I’ve talked about it in the past week or so; little indicators of the economy’s health. Well, here is a list from Time that compiles some of the more strange indicators of the economy and what they mean.

1. Hikers. When times are hard and unemployment is high, people tend to have a lot more free time on their hands. This means there is a spike in the number of people going for hikes in national parks and other places as well.

2. Immigration into the United States. For a while now, like decades, the number of immigrants coming into the U.S. has been rising. However, now with a bad economy, the number has slowed down and even stalled a bit. It seems like our country isn’t as attractive as it once was.

3. Men’s Underwear. I talked about this one in a post I wrote last week about ties. I think this one is just silly. But, the idea is that men buy more underwear when the economy starts picking up. When the economy is down sales of men’s underwear drops dramatically.

4. Fewer babies are being born and planned. In a recent survey of women, 44% said that they were going to wait to have kids until the economy starts to pick up. This means that the sale of birth control items should be up, right?

5. More attractive waitresses. This is another silly one in my opinion. The idea behind this “index” is that attractive women don’t have a hard time finding work being models or working for some kind of marketing campaign when times are good. However, now that times aren’t so great, they are finding themselves working at restaurants. And restaurant owners are more than willing to hire the pretty girls to be waitresses so it will bring customers in.

Like I said, the whole thing is kind of silly. I mean, you can also look at more reliable sources to tell you how the economy is doing like unemployment as well as sales figures. I always thought that if sales in some industries were up then the economy is probably doing better than if sales are down.

The economy is one of those things that have many indicators ranging from the very silly to the very serious. Hopefully most of the indicators are pointing to the economy starting to pick up and maybe we’ll start seeing some growth soon.

Source

Procter and Gamble Co. has done something that only a desperate company does to a product: releasing a plethora of new flavors, shapes, sizes, and a new marketing campaign. Procter and Gamble decided to do this to the brand Pringles, and speculation is going on now that the crisp manufacturer may be the next brand to be sold off by P&G.

It’s not just consumers speculating that the company may be sold off but professionals also. The company has also given some hints that they are ready to move on from the food business altogether:

“More and more, we’re hearing from Procter & Gamble that the food business doesn’t fit in with the rest of their portfolio,” said Ali Dibadj, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein.

So far, Procter and Gamble has sold off Folgers, Jif, Crisco, and Sunny Delight. This makes Pringles the only major brand left for the company.

When P&G sold Folgers in November, the $3 billion sale was one of the largest consumer products to ever be sold. It was also among many moves that P&G made to focus business on higher growth potential like beauty and grooming items. It has acquired Zirh, a men’s skin care line, and The Art of Shaving grooming line in the past few months.

A.G. Lafley, P&G chairman and CEO, stepped aside July 1, but before he did, the told analysts that this year the company would “continue to prune” some brands while looking for larger positions in some other businesses and industries.

Of course, there is the loyal fans of the chip to worry about. There are several benefits to the Pringle’s chips versus other potato chips, such as:

Pringles are sold in cans, so the bags won’t get crushed. There is a flavor of Pringles for everyone
Pringles travel well (see reason 1)

P&G’s business plan leaves some brands out in the cold too, not just food, but brands like Braun and Duracell, both billion dollar brands. So, it is unlikely that these brands may be sold off.

1.     Situation Analysis

a.       The company – include company performance over the last three years.  The product – provide a description of the merchandise the store/dealership carries.

b.      Retail footprint – where are the stores/dealerships located in U.S.?  Provide map

c.       The environment

a.       Industry trends

b.      Social, economic trends

d.      SWOT -  ½ to 1 page chart of what you believe the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are.

e.       The competition – list who the main competitors are and who the indirect competitors are.

2.   Target Market Research Overview:

a.       Secondary research

Provide an explanation of databases you searched for insights on the target market.

Describe what clusters the target market belongs to from Claritas, Tapestry, etc.

Simmons results, provide a detailed explanation of what you searched for and found in Simmons data base.

b.      Primary research -

a.      Methodology – who did you ask and how did you collect data?

b.      Provide summary of results from each question

3.   Key insights (from both primary and secondary)

a.      Inside the targets’ mind – who is this person?

b.      Pull direct quotes from target market interviews, relevant articles.

4.  Target market profile

a.      Primary market

b.      Secondary

Starbucks had a “sneak peek” of a new marketing campaign on YouTube recently.

The youtube “sneak peek” shows the upcoming full page ads that Starbucks will take out to compare it to competitors.

From the AP:

Playing up ketchup’s natural roots also feeds into consumers’ growing desire for more wholesome, natural foods, analysts and the company said. The new label includes the tagline “Grown not made.”

Heinz is also planning its largest marketing campaign since the 1980′s to get the news out about its new slogan.

Source

Sure it works, my cable company has changed it name about 3 times in five years. It holds about 80% of the market and everyone knows that its service is sub par. Your cable or internet can go off at random for days. Add to the fact that when this company decides to do maintenance work it basically shuts down the whole town of an internet connection for a few days. It has no multinetwork line backup, nothing, they are in fact a simple reseller of Quest Communications services.

You’d think with all this someone would come and knock the king off his hill. Well even though everyone in town knows that there service isn’t the best, newcomers to the town simply do not know and are force feed advertisement after advertisement from this company. It also helps that they own one of the local broadcasting channels and stream free real estate listings to your tv, with the only commercial between house listings are ads for there services. When enough people get mad, it seems that the company just changes it name, and then relaunches itself and goes on an even bigger marketing campaign in the local market to newcomers. However, I have as of yet to see a change.

So why do companies just change the name and never upgrade there level of service or product. The are many reasons some simple some complex. For starters it is easy to do a corporate name change, this might not do anything but change your name on paper, but for a simple filing fee to your local secretary of state you can now call yourself something new. It’s not quite like getting a new slate, more like pulling the cover over your potential new customers eyes. Some companies simply cannot upgrade there product/service b/c they are in fact dependent on someone or something else. If you are a reseller service and your core product has issues you can either choose to drop it or just keep relabeling it in order to keep up with the customer drop off rate by bringing in new customers.

In some cases companies rename something not because the product is bad but because they hope to increase consumer awareness by adding all sorts of marketing flare to drill into the minds of there hopeless victims(I mean, customers.) Take Wendy’s for example, a few months back Wendy’s started renaming itself in wake of slowing sales growth and a new consumer shift towards healthier eating habits. It tried to promote itself as a new better fast food place a valid start by any means, but what really stands out is it’s slogan for this marketing twist, “It’s not fast food, it’s Wendy’s”.

That’s kind of like saying a car is what people from New York drive and a vehicle is what someone from the south drives. A car/vehicle is the same thing, it’s a ford, a Honda, a shiny compact/large piece of equipment that we use to get from point A to B. There is no difference here than Wendy’s saying that they are not fast food. By fast food standards, “fast food” is defined as a drive thru restaurant one can order and receive food from in under 3 minutes. Nationally McDonald’s holds the fastest time for this with an average wait time of under 1 minute, but how can Wendy’s set itself apart.

Should we now assume that because they are no longer fast food they will take longer. No Wendy’s knows there customers don’t want to wait longer for there food to get to them. What about the salads and other “healthy” options on there menu. Wendy’s has been selling salads for years, other fast food chains had added more healthy options than Wendy’s as of late. So what has Wendy’s basically done. They basically called there car an automobile, a republican a GOP member, it’s all the same.

I like Wendy’s, some of there food is quite tasty, but if you are going to rename yourself, do it with a little more passion. Don’t put yourself in a class of other companies that simply pull the cover over the eyes of their customers. Consumers are smarter than that. The short sales spike to your bottom line, is not worth putting your corporate reputation at risk by simply putting a big shiny bow on the same old thing.

Napster was once a great peer to peer file sharing program where music was free and plentiful. After being attacked by the RIAA and Lars (see: Metallica) it shut down. Then in 2002 Chris Gorog the CEO of Roxio, a CD burning program, paid $5 million for Napster’s assets (which included it’s logo). He was under the assumption that he could re-launch the program and sell legal music. He believed with the familiar logo and name would bring in millions of subscribers.

Now the service has 6 million songs and only 760,000 subscribers. Since the launch, Napster has never pulled a profit. Some unhappy investors are trying to put themselves on the board at the company’s annual meeting in September.

Shawn Fanning did a great thing, paving the way for mainstream digital downloads. However, after the RIAA went after the users, many people stopped using the program. Many moved on to other programs like Limewire. Some subscribe to other music services or download songs with programs like iTunes. Without a lot of publicity, a lot of the old users think downloading and using Napster could land them in court. Until I read about some of the investors of the company launching a proxy campaign, I didn’t even know that Napster was still around, let alone a subscription service.

They need a marketing campaign…badly.

Then again, at least Napster is in the news…no publicity is bad publicity…especially when people don’t even know you exist.