Tuesday, May 22, 2007

More is Better

The truth about the debate over global warming is that we all want MORE and we don't like the idea of limiting ourselves - or even worse, others telling us we can't have what we want. The real American Idol is consumption. Seth Godin gives ideas on how to market ecology:

"More has been around for thousands of years. Kings ate more than peasants. Winning armies had more weapons than losing ones. Elizabeth Taylor had more husbands than you.

"Car dealers are temples of more. The local Ford dealership lists four different models... by decreasing horsepower. Car magazines feature Bugattis, not Priuses on the cover. Restaurants usually serve more food (and more calories) than a normal person could and should eat.

"Is this some sort of character flaw? A defective meme in the system of mankind? Or is it an evil plot dreamed up by marketers?

"There's no doubt that marketers amplify this desire, but I'm certain it's been around a lot longer than Jell-O.

"One reason that the litter campaign of the 1960s worked so well is that 'not littering' didn't require doing less, it just required enough self control to hold on to your garbage for an hour or two. The achilles heel of the movement to limit carbon is the word 'limit.'

"It's a campaign about less, not more. Even worse, there's no orthodoxy. There's argument about whether x or y is a better approach. Argument about how much is enough. As long as there's wiggle room, our desire for more will trump peer pressure to do less. "Fight global warming" is a fine slogan, except it's meaningless. That's like dieters everywhere shouting, "eat less" while they stand in line to get bleu cheese dressing from the salad bar.

"As a marketer, my best advice is this: let's figure out how to turn this into a battle to do more, not less. Example one: require all new cars to have, right next to the speedometer, a mileage meter. And put the same number on an LCD display on the rear bumper. Once there's an arms race to see who can have the highest number, we're on the right track."

Monday, May 14, 2007

First to 100

NCAA Division I championship leaders (men's and women's):

1. UCLA 100
2. Stanford 93
3. USC 84
4. Okla. State 48
5. Arkansas 43
6. Louisiana State 40
7. Texas 39
8t. Michigan 32
8t. North Carolina 32
8t. Penn State 32

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Preaching to the Choir

Interesting. It seems that you are more likely to get clients for your services among people who are already enthusiasts and who want to improve, rather than from among those who are the neediest for it.

How to apply this for your product?

"Most people in the US can't cook. So you would think that reaching out to the masses with entry-level cooking instruction would be a smart business move.

In fact, as the Food Network and cookbook publishers have demonstrated over and over again, you're way better off helping the perfect improve. You'll also sell a lot more management consulting to well run companies, high end stereos to people with good stereos and yes, church services to the already well behaved."

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Educators Against Competition

Why am I not surprised that the college presidents mentioned in this USA Today article are against judging their schools' performance? Isn't that a basic tenet of modern education, that teachers and the educational process cannot be held up to evaluation of results?

A dozen college presidents have pledged to boycott a key component of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings because they say the popular rankings mislead prospective students and encourage gamesmanship.

The presidents — from a range of mostly smaller institutions including Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and Earlham College in Indiana — outlined their complaints in a letter dated Saturday to colleagues at other schools.

The letter says the dozen colleges have pledged to stop filling out the part of the survey in which colleges rate each other, which accounts for 25% of a college's ranking. The colleges say they also will no longer use the rankings in their own promotions and ask other schools to do the same.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Religious Interest Growing at US Universities

This report from the International herald Tribune, including some of their analyses:

Across the country, on secular campuses as varied as Colgate University, the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley, chaplains, professors and administrators say students are drawn to religion and spirituality with more fervor than at any time they can remember.

More students are enrolling in religion courses, even majoring in religion; more are living in dormitories or houses where matters of faith and spirituality are a part of daily conversation; and discussion groups are being created for students to grapple with such questions as what happens after death, dozens of university officials said in interviews.

A survey of the spiritual lives of college students, the first of its kind, showed in 2004 that more than two-thirds of 112,000 freshmen surveyed said they prayed and that almost 80 percent believed in God.

Nearly half of the freshmen said they were seeking opportunities to grow spiritually, according to the survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles.