“Alice in Wonderland” opens in theaters today, accompanied by Disney’s most wide-ranging array of consumer products ever, chasing an unprecedented broad audience.

Tim Burton’s 3-D “Alice” follows the classic character years after her first visit to Wonderland, so it makes sense that Disney would go after an older audience.

So now Disney has adult women in its cross hairs: in addition to the usual range of kids toys, games and apparel, it’s licensing “Alice” for products for adults.

Disney’s going grown-up and high end.

For more on the potential Consumer Products Tea Party, check here.

In a demographic view of social networking activity on mobile devices, women were found do use their phones to “tweet” and “friend” 10% more than men. And while social networking is commonly thought of as something for “the kids,” the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group.

“Fourth quarter ad spending was down just two percent year-over-year, and that helped soften the full-year decline,” said Terrie Brennan, senior VP for new business development at The Nielsen Company. “In fact, most of the top advertisers showed increased spending late in the year. These are encouraging signs for an ad market that’s still trying to stop the bleeding.”

Ad spend declines are easing up even in print media, which have taken more than their share of lumps over the last few years. National Newspapers were down 13.7% last year, but it’s an improvement from the -21.6% pace that Nielsen reported through the first three quarters of 2009. Local Newspapers finished relatively strong in 2009, cutting its reported 14% decline in ad revenue through the third quarter to -10.4% by year’s end.

Spanish Language Cable TV (+32.2%) and Cable TV (+14.8%) stood out as the top-gaining media in 2009. Free-Standing Insert Coupon (+11.5) was the only other medium to show significant year-over-year growth. Internet (+0.1%) remained essentially flat.

African-American TV (a subset of network, cable, and syndicated) enjoyed a 13.8% increase in spending year-over-year. Spanish language TV (cable and network combined) fell 0.4%.

by Kristen Purcell, Lee Rainie, Amy Mitchell, Tom Rosenstiel, Kenny Olmstead.

The overwhelming majority of Americans (92%) use multiple platforms to get their daily news, according to a new survey conducted jointly by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The Internet is now the third most-popular news platform, behind local and national television news and ahead of national print newspapers, local print newspapers and radio. Getting news online fits into a broad pattern of news consumption by Americans; six in ten (59%) get news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day.

The internet and mobile technologies are at the center of the story of how people’s relationship to news is changing. In today’s new multi-platform media environment, news is becoming portable, personalized, and participatory:

* Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.

* Personalized: 28% of Internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.

* Participatory: 37% of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

In addition, people use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news. And they use traditional email and other tools to swap stories and comment on them. Among those who get news online, 75% get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% share links to news with others via those means.

Despite all of this online activity, the typical online news consumer routinely uses just a handful of news sites and does not have a particular favorite. And overall, Americans have mixed feelings about this “new” news environment. Over half (55%) say it is easier to keep up with news and information today than it was five years ago, but 70% feel the amount of news and information available from different sources is overwhelming.

Take a look at the study and download it here.

]]> http://truecreek.com/2010/03/01/understanding-the-participatory-news-consumer/feed/ 0 http://truecreek.com/2010/02/24/how-twitter-and-facebook-make-us-more-productive/ http://truecreek.com/2010/02/24/how-twitter-and-facebook-make-us-more-productive/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:24:25 +0000 truecreek http://truecreek.com/?p=1916 By Brendan I. Koerner.

Your random tweets about Android apps and last night’s Glee are stifling the economic recovery. At least, that’s the buzz among efficiency mavens, who seem to spend all their time adding up microblogging’s fiscal toll. Last year, Nucleus Research warned that Facebook shaves 1.5 percent off total office productivity; a Morse survey estimated that on-the-job social networking costs British companies $2.2 billion a year.

But for knowledge workers charged with transforming ideas into products — whether gadgets, code, or even Wired articles — goofing off isn’t the enemy. In fact, regularly stepping back from the project at hand can be essential to success. And social networks are particularly well suited to stoking the creative mind.

Studies that accuse social networks of reducing productivity assume that time spent microblogging is time strictly wasted. But that betrays an ignorance of the creative process. Humans weren’t designed to maintain a constant focus on assigned tasks. We need periodic breaks to relieve our conscious minds of the pressure to perform — pressure that can lock us into a single mode of thinking. Musing about something else for a while can clear away the mental detritus, letting us see an issue through fresh eyes, a process that creativity researchers call incubation. “People are more successful if we force them to move away from a problem or distract them temporarily,” observe the authors of Creativity and the Mind, a landmark text in the psychology and neuroscience of creativity. They found that regular breaks enhance problem-solving skills significantly, in part by making it easier for workers to sift through their memories in search of relevant clues.

That doesn’t mean that employees should feel free to play Minesweeper at will, however. According to Don Ambrose, a Rider University professor who studies creative intelligence, incubation is most effective when it involves exposing the mind to entirely novel information rather than just relieving mental pressure. This encourages creative association, the mashing together of seemingly unrelated concepts — a key step in the creative process.

More about How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive here.

New ads for Domino’s Pizza display unusual corporate vulnerability—and the surprising effectiveness of talking straight.

I recently saw a television commercial that made quite an impression on me, and I have a hunch that it might go down as one of the most effective advertisements of all time, assuming the company behind it is sincere. I’m talking about Domino’s Pizza (DPZ) and the recent ad in which the company concedes the shortcomings of its product and explains what has been done to improve it.

The spot opens with customers describing Domino’s pizza using words like ketchup and cardboard. Then, Domino’s President J. Patrick Doyle matter-of-factly explains the importance of acknowledging how customers see his pizza. Finally he outlines the company’s response: 40% more herbs in its sauce, better cheese, a special glaze on the crust. I have a hard time remembering the names of the U.S. Supreme Court justices and even what I had for breakfast. But I can remember all those details from the Domino’s ad, and that says a lot about its impact.

I’m willing to bet that Domino’s will sell a lot more pizzas in the months ahead. And the reason I believe that has less to do with the new ingredients than with Domino’s willingness to cross a line that most companies—and for that matter, most leaders—won’t even approach. Domino’s chose to make itself vulnerable.

Vulnerability isn’t a word that shows up on lists of ingredients for business success. Here’s why it should: Without the willingness and ability to be vulnerable, we simply can’t build deep and lasting relationships in business and, come to think of it, life.

Vulnerability is often seen as a weakness; it’s actually a sign of strength. People who are genuinely open and transparent prove that they have the confidence and self-esteem to allow others to see them as they really are, warts and all. There’s something undeniably magnetic about people who can do that.

When it comes to the workplace, vulnerability is critical in the building of teams. When teammates feel free to admit their mistakes, ask for help, and acknowledge their own weaknesses, they reduce divisive politics and build a bond of trust more valuable than almost any strategic advantage. Another great venue for vulnerability is the one I work in, the world of service. When consultants and advisers are willing to ask dumb questions, tell the unvarnished truth, or broach the painful, elephant-in-the-room topic, they engender loyalty and trust with clients.

More about The Power of Saying ‘We Blew It’ here.

Then, you have Marmaduke. Releases 6/4, starring Jeremy Piven, Ron Perlman and Amanda Seyfried.

By Lee Rainie:

In a national survey between November 30 and December 27, 2009, we find:

74% of American adults (ages 18 and older) use the Internet, a slight drop from our survey in April 2009, which did not include Spanish interviews. At that time we found that 79% of English speaking adults use the Internet.

60% of American adults use broadband connections at home, a drop that is within the margin of error from 63% in April 2009.

55% of American adults connect to the Internet wirelessly, either through a WiFi or WiMax connection via their laptops or through their handheld device like a smart phone. This figure did not change in a statistically significant way during 2009.

These data come from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The most recent survey was conducted from November 30 to December 27, 2009, using landline and cell phones and including interviews in Spanish. Some 2,258 adults were interviewed and the overall sample has a margin of error of ± 2 percentage points.

Download the entire Internet, broadband and cell phone statistics survey here.

By Margaret Shapiro

We’ve heard about the gender divide in knowledge and use of technology. It seems the gap may start with the simplest of technologies — cellphones — and at a fairly young age — middle school.

For a study published in December in the journal New Media and Society, University of Alabama at Birmingham sociologist Shelia Cotten asked nearly 1,000 middle school students to rate the different ways they used their cellphones.

The results showed boys much more than girls used their phones to play games, share photos and videos, listen to music and send e-mails. Girls tended to use their phones primarily for talking and or text messaging.

To the researchers’ surprise, the boys used the phones for talking and texting just as much as the girls — in other words, they didn’t use the “complicated features” instead of socializing, but in addition to it. “We would’ve expected that girls would use cellphones for talking and texting because females are socialized to communicate more with others than males,” said Cotten in an online video presentation of her research, “but there were no differences.”

“By these study results, we aren’t saying that parents should buy phones with fewer features for girls,” she said. “But it does point out how much more needs to be done to teach girls” about technology. “Females traditionally have perceived themselves as less skilled in terms of technology, especially with regard to computers.”

Cotten said that 60 to 70 percent of middle school kids report owning a cellphone.

More about Boys vs. Girls on Cellphones here.

Among those closely watching the Supreme Court ruling last week that loosened restrictions on corporate campaign spending were local television stations, which now hope for a windfall.

Media of all kinds may benefit from the decision, which promises to let more political advertising money be poured into the system. Most of that money finds its way to television, and in particular, local stations in battleground states.

“It’s a big opportunity” for stations, said Steve Lanzano, the president of the Television Bureau of Advertising.

Under the Supreme Court decision, corporations and unions will be free to spend money on attack ads in ways that were previously banned. “This takes an already bulked-up, well-funded election and puts it on steroids,” said Evan Tracey, the chief operating officer of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a division of TNS Media Intelligence.

In the supply-and-demand marketplace of advertising, “it’s going to drive up rates” for local stations, he said. “There’s going to be a lot of people fighting over the same inventory.”

In part for that reason, he expects more money will flow to radio and local cable operators.

Election advertising is especially critical this year, given the beating that local stations have taken in the downturn. Exacerbating the economic pressures, the lack of political ad dollars last year meant that many stations experienced 30 percent declines in ad revenue, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.

More about Court Ruling Invites a Boom in Political Ads here.

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — Clear Channel Communications Inc., the largest U.S. radio broadcaster, said it may be interested in signing shock jock Howard Stern, whose five-year contract at Sirius XM Radio Inc. expires at the end of 2010.

The company’s interest hinges on whether Stern would be willing to work “within the limitations” of free over-the-air radio, said John Hogan, chief executive officer of the radio division of San Antonio-based Clear Channel.

“We clearly have both the willingness and the financial wherewithal to consider high-profile talent,” Hogan said in an e-mailed statement. “We would be the most logical company for him to optimize his exposure and financial return.”

Sirius XM, which averted bankruptcy last year after John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. bought a 40 percent stake in exchange for $530 million in loans, may not be able to afford to renew the radio talk-show host’s existing contract, worth $500 million, said Tuna Amobi, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s.

Hogan’s remarks represent one of the first public expressions of interest after Stern, 56, said on air yesterday that he’s fielding calls from companies that want to hire him.

“Even if (a new contract) were half of what it was before, it would still be a major financial burden for Sirius,” Amobi said. “It’s a totally different game.”