Unsplash / Jesse Orrico A common marketing challenge involves breaking through inertia.  Getting people to do things they know they should do, but don’t – either because of laziness, status quo bias, or various unconscious emotional barriers. An area where this is especially relevant is organ donation.  A new ad in Canada and a new academic study offer two perspectives about how organ donation advocates can use audio to move people’s minds. The academic research, led by a team at the University of Illinois, suggests ads featuring happy stories of organ recipients and their families ..read more

Fascinating new WARC article (subscription required) about the marketing challenges facing the insurance industry in the time of global warming. People in parts of the US especially prone to climate-induced natural disasters (especially Florida and California, but other states, too) are those who need home insurance most, but ironically are the ones who have the fewest options.  Insurance companies are pulling out of these states or limiting coverage because of the high risk. Suzanne Barker, Strategy Partner, AMV BBDO, argues in WARC that there are a few things insurance companies should ..read more

Credit: Unsplash/J. Balla Photography Some pet parents seem to be increasingly obsessed with their dogs, which seems like a good thing. But is it? In a recent New York Times feature, Sam Apple tagged along as his goldendoodle, Steve, enjoyed a stay at a luxury dog hotel.  Back in the day, of course, if you were leaving town you had a neighbor stop in a couple times a day to feed Rover, or you dropped him off at a kennel.  And probably the vast majority of people still do that, of course. But there is also a niche market for these very extravagant lodgings and experiences. Your dog c ..read more

Credit: Macallan When is a bottle more than a bottle?  When you’re buying a $50,000 whisky. Macallan and Bentley have paired up to produce a new high-end whisky whose container doubles as a work of art.  According to an article from Fast Company, the “bottle” (which probably isn’t even the proper term) for Macallan Horizon incorporates glass, aluminum, leather, wood, and copper.   The most complex part of the whole design apparently is the closure, which is, “inspired by the Bentley Drive Dynamics Control rotary knob.” There is a video that illustrates ..read more

I love this new ad from Quaker Canada.  A little bit schmaltzy, perhaps, but people dig schmaltzy in small doses. It is a touching little story. Nostalgia is a hot topic in marketing right now, but a lot of brands shy away from it for fear of being perceived as “old fashioned.” Quaker obviously doesn’t share that fear, given that it hasn’t significantly changed its packaging in 100 years, “est. 1877” is printed on the packaging, and one of its main products is literally called “Old-Fashioned.” It’s a fascinating brand. Oats are a commodity product. Quaker innovates a lot, but its base pr ..read more

How can a brand with no budget and no awareness create buzz ?  A little behavioral science can help. This comes from the newsletter of Jen Clinehans, a behavioral science specialist.  The brand is Jo Malone, which today is part of the Estée Lauder family.  But at one time, they were a very small, boutique brand based in England and struggling to break into the US market.  Jo Malone’s eponymous founder managed to wrangle a concession space inside New York City’s glitzy Bergdorf Goodman store, but she had no way of attracting attention from shoppers who had never heard of th ..read more

Major brands spend craptillions of dollars every year for the right to appear in the Super Bowl, the media and pop culture event of the year.  And why not? Last year’s Super Bowl was the third-most-watched US-based telecast in history. But there is one “brand” in a highly competitive “market” that was offered 3-4 minutes of free airtime during Sunday’s big game -- and turned it down. Yes, that’s the Joe Biden campaign. The campaign believes people are fatigued by politics, so they don’t want to alienate voters by having the president show up during a pregame interview.  Instead, the ..read more

Just as the clothes make the person, the package makes the product. A recent study in the Journal of Marketing suggests that the optimal package design depends on both what the brand is trying to say about the product inside and the consumer’s goal in purchasing that product. Consumers assume (largely unconsciously) that a simple package design means the product has fewer ingredients and is more natural than a product inside a more elaborate package. In many cases, consumers are willing to pay a price premium for products in these simple packages. There are exceptions. The correlation doesn’t ..read more

Jerry Olson shared this essay from The Guardian about the creeping trend of global ubiquity. The author, Kyle Chayka, uses coffee shops as his exemplar. Did you ever notice how many coffee shops look the same, even independent shops?  The author blames this (if “blame” is the right word) on recommendation algorithms on social media platforms such as Instagram.  If you are a coffee shop, you want social media hits, and to get those hits your posts have to align with the demands of the algorithm, which leads to a cycle of sameness. As Chayka writes, “Digital platfo ..read more

This BBC article discusses how nostalgia cycles seem to have accelerated in recent years. Typically, nostalgia runs in 20-30 year cycles.  That is enough time for kids to become adults, get some money in their pockets, and (I guess) feel sufficiently worn down by their lives to yearn for the past. So, Pepsi’s new logo is similar to the one they used in the 1990s. Mean Girls is now at the box office for the first time since the original in 2004. Hasbro has relaunched the Furby. While that 20-30-year standard still holds, the article contends that nostalgia is about more than just the pass ..read more