Soul Owners: Better To Be A Sellout Than A Remaindered Item
Take it as a healthy sign of generational optimism when young folks are engaged by the issue of "selling out

Soul Owners: Better To Be A Sellout Than A Remaindered Item
Take it as a healthy sign of generational optimism when young folks are engaged by the issue of “selling out.” It doesn’t matter whether they’re averse to selling out or eager to do it. What counts is the assumption that Big Business stands ready to buy their souls if they’ll just abandon their loftier dreams. In truth, corporate America may not be panting to enlist would-have-been performance artists in its junior-executive training programs, but it’s good for morale if young adults imagine otherwise. After all, nothing is more disappointing than deciding to sell out and discovering that nobody cares to buy. In a survey conducted among 18-34-year-olds for Swing magazine, 14 percent of respondents said “most” of their friends already have sold out and 33 percent said “some” have done so. On the other hand, 35 percent said “very few” of their pals have sold out and 14 percent said “none” have done so. It’s not that the respondents hold terribly strict views on what constitutes selling out. Asked if “choosing a career just for the money” qualifies as selling out, 61 percent said “no.” So, are they ready to take the money and run? Not most of them. When asked whether they’d rather “work at a job you really feel good about but only make enough money to get by OR make enough money to live well but work at a job you don’t feel good about,” 72 percent preferred the former while 27 percent chose the latter. And just 18 percent said they’d given up a career they wanted to pursue due to fears they couldn’t make a living.
PARENTS VS. PEERS: Part-Time Role Models
As child-development experts debate the relative importance of parents and peers in forming a kid’s behavior, the numbers are in on one aspect of the matter: A Roper Starch survey finds 64 percent of teen respondents citing friends as the “top influence” in their choice of clothes. Parents will be happy to escape the blame on that score. They’ll also be relieved that a majority of teens (61 percent) said parents exert the most influence on their decision to drink alcohol or not. And 45 percent said parents are the main influence as they figure out what they want to be when they grow up. Among other info-tidbits: 75 percent of teen girls said they share secrets versus 56 percent of teen boys. Likewise, 76 percent of girls share their dreams versus 52 percent of boys.
Shopper, Heal Thyself: Putting ‘wellness’ Atop Their Grocery Lists
If an apple a day will preserve them from the tender mercies of their HMOs, increasing numbers of consumers will be sure to buy some when they stop at the supermarket. Until recently, fat content and calories were the only health-related factors that drew much attention from mainstream shoppers. But now, says a study commissioned by Prevention magazine and the Food Marketing Institute, a broader concern about “wellness” is influencing people’s supermarket shopping lists. The study sees this development as part of a more general trend toward “self-care.”
As you can see from the chart, women are more apt than men to be guided by various health-related concerns when they choose their groceries. But the numbers are strikingly high for men and women alike, even if we assume that the survey’s respondents are crediting themselves with more sagacity than they actually display in the store. A breakdown of the data by age group finds the hale and hearty Gen Xers less likely than the decrepit baby boomers or “matures” to heed health concerns in their food shopping.
Product labels have become a crucial source of information for today’s health-conscious shoppers. In all, 17 percent of respondents say they’ve stopped buying a product in the past month due to a specific ingredient, while 18 percent have started buying a product because of an ingredient.
play ball: But Don’t Forget About Subaquatic Billiards!
One could interpret the chart here to mean that baseball is clinging to its status as the national pastime. Bear in mind, though, that the stats come from a Time.com online poll initiated shortly after the World Series (capping a season of home-run heroics) and just as the reality of an NBA strike was sinking in. Under the circumstances, baseball’s thin plurality seems more an indication of a declining share of mind. (The chart reflects the tally as it stood at press time.) If nothing else, partisans of traditional athletics will be happy that their favorites haven’t yet been eclipsed by skydive-bowling or some other crackpot “extreme” sport.
Spooked: Adding Up Adweek’s Classified Ads For Jobs
With the economy apparently cooling down, the market for jobs in advertising, marketing and media has gone cold. The volume of help-wanted classified ads running in Adweek reflects that turn of events, with year-to-year comparisons on the negative side for all six regions. If the trend continues, we’ll be on the lookout for a boom in ads from outplacement services.
Cover Your Ears! Maybe Television Sets Need An L-Chip, Too
Why are TV ratings mediocre so far this season? Perhaps parents have tuned out in fear of bulletins about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Polling commissioned by Cramer-Krasselt of Chicago found 42 percent of parents saying they’re “extremely” or “very” concerned about the effect the media coverage could have on the “character development” of young children. Among parents of kids age 3-12, 46 percent have turned off the TV or changed channels to shield their offspring from coverage of Lewinskygate; 35 percent of the parents of 13-17-year-olds say the same. Do you suppose there’s a lucrative niche for a network that renounces any mention of the matter?
MIXED BLESSINGS: In Defense of Vanilla, True Bathroom Humor, Nocturnal Fears, Etc.
What is it about poor old vanilla that invites disparagement? Brands intent on jazzing up their images routinely do so by means of invidious comparisons with vanilla. Indeed, an ad for Chicago’s new Hotel Monaco is notable for its restraint in omitting “plain,” the modifier that usually attaches itself to the word. Does it not occur to advertisers that many of us like the flavor? Untold millions of vanillaphiles may take umbrage when ads take cheap shots at it. More research must be done on the issue. In the meantime, this stylish ad (by Creative Marketing of Northbrook, Ill.) plays the anti-vanilla theme to the hilt. Copy also notes an amenity seldom found in lesser establishments: At Hotel Monaco, “complimentary goldfish keep you company.” Better than hypercritical goldfish, no doubt.

While we’re on the subject of fish, make what you will of the findings in a CNN Interactive online poll that asked: “Do you think fish should be on the menu at aquariums?” While a blasƒ 64 percent of participants “don’t think it’s a problem,” 11 percent “don’t think it’s appropriate.” Striking a moderate stance, 25 percent think it’s all right “only if the fishing methods are environmentally sound.”

An entrepreneurial woman’s place is on the home page. A study sponsored by IBM and the National Foundation for Women Business Owners finds that 23 percent of female business owners in the U.S. have their own home pages on the Internet.

Can Martians and Venusians come to terms on bathroom design? An ad for DuPont invokes a famously contentious battle of the sexes while positioning the company’s Corian as the remodeling material on which men and women can agree. The stuff is so durable that “you might end up leaning on it ten years from now. Passionately discussing the position of the toilet seat.” Gabriel Diericks Razidlo of Minneapolis created the ad.

Maybe the advertising award shows should inaugurate a category for parodies of the “Got milk?” campaign. There’s certainly no shortage of them. Among the latest is an ad that relates spilled milk to lost data. And if you’ve got to cry about one or the other, spilled milk is a lot easier to cope with. As the copy asks, “What good are strong teeth and healthy looking skin when your computer takes a nose dive, taking with it weeks, maybe months, of work?” MSI Advertising/Marketing/PR of Richmond, Va., created the ad.

What keeps business people awake at night? Not the competition. A poll by Biz/Excite, a supplement to PC Computing, found 22 percent of those in small and mid-sized companies losing sleep about paying the bills. Twelve percent fret about customer service, and another 12 percent worry about new markets. But just 5 percent lie awake with fears about competitors.