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Archive for the 'Emotion' Category

The Dirtiest Hotels in the World

This is a brilliant promotion from TripAdvisor. Got it via email and it was the one promo email, out of the last 500, that I’ve clicked thru to see. How can you not?  Its strength is its unexpectedness — most companies would be too chicken to try something like this.
From a review of the #1 hotel [...]

Bill Gates at TED

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 [...]

“We let polluted air speak for itself”

How 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

The 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

You’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

In 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 [...]

J.C. Penney: If you make your wife mad, buy your way out.

I know this “Doghouse” campaign is supposed to be funny, in that Bud-Light Man-Humor kind of way, but it’s hard to escape the ickiness of the core message: When you do something really bad that makes your wife furious at you, buy her a diamond and it’s all good.
Nor does this interpretation involve a deep-feminist critique of [...]

If Starbucks marketed like a church…

John Moore at Brand Autopsy highlights this satirical video, created by a church marketing expert to inspire churches to find ways that ”we can remove the speed-bumps we have unknowingly created for visitors.”
My favorite part: The barrista waits on a couple that is clearly new to Starbucks – they’re a bit overwhelmed and end up asking sheepishly for ”a [...]

You’ve got to know when to Fuld ‘em

Nicholas 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!). [...]

The myth of mutual funds

The 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.