Time was when the United States accounted for the largest contingent of the Fortune 500 global companies. Not so anymore. According to stats reported recently by international business expert Ted Fishman in USA Today, only about one-fourth of the 500 largest global enterprises are based in the U.S.
And those that remain on the list aren’t behaving particularly “American,” either. This group of ~140 companies has eliminated nearly 3 American million jobs since 2000.
Is that a consequence of the recent global recession? Hardly … the same companies added ~2.4 million jobs overseas during the same period.
The particulars behind each company’s employment choices are varied, of course. But certain factors seem to come up often in the analysis, including:
Gaining closer geographic proximity to the world’s fastest-growing economies such as India, China and other Far Eastern countries.
The availability of workforces that are “cheaper” to hire and require fewer employee benefits.
A relatively unattractive U.S. corporate tax rate compared to other countries – hard to believe, but America’s 35% top corporate rate is eclipsed only by Japan’s (39.5%).Going forward, it would be nice if America’s largest corporate entities could be more sensitive to the need for additional investment here at home. Then again, it would be equally gratifying if government adopted policies of lower tax rates and easing regulations to make business growth and job creation in America easier.
The truth is, both parties will continue to pursue their own self-motivated interests, which is only natural.
The problem is, it’s a lopsided game. With a big wide world out there, the multinationals have a host of options at their disposal … and thus hold the winning cards. Tax laws and new regulations can be put on the books time and again, but the multinational crowd continues to float above it all, seemingly unaffected by anything – at least not to any great extent.
I wonder how many marketers are focused on what’s happening in Europe on the digital marketing front? While companies here are busily engaged in making sure ad tracking is being done to the nth degree, in the UK and Continental Europe, new legal restrictions on advertising tracking threaten to upend a lot of these efforts, particularly for multinational brands.
In short, the EU’s e-Privacy Directive restricts the use of “cookies” and virtually all other digital ad tracking methods. And the legal frameworks set up around this directive would require any marketer with users in any EU country to be subject to EU-wide and country-specific privacy legislation.
The new privacy initiatives are far more restrictive than the present US-EU “safe harbor” agreement, which merely requires American companies to notify users when cookies are used on a website. The new regs covering web pages, web apps and mobile apps would require giving notice each time a cookie is used, thereby setting up a flurry of endless notifications that promises to seriously degrade the online browsing experience.
The seemingly reasonable compromise of adding information to a “terms of use” agreement isn’t acceptable to the EU either, unless all users are issued the new agreement and they certify their acceptance.
And just to make sure everyone knows how serious all of this is, the new regs call for the imposition of financial and/or criminal penalties for the non-compliant use of cookies. But for the moment at least, only two relatively small countries besides the UK – Estonia and Denmark – have implemented controls to enforce the EU directives.
Here in the United States, privacy legislation slowly wends its way around Congress, with many legislators understanding that the key to successful commerce online is the ability for marketers to match marketing messages to interested consumers. It’s in Europe where governments appear more than willing to cripple the ability of marketers to do the job they’ve sought to do for decades: Target their audiences with as much precision as possible.
As a result, some European businesses are making noises about abandoning Europe for the United States. The problem is, in the digital age with so much of the branding and commerce blurred between countries, it’s impossible for restrictive moves in one region not to cause negative repercussions somewhere else.
I’ve blogged before about the increasing concerns many people have regarding the quality of college education in America. Now, several new data points should make every parent of college-age kids – or children who will be ready for college soon – take additional notice.
The first interesting news tidbit is that total student debt, which surpassed the country’s credit card debt for the first time in August 2010, now tops $1 trillion. Compare that to student debt being only around $200 billion as late as 2000.
So we’re talking an increase of ~400% in a little over a decade, which is miles more than the inflation rate over this period. Average debt now stands at almost $23,000 per student, which is a spike of ~8% over the past year alone.
And just what are students getting for all the money they’re spending (or borrowing) for their higher education? If you want to know the ugly truth, check out the recently published book Academically Adrift by sociologists Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum [ISBN-13: 978-0226028569 … also available in a Kindle edition].
Based on the information presented in this book, some grads might wish to haul their colleges up on charges of educational malpractice. Full-time instructional faculty has declined from 78% of college teachers in 1970 to only around 50% today.
Roksa and Arum also report that college faculty members spend, on average, just 11 hours per week on instructional preparation and delivery … the rest of their time is spent on research and a slew of administrative activities.
And how about the “quality” of the education that’s being delivered? If we wish to view that in terms of the amount of time students are spending on their studies, the stats aren’t trending in the right direction. The book claims that whereas the typical college student in the early 1960s devoted an average of 40 hours each week to academic work, today’s students now spend only about 27 hours per week on studies. So in what way is the substantial extra money being extracted from students being used to delier a better quality product?
Of course, we all know the economy has been a major problem over the past few years, with jobs hard to come by even for seasoned workers. But to learn that fewer than one in six college students are moving out on their own following college graduation means that precious few grads are coming out of school with the ability to land jobs that can sustain an independent lifestyle — however modest.
With stats as dismal as these, is it any wonder why some people are seeking an alternative paradigm for higher education other than the “four years away from home” model? Enrollment figures at America’s community colleges have been skyrocketing. Online education is also booming, despite lingering concerns about learning standards and accreditation.
Some economists such as Richard Vedder are suggesting making radical reforms in the way that financial aid is provided – and to whom – while other observers are pushing for more recognition of learning credentials that take us beyond a BS or BA degree.
Many of these ideas strike at the very heart of what we’ve always been conditioned to believe about a four-year college education as the gateway to a better life. But with today’s reality being so far removed from the theory (fantasy?) … some out-of-the-box ideas and approaches are exactly what are needed now.
Each year since 1999, Harris has measured the reputations of the 60 “most visible” corporations in the United States. The 2011 survey, fielded in January and February, included ~30,000 Americans who are part of Harris’ online panel database. Respondents rated the companies on 20 attributes that comprise what Harris deems the overall “reputation quotient” (RQ).
The 2011 survey contained 54 “most visible” companies that were also part of the 2010 survey. Of those, 18 of the firms showed significant RQ increases compared to only two with declines.
The 20 attributes in the Harris survey are then grouped into six larger categories that are known to influence reputation and consumer behavior:
Products and services
Financial performance
Emotional appeal
Vision and leadership
Workplace environment
Social responsibility
Each of the ten top-rated companies in the 2011 survey achieved between an 81 and 84 RQ score in corporate reputation. (Any RQ score over 80 is considered “excellent” in the Harris study). In cescending order of score, these top-ranked corporations were:
Google
Johnson & Johnson
3M Company
Berkshire Hathaway
Apple
Intel Corporation
Kraft Foods
Amazon.com
Disney Company
General Mills
At the other end of the scale, the ten companies with the lowest ratings among the 60 included on the survey were:
Delta Airlines (61 RQ score)
JPMorgan Chase (61)
ExxonMobil (61)
General Motors (60)
Bank of America (59)
Chrysler (58)
Citigroup (57)
Goldman Sachs (54)
BP (50)
AIG (48)
Clearly, BP and AIG haven’t escaped their bottom-of-the-barrel ratings – and probably won’t anytime soon.
What about certain industries in general? The Harris research reveals that the technology segment is perceived most positively, with ~75% of respondents giving that sector a positive rating.
The next most popular segment – retail – had ~57% of respondents giving it a positive rating.
For the auto industry, the big news is not that it’s held in high regard (it’s not) … but that its ratings jumped 15 percentage points between 2010 and 2011. That’s the largest one-year jump recorded for any industry in any year since the Harris RQ Survey began.
What industries are bouncing along the bottom? Predictably, it’s financial services firms and oil companies.
But the news from this survey is, on balance, quite positive. In fact, Harris found that there were actually more individual companies rated “excellent” than has ever been recorded in the history of the survey. Considering the sorry state of the economy and how badly many brands have been battered, that result is nothing short of amazing
Word of two recent medical studies should give pause to those of us in the professional world who do our share of traveling on the job.
First up, researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University are reporting that businesspeople who travel two weeks or more during an average month are significantly more likely to have a higher body mass index and to be obese.
The conclusions were drawn from reviewing data from medical records of ~13,000 participants in a corporate wellness program, as provided by preventive health services firm EHE International.
In comparing frequent business travelers (those who typically travel 20 or more days per month) against light travelers (only 1-6 days per month), not only did the evaluation discover poorer health results for the first group, it also found that those individuals were 260% more likely to rate their own health as “fair” or “poor” compared to the less frequent travelers.
The Columbia University study notes that since ~80% of business travel is carried out using personal automotive transport, often this means long hours of sitting.
Poor food choices on the road are no help, either. Of course, this is a challenge for all business travelers no matter what mode of transport they choose to take, what with the high sodium and fat content of restaurant fare – and oh, would you like sour cream and butter on your baked potato?
Not surprisingly, the Columbia study concludes that those who travel extensively for work “are at increased levels of risk and should be encouraged to monitor their health.”
But if that news isn’t enough, along comes another study that links middle age obesity to mental degradation in later life. As reported in the most recent issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, researchers in a study conducted at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden conclude that controlling body weight during the middle years can significantly reduce the risk of developing dementia in later years.
This study analyzed time-lapse information from ~8,500 twins aged 65 or older, and within that sample, evaluated the results from the ~475 individuals diagnosed with dementia or possible dementia against factors such as height, weight and BMI measures that had been recorded 30 years earlier.
The Swedish study found that those who were overweight or obese during midlife were at 80% greater risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease in later life.
Connecting the dots between these two studies makes things quite clear: If you want to lessen you chances of Alzheimer’s or dementia in old age, keep your weight under control today. And to keep your weight under control today, beware of the traveler’s lifestyle and get off your duff in the office.
Coming off the worst recession in memory, just how happy are Americans in their jobs today?
An online survey of ~450 American adults conducted in late February by enterprise feedback management and research firm MarketTools has found that only ~34% consider themselves “very satisfied” in their current job positions:
Very satisfied: ~34%
Somewhat satisfied: ~40%
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied: ~10%
Somewhat dissatisfied: ~10%
Very dissatisfied: ~5%
Those results would seem to portend that a significant number of people will be looking to change jobs in the near-term future.
And in fact, nearly 50% of these respondents reported that they’ve “considered” leaving their current positions – and more than 20% have actually applied for another job within the past six months.
What’s causing dissatisfaction among employees? They’re the usual things, beginning with salary, although many respondents cited multiple contributing factors to employee dissatisfaction:
Salary level: ~47% of respondents
Level of workload: ~24%
Lack of opportunity for advancement / career development: ~21%
Relationship with manager / supervisor: ~21%
Medical benefits issues: ~20%
Work environment: ~14%
Length of commute / distance from home: ~14%
It shouldn’t be too surprising to witness an increase in job-hopping behavior following economic downturns. For those lucky enough to have held onto their positions during the recession, the working environment has likely been more stressful, as employers required more productivity from fewer workers.
It’s also likely that benefits packages were reduced to some degree. So it’s only natural for people to nurse some residual negative feelings about the situation and to possibly consider jumping ship to another employer.
But would that be the best move?
Often, moving to a new employer doesn’t result in the improvements the employee expected to find. And smarter companies will use the improving economic climate (such as it is) to reward those employees who hung in there when times were tough. After all, these are their better workers!
Salary and benefit increases are always going to be appreciated … but so is the opportunity for continued growth and career development.
It’ll be quite interesting to see what the job-hopping statistics show a few months from now.
If you feel you’re being overwhelmed by information overload in the digital realm, you have lots of company.
A survey conducted last month of ~200 adults who are online “content consumers” found that the largest proportion reports being online essentially their entire waking day. The survey, conducted by content publishing platform company Magnify, was made up of executives, professionals, entrepreneurs and technologists.
It’s a small survey sample to be sure … but who could really argue with the results it uncovered? When asked to what degree they were connected to the Internet, here’s how these respondents answered:
From the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed: ~50%
Most of the workday: ~28%
9 am to 9 p.m.: ~17%
But here’s the even bigger kicker: A large majority of the respondents reported that the quantity of information being received today had grown by 50% or more compared to last year:
Information flow has doubled or more since last year: ~26%
… Has increased by ~75%: ~10%
… Has increased by ~50%: ~28%
… Has increased by ~20%: ~25%
… Has stayed essentially the same: ~11%
How are people dealing with processing the additional information? See how many of these “coping mechanisms” reflect your own actions or behaviors:
Reading/responding to e-mail on evenings and weekends: ~77%
Never turning off the mobile phone: ~57%
Unable to answer all e-mails: ~47%
Missing important news: ~41%
Ignoring family and friends: ~40%
Answering e-mails even while with children: ~35%
Checking e-mails in the middle of the night: ~33%
The question is: Have we finally reached a critical-mass state where the law of diminishing returns kicks in?
Well, we might have thought that one year ago … before the latest torrential increase in volume happened!
Who controls consumer household spending? Women ... men ... or both?Among the “everyone knows” factoids in marketing, it’s accepted pretty much without question that women are the purchasing decision-makers in households far more than men. Whether it’s decisions on consumer spending or healthcare services … women are much more likely to be making those decisions compared to men.
And the figure commonly cited? Women are responsible for ~80% of the decisions. But how accurate is this … or is it time to reconsider this notion?
A survey conducted last year of ~4,000 Americans age 16 and older by The Futures Company, a London-based marketing consulting firm, found that ~37% of women claimed they have primary responsibility for shopping decisions in their household, while ~85% claimed they have primary or shared responsibility.
And the figures for the male respondents in this survey? Substantially the same, it turns out: 31% claimed they have primary shopping responsibility and 84% claimed that the responsibility is shared.
Emily Parenti, marketing director at Futures, concluded that the survey results “tell a different story” than the common perception of how much women control the purse-strings in households.
Indeed, the Futures survey is one of the first ones that actually goes so far as to quantify the issue. Ira Mayer, president of EPM Communications which publishes the newsletter Marketing to Women, has attempted to find the origin of the accepted 80% figure – but has come up empty.
“There is never any sourcing of the number,” Mayer says. And yet, “it’s become accepted folklore.”
When challenged to cite corroboration, students of marketing point to the book Marketing to Women, published in 2002 by Marti Barletta, wherein the claim is made that women “handle 80% to 90% of spending and purchasing for the household.”
And yet … Barletta has never been able to cite the source for this claim, either. Instead, she considers it “one of those rules-of-thumb numbers that everyone in the industry uses.”
Perhaps marketers need to take a look at this rule-of-thumb again. Because in addition to the Futures survey, a 2008 online research survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group asked women and men to estimate what percentage of household spending they influence or control.
True to form, the average answer given by women in the BCG survey was 73%. But the average answer given by men was 61%.
So in essence, both genders are claiming responsibility for a controlling or influence more than 50% of the spending in their household.
This points to a difference in perspective that likely won’t be going away anytime soon. Indeed, Marti Barletta still claims to be “pretty comfortable” with the 80% figure for female control over household spending. “Even being conservative, I wouldn’t go below 75%,” she asserts.
Whatever the correct figure actually is, one thing we can be certain of is that the notion of women having overwhelming control of household spending is off-base. And so, consumer product manufacturers would be wise to recalibrate their thinking as they engage in their product development and marketing activities and programs.
Adding a lot of class to the neighborhood: Adzookie puts the "outré" in outdoor advertising.There’s an interesting story that’s been swirling around the past few days about out-of-home advertising. Evidently, mobile ad network firm Adzookie is on the prowl for using someone’s house as an advertising placard.
As in “the entire house.” Or nearly all of it; Adzookie plans to place its logo, marketing messages and social media icons along with highly visible hues on every inch of surface save the rooftop, windows and awnings.
And what’s in it for the homeowner? Adzookie is claiming it will pay the mortgage on each house it selects for the honors.
Already, well over 1,000 applications from property owners have been received. The vast majority involve houses, but there are also restaurants, other businesses, and even a house of worship that have been submitted. You can click over to Adzookie’s Facebook page to view many of the pictures and pitches received.
How will Adzookie make its decision? Key, of course, will be traffic density; homes in sleepy sub-divisions or cul-de-sacs won’t have much of a chance. Then there’s also the issue of restrictive homeowner associations or the howls of protestation over “eye pollution” from nearby neighbors. That’ll knock quite a few more out of contention.
But here’s another tidbit that may turn out to be a deal-breaker for most of the remaining applications: CNNMoney magazine is reporting that Adzookie’s budget for the entire program is only ~$100,000 … and that includes the cost of painting the home(s) in question.
Even in this depressed real estate market, there aren’t too many houses that have a mortgage that low – unless you’re talking about a home in the City of Detroit, perhaps.
This capricious initiative proves yet again that in today’s world of advertising and promotion, pretty much anything goes. And if the idea is quirky enough, it’ll generate publicity in and of itself – thereby helping to bring about the desired awareness and interest even before the first slaps of the paintbrush ever hit the house.
That the venerable Philadelphia Orchestra, 111 years old and one of the best-known, best-loved ensembles in the classical music field, should be facing bankruptcy proceedings comes as a surprise to most people. This orchestra, with its stellar roster of past music directors including Eugene Ormandy, Ricardo Muti, and Leopold Stokowski of Disney’s Fantasia fame, would seem to be nearly immune to financial stresses.
But the fallout from the economic recession has affected private and public funding alike, with corporate donors snapping their wallets shut … and many well-heeled retirees and other donors looking at their financial and real estate portfolios and feeling much poorer.
In the new economic reality, the prognosis for the Philadelphia Orchestra and other professional classical music ensembles is grim unless severe cuts are made to operating expenses. But those steps can also be risky. Just a week before the Philadelphia announcement, the Detroit Symphony, another well-established body whose list of past music directors including Antal Dorati, Paul Paray and Neeme Järvi is almost as impressive as Philadelphia’s, nearly went under after proposing more than a 15% reduction in player salaries, plus other concessions.
Rather than agree to their base pay dropping from ~$104,000 to ~$88,000, the musicians went on strike in the Fall of 2010. It was only when the board of the DSO was ready to pull the plug on the orchestra’s existence that the players agreed to come back to work.
On Saturday, April 9, the DSO performed for the first time in over five months, and the musicians are now committed to completing the current orchestral season. After nearly two years of wrangling, it’s the best outcome anyone could have hoped for.
Looking out across the country, it’s difficult to find much good news in the orchestral field; the Honolulu Symphony was recently liquidated and the Louisville Orchestra has also filed for bankruptcy.
But one bright spot is in Buffalo, where the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, under the inspired 11-year leadership of music director JoAnn Falletta and a pragmatic, forward-looking Board led by Cindy Abbott Letro, is weathering the economic stresses with better success. Another venerable orchestral institution, the BPO is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and its roster of past music directories includes such luminaries as William Steinberg, Michael Tilson Thomas and the composer-conductor Lukas Foss.
Considering that the Buffalo urban community is much smaller than many other metropolitan markets like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco that support professional symphony orchestras, what the BPO has been able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing.
In 2008, the BPO concluded a capital campaign that added more than $32 million to the orchestra’s endowment, and posted a balanced budget in the 2009-10 season. In 2010, it went on tour for the first time in ~20 years. The BPO’s symphony programs are some of the most interesting and inventive being performed by any orchestra in America (I know: I’ve attended several of them). And the orchestra is continuing to release new CDs of fascinating orchestral repertoire on Naxos, the world’s largest classical music label.
Key to the BPO’s success goes beyond public monies, or support from foundations plus a few wealthy individuals. It’s about creating a strong link between the orchestra and the wider community – something easy to talk about, but challenging to accomplish without building strong chemistry and a sense of shared destiny. And in that regard, the attitude, approachability and personality of the music director cannot be overstated.
Richard Morrison, esteemed music critic of The Times of London, writes in the pages of BBC Music Magazine of “the existential crisis that could soon devour orchestras across the world with exemplary management, hard-working musicians, high standards and realistic attitudes.” He can “easily envisage a future in which dozens of ailing cities across Europe and America lose their orchestras forever.”
Not that Morrison is happy about his prognosis: “Some might argue that, in this age of universally-available Internet concerts, the physical presence of an orchestra in any particular region no longer matters. I can’t agree. It would be a tragedy if the opportunity to hear live classical concerts was bestowed only on people living in the wealthiest cities,” he opines.
If the example set by the Buffalo Philharmonic is one that could be replicated in other urban areas, Morrison’s grim prediction could turn out to be wrong. Let’s hope so.
Time was when the United States accounted for the largest contingent of the Fortune 500 global companies. Not so anymore. According to stats reported recently by international business expert Ted Fishman in USA Today, only about one-fourth of the 500 largest global enterprises are based in the U.S. 
Nones Notes 