jikStudy: Alcohol Advertising Grew 400% In 40 Years — But Americans Aren’t Drinking Morede

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(Meneer Dijk)

Since 1971, advertisers have churned out more and more content dedicated to pushing alcohol in its various forms. But just because we might see a galloping horse promoting beer in slow motion or a fun gang carrying a cooler of malt beverages on a beach every time we turn on the TV, computer or sit staring at a subway ad, that doesn’t mean Americans are drinking more booze than we did 40 years ago, according to a new study.

While marketing efforts on behalf of alcohol companies might bring in new customers or keep current fans loyal, it seems all that money spent on advertising isn’t turning the country into a nation of lushes, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Austin (via AdWeek).

Researchers led by advertising professor Gary Wilcox looked at alcohol sales between 1971 and 2011, and found that per capita consumption stayed basically flat. Over the same period, alcohol advertising in the U.S. climbed by more than 400%.

“Relating these findings to previous research reveals a consistency in that there is either no relationship or a weak one between advertising and aggregate sales,” the report states. “Over this time period, beer sales have exhibited a downward trend since the early 1990s, while wine and liquor have increased their share of total alcohol sales. This is despite large increases in advertising expenditures across all three categories of alcohol.”

While the boost in ads might not change how much we drink, marketers can still be assured that their ads are good at guiding brand preference, the study says.

You might be more likely to go out and buy a Miller High Life or a Bud Light after watching a good ad, but you’re probably not going to buy 24 of them and drink them all at once just because of a commercial, for example, or suddenly think it’s a good thing to go from three drinks a week to 30.

Instead, you’ll probably just be like, “Man, you’re right, cool, attractive person drinking on the beach! I really do like [X brand]!” or “Maybe I should try switching to [Y brand] because those horses are just so majestic.”

Beer, wine, or spirits? Advertising’s impact on four decades of category sales

Alcohol Ads Increased 400% Over 40 Years, but Americans Aren’t Drinking More [AdWeek]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikWalmart Would Really Rather Not Pay That $151M That Court Says It Owes Employeesde

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Just because we love Walmart.horse so much, here’s a reminder that it exists.

For more nearly a decade, Walmart has been fighting to avoid paying $151 million in damages to more than 187,000 current and former employees in Pennsylvania for regularly compelling them to work without proper compensation. And even though the state’s highest court recently affirmed that penalty, the retailer isn’t ready to hand over that money just yet.

This case actually dates back to a class action filed in 2002, alleging that Walmart systematically and deliberately forced employees to work off the clock, through mandated break times, or through meal breaks.

In its appeal of the 2006 jury verdict, Walmart claimed the case had been a “trial by formula,” which means that the plaintiffs didn’t present comprehensive data showing that each of the class members had been affected in the same way, but instead relied on the testimony and analysis of expert statisticians who reviewed Walmart time sheets and determined the extent to which workers were harmed.

It’s effectively the same approach that Walmart used to break up the infamous Wal-Mart v. Dukes case involving allegation of systemic sexual discrimination. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling and determined that the class of plaintiffs in the Dukes case should not have been certified in the first place.

Speaking to the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, PA, a rep for Walmart implied that even though this “trial by formula” contention failed to win over the Pennsylvania Supremes, the company will likely trot out this argument if it gets the chance to do so before SCOTUS.

“We believe these claims should not be bumped together in a class action lawsuit,” the rep explained. “We’ve continually said that if someone believes someone was not allowed to take breaks, they should have those claims reviewed on an individual basis.”

Yes, because a Walmart employee who makes slightly above the minimum wage has enough money in their bank account to sue the nation’s largest retailer. Or maybe a lawyer will take the case so they can score 30% of that huge $800 award a single employee might receive if victorious.

The rep for Walmart also noted that some of these claims are more than a decade old. That tends to happen when a lawsuit lingers unresolved for 13 years.

Walmart is nothing if not tenacious about spending gobs of money on lawyers to avoid paying penalties. After all, this is the company that spent more than $2 million and nearly seven years trying to avoid paying a $7,000 OSHA fine for the 2008 Black Friday trampling death of an employee at a Long Island store.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

jikLeaked Contract: Amazon Makes Warehouse Workers Sign 18-Month Non-Compete Agreementsde

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(chinguri)

Amazon warehouses, even the ones powered by amazing shelf robots, depend mostly on human labor to get the stuff off the shelves and into boxes. The job doesn’t pay very much and is grueling, and also has high turnover. Oh, and employees are asked to sign 18-month non-compete contracts that ban them from working for any competitor of Amazon.

We thought that the non-compete contract that Jimmy John’s made its employees sign was bad, and that only limited ex-workers from working in any place that makes more than 10% of its money from selling “submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches.” Yet The Verge got hold of a seasonal worker’s contract and made it public, and it has a surprising requirement. Amazon bars their former employees from working for companies with products or services that compete with Amazon’s. Some workers have reported signing a similar agreement after a layoff in order to receive their severance pay. Amazon is a store that sells pretty much everything, so how does that work out for employees in their warehouses?

One woman who works at one of Amazon’s warehouses during the holiday season takes the agreement seriously, saying that she would ask permission before seeking a job with a retailer like Walmart or Sam’s Club. Is she being overly scrupulous? She hasn’t tested how strict Amazon is about the policy, since she hasn’t yet been offered a job with one of their competitors.

The Verge notes that they asked Amazon which jobs at which companies their former warehouse workers might not be allowed to take under the non-compete agreement. Amazon hadn’t responded as of earlier today.

During employment and for 18 months after the Separation Date, Employee will not, directly or indirectly, whether on Employee’s own behalf or on behalf of any other entity (for example, as an employee, agent, partner, or consultant), engage in or support the development, manufacture, marketing, or sale of any product or service that competes or is intended to compete with any product or service sold, offered, or otherwise provided by Amazon (or intended to be sold, offered, or otherwise provided by Amazon in the future) that Employee worked on or supported, or about which Employee obtained or received Confidential Information.

Non-compete clauses make sense for employees who have sensitive knowledge about the back-end operations of Amazon. We can even see how competitors might want to recruit the people who design and run Amazon’s warehouses. Amazon warehouses are often in remote areas without many employment options, which makes non-compete agreements for jobs that pay maybe $12 per hour an even worse idea.

Exclusive: Amazon makes even temporary warehouse workers sign 18-month non-competes [The Verge]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikObedience School Sues Yelper For $65K Over Negative Reviewde

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Note: Not the actual dog involved in this lawsuit. (photo: colonelchi)

A few months ago, a Virginia woman began taking her dog to obedience class, and when the training wasn’t what she expected, she requested a pro-rated refund and wrote a negative review of the school on Yelp. Now she’s facing a $65,000 defamation lawsuit.

The Washington Post reports on this lawsuit, the latest in a string of legal actions filed by businesses against customers who vent on Yelp and other online review platforms.

In this case, the customer says she was expecting that the $175 training program would help her socialize her puppy so that it possibly be used as a therapy dog. However, she claims that the conditions of the school were not conducive to this goal so she requested a partial refund.

“In a nutshell, the services delivered were not as advertised and the owner refused a refund,” she wrote in her Yelp review, which has since been removed from the site.

But in the lawsuit, the school’s owner claims that she communicated the training conditions with the customer in e-mails before classes even started. She also says that the customer agreed to a no-refund clause.

She tells the Post that she offered other non-refund options to the customer, like a credit for a future class, but to no avail.

The owner explains that, as a small business, the school depends on word-of-mouth from online review sites to reach new customers and that this customer’s negative review “had a significant impact.”

The customer contends that the lawsuit and others like it are an attempt to stifle consumers’ First Amendment protections.

“People should be free to express their feelings about their service providers,” she tells the Post. “Companies using the legal system to silence their critics has a chilling effect on First Amendment rights.”

The customer contends that the school’s lawsuit is what’s known as a SLAPP complaint — a “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” wherein the plaintiff sues with the intent of quieting a defendant who can’t afford to fight back in court. Several states have anti-SLAPP statutes that allow for a judge to review the merits of a complaint and quickly dismiss any frivolous allegations that are only intended to stifle free speech.

The obedience school lawsuit is just one of several recent complaints filed by businesses against Yelp reviewers.

Because bad reviews can hurt business as long as they’re still available online, many plaintiff companies will seek a preliminary injunction asking to have the review taken down immediately pending the outcome of the case.

That was the issue with a few years back when a contractor — also in Virginia — sued a customer over allegedly libelous remarks made in her Yelp review, and asked the court to have the review taken down in advance of the trial. Initially, the judge tried to compel the defendant to edit a portion of the review, but she appealed as the edits in question presuppose that what she wrote was defamatory without the case ever going to trial.

That would be a violation of the rule against prior restraints, she argued, and in 2013 the Virginia Supreme Court agreed.

What sets both of the above cases apart from most Yelp-related lawsuits is that there was no question of who wrote the reviews involved.

Many lawsuits filed by businesses against Yelp reviewers done with temporary “John Doe” defendants because the businesses only have the Yelp user names to go on, and Yelp is understandably reluctant to hand over information about users.

Staying in Virginia, there has been an ongoing battle between Yelp and a carpet cleaner trying to force the site to reveal the names of certain reviewers. In early 2014, the trial court ordered Yelp to comply with a subpoena and make the information available to the plaintiff, but last fall Yelp appealed to the state’s highest court, which is expected to issue a ruling soon.

More recently, Yelp fought a subpoena in a lawsuit filed by a Texas real estate firm looking for the real name of a reviewer whose Yelp writeup was allegedly libelous.

Some businesses have tried bizarre, highly questionable routes to short-circuit negative reviews before they ever get published, like dentists and other medical professionals who include clauses in their contracts claiming they actually own the copyright to anything written about their business online.

An apartment complex in Florida also tried to claim copyright on every word and image posted about tenants’ properties — until it was brought to the attention of the media and suddenly the management company disavowed its own policy.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

jikStarbucks Celebrating Frappuccino’s 20th Year With Birthday Cake Flavorde

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(Starbucks)

When I turned 20 I added an extra package of ramen noodles to the pot and treated myself to some wine coolers that just happened to appear in my refrigerator. But it appears Starbucks is going the more traditional route to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its Frappuccino, by debuting a limited-time birthday cake flavor.

Starbucks first started experimenting with blended drinks in its Los Angeles store in 1993, and began selling coffee-flavored Frappuccino drinks in all of its 500 North American stores in 1995, reports CNNMoney.

Starbucks sold 200,000 Frappuccino drinks in the first week, doubling expected sales, according to the company’s director of brand management, Done Moore.

The icy concoctions now come in variations that don’t even include coffee, including the birthday cake drink it’s selling March 26 through March 30. The drink is made with vanilla bean and hazelnut flavors blended together and topped with “raspberry-infused” whipped cream.

It didn’t come up with the Frappuccino name, however, and instead acquired it when it bought The Coffee Connection, a Boston shop that served frappuccinos in a soft-serve machine.

The Frappuccino helped change the company by bringing people into the stores even when it was hot outside, Starbucks says, a time when many people eschew hot drinks in favor of icy refreshment.

“With Frappuccino, we were able to level out the dips in store traffic in the summer,” said Dina Campion, who oversaw 10 Starbucks stores in Southern California and was instrumental in bringing the Frappuccino about.

In its first summer, the Frappuccino accounted for 11% of sales, boosting the company stock to a record high.

Starbucks sells Birthday Cake Frappuccino to celebrate Frap’s 20th [CNNMoney]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikTruck Full Of Salmon Turns Over On Highway, Blocks Traffic For 9 Hoursde

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(Seattle Plice Department)

The creatures of the sea are rising up to…snarl our traffic and then get eaten anyway. First, a tractor-trailer in Maine overturned, but its cargo of 30,000 pounds of live lobsters were fine and survived to be loaded on another truck. Now a truck full of salmon turned over on a highway in Seattle, messing up traffic everywhere from down the road to in the sky.

It started around 2:30 in the afternoon when a truck carrying a trailer full of fish overturned, completely blocking SR-99 near Safeco Field, where the Seattle Mariners play. The traffic snarl meant that it was impossible to get paramedics in to attend to the driver. The truck was too damaged to move under its own power, and there was too much fish in the trailer to move it easily. Tow trucks capable of the job didn’t make it until 4 P.M., and the police weren’t able to move the truck, the trailer, and the tons of fish until seven hours after that because of damage to the trailer.

What took so long? SPD explains 9-hour semi crash cleanup [KOMO]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikCemetery Workers Won’t Stop Calling And Asking For Man Whose Ashes Have Been Interred There For 4 Yearsde

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(WKMG 6)

It’s one thing to be annoyed by telemarketers who just don’t know when to quit. But it’s a hassle that shouldn’t follow you (or your loved ones) into the afterlife. The longtime partner of a man who died of lung cancer in 2010 says though his loved one was cremated and interred at a local cemetery, workers from that same cemetery keep calling the house and asking for the dead man by name.

The 51-year-old man had asked that he be laid to rest at cemetery memorial park, after driving past it every day on his job as a mail carrier, reports WKMG 6.

“I like the openness back here. And the quietness back here,” his partner says of the spot he frequently visits at the cemetery. “It’s calm here. Sad, but calm.”

Then two years ago, while he was at the home the couple used to share, the phone rang, with the Caller ID showing it was coming from the cemetery. He says he answered the phone and the worker asked to speak with the dead man by name.

“And at first it was just jarring,” his partner says. “The very place he’s at is calling to ask for him? I thought it was some kind of joke.”

He explained that the requested man wasn’t alive anymore, and in fact, was interred at the same cemetery the worker was calling from. As a reasonable person would do, he assumed his partner’s name was taken off the sales call list at that point.

Cut to six months later, when someone else from the cemetery called and asked to speak, once again, with the deceased.

“He’s there in your gardens,” his partner says he told the caller. “She said, ‘Oh my gosh!'”

A third call came six months ago, and again, he told the cemetery worker the man was dead, and a sales supervisor said his name would finally be removed from the list, he says.

But then on March 3? Another phone call from the same place. Six days after that? A fifth call.

“I don’t think I’m asking too much, I really don’t,” the deceased man’s partner says. He believes the company is trying to sell his late loved one upgraded funeral arrangements. Too late.

Because he and his partner had done business in the past with the cemetery, the company can call despite the fact that the number is on the Do Not Call list. But if someone asks a business to stop calling, it should do so.

“According to the rules of the Do Not Call program, a business should stop calling an individual when that individual asks the business to do so,” said a spokesman for Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That agency hasn’t received any telemarketing complaints about the cemetery in question.

A spokeswoman for the cemetery’s parent company says it’s policy to remove customer’s from the list if asked.

“When we receive a request to remove a name from our call list, we make a notation in our database not to contact the individual. This removes the name from all call lists,” the spokeswoman said. “Occasionally, mistakes happen. In these circumstances we work to ensure our list is up-to-date.”

Seems like the company needs to work a bit harder on that up-to-date list.

“The credit card company stopped calling. Everyone else did. Nobody calls for him. But the place he’s buried can’t get it,” his partner says.

Cemetery repeatedly calls dead man [WKMG]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist