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Bacon. A staple of the hearty American breakfast. It’s the breakfast of champions since the dawn of time, right? Actually, no. Eating a big hearty breakfast (with bacon of course) is a result of a marketing campaign by Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew. Before the 1920s, nobody was eating bacon. It was scrap food for peasants. The Beech-Nut Bacon company wanted to change that, because they…
My grandpas and uncles often talk about how millionaires and billionaires (now even trillionaires) are greedy and “evil”. And of course, also how marketers and advertisers are tricking people into buying useless -- even harmful -- products. Most of the time that’s just old-man-yelling-at-a-could nonsense. But sometimes….sometimes they’re right. In fact, one of the most famous 20th century…
I guess it’s safe to assume you’re brushing your teeth every day, right? Why are you doing that? Well, because you’re a mature adult who takes care of oral health and hygiene. Orrrrrr because your parents were forcing you to do it when you were a little kid, and you were bitching and screaming “I don’t want to!” But now you’re used to it and it’s just a part of your morning and evening routine.…
The year is 2039. We have flying cars, billionaires go to Mars for summer vacation and intelligent robots are doing all the menial work. Then one Tuesday evening your doctor friend tells you he found a way to cure cancer. And he needs your help to get it into the hands of billions of people. You need to help him sell it. Now that you know you literally have the BEST PRODUCT EVER in your hands, you…
Imagine you’re a broke 28-year old guy, living in a small, drafty apartment in Midtown Manhattan, and you want to be an actor. But doctors screwed up something when you were born. So now you have a birth defect that makes your face look funny and talk kinda funny. Not the best start. But you REALLY want to be an actor, so you go to auditions aaaand….you get rejected. You go to the next one, and…
This post is about the principles tyrants like Adolf Hitler and cult leaders like Jim Jones have used to masterfully persuade people to join their cause and do unimaginable things. Things that nobody even asked them to do were so unimaginable and so cruel that some of these monsters were dubbed “bigger Nazis than Hitler”. On the other hand, Jim Jones’ followers didn’t only die for their leader…
Remember the famous Apple slogan from the turn of the century – “Think different”? The slogan wasn't created just to look nice or win advertising awards. Its purpose was to appeal to a specific target audience. It was the cornerstone of Apple's entire marketing, and made them a boatload of money. The campaign worked so brilliantly because…..who doesn't think of themselves as different or special?…
What’s one of the highest compliments a salesman usually gets? You’ve heard it countless times: “He is so good at sales he can sell ice to eskimos!” And yeah, that does sound great at first glance. But on second thought….why would a good salesman waste time selling ice to eskimos? Why try to swim against the current? If you try to do that, you: -- Are not helping anyone -- Are ripping them off --…
Does the name Sidney Frank ring a bell? He’s the guy who made Jägermeister a huge worldwide brand, then pioneered the super premium vodka market by creating Grey Goose out of thin air and later sold it to Bacardi for $2.2 billion. Rarely seen without a custom-made Davidoff cigar in his mouth, Sidney hired a financial advisor to teach him how to spend all that money. Not something you hear every…
Didn’t like statistics in school? Too bad, because everything in life is about probabilities. YOUR life is all about probabilities. The problem is that we don’t know the exact probabilities of things happening to us because of so many ‘known unknowns’ and even ‘unknown unknowns’. If I get in my car to drive somewhere, what is the chance of getting in an accident? For me, probably very low on a…