A Searching Analysis, Money Beats Sex, Etc.

Golly, the Internet isn't a flash-in-the-pan after all! We find fresh evidence of this in a report from the Pew Internet & American Life project, which says the use of search engines has joined e-mail as a routine activity for tens of millions of Americans. Indeed, search-engine usage is closing in on e-mail for the status of most-popular Internet activity. The Pew report finds a 55 percent increase between June 2004 and September 2005 in the number of people who use search engines on an average day (from 38 million to 59 million). Putting it another way, 41 percent of wired adults now use search engines on a typical day. Among those who have a broadband connection at home, 54 percent use search engines that often. The figure rises to 70 percent for those who have broadband at home and at work. Even among those who rely on a dial-up link at home, the figure is a not-so-shabby 33 percent. The homemade side dish is disappearing from the American dinner table, but ready-made versions are taking up some of the culinary slack. A report by Information Resources Inc. on the "convenient meal solutions" field says dollar sales of refrigerated side dishes jumped 80 percent in the 52 weeks ending Sept. 11. There was a 7 percent gain in sales of frozen side dishes. (The data include sales at food, drug and mass-merchandise outlets.) The report provides bitter news, incidentally, for devotees of pot pies—too antique a dish, evidently, to prosper even in a convenient form. While the report tells of sales gains for frozen multi-serve dinners (up 18 percent), frozen hand-held entrées (8 percent) and frozen pizzas (2 percent), sales of frozen pot pies declined by 6 percent. Who says the news in a daily paper isn't relevant to the average person? It's surely relevant to the average person who wants a bargain on used brass poles. So readers might infer, at any rate, from a clever ad promoting San Diego's Union-Tribune. You might not think that an FBI raid on a strip club would be a stimulus to local commerce, but the ad shows how a newspaper can bring such varied elements of life together in one convenient package. Playing on the way men manage their mid-life crises, another ad in the series links an article on premature male balding to an item on soaring sales for sports cars. (Feel the wind blowing through your scalp!) NYCA of San Diego created the campaign. Here's a bad sign of the times: Lots of overweight children resort to adult or junior-sized attire in order to have clothes they can squeeze into. Surveying mothers of overweight kids age 9-12, The NPD Group found that 38 percent of the girls wear women's or junior apparel and 31 percent of the boys wear men's clothes. While a kid can get into such clothing, this doesn't make it a good fit. Overweight kids in this age cohort "appear to be stuck between youth sizing that is too small and adult sizing that is larger, but not proportional." Pants are the hardest category. Apparently modern society really is too acquisitive. In a poll conducted for Lifetime cable network by ICR, women were asked what they'd most like to have in 2006—more money, more time for themselves or more sex. Money won an outright majority of the vote (58 percent), with time to oneself a distant second (36 percent). A mere 6 percent opted for more sex. Along the same lines, when respondents were given a choice between a day-long shopping spree and "an intimate night with the man of their dreams," the spree had more takers than Mr. Dreams (58 percent vs. 38 percent). Men seem to fare better in female esteem when they throw in some food: Asked to choose between an iPod and a romantic dinner with their significant other, 69 percent of women went with the dinner, while 27 percent preferred the iPod. One holiday-related tidbit from this survey: Among women who own a pet, 55 percent intend to give it a gift, while just 41 percent plan to give a gift to their boss.

Brand Marketing

A Searching Analysis, Money Beats Sex, Etc.

Mark Dolliver

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Mark Dolliver