In his talk at TED, Bill Gates released a jar full of mosquitoes, sending them out to feast on some of the world’s best & brightest blood. “Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,” he said. “I brought some. Here, I’ll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.” He then waited [...]
Archive for the 'Credibility' Category
Bill Gates at TED
Published by February 5th, 2009 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, General and Unexpectedness. Closed“We let polluted air speak for itself”
Published by February 5th, 2009 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, General and Unexpectedness. ClosedHow do you convince people that air pollution is a problem? You let them see it for themselves. Check out this very smart outdoor campaign in Hong Kong. (Thanks to Choleena at Tantramar for the tip.)
Daily Show statistics
Published by December 19th, 2008 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, General and Unexpectedness. ClosedThe other night Jon Stewart mentioned that if you commit murder, you’ve got a 48% chance of going to jail. Versus if you’re an Illinois Governor, you’ve got a 50% chance. (4 out of the last 8 Governors have ended up in the clink.)
Beyond War: Now in Video
Published by December 18th, 2008 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and General. ClosedYou’ve read the prose and heard the audio. Now watch the video, starring Ben of Ben & Jerry’s fame. This is very effective communication — it brings emotion to what deserves to be an emotional issue (the stockpile of nuclear weapons and the destructive power it holds). (Thanks to Matt V for the link.)
Beyond War: The audio version
Published by December 16th, 2008 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, General and Unexpectedness. ClosedIn the book, we tell a story about a group called “Beyond War,” which tried to mobilize public opinion against the nuclear arms race. As part of their anti-nukes presentations, they’d do a demonstration that involved dropping BBs in a bucket. (See full passage below for context.) Now you can hear what it sounds like [...]
The “health halo”
Published by December 5th, 2008 in Credibility, General and Unexpectedness. ClosedDo healthy-sounding terms such as “organic” or “trans-fat-free” seduce us into eating more than we would otherwise? (I.e., do we feel virtuous eating our “trans-fat-free” french fries and conclude that we’ve earned a cookie?) John Tierney has a great piece exploring the phenomenon. From the article:
Experiments showed that putting a “low fat” label on food caused everyone, [...]
A 23.3 trillion banner-ad bailout. Better start hitting refresh.
Published by September 25th, 2008 in Concreteness, Credibility and General. 4 CommentsOver 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 [...]
You’ve got to know when to Fuld ‘em
Published by September 18th, 2008 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, General, Simplicity, Story and Unexpectedness. 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!). [...]
Reader Greg Miller has made one of our book concepts stickier. Here’s the relevant passage of our book and then Miller’s improvement…
Another way to bring statistics to life is to contextualize them in terms that are more human, more everyday. As a scientific example, contrast the following two statements:
Scientists recently computed an important physical constraint [...]
The myth of mutual funds
Published by August 19th, 2008 in Credibility, Emotion, General, Simplicity and Unexpectedness. 5 CommentsThe evidence says that people who buy mutual funds retire a lot poorer than if they’d simply bought index funds. So why do mutual funds keep growing? In our latest Fast Company column, we explore why it’s so hard to get the truth to stick.
