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This summer I won a silent auction for a case of plant-based sausage for about $25. That’s dinner for a month at less than a $1/night – I was shocked I won with such a low bid.

Are you familiar with the book Six Word Memoirs? In it, famous and not-so-famous people capture the meaning of their lives in six words. For example, Aimee Mann wrote, “Couldn’t cope, so I wrote songs.”

This research has been around for a few years, but it made the rounds on Marketing Twitter again this week and is always worth keeping in mind. In short, the more messages an ad tries to communicate, the less likely any of those messages actually gets through.

It is titled, “The Power of Profanity” and explores the impact of curse words in online reviews.

Mikhail Gorbachev died yesterday. In the West, he is remembered as a visionary who helped bring an end to the Cold War. In Russia, he is reviled as the man who destroyed an empire.

The image above is how Yeezy Gap clothing is being displayed in store. When Kanye West first saw the clothes displayed on hangers, he became upset and instead demanded that they be placed inside these containers that resemble giant garbage bags.

You may have heard about Blake Lemoine, the engineer Google recently fired for telling the Washington Post that a Google AI bot, LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications), had become sentient.

This is a very simple outdoor ad that is capturing some attention on Marketing Twitter. It’s for a new watch that has emerged from a partnership between Timex and the Brooklyn-based clothing company Adsum.

The book Nudge, by Thaler and Sunstein, introduced marketers and others to the idea of nudges. However, the hype around the book almost suggested nudges were like magic. Do A and B will happen, every time, which isn’t the case.

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research study demonstrates just how well gamification – specifically, the tracking of streaks – can spur repeat behavior.

The online debate over the benefits of purpose marketing continue with Andrew Tenzer’s column in Marketing Week. It also is a useful discussion about research design.

The Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland has created a virtual exhibit that highlights the history of broadcast jingles. It’s called “The Lost Art of Jingle Writing.”

Sometimes brands want to reflect the emotions and associations people already have with a product category, but other times a brand can use those category insights to figure out where not to go.

Most parents name their children after family members or famous people, or they simply find a name that just sounds nice coming off the tongue. But now you can name your child after a lamp.

Some marketing experts have been highly critical of San Pellgrino’s new can.

James Forr of OZ recently spoke at the ARF’s AudiencexScience Conference about “The A-B-4Cs of Winning Advertising.” He discussed how using metaphor to illustrate a product attribute (even an otherwise mundane attribute) can be a powerful communication tool.

Thanks to OZ’s Joe Plummer for sending a summary of a Journal of Consumer Research article that discusses the art of sticking to a boring task. The key is distraction.

The power of visual imagery is central to what we do at OZ – a metaphor or an image can tell an entire story with no words required.

New research published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that scientific claims are fine for selling utilitarian products, but not so good for selling products that bring pleasure.