Archive for July 24, 2012

Marketing and Movie Posters

July 24, 2012 / MHBAdmin / No comments

By: Wendy Lin

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to sit in on a talk given by a representative from Sony Pictures. The topic of entertainment marketing delved into the making of movie posters and the usage of social platforms. It was interesting to see a time-table structuring the employment of differing social channels along with their frequency, all dependent on the release date of a movie. But what really intrigued me was the amount of effort put into the finalization of movie posters.

Consumers are typically only exposed to movie posters released in their home country. I, for one, usually only see the movie posters from the United States, unless my friend from overseas in Taiwan happened to share with me a movie that she liked. Yet, movie posters differ in different cultures. Sometimes it may contain drastic differences, while sometimes it may merely contain subtle ones that may be observed through only careful scrutiny.

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The Psychology of Simplicity

July 23, 2012 / MHBAdmin / No comments

By: Grant Johnson

Source: CBSNews.com

 

I’m usually the definition of apolitical, but it’s been hard to avoid all the buzz surrounding the upcoming election.  It’s been especially hard since the buzz started last summer, when Republican candidates started to come out of the woodwork, with presidential hopeful Herman Cain among them.  He gained notoriety early on with his proposed 9-9-9 tax plan.  Now, I have nothing to say about the pros or cons of that plan; what interested to me is the way its success – at least in terms of generating publicity – stemmed from a couple psychological factors that politicians can take advantage of.

The smartest thing about the plan, from a PR standpoint, was obviously the name.  As soon as you introduce numbers to an argument, you’re doing yourself all kinds of favors.  This happens for two main reasons: a) people trust numbers, and b) people don’t really understand them; that’s a deadly combination.  Charles Seife’s book Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception lays this out nicely.  Seife illustrates the way people get down on their knees to worship at the altar of numbers, without really wanting to critique or comprehend them.  If you want to erroneously claim that vaccines cause autism, for example, you can point to the number of autism cases.  When people hear that natural blondes will be extinct in 200 years, as Good Morning America once declared, they assume that the number brings a measure of credibility.

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Rolling to Success

July 20, 2012 / MHBAdmin / No comments

By: Kara Johnson

Source: KTown213.com

Food trucks have been around for a long time, but they are no longer just a place to get a greasy grilled cheese or hamburger.  Today, food trucks offer us an endless array of gourmet options from lobster rolls to Kogi BBQ.  Food trucks offer relatively inexpensive but delicious food, and they are fun to visit as well (the long lines just make your food taste even better when you get it, right?).  However, I never really thought of the business benefits food trucks create.  The LA Times recently featured an article about how many food truck owners opened up food trucks to pilot their menus and gain exposure before opening up sit-down restaurants.  What a great idea!

Food trucks are cheaper to start up and operate than a brick-and-mortar business; overhead and operating costs are lower and the risks associated with starting a business are not nearly as high, especially in the current economic conditions.  The cost of opening a small restaurant can easily top $400,000, while opening a larger restaurant can run into the millions and the risks are huge – you don’t know if people are going to like what you have to offer.  On the other hand, a used food truck can be purchased for around $20,000 and while you also don’t know if people will like what you have to offer, the overhead, operating costs, and amount of effort needed to get the business rolling is much lower.

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Frank Luntz: Clarification or Manipulation?

July 19, 2012 / MHBAdmin / No comments

By: Shareen Hill

Frank Luntz is a “corporate consultant, pollster and political consultant to Republicans. [His] specialty is testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.” I first learned about Luntz in one of my graduate school courses, and I found his expertise as a wordsmith to be incredibly appealing and interesting. His approach to conducting research involves finding out which words elicit which emotions. Armed with this knowledge, he can craft perfectly worded messages that will speak to the innermost beliefs people hold. Or, he can craft messages that are perfect for manipulating people. It depends on who you ask.

What, exactly, is Luntz doing? He is simply witnessing reactions and making decisions based on those reactions. Newton determined that for “every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” and Frank Luntz knows this. He studies reactions to words until he understands the interactions well enough that he can manipulate the input… the words used… to get the exact reaction he wants. Clever? Controversial? Unconscionable? That’s the debate.

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Lose Sleep or Lose Your Job?

July 18, 2012 / MHBAdmin / No comments

By: Briana Fountain

Last work, one of my coworkers turned to me and said, “Wow, you look exhausted!” I didn’t know how to respond to that statement, particularly because I knew that it was probably true. I am exhausted, all the time; it’s the type of exhaustion that causes yours eyes to burn, and makes you break into fits of giddy laughter in the evening after an incredibly long day. I didn’t think it showed, though. I try to avoid the chronic dark circles around the eyes, and I do my best to hit the coffee machine enough times during the day to keep myself going.

But being exhausted is nothing new in the world of business. Many working professionals do not get enough sleep, for one reason or another, and the popular opinion is that less sleeps means decreased work performance. In fact, I heard an anecdote recently about the Human Resources director at a large firm in San Francisco. Apparently, this director would ask applicants, during the interview process, how many hours of sleep they get in a typical night. If the applicant says anything less than seven, they are not asked back for a second interview.

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