Bullets March 2013

Bullets

Business to Business

• 80 percent of 120 human resources executives polled said their companies currently offer some form of telecommuting option to employees with 97 percent of them saying there are no plans to eliminate that benefit. (challengergray.com)
• More than eight in 10 online Americans (85%) viewed online videos in 2012. (comScore; 312-777-8801)
• Owners of iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices send more than two billion iMessages daily. (Apple; 408-996-1010)
• More than nine in 10 liquor brands have Twitter accounts. (L2 Think Tank; 805-441-3233)
• 44% of small to mid-sized business decision-makers use social media; 86% of those SMB decision-makers use Facebook, 41% use LinkedIn and 33% use Twitter. (straightnorth.com)
• While 85% of consumers are searching for local businesses online 63% of small businesses don’t have a website and 25% of small businesses don’t show up in the search results. (localsplash.com)

 Brand Strategy

• Almost half of women worldwide (48%) look at brands’ social networking pages regularly. (Ipsos; 310-736-3440)
• More than half of consumers (55%) use manufacturers’ and retailers’ websites to help them make purchase decisions. (WSL Strategic Retail; 212-924-7780)
• More than seven in 10 consumers (73%) who post about brands on social networks weekly believe the brands see posts made on their personal social network pages. (JWT; 310-559-9222)
• Companies’ Facebook posts that contain photos earn 53% more “likes” and 104% more comments than the average posts made by companies on the site. (HubSpot; 888-482-7768)
• Most watches displayed in advertisements are set to 10:10 because the hands of the watch frame the watch brand name and they make a smiling face. (wikianswers.com)
• A new study finds that the best strategy for advertisers trying to persuade a skeptical audience is to leave out facts and focus more on emotional ads. On the flip side, it found that those who are less skeptical are more persuaded by more information-based ads. (livescience.com)

Energy

• The two biggest sources of pollution remain coal-fired power plants and vehicular engines.  Both of these can run on natural gas.  Natural gas can be produced synthetically from a variety of carbon sources: coal, biomass, and garbage. Methane can be produced biologically using digesters or microbes. In addition, gas power plants are superior to coal plants because they run on a turbine, which is similar to a jet engine and very flexible to operate. The operational flexibility of gas power plants makes them complementary to wind and solar. (thegreeneconomy.com)
• Manufacturing is a dirty business. Industrial facilities in the United States generate 7.6 billion tons of nonhazardous waste annually, according the Environmental Protection Agency. Most of it ends up in landfills. (forbes.com)
• While it may cost anywhere from $70 to more than $200 to dispose of one ton of garbage, a well-managed recycling program can reduce costs by as much as 35%. (inkpal.com)
• Americans waste a huge amount of oil. It has recently been estimated that 350 million barrels of oil are wasted on food that is thrown out. American drivers waste an estimated 1.9 billion gallons of fuel (roughly equivalent to 45 million barrels of oil) in congested traffic every year. Simply making sure that all tires were properly inflated could save 1.2 billion gallons of fuel per year, another 28 million barrels. (huffingtonpost.com)
• Six million Americans are using geothermal energy in their homes – three million receive electricity from geothermal power plants and another three million use geothermal heat pumps to heat & cool their homes; more than 100 new geothermal power projects now under development in 13 states will more than double the county’s geothermal capacity over the next five years. (mnn.com)

Healthcare

• Pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than research: According to ScienceDaily, a “new study by two York University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development.” (noedb.org)
• More than a third of parents (35%) have received prescription pain medicine for their children at least once in the last five years. (C.S. Mott Hospital at the University of Michigan; 734-936-6641)
• More than a quarter of U.S. adults (27%) have used walk-in health clinics located in pharmacies, retail stores, or work-places in the last two years. (Harris Interactive; 585-272-8400)
• More than one in five children ages 5-13 (21%) have had three or more dental cavities filled. (American Dental Association; 312-440-2807)
• Researchers report that women’s magazines have 10.5 times more ads and articles promoting weight loss than men’s magazines do, and over 75% of women’s magazine covers include at least one article title about how to change a woman’s body by diet, exercise, or cosmetic surgery. (randomhistory.com)