Hive to Honey

You know that famous target of Burger King, the “superfan” that the chain has been courting with edgy campaigns such as “Whopper Virgins” and “SpongeBob SquareButt?” Well, it turns out a bunch of them qualify for AARP cards.
Burger King CEO John Chidsey After years of talking about how it’s targeting young males who consume prodigious [...]

Continuing the barrage of 2010 trends pieces, Bon Appétit’s January issue embraces fads that will stay popular in the next year: meatballs, updated Austrian food, and nostalgic desserts. The editors make the requisite nod to the sustainability craze by pushing vegetarian dinner parties.
Grub Street

If the 25- to-54-year-old demographic is the sweet spot for online video advertisers, they may need to aim a little lower. Kids under 14 are generating the highest click-through rate on pre-roll ads, at 3.7%, according to the latest user data from video ad network YuMe.
That group’s parents — people over 35 — had the [...]

Food companies’ branded online interactive games came in for criticism during a presentation of new research at the FTC’s Dec. 15 hearing on food marketing and childhood obesity.
Elizabeth Taylor Quilliam, assistant professor in Michigan State University’s advertising, public relations and retailing department, presented the findings of a study focusing on food-and-beverages-branded online games.
Quilliam and her [...]

Nearly a third (32%) of Americans say they would be open to having their Web-surfing and television viewing habits monitored in order to receive ads more relevant to their interests — as long as the data collected could not identify them as individuals, according to a global study of consumer media habits and advertising attitudes [...]

Twenty-ten could well be a seminal year for regulation of food marketing and nutrition standards — and not just for kids.
Despite the “very impressive strides” made in the children’s arena since the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ (CBBB) Children’s Food & Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) was established in late 2006, food marketers have a [...]

Last December, marketing and media information firm The Nielsen Company, in “The Short Code Marketing Opportunity” report, captured why short message service (SMS)-based advertising campaigns will flourish: “Where there’s an audience, marketers are not far behind.”
Mobile advertising offers brands an unprecedented ability to build highly targeted, personal relationships with their audiences. Advertisers have two options [...]

To understand our future, we look to the past. We can begin by cracking open Roland Marchand’s cultural history, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940.
Marchand’s 1985 evaluation of the phenomena of marketing during the 1930s reveals insights that could easily have been written yesterday, and will help us define and manage the [...]

In contrast to banner ads, bigger isn’t necessarily better when it comes to rich media, according to new research conducted by display ad provider Eyeblaster. Rather, choosing the right video, ad format, flash features and expansion are far more important when it comes to rich media display ads.
A breakdown by ad formats across multiple regions [...]

Nowadays the deepest threat to the restaurant industry isn’t food companies advertising the value of their brands, but competitors who promote “deep discounting,” said Drew Madsen, president and chief operating officer of Darden Restaurants, which owns such dining concepts as Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse. The company saw first-quarter sales dip 2.3 percent [...]