The Harry Potter Phenomenon
When I was a kid, I collected sea shells. When I got bored of that I collected coins. Then, for some bizarre reason, I started collecting rose petals and storing them between the pages of very heavy books. Do you know what happens to a rose petal left inside the pages of The Reader’s Digest Family Health Guide, between page 846 and 847 for six years? It becomes soft, and almost translucent. Natural frail skin with dark, thin veins, like a small section of an anatomical map in my biology class...keep reading.
Move Your Own Damn Cheese: A Rant
Friday, June 03, 2005
So, am I the only one who thinks that these story books masquerading as business fables are a complete waste of time? Years ago, Richard Bach wrote a book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull which was about the concept of adapting to change and persevering when the odds were against you. That was when metaphors weren’t tired and it was amusing to think of seagulls trying to attain nirvana. But then, when you have mice teaching you to combat fear, and dogs expounding the values of loyalty, and milions upon millions of people are actually buying that crap, that’s when battle lines need to be drawn...continue reading.
Rated R, by Parental Permission
So, I realize that I’m on this movie theme, but I couldn’t help it. My colleague Russ sent out an email about a card that’s being offered by GKC Theatres that’s causing all sorts of controversy. Essentially, it allows parents to pre-allow their children into R-rated movies by the purchase and signature of a “permission card.”
CBS News has a pretty comprehensive story about it.
The implications?
Well, for one, ticket sales. Not that they’d go up. I think, frankly, they may drop. If major chains were to follow suit, parents who don’t want to be dragged to comic-book movies or Adam Sandler flicks may end up just getting the card so that they could get a massage at the spa, or spend more time shopping at the mall. Another reason sales might drop is because kids, who perpetrate most of the “show-sliding” (slipping into another theatre for a double-feature without going out and buying a new ticket) today, won’t have an adult to stop them.
It’ll be an interesting trend to watch.
Jeffrey’s House of Magic.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Eric Schonfeld talks about Jeff Immelt’s management of innovation at General Electric, and how it’s turning the company into a marketing power player.
GE researcher Anil Duggal is working in a cramped, darkened lab on a replacement for that iconic invention. Duggal holds a flat, glowing 6-inch square that illuminates his face. The light is created by a thin layer of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) sandwiched between two glass plates. Duggal hopes they will eventually be printed on plastic so that flexible lighting surfaces can be incorporated into wallpaper or furniture. Just as the OLEDs convert electricity into light, they can also do the reverse, and thus could someday become the basis for inexpensive plastic solar panels. They could be produced much like newspapers—“and newspapers are so cheap, we throw them away,” Duggal says. Think of the possibilities, adds his colleague Sanjay Correa. “What if your rooftop were made of a cheap material that creates electricity, and then inside, your ceiling could take that electricity and turn it into light,” he muses, a broad smile spreading across his face.
Small annoyance is that Business 2.0 requires that you register to read the entire article online, but I thought it interesting enough to list.
Seth Godin’s Purple Cow Chews New Cud
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Seth Godin, that bald-headed marketing fella from Yahoo!, has made quite name for himself with his previous books, Permission Marketing and Unleashing the Idea Virus. His new book Purple Cow, is a brilliant, pithy take on the concept of brutal clarity in marketing. It talks about how companies that use non-traditional mechanisms, and non-intuitive marketing methods to drive sales and tranform themselves.