Today's Five Facts About Marketing to Women!

-Women want Steven Spielbert (48%) to direct their life story, followed distantly by Woody Allen (12%), Nora Ephron (9%) and Quentin Tarantino (9%), according to Vanity Fair.  Men are three times more likely than women to request Spike Lee (16% vs. 5%).

-Women are less likely than men to listen to online radio each week (45% vs. 55%).

-Men prefer a woman's place smell like fragrance (53%), followed by a sexy candle scent (25%), freshly baked cookies (20%), and cleaning products (2%), says Cosmopolitan.

-90% of women say they want nothing to do with the proposal-planning process, finds The Knot.com

-Half of those who purchase a fake designer bag (46%) upgrade to a real one wihtin tow and a half years, according to MIT.

Today's Five Facts About Youth Markets

-High school girls and female college students are twice as likely as their male peers to carry wallets and identification in their backpacks, reports YPulse.

-64% of 4th graders attending public schools never use a calculator for math tests, says the National Center for Education Statistics.

-39% of teens surveyed by Tuffin Technologies think hacking is cool and 16% have attempted it themselves.

-44% of schools perform and emergency notification test - such as alerting students, staff and parents about problems - once per semester.

-More than half of teen girls (51%) says pressure from a guy is the reason girls send sexy messages or images, while 18% of teen boys say pressure from a girl is the reason, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Star Trek as a Cultural Phenomenon

As a Star Trek fan, I get asked over and over again, why Star Trek has had such an impact on popular culture.  So figure I'll dedicate this blog to answering this age old question.

At the time Star Trek debuted (early sixties), technology itself was a new frontier, and the world was rapidly changing. We had created a bomb which ripped apart teh very fabric of our world - the atomic structure. For the first time, man was talking about going to the moon as if it could really be done. Computers were metamorphasizing from the monstrosities that filled entire rooms down to a much more manageable size. Music was changing, and with it - the whold mind-altering hippie drug, freedom, exploration culture was born. And, the Cold War $ McCarthyism had begun. There was a LOT of be afraid of.

When a new horizon appear, there are two conflicing factors that emerge in all of us - fear and curiosity. Unlike a horror film which preys on the darker side of these emotions, Star Trek opened people's minds to the intense beauty and benefit of technology could bring. It wasn't something to be feared but to be embraced! It presented ideas bigger and better than  the problems of daily life. We will explore new worlds. We will "bodly" go where no man has gone before, yes indeed.

The original seriese only lasted a couple of years. But the ideas had touched a chord deep inside a small gropu who refused to let it go, and as teh rest of society caught up with them, they began to embrace it as well.

Today's 5 facts about Youth Markets!

-72% of families with teens 13-17 conduct searches for products or services after reading about them in online articles, compared to 57% of the general population, says media company ARnet.

-Tweens are most stressed over hearing rumours about themselfs or friends (68%), dealing with hard teachers (68%), getting good grades (61%), and their first kiss (51%), according to Unilever.

-11% of parents have given their child and antihistamine to put them to sleep while traveling, reports Trip Advisor.

-Married couples with kids spent $4,601 on groceries in 2009, about 15% more than married couples without kids ($3,996), finds financial website Bundle.com

-Girls, on average, start participating in sports at 7.4% years old, while boys do so at 6.8 years old, says Women's Sports Foundation.