21st Century Marketing Blog

The Real Life Social Network (Paul Allen – Google)

Paul Allen’s lengthy presentation is worth re-posting (and reading) because it does a great job at summarizing the behavioral roots of social platforms and highlights their inadequacies.  It’s the people, not the platforms, that legitimize social media.

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Jamie Oliver’s Secret Weapon: “I Tried Something New” Stickers

If you weren’t looking for it, you may have missed Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution television premiere a few weeks ago. By now, you’ve probably heard of the show and its reality TV look inside changing public school food in Huntington, West Virginia and beyond.

Jamie has a lot of creative tactics to teach kids about food – from dumping massive quantities of junk food consumed by the kids onto a giant tarp for all to see, to blending up the gristly remains of a chicken then reconstructing it into a fast food-worthy patty. My favorite tactic, so far, are the stickers he gives kids in the cafeteria when they try a new (healthy) food.

I love this!

I love it because it embodies a basic human drive for personal development. Saying “I tried something new” is the same as “I will not be complacent” and “I have goals” and “I care about my future” and “I am becoming something better than I was.” We do the same thing at the voting booths with “I VOTED” stickers to an extent.

If you can provide products or experiences that conspicuously allow your customers to transmit these positive messages about themselves (without alluding to the flaw, like a nicotine patch), then you’ll have a perpetual marketing machine that everyone will want to buy.

P.S. Sign the petition.

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