Work And More Work, Pricing Free Trade, Etc.

A survey of small-business proprietors yields a key fact about them: They're nuts. At least, many must be twisted to skew their lives so much toward work at the expense of all else. Conducted for Staples by International Communications Research among owners and managers of businesses with fewer than 20 employees, the poll found 21 percent of them work 80 hours or more per week. Moreover, work chronically encroaches on what's supposedly non-work time. Forty-seven percent toil "during what is supposed to be family time." Fifty-one percent work on holidays, 21 percent at least four times a week while eating dinner, 49 percent while driving and 66 percent "after hours and at night." Then there are the 18 percent who "admit to reading work- related e-mail and documents while in the bathroom." Naturally, they work while on vacation. But since 37 percent "could not readily remember their last vacation," it's hard to be sure exactly how they spent the time.Without a Katrina-sized disaster in the U.S. or a massive tsunami elsewhere to arouse their sympathies, Americans were less charitable in 2006 than in 2005. Still, 83 percent of adults said they contributed to a charity in the past 12 months, according to a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Personal Finance Poll. Among respondents who made contributions during that period, the average total was $1,220, vs. $1,352 the previous year. The chart at lower left indicates the hierarchy of causes toward which Americans make donations. People age 55 and older are the most likely to have made a charitable contribution, with 91 percent having done this. So did 88 percent of the 45-54s, 80 percent of the 35-44s and 70 percent of the 18-34s. There's a big gap in the incidence of contributions to religious causes: 47 percent of the 55-plus cohort made such donations, vs. 25 percent of the 18-34s. By contrast, the young were nearly as likely as the old to have contributed to educational causes (18 percent vs. 19 percent) and to the arts (10 percent vs. 13 percent).It's not a surprise that many Americans think free trade poses a threat to jobs in the U.S. And, indeed, a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found 48 percent of respondents saying NAFTA and other such pacts lead to job losses here, while just 12 percent said free trade leads to job gains in America. (The rest said it makes no difference.) Likewise, people were more apt to believe free trade makes wages in the U.S. lower than higher (44 percent vs. 11 percent). The surprising finding is that just one-third of respondents believe free trade yields lower prices for U.S. consumers. The 32 percent who said it brings lower prices were nearly matched by the 30 percent who think free trade results in higher prices. That's consistent with the fact that nearly equal numbers of respondents think their own finances have been hurt (36 percent) rather than helped (35 percent) by free trade. Given all this negativity, it's mysterious that a summing-up query found 44 percent saying free-trade pacts have generally been a "good thing" for the U.S., vs. 35 percent saying they've been a bad thing.Ad agency creative staffers ought to celebrate one trend in the automotive market: a shift away from cash rebates. There is nothing creatively gripping, after all, about a commercial whose chief message is, "We'll give you $1,000 back if you buy one of our cars." A report by J.D. Power and Associates says the average retail transaction price for a new vehicle ("the final vehicle price paid minus any customer cash rebates") climbed from $25,920 in 2004 to $26,881 last year. At the same time, the average cash rebate fell from $2,973 to $2,371. An executive at the research firm said the automotive market is now "standing more on its own" without big price cuts and rebates. Car advertising may still stink, but it at least has more leeway to avoid stinking as the decline of rebates makes positive branding more important. Some of us like pets because they're unlike humans. There's a niche, though, of people who like pets because they do seem almost human. An ad campaign for Chicago's Anti-Cruelty Society targets this audience. If a dog could tell jokes, as the one in the ad above apparently can, it'd be well worth having. Another dog in the campaign is seen speaking wistfully of the canine fairer sex: "that wench. she shakes that tail and they come running." It's an engaging setup to the campaign's theme, "Adopt a friend." Corn Fed Advertising of Chicago created the series. Where will the next Bill Gates come from? In a Zogby International poll that posed this question, just 21 percent of respondents guessed the "next great technology leader" will come from the U.S. Nearly two-thirds think this person will hail from China, Japan or India. The same poll asked people to say which is the greater invention: the printing press or the Internet? The press was the clear favorite, with 65 percent of the vote. Future archaeologists will be puzzled by the bundles of wires that run under our streets. And telephone poles? Must have been erected as an arcane tribute to the gods. A poll by Forrester Research documents the extent to which young consumers disdain landlines. Among online respondents age 12-21 who have a mobile phone, 57 percent said it has "replaced nearly all other phone use." (The figure was a non-trivial 21 percent for those 22 and older). Sixty-one percent of young folks (and 23 percent of their elders) subscribed to the statement, "If I can choose between using a mobile phone or a regular phone, I prefer to use a mobile." The same poll finds lots of hostility toward advertising via cell phones and other mobile gadgets. Seventy-nine percent of online consumers said they find ads on their mobile devices "annoying." Just 3 percent said they trust text ads on mobile phones, while 56 percent don't trust them (with the rest "neutral" on the matter).

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Work And More Work, Pricing Free Trade, Etc.

Mark Dolliver

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