Marketers are undervaluing and under-utilizing the loyalty programs in which they have often invested a great deal of money, $2 billion in the aggregate. The bottom line secret to customer loyalty is that deeper engagement and personalized contact drive loyalty, not mass blast communications and gimmicks, according to a new report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council.

Consumers are most interested in brands that offer value for the dollar, and not just low price, according to the Brand Keys 2010 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. The Index, which tracks 518 brands in 71 categories, demonstrates that consumers are becoming more brand-conscious and looking for established “real” brands that offer value, as opposed to brands which are endorsed by celebrities or heavily publicized.

One of the joys of watching television is seeing characters and over-sized personalities; in fact, one station even has a whole marketing campaign centered on characters. Each year, new television personalities are added to the list of favorites and others drop off, showing another joy of television watching – it is never the same, year after year. Talk show hosts were prevalent among the top 10 U.S. TV personalities in 2009, according to a Harris Interactive poll.

8 to 18 years old spend an average of more than 7 1/2 hours a day, seven days a week with media. Five years ago, young people spent an average of nearly 6 1/2 hours a day with media, and managed to pack more than 8 1/2 hours worth of media content into that time by multitasking. At that point it seemed that young people's lives were filled to the bursting point with media, according to a study by Kaiser Family Foundation.