The Breakfast Meeting: Social Media as Focus Group, and a North Korean Fantasy

By NOAM COHEN

The comments relayed by social media are offering retail stores the kinds of insights about consumer demand that in the past would have required assembling focus groups and conducting other kinds of research, Stephanie Clifford reports. Companies like Frito-Lay and Estée Lauder poll the public via social media about what products they would like to see introduced; Wal-Mart, through its acquisition of a social-media company Kosmix, is looking for trends as they emerge - where and when to stock products, whether a certain video game is being talked about, if that talk is positive.

• CNET reports that the rapper Eminem has more Facebook fans than any other living person, surpassing 60 million Facebook Likes, adding an average of 24,000 likes a day. Even so, Rihanna is fast on his tail, adding 26,000 likes a day.

The title character on the Disney animated TV series “Doc McStuffins” is 6-year-old African-American girl who emulates her mother, a doctor, by opening a clinic for dolls and stuffed animals. The series is part of Disney's effort to leave a racially charged past behind, including the racial stereotyping in much earlier films like “Dumbo” or “Song of the South,” Brooks Barnes reports. The Doc McStuffins character has touched a chord with African-American parents, filling a niche among children's animated series. Mr. Barnes writes:

Black cartoon characters in leading roles are still rare. It's considered an on-screen risk to make your main character a member of a minority, even in this post-“Dora the Explorer” age. Networks want to attract the broadest possible audience, but the real peril is in the toy aisle. From a business perspective, Disney and its rivals ultimately make most of these shows in the hope that they spawn mass-appeal toy lines. White dolls are the proven formula.

The production of “Comrade Kim Goes Flying† would seem as unlikely as its title being literally true. It is the first fictional film with an entirely Korean cast co-produced with Western partners and shot inside North Korea, Jonathan Landreth writes. The film, about a coal miner turned trapeze artist, is the brainchild of Nicholas Bonner, an Englishman based in Beijing who runs a company that takes tourists into North Korea. A challenge, he said, was to steer his North Korean co-writers toward comedy and away from a straightforward triumph through hard work; it will premiere in September at the Pyongyang International Film Festival.