The Pope dons red Prada kicks, politicians break out red ties in election season and that darn Netflix package always seems to stand out in a crowd of manilla and ivory mail. Why red? Do humans have a penchant for the rainbow’s most fiery color? This study released in 2005 discovered that red-clad athletes out-performed [...]
I found a great article called "10 Practical Uses for Psychological Research in Everyday Life." It explains how to detect lies, make your smile more attractive, persuade people, avoid getting scammed, and reduce your cholesterol level. On example: one person expressing an opinion three times has 90% of the effectiveness as three people expressing it [...]
My friend Richard Shaffer of Israeli Wine Direct interviewed my other friend Roger Dooley of the Neuromarketing Blog. The interview is called "This is Your Brain on Wine." Ostensibly the interview focuses on wine, but it's applicable to marketing in general. Here's an example of a Dooley answer from the interview: Effective Internet marketers let [...]
This is a great analysis of how a rug merchant in Turkey applied the principles of Robert Cialdini. Do you think he read Influence or Yes!? You must read this story if you're into persuasiveness. Thanks to Mitch Weisburgh for pointing it out.
Just posted a book report for Yes! for my buddies at American Express. This is the best business book I've read this year. Please check out my posting here. One of the co-authors is Robert Cialdini; he is The Man when it comes to persuasion and influence. Every entrepreneur, sales, and marketing person should read [...]
Check out this great article called "How Women Work." It's like a combination of Women for Dummies, Everything You Wanted to Know About Women But Was Afraid to ask, and Women: The Missing Manual. My favorite factoid: men have 6.5 times more gray matter than women. Women have 10 times more white matter. Gray matter [...]
A research team from Durham University and the University of British Columbia is investigating magic tricks to further understand how people's minds work. The key magician's techniques that the team investigated were misdirection and illusion. For example, in the misdirection trick, a researcher dropped a lighter and cigarette while misdirecting the subjects to the opposite [...]
There's nothing I like to study more than techniques of persuasion, and I want to persuade you to check out a website called ChangingMinds.org. You can think of it as Robert Cialdini, my hero when it comes to persuasion, on steroids. Here is a direct link to theories of persuasion but do spend time on [...]
A sign of PR cluelessness is writing to a reporter after an article appears because you think that it should have mentioned your product or company. There are two problems with this theory: first, the reporter isn't going to revise the original piece; and second, she's not going to write another article covering the same [...]
I recently signed up for Friendfeed, and I had a hard time figuring out who to follow. Christine Lu told me that this is a common problem, and we came up with idea of aggregating the top Friendfeeds to help people get started. Check it out: Frienderati.alltop.com. You can use this as a starting point [...]
Neuromarketing has another great blog post. This time the subject is the power of "free." Click here to read it. Apparently, a free offer has power that is far beyond what you'd think. There are many marketing and advertising implications, so go read the posting.
Dr. Bianca Wittman of University College London found that making novel choices activates the ventral striatum of the brain. This area is associated with rewarding behavior. Thus, labeling a product as "new" may increase its sales because of this brain wiring. Also, familiar brands also cause higher levels of brain activation, so the perfect pitch [...]
My buddy David Szetela writes a new column for SearchEngineWatch called "Profitable PPC." In his first column, "PPC Advertising: Art or Science?," he mentions a book called Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins. The book was first published in 1923--long before TV or online advertising. Hopkins is the inventor of test marketing, coupon sampling, and [...]
Check out the Silicon Valley Moms "Summer Road Trip '08." Five mommy bloggers are driving across the United States in a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid. Other sponsors include Yahoo!, CBS News, WeightWatchers, Six Apart, and Zune. The moms describe it as "5 blogging moms, 7 days without kids, 1 car without carseats, 2,000 miles to drive." [...]
In this interview Dave Balter explains word-of-mouth marketing. Balter founded BzzAgent in 2002. His company has provided word-of-mouth media services for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and has been featured in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and on National Public Radio. He is also co-founder and current board [...]
Are you interested in the role of personality in a company's marketing? I recently interviewed Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy PR about this subject. You can read the interview here at Sun Microsystem's small business blog. He covers topics such as the creation and use of brand personalities, good and bad examples, and the role of [...]
There are approximately thirteen million CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom. They are use to monitor people for security reasons--not all the time, though. A band called The Get Out Clause played their music in front of eighty cameras, requested the footage citing the Freedom of Information Act, and put together a music video. This [...]
A few weeks ago I was in Charlotte to make a speech for Network Solutions, and I met Justin Ruckman. He handed me his business card--which I just loved. For once, a business card that cuts to the chase and is readable. Hallelujah! So I asked him to make business cards for me. Take a [...]
Just found out about a great conference at Stanford called "Creating Infectious Engagment." It's on May 1st from 3:30 to 6:00 pm. Learn more by clicking here. It features speakers such as Diego Rodriguez, Perry Klebhan (CEO of Timbuk2), and Debra Dunn (former SVP at HP). The conference is free--it can't get much better than [...]
Over at the Sun Microsystems small and medium business site, I published an interview with Josh Bernoff about his new book (co-authored with Charlene Li) called Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. In this interview he discusses the impact of social media on sales, support, marketing, and branding. He and Charlene are [...]