WHAT’S HAPPENING

• Ink on the skin can blot candidates’ job prospects — so claims Barcelona’s Planas Clinic, which has seen an 81% rise in demand for laser tattoo removal since 2008 (LaVanguardia.com, 27 December 2011).
• As job competition increases in Spain, these former fashion statements are becoming a pain.
• Rafael Serena, head of Planas’s laser unit, warns that tattoo removal is more expensive, time-consuming and painful than being tattooed. Prices range from €200 to €1,500.
• Work is the main motivation: Men wishing to join the police or fire services get their ink removed, as neither employ tattooed candidates; women working with the public often want tattoos removed from visible areas like the neck or ankle.
• Youngsters setting out on executive careers also don’t always feel comfortable wearing a suit and tie over their tattoos, says Gabriel Buendía, head of Barcelona’s Teknon Centre, which has also experienced a rise in demand

WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS

• Spain has long been tolerant of piercings, dreadlocks, tattoos and other fashion statements. As the job market constricts, taming the image and toeing the line can give candidates a competitive edge.

RESOURCES

• Clínica Planas
• Centro Teknon

WHAT’S HAPPENING

• After 22 years, bassist Rick Robinson is leaving his position with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to tour with a smaller ensemble group. Their mission: to bring more classical music to African American and other underserved communities.
• Robinson’s CutTime Productions organizes concerts, arranges and contemporizes popular symphonies and delivers lectures that advocate broadening the scope of the classical genre (Freep.com, 7 September 2011).
• Its eight-piece instrumental arm, CutTime Players, travels to schools, churches and bars, hoping to show a side of classical music that’s fresh and fun.
• Robinson says that more minorities and young people would embrace the orchestral sound if it was taken off its pedestal and blended with urban pop, jazz and rock styles (NPR.com, 24 December 2011).

WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS

RESOURCES

• CutTime of Detroit
• Classical Revolution Detroit on Facebook and Twitter

WHAT’S HAPPENING

WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS

• Innovative marketers are thinking outside the box to push vending machines into more interactive territory, giving consumers a novel and fun experience while lighting up the brand image.
• Responsive vending machines don’t just dispense products; they also deliver a feeling of reward and satisfaction to customers who use their skill, mind or time to earn the treat.

RESOURCES

• Kraft
• Jell-O: The facial recognition vending machine is being tested in New York and Chicago.

The same day that I read former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl’s sumptuous weeklong eating journal on Grubstreet, I read about Sundance documentary Finding North and its portraits of hunger in the US. We live at a time when there’s a great divide between the haves and have-nots, when more people are obsessed with finding the best versions of everything, and others are just trying to find some version of satiety.

In a recent trend about the Fragmentation of Foodies, I wrote about how the recession has pushed foodieism to a mass scale. Today, people just want to feel knowledgeable/excited about what they eat, whether it’s caviar or french fries. Still, the culture wars remain, and what started as food elitist vs. food democrat is shifting. The new trouble spot? Whether there’s a basic sensitivity toward the food-insecure from the vantage point of the food-saturated.

According to the Finding North website, 49 million Americans — one in four children — don’t know where their next meal is coming from. A Share Our Strength/ConAgra survey found that the frequency of eating dinner made at home increases as income decreases (January 2012). In other words, millions of consumers strive for the luxury of time and money when it comes to planning a varied diet, while others have the luxury of outsourcing that task to chefs multiple times a week.

What does this mean for marketers?

1. Until more people are employed, always remember to balance the embarrassment-of-riches tone of food excitement with acknowledgment of the other, have-not world.

2. Equally praising highbrow and lowbrow food (which Reichl did, from champagne to ramen) isn’t quite enough. Recognizing good luck, or even practicing self-deprecation, might be.

3. Touting quality rather than exclusivity can help a brand step away from the elitist/anti-elitist fray. Everyone deserves good food.

4. Aspiration is a key part of food marketing, sure, and Reichl is pushing the fabulous-life brand of an über-foodie (to be expected), but companies can make consumers feel included rather than jealous or bitter by balancing gilded lilies with cause projects.

Call it the year of the double teaser. And we’re not talking about the GoDaddy ads. One of the recent innovations in Super Bowl-related marketing is the early circulation of trailers for the ads that will be aired during the big game. Yes, ads for ads that appear online before any of the action even begins. One of the reasons for that is because Super Bowl spots aren’t simply commercials; they’re a mini-marketing surge that now has a growing lead up time and a (little bit of a) long tail.

Most viewers may be gabbing about guacamole during a brand’s 30-seconds of big game fame, but the Super Bowl halo shines far beyond the gridiron — and in just the past couple of years there’s gotten to be a lot more to it than just the TV coverage. This year’s Super Bowl even represented an English-language record for tweets per second. And thanks to those as-it-happens tweets noting the compelling ads, YouTube hosting all the spots for later review, and a culture of me-too consumer commentary and rating, the marketing that connects with consumers will still get outsized attention.

The 2012 Super Bowl’s big marketing takeaways:

1) More ecosystem, less event: While the Super Bowl is still primarily a TV event — and a mind-bogglingly successful one, at that — the ecosystem around it has boomed over the past couple years. Brands that don’t have the bucks to spend scripting Clint Eastwood spitting gravel or securing first quarter airtime still can grab eyeballs with hard work and savvy strategy.

We heard some viewers comment that it was becoming hard to keep up with both the commercials and the tweets. That split attention span offers opportunity for marketers with solid social media strategies, even as fractured attention means less immediate bang for the buck for brands putting ads on TV. Quick reactions and the online ecosystems matter. Branding author Rob Walker, commenting for AdWeek, talked about how many PR pitches he received in real time, as the very game was unfolding. And brands such as Amazon scored points by reacting to fans and tying product pitches into in-game (and even in-ad!) action on Twitter.

2) Nostalgia isn’t enough: From a content perspective, the obvious theme of this year’s Super Bowl ads was nostalgia. Marketers tried to hit every generation — from Gen Xer-aimed Ferris Bueller Honda spots to Chrysler’s Eastwood pitch for Baby Boomers and Budweiser’s grainy Prohibition callbacks.

Taken as a whole, the nostalgia theme wore thin with viewers, as the overall tone of looking backward made one ad bleed into the next. But individual memory-based ads were among the most effective ads of the Super Bowl. Eastwood’s Chrysler spot was direct, referenced specific events, had a point of view and therefore stirred emotion and conversation, helping the Chrysler brand stand out in tone and message from its car category competitors. It was also the best commercial for halftime we’ve ever seen. Go, halftime!

3) Momentum matters: GoDaddy had PR problems coming into the Super Bowl. They’ve taken heat over the past couple weeks for supporting the (ultimately shelved) Stop Online Privacy Act, a law which would have changed the way copyright laws were enforced on the Internet. They’ve also been blasted for sexist ads in years past. That combination — recent news events and a lowest-denominator approach to past spots — meant consumers weren’t as open to the company’s have-fun brand message as they have been in the past.

The night’s other just-OK performances? At least in the calculus immediately following the game’s glow, Samsung’s stylus raised many eyebrows. Oh, and Madonna’s arms got mixed reviews, as well.

Despite rumors of its demise, America’s game hasn’t declined as a media event. Last year’s Super Bowl was the highest-rated TV show of all time, with 111 million viewers. This year’s conference championship games had the highest TV ratings in 30 years. And in a cultural landscape where big events are more and more rare — even formerly bulletproof family fare like American Idol has an audience on the wane — shows that can draw millions of eyeballs and own a weekend are an even more important part of the mediascape and cultural conversation. The Super Bowl still matters — but the game has changed. As the social ecosystem has grown, the field marketers get to play on has gotten much bigger, and far less defined.

WHAT’S HAPPENING

• Bunking with a roommate, for better or for worse, used to be a college rite of passage. These days, more students are seeking haven in private rooms. As of 2004, half of all US schools were including singles in new construction (The Record, 7 December 2011).
• One-third of the rooms at Montclair State University in New Jersey are singles, while Rutgers University has 1,500 singles under construction. Like those at most schools, they’re configured as suites with shared baths and living areas.
• While some critics fear that singles could lead to social isolation, communal rec rooms and food courts help foster interaction. And the price is right: MSU singles run $5,070 a semester, compared with $4,640 for doubles.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS

• Most students today grew up with their own rooms, often guarded fiercely as “no parents allowed” domains. So it’s not very surprising that kids prefer to fly solo when they fly the coop.
• As college costs continue to skyrocket, schools can help ease the pain by making living quarters homier. In the larger scheme of things, paying a little extra for apartment-style digs makes sense.
• The trend toward singles dovetails with the move toward more stylish dorm decor.

RESOURCES

• Association of College and University Housing Officers – International

WHAT’S HAPPENING

WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS

RESOURCES

• KLM

WHAT’S HAPPENING

• “Zero idle power” to the people. That’s what Bracketron GreenZero device chargers and power supplies deliver — a way for energy-aware consumers to automatically staunch the flow of vampire energy (the suck from devices in fully charged or standby mode).
• Designs dubbed Mushroom and Stone add a designer’s eye to eco-cred and easy portability for charging USB and iDevices. When the device is full, GreenZero Technology automatically shuts off the flow of electricity.
• Solutions for vampire energy are increasingly a way for electronics manufacturers to stand apart, like the iGo Green product line and  Belkin’s Conserve Socket. iGo also launched the VampirePowerSucks.com awareness campaign, complete with augmented reality, to help device users wake up to the drain.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS

• Consumers are on the hunt to save money and resources. That means taking a harder look at every area of life for ways to tighten up and lighten up.
• The days of ghettoized green lifestyle solutions is ending. Mainstream consumers want affordable eco-solutions that don’t require a sacrifice of convenience or style.
• Is energy savings about budget realities or eco conscience? Bet on some of both.

RESOURCES

• Bracketron GreenZero batteries and chargers debuted at CES 2012, with retail rollout in March 2012, priced from $25 to $35.
• iGo sponsors the VampirePowerSucks awareness campaign.
• iGo Green products
• Belkin Conserve Socket

Most women (and perhaps men) have been there — staring, incredulous, at the perfection of women adorning magazine covers and uncertain whether they should feel inspired or insecure. Although airbrushing is no beauty secret, it turns out that most women still fall into the latter group. When polled, four out of five US women say that they’re dissatisfied with their appearance, and a third choose an “ideal” body shape that’s 20% underweight (RaderPrograms.com, 2011).

In the last several months, the absurdity of today’s beauty standards has been drawing not only attention but action. In mid-January, filmmaker Jesse Rosten created buzz with his mock commercial for “Fotoshop by Adobé,” poking fun at typical beauty ads filled with unrealistic results and hard-to-pronounce ingredients. The video received more than half a million views in its first four days. Dartmouth College is developing a Photoshop tool that will rank how much airbrushing has been done in a particular ad or photo spread. And beauty brand Make Up For Ever proudly called out, “You’re looking at the first unretouched makeup ad.” The ball that Dove got rolling with 2004’s Real Beauty campaign has really gained momentum.

As more consumers grow critical of modern standards of beauty and learn to balance aspiration and reality, brands are being held accountable. In fact, the Self-Esteem Act is a bill that would regulate heavy retouching in magazines and ads by requiring disclaimers. (Covergirl recently pulled ads for NatureLuxe Mousse Mascara for potentially misleading consumers on product performance.)

What does this mean to marketers?

New role models. Good: Replace picture-perfect ideals with the older heroines of Hollywood who stand their anti-surgery ground or age realistically (see Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon and Diane Keaton, per our IconoCommunities panel). Better: Use regular-consumer noncelebrities.

Keeping up appearances. Ditch inevitable disappointment by focusing less on the promise of perfection and more on a broader definition of beauty. Does this mean that women want to see every fine line or crow’s foot on a beauty spread? Probably not, but a few notches closer to the truth can recalibrate expectations.

A final word. Overused beauty-related terms like “transforms,” “revolutionary technology” and “breakthrough systems” are meaningless. Instead, try confidence-boosting words and concepts like “strength,” “energy” and “success.”

WHAT’S HAPPENING

WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS

RESOURCES

• Tamil Nadu Department of School Education