Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!usa-post Newsgroups: usa-today.trends,americast.usa-today.trends From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: usa-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: trends Mon, Sep 28 1992 Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 04:52:55 EDT Message-ID: 09-28 0000 DECISIONLINE: Trends & Marketing USA TODAY Update Sept. 28, 1992 Source: USA TODAY:Gannett National Information Network WARNING LABELS ARE ALL OVER: Warning labels were once found only on prescription drugs and electrical appliances. Now consumers are cautioned about everything from champagne bottle corks to oversized plastic bags. In a recent Roper poll, virtually all the respondents knew alcohol impairs one's driving ability. Anheuser-Busch is using the poll to argue that warnings are a waste of time and money. ADS USE CELEBRITIES: Trends sweep through advertising like rumors through a junior high. Today's attempt to break through the clutter becomes tomorrow's rage, and then next week's cliche. One current trend in the making among fashion advertisers is the use of quirky actors as clotheshorses. John Malkovich and Liam Neeson have modeled clothes for Andrew Fezza and Barneys New York has used Kyle Maclachlan. (For more, see special Ads package below.) CELLULAR INDUSTRY OUTLOOK SEEN: The cellular industry is in the transition between the 100 years of wire-line communications and the personal wireless communications systems (PCS) of tomorrow, says Tom Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. He told the Kagan Seminar last week in New York City that PCS will change the way people work, communicate and "change our society." NUMBERS WILL BE CONSOLIDATED: Tom Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, says in the future that a person will have just one phone number. There were will be no need to have a separate number for home, work or when a person is in transit. "A call to one number will seek you out and connect you," Wheeler says. MEXICO MARKET IS WIDE OPEN: One of the top-selling brands of salsa in Mexico is made in the USA. Pace Co. of San Antonio has captured 33% of a huge market in just a few years. The Mexican consumer market is wide open, says Robert Ampudia Whitt III, CEO of Marketing Mercadio International, the firm that led Pace's charge in Mexico. MORE FARMERS GROWING MARIJUANA: When the Secretary of Agriculture lowered tobacco price supports in 1981, cultivating marijuana became the only rational economic choice in many remote areas. Before 1980, there were no more than 300 marijuana plants in the country, according to the University of Toledo's Henry E. Moon. In 1985, the number hit 4,000 and was almost doubling every year. SOAP STARS TRAVEL AIRWAVES: In an effort to boost ratings, daytime producers have concocted plots in which characters cross over between different soaps. Monday, Lauren of "The Young and the Restless" travels to sister CBS soap "The Bold and the Beautiful." Producers hope viewers will do the same. ABC will also use this ploy, sending Dinah Lee from "Loving" to "All My Children." `NEW WAVE' EMERGING: The Federal Communications Commission has finalized its decision to move microwave users out of their current spectrum in order to create a block of frequencies for emerging technologies such as personal communications services. The emerging technologies frequencies will be in the 1.85-GHz to 2.2 GHz band. MACHINE ORDERS DECLINING: U.S. machine tool orders declined 23.2% in August, a symptom of the sick economy and plunging factory employment. Compared to a year earlier, orders declined 33.1% last month, according to the Association for Manufacturing Technology, a trade group that compiles the monthly statistics. However, year-to-date orders were 1.9% ahead of the same period of 1991, the trade group said. SPECIAL PACKAGE ON ADS: TV GETS CAMEO ROLE IN ADS: Original ideas in advertising don't stay original for too long. When Blackglama used celebrities to pique reader interest in fashion ads, trendmeisters like Gap and Amaretto di Saronno began using quasi-celebrities whom readers could feel hip for having identified. Another emerging ad trend: Inclusion of the television set itself as part of a commercial's script. COMICS MAKE FUN IN ADS: Advertising characters have begun looking back out of the TV screen - as if they're really inside the set. For Nike, comic Dennis Leary raps menacingly on the inside of the screen and threatens to come into viewers' homes. It's intrusive, attention-grabbing, funny and memorable; in short, everything an ad wants to be. Other ads are referential to the mechanics of TVs and VCRs. LETTERBOXING IS HOT: Letterboxing is also a new trend. Black strips across the top and bottom of the TV screen popped up during the Olympics. Sunoco Ultra 94, Alaska tourism and Hidden Valley salad dressing are all among advertisers giving their commercials the foreign-film treatment. The black strips are purely for effect: to make viewers think an ad is as cinematically important as a big-screen epic. (End of package.) Trends & Marketing Editor: Michele Coleman. (1-919-855-3491) Making copies of USA TODAY Update (Copyright, 1992) for further distribution violates federal law. This article is copyright 1992 Gannett News Service. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM