When the 60 Second Marketer Talks, Wall Street Listens

It was just about 2 months ago that the 60 Second Marketer did a 5-part blog series called “Good Economic News.” We (and it turns out a lot of other businesses) were getting tired of the doom and gloom that was being perpetuated by the media, so we decided to write about good economic news. 60secondmarketer001

To be sure, things were difficult. And it didn’t help that President Obama kept talking about how bad things were. But when we took a deep dive into the data, we were surprised by many of the facts, some of which are outlined here:

PepsiCo revenue grew 10% last year to $43.3 billion.
Walmart sales rose 6% last quarter, net sales rose 1.7% to $108 billion.
McDonaldâ€™s global comparable sales were up 7.1% in January. More specifically, the U.S. was up 5.4%, Europe up 7.1, Asia/Middle East/Africa up 10.2%.
Coca-Cola had an 11% increase in revenues in 2008 to $31.9 billion; net income was up 17% to $7.4 billion.
Oil is 76% lower today than last summer.
H. J. Heinz fiscal 3rd quarter net income climbed 11% to $242.3 million, up from $218.5 last year.
Box Office receipts for the movie industry are up 28%.
Interest rates at historic lows.
Home prices dropped/most affordable level since 1971.
The S&P 500 is predicted to rise as much as 20% towards year end (Source: NPR).
In December, inventories declined at twice the rate than was anticipated, which means manufacturers will have to make more stuff to compensate for low inventories.

We were pretty excited when we uncovered the good economic data. And, apparently, so was Wall Street. As you know, the 60 Second Marketer is required reading for members of the Wall Street community. In fact, it’s been reported that cocktail parties in the Hamptons often hand out framed 60 Second Marketer blog postings as gifts to attendees.

Okay, hold on a second. If you’re a regular reader, you know that the previous paragraph was just a joke. But if you’re not a regular reader, then feel free to imagine that we’re totally, 100% serious when we say that the 60 Second Marketer is required reading for the Wall Street crowd.

Anyway, we digress.

Our main point is this — that our posts on good economic news must have hit the spot. The Dow was at 6500 in mid-February. It was late February when we wrote our 5-part series. Today, the Dow is approaching 8000. That’s more than a 20% jump in the Dow since we wrote the postings.

Coincidence?

We think not.