I have several complaints about the recently announced expansion of the best picture nominees from five to ten.

1. Confusion. Our short term memory only allows us to consider about five to nine items at once, making ten too many by at least one. It’s relatively easy to think of five things and choose your favorite. Ten requires you to do something like write them down and assign scores to each. Is the Academy unaware of integers between five and ten?
2. Faulty logic. One of the main reasons cited for the change is that the Academy has been perceived as “elitist” in recent years for ignoring crowd favorites. But isn’t this the point of a professional critique—to choose the elite? Crowd favorites can easily be determined by looking at the box office returns, or the number of tickets sold—or by letting anyone vote instead of just Academy members. …Read More…

Although I’d planned on entering, I narrowly missed the deadline (oops) for 2009 submissions to New Times’ 55 Fiction competition, which calls on readers to submit 55-word fictional stories. So I was excited to hear the announcement of NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction Contest, requiring authors to write stories that can easily be read out loud within three minutes (under 600 words, according to them, but shorter is fine).

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As a student of cognitive science turned brand strategist, I was especially interested in an old post on Bob Hoffman’s blog, The Ad Contrarian (he refers back to it in a much more recent post, or I probably never would have noticed it), about “Salesmen & Sociologists.”

The point of the post is that “we have substantially exaggerated the power of brands. Most consumers in most categories have little or no brand loyalty.” The author goes on to say that most purchasing decisions are made based on functional differences like price and convenience.

So, as a cognitive science dork and a brand strategist, I have to say…he’s absolutely right. At least about the part I’ve mentioned here. The idea of brand loyalty as something that is complete and infallible is greatly exaggerated. (Although, just after reading that post I saw this. Funny timing.) And even if that level of loyalty was commonplace, which it’s not, it wouldn’t be easy to create without a great product. …Read More…

I just read through yet another brilliant post on BrandCultureTalk, one of my favorite industry blogs. First off, I like that the post makes use of the words “shenanigans,” “confiscatory,” and “sophistry” (which I admit I had to look up). But beyond a perfect score on the verbal SATs, the author of this post clearly has a knack for dissecting a complex issue (in this case, the ailments of the credit card industry), doing research to support his/her points of view, and stringing together an engaging article that manages to be relevant without being trite (a bit of a rarity in articles about branding/marketing).

The post is essentially a diatribe on the frustrating attributes of the First PREMIER Bank Platinum MasterCard and the credit card industry as a whole. Which brings me to the title of this post: some industries just suck. …Read More…

My reactions to this airline fold-down tray advertisement for Nature Valley Granola Nut Clusters, in order of occurrence:

1. Wow, that is ugly and obnoxious.
2. The airlines are really getting desperate for revenue.
3. Why would they advertise a snack food that is not available on the plane? …Read More…

[Originally published on The B2B Brand Debate]