In 2008, the Boston Consulting Group ran a lifestyle survey of 12,000 women in 22 countries. Their survey findings inform the conclusions in Women Want More, a book that details the burgeoning women’s consumer market.

Each chapter includes statistics, company stories, and anecdotes from individual women. Readers finish the book with an idea of how women behave as consumers, and how to gear their products for success in the female economy.

Authors: BCG Senior Partner Michael Silverstein, who wrote Trading Up (2003) and Treasure Hunt (2006). Co-written with BCG Partner Kate Sayre.

Recommended for: Corporate leaders and marketers who want to tap the growing women’s consumer products sector.

Background

Women comprise a huge potential market for companies. They control almost $12 trillion of the $18.4 trillion in worldwide consumer spending (65%). By 2028, they will control 72%. Over the next five years, they will gain $5 trillion in earned income. The result? A consumer market bigger than China and India.

That’s just the beginning. So far, 80% of unemployment growth has been male, making the term he-cession ring true. Women own 40% of US businesses—and that number is growing. Women make most of the household decisions about travel, cars, and electronics. Many control household finances.

With economic potential like that, companies need to think seriously about catering to discerning females. “Making it pink” just won’t work.

The Survey

After reviewing the results of their survey, the authors came up with some noteworthy findings. Some of it is familiar: People have either researched and concluded it before, or it sounds like common knowledge:

1) Most women are employed.

* 71% of US mothers are in the labor force (2006 stats)
* 56% have children under one year old (2006)

2) At the same time, women still do all the housework.

* 88% are responsible for grocery shopping
* 85% make all the family meals
* 84% do the laundry
* 84% do most of the housecleaning

3) As a result, they’re stressed.

* 47% say that demands on their time are the “big stress in their life”
* 45% don’t have enough time for themselves

4) Finally, in an unrelated vein of womanhood, they don’t feel skinny or pretty.

* 68% think they’re overweight
* 44% of women rarely or never feel beautiful

Sayre and Silverstein also uncover some tidbits that you may not have heard before:

* Women’s happiness, as correlated with age, is a V-shaped curve. That means women are happiest when they’re young and old, but not so much in between.

* Love, health, honesty, and well-being are the four most important values to women

* When asked what makes them extremely happy, women said:
1) Pets (42%)
2) Sex (27%)
3) Food (19%)

Sorry, guys.

The authors claim there are still a lot of first-mover advantages in the female market. Overall, women fell pressured for time and stressed. They’re constantly looking for products that meet their specific needs (unlike men, who are more loyal to brands). If you create a product that saves women time, feel in control of their finances, or offers other key features as defined in the book, you, too, can capture your piece of the femme pie.

Archetypes

To learn exactly how to address women’s needs, you need to consider the archetype your target market belongs to. The authors divide women into six archetypes. They’re based on economic class, age, and family status:

Fast tracker: 24% of population, 34% of earned income
College-educated, career-minded, makes a lot of money

Pressure cooker: 22% of the population, 23% of earned income
Middle-income, middle-aged, never enough time in the day

Relationship focused: 16% of the population, 13% of earned income
Young, single, adopting brands

Fulfilled empty nester: 15% of the population, 16% of earned income
Money in pocket, enough time, likes leisure and travel

Managing on her own: 10% of population, 9% earned income
Divorced/widowed, making a lot of decisions by herself

Making ends meet: 12% of the population, 5% of earned income
Low income, less education. Low-paying jobs or unemployed. Dissatisfied.

Companies need to understand exactly who they’re trying to serve, and refine from there.

Although the archetypes serve the purposes of this book well, they don’t take culture, lifestyle, and other important market aspects into consideration. They’re a starting point for companies, but not a definitive guide for defining a market segment.

Features of Each Chapter

After explaining the archetypes, the book explores different categories of products that women care about. Each chapter is devoted to a category. Food, fitness, beauty, and apparel make up the first four categories. Financial services and healthcare, which women perceive negatively, make up the next two.

The authors cover how women perceive each product category, how they spend their money on it, and how archetypes react to it. Quotes, statistics, and anecdotes about individual women add flavor to the chapter.

The authors also describe commercial opportunities in each category, illustrating them with major corporations that “got it right.” These include Whole Foods, Curves, Olay, Banana Republic, and several other large corporations.

Next, the book talks about women in low- and high-growth global economies. The former include Japan and Europe. The latter include BRIC, Mexico, and the Middle East. Readers learn more about the characteristics of women in those countries, and how to cater to them.

Before concluding the book, the authors detail women’s attitudes towards charity and giving.

Analysis

The book is well-written, even fun to read. The statistics, stories, and quotes in each story engage readers with the subject matter. Some topics might feel familiar—of course women don’t have enough time—but the book adds value to previous assumptions by going into specifics.

Sadly, several of the characters in the book aren’t original. One was sourced from Wikipedia; another came from a blog. BusinessWeek reporters uncovered this irritating fact in September. The authors have agreed to make revisions.

Also note that the book targets leaders of large, consumer-goods corporations (who might, incidentally, read the book and hire BCG consultants). It doesn’t go into depth with regards to service industries, outside of financial and healthcare services. It doesn’t give readers refined tips, or schedules on how to revise their product offerings. One assumes that’s where the consultants come in.

The book provides a general reminder to capture a growing market. It gives a deeper definition of who inhabits that market. And, as far as business books go, it is conventional. It covers established companies and brands. It does not mention burgeoning industries (eg. the green industry) or edgy innovations.

The material is in-the-box and focused on big companies. Undoubtedly, that serves a purpose. Just know that the business wisdom within won’t push many boundaries.

In sum: Useful and fun to read, but not groundbreaking.

Learn more about the book here.

Full disclosure: BCG sent us a free copy of the book to review.

I hate the Example Company. Their product killed my dog. Their customer service gave me road rage, which in turn made me wreck my car. They bilked me out of a $5,000 insurance payment.

They are a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.

Oh, wait. That was Matt Taibbi’s description of Goldman Sachs. But you get my point. Example Company is the devil. Goldman Sachs is a vampire squid. Both companies are being hammered by public perception. (The first company is fictional.)

If you’re a member of the reading public, you may be momentarily astounded by the claims above. But if you’re affiliated with either company, those same claims, under the right distribution conditions, will leave you panicked for the foreseeable future.

Levick Strategic Communications, a DC-based crisis and litigation communications firm, might call your experience a bad day in the Court of Public Opinion. They specialize in techniques to help you survive perceptual whippings like the ones above–and prevent repeats.

They’re very good at it. Either Levick or its current employees have, at some point in time, managed the brand or reputation of:

-AIG, during the financial crisis
-An order of the Catholic Church, during the sex scandals
-The tobacco industry
-Spinach, after the 2007 salmonella outbreak
-The Florida election recount
-The People’s Republic of China, on the subject of Taiwan

When a high-profile company or person makes a visible misstep, or is subject to a prominent attack, Levick steps in. Their highly cultivated media and public affairs techniques have earned them international acclaim.

I talked more about some of those techniques, brand equity, and online crisis management with Levick VP Dallas Lawrence, who heads their digital media team. Lawrence specializes in brand advocacy and defense using social media, the blogosphere, and Internet communications. You can find more of his work at Levick’s BulletProof blog, or through his Twitter feed: @DallasLawrence.

BP: What are the biggest online threats to a brand?

DL: Inaction is one of the greatest single threats today in a crisis. Years ago, you had a couple of days to pull together your crisis team, you could have meetings, you could talk to a reporter, you could get back to them in a day or two with the information.

Today, crisis moves on a 14/40 news cycle, or a cycle measured in minutes. They don’t give you a week to get back. That fundamental shift is not understood in many boardrooms and many corporate communication rooms. It can be a lethal mistake to think you can wait out a crisis in the digital age.

Big does not mean savvy. Domino’s Pizza was the textbook poster child for this earlier this year.

I’m sure you’ll recall the malfeasant kids who put up a graphic video (see YouTube clip above). Domino’s first corporate response to the media within the first 24 hours was, I believe, “we’re not going to comment on this.”

Because it wasn’t the CBS nightly news calling, or the New York Times, they didn’t think it was wise to engage. Meanwhile, millions of people saw that YouTube video, the blogs picked it up, and within 36 hours, every network had it. CNN, Fox were showing the video. And then they finally responded.

Imagine if they had had, within their corporate DNA, the reflex to know immediately that “this is going out on YouTube, we need to have a video out on this within an hour putting this to rest, and storm that video to our fans.” Millions of people order Domino’s pizza. They would reach out to those folks and mention that this was an isolated incident.

Instead, they were silent, for almost 36 hours, which was just lethal in that environment.

They were setting up their Twitter account in the middle of the controversy. This is a consumer-focused brand that sells their product to consumers across America, and never mind that they weren’t proactively sending out tweets, they didn’t even have a profile set up so that they could be monitoring all those tweets. I’m sure they learned their lesson, and the next time in a crisis, they’ll be much better prepared.

In the 48 hours that followed (after the first 48 hours), they finally got it right.

BP: Let’s say there’s a company that does something ethically off. That company calls you and says we’re getting bad PR, can you help us. What would you tell that company to do?

DL: Nine times of out ten, the solution is to rip that band-aid off yourself and set the narrative.

It’s better for you as the brand that has made the mistake (or is so accused) to be the one that establishes the narrative, be the first one to the mic, and really get established at being open, transparent, and accountable. Those are the 3 key terms in 21st century crisis communications. You must be seen as open. You must be accountable, and everything you do has to be transparent.

The broad key theme is to have a company that’s prepared to run to the light, it’s prepared to not duck and cover and hope it passes, and it’s prepared to engage in a sustained dialogue that protects and proves its brand, encourages its investors, and reaches out to its consumers.

BP: As a company, what is one way to convince dubious people that you’re being transparent and telling the truth?

DL: I’ll give you an example of something a great company has done. Six Flags, a major theme park, is in the middle of a financial restructuring. They can say and do the press releases until they’re blue in the face.

The CEO of the company, Mark Shapiro, decided to go out and reach out to bloggers personally. Not through a corporate communications director or a press release, but to sit down and have a conference call with 25 or 30 of the most influential bloggers covering his industry. These are roller coaster enthusiasts, these are mommy bloggers, investor bloggers concerned with the financial health of the company.

He threw it open to questions. They talked for more than an hour about their questions. And he said to them, “I don’t want this to be the last time we have this call. At the end of this season, let’s get together and chat again.”

He followed through on that. This week, he did a follow-up call with a couple dozen bloggers, sitting down with them and recapping what they talked about before, how the season went.

I think you can see by how open and honest his answers were, that he was telling it works and all. Bloggers are just as smart as all of the journalists. They know when they’re being spun, and they can’t stand it. They want someone to be honest with them.

BP: Some of Levick’s clients operate in potentially volatile reputation industries. Tobacco and drug companies come to mind. What kinds of strategies do you encourage them to take in order to build their reputations during peacetime? How does that help when a media firestorm hits?

DL: The first thing is that we encourage all of our clients to use their peacetime wisely. You don’t want the first time you’re telling your story to be in the middle of a crisis. You don’t want something to explode in the middle of a crisis that someone else has already defined the narrative for.

During that peacetime, our company builds our database of third-party ambassadors to reach out to potential people we use as message echoing chambers when crisis hits.

We build those relationships now. We reach out to them before we need them. The people we reach out to—industry bloggers, social networking connectors—it’s not the first time they’ve heard of us, when we need a favor.

BP: Who are your 3rd party ambassadors?

DL: They run the gamut. It depends on the crisis. An ambassador could be a university professor, a scientist, a think tank director, or a foreign policy expert. It could be mommy bloggers or fans of your brand on Facebook. The potential universe of brand ambassadors is only limited by the potential number of products & brands.

BP: How do you predict future brand assaults?

DL: Quite honestly, one of the greatest tools for that is the social and digital media space. If your company or brand has the ability to listen to the comments and dialogue that are going on around their brand now, they’re in a far better position to nip potential crises in the bud before they emerge on the front page of the New York Times.

It’s important that companies and brands stay active in that space. For example, a firm that might be trolling for victims of a class-action lawsuit might be setting up a Facebook page now, asking users whether they were affected by a certain product, and to join their class action.

You can even go one step further. An example that I love is Marriott Hotel. They’ve got a fantastic system in place for social media monitoring.

If you have a bad experience at a Marriott hotel, and you send out a tweet before you check out, they want to catch that and correct your user experience before you leave the property, so that you leave a happy customer. You don’t leave a customer who’s then going to tell fifty of your friends and post a negative review and inflict long-term damage.

Image: Cipherdyne

BP: I’ve relayed negative brand experiences that customers have on my own blog. Sometimes customers agree with me, but sometimes commenters post a professional-sounding defenses of the brand. They’re anonymous, so the nature of their defenses sometimes makes me wonder whether they’re PR folks posing as individuals. Is that also something you guys do to defend a brand, put up a positive comment or other kind of comment to try to disarm a blogger’s argument?

DL: We as a firm do not try to do any black hat operations like that. Burger King last year had to fire their VP of Communications for doing just that, going out and fake blogging.

You have 118 million bloggers out there who are all policing and looking for the next corporation that’s taking the easy route. So this is not something we do for our clients.

Does it happen? Absolutely. I know that it happens.

What we might try to do is take the Barack Obama playbook. Chris Hughes and their team wrote the playbook for how you organize your supporters to be your voice and response.

So when Barack Obama was being pilloried in a local Chicago news channel for the Reverend Wright issue during the campaign, the campaign didn’t engage. Instead, they reached out to all their supporters and said “bombard this news site with what you know to be the truth!” And that’s what happened.

We encourage people to use their peacetime wisely, because you can’t unleash your hundreds or thousands of third-party ambassadors during a crisis if you didn’t take the time to connect to and make those relationships.

If someone is posting a negative comment or negative review, you can reach out to your reporters and say hey, we’d sure love it if you could share what you know to be your experience with the brand, and turn them loose.

BP: Speaking of spin, one thing that occurred to me is that it could be said that you guys are manipulating peoples’ opinions of evil companies, or something like that, because you do defend tobacco companies and other organizations that are controversial. How would you respond to that?

DL: I would say that everyone deserves their day in the court of public opinion. That’s what we offer our clients.

We represent a broad swath of clients, from Fortune 500 companies to small individuals to environmental companies doing good. For example, we have a great relationship with a client that has saved school districts more that $1 billion in electric fees. They just won the EPA partner of the year award for what they do to help the environment.

I think that you can look within the client roster and think of one or two examples…but I think that every single one of our clients falls into the category of deserving a day in the court of public opinion. We show up every day to give them that strong representation that they deserve.

BP: How do you determine when a controversy gets safe for a company? How do you determine that it’s a little flare-up that you don’t have to pay attention to?

DL: One of the worst things that can happen is that a company can overreact in a non-crisis situation and actually create the crisis.

One of the questions you have to ask, even if it’s a horribly negative story, is: “Is this really a crisis?” Do you really want to put the CEO of the company out there? Or is this just an issue that requires the response from a corporate communications executive who can just address a couple of quick questions?

That is probably one of the first steps that you have to take in any kind of crisis. You have to put the decisionmakers around the table and ask the right questions.

Obviously, if 60 Minutes is knocking on your door and you know that something’s gone terribly wrong, you probably have a crisis.

But if a lone blogger who’s sitting in the basement of his parents’ house and coming down from his Red Bull high has just hit your company with a snarky blog post, do you need to respond? No, probably not, because that’s exactly what that particular person hopes you do, is engage them. Read the situation and calibrate your initial response and everything after that.

Image: Wikipedia

BP: How many hours a day does it take to monitor and defend a big company’s reputation online?

DL: It can be a full-time job for a very big team if it’s a big enough crisis.

We were involved with the pet food recall, the toy recall, the spinach recall, the financial crisis this year, a number of global litigation issues, the baseball star Roger Clemens. All these folks have an enormous amount of public interest around them.

Our clients had as many as 15-20,000 blog posts and tweets posted about them in a single week. Every single one of the those has potential to be a serious brand threat. So, it really depends on the size of the company and the scope of the crisis.

Image: XPigs

BP: One of your clients is a major financial services firm. Because of the financial crisis, the only thing that comes to my mind about defending its reputation is waiting until the negative media cycle blows out. Do you guys have a more active strategy than that?

DL: In every crisis, there are a couple moments during the before/during/after arc of a crisis. You reach a point in the “during” part where consumer anxiety and tension reaches its xenith. Just after that tipping point, where consumer anxiety begins to relax, you have an immediate opportunity, a teachable moment to build equity.

The world’s attention is still focused on you, but they’ve just exhaled. They now know what the concern is.

For example, during the pet food crisis a few years ago, once they identified that melanine was the issue, Americans relaxed. They realized “oh, now they found it and we can know what the crisis is.”

There was an immediate teachable moment after that. The pet food industry rushed into that moment, to educated consumers, that really calmed anxiety and returned sales right back to where they were.

Every crisis has kind of the same phases. There are opportunities to limit and mitigate the damage impact upon the brand during each of those. There are also opportunities to grab the spotlight during when the world is watching you.

What you do next really does matter. You can show a proactive, transparent, and accountable strategy. You can actually win over a lot of critics during a crisis.

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Here’s an interview with Dallas where he talks more about brand ambassadors and strategies:

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For more on social media and crisis management, as well as reflections on current events, visit Levick’s blog here.

Viral videos are one of the Internet’s best entertainment mediums. They teach, impress, and–perhaps most importantly–help you pass the time.

Companies know this. When they commission top international advertising firms to produce Internet videos, they use “going viral” as a measure of success. Marketing videos can help bolster a company’s reputation, increase sales, and foster positive associations in consumers’ minds. Or, as the Microsoft and Nokia videos below prove, they can lack product association, but still be viral.

Here are the best viral marketing videos of 2009–so far. It’s only late October. Companies still have time to release new viral hits. Only time will tell what kind of random and fascinating content will hit the Web next.

The BaaStuds

Samsung chose to promote its LED TVs using LED lights mounted on…sheep. This sensational video employs skilled shepherds and cameramen to create un-baa-lievable results. Views on YouTube (at time of writing): 9.5 million

MegaWoosh Waterslide

Microsoft sponsored this video of Swiss stuntman Bruno Kammerl executing a mind-blowing waterslide jump. Clad only in neoprene, Kammerl flies more than 100 feet into a tiny pool of water. How a waterslide jump relates to Microsoft’s Office Project 2007 is something of a mystery, but that’s just who fronted this flabbergasting fake. Views: 3.6 million

The Acrobutt

MSI laptops are so lightweight and durable that you can catch them in your buttcrack. At least, that’s what the company proved in its bizarre viral video, featuring young men in spandex hucking laptops into…you guessed it. Views: 2.3 million

What Kids Don’t See

German porn company Beate Uhse advertises its built-in child lock with a video reminiscent of an adult Rorschach test. If you’re curious as to how boobs can morph into a tweety bird, here’s your chance. Views: More than 800,000

Bruce Lee Plays Table Tennis

Ad agency JWT Beijing released this video for the Chinese release of the Nokia N96. The video features Bruce Lee playing ping pong using only a kung fu weapon–and beating his (very capable) opponents. The video is a jaw-dropper, though it’s unclear how it relates to the phone. Views: 600,000+

Mattress Dominoes

British company Bensons for Beds filmed mattress factory employees clutching mattresses, then falling like dominoes. The slapstick-style video ends with one employee and his mattress landing on a conveyor belt. A woman jumps into bed with him, and the couple gets loaded onto a Bensons truck. Views: 700,000

How’d He Make That Phone Disappear?

A man filmed this entire video on a new Samsung I8910 HD video phone. Towards the end of the video, he makes the phone he is holding disappear, though it can still make videos. He claims to have used no special effects. It was up to viewers to guess how he’d done it. Views: 1 million

Vanilla Ice Says Sorry

Virgin Mobile Australia released this video of Robert Van Winkle (formerly Vanilla Ice) apologizing for his first album. His apology, which is sincere, covers both his sound and his look. The shock value of this video lies in its uniqueness. Views: 885,000

We emphasize value-added activities that will increase perception of your company and help marketing efforts. Use these tips in conjunction with energy-saving efforts that lower operating costs.

1. Go renewable–and let everyone know

Renewable energy bolsters public perception of a company. It marks you as a responsible, conscientious, caring organization. Harness this perception to attract more customers and increase your market share.

Whole Foods, for example, has established a “Green Mission” that includes offsetting all of its energy consumption with wind energy credits. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency named Whole Foods its Green Power Partner of the Year in 2006 and 2007. A slew of good publicity followed.

Other large corporations, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, Costco, and Safeway also have renewable energy programs.

2. Market to guilt

Image: Stuff Young Jewish Adults Like

Humans, specifically Americans, generate most of the CO2 emissions that contribute to global warming. This sordid fact weighs on the public conscience, compelling consumers to seek out products and services green enough to assuage their guilt. Offering ways to mitigate enviro-guilt draws more customers to your company, which ultimately can boost your bottom line.

For example, the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) recently became the first airport in the country to offer carbon offset kiosks. With a simple swipe of a credit card, customers contribute to reforestation and biofuels, assuaging their sense of guilt about boarding a fuel-hungry, CO2-emitting jet. The program certainly differentiates SFO from other nearby airports, potentially boosting perception to the point of attracting more fliers.

Oil- and gas company BP is another example. It touts itself as one of the first oil companies to “take precautionary action to address climate change.”

Company officials emphasize that BP has made efforts to reduce emissions at its extraction operations, innovated a new type of gas that emits fewer toxins, and invested in clean technology research.

Does that absolve BP from the fact that it makes money by mining oil? No, but by emphasizing its efforts to mitigate the damage, BP is tacitly admitting that although it’s a bad guy, it wants to do good by the environment. In other words, it is appealing to consumer guilt.

Note: Some might label BP’s efforts as greenwashing. Regardless, it is using the tried-and-true tactic of addressing consumer guilt to clean its image.

3. Green your logo

Speaking of greenwashing, we make this point with a caveat: If you green your logo, please do something to back it up. Run your organization off renewable energy. Weatherize your building. Donate to eco-wise nonprofits. Sell green products. Otherwise, you risk being seen as a greenwasher.

Back to whipping boy BP. It’s an oil company, but its logo–a green flower-like symbol–evokes feelings of green. Does BP’s green logo and website design make the oil company look more environmentally friendly? On a subconscious level, it does.

If I didn’t know what BP was, and saw its logo for the first time, my first impression would be of a pretty green flower. Logo-wise, it looks much greener than, say, Chevron, whose red-and-blue logo evokes more patriotic feelings on first impression. Design counts.

4. Donate to Earthy causes

Reserve a portion of your profits for a nonprofit that works to restore the planet, like 1% For the Planet. Or make monthly/annual donations to an organization that preserves and restores nature. Making a financial commitment will show the general public that you put your money where your mouth is. Make sure that you publicize your donations well.

5. Sell eco-minded products

Image: Zazzle/Eco Girl

Nobody was buying canvas bags in the 1980s. Now, almost every grocery store sells lines of reusable shopping bags at the checkout counter.

People want to go green–and they’ll spend money to do it. Address that need with new products and services. They can complement your current offerings, or represent a deviation from your traditional wares. If you’re a service, develop a new brand that addresses the needs of people in the burgeoning green industry. Or market to people who want to feel more green.

Read up on what other bloggers have to say at BlogActionDay.org.

After Nike endorsed–no, wait, didn’t endorse–Michael Vick again this year, I can’t help but wonder whether Vick has even more star power than he did before spending 23 months in prison for his participation in a dogfighting ring.

John Kelly of Minyanville has the following to say about Vick and notoriety:

The questions on everyone’s minds are: Can Michael Vick return at the same level of play after spending 18 months in jail? Will the fans forgive him for his cruelty to dogs and allow him to refurbish his tarnished image? Gareb Shamus, CEO of New York-based Wizard Entertainment, which covers the gaming industry, says the answer is yes. “If anything, it’s his notoriety, more than his athletic ability, that will contribute to a spike in his popularity,” he says. “This is a period in our history where infamy makes you famous. And desirable.”

On the other hand, there’s some positive news for Vick. A day after signing his contract with the Eagles, the video-game company EA Sports added Vick to this years edition of Madden NFL, its bestselling multi-platform video game. Even more telling, Vick’s number-seven Eagles jersey is the fourth-best selling jersey on NFLShop.com. The stats are based on sales at the site from April 1 to August 28; Vick signed with the Eagles on August 13, which means that his jersey broke the top five in sales in less than two weeks. And while Dick’s Sporting Goods, whose headquarters are in Pennsylvania, is refusing to stock the jersey, the sporting goods chain Modell’s reports that demand for the jersey is high.

There are two ways to interpret Vick’s story:

a) Vick should be permanently shunned for his involvement in dogfighting. Contributing to the deaths of animals is inexcusable.

b) Vick messed up. He declared bankruptcy and did time in prison. Now, he’s getting a second chance. Who doesn’t deserve a second chance?

Through his actions, Vick has become symbolic for his audience. He gives them a chance to express agreement, disagreement, disgust, and a range of other emotions. In that sense, Michael Vick is more than a football player–he is a trigger for value expression.

Because of that, Vick continues to draw a lot of attention. Companies like Nike and jersey sellers can capitalize on that attention, either by selling product or by making their own statement, as Nike just did. Maybe his moral value went down after the dogfighting incident, but his marketing value has gone up.

What do you think of the Vick incident? Is it affecting your perception of his sponsors or the Philadelphia Eagles?

Well, it’s here. Call it Black Friday for publishing. Some say that the Kennedy memoir, Dan Brown’s new book, and Oprah’s pick could make this week a record breaker for book sales. But one book in particular won’t be getting an extra special boost – a Presidential boost.

ShelfLife reports that a quote from President Barack Obama has been removed from the book jacket of Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court. The memoir, penned by University of North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams is scheduled to be published in November.

According to ShelfLife, the quote was to be:

“What makes Coach Williams one of the great coaches isn’t just his extraordinary record, but his dedication to his players. He’s just as serious about making these guys into men and into leaders as he is into making them champions.”

The quote was apparently never meant to appear as a blurb for the book and publisher Algonquin’s legal team advised them to remove the statement from the book jacket because sitting presidents cannot make commercial endorsements. And how exactly does that work when one has their own products (books) to sell?

Apparently, too, new printings of Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland have been stickered with a quote pulled from an Obama interview:

 “Fascinating…A wonderful book.’ President Barack Obama, Newsweek.”

What do you think? I mean, he said it. It’s a matter of record. And what’s the difference between a publisher quoting a Newsweek article and the nightly news covering Obama’s vacation reading list? Gee, I wonder which sold more books.

I’m not sure where I stand on this, but if Obama shows up on any of those romance novel covers, I’ll be stocking up!

Image Credit: Chris Owens, Flickr

Appease your inner free foodie today at Panera Bread locations, which are offering a “September Sampler Day” today, September 10, 2009. Stop in between 6am-9pm for free samples of Panera’s Power Breakfast Sandwich, Napa Almond Chicken Sandwich, BBQ Chopped Chicken Salad, Macademia Nut Blondies, and Chocolate Fudge Brownies.

The first 99 people who are turning either 9 or 99 on Sept. 9, 2009 — that’s 09/09/09 — and who prove it by e-mailing a copy of their birth certificate or driver’s license along with their address and phone number to pr@dominos.com, will receive a $25 gift card.

The contest runs from Aug. 31 at 8 a.m. through Sept. 30 at 11:59 p.m., or until all 99 prizes are gone.

Sure beats worrying about the end of the world.

Last night, Palm unveiled its new Pixi, a new, cheaper smartphone that runs on the Palm Pre OS. TechCrunch has more:

In a move akin to Herman’s Hermits opening for the Rolling Stones, Palm has decided to announce the new Palm Pixi, a phone akin to the Palm Centro of yore in price point and features, on the very day Apple will eat up the rest of the news cycle.

There is no Wi-Fi, a dealbreaker for many. The Pixi will be available in multiple “Artist Series” styles and will be available around the holidays.

More.

Lots of people use smartphones without Wi-Fi, so I question whether the Pixi’s lack thereof is really a “dealbreaker.” More interesting is the fact that Palm chose to nestle its new product announcement on the day of a big Apple event. Has Palm fallen so far behind that it has to ride Apple’s PR coattails just to make a statement? Or is this just a really bad marketing strategy? I’m guessing the latter.