Takes

CONSTANT CUPID: QUESTION OF THE WEEK - ARE YOU IN LOVE? Love may not be constant in any single case, but it's remarkably so in the aggregate. In a nationwide survey conducted for Adweek by Alden & Associates of Hermosa Beach, Calif., 71 percent of respondents answered affirmatively when asked: Are you in love? That's a negligible shift from the 72.5 percent saying the same in last year's survey and within a few percentage points of each Valentine survey we've done in the past five years. As in previous polling, the youngest respondents were the least likely to be in love, with just 38 percent of the 18-24-year-olds falling into that category. By contrast, 85 percent of the 25-34s said they're in love. A reassuring 96 percent of married respondents claimed to be in love (with their spouses?), versus 32 percent of singles. Despite their differing planetary origins, there was no significant gap between men and women in this year's Valentine data. TINSELTOWN SEX: WELL, IT'S NICE TO KNOW THEY HAVE A HOBBY Lest anyone begin to imagine that Washington, D.C., is the nation's leading hotbed of sexual intrigue, a survey in Details returns that honor to Hollywood. The magazine sent out questionnaires to a couple thousand movie-biz insiders-including actors, actresses, producers, directors, agents and writers-to get a sense of just how sex-drenched Hollywood is. For starters, 46 percent of respondents believe they have more sex than the general public does. Asked what they'd do to land a job or close a deal, 30 percent said they'd have intercourse and 21 percent would strip, while 86 percent would "flirt like a demon." Moving on to matters of geographical interest, the survey found Griffith Park edging out the famous Hollywood sign as "the best public place in Hollywood to have sex." Ah, the great outdoors. JAPANESE REVELS: A CONSUMER TREND THATIS WORTH ITS SALT Even amid Japan's lingering recession, consumers in that country need to cut loose now and then. Thus, a report by Dentsu has identified "reveling" as an important phenomenon in that society. In part, these revels take the form of products and services that allow people to savor a sense of self-indulgence. Among popular items of the past year, according to Dentsu, are kits for handmade teddy bears. Skin- and hair-care products containing mud or clay have won a following, as have simulation games that let players pretend to be a jockey or a railroad engineer. And, with deregulation of the market for salt (!), gourmets have been splurging on imported brands and on regional salts that incorporate local herbs, seaweed, minerals and whatnot. OH, THOSE BOYS: BUT THEY REALLY WANT A GAL WHO'S JUST LIKE MOM To paraphrase Shakespeare, lust is not lust that alters when it alteration finds. Quite the contrary, judging by male devotion to the famously augmented Pamela Anderson Lee. In a poll by Men's Fitness magazine, readers were asked to say which famous person "arouses in you the most lustful feelings." Lee led the arousing field by a wide margin, with Demi Moore in second place and Jenny McCarthy running third. We invite you to correlate this list with another part of the survey, in which the men were asked to cite the qualities other than body parts that attract them to a woman. Personality topped the list (cited by 63 percent), followed by smile (51 percent) and intelligence (33 percent). For what it's worth, unattainability (17 percent) outpointed availability (14 percent). The Rules rule! The poll rebuts the notion that men think of sex all the time. Rather, 63 percent said they think about it "a few times a day," 28 percent do so "once an hour," 5 percent answered "once a day" and 4 percent said it's "less than once a day." So there. BEYOND CARS: PREPARING TO WIN THE DEMOLITION DERBY ON THE ROADS OF THE '90S Maybe people are heeding the stories about how sport-utility vehicles make mincemeat of ordinary cars when one collides with the other. And they'd rather be the mincer than the minced. At any rate, a consumer study finds "intent to purchase" SUVs has nearly doubled during the past three years, even as demand for regular cars has decreased. The research was conducted by The Dohring Co., a Glendale, Calif.-based firm that tracks the automotive market. Dohring notes that automakers will be happy to live with that trade-off, given the difference in profit margins between conventional cars and SUVs. Another recent survey by Dohring detects a cooling of consumer interest in the fledgling category of used-car superstores. Though such superstores made an initial splash in the marketplace, inclination to buy from them has been declining-even as awareness of those outlets has risen from 22 percent of consumers last year to 31 percent this year, according to Dohring's study. A new-car dealership that offers a "manufacturer's certified used-car program" can have a strong advantage, Dohring suggests, but only if it takes systematic steps to market its program to potential customers. MIXED BLESSINGS: KEEPING KIDS BUSY, DOGS OF THE WEEK, ETC. Here's the best reason yet for parents to own a home computer. Asked what they're most likely to do when lousy weather keeps them indoors, 18 percent of kids responding to an online poll answered "drive my parents crazy." But 36 percent of participants in the poll, conducted via the CurioCity FreeZone Web site, said they'd while away the hours by using the computer. Needless to say, plenty of these young chipheads would fall into the parent-tormenting ranks if they didn't have cyberspace as a handy alternative. In addition, 20 percent of respondents said they'd watch TV shows or videos, 14 percent would listen to music and 11 percent would talk on the phone. When the client has "Humane" in its name, you don't expect to see dark humor in its advertising. But a campaign for the Ozaukee Humane Society in Wisconsin has an edge to it. Hadn't thought of a dog as your own canine capo? One of the ads cheerfully presents that notion. Another shows an affable pooch below a headline that reads: "Some people pay $4.00 a minute for this much love and affection." Well, yes. Milwaukee agency BVK/McDonald created the unusual series. And while we're on the subject of dogs, what philosophical person has not pondered the fact that God spelled backwards is dog? A British ad for NatWest puts that insight into action as it transforms a bit of insurance-industry boilerplate into a catchy sales point: "Household insurance, including acts of dog. Just in case." The London office of Ammirati Puris Lintas created the ad. One of these days, the feds should find out how many man hours are expended each year on surveys of Americans' sexual behavior and attitudes. When you add the time experts spend creating and tabulating such surveys to the time the rest of us spend responding to and reading about them, the total must be enormous. Self magazine recently got into the act, posing questions to 1,000 men and 1,000 women. On the timely topic of whether people are monogamous, it turns out most of them are. "Four out of five men and women reported they've had one partner in the past 12 months," says the magazine's summary of the data. We can guess who the fifth one is.

Brand Marketing

Takes

Mark Dolliver

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Mark Dolliver