Tag Archives: marketing

Fake Cause Marketing: Bob Garfield takes Jane Seymour and Kay Jewelers to the woodshed

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It turns out that one of my favorite business writers, MediaPost’s Bob Garfield, hates those Jane Seymour Kay Jewelers ads as badly as I do.

Awww. Every kitsch begins with Kay.

But wait. Open your heart? No, unless by “heart” they mean “wallet.” Ladies and gentlemen, I give you open-heart sorcery: the black art of combining celebrity, cheap sentimentality, self-delusion, greed and borderline consumer fraud.

…

The practice exploits consumers’ emotions and invites them to delude themselves into thinking a product purchase is an act of charity. But it is not charity. Continue reading →

Infographic best practices: learn how math works

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What would happen if you put Yogi Berra in charge of making infographics?

We’ve written about the problems with infographics before, but this one takes the cake.

There’s a fun one from Ethos3 up at SlideShare.net addressing the importance of nonverbal communication when making presentations. It’s generally pretty helpful, but it also provides us with a lesson in the value of not overreaching.

See if you can spot the problem.

Infographic

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PowerPoint is making us dumber and damaging our businesses

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Yes, PowerPoint sucks. Here’s why, plus some suggestions about how to fix the problem.

Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall. – Edward Tufte Continue reading →