Women born in the 1950s and 1960s are spending $47 billion a year on fashion, accrording to numbers released by NPD Group, a market research firm.
That's about 45% of the total that American women spend on fashion.
And that explains the huge advertising budgets devoted to... Oh... Wait...
Via Daily Mail, Answer Bag
Target's marketing department tracks customer spending habits to predict major changes in their lives and market to them accordingly.
So, for example, if they notice a female customer purchased a pregnancy test and later stocked up on vitamin supplements and anti-stretch mark lotion, Target would assume she was pregnant and send her coupons for baby furniture and diaper genies.
Typically, this works out well for all concerned. Consumers get discounts on products they need and Target sees an increase in sales.
In the case of one pregnant high school student, the results were less expected. The young woman had not yet told her parents of her pregnancy, so when Target's mailer of deals on cribs and baby clothes arrived, her father became suspicious and started asking questions.
Click here to read the whole story.
Image: Juno
Via Pandora
NPR reports on a survey of 700+ employers who were looking to hire recent college graduates. Turns out:
CareerBuilder conducted its annual survey of hiring managers. The results include the top four most common excuses for tardiness:
· Traffic, 31%
· Lack of sleep, 18%
· Bad weather, 11%
· Getting kids to school or daycare, 8%
No surprises there. The fun began when CareerBuilder asked hiring managers to provide the most outrageous excuses given by employees for being late. CareerBuilder shares the ten best answers:
1. Employee’s cat had the hiccups.
2. Employee thought she had won the lottery (she didn’t).
3. Employee got distracted watching the TODAY Show.
4. Employee’s angry roommate cut the cord to his phone charger, so it didn’t charge and his alarm didn’t go off.
5. Employee believed his commute time should count toward his work hours.
6. Employee claimed a fox stole her car keys.
7. Employee’s leg was trapped between the subway car and the platform (turned out to be true).
8. Employee said he wasn’t late because he had no intention of getting to work before 9:00 a.m. (his start time was 8:00 a.m.)
9. Employee was late because of a job interview with another firm.
10. Employee had to take a personal call from the state governor (turned out to be true).
Read more about the survey at CareerBuilder.
The vintage Alka-Seltzer ad is from my other blog, Found in Mom's Basement.
According to a Vanity Fair poll, 2% of Americans think Mitt Romney's real name is Mittens Romney.
His real first name is actually Willard.
Chanel No. 5 ad featuring actress Audrey Tautou.
Via Daily Mail
An interesting measure of our society:
Click here to see more hot twitter topics from 2011.
Can you stand one more?
Click here to see who are the 15 Most Popular Celebrity Chefs on Twitter.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the zombie genre economy is worth billions of dollars. That includes revenues from movie tickets, TV shows, DVDs, gaming, comic books, novels, Halloween costumes, etc.
Click here to read more about the zombie economy.
Click here to see a zombie engagement announcement.
Image via The Walking Dead
According to a report by a British research firm, "It turns out cheese is the most stolen food in the world."
Click here to see an ad full of a different kind of cheese.
Via Huffington Post
No big surprises here. But, sometimes, it's nice to have confirmation of your instincts.
Not everyone realizes that Facebook has a Hide feature. It allows you to Follow a Friend or Like a Brand without having to see their posts cluttering up your Wall.
To enable the Hide feature, run your cursor across the upper right corner of a post from the offending poster; doing so will make an X appear. Click the X and your options will appear.
Click here to read a great Facebook post from The Walking Dead.
Via Influx
A study suggests that one in 25 business leaders, about 4%, is a psychopath.
I'm sure this just confirms what many of you had already suspected.
Click here to read how psychopaths use charm and manipulation to get ahead in business.
