I’ve watched an intriguing video on TED.com that talked about a simple way some companies are increasing their profits. In short, they’ve found that offering their customers fewer choices can lead to more purchases than offering many choices. Sheena Iyengar (the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School) who gave the talk, says that we have a “choice-overload problem” in today’s world. She had held an experiment at an upscale grocery store to see whether or not having too many choices affected a consumer’s ability to choose and ultimately buy a product....

At the grocery store one day, I found myself looking for MSG-free salad dressings (which turned out to be a difficult task). I finally found a brand, but while I was reading over their ingredients, I noticed a weird “story” on the back of the bottle. If you’ve ever bought a Newman’s Own product before, you may have noticed these bizarre short stories on their packaging. Here’s the strangest one I’ve seen… On the back of Newman’s Own Low Fat Sesame Ginger dressing, the copy reads as follows: “The Great Salad Dressing Balloon Race. An Armada of balloons loaded with Low Fat Sesame Ginger....

Bored, sitting in the doctor’s office one day, I came across a Lennox ad in a magazine that had a strange-looking 1-inch graphic in the corner. I’ve seen plenty of QR Codes, but this one was nicely branded specifically for that company. From a marketing standpoint, it was intriguing. So, I went online to learn more. I found out that it was Microsoft’s new barcode for smartphones, called “Tag.” Microsoft had announced their new technology back in 2009 at CES. But I had never even seen a “Tag” on a product, ad or otherwise until now. Tag allows marketers to create either a HCCB (High Capacity Color...

Have you ever heard the phrase, “The medium is the message”? It was first coined by Marshall McLuhan, a pioneer in the study of media theory. The phrase generally means that the type of medium (i.e. Radio, TV, Outdoor Advertisement, telephone, the Internet, etc.) embeds itself within the advertising message, which influences how its audience perceives that message. Some people mistakenly believe that McLuhan meant that the message isn’t as important as the way it’s delivered. On the contrary, McLuhan argued that modern forms of communications (in his day included radio, television, films, and early computers) would...

Let’s be honest, if you were a client of the fictional ad agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, you’d probably run for the hills. The characters are pretty blunt – if not entirely rude – with their clients in a way that probably wouldn’t fly today. Set in the 1960′s, Mad Men has received critical acclaim for its portrayal of a big-time advertising agency in New York City. The show gives its audience a glimpse into the advertising world, and even though it has changed over the decades, businesses can still glean some good advice about the agency-client relationship (just replace all the booze and cigarettes...