My family, friends, colleagues, home, health, and the spirit of hopefulness all top the list. Happy Thanksgiving and make certain to eat too much turkey and pie. UPDATE: And my 100th blog!

I skipped blogging the last two days as I had trouble finding something that was not horribly depressing. Just a few days before my favorite holiday, I couldn’t bring myself to post yet another dire story about the economic condition here in the US and emerging abroad. However, today I read about a little beacon of hope. As more Americans turn to charity amid worsening economic gloom, operators of food banks and other aid groups are relying on the surprisingly resilient generosity of their neighbors and finding that even when times are tough, people still give. “At a time when people have things and they know that other people don’t, Americans’ generosity wins out,” said Justin Greeves, senior vice president of Harris Interactive, which regularly polls Americans about their charitable giving. Something to be thankful for indeed. (more…)

In this glum economy, everyone could use a little elf. And so OfficeMax is bringing back its viral-video hit promotion “Elf Yourself” for the third year, this time in partnership with JibJab. With JibJab’s technology, the elves that consumers put their own — and family and friends’ — faces on can now be downloaded, e-mailed, posted and embedded in web pages. Also new this year is the ability to put the personalized elves on mugs, mouse pads, greeting cards and ornaments for purchase. And the potential for a lot of elf-ing this year is huge. Last year, 123 million elves were created, and the ElfYourself.com website recorded 193 million unique visitors in 2007, up from 36 million in 2006. Encouraging for OfficeMax is that many people make the elf-to-Office connection in recall research. Last year, 40% of the visitors remembered the videos were brought to them by OfficeMax, and 63% of people who most frequently shopped for office products remembered it was OfficeMax. Another example that it’s getting alot tougher for stubborn dinosaurs to support the position that the use of on-line in the marketing mix is just a fad. Elf on.  (more…)

Some 71% of consumers globally said despite the recession they have given just as much — or more — time and money to causes they deem worthy, according to the second-annual Edelman Goodpurpose study. More than half of the consumers surveyed said even in the throes of a recession they would be prepared to pay more for a brand if it supported a good cause. And more than two-thirds said they would be willing to pay more for eco-friendly products. As the economic situation worsened, the study found brands associated with good causes are highly likely to influence purchase behavior and favorable word-of-mouth. U.S. consumers were twice as likely to find it “very appropriate” for a brand to use its marketing dollars to fund social causes (35%) vs. entertaining campaigns (16%) or brand sponsorships (15%). ”On one hand, [there are] all the realities of the recession and people wanting more value [for their money],” Mitch Markson, president-consumer brands and global creative director at Edelman. “But on the other side, they also want more values in a different way.” When asked to name a brand they associated with a good cause, people most often mentioned Yoplait, Coke, Campbell’s Soup, Newman’s Own and Dove.  (more…)

It is no secret that US consumers are cutting back, anxious about jobs, plummeting home values and shrinking retirement savings. But that belt-tightening seems to have also prompted a reconsideration of what is acceptable consumerism even for those relatively unaffected by the economic cataclysm. When just about everyone is making do with less, sometimes much less, those $2,000 logo-laden handbags and Aspen vacations can seem in poor taste. “Luxe” is starting to look as out of fashion as square-toed shoes. “The era of conspicuous consumption, at least for the foreseeable future, has come to a close,” said Paco Underhill, the author of “Why We Buy,” which explores the science of retail. “Consumption will still happen. It’s just not going to be as public.”  (more…)

Tuition and fees at four-year public colleges and universities rose faster than those of private schools, yet again outpacing the rate of inflation, the College Board said in a report.

The continuing rise in the cost of higher education comes at a time when financial turmoil and recession is prompting more families to consider public colleges instead of pricier institutions. Applications at Binghamton University, one of the top-tier schools in New York’s state system, are up 50% so far this year, a spokeswoman said this week. At the University of Massachussets at Amherst, the flagship campus of the Massachusetts state university system, admissions officers are seeing a “significant increase” in early-action applications, a spokesman said. At least people will stop saying “Where?!” when I tell them where I went to undergrad. (more…)

Top Chef Season 5 New York City debuted last night and I found myself humming “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere” during the first commercial break. The two tough elimination challenges promise a season that is going to live up to the reputation of my favorite city (and hometown). What makes Top Chef so successful and watchable? An unbeatable combination of reality TV, food created by people who can actually cook, and a $100,000 competition at a fabulous location. Let the flames begin. (more…) 

For months I’ve been saying drooping consumer confidence (or lack of it) is a ticking time bomb. The panic on Wall Street has eased in the last few weeks, and banks have become somewhat more willing to make loans. But in those same few weeks, American households appear to have fallen into their own defensive crouch. Suddenly, our consumer society is doing a lot less consuming. The numbers are pretty incredible. Sales of new vehicles have dropped 32 percent in the third quarter. Consumer spending appears likely to fall next year for the first time since 1980 and perhaps by the largest amount since 1942. Even before its recent housing-fueled boom, consumer spending was a bigger part of the American economy than of, say, the French or German economy. Americans like to buy things, and they also don’t tend to stay pessimistic for long. It would be silly to insist that a few terrible months meant the end of American consumer culture. But it would be equally silly to assume that culture could never change. It might be changing right now. (more…)

Sure it seems like sliders and over the top burgers are taking over the culinary world. But, I was just in Chicago on business and no trip is complete without a stop at Portillos for a Chicago style Hot Dog. After you polish that off, enjoy the real star which is their Italian style beef sandwich dipped in jus and then topped with fried peppers and zesty gardinere salad. Everything is fresh, fresh, fresh — Portillos secret to success since 1963. Go hungry and leave stuffed or you’ll hate yourself.  (more..)

Pizza Hut, which recently crossed the $1 billion benchmark in online sales, is launching a Facebook application that allows fans to place orders without leaving their profiles. While shifting consumer behavior may be behind the move toward mobile ordering, it’s also lucrative. According to Mr. Kraut, VP-marketing communications at Pizza Hut, online buyers spend more. “It’s a little more upscale demographic, and a lot of people use credit,” he said. Pizza Hut’s not alone: A number of the nation’s biggest fast-food chains are beginning to embrace text and iPhone ordering capabilities, at least as tests. Already for the three months ending in August, food marketers sent almost 1.4 million text-message ads, up 37% from the same period last year, according to ComScore’s M:Metrics data. Consumers seem to want the offers: of all the ad categories using SMS marketing, restaurants had the highest response rates, with 15.5% of consumers responding to the ads. Package-food companies aren’t sitting on the sidelines either. Kraft chief marketer Mary Beth West said the company has created an iPhone application for consumers to download recipes and shopping lists in the grocery store. ”Even in the current economy, people don’t have any more time than they had before,” Ms. West said. “They’re trying to get dinner on the table, and this is going to help them do that.” (more…)