Steal My Ideas, Please

Finished reading Made to Stick and enjoyed its many valuable insights about “Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,” as the subtitle says. I hope to write at length about some notions like how objects can have intentions, and how smart the section was on remembering to appeal to people’s more noble sides, the impulses higher […]

That Manning-to-Tyree escape and catch in the Super Bowl was legendary stuff. So it needs legendary name. Something like the Immaculate Reception, that famous Franco Harris play. How about this then: The Spectaculate Reception. Yeah, I know spectaculate is not a word, but doesn’t that make the moniker all the more memorable?

Suppose we each had our own personal bar code. Wear it proudly on a T-shirt, or the ass of your jeans (whatever you wish), and then passersby can scan it (with those scanner phones that will come someday) and learn all about you … or at least about your blog, your causes, your interests, your requests. […]

I don’t understand commercials that make users of products look stupid. OK, it’s fine to postmodern and make fun of yourself (thereby engendering trust), but, hey, if it’s not funny and the user looks like a schmuck, well, why do I look like a schmuck and buy your product? First, tonight, I see a T-mobile ad […]

Instead of Yosemite Sam and “Back Off!” you’d see Yosemite Samsonite and “Half Off.” Instead of ”How’s my driving?” you’d see “What’s in your wallet?” Instead of silver silhouettes of Playboy bunnies, you’d see an ad for the return of the Volkswagen Rabbit.
Yeah, but who wants to see this? Especially since, sooner or later, every static ad […]

The world as you see will be radically changed by the Flat-Screen Revolution. J.K. Rowling had it right: People will move in paintings and newspaper pictures. But take it further: Imagine how decals with moving images would make race cars even more of a visual riot. Billboards will move. Bumper stickers. (Once wrote a sci-fi […]

Here’s a win-win for charities and advertisers. It’s a site where companies get good publicity in exchange for matching contributions to charities. Plus it’s a way for philanthropic, benevolent souls to get more bang for their buck. Basically, works like this: Charities and companies with existing matching-contribution programs sign up, agreeing to link to the […]

Say you’re selling copies of your CD (like this one for my nephew Robert’s San Fran band, The Chop) but a potential fan asks, “Yeah, but what do you sound like?” Wouldn’t it be cool if your CD had a flap that played a song when opened? If this doesn’t exist, count on it, since we […]

If it would cut the cost of your food, would you be cool with eating a steak “branded” with the logo for a beer? Or see an for ad for Wheat Thins stamped on slices of American cheese? Or how about web addresses that show up when you toast a slice a bread? Or how about pop […]

Let’s hope that ads eventually make all Internet sites free. But now you’ll find publications like magazines that charge dollars for reading current articles, or for accessing archives. How about some ecoonomy of scale? Charge way less, so you get more customers, producing as much revenue if not more. Here’s a way for Paypal, or someone other online paying […]

Seriously, why should a big-time TV event like this fail to generate any revenue for anybody? The networks run no ads, the government gets no rights fees, and a handful of major networks alienate chunks of their TV-addicated audience. So revamp the speech to have commercial breaks, and sell the exclusive rights to one network, or one broadcast and […]

No, I’m not talking about burning off calories by talking. Just seems that exercise would be more fun if it had an element of socializing. Noisy machines, regimented classes, the need to grunt while weightlifting, the love of quiet in yoga … they all work against talking. So why not design routines to be compatible with conversation? First, have participants stand in […]

By themselves, logical statements don’t persuade. And neither do examples or metaphors. But put all three together, especially if the statements are short and memorable, and maybe you have a three-part formula for making a little magic happen.
Jesus told parables, and his ideas sure caught on. He had some snappy sound-bites, too, like “He who shall save his […]

Who says Jack can’t play and learn at the same time? Suppose balls and bats and hockey sticks were covered with vocabulary words. With definitions, of course. Casually, those words would work their ways into minds and conversations. Heck, maybe cover a whole playground with words, names and ideas worth learning. Those in some jokes for […]

Advertisers want undivided attention, right? Subscribers want cheaper cable. So why not offer discount cable where the catch is some ads are always in view, in strips around the bottom of the screen. Worse, when you use the remote (trying to escape ads), some ads pop up and follow you temporarily. Maybe that second part belongs […]