Over at Slate, Juliet Lapidos asks, how much is $700 billion?
Let’s say Slate charged its advertisers $30 per 1,000 ad impressions, a common industry rate. And let’s imagine for a second that the federal government decided to nationalize Slate in order to pay for the bailout. We’d need our readers to rack up enough page […]
Archive for September, 2008
A 23.3 trillion banner-ad bailout. Better start hitting refresh.
Published by September 25th, 2008 in General, Concreteness and Credibility. 4 CommentsDo not miss this very funny NPR piece by Robert Krulwich on some of the liberties taken by scientists in naming species. (The audio is great — don’t stop at the text.) Preview:
The rule is that anytime someone finds an animal, vegetable or mineral new to science, the discoverer, like Adam, has the privilege of […]
We’ve received a fair number of angry letters on our anti-mutual-funds column in Fast Company — exclusively, btw, from mutual fund employees or investment advisors. Here’s a teaser:
Let’s pull off the Band-Aid quickly. You’ve come to believe that mutual funds are a smart place to put your money. They’re not.
That’s the assessment of the smartest minds in […]
Sign spotted today: “YES, we have patchouli.”
Jacob Weisberg thinks Obama needs a good catchphrase for his economic plan:
If you go to the economy section on Obama’s Web site, the banner that greets you proclaims, “Responsible Tax Cuts for Ordinary Americans.” It’s accompanied by an image of two piggy banks, a small one labeled “Taxes” and a big one labeled “Savings.” The […]
You’ve got to know when to Fuld ‘em
Published by September 18th, 2008 in General, Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and Story. 6 CommentsNicholas Kristof has a sticky piece today on the grotesque overpayment of CEOs who fail. Case in point: Richard Fuld, chief of the now-flushed Lehman Brothers, made a half-bil between 1993 and 2007. Good investment.
This story, and others like it, run the board on the traits of a sticky idea: They’re simple (Too much money!). […]
Hands-only CPR
Published by September 11th, 2008 in General, Simplicity, Unexpectedness and Concreteness. 5 CommentsChip and I were thrilled to work with the AHA on their new campaign promoting “Hands-only CPR.” (Our role was limited: We led a workshop early in the process as the AHA team contemplated how to talk about the new technique. But we had nothing to do with the ingenious commercials that Jerry Potts and his […]
