all of the information in one place and if you were traveling the you were stuck.

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As Kids Grow, Parents Spend Less Time on Social Media

posted on January 20, 2011

Parents with children under six years old spend more time using social media than those with older children. This is one of the findings of a new survey conducted by Media Audit and featured on eMarketer.

Starting with 67.1% (for parents with kids under six), the study saw a gradual but steady decrease in usage ending at 55.2% for parents with kids over 18. My guess is that the decrease is based on two factors, parental age and lifestyle.

Though there are exceptions to the rule (Elton John), most sources quote the mean age for a first baby at 25 to 27 years old. So the top level of responders in this survey are in their early-thirties and under. That alone, will account for more social media usage.