You may have seen “The Story of Stuff” by now — if you haven’t, it’s worth your time to check out. It’s an anti-consumerism video narrated by a woman named Annie Leonard. It’s been a huge viral sensation — it logged over 100,000 views in the week after its release.
The video is well done — [...]
Archive for December, 2007
Mercy Corps’s thoughtful use of concreteness
Published by December 20th, 2007 in Concreteness, Emotion and General. 1 CommentWhen you give to Mercy Corps, they follow up with an email that gives you a concrete vision of how you’ve helped. For instance: “Your support of $40 provides a Zimbabwean family clean drinking water for two years.”
Lots of charities have figured out that, in soliciting donations, they need to anchor abstract amounts of money [...]
“Canoe Man”
Published by December 20th, 2007 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, General, Simplicity and Story. 0 CommentsThere are 6 principles of sticky ideas, and folks, Canoe Man has all 6. It’s no wonder why this bizarro tale has captivated the UK public.
Robert M brought it to our attention with this introduction: “Man vanishes at sea in 2002, only his battered kayak is found. Wife and two sons mourn, then wife claims [...]
Triggers and water conservation
Published by December 20th, 2007 in Concreteness, General, Simplicity and Unexpectedness. 0 CommentsPark Howell saw our column about “Triggers” in Fast Company and wrote us with a great story:
In 1999, we created the “Water – Use it Wisely” conservation campaign that was completely built on environmental triggers. I think we were simply more intuitive (lucky) in our approach than brilliant (good) when creating the campaign, but [...]
If everyone had a brain like this guy, it would be a heck of a lot easier to make our ideas stick… What a fascinating story.
Turns out the guy’s brother is making a documentary about him and his remarkable memory.
