August 30, 2010 – 7:13 am
by Rocio Zamora Arzola WHAT’S HAPPENING Austin’s Mexic-Arte Museum is celebrating its 15th anniversary. Quinceañera theme, anyone? Curator Claudia Zapata had something more nontraditional in mind, inviting 15 artists to attempt a global approach to Latino art in an exhibit entitled “Consensus of Taste.” Although the participating artists — all under 35 years of age [...]
by Hans Eisenbeis WHAT’S HAPPENING As of May 2010, 15 million Americans were unemployed (BLS.gov 6.4.10). That’s a lot of idle people, and economists are interested in understanding what they’re doing with all of their downtime. The Bureau of Labor Statistics actually tracks how Americans spend their time. And the American Time Use Survey for [...]
by Lisa Parks WHAT’S HAPPENING Beautification of public schools? Sounds like a job for the quicker picker-upper, as Bounty works in partnership with volunteers from HandsOn Network and Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation to launch the Make a Clean Difference program. Actress Gabrielle Union is spokesperson for the clean scheme, joining other celebrities like Mary J. [...]
by Hans Eisenbeis WHAT’S HAPPENING With as much as 12 months’ worth of home inventory on the market, and empty apartments everywhere, one might ask where everyone went. The answer, in many cases, is “back home.” Analysts looking closely at Census Bureau information have learned that multigenerational living has increased dramatically since the beginning of [...]
March 30, 2010 – 11:47 am
by Shreya Mukherjee As the Global View team gets ready for Iconoculture’s annual client event, Iconosphere (May 17-19, Beverly Hills, CA), we’re hard at work studying and scrutinizing brands’ best practices from around the world. These are the winners that not only beat la crisis but also aced the cautious-consumer test. One finds quite a [...]
March 16, 2010 – 11:13 am
by Abelardo de la Peña Jr. That sound you’re hearing is 120 million census forms landing in mailboxes this week. At long last, the census has arrived. The count has far-reaching implications, determining how $400 billion in federal funds (for housing, health and education programs) will be distributed to local governments annually, while also helping [...]
by Rocio Zamora Arzola WHAT’S HAPPENING When it came to college, Latino students tended to attend one near home to stay close to family. Now, more young Latinos are opting for schools outside their communal comfort zones. Between 1975 to 2009, Latinos enrolling in four-year colleges located more than 50 miles from home rose from [...]
by Abby Shannon WHAT’S HAPPENING After a multi-year investigation behind the claims of U.K. doctor Andrew Wakefield, reputable medical journal The Lancet retracted his 1998 paper that linked the childhood measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism (CNN.com 2.2.10). Wakefield was found to have acted unethically — conducting invasive and unnecessary medical procedures to [...]
by Abelardo de la Peña Jr. WHAT’S HAPPENING Childhood obesity is a big problem with Latino kids: 22.1% of Mexican American boys, for example, are obese, compared to 18.5% of black boys and 17.3% of white boys (CDC.gov 10.20.09). Enter popular PBS KIDS GO animated characters Maya & Miguel, encouraging children to eat healthy and [...]
January 29, 2010 – 6:51 am
by Hans Eisenbeis WHAT’S HAPPENING Before the Great Recession hit, we’d already documented a shift among aspirational consumers from buying goods to collecting experiences. Now that trend has mainstreamed in a big way, as financially strapped Americans are cutting their spending and replacing it with low-cost, high-value experiences. The U.S. Department of Labor tracked consumer [...]
January 20, 2010 – 11:33 am
by Abelardo de la Peña Jr. Before the holidays, my wife and I traveled to New Orleans to visit family. We’d never been before, and the city didn’t disappoint. For the most part, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina seemed long ago and far away. Yet we were stirred by the sight of hundreds of still-vacant and gutted [...]
January 13, 2010 – 11:02 am
by Cree McCree WHAT’S HAPPENING How do today’s Millennials compare with the Woodstock generation? Using a 1969 CBS News special as a model, Channel One conducted in-depth interviews with 1,300 young people nationwide for Then and Now: 1969-2009. Among the key findings: The generation gap has closed. 64% of the current crop enjoy spending time [...]
December 30, 2009 – 8:18 am
by Charlotte Beal OK, so the Aughts haven’t ended on a particularly high note. It’s been a decade of extreme volatility, but through better and worse, since 2002 Iconoculture has been getting at the why’s behind consumer desires and actions. This week, we’re looking back at the most interesting, powerful and insightful pieces of content [...]
December 17, 2009 – 6:42 am
by Hans Eisenbeis WHAT’S HAPPENING Anecdotally, we’ve known times are tough for Millennials. If they’ve been to college, they carry mountains of debt, and they’ve been hit harder than any other generation in the area of unemployment. Now the Pew Center and the U.S. Census confirm that many are dealing with the economy by heading [...]
December 15, 2009 – 2:33 pm
-A self-proclaimed overly simplified—but admittedly welcome—cheat sheet for the climate conference. -Yesterday’s news from the U.N.’s official site. -Interactive tools: Google Earth shows climate change scenarios and “tours” the world; CNN and YouTube launched the COP15 channel taking questions from around the globe for a panel in Copenhagen to answer live today. -President Obama has [...]
