Community

PRINCETON, NJ — Americans view the computer industry the most positively and the federal government the least positively when asked to rate 25 business and industry sectors. All five of the top-rated sectors this year are related to either computers or food.

Gallup has asked Americans each August since 2001 to indicate whether they have positive or negative views of a list of business and industry sectors. The 2011 update is from Gallup’s Aug. 11-14 survey.

The results range from a +62 net positive rating for the computer industry to a -46 net positive rating for the federal government.

The sectors Americans view most negatively have all had well-publicized problems in recent years. The federal government has been near the bottom of the list in previous years, but is at the absolute bottom this year for the first time, displacing the oil and gas industry. Seventeen percent of Americans have a positive view of the federal government — the lowest of any sector tested this year — while 63% have a negative image. Only one sector, oil and gas, has a higher negative percentage, 64%. Other poorly ranked sectors include real estate, healthcare, banking, and the legal field.

Federal Government’s Image at All-Time Low

The positive and the negative ratings for the federal government this year are the worst since Gallup began measuring its image in 2003.

The deterioration in Americans’ views of the federal government began in 2004 — correlated with a downturn in President George W. Bush’s job approval rating and rising concerns about the Iraq war and the economy. Views turned slightly more positive in 2009 during Barack Obama’s first year as president, but dropped back down last year and again this year, likely reflecting rising concerns over the economy as well as the increase in government spending and power.

Other Gallup data from August of this year show that Congress has the lowest approval rating in Gallup history, and that satisfaction with the way things are going in this country is near its all-time low.

Images of Federal Gov’t, Real Estate Industry Drop the Most Over the Past Decade

Americans’ views of a number of sectors have worsened dramatically between 2001 and 2011, or, in the case of the federal government, between 2003 — the first year Gallup asked about it — and 2011.

The images of the federal government and the real estate industry have dropped the most over the past decade. The percentage of Americans rating the government positively has declined 24 points since 2003, and the real estate industry’s positive ratings have fallen 23 points since 2001. Other sectors with double-digit drops include the banking sector, education, accounting, and healthcare.

Americans view four industries more positively now than they did in August 2001: the Internet industry, electric and gas utilities, and the computer and movie industries. The current 72% positive rating for the computer industry is the highest such rating of any industry since Gallup began tracking business sectors in 2001.

Implications

The continuing high ratings for the computer and Internet industries likely reflect the global success of such American companies as Google, Apple, and Facebook, the technology industry’s apparent success even in this time of economic uncertainty, and the increasingly major role that technology plays in Americans’ lives. It is less clear why food-related sectors such as the restaurant industry, farming and agriculture, and the grocery industry do so well in the eyes of Americans, but it could reflect the United States’ relatively noncontroversial and efficient food supply system.

At the other end of the spectrum, poorly rated sectors have been associated with various well-publicized political or economic problems in recent years. Americans’ frustration with politicians and Washington — exacerbated by the contentious debt ceiling negotiations — comes through in the federal government’s all-time low image rating. The oil and gas industry has never done well in these image assessments, which is likely tied to swings in gas prices and the overall high price of gas.

The bad image of the real estate industry most likely reflects the housing crisis that has beset the country in recent years, and the poor image of the healthcare industry may reflect the rising cost of healthcare and uncertainly about access issues. Americans continue to view banks poorly, which clearly reflects lingering concerns from the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent failure of many banks around the country. Lawyers and the legal field have never had positive images.

By Frank Newport

With the never-ending stream of new social technologies, apps and platforms rolling out every day, its easy to get lost in the minutiae of social media. Yet for there to be effective change, especially within large, top-down, hierarchical institutions, a company must have an over-arching understanding of the new role it has to play.

If a brand wants to build social communities, capital and influence, it must become the chief celebrant of its community, not its celebrity. This simple shift in approach unlocks enormous transformative potential for brands. Here’s why:

1. They spend less time talking and more time listening.

2. They start treating customers as living, breathing people.

3. They invest time and energy in relationships as well as profits.

4. They expand from a sales into a service mentality.

5. Their community can work for them and buy from them.

6. Their story becomes their community’s story.

7. Customers become emotionally invested in the company’s success.

8. Relationships start being built around shared values, as well as dollars value.

9. They automatically shift from a push/broadcast to a pull/social strategy.

10. Emotional connections with customers becomes natural rather than forced.

To achieve this a brand must undergo a re-visioning process ideally led by management. In doing so, they must re-frame how their products and services can be positioned to enable and celebrate the success of their customers and community rather than solely seeking profit or to indulge the vanity of their brand personality. If this sounds like broad strokes, they are. Such simple, broad intentions are the filters that will inform the details of social engagement, especially for large organizations.

Brands stand to benefit from such a shift in several ways, the most important of which is the customer goodwill, loyalty and, ultimately, the profits they will earn.

Leading brands already embracing this new dynamic. Nike with its open source Environmental Design Tool that benefits the entire sports apparel industry; P&G’s ‘Click for Water’ Blogivation campaign that empowers bloggers to help those desperately in need of clean water; Walmart’s Sustainability Index that has the potential to positively transform entire industries and supply chains; and Pepsi’s Refresh Project that helps regular people realize the ways they hope to improve the world.

Obviously such a reframing of thinking is difficult to adopt in the boardroom and even more difficult to execute company-wide. But as social media, technologies and business continue to change commerce, there will be those companies that leverage it to their advantage and those that it will destroy. For proof, CEO’s and shareholders need only look to the changes in the music, entertainment, publishing and, most recently, marketing industries. The time for brands to shift their thinking is now. The market has already changed.

Do you think a sufficient number of brands have integrated the implications of social business for their business models? Or do you think social business will peak and fade away?

by Simon Mainwaring (The Business of Social Transformation)

Survey from Varsity Brands Reveals That Teen Girl Opinions Are Greatest Influence, Involvement and Leadership are Critical, Recent Economic Conditions Factor into Teen Concerns

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — A recent survey by Varsity Brands of teen girls showed that ninety-three (93) percent of teen girls participate in one or more activities at school.  Nearly half of teen girls hold some type of leadership position in or out of school and almost three quarters feel people look to them as a leader.  Interestingly, being a leader resonates with teen girls more than being trendy — 47 percent more teen girls identify themselves as leaders versus trendsetters. They are not interested in changing who they are, as three-quarters (77 percent) are comfortable in their own skin.

The study surveyed 1,016 teen girls ages 13-18 to represent the roughly 14 million teen girls across the United States and sought to find out more about this powerful teen demographic, how they spend their time, how influential they are as a group and where they hold the most power of influence.

“In 2010, teen girls give ‘girl power’ a whole new meaning,” said Nicole Lauchaire, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Communications for Varsity Brands, Inc.  ”Girls today are social connectors empowered by technology, and they beat out their male counterparts when it comes to ‘connecting’ online. Additionally, teenage girls are more involved than ever in their communities and value leadership more than simply being trendy.”

Community and Giving Back

For teen girls the broader community is a touch point where they connect and contribute their talent and energy. Teen girls are about twice as likely as teen boys to belong to a volunteer group, with roughly 65 percent of teen girls having volunteered in the past 12 months.

Girls as Brand Evangelists

Teen girls generally show more brand loyalty and make more purchases than teen boys. Teen girls are vocal about their purchases within their social circles. Nearly 9 out of 10 teen girls say they enjoy sharing recommendations with their friends.  Teen girls know they are influencers —  53 percent of teen girls believe their opinions greatly influence their friends’ purchase decisions. Teen girls report that their friends’ opinions and actions are the No. 1 reasons they will make a purchase.  Seventy seven (77) percent of teen girls say they are influenced by purchases of their friends and 71 percent say online posts influence them. This indicates a two-way influence dynamic: those who are more likely to influence others also are more likely to be influenced by others.  When a teen likes a brand, they are most likely to directly recommend that brand to a friend/peer (73%) or buy another product by the brand (69%). Virtual recommendations, such as becoming a fan of the brand online (48%), following the brand on a social media site (30%), or sharing links about the brand (17%) are less frequent.

Teen Girl Social Connections Online

While teen boys and girls spend roughly the same amount of time online, teen girls are more likely to use that time for connecting, self-expression and relationship building. Teen girls spend hours each day interacting with their friends through texting and social media. However, their preferred method of communication (e.g. texting, face-to-face, etc) varies depending on their audience. Texting is the preference for communicating with close friends, but many teen girls prefer to use social media to get in touch with classmates.  Face-to-face is their primary means of communicating with authoritative figures such as parents, teachers and coaches.

Teen Girls are Good Sports

Teen girls are embracing being active more and more, and athletics are the leading activity teen girls participate in at school. Today, 65 percent of high school girls participate in a school sport. The top 10 most popular include track and field, soccer, tennis, basketball, volleyball, softball, cross country, swimming, cheerleading and dance team.

In addition to helping them keep fit, participation in athletics gives teen girls a variety of interpersonal benefits. Through athletics, teen girls learn to enjoy healthy competition. Four out of five female athletes experience the “thrill of competition” from joining a school sport or spirit team. Participating in athletics helps teen girls make new friends (86%) and gives them a built-in support system (65%).

Though the interpersonal aspects of organized athletics cannot be overlooked, the internal benefits are just as powerful. A huge majority of female teen athletes say that playing some type of sport/spirit team generally makes them happier (78%), builds their overall confidence (73%) and helps to relieve stress (69%). “Girls are not just making friends – they are utilizing sports to grow their coping skills and improve their temperament and self-perception,” said Lauchaire.  ”Team athletics, such as soccer, cross country and cheerleading, give teen girls a social outlet, a confidence boost and a stress reliever.”

Girls are Stressed and Stretched

While they want and need to be involved, teen girls readily admit to having more stressors than teen boys – they are almost three times more likely to say they feel stressed out “all the time.” The economy and its impact is the dominate concern for teen girls – more so than “teen issues” such as drug abuse, bullying and teen pregnancy. Teen girls are most concerned with issues that have an immediate impact on them, such as getting into college. They have a great deal of anxiety about money, indicating that recent economic conditions may factor into teen concerns. This audience worries about paying for college (71%) and finding a job (58%), more so than issues like teen pregnancy (41%) or date rape (29%).

For additional findings from the Teen Girl survey, and to access the Teen Girls: Influence, Involvement and Empowerment white paper, visit www.varsity.com/teenresearch.

We’re all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits — from happiness to obesity — can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don’t even know.

Hat tip to Eric to pointing this out. I watched it and was re-inspired to do what we at Vocanic do.

Ian McKee
CEO of Vocanic

There may be a literal truth underlying the common-sense intuition that happiness and sadness are contagious.

A new study on the spread of emotions through social networks shows that these feelings circulate in patterns analogous to what’s seen from epidemiological models of disease.

Earlier studies raised the possibility, but had not mapped social networks against actual disease models.

“This is the first time this contagion has been measured in the way we think about traditional infectious disease,” said biophysicist Alison Hill of Harvard University.

Data in the research, in the July 7 Proceedings of the Royal Society, comes from the Framingham Heart Study, a one-of-a-kind project which since 1948 has regularly collected social and medical information from thousands of people in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Earlier analyses found that a variety of habits and feelings, including obesity, loneliness, smoking and happiness appear to be contagious.

In the current study, Hill’s team compared patterns of relationships and emotions measured in the study to those generated by a model designed to track SARS, foot-and-mouth disease and other traditional contagions. They discounted spontaneous or immediately shared emotion — friends or relatives undergoing a common experience — and focused on emotional changes that followed changes in others.

In the spread of happiness, the researchers found clusters of “infected” and “uninfected” people, a pattern considered a “hallmark of the infectious process,” said Hill. “For happiness, clustering is what you expect from contagion rates. Whereas for sadness, the clusters were much larger than we’d expect. Something else is going on.”

Happiness proved less social than sadness. Each happy friend increased an individual’s chances of personal happiness by 11 percent, while just one sad friend was needed to double an individual’s chance of becoming unhappy.

Patterns fit disease models in another way. “The more friends with flu that you have, the more likely you are to get it. But once you have the flu, how long it takes you to get better doesn’t depend on your contacts. The same thing is true of happiness and sadness,” said David Rand, an evolutionary dynamics researcher at Harvard. “It fits with the infectious disease framework.”

The findings still aren’t conclusive proof of contagion, but they provide parameters of transmission rates and network dynamics that will guide predictions tested against future Framingham results, said Hill and Rand. And whereas the Framingham study wasn’t originally designed with emotional information in mind, future studies tailored to test network contagion should provide more sophisticated information.

Both Hill and Rand warned that the findings illustrate broad, possible dynamics, and are not intended to guide personal decisions, such as withdrawing from friends who are having a hard time.

“The better solution is to make your sad friends happy,” said Rand.

via [Wired Science]