Exactly as we called it:
AGT Final Four
Longshot: Landon Swank … illusionist
They said that 1% separated Landon from POPLYFE (for the 5th slot).
Finals are next Tuesday.
My early pick: Team iLuminate
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P.S. We may change the header to News & Views on Marketing, Economics, Politics and Pop Culture …
Cutting to the chase, here’s my take:
Final Four
Longshot: Landon Swank … illusionist
Breaks my heart, but little Anna Graceman won’t make it … she’s the charming kid with wide vocal range … she came dressed like a woman and sang a bland song … whose idea was that ???
Hat tip to the Smage Brother who got smashed in the head by a motor bike and never stopped smiling.
Results show is tonite …
Garett Jones & Daniel Rothschild — George Mason economists — surveyed employers to determine the impacts of Obama’s trillion dollar Stimulus.
Their report “Did Stimulus Dollars Hire the Unemployed?” presents several interesting conclusions.
Most noteworthy:
Just 42.1 percent of the workers hired at Stimulus-receiving organizations, were unemployed at the time they were hired.
More were hired directly from other organizations (47.3 percent)
A handful of hires came from school (6.5%) or from outside the labor force (4.1%)
Thus, there was an almost even split between “job creating” and “job switching.”
Bottom line: Hiring isn’t the same as net job creation.
Technical note: To be fair, there are 2nd and 3rd order effectc. That is, firms that get poached may need to hire replacement workers — who may be drawn from the unemployment roles. So, the Stimulus may have reduced unemployment more than the survey indicates.
Punch line: Why do two identical-looking products that get the same score in acceptability tests, perform wildly differently in the marketplace?
“Emotional research ” tries to find out why, and create profiles of prime prospects.
Excerpted from CPGmatters “Kraft Foods Develops ‘Emotional Profiling’
Kraft Foods has been developing a sophisticated new science of “emotional profiling”.
Kraft has been working on emotional profiling for three years as part of its sensory and consumer-testing work.
“The theory behind emotional profiling is uncovering the difference between ‘liking’ something and ‘preferring’ it.”
“The idea is fairly basic.
Even if an individual likes two different products, they may still prefer one over the other.
We’re trying to figure out that difference or gap so that we can make the best possible products that consumers will truly prefer.”
Traditional research tools may not be enough to capture the implications of emotion on food shopping.
“We use emotional research to define unique points of difference and create a new hierarchy of attributes that go beyond ‘liking.’
Qualitative research usually includes in-depth interviews exploring sensory reactions with target customers who represent a variety of positions along the brand-loyalty scale.
So, tell me again why kids love artificial-looking, artificial-tasting Kraft mac & cheese …
The Homa Files 