Echo Boomers like to be in control, don't trust advertising in any media, and are hip to hype, according to new findings by market research firm Yankelovich. The children of the Baby Boom generation, ages 12 to 24, present a unique opportunity for marketers and media agencies if they strive to understand the development of their mindset.
Posing as a heterosexual, Weekly Dig writer Lissa E. Harris infiltrated the crowd opposing acceptance of same-sex marriage outside the State House in Boston last week. A rosary recitation faltered when a man led a chant opposing homophobia. Anti-gay-marriage activists carried signs saying “Adam + Steve = 0 People. Adam + Eve = 6 Billion People.” Inside the State House, Harris writes, she "got confused by the labyrinthine corridors on the first floor and followed a gaggle of protestors from both sides who found momentary common ground as they searched for the stairs."
In cities on both coasts, the stimulant crystal methamphetamine has become the party/sex drug of choice among gay men. They call it "tina," Eric Snider reports in Weekly Planet (Tampa). "Tina is attractive because it provides long bursts of energy, a sense of euphoria and well being, and it can make you (along with anyone else who is doing it with you) horny as hell," Snider writes. The downside is that it has the power "to drop its users into a cycle of dependence and depravity, to keep them up for days on end, partying and engaging in extreme, often unprotected, sex." The drug is implicated in the spread of AIDS.
Newspapers may be the original grassroots medium, but you'd never know it judging by their piece of the political-ad pie. The Newspaper Association of America's drive to get candidates — and newspapers themselves — to see the potential in political print ads gained impetus last August, however, when its bipartisan poll of 1,200 registered voters nationwide showed that 7 out of 10 regularly read newspapers.
A new survey finds that 69% of the largest 232 newspapers in the U.S. now offer the option of Web-only help-wanted advertising for employers, compared with 45% in January 2003. The findings were released today by New York-based market research company Corzen Inc.
Fishermen and citizens harmed by what's been called the worst environmental disaster in Spanish history are looking to a Houston ship classification society to bear some responsibility, writes Josh Harkinson in the Houston Press. In November 2002, the oil tanker M/V Prestige sprang a leak, then split in half and sank 130 miles from the Spanish shore. Now the American Bureau of Shipping, which inspected the ship shortly before it sank, is the subject of lawsuits asking for $1 billion.
Online ad spending surged 38 percent during the fourth quarter of 2003, the fastest rate of growth of any quarter since the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers began tracking online ad sales in 1996.
Two members of the Air National Guard unit in Alabama that President Bush was supposed to join in 1972 tell Jackson Baker of The Memphis Flyer that they were expecting Bush, they were waiting for him, and they're sure they never saw him. The Memphis Flyer posted on its Web site today its late-breaking, copyrighted story that responds to the question plaguing Americans: Was George W. Bush AWOL at a time he claims to have been serving in the National Guard?
