Archive for wall street journal

what we’re reading

April 18, 2008 at 9:37 pm · Filed under politics and tagged: ,

From the Wall Street Journal this week: a profile of three college super-delegates who have become important to the Obama and Clinton campaigns.  Also, a look at hooking-up among campaign staffers – Amy Chozick’s article notes that Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 camaign resulted in at least five marriages and six babies.

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what we’re reading

March 28, 2008 at 7:03 pm · Filed under hno content and tagged: , , , , , , ,

From Hoops to Hipsters
The Washington Post
“Half the history of Converse is about basketball, and the rest is about something far more complicated, about the ways a plain sneaker is consistently adored by anticonsumer consumers,” Hank Steuver writes on the shoes’ 100-year anniversary.
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Young Drivers on the Radar
The Wall Street Journal 
According to the National  Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were13 million 15-20 year old drivers in 2006; the 3,490 deaths by vehicle accidents make them the leading cause of death for the age group.  The Wall Street Journal’s Personal Journal writes on insurers who are offering discounts to teen drivers, a group M.P. McQueen writes, “that they’ve traditionally tried to avoid.”  An accompanying article on the in-car cameras and GPS trackers that parents are using on their teenage drivers is worth the read for one parent’s explanation of the monitoring services alone: “‘Around my house, we have the golden rule.  He who has the gold makes the rule … If you want my checkbook and my car with my name on it, these are my rules.’”
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 ”Colorful Converse Shoe Star”by Patty Mitchell on Flickr.  Creative Commons.

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what we’re reading

February 8, 2008 at 8:10 pm · Filed under hno content and tagged: , ,

Department of deprivation research

The Wall Street Journal reports on Burger King’s Whopper hoax, in which two Nevada stores claimed that the company had discontinued the signature burger, causing fierce reactions from customers who were caught on camera.  The commercial is a rarity for the otherwise quiet use of “deprivation research” by companies to see how loyal consumers are to a company’s product.  Dunkin’ Donuts has used deprivation research two years ago, forcing some customers to drink Starbucks coffee.  In other cases, Burger King has given customers who have ordered the Whopper burgers from McDonald’s or Wendy’s.  The planning of the Freakout commercial is rather interesting: Burger King used actors and eight hidden cameras, but settled on filming the commercial in Nevada because of California’s laws on hidden filming.  All the while, the customer’s exasperated one-liners (“What are you going to put on the logo now – home of the ‘Whatever we got’”) have caused Whopper sales to jump by double-digits.

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