How to make the study of Science exciting!

Topic: Tegenaria duellica, a.k.a. Spiders
Finding: Experiments have shown that common house spiders spin their webs in different ways according to the psychotropic drug they have been given.

So they behave differently... big deal! *Yawn* Boring, right? 
Wrong. 

Turns out, the folks at Environment Canada Wildlife Service may have found the way to communicate to the young and restless. This short documentary will show you what I mean:



If only more educational videos can be as creative and entertaining, we will have youths paying more attention in classes like Sex Ed, Alcoholism, Defensive Driving, Drugs and the Law... etc. 

Always think from the customers' point of view.

Social Experiments

The Washington Post conducted this social experiment:

Violinist Joshua Bell plays incognito in a Washington subway before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people using a $3.5 million handcrafted 1713 violin by Antonio Stradivari.
What do you think would happen?




Excerpt from the Washington Post article: "A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work."

On the flip-side, will consumers pay the premium for a mediocre product with a hyped up brand? Oh wait... that's what we, marketers, do. Make the ordinary, extraordinary. The unnecessary, a must-have.

On a much lighter note, how does a region's environment affect its people?
Take the people of Osaka, Japan, for example...



The insight lies in these quotes from my friends familiar with the Japanese culture:
"They are from Osaka, which is like the Japanese capitol of comedy" 
"Only in Osaka. You do this on Tokyo ppl, and you'll get completely ignored."

Marketing & Marie Curie's P.O.V

A recent IBM survey of chief marketing officers showed "that many feel unprepared to handle today's social media-infested waters." No doubt, marketers with an "old-school" approach are losing their grip in this world of digital media and data explosion.

The gist of the survey conducted by IBM: 

• 71% said they are under-prepared to manage current "data explosion"
• 68% struggle with changes in social media.  

Phil Kotler, author and marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University said, "Marketing was just easier in the past."

To me, "marketing" never got easier or harder. It was a matter of how much marketers were able to understand the consumers and their motivations. Back then, the expectations put on a marketer were much lower than what they are today. Creating a great buzz around a product or brand is great... but that will no longer suffice today. Marketers and businesses want more than just exposure and engagement. They want to measure the EFFECT - an obvious link between the ad and the resulting purchase. So far, only the world of online advertising and e-commerce has been fairly successful in tracking a specific user's site visit, duration and activities.

Marketers today shouldn't feel overwhelmed by the influx of information. We won't have all the answers for every question and, sometimes, the answer leaves us even more confused and uncertain. But that's okay... we should be comfortable living and making decisions in a VUCA World. If anything, marketers today should get excited of the deep consumer insights they can uncover thanks to the availability of data and technology to analyze what's happening on a larger scale.

In the words of French Physicist, Marie Curie:  

"Nothing in life is to be feared.  It is only to be understood."