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Green Products Under Scrutiny
Many manufacturers claim their products are environmentally-friendly, but how green are they? Priya David reports.The findings from the nationwide survey conducted among more than 3,000 women reveal key insights on the female psyche across topics including health and well-being:
When it comes to health, women are more concerned about
diet/weight (56%) and eating right (36%)
than they are about
cancer
(23%), cardiovascular/heart health (20%), and diabetes (18%)
- Many women are skipping important medical examinations, including annual physicals and cancer screenings
- Less than two-thirds (59%) of all women get an annual physical, even lower among Gen Y women (44%).
- Nearly one-third of Boomer women are not getting their important annual mammograms, cholesterol checks or physicals.
- 62% of women regularly give themselves a breast self-examination, while only 14% of all women get a skin cancer screening at least once a year.
Four in 10 women report that they are more than 20 pounds overweight
- Gen Y women are more likely than Gen X and Boomer women to say they are at their ideal weight (29% vs. 9%, 7% respectively).
- Relatively few (4%) overweight women say they would consider surgery as a weight reduction strategy; a substantial number say they would consider exercise (76%) and improving their diet (75%) to lose weight.
Still, when it comes to achieving a healthy lifestyle, more women
opt for simple strategies like “drinking more water” and “eating more
fruits and vegetables” than more disciplined approaches like
“exercising three times a week”, “lowering calorie intake”, “watching
their sugar intake” and “using portion control”
- Not surprisingly, women are sensitive about their own weight, with 4 in 10 (40%) who say it’s wrong for a man to tell a woman that she’s overweight
- However, relatively fewer women think it’s wrong for a woman to tell a man he’s overweight (32%) or a parent to tell a child he or she is overweight (26%).
Most women think the battle of the bulge starts at the schools at an early age; the majority of moms claim that while their child(ren) eat junk food, it’s “not when I’m around”
Top 10 Health Concerns (across all generations)
1. Diet/weight control (56%)
2. Eating well/nutrition (36%)
3. Allergies (27%)
4. Aging process (26%)
5. Mental health (25%)
6. Arthritis (24%)
7. Cancer (23%)
8. Cardiovascular/heart health (20%)
9. Diabetes (18%)
10. Menopause (18%)
Medical check-ups:
- Less than two-thirds (59%) of all women get an annual physical, while more than two-thirds get an annual blood pressure check-up (67%) and visit the dentist at least once a year (66%).
- Only 44% of Gen Y women get an annual physical, compared to 69% of Baby Boomer women.
- 62% of women regularly give themselves a breast self-examination, while only 14% of all women get a skin cancer screening at least once a year.
- Nearly one-third of Boomer women are not getting their important annual mammograms, cholesterol checks or physicals.
Non-traditional approaches to health & wellness:
To improve health and well-being, some women have taken the following
non-traditional approaches: natural herbs and supplements (26%),
bought/adopted a pet (25%), meditation (11%), acupuncture (4%), visited
a hypnotist (1%).
What Women Want: To Look and Feel Good
Dissatisfaction with physical appearance/energy levels:
While most women like who they are inside and are satisfied with
their “identity and development as an individual” (68%), only 4 in 10
women say they are satisfied with their physical appearance (40%)
and/or energy levels (37%).
Professionals Women Would Want to Hire*
1. Personal Trainer (47%)
2. Personal Chef (34%)
3. Financial Advisor (31%)
4. Live-In Housekeeper (31%)
5. Professional Masseuse (29%)
6. Nutritionist (28%)
7. Professional Organizer to de-clutter your living space or office (24%)
8. Stylist (19%)
9. Interior Decorator (15%)
10. Career Counselor (13%)
*allowed up to 5 choices
Women’s Lifestyles:
Most women don’t want to work too hard to achieve a healthy
lifestyle, opting for simple solutions like drinking more water or
eating more fruits and vegetables over the more disciplined approaches
like exercising regularly, counting calories, and using portion control
(see chart below)
What Women Do to Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle*
- Drink more water (80%)
- Eat more fruits and vegetables (70%)Read nutritional labels (49%)
- Avoid foods that are high in fat (47%)
- Make a conscious effort to lower calorie intake (44%)
- Watch my sugar intake (44%)
- Exercise at least three times a week (43%)
• Women with children are especially likely to say that “it is difficult for me to find time to take care of my physical appearance” (28% vs. 22% total women).
Overweight Women:
- The vast majority of American women (84%) feel they are overweight.
- 13% of women feel that they are the ideal weight, while 23% feel they are 21-50 pounds overweight and 16% report being more than 50 pounds overweight.
- Older women are more likely than younger women to report they are overweight and to join weight management programs
- More Gen Y women (29%) feel they are the ideal weight, compared to Gen X women (9%) and Baby Boomer women (7%).
- Gen X women (22%) and Baby Boomer women (20%) are more likely to get involved in weight management programs to improve their health and well-being than Gen Y women (14%).
- On the other hand, Gen Y women (24%) are more likely to do yoga or Pilates to improve their health and well-being than their Gen X (18%) and Boomer (8%) counterparts.
Among women who feel they are overweight, exercise (76%) and improving diet (75%) are the top two strategies for weight reduction, while taking medications and/or dietary supplements (17%) and undergoing surgery (4%) are less popular methods.
READ MORE"It is particularly important for marketers in the health and wellness category to have a clear understanding of women's behaviors, motivations and thoughts so that the messaging they create will resonate and have enhanced impact," said Debbie Reichig, Senior Vice President, Market Development, NBC Universal. “We are thrilled to be able to make this information available to them.”
Specificity
An environmental marketing claim should specify whether it refers to the product, the packaging or both, or just to a component of the product or its packaging.
A box of cereal is labeled "recycled package." The package consists of a paperboard box with a wax paper bag inside holding the cereal. By itself, the claim "recycled package" could apply to both the box and the bag. If only the box is recycled, the claim is deceptive. It should be qualified to say, for example, "recycled box."
A steel can that contains vegetables is labeled "recycled." No qualification is necessary for this claim because it is obvious to consumers that the can is recycled-not the vegetables.
Qualifications (that is, disclosures or explanations) pertaining to an environmental claim should be clear, prominent and understandable. Clarity can be achieved through the size of the type face, proximity of the qualification to the claim being qualified, and absence of contrary language that could undercut effectiveness.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seeks to prevent deception and unfairness in the marketplace. The FTC Act gives the Commission the power to bring law enforcement actions against false or misleading marketing claims, including environmental or "green" marketing claims. The FTC issued its Environmental Guides, often referred to as the "Green Guides," in 1992, and revised them most recently in 1998. The Guides indicate how the Commission will apply Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices, to environmental marketing claims.
Federal Trade commission: Facts for Business
Cell phone messages save paper and ink, as well as distribution transportation. They provide consumer convenience and are available 24/7, wherever the consumer wants to shop. This is a great solution for local consumer businesses with national market and brand visibility.
Think...Mobile Phone coupons.
Carvel, the ice cream retailer will now let mobile phone users send text messages to company spokesmammal "Fudgie the Whale" and receive in return a coupon for a blended coffee drink and a chance to win a 42-inch TV.Cell phone users who text "FUDGIE" to short code 78247 through July 31, 2008 will get a coupon for one of Carvel’s new Arctic Blender drinks.
OTHER Mobile Phone Coupon Applications: How about on-site, or "in the shopping mall" Point of Purchase mobile phone offerings?
Bath & Body Works announced it is offering coupons to its customers via mobile phone.
Cellfire
Cellfire Wins E-Tech Award For Innovation In Consumer Mobile Applications at CTIA Wireless 2008Brent Dusing, CEO of Cellfire says Cellfire 3.0 is the latest version of Cellfire’s mobile coupon and discount offer service that enables consumers to easily find, store, and use many discounts across multiple merchants and locations directly on their mobile phones. Unlike text-based offers, Cellfire’s application-based service is like a coupon wallet that consumers can access on demand to discover and use discounts specific to their geographic area. New merchants and offers are added on a regular basis.
Features in Cellfire 3.0 include an enhanced user experience, external offer discovery, 1-to-1 offers, and the ability for consumers to save on groceries with mobile grocery coupons.
Cellfire is headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information or to download Cellfire, visit www.cellfire.com.
AdReady promises to ease the headaches and guesswork
and to lower the costs associated with buying display ads. A Ford
dealership in California can pick from a pool of templates and
customize an image of a revolving Ford car with the dealership logo and
contact information. Then, the dealer can buy ad space through AdReady
on major Web sites targeted to reach only Web surfers in California.
The AdReady system suggests tweaks, such as changing the ad background color, that have proven to draw more people to click on
ads.
Advertisers can spend as little as $20, and AdReady is paid a cut of the ad buy.
AdReady and other services also give advertisers the ability to tie ad spending to response results that show how many people viewed a specific ad and how many people clicked on it. The car dealer could then decide it wants to turn off the ads that received the fewest clicks and run more of the ads that were more effective.
By drawing in new ad buyers, the self-service options also aim to address one of the nagging problems with the display-ad market: cheap prices.
As a flood of new Web sites compete for consumers'
eyeballs, sites such as Facebook are having difficulty raising prices
for ads. The cost for reaching a thousand Web visitors can be as little
as a few cents on Facebook or MySpace.
Reaching the same number of viewers of a prime-time TV show can cost $30.
SOURCE: New York Times May, 2007
THE CASE STUDY: ...the ad was seen more than 250,000 times. Quickly, Bonobos sold out of Clarks, at $120 a pop. Total cost for the ads: about $63.
Facebook is only one of a rising number of self-service ad options. There are new entrants such as AdReady Inc., AdBrite Inc. and AdItAll LLC. MySpace, like Facebook, is offering do-it-yourself ads that marketers can tailor to individual interests on the social-networking site. (MySpace, like [The Wall Street Journal], is owned by News Corp.)
Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit and Google have new self-service ad options for the opposite side of the equation -- for Web publishers who want to attract advertising to their sites.
The rising number of self-service options underscores the expanding market for display ads, the graphic- and video-heavy ads in fixed spots on a Web page. The market for display ads reached $5 billion in 2007, according to market-research firm eMarketer Inc. That is far less than the estimated $8.6 billion in spending for text ads tied to online search. But in coming years, the mix is expected to tilt in favor of display ads, thanks to the rise of online video and the increasing push of brand marketers such as car companies into the display market.
But for the majority of mostly small- and medium-size businesses, it remains too difficult and expensive to buy display ads. To create an ad, businesses have to navigate the 15 standard sizes and half dozen standard formats and design something that will be eye-catching. They have to pick which Web sites or networks to buy ad space from, test multiple ads, track which ones draw the best consumer responses and adjust marketing campaigns accordingly. Doing this alone is daunting, and paying an ad agency to do it might cost thousands of dollars. Sites such as Yahoo Inc. often require advertisers to promise they will spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on advertising. SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
As a publisher of original content and aggregated news, I cringe at some of the prices being paid for search ads...there comes a point at which publishers can no longer afford to create quality content that is supported by bargain basement advertising. Hopefully, the ad networks will be cognizant of that fact and the plight of the traditional media who are now feeling the sting of cheaper online advertising will serve as a warning and guidepost for what can happen to online content development.
We don't have to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs!
Penguin Classics set up a blog where anybody can post a review of one of their books. Well, not exactly anybody. The selection process is random because they have a limited number of books. But if you win their lottery, type away about how you feel about Virginia Woolf.
ABC.com hopes to generate as much ad revenue as it does from its on-air programming. To keep viewers interested in ads ABC has found that ads should be created specifically for the Internet and not repurposed commercials from broadcast TV. ABC research that revealed better results for ads that promoted interactivity like casual gaming.
Slide.com layers social content applications on top of Facebook, Orkut, Friendster and more. Slide enables you to make a slide show onliine, personalize your pics with stickers and graffiti, have a personal Guestbook, frame your YouTube videos with snazzy borders, upload your images, and get screensavers. All designed for "engagement" so that you'll use their website and drive up their community engagement for advertisers who want comsumer eyeball time.
My question is...what do green consumers want? Do they want to spend more time on their computers, just like their not-so-green siblings? Do they want to belong to a virtual community with similar values? What do YOU want from your green online media?
Seriously, I'd love to hear from you. Send an email or call me. I'm an approachable editor searching for common sense ways to share green solutions around the digital campfire. Carolyn Allen: 310-827-2510 or email at CAROLYN (at) CaliforniaGreenSolutions.com
... or add your questions, suggestions, observations in our COMMENTS. Let's talk!
Shipping Services
"On May 12 the USPS will adjust prices for our shipping services — Express Mail, Priority Mail, Parcel Select, Parcel Return Service, and International Mail. For the first time our pricing includes commercial volume and contract prices, rebates, online price reductions, and other new incentives."Mailing Services
First-Class Mail, Standard Mail, Periodicals, Package Services, and Special Services. The average increase by class of mail is at or below the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index.
A First-Class Mail stamp will be 42¢.
For more information, visit the US Postal Service Price Increase
The site is Yahoo's latest foray into vertical sites, which include the popular Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance, as well as Sports and Entertainment, and the much less popular Yahoo Tech and Yahoo Green Tech. Shine is also Yahoo's first targeting a specific audience and not just a topic.
Women as a demographic is a good target, particularly given the number of women who use Yahoo (40 million women between the ages of 25 and 54 every month) and the fact that females tend to blog more than males.
This is really a key audience for Yahoo and are addressing women as 'chief household officers'.
Hybrid content includes articles and original blogs from a range of sources, including Glamour, Epicurious.com, Style.com, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Women's Health, and Good Housekeeping...and readers.
Eight editors are overseeing the various sections (such as home, parenting, fashion, culture, and career) and the editor in chief is Brandon Holley, former editor in chief of Jane magazine.
Shine readers will be able to start their own blogs and that content, if deemed worthy, can end up as some of the featured content in different sections on the site.
"Shine"
Who would think, after watching all of the high-glamor television and
Internet ads for new cars that safety matters more than paint color!Maybe the sustainability message is getting through -- quality matters! Value matters -- and that's not just price. Performance matter. All those features are part of sustainable product design and service.
As the Federal Trade Commission looks at environmental claims in more depth, it's time to take a look at what truly is wanted in the marketplace -- and it looks like the safety and quality messages are gaining on the label of the day...like glamor or sexy style that's out of date in nine months.
A 2008 survey also revealed that car buyers consider safety and quality as the most important consideration, followed by value, performance, environmental friendliness, design, and technical innovation.
Source: Consumer Reports' 2008 Car Brand Perception Survey
