November 2008: Optimize

Politics Unusual: Media and the Making of a President.
Keyboard politics and the Internet have replaced the backroom dealings of Presidential elections with a more immediate, personal and opinionated forum for evaluating candidates and platforms...

Economic Blues Color Holiday Outlook.
Scrooge will be in good company this holiday season, as American consumers tighten their belts and hang on to their wallets, with 85% planning to spend less or the same as last year...

Gourmet Shoppers Cook Up Retail Opportunities.
With rising inflation and gas prices taking a bite out of household budgets, now is a good time to cater to high-earning, big-spending, home-grown gourmet cooks who account for one in five U.S. households...

Flying Fingers
Text-messaging has become so popular that U.S. mobile subscribers now send and receive more text-messages in a month than they do phone calls. Increasing 351% since last year, it has become a ubiquitous method of communication for more than just teens...

One Nation Under Madden.
How does a brand stay true to its core, continually reinvent itself for 20 years and manage to thrive in the challenging new media? The Madden video game scored a marketing touchdown with a commitment to authenticity and a three-screen approach that made it a cross-over cultural phenomenon...

A Widening Market: The Obese Consumer.
Obesity is on the rise around the world, but is especially predominant in the U.S. How should marketers navigate this sensitive, but opportunity-laden environment? In a word—carefully—and with a solid understanding of whom the obese consumer is...