Thought provoking

Plato's Cave and The Matrix

• The Matrix is based on Plato's cave analogy.


• In the analogy, a prisoner chained in a cave interprets the world solely through shadows cast on the wall.


• Plato argues we need to unchain ourselves and leave the cave, just as Neo leaves the Matrix's false world by taking the red pill.


• Today's technology may create a superficia

Look around. Society is filled with highly engineered versions of reality that are more attractive than the world our ancestors evolved in. Stores feature mannequins with exaggerated hips and breasts to sell clothes. Social media delivers more “likes” and praise in a few minutes than we could ever get in the office or at home. Online porn splices t

Category Problems

• Marketing people have opportunities to look at category problems that don't have a media budget attached.


• New technology negatives are salient while positives are invisible.


• New and frightening things are scarier than old things.


• Range anxiety in electric cars has two components: range and anxiety.


• It's cheaper to reduce anxiety than

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

Asking myself the question, “When I’m old, how much would I be willing to pay to travel back in time and relive the moment that I’m experiencing right now?”

If that moment is something like rocking my six-month-old daughter to sleep while she hugs me, then the an

“I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”

–HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE

American editor and journalist, first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize

The first axiom is: it is impossible not to communicate. In other words, we don’t just communicate when we choose to speak or send out a message; in fact, we don’t only communicate when we intend to communicate. You can see the truth of this if you consider, for example, how you might interpret someone else’s failure to return a phone call – especi

Value of the Advertising Process

• The most valuable aspect of advertising might be the strategic thinking required to produce the advertisement itself, not the final product.


• This process forces businesses to address fundamental questions about their purpose, differentiation, and value proposition.


• Rushing to a cheap, adequate result via AI shortcuts