Global Teens Growing indifferent to "Brand America"
A marketing study released early this year puts a pretty savage point on the dilemma. Based on research conducted in the summer of 2005, Chicago branding agency Energy BBDO ranked the “likeability” of 54 globally-marketed brands amongst 13 to 18 years olds from a baker’s dozen of countries, including the United States.
Of the big brands with roots in the USA, just five – Nike, Colgate, Coca-Cola, M&Ms and Kodak – made it into the top ten. Contrast this with ten years ago, when a comparable study conducted by D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles discovered near-total supremacy of US brands over the much-desired teen demographic, capturing eight of the top ten “likeability” slots.
Last year, however, a study in the journal Nature compared Britannica and Wikipedia science articles and suggested that the former are usually only marginally more accurate than the latter. Britannica demonstrated that Nature's analysis was seriously flawed (“Fatally Flawed” was the fair title of the response), and no one has produced a more authoritative study of Wikipedia’s accuracy.
Chess as a guide to watching media
In the media, we have army of pundits who are there to offer up endless “What-ifs.” Speculation is their trade and craft and many are capable of turning around on a dime to revise their view points depending on which way the wind—and their party line leads them.
You have seen the game being played endlessly with some news name passionately defending a position one minute and then, just as passionately, abandoning the posture when the Administration changes its message points.
Free-market theory could be the key to greener travel
We think of roads as free, but if a truly free-market approach were initiated -- one in which we had to pay for the use of our pathways -- public transit would appear the more feasible and thrifty option. If used correctly, Ross predicts, tolls could provide a way to offset highway-building costs and redirect funds to mass transit.
Word spread last week that researchers at AOL had released three months' worth of search logs that contained nearly 20 million search histories detailing the online lives of 658,000 customers. The data included information on subscribers who used AOL's browser, but not those who had used AOL's portal.
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