* This post about Pizza Hut U.K.’s new DJ-mixable pizza box is for our German-speaking readers via Musik Express. (Google’s translation here.)
Tag: Media and Marketing
Humana has 3,000 of its more tech-savvy employees serving as unofficial brand ambassadors on Twitter, Facebook, and other heavily trafficked social networks. That’s out of 50,000 employees overall. Here’s how the Louisville insurer stacks up against other big area employers taking advance of free publicity on the short-messaging service Twitter. Founded in March 2006, Twitter has 313 million members.
2,390,000 followers
Amazon (joined February 2009)
1,760,000
Taco Bell (July 2007)
1,460,000
Pizza Hut (December 2007)
1,070,000
KFC (July 2008)
915,000
Ford Motor (July 2008)
430,000
Papa John’s (December 2008)
177,000
Jack Daniel’s (September 2010)
157,000
UPS (June 2010)
75,300
Texas Roadhouse (November 2008)
28,600
Humana (March 2009)
20,900
GE Appliances (September 2009)
15,700
Yum Brands (September 2007)
5,493
Haier America (March 2009)
4,597
Kindred (May 2009)
0
Brown-Forman (no account)
Tortoise or hare? Both!
The list shows that simply getting on Twitter early doesn’t guarantee a big following; you’ve got to work it. Tech behemoth Amazon didn’t join until nearly three years after Twitter launched, but it’s No. 1.
On the other hand, Yum Brands has just 15,700 followers even though it was the second-earliest to join. But Yum’s a corporate brand; it makes sense that its consumer brands — KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell — do all the heavy lifting.
To put all these figures in perspective, consider the person with the most Twitter followers in the world: singer Katy Perry, with 91.9 million. Perry, 31, joined in February 2009. Top Twitter followers.
Boulevard’s on Twitter, too.
And we’re just getting started; please follow us.
* U.S. accounts only.
By Jim Hopkins
Boulevard Publisher
On Aug. 15, 1990, The Courier-Journal delivered a 52-page paper chock-a-block with news. President George H.W. Bush was rounding up support for an embargo against Iraq, retaliating for its invasion of Kuwait less than two weeks before. Sen. Mitch McConnell, still in his first term, was on the hot seat in his re-election campaign. Kentucky’s powerful tobacco industry still didn’t accept the dangers of smoking. And comedian Bob Hope and his pet poodle were in town. It was a humid Wednesday, with temperatures heading for 86 degrees. The news:
“U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s re-election campaign is extolling his 5½-year record with a wide range of radio commercials — at least two of which exaggerate the impact of his work,” CJ political writer Al Cross wrote in a page-one story. “Those two ads say McConnell worked out the financial problems of Big Rivers Electric Corp., and saved the Kentucky construction industry by casting the deciding vote against a presidential veto of a highway bill.”
The record, including statements from company and government officials, contradicted McConnell’s account, Cross said. But the Louisville Republican vigorously defended the commercials, saying they weren’t inaccurate or misleading. At the time, McConnell faced Democratic nominee Harvey Sloane, the former Louisville mayor and county judge-executive.
Humana nixes smoking
Citing concerns about deaths linked to passive smoking, Humana said it would ban smoking at its corporate headquarters downtown and in all division offices starting Feb. 1, 1991. The health insurance giant’s decision came after a June report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that about 3,800 lung-cancer related deaths per year among non-smokers are caused by secondhand cigarette smoke. Humana estimated only 1 in 7 employeees smoked, a decrease of about 35% from several years before.
The story noted that “the tobacco industry, which has never agreed that smoking is a hazard even to smokers themselves, has attacked the EPA findings as unsubstantiated.”
Comedian Bob Hope signed copies of his new book, “Don’t Shoot, It’s Only Me,” at the W.K. Stewart Booksellers in the Holiday Manor Shopping Center. The 87-year-old stayed at the Galt House with his wife Dolores and their poodle Baxter.
That day’s CJ carried three full-page ads for Louisville-based Bacon’s Department Store, and four full pages of business news, including 2½ pages of stock listings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had closed the day before at nearly 2,748 points.
ValuMarket was selling half-gallon cartons of Sealtest ice cream for $1.98. TWA offered roundtrip tickets to New York City for $158.
And unknown to most everyone reading that day’s paper, Jennifer Shrader Lawrence was born to Gary Lawrence, a construction worker, and his wife Karen, a children’s camp manager.
Postscript
A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:31 a.m.
KFC: The senior mufti in northeastern India’s Bareilly has issued a fatwa, or an Islamic edict, against KFC restaurants in the area, terming it a “sin” to eat there because the chicken sold doesn’t conform to Islamic law. “People at KFC process the meat away from the eyes of Muslims and such meat has been termed haram in Islam,” he said. The mufti said that the halal certificates displayed at the stores are irrelevant if the owners and workers can’t detail the procedures they use. “Halal is not only about killing the animal,” he said, “it is also about the way its meat is processed and cooked” (Hindustan Times).
GE: Contract talks open today between Louisville-based GE Appliances and the union representing about 4,000 workers at Appliance Park, and the saber-rattling is well underway. Management says the factory complex in the south end is losing money, and workers are earning more than typical in the industry. But a union leader says the company is merely trying to intimidate workers ahead of negotiations (Insider Louisville). The employees are covered by a contract reached before GE Appliances was bought in June by China’s Haier for $5.6 billion. In all, the nearly 60-year-old complex has about 6,000 workers. GE Appliances employs another 6,000 workers elsewhere. More about the company’s history in Louisville.
TEXAS ROADHOUSE, despite a second-quarter earnings miss, is a bright spot in the struggling casual dining industry, where rivals have boosted prices to compensate for falling traffic — and paid a price for the misstep. The steakhouse chain increased prices less than peers, and traffic’s improved, according to KeyBanc Capital Markets. Overall, traffic at casual-dining chains is down almost 30% since 2005. What gives? “Casual-restaurant chains are feeling the heat as loyal baby-boom customers age and millennials take their place,” the business weekly says. “Boomers like big portions and value pricing; their children, who favor organic and gluten-free foods, are pickier and less price-sensitive” (Barron’s).
On Friday, Texas Roadhouse shares ranked No. 1 in weekly performance among big area employers Boulevard tracks. Founded in 1993 with a single restaurant in southern Indiana, it’s grown to nearly 500 outlets in 49 states plus five foreign countries. It employs 48,000 workers, including about 500 in Louisville. More about the chain.
PIZZA HUT: In Albuquerque, a Pizza Hut is seeking delivery drivers in a Craigslist ad posted yesterday that lists the following perks: “The hours are flexible. You’re out and about, listening to tunes and delivering great pizzas. Oh, and people are really, really happy to see you!” (Craigslist).
TACO BELL: In Portland, Ore., a man posted the following in Craigslist’s men-for-men Missed Connections section yesterday: Continue reading “Religious leader in northeast India bans KFC meals, saying they don’t conform to Islamic law; GE contract talks start today; and Texas Roadhouse treads softly as rivals jack up prices”
A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 11:15 a.m.
PAPA JOHN’S and PIZZA HUT: Slate magazine handicaps the race to sign Olympics gymnastics golden girl Simone Biles to an endorsement contract, given her love of pepperoni pizza: She eats some after every competition. The likely winner, at even money? Papa John’s, says the online publication’s Justin Peters.
“The chain has a vast national advertising budget and a history of using famous athletes like Peyton Manning and J.J. Watt in its commercials,” Peters says. “The tag line writes itself: ‘Better ingredients, better pizza, better vaulting: Papa John’s!'”
Panting four spots back in the race, at 30-to-1 odds: Pizza Hut. “The Hut isn’t a front runner here,” he says, “and the only way it will stand a chance of signing Biles will be if it can present a compelling artistic vision for an ad campaign” (Slate).
Columbus native Biles, 19, is the the Rio games’ individual all-around gymnastics champ. “In doing so, she joined Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin and Gabby Douglas as American all-around winners” (New York Times).
KFC: Tyson Foods has fired 10 employees caught on video by an animal rights group punching, kicking, flinging live birds, and even crushing the head of a live one under his boot. The Arkansas-based supplier to KFC and McDonald’s also said it will retrain workers who handle live poultry on animal welfare policies. The footage, recorded in May and June, was posted online by Compassion Over Killing, which fights for animal rights and encourages vegetarianism. Tyson, one of the world’s largest meat processors, said it was “disgusted by the actions of the individuals in the video” (Mirror). Posted two days ago, the video’s already been viewed more than 50,000 times:
In other bad news, the inevitable backlash has started against KFC’s newly unveiled U.K. gravy fountain:
Behold its wonderful awfulness:
Joined by The New York Times, Gannett Co. argues in papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court today that the rape allegation — which Trump has denied — is of public interest in the GOP presidential campaign of the twice-divorced and thrice-married New York billionaire, according to the New York Daily News.
The filing notes that a 1993 biography of Trump reported that Ivana Trump — his first wife — told friends her husband had “raped” her in 1989 during a fit of rage. Trump and the former Czech model Ivana Zelníčková married in 1977 and divorced 14 years later in 1991. By 1995, they’d patched things up enough to star in a Pizza Hut commercial where they joked about their divorce settlement:
Gannett bought The Courier-Journal from the Bingham family in July 1986 for $300 million. With the CJ and USA Today, Gannett now owns 110 dailies across the U.S. and the U.K. Adjusted for inflation, $300 million would be equivalent to $660 million in today’s dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.
Photo, top: While that photograph is undated, Ivana Trump’s hair screams 1980s; more hairstyles from that era.
Boulevard 