Do you get irritated by the TV news anchors always throwing in extra adjectives to sensationalize their news stories. Every story must be “astounding,” “gripping,” or “revealing.” It is a relatively recent phenomenon. The anchors do it to make the stories seem more important and more immediate for their viewers. Just a little spin to… Read More »
Everyone gets excited by a big retail contest: there are prizes to be won, discounts to be won, a game to be played. But while consumers consider this kind of promotion to be like a lottery with millions to win, marketers see the event as a massive coupon drop. When you consider that the majority… Read More »
Hello Berlitz! Hello Rosetta Stone! You think we want to speak Mandarin fluently in 30 days – HAH! What we really want to know is the difference between “hashi” and “gohan” in a Japanese restaurant. What is a glass of “palinka”? What the heck is “chupe de camarones”? Should I order the “murgh cholay” or… Read More »
Ratings seriously are off for NFL games this year and there are lots of theories why. The tumultuous US election is one reason being offered. That was a wilder reality show than the average NFL game. And people love the spontaneity of those reality shows. But could that be the only reason? One of the reasons… Read More »
Human beings have an obsession for naming things. This is not surprising since it is the basis of all society, all language and all communications. We name ourselves first. We grow up knowing our labels and very few of us change those labels. This is us adding our own version of metatags with each choice… Read More »
On a recent visit to Florida, I ended up seeing a lot of pharmaceutical commercials for all manner of pharmaceutical products that I had no idea about. The commercials all have a similar pattern. They introduce a product name, all seem to be something like “Prolaxatrol,” or some other made up name that might suggest… Read More »
Be careful with translations. Relying on Google or any other digital translation can bring you problems, Not just small mistakes; but mistakes where the meaning is jumbled up and confusing. Effectively using a language that you to communicate with customers requires understanding the cultural context that it comes in. The title of this blog is… Read More »
One example that randomness can bring order is the theory that an infinite number of monkeys hitting keys at random on a keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. The odds of this happening are obviously infinitely small. There have… Read More »
This title is not an equation in Latin numerals. It’s about the size of it. Recently, we were in South East Asia. While there we shopped for clothing and found the sizing of clothing to be quite different from North America. Sure there were S-M-L-XL sizes. But they all seemed to be at least one… Read More »
There were established rules that limited the use of well known persons in advertising to children in Canada. Then our client, General Mills, let us know they had signed a deal to launch a cereal, Pro*Stars in 1983, that would feature Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, on the package. It was the brainchild of Mike… Read More »