Weekly Spots

POSTED: January 17, 2011

(White Plains, NY) January 17, 2011 – According to Arbitron, San Diego, CA is the 17th largest radio market with a population of 2,609,000.

• Named for the Catholic Saint Didacus, more commonly known as San Diego by the Spanish, who first came to the new world in 1602 and put the name on the map.
• There is another city 18.5 miles from San Diego that has a population that equals the Southern California city. It’s Tijuana, Mexico.
• According to education rankings released by the U.S. Census Bureau, 40.4 percent of San Diegans ages 25 and older hold bachelor's degrees.
• Public colleges and universities in the city include University of California, San Diego, San Diego State University, California State University San Marcos and the San Diego Community College District, which includes San Diego City College, San Diego Mesa College, and San Diego Miramar College. Private colleges and universities in the city include Alliant International University, Coleman University, Design Institute of San Diego and the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising's San Diego campus.
• San Diego’s professional sports: the NFL team San Diego Chargers and MLB’s San Diego Padres.
• San Diego has produced some amazing people, including some terrific professional football players: Reggie Bush, Marcus Allen, Lance Allworth, Tony Romo, Junior Seau and Ricky Williams. The great Ted Williams (the baseball player) was born in San Diego as well as Brad Ausmus, musician Stephen Bishop, who got his guitar crushed by John Belushi in Animal House, singer and TV personality Mark McGrath, singer Tawny Kitaen, Adam Brody, Ted Danson, Cameron Diaz, Heather O’Rourke and snowboarder Shaun White.

SAN DIEGO SPOT TEN

They say California is a different state of mind. Well, these stats demonstrate that San Diego is a unique market. The #1 radio advertiser was OVATION CELL THERAPY with 801 spots. MCDONALD’S was #2 with 746 ads, while the GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO (Gobierno De La República) came in #3 with 680 spots. ARROWHEAD (water) was #4 with 558 spots and MATTRESS DISCOUNTERS WEST hit #5 with 546 spots. FRESH & EASY was at #6 running 472 commercials, while BANKRUPTCY LAW CENTER was in at #7 with 469 spots. PROACTIV SOLUTION slid into #8 from #17 with 441 spots and SAN DIEGO SKI & SNOWBOARD MEGASALE was #9 with 433 announcements. SLEEP TRAIN was #10 running 430 spots.

GASOLINE SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

On the national fuel category the prices are going up, but the spot counts are not. #1 in the nation last week was BP with 5,785 spots. Coming in #2 was SHELL with 838 spots, followed by MARATHON airing 55 spots. CENEX was #4 with 55 spots as well, while TEXACO was #5 with 45 spots. HERON’S LANDING was #6 with only 17 ads and CONOCO placed 16 spots nationally. EXXON-MOBIL was #8 with 13 spots, while CITGO ran 11 spots to earn #9. ELMQUIST/DECKER’S BP was #10 with 8 spots.

NATIONAL SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

GEICO continues its blitz of all media. On radio, they were #1 again with 60,885 spots. MCDONALD’S was #2 with 25,954 spots. A new entry into the Top Five this week, H&R BLOCK moves from #22 to #3 with 25,095 spots, while SAM’S CLUB jumps #10 to #4 with 23,245 spots. The HD DIGITAL RADIO ALLIANCE was #5 airing 21,357 announcements. Of note, TURBO TAX moved from #7 to #8 with 17,644 spots and QUICKEN LOANS dropped #6 to #10 with 16,009 ads.

Posted: January 17, 2011

Over the last 80 years, Nationwide has grown from a small mutual auto insurer owned by policyholders to one of the largest insurance and financial services companies in the world, with more than $135 billion in statutory assets.

Early growth came from working together with Farm Bureaus that sponsored the company. Eight Farm Bureaus continue to promote Nationwide and provide discounts to members.

In 1925, the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation incorporated the Farm Bureau Mutual Automobile Insurance Company with the goal of providing quality auto insurance at low rates for farmers in Ohio. By 1928, with help from locally based sponsoring organizations, Farm Bureau Mutual began expanding into other states.

In 1934, the company started insuring motorists in metropolitan areas and, through the purchase of a fire insurance company wrote property insurance policies. By 1943, the Farm Bureau Mutual operated in 12 states and the District of Columbia.

The Farm Bureau Mutual expanded operations until it became clear that they had far outgrown their original goals... and their name. With a western surge that included 20 additional states, the company changed its name to Nationwide Insurance® in 1955.

Nationwide has its international headquarters at One Nationwide Plaza in Columbus, Ohio. The 40-story structure is the largest single office building in central Ohio. In 1982, Nationwide acquired Farmland Insurance, now Nationwide Agribusiness Insurance, a 100-year-old company and America's leading farm insurer.

In 1997, Nationwide Financial® went public and in 2000, they christened the Nationwide Arena where the National Hockey League franchise, the Columbus Blue Jackets play. Like many insurance companies, they also entered the banking business in 2007 with the Nationwide Bank.

In 2009, Nationwide Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company (Nationwide), purchased all of the outstanding shares of common stock of Nationwide Financial Services (NFS) it did not already own; NFS became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nationwide and a private company.

According to their 2009 Annual Report they claim revenues of $20.8 billion with a net operating income of $979 million. They have 32,000 associates.

More than 63% of Nationwide spots ran on Cable. In the last 12 months, they ran 251,449 spots. Their biggest months were December (36,307) and last January (23,097).

On the Radio, the insurance giant only ran 95,898 spots in the last 12 months with very little in January and February of 2010, then hitting their high in October with 12,266 for the month.

August was the biggest month for Nationwide on TV with 5,130 spots and a grand total for the last 12 months of 48,924 ads.

POSTED: January 17, 2011

Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits (sometimes named Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen or Popeyes Chicken & Seafood; often referred to as just Popeyes) is a chain of fried chicken fast food restaurants, owned since 1993 by the Sandy Springs, Georgia-based AFC Enterprises, which was originally America's Favorite Chicken Company.

Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken first opened in Arabi, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish, in 1972 as "Popeye Family Fried Chicken", owned by Al Copeland.

They started out selling traditional mild fried chicken, but business was slow, and they realized they'd have to sell a spicier alternative to their standard chicken recipe if they wanted to impress flavor-seeking New Orleanians.

Copeland began franchising his restaurant in 1976, beginning in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and added approximately five hundred outlets over the next ten years.

B.P. Newman of Laredo, Texas, acquired various franchises in Texas and surrounding states. In 1989 Popeyes was the third-largest chicken chain. They merged with Church's Chicken, the second largest, and parent company AFC Enterprises operated the two chains separately. On December 29, 2004, AFC sold Church's to Arcapita, formerly Crescent Capital Investments, retaining Popeyes.

Copeland claimed he named the stores after the fictional detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in the movie The French Connection and not the comic character Popeye the Sailor. Copeland would claim facetiously that he was "too poor" to afford an apostrophe, thus it stands as Popeyes. The chain later acquired rights to use Popeye the Sailor for marketing purposes.

According to Enterprise Magazine, in 2009 they had 1,539 US stores with 37 of them company owned. AFC Enterprise shows revenues of $148.00 million with net income of $18.80 million. They have 1,200 employees.

KFC (Corporation), founded and also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, is a chain of fast food restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky. KFC has been a brand of Yum! Brands since 1997, when KFC was spun off from PepsiCo as Tricon Global Restaurants Inc.

KFC primarily sells chicken pieces, wraps, salads and sandwiches. While its primary focus is fried chicken, KFC also offers a line of grilled and roasted chicken products, side dishes and desserts. Outside North America, KFC offers beef based products such as hamburgers or kebabs, pork based products such as ribs and other regional fare.

The company was founded as Kentucky Fried Chicken by Colonel Harland Sanders in 1952, though the idea of KFC's fried chicken actually goes back to 1930.

The company adopted the abbreviated form of its name in 1991, some say to deemphasize the “fried” aspect of their fare, which health conscious consumers were trying to avoid.

Starting in April 2007, the company began using its original name, Kentucky Fried Chicken, for its signage, packaging and advertisements in the U.S. as part of a new corporate re-branding program. They followed by remodeling their restaurants. But you will still see a variety of signage on their stores around the country. Yum! Brands uses both the original name and the extra concise version: KFC.

The Colonel's secret flavor recipe of 11 herbs and spices that creates the famous "finger lickin' good" chicken remains a trade secret. On September 9, 2008, the one complete copy was temporarily moved to an undisclosed location under extremely tight security while KFC revamped the security at its headquarters.

Yum! Brands, a publically traded company as of last year had revenues of $10.84 billion with a net income of $1.07 billion. They have 350,000 employees with KFC having over 24,000 employees.

This might be a bit of a David and Goliath comparison, but both have strong brands and fans. Popeyes ran 78,184 spots in the last 12 months on Cable, while KFC had 393,133 spots in the same time period.

On the Radio, KFC ran 81,052 spots against Popeyes 20,949 ads in the last 12 months. For KFC, the biggest months were March (15,210) and July (15,856). Popeyes ran hottest in July (3,595) although their chicken is spicy hot year-round.

On TV, KFC ran 173,788 spots and Popeyes ran 50,103 spots in the last 12 months. KFC’s biggest months were February with 22,357 and June with 19,430 spots. Popeyes ran the most TV in May with 6,280 spots and July with 7,306 ads.

Posted: January 17, 2011

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