The following story is about magic–the marketing kind (via psychologist Paul Bloom’s fantastic new book, How Pleasure Works):

Art and Value

In the 1930s, the The Supper at Emmaus (pictured below) sold for $4 million. Critics widely revered the painting, considering it a lost work from famous 17th century painter Johannes Vermeer. It was praised for its beauty and paraded to many museums.

In 1947, The Supper at Emmanous, once considered a masterpiece, was discovered to be a forgery by expert counterfeiter Han van Meegeren, suddenly becoming worthless. After this discovery, curators labeled the painting a poor copy, attacking its technique and [...] Continue Reading…

For the past year, I’ve followed an intriguing startup: bonobos.com.

I discovered Bonobos, an online men’s clothing startup, on Craigslist while perusing marketing jobs (I applied for a position for which I was grossly under-qualified, and subsequently rejected). Fortunately, I began to observe the company as they blossomed from their modest beginnings.

Bonobos is an an awesome case study. It’s a startup with product/market fit. That is, they have a viable business with a market for their products. Few startups have achieved this feat–but once they do, often the question is growth. That is, how to acquire customers and build loyalty. [...] Continue Reading…

In previous posts, I’ve discussed the randomness of success. It’s easy to attribute failure to poor marketing or success to an awesome product,  but we forget about the role of luck. A marketer may congratulate himself for a high response rate, but factors unknown to him could have played a significant role.

I’ve been reading the Black Swan by Nassim Taleb, and he adds mind-blowing layers to this idea of serendipitous success[1]. One such idea is the “tournament effect.” It’s a bit difficult to explain, so here’s Taleb’s passage first:

Someone who is marginally better can easily win an entire pot, [...] Continue Reading…

Recently over a glorious dinner at Nyonya, a friend and I began discussing toothpaste (he is employed by Colgate).

It began with my claim that you’d have to be insane to pay for Colgate’s price premium ($1.50 – $2.00). Colgate’s mid-tier brand, Colgate Total, surely didn’t justify a 100% premium over the generics.

No-no, he claimed. Colgate is a much better toothpaste. It uses Tricoslan, a patented formula, unique to Colgate.

I retorted that Tricoslan, and any patented Colgate concoction, is merely a marketing gimmick.

Blasphemy, he replied. It’s scientifically proven. Colgate Total cleans teeth better. Others at the table agreed. Generics like [...] Continue Reading…

There’s a new idea emerging for entrepreneurs with a drastically new approach to marketing: the Lean Startup.

I just learned about it from an entrepreneur, who hardly contain his passion for the idea.  A bit of background:

The Lean Startup begins with the premise that startups are unlike any other business.  Strangely, most startups use the same strategy employed by big corporations. Here’s a product development framework that you would find in any Corporate Strategy course [via Steve Blank]:

This works for big companies because they operate in defined markets with well-researched customers. Big companies know exactly who they are selling to [...] Continue Reading…