Thursday, July 31, 2008

194 Coeds Say Skinny Women Make Them Want To Buy

In a study - that still needs to be followed up - college women "found that despite the negative effect on their body image, women preferred ads showing thin models and said they were more likely to buy products featured in those ads than in ones showing "regular-size models," said Jeremy Kees, a business professor at Villanova."

In this morning's AdAge...

I need some college women to reply here.

Case Study: Power of the Internet

Eleven months ago columnist (and a host of NPR's On The Media) Bob Garfield had a customer service nightmare experience with Comcast (one of the communications "options" hereabouts, too) and in frustration he launched the website and blog comcastmustdie.com.

Here's Garfield, interviewed last December by OTM co-host Brooke Gladstone in which he says he's trying to start an e-surrection. And an e-surrection it became. (It's also interesting to hear a jounalist the target of an interview.)

This morning brother Bob declares victory (damn near) in his AdAge column.

Garfield's blog and website became a downhill snowball of hundreds of people with customer beefs that made Comcast perk up and listen. "We get it," says Comcast corporate spokeswoman Jenni Moyer. "And not only do we get it, we're not just listening. We're also changing the way we do things. And we're moving from being reactive to proactive."

I hope that this will be a Case Study in every media, public relations and communications studies text published in the next 10 years.