Budgeting for the Super Bowl party
The Super Bowl party is an annual tradition in many American households, and hosts this year will spend $144 on average, according to a recent survey by Visa Inc. That’s down significantly from last year’s survey, which found hosts planned to spend a average of $172 on Super Bowl parties.
This year’s average includes a wide variance in budgets, with nearly one-fourth of respondents planning to spend less than $50 and one in 10 budgeting more than $250. More than one-third (35 percent) said they would spend between $50 and $100, and 32 percent expect to spend between $101 and $250. Men plan to spend more than women, and younger fans expect to spend more than older, the survey said.
Visa also has a handy party budget calculator, which showed I’m a cheapskate, er, frugal host. I like to include a Super Bowl trivia contest as part of my game-day festivities. The entertainment before and during the event provide great fodder for unusual questions, such as “college marching bands provided the halftime show at four of the first five Super Bowls. At Super Bowl iV, this celebrity was the first professional entertainer to perform at halftime, and was invited back to sing at halftime of Super Bowl VI.”
Answer: Carol Channing (source)
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
“Avatar” nearing top 25 … in tickets sold
The Live Feed blog on The Hollywood Reporter site notes that while “Avatar” has blown past “Titanic” as the top-grossing movie of all time, it hasn’t even reached the top 25 in terms of tickets sold. Currently, “Avatar” is No. 26.
The Top 10 by number of tickets sold:
1 “Gone With the Wind” (1939) 202 million
2 “Star Wars” (1977) 178 million
3 “The Sound of Music” (1965) 142 million
4 “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) 142 million
5 “The Ten Commandments” (1956) 131 million
6 “Titanic” (1997) 128 million
7 “Jaws” (1975) 128 million
8 “Doctor Zhivago” (1965) 124 million
9 “The Exorcist” (1973) 110 million
10 “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937) 109 million
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Showdown: freecreditreport.gov vs. freecreditreport.com
The late, great standup comedian Bill Hicks once offered this piece of advice to folks in the marketing business: “Kill yourself.” It was advertising campaigns like the one for freecreditreport.com that fueled his righteous indignation. The inescapable ads are undeniably clever. But they entice consumers to visit a Web site called freecreditreport.com that IS NOT FREE. Once you sign up for your “free” credit report, you must opt out with seven days or the company will begin charging you a regular fee. And those monthly fees do add up. This New York Times story notes that freecreditreport.com spent $70.7 million on advertising in 2007.
To make matters worse, there really is a site that offers free credit reports: annualcreditreport.com.
The Federal Trade Commission recently launched freecreditreport.gov to help lead people to their free credit reports. And those government bureaucrats managed to do some clever marketing of their own. The site includes videos that are spot-on take-offs of the freecreditreport.com commercials. (I wrote about this earlier this week).
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
If it ain’t broke…
Advance Food Co. President Mark Allen at the company's Enid plant.
If you’ve got a good thing, you should stick with it. That apparently is the strategy employed by Enid’s Advance Food Co., which today announced it had acquired the product line and assets of Iowa-based Whitaker Foods Inc.
Advance Food CEO Mark Allen offered the following comment in a prepared statement issued by the company:
The Whitaker Foods product lines are very complimentary to our existing products, creating a synergy that will help Advance Food Company reach our goal of becoming the unconditional leader in our product categories.
Advance’s last major acquisition was three years ago, when it bought the Quick-to-Fix product line from Smithfield Foods. Allen’s take, again from a prepared statement:
The Quik-to-Fix product lines are complementary to our existing products, creating a synergy that will help Advance Food Co. reach our goal of becoming the unconditional leader in our product categories.
“Very” interesting.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Bad ads
Crowell Advertising in Salt Lake City has bestowed its Tracy Awards to the creators of advertising campaigns it considers the year’s worst. Among the recipients of Tracys are Snickers, Oreos and Coors Light. Also recognized was a Windows 7 commercial featuring characters from “Family Guy.” I have to admit I never saw this spot, but I agree that it’s remarkably unfunny.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Bad press release nominee
Perhaps I should initiate a contest for bad news releases similar to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which annually honors the worst fiction writing. Amazingly, someone got paid to produce the following copy, which was emailed to me and other reporters in hopes that we would write a news story based on this information.
Isilon Systems (NASDAQ:ISLN) is the proven leader in scale-out NAS. Isilon’s clustered storage and data management solutions drive unique business value for customers by maximizing the performance of their mission-critical applications, workflows, and processes. Isilon enables enterprises and research organizations worldwide to manage large and rapidly growing amounts of file-based data in a highly scalable, easy-to-manage, and cost-effective way. Information about Isilon can be found at http://www.isilon.com/.
Can’t we just run stuff up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it?
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
A viral video happy ending
The world’s worst parking job attracted a million-plus views on YouTube. Hyundai was watching. Very clever marketing.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Tiger roars past $1 billion
Tiger demonstrates is pitching skills in this Buick ad.
Forbes.com’s SportsMoney blog by Mike Ozanian estimates that Tiger Wood’s $10 million payday last weekend pushed his career earnings — on and off the course — past the $1 billion mark. That would make him the world’s first billion-dollar athlete, Ozanian said.
Ozanian writes:
The scary part is that Woods is only 33-years-old and might have 15 years of competitive golf left in him and 30+ years of designing golf courses. This is only the first $1 billion for Woods.
Comments on the blog claim that Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher already have eclipsed the billion-dollar mark. But Woods’ financial accomplishments at such a tender age are impressive.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
A century of dumb inventions
Life has compiled a photo gallery from its archives of some of the dumbest ideas that inventors created in the 1900s. Many of the photos are priceless, and the captions contain just enough snark. About a gunslinging robot, Life writes: “It’s always easy to question the wisdom of giving a robot a gun, but also making him quick on the draw is just irresponsible.”
Of an anti-bandit bag with a bottom designed to collapse and dump the bag’s contents when its owner is threatened, Life writes: “That’ll stop those thieves from getting at the contents of your bag! No, wait. It won’t.”
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
The $300,000 clunker
The Detroit Free Press ferrets out some fascinating details from government data about the recently concluded Cash for Clunkers program. Someone traded in a 1997 Bentley Continental R, which had an original price of more than $300,000, in exchange for no more than $4,500 credit toward a new car.
Some enthusiasts would have paid many thousands of dollars for the rare 1987 Buick GNX destroyed under the program; only 547 were built. The nation’s supply of used Chevrolet Corvettes was thinned by 131, including 34 convertibles, and the program also liberated 22 Americans from the burden of owning a Peugeot.
And this
And 37 people decided to clunk models that were less than a year old.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
